The Auron MacIntyre Show - Did Cato's Pride Doom the Republic？｜ Guest： Alex Petkas ｜ 6⧸12⧸26

00:00:00.780 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:06.000 Before we get started today, I just want to remind you that one of the ways we keep the

00:00:09.200 lights on around here is, of course, subscriptions to Blaze TV. So if you want to support this

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00:00:23.760 to get $20 off today that's blazetv.com slash orin to get $20 off today all right guys we know that

00:00:33.920 america is often compared to ancient rome in fact every country loves to compare itself to ancient

00:00:38.500 rome because ancient rome was awesome however our founders very specifically were very interested

00:00:43.580 in ancient rome and one of the figures that they really enjoyed was cato cato played a very

00:00:48.940 critical role during the transition between the republic and the empire the events with caesar

00:00:54.860 and everything else that was going on and so i thought it'd be interesting to take a look at

00:00:59.500 cato and ask the question did his pride did his actual love for the republican government the way

00:01:06.080 he wanted to be seen as a champion of that classic republican virtue did that ultimately doom the

00:01:12.360 republic did it keep him from making different changes or taking different avenues that could

00:01:16.900 of Rearranged History. Join me today to discuss this as a classical scholar, the host of the

00:01:23.300 Cost of Glory podcast, and our resident classical historian, Alex Petkus. Thank you so much for

00:01:29.080 coming on, man. Always great to be with you, Oren. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So I think

00:01:35.840 it's fair to say that Cato is a classic figure, somebody who has been revered through the years,

00:01:42.520 seen as somebody, you know, kind of a champion of this classic Roman virtue fighting for the

00:01:48.520 Republic. And I think those are all admirable qualities. I think all of us can look at a man

00:01:53.500 like Cato and see something to be admired, something to be emulated. At the same time,

00:01:59.640 he's a tragic figure. He's somebody who in many ways couldn't get out of his own way. He couldn't

00:02:05.520 allow for perhaps some flexibility, some political understanding in the moment that might have been

00:02:12.500 more effective in his goals. But I want to maybe start before we get into, you know, his ups and

00:02:18.740 his downs. Who was Cato and why was he so important to, say, people like the founders of the United

00:02:24.440 States? Cato is the sort of Roman's Roman in the eyes of later readers of history, especially the

00:02:34.180 U.S. founders. And he got that reputation by being Julius Caesar's greatest opponent, most of all.

00:02:42.500 He was a Stoic, a kind of traditional Roman who modeled himself maybe less after the Stoic

00:02:51.400 sages that he studied and more after people like his great grandfather, Cato the Elder,

00:02:56.860 who was a famous stodgy moralist and a war hero, it should be said.

00:03:03.040 But Cato was also a kind of upholder of the conservative oligarchy in Rome.

00:03:10.960 And this is the main thing that brought him into conflict with Julius Caesar, as Caesar was a kind of populist outsider.

00:03:19.500 And he was a very upright moral figure who kind of rose on an anti-corruption platform and then ended up arguably triggering the Civil War against the Second Roman Civil War against Julius Caesar and sort of dying famously, refusing Caesar's mercy.

00:03:36.820 One of the reasons that he's very popular among the U.S. founders is because possibly the most popular play in the 18th century was a play by Joseph Addison, who wrote the tragedy, I think it's just called Cato, and it kind of catalogs his last days in Utica, North Africa, and the last days of his role in the Civil War, at least.

00:04:01.620 and many famous quotes come from that play that you would recognize or at least they're modified

00:04:06.780 versions of it like give me liberty or give me death um patrick henry or uh nathan hale saying

00:04:13.060 i regret that i have only one life to give for my country right before he's hanged these are

00:04:18.460 almost taken verbatim from from cato's addison or from addison's cato and uh and george washington

00:04:24.800 famously this was his favorite play and he had it staged uh at the um at the difficult winter

00:04:31.280 and Valley Forged, you know, when they didn't have any supplies, they at least put together

00:04:35.440 or cobbled together a stage and he had it performed by his soldiers.

00:04:39.320 And many of them, you know, knew the lines by heart.

00:04:41.580 It was just that popular and that influential.

00:04:43.600 So he kind of became the model of Roman virtue, resistance to tyranny, the supposed tyranny

00:04:49.660 of Caesar and the tyranny of St. George, I mean, King George III, not St. George.

00:04:55.060 uh so that he's had a very powerful influence over united states discourse there's of course

00:05:03.780 the letters of cato which were these pseudonymous writings in from the early 18th century circulated

00:05:10.100 around england kind of opposing the overreach of the monarchy so um and of course we have the

00:05:16.220 cato institute today which uh perhaps we could talk yeah that's not to associate there but no

00:05:22.780 it's very interesting you know a lot of people would recognize uh you know people today ripping

00:05:28.440 off star wars quotes and weaving them into you know whatever they're saying the founders are

00:05:32.680 doing it with something that's a far more based and cool and uh and serious so you know make our

00:05:38.660 entertainment based again so we can go back to quoting you know historically uh you know semi

00:05:43.160 accurate plays instead of uh you know some some kind of uh star wars slop but anyway sorry i

00:05:48.840 interrupted you there yeah no it's uh he's a he's a fascinating figure for a lot of reasons and uh

00:05:55.900 i'm excited to get a little deeper into his life well let's begin at the beginning then how does

00:06:02.460 cato find himself in this position how did he grow up what were his political ambitions why was he so

00:06:09.760 dead set in kind of cutting this classically roman stoic figure what spurred him to uh kind of this

00:06:17.040 status well cato grows up in the comes of age i guess in the days of the the first great roman

00:06:24.400 civil war and before that the social war in the uh 90s and 80s he's born in 95 bc caesar's born

00:06:32.240 in 100 so it's a little younger than caesar and it's uh rome has just been torn apart by this

00:06:39.600 factional conflict between the optimates and the populists the populares famously

00:06:47.360 the optimates win sulla is their leader he orchestrates this bloody reprisal called the

00:06:55.040 proscriptions a thousand or so the top romans either either dead or exiled their properties

00:07:02.560 confiscated and he sola also forbids any son of a proscribed man from serving in politics

00:07:12.400 so it's like a generational uh generationally solidified group ruling rome in the decades

00:07:21.360 after sola of people that were kind of loyal to the regime some of them quite corrupt some of them

00:07:27.440 you know fine and noble but um there there is a kind of power power elite at rome that you know

00:07:38.000 before sulla and before the civil war you have the gracchi you have marius there's a kind of

00:07:43.600 give and take between the populists and uh and it really just takes a decisive direction in the in

00:07:48.880 favor of the the power and really the wealth elite i mean a lot of these guys are very rich rome is

00:07:53.920 very wealth inequality is immense as you can imagine they have this vast empire that they've

00:08:03.520 conquered um not not everything that we eventually associate with the roman roman empire you know the

00:08:10.160 pompey conquers the east when cato's in his 20s and uh of course caesar conquers gaul when um in

00:08:18.000 the 50s bc but but that's the kind of situation that cato grows up in there's a lot of corruption

00:08:23.840 There's a lot of political intransigence, and he kind of sets himself apart.

00:08:30.840 I think this is one of the attractions to Cato of Stoicism.

00:08:35.920 Funny enough, his grandfather, great-grandfather, Cato the Elder,

00:08:40.700 thought philosophy was weak and effeminate and foreign.

00:08:44.880 And so for Cato the Younger to take up Stoicism in his day,

00:08:50.640 Greek philosophy was a little bit more normalized by then, but the Stoics were really

00:08:55.520 kind of marginal in Rome, at least. There was much more, you know, credibility if you were

00:09:05.400 an academic like Cicero, or especially if you're an Epicurean, like Caesar kind of dallied with.

00:09:13.320 And I mean, we can name a lot of people that were favorable, you know, Aristotle's philosophy,

00:09:17.700 for example. Crassus was maybe not Aristotelian or just man in Rome, but he had an Aristotelian

00:09:24.780 tutor for his sons. But we can't really find any Stoics of Cato's age, actually, in Republican

00:09:32.920 Rome, or very few. And so I think the Stoic philosophy that he's now associated with was

00:09:39.720 a kind of choice to set himself apart from the normal Romans, as well as his kind of

00:09:45.240 adaption of kind of old-fashioned dress. He didn't wear the nice flowing togas like the 0.97

00:09:54.120 fashionable young men used to wear. He would wear this drab old toga, and he walked around

00:09:59.660 barefoot. And he's trying to kind of adopt this ascetic persona that was partly associated with

00:10:08.060 the Greek philosophers of the kind of cynic tradition. Diogenes, the famous cynic, had a

00:10:14.040 little bit of influence on the stoic vibe you might say uh but it also kind of evoked this old

00:10:20.080 roman salt of the earth virtue all this wealth and and luxury is just making us feminine we're

00:10:26.440 soldiers we're like farmer soldiers at heart so cato really drew from these two uh channel

00:10:32.040 but um that that's that's cato's like rise in a nutshell of how he sets himself up at least

00:10:50.400 to be a contrarian in politics and uh he's he has family ties to the regime that that

00:11:00.440 Sulla established. His half-sister is a Servilia, and this is a great noble family, and he eventually

00:11:09.640 ends up making very advantageous marriage ties among the kind of power elite, and he's from

00:11:16.520 an old noble family, distinguished by its name at least for 100 years since his great-grandfather,

00:11:22.160 but um but even so he's not he takes some choices early in his career to kind of set himself apart

00:11:31.240 even from the party that he was really going to operate in and eventually became firmly associated

00:11:37.300 with yeah it's a very interesting time I mean obviously you know the story of Julius Caesar

00:11:43.500 is famous for so many reasons and it's the period of permanent history that people know them the

00:11:48.360 most but it also feels specifically applicable to many i'm sure empires in this state but very much

00:11:56.400 the united states because you have that moment as you say where the rome has not officially become

00:12:02.680 an empire but it you know for all intents and purposes is and that has radically changed the

00:12:08.720 dynamic inside it used to be a place where the average citizen was uh you know a farmer they

00:12:14.800 were paying for their own military gear you know the troops weren't paid all these things very much

00:12:19.080 a citizen militia you know true republic in that way and then you see the expansion the decadence

00:12:25.080 comes in they bring in slaves from all of these foreign places that are conquered it completely

00:12:29.580 destabilizes the economy the slave labor is too cheap and so the average roman can't find work 0.98

00:12:35.100 can't farm it you know you can see the obvious parallels today when it comes to foreign labor

00:12:40.100 and the the cost of the empire and the decadent elites all of these things can can easily speak

00:12:45.340 to i think a cycle of history that many people can feel echoes of in their current uh day so

00:12:51.940 cato becomes a very interesting figure because he represents kind of that stand against that

00:12:57.680 change right like that that that understanding of we were this once we could return to this uh you

00:13:04.540 know republic we could be these people we don't have to go down this track of decadence we don't

00:13:09.400 going to have to go down this track of empire. You know, we can in some way reorient ourselves

00:13:14.140 towards our ancestors. And so in that way, again, very respectable, but also a tragic moment that

00:13:20.800 ultimately does not go his way as we know some of the history. But what was his entrance into

00:13:25.800 politics itself? How did he become, you know, a notable figure in Roman politics?

00:13:31.740 Well, one of his first big political pushes was he gets elected quester. So he's around sort of late 20s. And this is the first rung, one of the early rungs on the Roman cursus honorum.

00:13:45.840 And he gets appointed to be in charge of, I think it's the Treasury, the House of Records.

00:13:56.760 And he essentially sees this is a place where records are kept of state debts and state loans and what is owed to the FISC.

00:14:09.420 And this is a huge opportunity for anti-corruption policy because there are a lot of rich Romans that will, you know, borrow money from the treasury and then somehow get it written off.

00:14:21.460 They build a little patronage network among the clerks, the kind of permanent bureaucrats, you know, this sort of like mini deep state kind of non-political appointees that really run the show. 0.94

00:14:33.620 and then the questers are these young gentlemen and they come in there and you know most of them

00:14:40.260 are kind of card punching time servers and they're they're kind of there for the for the

00:14:46.260 mark on their cv and if they try to interfere with the bureaucrats they quickly discover that

00:14:52.100 these people just totally run circles around them because they know the laws they know where all the

00:14:57.380 records are kept and all the policies and they'll be able to kind of you know bureaucratically uh

00:15:03.220 stifle any any opposition and so cato studies the office very very in-depth i mean he's a he's a you

00:15:12.180 know has a lot of zitz flash as the germans say to just sit there and uh and crank through really

00:15:18.740 boring documents so cato enters the office and and um he's like quoting chapter and verse from

00:15:26.100 the roman law code and and kind of out bureaucrats the bureaucrats and he even gets and you know he's

00:15:32.760 finding uh irregularities and he's calling in debts that people thought would be written off

00:15:38.960 and he's chasing out corruption and this pisses a lot of people off understandably he even has a

00:15:44.920 couple of the top bureaucrats like hauled off and fired and one of the censors who is a very

00:15:52.940 distinguished room this guy catalyst comes in and says hey cato you know yeah there's a way things

00:15:58.940 work in this town i know you're you're young and you're champing at the bit uh yeah but yeah let's

00:16:03.580 just ease off would you you know there's there's a bigger picture here and and cato just sort of

00:16:09.020 shuts him down he says well catalyst you know you're you're a censor and you should you should

00:16:13.260 kind of know about uh you're supposed to be the the the moral arbiter of the roman elite you know

00:16:20.620 you you kick people out of the senate if they uh they live a licentious life i mean i'm just doing

00:16:25.180 my job here i mean if if you like i could have you hauled off to the to the prison myself because

00:16:30.620 this is my turf and so he kind of um sticks it in the face of one of the top politicians of the day

00:16:38.060 and uh catalyst eventually backs down so this was the kind of thing that cato became known for

00:16:43.900 opposing men in his own party on you know corruption infractions and uh taking a stand

00:16:50.940 against bureaucrats and really mastering the laws and the traditions that that allowed him to make

00:16:56.700 the argument when he needed to make them i i posted about cato's work at the uh the treasury when he's

00:17:05.020 when he's a quester and i suggested like you know he's he's kind of um i mean he could be a great

00:17:09.900 hero for the for the doge movement yeah couldn't he and um he's kind of like a patron saint of

00:17:16.540 accountants if he were catholic and and then a bunch of people you know commented back well cato

00:17:21.900 was a was a cuck and you know caesar was the real man and uh blah blah blah but you know it is true

00:17:28.940 that that cato had um he had a lot to offer in terms of anti-corruption at least at least in kind

00:17:36.300 of persecuting infractions against the system even if he was not so open to changing the system

00:17:48.140 itself that incentivized in those kind of abuses and that corruption which is a sort of running

00:17:55.740 thread throughout cato's career yeah i think we can see from uh how things went with elon musk's

00:18:01.500 doge that uh this is always a uh difficult enterprise and uh kind of late stage uh you know

00:18:07.600 republics at this point and so even there we can kind of see that echo of you know yes you were

00:18:13.960 willing to make the reforms but were you willing to change a system in a way that would shake it

00:18:18.160 up would prevent this might you know ultimately prolong the life of the republic this is always

00:18:23.760 the difficulty the reformers are not necessarily the restores right uh which is you know funny

00:18:29.140 enough the the dichotomy between two the british breakaway right-wing parties right now right are

00:18:33.900 you just trying to reform the thing or are you actually trying to take actions radical enough

00:18:38.580 to preserve it even if that in some way might violate a current uh you know paradigm or a

00:18:44.260 current uh you know uh procedure you know would you ultimately be willing to uh you know stub

00:18:50.280 some toes and shake some things up even though it's going to in the long term actually preserve

00:18:54.800 the thing that you love. And that's a tension that many, you know, constitutionally conservative

00:18:59.960 people really run into. So Cato clearing up corruption, but he's also known for, you know,

00:19:08.380 this conspiracy, you know, he and Cicero, you know, get involved in uncovering and addressing.

00:19:15.140 So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So his one of I think is his finest moments

00:19:21.560 probably is in the Catalinarian conspiracy, which really comes to a head in 63 BC. Cicero is the

00:19:28.440 consul. Cato has just been elected tribune. And notably, Julius Caesar has just been elected

00:19:34.420 praetor. So they haven't entered office yet. Cato and Caesar haven't. But essentially,

00:19:41.300 the background is Catiline. This is failed, kind of dissolute aristocrat who tried to run for

00:19:50.020 consul twice and lost and he he uh he launched plan b as it were which was basically

00:19:57.300 murder a bunch of senators march on rome and take over the state um and cicero and he's

00:20:05.780 promising debt relief he's he's a kind of a populist um kind of class defector but but he

00:20:12.520 was very sneaky and he he had a lot of allies among the the nobility who sort of didn't know

00:20:17.680 any better. The catalyst that I just mentioned was one of them. But Cicero eventually finds

00:20:22.920 really damning evidence and chases Catiline out of town in a famous, the first Catilinarian

00:20:29.440 oration where he sort of shames Catiline in front of the Senate and present some evidence. And,

00:20:35.120 you know, Catiline flees. It's a famous painting of Catiline sulking in the benches alone and all

00:20:41.920 the Senate kind of staring at him and Cicero kind of railing against him. And so Catiline leaves,

00:20:47.700 but some of his conspirators are still in the city. And Cicero finds evidence that they're

00:20:53.740 actually still planning to carry out the bloody coup. And he arrests them, hauls them before the

00:20:59.800 Senate, and he gets them to confess. He presents them with incontrovertible evidence. And they all

00:21:04.940 just say, yeah, well, all right, I was trying to do the right thing. But, you know, yeah, this is

00:21:11.420 is what we were planning to do they can't deny it and so the um the issue before the senate is

00:21:17.740 what should we do with these conspirators who just confessed that they're intending to bring fire and

00:21:22.780 murder and uh cicero kind of feels like the thing to do is to summarily execute them which is uh

00:21:31.900 you know kind of against roman law but but but he can he can get authorized by the senate as the

00:21:37.260 consul to do what is necessary to save the state and but he wants the senate to kind of back him

00:21:43.020 up but basically he want he'd like to execute them without a trial because um they've discovered that

00:21:48.780 there's an army of like 5 000 people a day or two's march from rome this is you know real tense

00:21:54.780 situation sort of late um november december of 63 and um you know there's a lot of waffling and

00:22:03.660 And plausible arguments made.

00:22:06.580 And Julius Caesar actually stands up.

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00:22:42.920 Offers the case that these men should be not spared punishment,

00:22:48.520 but just held in prison for life.

00:22:51.440 Life in prison distributed amongst various strongholds throughout Italy.

00:22:55.900 Death would be too good a punishment for these men.

00:22:58.700 and um they have a lot of popular support still now the interesting thing here is caesar

00:23:06.420 is backed by rome's richest man crassus and cicero suspects in fact he knows cicero suspects

00:23:16.580 many people suspect crassus is behind this whole thing like he was financing catiline

00:23:20.920 Crassus is a very dark, crafty, shadowy figure.

00:23:26.180 And Cicero later said he had incontrovertible evidence that Cicero himself was in on the scheme,

00:23:35.060 but he didn't want to bring such powerful, influential men under suspicion.

00:23:41.640 He wanted to cut out the cancer, at least the tumor, without maybe cutting out its ultimate causes

00:23:50.000 because if he challenged the great, great men who were behind it,

00:23:54.520 you know, this might start a real revolution

00:23:56.820 or be kind of politically dangerous for him.

00:23:59.240 And so he kind of isolates the blame and the damage in this case

00:24:03.540 away from Caesar.

00:24:05.560 But in this, and so in this speech,

00:24:08.300 Caesar's sort of playing up the emotions of the Senate

00:24:13.740 and kind of their fear that if they take too drastic action,

00:24:17.900 you know the the people might rise up it's very very tense um and so cate you know cicero after

00:24:26.340 caesar speaks he's like well i i guess you know there are reasonable arguments made on both sides

00:24:32.360 but maybe maybe the case that caesar made is is the most reasonable we should spare so to speak

00:24:36.980 these men and just give them life in prison and then cato stands up and he he says you 1.00

00:24:42.340 pussies, you know, you bunch of cowards, you, well, there's armies at the gates, and they were 1.00

00:24:48.840 threatening fire, and the dagger was at our throat, we want to spare these men, you know, take hold of 1.00

00:24:54.140 the reins of government, damn it, and he kind of browbeats the Romans into voting, the Senate into 0.97

00:24:59.660 voting that these men should be executed, and while he's doing it, you know, it's interesting, he kind 0.98

00:25:05.300 of this episode is narrated very well by uh sallust who who knew both men or knew all the

00:25:13.800 parties involved uh whether or not he was actually there in his um war with catiline

00:25:18.680 he preserves the speeches cato in you had had some like innuendo for caesar maybe well why is

00:25:27.580 caesar so eager to see these men spared what what has he got up his sleeve he's kind of hinting at

00:25:32.700 thing that cicero doesn't want to hint at that that caesar's behind this and whatever happened

00:25:38.220 you know it was likely if catiline had actually pulled it off that caesar thought he would find

00:25:46.460 a way to be on top of it all caesar's consistent policy throughout this period he's kind of up and

00:25:51.980 coming politician he's not a great man of rome yet is basically any policy that sort of challenges or

00:25:58.780 weakens the power of the um you know pro sola optimate oligarchy that controls the senate

00:26:05.580 that's the policy he's going to support does it mean that caesar is a full-on revolutionary who

00:26:11.660 wants to make himself tyrant maybe not but that's certainly what cato thought and and like from that

00:26:18.940 moment thereon uh you know the men are executed um and but from that moment cato took the hardest

00:26:30.380 line possible in every possible case against caesar it's like he he kind of was convinced

00:26:36.780 irrevocably that caesar was a tyrant on the rise who wanted to murder them all and cancel debts and

00:26:43.180 just have the rabble rule Rome and that that kind of I don't know it sort of determined his 0.91

00:26:49.500 political fate in a lot of ways for the rest of his life so as you say obviously he sets himself 0.91

00:26:55.940 against Caesar and if he's worried about this guy becoming a tyrant well you certainly don't want

00:27:00.480 him stepping into the consulship so when it comes to ascending or ascending the consulship you know

00:27:07.520 he uh cato that is kind of puts himself out there as an enemy of caesar he goes out of his way to

00:27:15.760 try to prevent this and probably in ways that are ultimately uh unwise uh in certain areas can you

00:27:22.680 describe a little bit of that conflict yeah so um a year or two later caesar he's coming back from

00:27:30.200 his provincial command at uh he was in spain as a as a provincial governor after his premiership

00:27:36.520 He wants to run for consul. He also wants to run for a triumph, put in his, you know, application to get a proper glorious triumphal procession because he knocked around some bandits and fought, you know, a minor war, but, you know, not nothing in Spain.

00:27:56.520 and um so cato basically filibusters to prevent um you know the the roman legal technicalities

00:28:03.880 are kind of interesting but maybe we can skip over them essentially cato forces caesar politically

00:28:08.520 to pick one or the other you can either triumph or you can run for consul this year but if you

00:28:14.280 triumph you're gonna have to wait another year for the consulship because you would have to make your

00:28:18.760 candidature in person technicalities we can skip over but basically caesar he thinks caesar's going

00:28:25.880 to pick the triumph probably and just delay his uh his political rise for for one more year to

00:28:32.600 become consul um but he pisses caesar off to be sure and caesar just says nope i'm gonna go for

00:28:38.120 the power not the glory i'm a young guy i'll get i'll get a triumph later um let's let's not put

00:28:45.800 the brakes on my career now and uh and i'd like to stop just real quick and say how important that

00:28:52.760 moment is like a lot of people just blow past that uh but a for people who are not understand

00:28:58.700 a triumph is much rarer than a consul ship yes uh it is it is a uh a very rare honor and so

00:29:06.220 passing it up you know you might say oh well you know pass up a medal to become president of course

00:29:10.940 you know it's like no this is very very different there are a couple consuls every year in rome

00:29:15.480 lots of people take consulship it's a big deal but it but the triumph is a huge deal and so

00:29:21.080 caesar is passing on what is often like the culmination of a person's life puts them in

00:29:26.280 the annals of history uh you know it showers them in glory forever he passes that up to take

00:29:32.240 the office and that is a huge important moment because that is understanding that in that moment

00:29:41.220 the power is more important than the glory setting himself on the track and possibly securing that

00:29:46.760 power is the more important thing than securing his legacy there like Caesar has a eyes on the

00:29:53.460 prize that go well beyond even a what for most people would be like the greatest honor of their

00:29:58.560 lifetime he is a man of incredible vision and being in the fact that Cato misjudged him as a

00:30:05.960 man who was vainglorious instead of a man who is clever and is going to play that that that is a

00:30:12.020 big miscalculation by cato is assuming something about his opponent assuming he's weaker uh that

00:30:18.740 he's less disciplined and he ends up paying the cost for that at the end yeah it's well put

00:30:23.920 and and caesar was also a man who had an impeccable sense of timing too and and and he's i think he's

00:30:30.040 probably seeing the stars aligning that this is actually a really good year for him to be console

00:30:34.680 as well because of other blunders that cato has has made in in the lead up to this so cato has

00:30:43.800 has pissed off the equestrians who are the kind of business classes of rome they're not politically

00:30:49.800 involved directly uh but they're they're they're wealthy and they they run the tax farming and they

00:30:56.120 run mining up they do a bunch of stuff that's important to the kind of functioning of the state

00:31:00.760 supplying the army and things like that and uh he pissed off the equestrians in this trial by

00:31:07.160 threatening to prosecute them for accepting bribes and getting off some politician and

00:31:11.240 and then um he is blocking the uh these equestrian sort of lobbies who are trying to get their uh

00:31:21.400 contract written down basically they were they they bid high to go farm the eastern provinces

00:31:27.800 that pompey just conquered and you know they said oh we're going to bring back you know let's say

00:31:31.800 10 000 talents and they go over to asia and they realize that pompey's like sort of taking all the 0.77

00:31:37.240 money and it's very war-torn countries we can't we're going to go bankrupt if we have to bring

00:31:42.600 back 10 000 talents can we just bring back i don't know 5 000 or 3 000 or whatever it is

00:31:47.880 and uh cato says nope deal's a deal and crassus is really the champion of the equestrians crassus is

00:31:55.160 probably got a lot of money at stake and he's really lobbying to try to get the equestrians

00:32:00.360 bill written down and cato's shuts him down and and see cicero around this time says you know

00:32:07.400 cato doesn't understand the big political game the senate always wants to get the equestrians

00:32:12.200 on the side of the establishment and the nobility and to keep them out of the the claws of the

00:32:17.240 populists because they're kind of the swing party potentially and uh so cicero's like cato just

00:32:24.040 chill like let crassus pass his bill and uh you know the equestrians will will love us all and

00:32:30.560 and cato says nope it's a matter of principle cato really doesn't like the businessmen it should be

00:32:35.360 said uh and maybe that's that's a vote in his in his favor um but uh this what this does is it

00:32:42.000 basically makes cato crassus's biggest problem and then at the same time you got pompey coming

00:32:49.180 back from the east after his glorious eastern campaign and and uh pompey's trying to get land

00:32:55.020 distributed to his veterans uh which is sort of the the understanding now if you have a long

00:33:01.980 overseas campaign you know you need to reward your soldiers and pompey's trying to make them

00:33:05.920 respectable gentlemen get them little plots of land to farm and he's also trying to get all of

00:33:11.380 his um the arrangements that he made with various cities and kings and you know um he's like

00:33:18.980 drawn up all these arrangements taxes and you know tax breaks and all this stuff in the east

00:33:25.260 he wants to get it all ratified by the senate in this one kind of omnibus bill and cato's blocking

00:33:31.160 him there because he's saying basically if pompey gets all these measures passed then he'll be too

00:33:38.900 powerful it'll kind of set him up as a as a potential tyrant cato's always trying to make

00:33:43.740 sure that nobody sort of rises too, too high. And now a cynical person might say that this is just

00:33:49.640 like the forces of envy. It's like the tall poppy syndrome. Cato is always sort of looking out for

00:33:55.060 tall poppies and trying to try to beat them down, which is sort of how the Republic is designed to

00:33:59.880 function, it should be said. But this also makes Cato Pompey's biggest problem. And sort of

00:34:08.040 intransigence that he's able to affect the kind of um procedural obstructionism that cato has in

00:34:17.000 the senate he's you know filibustering or you know getting things voted down or putting off debate

00:34:22.840 for the next day it's just you know making crassus and pompey want to pull their hair out and so

00:34:28.680 caesar sees this is the moment right comes in he says pompey crassus this is in a dark you know

00:34:35.240 smoke-filled room um and hey support my bid for the consulship this year we'll get all your

00:34:41.480 measures passed i know how to beat cato hey you know caesar caesar has shown he's a he's a very

00:34:46.760 clever clever man and he's very popular too he's a flashy popular guy and so this is the forging

00:34:54.000 of the triumvirate so essentially cato by by kind of putting up uh intransigence and and blockading

00:35:02.580 and sort of insisting on the letter of the law

00:35:04.820 sets up a very strong opposition to himself.

00:35:09.640 And sure enough, Caesar is elected

00:35:11.360 and becomes consul for the year 59.

00:35:14.940 And he's just kind of,

00:35:16.880 he's not a really powerful politician.

00:35:19.240 He's promising,

00:35:20.440 but you could even call it a duumvirate.

00:35:22.900 It's like Pompey and Crassus

00:35:23.920 are the real kind of twin towers of Rome

00:35:26.480 and Caesar's like a little guy

00:35:27.840 with the trapeze,

00:35:30.220 you know like wire walking between them and um but but that's that's kind of a problem that

00:35:36.660 nobody more than cato created like this this sort of caesar triumvirate juggernaut

00:35:42.200 and this is why i thought this story was so important for a moment like ours because there

00:35:47.980 are so many conservatives who feel like cato you know they want to protect the republic they want

00:35:53.960 to return is to virtue. They want to hold on to the system as it is. They want to use the procedures

00:36:00.580 of the system to arrest what is happening, thinking that ultimately, like the Constitution,

00:36:06.920 you know, all of the checks and balances, democracy, all of these things can be used to

00:36:12.140 ultimately slow the corruption of the society, turn the ship around to prevent what's happening.

00:36:17.920 And while I think a lot of them would look fondly on Cato and his actions, we have to look at the

00:36:22.740 results and the results as you say as noble as we might find cato's you know resolution in these

00:36:28.920 moments his willingness to to push back against corruption to push back against you know the

00:36:33.880 forces that are arrayed against his beloved republic he ends up forging the very alliance

00:36:39.160 that will bring about the tyranny that he fears the most right this is his worst nightmare and he

00:36:45.240 is more or less manufacturing the very uh you know kind of political alliance the power block

00:36:51.760 that will make this happen and so it's a important lesson i've talked to a lot of libertarians

00:36:58.940 and uh they're currently you know big champions of thomas massey they see thomas massey as this

00:37:04.500 man who stood against corruption you know in the face of foreign influence in the face of you know

00:37:09.260 the epstein files everything else you know thomas massey gets on there and he uses the procedure of

00:37:14.080 uh you know congress to wrestle the trump administration to the ground and force them

00:37:17.680 to keep their promises and these things and i'm not calling thomas massey cato to be clear uh but

00:37:22.800 uh you can see the shadow of this and now the libertarians are very excited because even though

00:37:27.740 thomas massey has been defeated he is the symbol of you know the the victory of the the truth of

00:37:33.940 the republic and you know they all want him to be present they all want him to rush and then i'm

00:37:39.060 trying to explain to them guys you don't understand like thomas massey standing athwart history and

00:37:45.060 saying stop will not actually stop it any more than it did for cato and i just think again that

00:37:50.920 doesn't mean we can't admire you know some of the courage of massey or the courage of cato the the

00:37:56.700 willingness to push back against the the popular will and what was politically expedient

00:38:02.280 sometimes it's annoying sometimes it's frustrating you can see again the way people you know respond

00:38:08.220 to tonis massey sometimes it's not always uh you know gonna win over the large crowd but it it is

00:38:14.380 something that we admire on some level for just having that stalwart nature and the ability to

00:38:18.980 resist temptation but as we consider this history i just want us to remember you know these things

00:38:24.760 are all applicable to the common day we can it it doesn't necessarily you know repeat but it

00:38:29.660 certainly rhymes and so this dynamic as we remember cato you know pushing very hard against this force

00:38:36.020 nobly uh you know opposing a tyrannical state that he fears he is in a way kind of creating the

00:38:43.720 Voltron you know he's bringing the powers together that will ultimately uh bring about the thing that

00:38:48.400 he he fears the most so if if you're familiar with Roman history at all you know where this is going

00:38:53.920 we have the first triumvirate forming what do they do to try to go through Cato how do they

00:39:01.040 try to clear his obstruction well there's there's a whole lot of uh um kind of forcing through of

00:39:07.460 measures cato manages funny enough so cato for all his career he's an anti-bribery politician and um

00:39:17.060 but he sort of concedes that in certain extreme cases bribery might be necessary and he allows

00:39:24.580 his uh his buddy a marriage connection bibulus to run for consul riding on on a wave of massive

00:39:32.420 bribes from the Optimates. And Cato sort of gives his blessing to it. So Caesar does have an opponent

00:39:38.740 in the consular office with his colleague. And there's some very, very funny and kind of sad,

00:39:47.960 depending on your perspective, sad or funny moments where Bibulus sort of stands up in

00:39:53.640 assemblies and tries to stop Caesar. And I've seen lightning. I've seen thunder. There was a bad

00:40:01.320 omen because consuls can do this at Rome. And then Caesar just kind of ignores it and continues on

00:40:05.980 with business. And at one point Bibulus is standing up and railing against the tyranny of Caesar and

00:40:13.320 the dark forces behind him. And, you know, mid kind of tirade, a bucket of excrement is dumped 0.98

00:40:21.440 upon his head and he's sort of laughed out of the forum. But, you know, it's worth pointing out that 0.92

00:40:27.280 But Caesar, his legislative campaign, for the most part, was actually brilliant.

00:40:33.280 I mean, he was a really good solver of problems.

00:40:36.500 And it's worth mentioning just for a moment here, and some of these might resonate, the problems that Rome was dealing with.

00:40:43.220 You mentioned this vast empire that they haven't really acknowledged as an empire.

00:40:47.700 Where Rome has this problem of provincial corruption, that is to say governors going out and extorting the provincials and the provincials having very little recourse because the governors can always, you know, get their buddies put on the jury and things like this.

00:41:03.180 And, you know, you've got this intransigent oligarchy with its proceduralism that that won't solve real problems.

00:41:11.620 You've got massive wealth inequality that's exacerbated by the electoral system because, you know, to get elected to office really requires you to have a ton of money.

00:41:24.340 then as now, especially the more important the office. And often they're taking out loans to

00:41:31.100 even the rich guys are taking out loans because they're not all that liquid to pay for their

00:41:35.660 campaigns. And then they're expecting to go to the province and extort all the provincials and

00:41:40.420 make their money back. And, you know, as as things progress, you get domestic lawlessness.

00:41:47.160 There's factionalism kind of on the rise. There's all these problems at Rome and Caesar

00:41:52.540 makes some really credible dents in that so he has he lost for example a provincial corruption

00:41:58.820 law that really raises the bar or like lowers the bar for prosecution it makes makes it so that you

00:42:05.400 can get not just uh if your hands are dirty but if any of your subordinates hands are dirty

00:42:10.800 uh and the provinces like they can they can call you to account and he he makes a law whereby

00:42:17.660 provincial governors have to submit not just their records to Rome, but submit their accounts

00:42:24.860 to and put them in cities, two cities in each province. So he's really trying to increase

00:42:31.980 the accountability. He passes Pompey's land redistribution policy for the soldiers, support

00:42:43.520 our troops so there's a lot of things that caesar does that just show he's he's a really talented

00:42:48.720 and creative legislator and he gets it done if if the senate opposes him and obstructs him because

00:42:54.880 cato's filibustering he'll just go to the popular assembly there's a way to work around it expends

00:42:59.600 a lot of political capital and requires a lot of popular support but caesar is willing to spend

00:43:04.320 that capital and he has the popular support so um there there's a lot to be said for the fact that

00:43:11.120 Caesar really was a more creative statesman than Cato, and that he actually had an eye to solving

00:43:20.160 those problems. I think you can really make that case. I tried to make it in the biography that I

00:43:24.560 did of Caesar. And of course, I also did a biography of Cato. But Cato basically takes the line

00:43:32.800 throughout Caesar's consulship

00:43:34.920 that even if Caesar

00:43:36.740 proposes a good policy

00:43:38.100 it's bad

00:43:40.560 because it will make Caesar more

00:43:42.740 powerful. It's like

00:43:44.440 he's a snake. Cato

00:43:46.800 is just convinced

00:43:48.120 that Caesar ultimately

00:43:50.660 is sort of

00:43:52.380 unmixed evil

00:43:54.820 for Rome. This becomes his

00:43:56.820 never Trump moment. This is his orange

00:43:58.840 man bad. Even if you win for the 0.98

00:44:00.820 country it's still bad because you are bad.

00:44:02.800 and that will give Caesar derangement syndrome. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 0.86

00:44:07.820 he's one of the first cases of this, this, this common pattern, I think. So, so we know that

00:44:16.020 ultimately the Roman Republic comes to conflict and Cato is at, you know, the center of that

00:44:24.140 development. So how does this move from, you know, being politically obstructive to now we're

00:44:30.180 getting to full-on, you know, armed civil war? Well, while Caesar's away, he's away for eight

00:44:38.000 years, and Cato is, you know, listening to the biography on Cost of Glory, if you want to hold

00:44:43.080 the full story, but Cato basically, he's sort of playing his card as a moralist, and one of the

00:44:52.500 things that becomes clear through Cato's career that I don't really mention in the show, but kind

00:44:56.900 of was occurring to me cato is uh he is he is just he is uh he's honest and and yet his his

00:45:07.160 moralism the romans sort of smile and they they you know pat him on the head as it were it's like

00:45:13.620 this is great isn't it great you know we we're still we still got it and then they go on and 0.94

00:45:17.760 they keep bribing in elections and they go on and they keep seeing the prostitutes and he doesn't

00:45:22.540 really affect much and and you know his his attempts to curb bribery and pass um various

00:45:31.320 legislations they don't they don't amount to much they're not that effective but what what he is

00:45:37.520 effective at his mandate as it were from the nobility from the uh the optimates is to rally

00:45:46.880 the troops and build and consolidate the base the the kind of anti-caesar base you know it's and

00:45:54.480 this is i think a trap for for the right too you know the the people admire a moralist the left

00:45:59.520 will let let the conservatives be these sort of moral upstanding honorable citizens john mccain

00:46:06.400 he was an honorable man you know but they'll let you do that as long as you don't act as long as

00:46:12.560 you keep attacking people to your right you know as long as you don't attack the actual problem

00:46:18.480 you could say that the deep state and things like this so whenever cato tries to actually you know

00:46:23.760 change things from within his party it comes to nothing but what one where he gets the most

00:46:28.800 traction is in railing against caesar's iniquities and recall caesar from his command he's just

00:46:34.400 broken a treaty with the germans debatable but you know uh we gotta bring him back to face his

00:46:41.360 his accountability for his crimes in Gaul. And so this kind of comes to a head in 52, 51. And

00:46:48.420 long story short, Cato has sort of managed to wrangle Pompey a little bit closer to the

00:46:55.640 optimate oligarchy and keeps whispering in his ear along with the other optimates that,

00:47:00.980 you know, Caesar's trying to dethrone you. You're the big man. Caesar's lawless. And Pompey just

00:47:06.540 says, no, no, shut up. He's my friend. Shut up. He's my friend. Well, actually, you know, 0.99

00:47:10.540 you have a point. And the final kind of breakdown is Caesar wants to come back from his command at

00:47:17.360 Gaul and his term is set to expire in a kind of hazy time period between late 50 BC and 48 BC.

00:47:28.580 And they take a very hard line and say, Caesar, you have to lay down your command, come back and

00:47:32.880 be a private citizen. Caesar gets some tribunes to pass a law that he can run for the consulship

00:47:39.720 and absentia which would give him immunity from prosecution and you know because he wants to be

00:47:45.400 able to not be prosecuted uh into political extinction after all he's done for rome you know

00:47:52.120 conquering and pacifying this dangerous province and bringing you know untold wealth back to the

00:47:56.660 roman coffers and cato essentially is one of the the leaders i mean there's there are a lot of

00:48:02.480 war hawks at this point but cato is kind of their moral aegis as it were and um i mean just to pull

00:48:09.120 one very telling episode there's there's a vote uh late in 50 bc so caesar crossed the rubicon

00:48:17.360 like january 9th or so 49 so right before this there's a vote lofted by one of caesar's

00:48:25.200 lieutenants that um pompey and caesar should lay down their commands because pompey has his own

00:48:31.920 extra ordinary command provincial armies all over the place and you know caesar is basically making

00:48:37.840 a concession through through this intermediary like hey i'll lay down my armies i want i don't

00:48:43.120 want to fight a war uh just as long as pompey does the same fair is fair um and the senate votes

00:48:51.200 370 to 22 to accept this resolution like let's have both of the big men step step out of the ring

00:49:00.000 and let things cool down we don't need to fight a war but things just keep escalating cato is one

00:49:05.440 of the voices he's one of the people that votes no and and so caesar by this time is on the borders

00:49:12.400 of uh italy proper you know in um ravenna right by the rubicon and uh he keeps making these

00:49:18.400 concessions hey i'll lay down all of my armies you and maybe i'll just keep one but it's one

00:49:24.320 very far away and caesar really does try i think it's fair but but he always sort of he's never

00:49:29.520 willing to totally let his enemies destroy him and there's one moment where he makes this really

00:49:37.280 abasing uh concession and pompey's actually thinking about it like um cicero's urging him

00:49:44.880 pompey take the deal let's let's stave off war we all lived through sulla this will be terrible

00:49:51.360 uh and cato is standing there he says pompey don't let yourself be deceived and then um pompey says

00:49:58.160 no caesar must must must submit and finally the senate kind of under the leadership of cato and

00:50:04.720 metellus and these other optimum hardliners they pass the ultimate decree and they declare war on

00:50:09.680 caesar basically they say caesar's an enemy of the state and so caesar says all right and he crosses

00:50:14.220 the rubicon and you know the rest is history um but but it really was i think it really came as

00:50:21.600 a surprise to cato he thought that caesar wouldn't do it to me that's something that's part of his

00:50:27.720 story that makes it tragic that a lot of people don't really um note that that cato didn't actually

00:50:34.720 want civil war he just wanted caesar destroyed and and and to submit but he didn't really think

00:50:41.100 caesar would do it he kind of underestimated his enemy which is ironic because he was always saying

00:50:45.600 caesar is this you know tyrannical snake who wants to overthrow the state but it's like he didn't

00:50:50.180 really believe it or why did he why did he back caesar into a corner yeah it's one of those moments

00:50:55.580 where you spend your basically entire career

00:50:59.000 railing against one man,

00:51:00.460 the danger of his tyranny that could be on its way,

00:51:03.500 what this will do,

00:51:05.020 but you don't believe your own rhetoric

00:51:07.840 or you didn't take it seriously enough

00:51:10.320 or you thought ultimately there would be a line

00:51:11.980 that wouldn't get crossed

00:51:12.900 and you decide to leverage a guy

00:51:16.100 into a no-win situation

00:51:17.300 unless he takes the one path you've left for him

00:51:20.060 and so end up in a way fulfilling

00:51:22.940 your own darkest, uh, you know, worries there. Uh, well, obviously we know that Caesar won the

00:51:29.340 civil war. So what happened to Cato? How does this end for him? Well, Cato, as soon as the

00:51:34.460 war breaks out, Cato's suddenly becomes one of the leading voices for peace. You know, let's,

00:51:41.000 let's make a deal. And, um, and, and he's just ignored at this point, like he served his role,

00:51:47.640 but the people who are now running the operation are Pompey and the sort of war hawks who are

00:51:53.680 hyping him up. And they just kind of keep ignoring Cato and they give him kind of petty little

00:52:00.520 commands. They do give him a command of Sicily and he eventually ends up abandoning it rather

00:52:06.240 than fight against a couple of Caesar's commanders that might have been bloody, might have won. But

00:52:12.940 he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to shed Roman blood. I mean, kind of understandably, 0.99

00:52:17.360 I think he's kind of regretting it. And, and because Cato is seen as a kind of lukewarm

00:52:25.000 supporter of the war, always saying, Hey, let's not execute Roman soldiers after we capture them

00:52:32.080 in battle. You know, let's, okay. If we have to kill somebody in battle, that's fine. But,

00:52:36.500 you know, if we capture them, we should, we should spare them. And this is the opposite policy of

00:52:43.400 what the, the Pompey takes. It's actually Caesar's policy, but it's the, the optimates are, um, are

00:52:49.360 really vindictive. And, you know, they execute like a thousand of Caesar's soldiers at the battle

00:52:54.120 of Dyrrachium that they've captured. And Cato's just like walking beside the, the lined up corpses

00:52:59.360 and he just, you know, weeping, sobbing. I think it's because he knows that this was his fault

00:53:05.060 at the end of the day and and um pompey eventually loses this great battle of pharsalus

00:53:09.960 and um and funny enough you know the war many people saw the war was decided by that great

00:53:16.460 battle uh pompey was still alive but not for long he gets executed and by treachery in egypt but but

00:53:24.780 cato decides to fight on um and i think he felt like he had he was sort of committed enough to

00:53:33.820 the cause. And he would either fight on or live in exile. Like he didn't want to go back to Rome

00:53:41.180 that Caesar controlled. And long story short, he eventually ends up in North Africa, in the city

00:53:47.320 of Utica, where he is given once again, a non-combat role. Essentially, he's holding down

00:53:53.240 the important supply city on the north coast in Tunisia and preventing the the 1.00

00:54:02.500 optimate like senator the people in his camp from sacking and murdering sacking 0.94

00:54:10.820 the city and murdering everybody in it because they wanted to side with Caesar

00:54:13.220 he's kind of a peacekeeper sparing lives which is which is admirable and then

00:54:18.320 eventually caesar lands in africa and um defeats cato's uh friends metellus and then he marches

00:54:27.040 on utica uh to accept the city's surrender and he's hoping to spare cato but but cato famously

00:54:35.680 commits suicide by sort of tricking his his friends who know that he wants to to do it and

00:54:42.480 and then he uh sort of keeps a dagger they try to take the dagger from him and he demands his dagger

00:54:48.800 back um and uh while they're not looking he uh he stabs himself and eventually like the doctor

00:54:56.480 sews him back up and then he opens up the wound it rips out his intestines and so expires um 0.88

00:55:02.880 because he would rather die than um accept the clemency of caesar and uh and live in a rome that

00:55:10.080 you know see a Rome that was that was dominated by this this tyrant that he had you know arguably

00:55:15.880 kind of created so that was his shining moment if you want to read a kind of lurid depiction of that

00:55:22.280 read Plutarch's biography I covered that in the final episode of the Cato series and that's that's

00:55:28.140 the those are the days that Joseph Addison also comments on Cato's sort of victory or death

00:55:34.040 mentality in the final days at Utica.

00:55:39.200 It's a really fascinating story. And of course, you can see why Cato is revered in many ways.

00:55:45.380 I mean, that's hardcore, you know, ripping your own bowels back open rather than taking the mercy

00:55:50.260 of a guy. Gotta say, I mean, hardcore, you know, you gotta give the man credit where it's due here.

00:55:55.920 But it is interesting that throughout there just seems to be this threat. Again,

00:56:00.240 And as admirable as Cato is, in many ways, he could not see that his insistence on procedure and morals did not ultimately yield the outcome he was looking for.

00:56:16.880 In many ways, as you say, it built the very tyrant he was worried about.

00:56:21.300 It certainly forged the triumvirate.

00:56:22.880 It pushed Caesar into different avenues.

00:56:25.560 Maybe he would have chosen a different way.

00:56:27.120 Maybe if Caesar didn't have to become Caesar, he would have been something else.

00:56:31.320 And this is always the interesting moment.

00:56:33.380 You know, there's so much of the history is characterized as either kind of trends and forces or great men.

00:56:39.800 Right. Like either they have that Carlisle and great man or you have to have kind of this more modern understanding that everyone is a product of the time and the space.

00:56:47.700 And I think the answer is obviously both.

00:56:49.900 You know, you have to have the trends, the forces.

00:56:52.280 You have to have kind of the substrate from which great men can arise.

00:56:56.480 They have to have that moment that they can meet.

00:56:59.200 Without the moment, you don't get it.

00:57:00.760 But without the man, you don't get it either.

00:57:02.700 And in a way, Caesar is forged in part because of Cato's kind of belief in trying to hold on to the letter of the law of the republic, even if he's losing it in spirit day by day.

00:57:16.240 And so I think that's a fascinating corollary to many of the approaches that are now being levied at the American Republic.

00:57:22.740 Yeah. And Cato, I think he's a good example of how insisting on the letter and kind of mobilizing all the forces of legal obstructionism against your opponent kind of undermines arguably the rule of law because people think, well, the law is the thing that is stopping good things from happening.

00:57:42.720 And if you keep towing that line, then people start to think the Senate is a corrupt den of fat vipers that is good for nothing.

00:57:52.420 And, you know, like they start to yearn for somebody who can just wipe it all away.

00:57:58.560 And so, you know, and one more thing that's worth mentioning that I think kind of reflects this difference in mentality between Cato and Caesar is Caesar really,

00:58:11.240 I think, sees the Roman polity as the whole empire. Like, okay, Rome is a city, but it also

00:58:20.780 rules over all these peoples and they need to be governed justly. Caesar, okay, this is debatable

00:58:26.340 now, but Caesar was kind of pro-granting citizenship to people who had fought loyally for

00:58:32.320 Rome and were Romanizing, sort of stretching the bounds of citizenship. And he's all about 0.59

00:58:39.920 provincial reform but but cato is sort of seeing rome as a city as as a city of traditions and

00:58:46.420 anything that that kind of disrupts the inner constitution the way that things have always been

00:58:53.340 this is sort of like tantamount to destroying rome itself um and caesar they they have just

00:59:00.480 very different versions of roman greatness and i think that caesar's was probably more plausible

00:59:05.700 to a wider group of people, even if they were not the most powerful people until he won, at least.

00:59:13.940 Well, and all I can think of now is the court's obstruction of the Trump administration and how

00:59:21.040 many people are so fond of quoting Andrew Jackson now. Let the chief justice enforce it. Because as

00:59:27.440 you say, when people see that Trump is trying to do something to make their lives better, hey, 0.98

00:59:32.160 deport this illegal who is you know taking jobs or you know maybe even threatening to kill you

00:59:37.160 know someone in my neighborhood oh no a judge says you can't so now i say well i care more about my

00:59:43.700 neighborhood than i do about the judge so just ignore him and fix the problem right and this is

00:59:49.180 this is always the moment right this is always the moment as you say where at some level uh using the

00:59:54.940 power of the obstruction of the rule of law destroys it and and ask people to yearn for more

00:59:59.660 So, yeah, like I said, I just think it's a fascinating comparison, very timely, very useful, and something to consider for kind of the right in America, conservatives in America, as they try to better understand the historical moment that they themselves are experiencing.

01:00:14.240 That said, Alex, where can people find your great work?

01:00:17.000 Yeah, on X at cost of glory is my handle there. And if you want to listen to the Cato series on the cost of glory podcast or watch it, we've got some documentary style videos made of it on YouTube, with some maps and images and really cool images, I think and or on any of your podcast players, Spotify, Apple, and so on.

01:00:41.020 it's a three-part series most of my i mean all my biographies are three-part series and uh

01:00:45.980 you know i think i think cato deserves a lot of attention today he's i try to let people admire

01:00:51.260 him for his for his virtues but you know i think you kind of can gather my my own opinions on

01:00:57.420 whether or not he was ultimately good for rome and that to me that is the tragedy that that is

01:01:02.220 most instructive for us that we can admire him while at the same time acknowledging that he

01:01:06.940 probably had some blind spots that prevented that that prevented better things from happening and

01:01:12.360 ended up creating the the very worst thing that he had imagined uh the roman empire you know

01:01:18.580 a whole other well that's whether that was good or bad well that's what makes it a tragedy because

01:01:23.320 the the failure was inherent in the flaw in the man in the beginning even though he in many ways

01:01:28.540 you know embodies many great virtues and that that's always where great tragedy is born uh guys

01:01:34.320 we were pre-recorded today so we cannot answer questions sorry about that but if it is your

01:01:39.000 first time on this channel you need to go ahead and click subscribe on youtube like bell notifications

01:01:44.480 all that stuff helps with the algorithm also if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts you

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01:01:52.740 with the algorithm there a rating or review really does that thank you everybody for watching and as

01:01:57.360 always we'll talk to you next time

01:02:04.320 Thank you.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - June 12, 2026

Did Cato's Pride Doom the Republic？｜ Guest： Alex Petkas ｜ 6⧸12⧸26

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

The Auron MacIntyre Show - June 12, 2026

Did Cato's Pride Doom the Republic？ ｜ Guest： Alex Petkas ｜ 6⧸12⧸26

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Did Cato's Pride Doom the Republic？｜ Guest： Alex Petkas ｜ 6⧸12⧸26