The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Government Shutdown Means the End of the Republic？｜ Guest： Alex Petkas

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00:00:15.320 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with

00:00:19.560 a great guest that you're really going to enjoy. Before we get started today, just want to remind

00:00:24.440 you that one of the ways we keep the lights on around here is of course subscriptions to Blaze

00:00:29.100 TV. So if you want to get the behind the scenes access to all your favorite Blaze hosts and you

00:00:34.760 also want to support what we're doing here, make sure you go to blazetv.com slash horn to get your

00:00:39.740 $20 off your subscription today. That's blazetv.com slash horn. All right guys, so it is of course

00:00:49.180 Halloween and I wanted to bring you a spooky tale of history repeating itself. We have a situation

00:00:55.820 where we've had a protracted government shutdown. If you're not one of the people who's really

00:01:00.420 dependent on the government, you probably didn't even notice. I often forget the government is shut

00:01:03.740 down at all. But actually there are of course classes that are entirely dependent on the government

00:01:08.700 in the United States. One of them is those that are receiving food stamps and if the government

00:01:14.340 continues to be shut down into tomorrow, we are supposed to see the first round of food stamps

00:01:19.560 being cut off from those who depend on it. We also have a situation where the military hasn't been

00:01:25.480 paid in over a month and we have a billionaire stepping in to cover the cost of the military to

00:01:31.880 pay their wages. An interesting parallel again with the Roman Empire where you had a lot of private men

00:01:39.500 end up funding these different armies. So the grain dole might end and the legions are being funded by

00:01:45.420 these patricians. It's a very interesting time and I think that has some interesting parallels to

00:01:50.840 the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire. So joining me today to talk about that is a frequent

00:01:57.080 guest on the show. He's a historian. He runs the Cost of Glory podcast. Alec Petkus, thank you so much

00:02:03.160 for coming on, man. Great to be on, Aaron, as usual. In times of late Republican turmoil, there's always

00:02:09.840 something to talk about. Yeah, this is one of those scenarios where obviously some of this is just we're

00:02:15.080 having fun. You know, we're kind of drawing these parallels. But of course, it's also serious. I mean,

00:02:20.040 we'll take as we were saying backstage, we'll take any opportunity to talk about Roman history. So this

00:02:24.580 is a good excuse as any. But I do think it is interesting to evaluate the ways that this again,

00:02:29.900 if it doesn't repeat, at least is rhyming with the way that history has happened before. We know that

00:02:35.700 even if these issues aren't exactly the same, there are signs of civilizational instability,

00:02:41.220 right? These are things that we can trace through. We know how they flesh themselves out in Rome.

00:02:46.400 Some of them were critical to fall of the Roman Empire or the Republic rather. Others, maybe not so

00:02:53.100 much. Maybe they just contributed. They ultimately became too much for the empire to bear. But it really

00:02:59.760 does create an interesting scenario where we can kind of trace those events and try to see how well

00:03:04.060 they map on so we can make some predictions about what's going on here. In fact, from what I've heard,

00:03:08.860 they're pushing to kind of end the filibuster in the Senate. We might get a straight up and down vote

00:03:15.060 to end this whole thing soon. So who knows? This might not even ultimately happen. But I still think

00:03:19.880 it's worth understanding because these moments are very important and we could easily be back here

00:03:25.160 again, given the instability and disagreement in our government. So let's start with the graindle.

00:03:32.400 This is a scenario I think some people have probably heard about this, that the Roman government

00:03:37.320 was providing bread at some level, providing grain at some level for the average person.

00:03:43.020 But I don't think they understand how integral it became to certain aspects of life, especially

00:03:48.840 in the Eternal City, and how this being taken away or threatened, the food supply, these kind of

00:03:56.320 things, how critical it could be to just changing the demeanor, changing the stability inside the Roman

00:04:02.560 Republic and then Empire. So can you start a little bit by explaining what the graindle is and where it

00:04:08.660 came from, what Tybin started, that kind of stuff? Yeah. So people often associate the graindle with

00:04:15.680 this quote, the bread and circuses that keep the city of Rome peaceful. That's a quote from Juvenal,

00:04:21.560 which is, you know, about a century and a half into the reign of the emperors. And, you know,

00:04:28.700 it's typically associated with this decadent late Roman period where the plebs are just wallowing in

00:04:33.940 entertainments and the emperor is kind of sitting serenely on top of a, you know, bureaucracy.

00:04:38.820 And, and, but it actually begins quite, quite early. I mean, in the, in the span of Roman history,

00:04:45.580 in the mid to late Republic, uh, in the, the first graindle legislation cap comes under Tiberius

00:04:55.720 Gracchus. Um, and Gracchus is famous for this. So we're talking 130 BC. These are the famous populists,

00:05:04.440 the Gracchi brothers, and, um, you know, who are famous for redistributing land, getting lynched by

00:05:11.260 the Senate or trying to champion the interest of the working man and the kind of common Roman soldier.

00:05:17.600 But in, in the Rome of Tiberius Gracchus' day, you had a great increase in population to the city of

00:05:27.320 Rome in the wake of the Punic Wars, which were fought not least over the island of Sicily, which

00:05:35.540 is kind of the breadbasket, uh, ultimately of Rome. And it certainly at this period, Sicily,

00:05:39.980 in addition to Sardinia is another very important Corsica, Sardinia, Sardinia, especially very

00:05:46.340 important, um, cereal agriculture regions. And, uh, the problem is the city of Rome is not at some

00:05:56.780 point easily able to sustain the, the food needs of the populace because it's one of the biggest

00:06:04.420 cities in the world at this time. I think it, by Gracchus' day, maybe it hasn't quite surpassed

00:06:09.480 Alexandria, but it soon will. And, um, it's a lot harder to ship in grain or to, to cart in grain

00:06:18.160 from the countryside. Um, because it's expensive to carry, it's like 10 times as expensive to,

00:06:24.480 to cart things a mile than it is to, to sail them by a ship. And so you start to have grain imports

00:06:30.540 being a really important part of the supply of food in the city. And with the population increasing,

00:06:36.220 you know, every spike in prices, uh, or every glut of supply, it has ramifications in, in the capital.

00:06:44.200 So if there's a bad harvest or especially in the late Republic, you get this problem of piracy,

00:06:48.700 you know, that can really put a, put a squeeze on the city of Rome. And so Gracchus proposed this law

00:06:55.420 and passed it, um, where Roman citizens would be entitled not to free grain, but to grain at a fixed

00:07:05.800 price. And this, uh, supply that he secured was five Modi a month. And a modius is like two gallons of

00:07:17.000 dry grain. So if you do the math, that's a modius, I, I think is something like 22,000 calories.

00:07:25.960 So multiply that by five, add a little olive oil and you got enough food to not starve. If you're,

00:07:32.840 if you've got a wife, you got a, maybe a baby in the house, um, maybe a slave it's, it's, it's enough

00:07:39.280 for a small family to, to just get by. And if you supplement with olive oil or fruits or, you know,

00:07:45.760 the occasional rind of pork you get at a, at a festival, you can, you can get by. And it's,

00:07:51.560 it's a big piece of, uh, the diet for a lot of citizens already at that time, the grain and,

00:07:57.320 and then, you know, with the graindole coming in, it becomes, becomes very important. It becomes a

00:08:03.480 kind of entitlement. And there's a funny story actually. Uh, so the graindole, it's important

00:08:08.520 to emphasize, you have a, a fair bit of foreigners moving into Rome, you know, peddling their wares,

00:08:15.240 settling, um, Greeks and, you know, Carthaginians, but the, the Roman graindole is only for citizens

00:08:23.560 and it's only for males. So it's essentially the idea is if you're a head of household, you can get

00:08:30.120 enough grain to supply your household. And, um, there was stiff opposition to this law as you can

00:08:35.880 expect. People are like, well, how are we going to pay for all this? This is going to create a dependent

00:08:40.040 underclass, et cetera. Uh, but the graindole did not require you to be below a certain property or

00:08:47.960 income level. And so one of the senators who was fiercely opposed, like the greatest opponent of

00:08:54.040 this law, after the grain law gets passed, he, he shows up in the bread line, uh, a few days later

00:09:00.360 and somebody asks him, well, what are you doing here? And he says, I'm, I'm, I'm here to get my,

00:09:04.920 my share of my property, my mayabona. So it, and, you know, uh, obviously a very rich man who had no

00:09:11.480 need for the graindole. Um, so it was contentious, but once it passed, you know, it's, there's just no

00:09:17.720 chance of repealing it. And that became the standard for a while. The, the, the grakin grain graindole at

00:09:23.560 a fixed price. So obviously the parallel seller here are pretty easy, right? Like we have this, uh,

00:09:30.840 this constant need, uh, to provide a certain amount of food to at least the poor, um, at that

00:09:38.160 time, though, as you say, it could be claimed by, by everyone, even if they ultimately didn't need it.

00:09:43.160 Now, as you point out, this is them buying it at a fixed price as opposed to just immediately

00:09:48.180 receiving of it. But obviously this is being heavily subsidized. That's why it stays at that

00:09:53.000 price. So you still have a situation where it's more or less welfare, though. It will require some

00:09:57.720 level of work and payment ultimately from these people. Uh, now it's a populist, uh, adjustment.

00:10:04.420 And this is of course, interesting because we always know that the populists come in and they

00:10:09.280 want to break up the order as it is. They're offering, you know, uh, better, better wages,

00:10:14.940 uh, you know, more farmland, uh, you know, the, the, the, the bread, uh, you know, the, the grain,

00:10:20.320 uh, there's always the situation where you're pointing out that so much of the system has been

00:10:25.560 locked up by the elites. And this is inherently going to be something that's very unpopular

00:10:30.100 with the elites. As you point out, the, the gracchi are lynched, uh, by the Senate ultimately

00:10:35.640 for their insistence on pushing these populist, uh, policies. And of course this moves all the

00:10:41.560 way up to Julius Caesar. A lot of people know he's a popular against, uh, the optimates. And so you have

00:10:46.820 this scenario, uh, where a lot of people can look at Donald Trump. And even though we think,

00:10:51.560 you know, conservative, small government, these kinds of things, we can kind of see that parallel

00:10:56.860 of him moving along. And even though he's technically supposed to be the Republican

00:11:00.500 party, the, the, the party of small government, he clearly isn't really afraid of entitlements.

00:11:05.100 He actually embraces in many ways, making sure that people get checks and these kinds of things.

00:11:09.400 Cause he gets like kind of the basic transactional nature of politics in a way that the wider Republican

00:11:15.280 party doesn't like I pay you and then you vote for me, right? Like this is, I do things that

00:11:20.000 benefit you. And then ultimately, you know, uh, you benefit me, a very, a very, uh, uh, patronage

00:11:26.020 style relationship that was very in favor in Rome. Of course that the patron system was really built

00:11:31.800 into their social order. One, one that we don't recognize today. Officially we, we tend to not

00:11:37.040 approve of this, but it's very clearly there. So I'm wondering in this scenario, how did the

00:11:43.760 grain dole evolve over time? Did it continue to stay a fixed price? Was it eventually just

00:11:49.440 free? Did the amount increase? What, what challenges were there in attempting to keep

00:11:54.460 that supply going? Did they eventually have to move beyond? I believe Egypt eventually became

00:11:59.040 a critical player when it came to, to feeding Rome. What are some of the things that, how the

00:12:03.320 kind of grain dole evolved both politically and logistically for Rome?

00:12:07.680 Well, one of the interesting things that starts to happen is, um, after this grain law is passed

00:12:13.860 is suddenly there is, well, obviously there's an incentive. If you can get your name on that list

00:12:20.000 of people entitled to grain, you're going to find a way. And one of the things that happens, the, the,

00:12:25.140 the list of people getting the grain dole grows over time. And, um, one of the mechanisms for this

00:12:33.380 happening is masters freeing their slaves. And, you know, when you free a slave, he becomes a client of

00:12:43.520 your, you know, often you free your slaves and then he's just sticks around as your employee,

00:12:48.060 especially if you've had good relations with them, which is what is generally advised. Um, and, uh, and so

00:12:54.580 people will free a slave and then the slave as a freedman will get the right to have a, uh, the grain

00:13:02.840 dole himself. So it's kind of like, you know, the way that employers will, will find ways to get their own

00:13:09.500 employees subsidized somehow by the, by the food stamp system. People criticize Walmart for this.

00:13:15.560 Well, you know, you set up the incentives in a certain way, people are going to take advantage of

00:13:19.040 it. Um, by, by the, the really late Republic. So the days of Julius Caesar and Cicero, the, the grain

00:13:26.320 lists have gotten bigger and out of control. And, you know, there, there are attempts to, um,

00:13:32.560 some successful attempts to ratchet it back by making it so that you can only be not a freedman,

00:13:39.200 but a free born Roman citizen. And there are people that are Italians who have moved in from

00:13:46.700 the countryside and they say, no, no, you have to be like a native Roman. You have to be domiciled in

00:13:52.860 Rome. You can't just be here, you know, renting, uh, an apartment for, for a day or two a week to get

00:13:57.940 your grain ticket. So there's all kinds of ways that people try to gain the system as, as I think you

00:14:02.820 and I would too, if we were hungry. But, um, so one of the attempts to, to kind of, um, rationalize

00:14:10.100 that comes in, in the, after the civil war with Julius Caesar. Uh, but let's get to that in a moment

00:14:15.640 because there's an important development that happens before that, which is in 58 BC, one of the

00:14:23.380 great mobster populists of the era of the late Republic, uh, Publius Clodius passes a law to

00:14:30.720 basically make the grain dole free. And you can imagine this was met with stiff opposition. Uh,

00:14:37.320 but, but Clodius got the law passed. And, uh, and after that point, the, by that point, the,

00:14:44.680 the grain, uh, roster had swelled from something like in the day, like in the, the 40,000s in the

00:14:52.880 days of Gracchi to something like 300,000 in the days of Clodius. So it's really gotten

00:14:58.320 big and it's, it's a huge burden on the state. And, uh, Cicero is, uh, found right around this

00:15:06.140 period. Cicero hates Clodius. So he has some kind of incentive to swell the number, but it's plausible

00:15:11.360 because it's so much grain that this Cicero says it's, it's one fifth of the annual revenue of the

00:15:17.720 state is earmarked for paying for this free grain, uh, to the citizenry of Rome. So, you know,

00:15:26.240 once again, once you pass it, you can't really undo it. Uh, but it, but it creates a lot of

00:15:31.380 supply problems. So it's one thing to pass the law to distribute this grain and to actually pay for

00:15:36.840 it. But if you, if you can't supply it, uh, if you can't find the grain, then prices are going to

00:15:43.240 rise for the state and they're going to be shouldered with even more of the burden. And that is when

00:15:48.420 in, um, 57, I think it is Pompey, the great, who's one of Rome's great politicians, um, you know,

00:15:57.680 payer of his own armies, which we'll, we'll get to in a bit. Um, he, uh, has a friend namely Cicero

00:16:04.420 and some other people propose him for this novel office called the prefect of the grain, the

00:16:10.920 prefectus unknown eye. Unknown is the Roman word for the grain dole, which has something to do. Well,

00:16:16.580 the etymologically has something to do with like the yearly supply of food, but, um, Pompey is

00:16:22.560 basically charged with making sure that there is enough grain to buy at decent prices and going

00:16:28.540 around to very, you know, Sicily, Sardinia, arranging things with merchants. Um, Egypt isn't

00:16:35.120 quite part of the equation yet, but North Africa, by that point, um, the Romans control quite securely

00:16:41.400 after the third Punic war. And that becomes another, probably the biggest staple of the,

00:16:47.200 you know, we don't think of Africa as a very fertile region, but, you know, Northern Tunisia and

00:16:51.000 Algeria, big, big grain producing areas in the, in the Roman world. And so, um, the, the prefect of

00:16:59.060 the grain, interestingly, is not just some kind of, uh, you know, bureaucratic negotiator office.

00:17:07.400 Pompey has imperium with this office. It's essentially like a military office. So he can

00:17:14.760 take warships around and kind of strong arm people. If there's any kind of crime going around

00:17:20.700 grain hoarding, he can put some muscle behind Rome's claims to, to get good access to good grain.

00:17:28.240 And, uh, it ends up being a five-year office and it's, it's one of the bases on which he

00:17:33.100 kind of holds power in Rome, uh, through being the man behind the Roman police force. Like if there's,

00:17:41.100 there's a lot of riots going on in this period, some of them may be grain related, probably a lot

00:17:45.080 of them mostly political. And, um, and so Pompey, when, when things get rough, he can step in,

00:17:50.980 crack down with troops in the city, which you normally can't do, but he can do it as the commissioner

00:17:57.380 of the grain supply, which is really interesting. So it shows you how big of an issue this is. And,

00:18:02.460 and also, you know, how, how much Pompey felt that being the man, being the grain boss was, uh, uh,

00:18:10.780 you know, a desirable kind of popular facing, uh, political office. Um, and, uh,

00:18:18.880 fast forward to the days of Julius Caesar. I think this is also really interesting. So the grain

00:18:25.820 supply has managed to continue to flow into Rome, even over the period of the civil war,

00:18:32.040 which starts in 49, 49 to 46 is, um, the, the, the most violent part of the civil war.

00:18:39.920 And once Caesar wins most of the civil war, there's still a flare up going on in Spain that he has to

00:18:45.460 take care of later. But once he gets back to Rome after killing, you know, the optimates and Cato

00:18:52.100 commits suicide in Africa, uh, Caesar comes back to Rome as dictator. He, uh, holds a drastic review

00:19:01.020 of the receivers of the grain dole and, uh, cuts the number from 32, 320,000, a hundred thousand

00:19:12.660 to something like, um, 160, I believe it is. It's in the mid hundreds. So he basically cuts the,

00:19:22.820 the eligibility in half for, for all the people receiving grain. And he specifies not only,

00:19:31.140 okay, you have to be a Roman male citizen that was there from the beginning, but, um, you know,

00:19:38.120 maybe people were abusing this. And so he reasserts this and make sure that everybody's complying with

00:19:43.080 this, but he also, uh, institutes a lot system by which, you know, not everybody who is theoretically

00:19:52.440 eligible is going to get a, uh, a share of the grain and you have to draw lots. And there's,

00:19:58.220 there's a weighted system by which the more kids you have, the better chance you all, you have of

00:20:04.940 getting grain. So he's, you know, it's a kind of pro natalist policy on Caesar's part, um, which,

00:20:10.860 you know, pro natalism, you can kind of see developing in the reign of Caesar and it continues

00:20:14.800 with Augustus, but you can sort of see that policy intersecting with his grain policy at this point,

00:20:19.660 which is really interesting. Yeah. So it becomes obviously, you know, as we'd expect,

00:20:25.540 unfortunately, uh, with any kind of state program, any kind of welfare, it, it starts to become

00:20:30.980 a, uh, something that is constantly being offered, uh, and increased. It's, uh, something that you

00:20:37.440 can use as a wedge against kind of the entrenched powers by offering more of it. Once it's there,

00:20:42.860 like you said, it's just not going to go away of itself. It's, it's too popular with people,

00:20:47.680 uh, obviously, however, it does become a logistical football and very interesting that, uh, Pompey is able

00:20:53.360 to kind of use that office that otherwise probably would not be one that just kind of covers you in

00:20:59.020 glory, right? It's not something that a lot of people would be fighting for, but he recognizes

00:21:02.560 the political utility of it, not just because he's in charge of this critical, uh, you know,

00:21:08.080 uh, kind of patronage thing that he gets to decide where it goes, but also because it gives him

00:21:12.780 special privileges, as you say, to, to move troops in and crack down on law and control the riots.

00:21:18.260 Basically he gets to circumvent the Roman constitution. Uh, this is the state of exception that he gets to

00:21:23.440 deploy by, by holding this particular office. Uh, so, uh, this is a Carl Schmidt, uh, you know,

00:21:29.460 would, would see him as the sovereign. He's, he gets to decide when, when you get to suspend those

00:21:33.760 rules. It's also very interesting that in order to really bring this back under control at all,

00:21:39.320 of course, uh, as we see with so much of kind of the Roman Republic, you have to see Caesar step in

00:21:44.740 and, and cut the Gordian, not just across the board, right? Like is you, you have the dictator,

00:21:48.840 he can make the decisions. It doesn't matter if this is politically popular or not anymore,

00:21:54.640 because now there is no more politics. This guy is now in charge. Uh, and so he can make these

00:22:00.060 decisions that no one else, uh, could make. Uh, so you end up in this scenario where obviously,

00:22:05.240 um, the, the larger kind of more democratic mechanism, the Republican mechanism basically

00:22:11.920 has been entirely hacked by the grain dole. The grain dole gets to decide a lot of the political,

00:22:17.640 uh, you know, uh, order. Uh, and then the only way to really make any of that go away. The only way

00:22:23.240 to reform that at all is to bring in a guy who just no longer has to worry about, uh, the Republican

00:22:27.860 order no longer has to worry about the democratic input, uh, and that incentive no longer necessarily

00:22:33.300 exists for him to be completely loyal to that program. So ultimately does the grain dole stay with

00:22:40.780 us until like the fall of the Western empire? Are there big interruptions? Does it eventually see

00:22:45.520 another scaling back, uh, does it become even more critical to the people in the eternal city? Like

00:22:50.560 what, what, what's kind of the final fate of the grain dole? Yeah. So one of the things that

00:22:56.200 people were hesitant about in instituting something like this is, um, the Romans are very reluctant to

00:23:04.800 establish any kind of permanent bureaucratic system or office. You know, when they are supplying

00:23:11.740 their army, they, uh, contract the, uh, the food supply and the arms supply out to private bidders,

00:23:20.980 and that gives the, the politicians, you know, the power to play them off each other, get the best

00:23:26.420 price, um, go with another alternative. Um, and it also prevents people from kind of holding the state

00:23:34.640 by the, uh, uh, uh, the, the leash, let's call it. Um, and, um, you know, so people were reluctant to

00:23:43.700 see an official office of, of grain supply develop. You can imagine, because that's just far from the

00:23:50.000 Roman mindset, but, but you start to get some centralization of the power, both. I mean, for,

00:23:56.440 from the, uh, time of the Gracchi's reforms, that's when we start to see proper state sponsored,

00:24:05.620 state owned granaries, um, in, in the city of Rome. Clodius, uh, appointed when he made the grain

00:24:14.600 free, he appointed his own guy to be in charge of, of all the grain. And then, of course, you can

00:24:19.800 imagine this would happen. Cicero and, and, uh, Clodius, his enemies quickly accuse that guy of

00:24:26.540 skimming a bunch off for himself. And, you know, the corruption gets involved. Um, but you, um, you,

00:24:34.580 you see the establishment under, it's kind of steps made in that direction under Caesar of,

00:24:41.880 of establishing permanent offices, uh, that are in charge of the grain supply. And Caesar starts by

00:24:50.180 adding a couple of edels who are the, the cereal edels, you know, Ceres is the God of grain. And so

00:24:56.020 they're the, the edels of Ceres. And, um, once Caesar is killed, he, uh, Augustus kind of follows in his

00:25:05.440 footsteps footsteps and establishes a, um, an office of the, well, it's not called the prefect of the

00:25:13.900 grain, which becomes the official title in the later Roman empire, but, but somebody who is directly

00:25:18.340 answerable to him. And he is actually, as part of his early powers of, um, you know, Supreme

00:25:25.220 command, basically Augustus, the way that he constructed his imperial authority was by cobbling

00:25:31.940 together existing forms of power from the Republican system. You know, he gets elected

00:25:36.560 consul in sequence over and over and over. He resists the, the offer of dictator. He's, um,

00:25:44.780 he's never dictator, but he, he has these other powers that give him the kind of dictatorial authority,

00:25:49.520 including the, the tribunition power, you know, he kind of takes over the champions of the people's

00:25:54.840 role. And, but one of the early offices that he accepted when it was, when it was offered to him,

00:26:00.220 but I sent it is the, the office of the prefect of the grain. And, um, and so this was clearly very

00:26:08.660 important to him. And it's funny, actually, after, after Caesar was assassinated, um, Brutus and Cassius

00:26:16.300 are, you know, they're still in the cities guys who have orchestrated this conspiracy and the, the

00:26:23.200 Senate wants to get rid of them, kind of let the situation cool down. And so they assign them the office,

00:26:28.960 the, the, the job of going and buying grain. They're, they're like official grain buyers,

00:26:35.100 uh, as, as one of their tasks to, to, to get them the hell out of Rome. But, uh, the grain dole

00:26:41.440 continues and, and grows in, in importance in Rome and it, it gets bigger. There is, um, and there's

00:26:49.240 attempts to retrench it by, by Augustus's time. Uh, it is swelled up, you know, to, to the hundreds of

00:26:57.140 thousands, several hundreds of thousands. Again, he cuts it back to 200,000. Um, but, um,

00:27:03.580 by, by the, uh, by the, by the end of his reign, Augustus has captured Egypt or, um, annexed Egypt.

00:27:13.980 And that's when Egypt starts to get more important under the reign of Augustus. So

00:27:17.460 Egypt, of course, you know, the Nile, you could just like spit out your sunflower seeds

00:27:23.160 and like sunflower plants will just blow up in that, in that spot. It's just so fertile.

00:27:28.340 So there's just a ton of grain in the, in the Nile Valley. And, um, it, you know, we think of

00:27:33.640 Egypt, if you're a kind of Roman history nerd as being the breadbasket of the empire, but it's not

00:27:39.260 for a long time that Egypt really becomes more important if ever, uh, than Africa say, or Sicily

00:27:46.880 to the grain supply of Rome. Um, but, um, you know, under Augustus there, there's like clear

00:27:53.260 political ramifications. If you're familiar with the story of, of Augustus, there's this, uh, revolt

00:27:58.220 of one of the sons, the rebel sons of Pompey, sexist Pompey, this pirate, uh, Lord, as he's often

00:28:05.240 called, who, uh, who takes control of Sicily and actually threatens Rome with starvation in 40 to 39 BC.

00:28:14.040 So it continues to be just a, a key thing that, that, that you have to handle as, as the emperor,

00:28:21.040 the emperor though, uh, it's like one of the main duties of the emperor to make sure that there is

00:28:27.020 enough grain and that you can pay for it and subsidize it and, you know, give it for free to

00:28:31.700 the people. But it basically never goes away. This is one of the perks of, of being a poor person in

00:28:37.900 Rome is you get the bread and the circuses. And later on there, there are things added to the

00:28:44.620 free food dole. You know, um, I think it's under the reign of Septimius Severus, you know, third century

00:28:50.980 BC, uh, AD, they start adding olive oil. At some point you get some, some pork belly and various things

00:28:59.240 are added. And I think it's important to understand the shift in, in the importance,

00:29:05.260 like why is this politically important? Okay. Under the Republic, it's politically important

00:29:10.020 because these are your voters, but in the empire is politically important because these people can

00:29:16.160 rise up and kill you. You know, that you don't want the riots and which is not such an issue under

00:29:21.220 the Republic. I mean, there's plenty of reasons that people riot in the Republic and there are mobsters

00:29:25.600 manipulating the crowd, but you know, there's luckily there'd be nothing like that today.

00:29:31.320 Yeah. Yeah. Thank God that we've solved that problem today.

00:29:35.300 Civilized as we are with nothing to do. Um, but so, uh, you know, you don't really have like

00:29:43.260 mobsters running around the emperor can just kill them or have them arrested. But if you don't feed the

00:29:49.540 people, you know, they're going to get pissed and they're going to rise up. So it's just, it's

00:29:53.720 constantly on, on the mind, you know, if there's a famine, it's, this is the sort of thing that can

00:29:59.340 topple an emperor. So they, they have to keep it up. It starts to get more sporadic in the, in the

00:30:03.900 late Roman period in Rome, because at that point by the mid 4th century AD, Rome is not, it's, it's

00:30:12.060 sort of the capital in name, but you know, Milan is more important politically, militarily, it's close

00:30:17.540 to the border. Constantinople becomes important. Constantinople is of course, getting grain from,

00:30:22.720 from Egypt. This is the norm. So, um, basically, you know, once you, once you start these handouts,

00:30:29.640 uh, it's the emperor really, you got to remember the emperor is sort of the, the, the populists

00:30:36.080 of populists, right? He is the champion of, of the lower classes of the people of Rome in Rome.

00:30:41.640 If you are the poorest, nobody, you can see the statue of the emperor in your, you know, market

00:30:49.800 town, and you can throw some incense on the altar to his genius. And you can just have this hope that

00:30:56.780 the emperor is going to, to reach out and help you one day. If you could just get your petition in

00:31:01.700 front of the right person at Rome or Constantinople. And so it's a big piece of, of a kind of populist

00:31:07.900 monarchs self-presentation that he's able to feed the people, um, and, um, and, and keep the grain

00:31:14.640 supply going never stops at Rome. Yeah. So obviously I don't think we have to, uh, you know,

00:31:22.320 uh, work too hard to draw the parallels of course, to our current situation. I think many people were

00:31:27.520 shocked to see how many tens of millions of people are on food stamps on a regular basis in the United

00:31:32.620 States and the percentage of them that are ultimately foreign born. It seems like a large

00:31:37.300 amount of our, you know, of, of our system is, is going to once again, uh, kind of subsidize the

00:31:44.000 importation of a number of people who, uh, will, will vote for a particular party for a particular,

00:31:49.500 uh, way of life, uh, but are not ultimately contributing, uh, to, uh, the larger pie. So,

00:31:55.440 I don't think we have to belabor, uh, those comparisons too much, but very interesting to

00:32:00.120 think ultimately, uh, of that. This is also a ticking time bomb at some level for, uh, the

00:32:05.940 American, uh, uh, Republic. Uh, and you know, what, will it continue? Will it shape? Will it mold the way

00:32:12.400 that our elections move forward? Could it end up creating, you know, bread riots? Uh, these things

00:32:18.040 are interesting. Again, I've got a feeling, uh, that they will eventually work this out, uh, you know,

00:32:22.720 before that probably stretches too far. Uh, but obviously we know that, uh, the Democrats aren't

00:32:27.300 exactly sad about ultimately, uh, civil, uh, disruption, uh, if they think it's going to hurt

00:32:33.700 Donald Trump. And so we can see this as kind of the, the weapon that it is between our political

00:32:39.020 classes. Now we spent a lot of time on the grain dole. So sadly we won't be able to get spent as

00:32:43.200 much on the second aspect, but, uh, you know, the other kind of thing that is repeating itself is that

00:32:49.640 the government shutdown has created a scenario where we're not paying our troops. And, uh,

00:32:54.260 they're, you know, this is one of those classic keys. You know, I don't know if you've ever read

00:32:57.800 the dictator's handbook, uh, but it's, uh, you know, uh, uh, one of those things like with,

00:33:02.200 what is the first thing you do? You pay the guys with guns, always pay the guys with guns,

00:33:06.500 you know? And this of course, uh, is, is something that, uh, many, many savvy, uh, Roman politicians

00:33:11.680 knew all too well. Uh, but we are not paying the guys with guns. And instead, uh, we have, uh,

00:33:17.720 Timothy Mellon of that fortune, uh, you know, committing $130 million of his own money, uh,

00:33:25.220 to this. And it's particularly interesting because Mellon is, uh, kind of more, one of those old

00:33:30.660 wasp, uh, money, right? Like this, this is the classic, this is the American ruling elite in,

00:33:36.100 in the most classic sense. These are, uh, your, your, uh, uh, your patriarchs. These are, uh, your,

00:33:42.860 uh, aristocrats, uh, who are kind of coming to the forefront and, and paying for

00:33:47.700 the legion at that time. And of course, the minute that, you know, the, the troops are

00:33:52.040 seeing their pay tied to an individual rather than to a system, uh, then you'll see generally

00:33:58.400 their loyalty will often shift from the idea of being loyal to the system or the country

00:34:03.480 and instead being loyal to where that pay is coming from. Uh, I know this is something that

00:34:08.500 of course we did see in the Roman, uh, Republican empire. So I was wondering if you could give us

00:34:13.320 kind of a brief history of, I guess, kind of the Marian reforms, like the shift from,

00:34:18.620 from the citizen soldier to the professional soldier, the paid soldier, what that meant,

00:34:23.320 and then how that developed as, uh, you know, kind of, uh, rich men started to fund legions rather

00:34:29.040 than having the legions be something that had to fund themselves, uh, you know, being, uh, being a

00:34:33.800 source of honor that you could afford the armor, you could afford the weapon, you could afford the

00:34:38.380 horse. And that was your role as a citizen in society to be a soldier, to serve in the legions

00:34:43.520 like that. Yeah, well, that's right. I mean, it, it was seen as a, as an honor to, to serve in the

00:34:49.180 army. I mean, that's, that's a bit of a, uh, a spin on it. Of course, you know, a lot of these guys

00:34:55.540 who are supposed to be eager for the honor are being forcibly recruited with, or, you know, at least

00:35:00.900 strong armed and into fighting if, if they don't feel like it, but there, you know, there are real

00:35:05.120 prizes to, to fighting in, in Rome's wars. But, um, that is true that there was a, there was a

00:35:12.520 swath of the populace that was seen as unfit for combat, both because they were, um, you know, not

00:35:21.780 of the fighting aristocratic classes or the, or the kind of citizen, um, you know, yeoman soldier

00:35:30.220 classes farming their own lands or because they were just too poor to pay for armor. And it had

00:35:36.060 always been the responsibility of citizens to kind of cover their own expenses. And, you know,

00:35:40.020 the amount that you could dedicate to your own arms sort of determines your, your rank in the armor,

00:35:46.860 in the army, you know, are you, uh, a light arm skirmisher with a little, you know, trash can lid

00:35:53.180 type thing made out of wicker and chucking a spear or slingshot at people? Or are you, you know,

00:36:00.400 a legionary, you know, full kind of hoplite armor, or are you an equestrian? Can you, can you afford a

00:36:05.420 horse? But, um, this starts to be a problem as Rome's wars get to be longer term, you know, foreign

00:36:14.300 or all around the Mediterranean. In the late second century BC, Rome is locked in a, two wars at the

00:36:23.900 same time, two major wars. One of them is in modern day France and Gaul, where these Celtic tribes,

00:36:33.060 uh, the, the, eventually it's the Cimbri and the Teutones are the ones that the sources talk about

00:36:38.640 are pushing up against the borders of Rome. They're talking about invading Italy. There's

00:36:44.060 talk of them having 300,000 men under arms, and they've got their wives and kids with them. They got

00:36:53.120 their wagons. They're ready to invade and have a good, you know, population resettlement, Volker

00:36:58.700 Vonderung, uh, for some, some Labans realm. And, um, and then, uh, there's also a war going on in

00:37:07.040 Africa with Ugartha, this, uh, rebel Numidian prince. And so the, the legions really start to

00:37:13.640 be stretched thin. I mean, there's also stuff going on in Spain. There's always kind of some

00:37:17.200 flare up and, and, um, there's not a lot of troops and, you know, it was this huge war at the battle

00:37:21.800 of Arousio in 105 BC that just apparently wiped out a hundred thousand Romans, Roman soldiers and a

00:37:29.400 couple of consuls. I mean, just really struggling to, to, um, uh, fill the, the register of, of citizens.

00:37:38.840 And so it's, it's at this time that a great populace rises and that's Gaius Marius. And, uh, Marius is a

00:37:46.260 sort of junior officer for the consul serving in Africa and Marius, you know, looking around at the

00:37:53.400 scene fighting in the Ugarthine war for a couple of years, he gets an idea of how the war can be won

00:38:00.120 and it's with a troop surge. And so Marius kind of against the orders and the will of his own

00:38:08.060 general, he goes back to Rome to run for the consulship for the next year, promising that he'll

00:38:13.820 end the war, you know, within a year or two. And, uh, and his promised method for doing that is he's

00:38:21.360 going to enlist a bunch of poor Roman citizens. And he proposes this and the Senate is, uh, basically

00:38:31.800 thinks he's nuts. And this is a stupid idea and that nobody should vote for Marius because he's

00:38:36.980 incompetent and he's a, you know, he's a provincial, I mean, he's from Arpenum, which is this

00:38:42.980 bumpkin land and, you know, halfway to Naples in the mountains. Um, so he's not from the, the elite

00:38:50.520 click, but, but he wins his election on a populist ticket, uh, promising to end the war that the

00:38:55.960 people are tired of. They're tired of the, uh, grain shortages. It's Africa, of course, they're tired

00:39:03.080 of the, um, the economic pressure. And, uh, and the Senate is like, all right, fine, Marius, you want

00:39:11.880 to raise up an army. You know, he has to propose this to the Senate to get their approval of it.

00:39:17.020 And, uh, he manages to get it passed with them kind of daring him to do so. Like, yeah, good luck.

00:39:24.300 Good luck getting anybody from the proletariats to fight in the, in the legions. They're not,

00:39:30.800 they're not fighters. They're not going to follow you. And then if you do good luck paying for it.

00:39:35.660 And so Marius says, all right, thank you for that. And, and he, he recruits, uh, a couple of

00:39:40.780 proper legions. He does the job. He goes to Africa, he wins the war, but what this does, you know,

00:39:47.380 historians discuss this a lot as a turning point in the history of the Roman army is, okay, Marius

00:39:52.780 does get some of the plunder from Africa, from, from Numidia. It's not an incredibly rich territory.

00:40:00.620 He's got to figure out a way to pay his troops. He, uh, but he kind of brackets that issue for a

00:40:06.460 while. And he takes his army up, wins another round of the consulship and he, and he goes and

00:40:12.020 he defeats the Kimbry and the Teutones, these Gauls that had been threatening the border in Northern

00:40:16.160 France. And it takes him a couple of years, but you know, he builds an incredibly powerful and

00:40:22.100 dynamic army out of these kind of regular Joes. It's, it's a real accomplishment. He reforms the

00:40:27.480 army in other ways. He is the guy that, uh, standardized the legionary, uh, Signa, uh, the, the Eagle there

00:40:36.040 before Marius, there was, there was like a pig and a dog, and there's a bunch of different

00:40:41.820 insignia that the legions would carry around. But Marius said, no, they're all going to be

00:40:45.320 Eagles. It's the bird of Jove. Um, but after that, Marius has to, he's basically promised

00:40:52.920 them all along that they're going to get the rich rewards. And as poor men, they, they, they want

00:40:58.040 this, they want to become, you know, respectable in a way they would been, you know, selling

00:41:04.200 trinkets on the streets or cart pullers or whatever it was in the city of Rome or poor

00:41:10.640 men from the Italian countryside. And he's promised them that he's going to make them

00:41:14.340 gentlemen. And so he's got to get the Senate to approve of a land redistribution out of

00:41:21.960 the public lands. And he's able to fund it some himself from the funds that he's brought

00:41:26.960 into the treasury. Marius has also gotten very rich by buying up mines and Spain. So it, it

00:41:34.000 ends up becoming a kind of, um, log jam in the Senate for several years before he can

00:41:38.780 actually get his, um, his, you know, legionary rewards passed for his soldiers, but he, but

00:41:46.780 he manages to do it. And he sets this pattern by which soldiers start to look not to the Senate

00:41:51.640 for the, you know, rewards that they get for fighting for Rome, but to a particular man.

00:41:59.440 And, uh, you know, fast forward a couple of decades, well, before we fast forward to Crassus,

00:42:05.880 this, one of the problems that this creates is the conditions for the possibility of an

00:42:10.520 actual civil war, you know, troops become loyal to Marius. He settles them in Africa.

00:42:16.380 A lot of these guys are still there in, um, in the times that Julius Caesar is fighting the

00:42:21.460 civil war, like their sons or grandsons, you know, their, their dads or their grandfathers

00:42:26.280 fought for Marius and they still, it means a lot to, to these people in Africa that Julius

00:42:32.100 Caesar is now fighting a civil war in Africa. And he was, uh, the, his, his Marius was married

00:42:37.580 to his, um, to Caesar's aunt. So there's like a kind of hereditary patronage that, that happens

00:42:44.120 there that, you know, hard to imagine this happening a couple of centuries earlier in Rome.

00:42:49.440 Uh, but this is the norm, but because these troops are loyal to Marius in the, in the eighties,

00:42:55.860 he gets into this conflict with another politician from the optimist non-populist party, which is

00:43:02.880 of course, uh, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Sulla and Marius have this incredibly bloody civil war

00:43:09.940 because they've recruited troops, many from the poor who are expecting big rewards. If their general

00:43:18.320 wins, there's a kind of wager that a man takes when he joins the army now to, um, to fight. And

00:43:25.260 the general is, is really on the hook for promising them big payoff benefits by the time they retire,

00:43:31.940 uh, and, and are victorious. Uh, so that's often chalked up to a big cause of, uh, of the civil war

00:43:41.160 that you have these loyal armies, loyal to generals instead of to, to Rome itself. And many of them,

00:43:45.780 you know, haven't even lived in Rome ever. They're from the Italian countryside or even from the

00:43:49.980 provinces. So it becomes, it just really changes the dynamic. Yeah. It's so interesting because,

00:43:57.040 uh, you know, one of the things that Machiavelli talks about, and of course he's drawing very deeply

00:44:01.600 on Rome and discourses on Livy is, you know, his, his other major work besides the prince. Um, and you

00:44:07.940 know, he, he points out that you really want to avoid standing armies as a Republic, like standing

00:44:14.040 armies are basically the doom of a Republic because they're always going to be looking

00:44:17.160 for something. They become this engine that's trying to feed itself. And this is why he warns

00:44:21.500 against Republics, uh, becoming these kind of Imperial, uh, you know, uh, uh, civilizations

00:44:27.800 because eventually in order to maintain that you will have to have standing armies and then

00:44:31.920 those armies will make demands. And you, you have the separation of the warrior class from the

00:44:37.360 citizen class, instead of the citizens being warriors. That's what it means to be, uh, a citizen

00:44:42.940 in a Republic. Like it's very literally service guarantee citizenship, uh, as opposed to, you

00:44:48.920 know, you have the separate professional class of warriors and they live one way and then your

00:44:52.720 average person lives another. And he says, this is what just kind of rins Republics apart.

00:44:57.020 And he's pulling obviously deeply from the Roman model and the, and the experience there.

00:45:01.900 And so once you have these professionalized armies and it's no longer, you know, uh, just your

00:45:07.360 job as a patrician, as a, as an aristocrat to, to fund your own, uh, ability,

00:45:12.780 to fight. And that's what, you know, kind of makes you a worthy citizen of, you know, able

00:45:16.680 to vote and have a say, it becomes this kind of automatic thing. It becomes this, this separate

00:45:21.360 warrior class. It starts pulling very heavily from, uh, other countries, you know, as we

00:45:26.680 start to discover that more and more of our American military, isn't actually even American

00:45:31.500 citizens, uh, this, you know, again, once again, our parallels become pretty obvious and

00:45:36.600 you can see why people looking at the scenario where, you know, Mellon is, is personally paying

00:45:42.860 these troops at this point. And, you know, you, you can draw again, those parallels. Now,

00:45:46.960 I don't think we're probably going to have him marching on, you know, Washington DC. He's

00:45:51.220 not going to be, uh, crossing the Potomac, uh, you know, to, to, to take, uh, control that

00:45:56.380 kind of thing ultimately, uh, with, with the legions, but it, it does, it is just interesting

00:46:01.320 that these problems reemerge reliably that, that these, these lessons that are applied

00:46:07.380 by people like Machiavelli to these ancient republics really do get pulled into the modern

00:46:13.520 day. And we can see, uh, the way, the way that these interact with each other. Uh, so

00:46:17.640 I know that, I know there's a much longer history of kind of what happens with the legions.

00:46:21.220 And obviously we know with Caesar and, and, and Mark Anthony and, and, uh, uh, Octavian

00:46:27.980 and their battles and everything, just the way in which armies are purchased and become loyal.

00:46:32.360 And even eventually we get, you know, the Praetorian guard and they end up being the ones that

00:46:37.140 basically determine who's going to be the emperor by whoever got the biggest bribe to them. So like

00:46:41.440 this, you know, this problem just snowballs worse and worse and worse throughout Roman history.

00:46:45.820 But I was just, you know, like I said, all of this could be over by the time we're done with

00:46:50.040 this episode, they could have voted to get rid of all this problem and pay everyone and fund the

00:46:54.960 government and we'll be fine. But I just thought it was worth going back and,

00:46:57.860 and kind of touching on these stories and reminding ourselves that these truths are eternal. They

00:47:01.920 echo through history for a reason, even if things never play out exactly the same way twice,

00:47:06.380 there are really important lessons we can learn by kind of studying these, this context.

00:47:10.840 But I think, I think the Mellon example, just maybe in closing is, is a great reminder of the,

00:47:15.960 that there's a different way of thinking about what your money is for. And this is what,

00:47:18.820 you know, Crassus is the richest man in Rome in the days of Julius Caesar and, uh, Caesar's patron,

00:47:25.320 in fact, enables his career. And, um, you know, listen to the cost of glory episode on Crassus,

00:47:30.840 uh, richest man in Rome, but he is, uh, famous for saying nobody is rich until they can pay for

00:47:38.620 their own army. And, uh, and Crassus did exactly that. He, that's how he's funded this, uh, campaign to,

00:47:47.540 um, to root out the slave revolt of Spartacus. You might've seen the movie. Um, I think Crassus

00:47:53.940 gets a bad shake in that movie, but you know, um, it's like literally crucify thousands of people,

00:48:00.560 you'll probably get a bad shake. Yeah, it's fair. And, you know, somebody had to pay for all that

00:48:06.040 wood and Crassus knew how to do it. So, um, there's another display of wealth, uh, in a kind of gruesome

00:48:12.600 way, but, but, you know, I think it goes to show that, um, in, in some republics, at least the,

00:48:19.780 the wealth is seen as only valuable in as much as it can kind of be converted. It's like fungible

00:48:27.800 into political power or into honor. I think it would be the better, more respectable way to say

00:48:32.180 it. And those are different things, honor and power, but, but this is how Crassus won, not just

00:48:37.620 as a rich man, but as a politician. So it's, it's cool to see, uh, you know, an American rich man

00:48:43.560 just in a little way playing, playing the Crassus model. I, there's probably too many checks and

00:48:48.420 balances in place for, you know, for him to actually be able to lead an army, uh, you know,

00:48:53.760 charge into Persia or something like Crassus did. Um, but you know, it, it does kind of raise this

00:49:00.720 question of, um, you know, what is the army really loyal to, uh, and you know, who, who is getting

00:49:06.300 their pay and, uh, probably these things will solve themselves shortly, but it could be different.

00:49:14.460 And it, it is very different in other parts of the world too. And so we should be thankful for what

00:49:19.060 we have maybe.

00:49:20.840 Yeah. It's interesting that, uh, you know, Curtis Yarvin has pointed this out many time that

00:49:25.200 ultimately excess wealth is just liquid power. Uh, if, if, if properly understood something that

00:49:30.840 I think has, you know, uh, in our current highly oligarchic society, we think of money as the end

00:49:37.500 unto itself. Uh, but of course, anyone who, uh, really recognizes the contours of power recognizes

00:49:44.140 that ultimately, uh, it, it only matters if you can convert it into, uh, power because, uh, all the

00:49:49.720 money in the world won't stop men with swords. Uh, and so, uh, you know, make, make sure that if

00:49:54.640 you're going to spend your money, spend it wisely there. One, one could say it's the cost

00:49:58.300 of glory. Uh, but with that terrible, uh, pun, let's transition to, uh, the, uh, the questions

00:50:05.000 of the people before we do Alex, where can people find your fantastic podcast and the other

00:50:09.900 things you're doing?

00:50:10.900 Well, if you, if you like the biographies of the great men of Greece and Rome, you

00:50:13.960 can find cost of glory on any podcast player or on YouTube. We've started putting out, uh,

00:50:20.580 visually stimulating documentary style, uh, portrayals, uh, over the audio that I've mostly

00:50:28.640 been focused on later, but, uh, cost of glory.com is my website. If you want to check out some

00:50:33.080 other stuff that I'm up to.

00:50:34.240 And, you know, now that, uh, Mike Duncan has just like embarrassed himself as like the

00:50:39.580 world's worst, uh, you know, uh, libtard, uh, you know, we, we, we need to support our

00:50:44.280 guys. So if you're going to learn Roman history, uh, as much as I love history of Rome, it's,

00:50:48.300 it's time to make the switch guys. It's time to move over, uh, to one of our, listen to

00:50:52.300 a show that loves Rome and loves America.

00:50:54.380 That's right. That's right. Loves Rome and puts America first. True, true, uh, Roman stories

00:50:59.980 for true American Patriots. All right, let's go to our, our questions here. Uh, Florida

00:51:07.740 Henry says, uh, uh, may, can you pronounce that? I'm not sure.

00:51:11.740 You many's of Cardia. I think we got a cost of glory listener. Yes. Thank you. That's,

00:51:16.400 that's the second guy I profiled in the cost of glory. He's Alexander's secretary who became

00:51:21.820 a warlord. So check that one out.

00:51:23.960 So that's one of your series on your podcast.

00:51:25.800 Yeah. Okay.

00:51:26.560 Thank you. And then we have, uh, Jerry Warville says, uh, what happens when you stop paying

00:51:34.000 the Dane geld, but you give the Danes a free crime pass, Alex love cost of glory. Have

00:51:40.280 you thought of doing a show on comparisons between Caesar and Napoleon, maybe Alexander

00:51:44.960 too?

00:51:47.000 Got to do those comparisons. I'm not sure what, what happens when you stop paying the Dane

00:51:51.320 geld and give, I think, and give the Danes a free crime pass. I think that they go and

00:51:56.040 take what they need, eat what you kill as we have to see that happening.

00:52:02.300 And as we have seen from, uh, several rather humorous, uh, you know, uh, Twitter and YouTube

00:52:08.160 and, uh, uh, uh, TikTok videos here recently, uh, perhaps some Danes talking about what they'll

00:52:13.660 take if they don't get, uh, the Dane geld. Uh, let's see here. Robert Weinsfeld here just

00:52:18.700 with a donation. Thank you very much. Sure. Appreciate that. Uh, Florida Henry says, uh, where

00:52:23.200 do you rank Sulla in Roman history? Did every, did everything Caesar, uh, did everything Caesar

00:52:28.740 did and died of old age? Yeah, obviously Caesar gets top billing, but, uh, you know, when it

00:52:34.540 comes to importance, what do we think about Sulla there?

00:52:37.260 Well, you know, Sulla, Caesar set himself up as the anti-Sulla as a, as a populist instead

00:52:43.340 of an optimate, optimate. Um, but, um, but you know, after he became the dictator, he re-installed

00:52:51.220 the statues of, of Pompey and of Sulla. So I think there was a grudging respect for Sulla

00:52:57.020 who is the man who kind of made what he did possible by resurrecting the dictator's office.

00:53:01.740 Although he did say, you know, when it came to power, Sulla was, was a mere child for laying

00:53:07.960 down the dictatorship. Uh, and so, you know, Sulla felt that, uh, Sulla hadn't learned the

00:53:13.220 ultimate lesson of power, which is never give it up. Yeah. Well, Sulla should have learned

00:53:17.380 the other ultimate lesson, uh, never forgive your enemies. I think, I think Sulla had the

00:53:22.380 last laugh on that. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, Orwell's, uh, Goon says, Plutarch,

00:53:28.760 uh, greatly overstated Marius's humble beginnings. His marriage would have been nearly impossible.

00:53:33.500 Was he not equestrian? He was more like Robin Hood, an elite who integrated himself with

00:53:39.260 the plebs. What do you think of that take? I think that's probably right. You know,

00:53:43.720 Plutarch loves, uh, rags to riches story, but Marius was, was no poor man, but he, he was

00:53:49.360 an outsider and, you know, Cicero also no poor man, but you know, if you, we know his career

00:53:54.540 a lot better and how damn hard it was for even a wealthy outsider from the equestrian ranks

00:54:00.620 to get, to get in the, those, those charm circles. And, uh, certainly marrying into the

00:54:06.460 Caesar family, the Julie, Julia Kaisera, Kaisera's family, um, was one of Marius's greatest political

00:54:14.800 achievements, you know, uh, really made him a respectable guy, but, uh, it, it, it didn't

00:54:19.860 come from nothing. I mean, we're all fans of elite theory here. You know, we know all kinds

00:54:24.480 of rags to riches stories really a lot of times, you know, maybe that guy is still doing something

00:54:29.640 impressive, but, but probably has, uh, some level of elite connection or ability, or he

00:54:34.440 wouldn't have been able to develop that in the first place. That doesn't take away from,

00:54:37.900 uh, those, uh, those victories though. And he also says, do we think Cincinnati's and the

00:54:43.740 citizen farmer soldier is a dead concept in the annals of America? Uh, well, I'll say that,

00:54:51.120 uh, you know, I think it has been for a long time. I think this has been the struggle ultimately the

00:54:55.940 two visions, right? Kind of the Jeffersonian versus Hamiltonian understanding of what America

00:55:01.000 would become. Uh, it's very clear that ultimately, uh, Hamilton, uh, for better or worse, kind of won

00:55:06.000 out, uh, in that, uh, battle. Uh, and this is something I try, I try to explain, you know, I'm not,

00:55:12.120 I'm not the official historian, uh, but I try to, to bring this forward when I talk about, uh, political

00:55:17.660 systems, uh, that Republics, you know, they have a, uh, particular form and you have to obey that

00:55:23.560 form. And if you're not in that form, then you're just not a Republic. And that's why when conservatives

00:55:28.240 run around and say, ah, well, we're a constitutional Republic, like, okay, well, I mean, how many wars

00:55:32.720 did you fight in? Uh, what are we limiting the franchise to? Uh, you know, the, the, all these,

00:55:37.300 you know, classic aspects of what really defined Republican government don't really apply to the United

00:55:42.480 States. Uh, and of course the same thing happened to Rome over time as well, uh, because ultimately,

00:55:47.520 well, you know, guys like Aristotle kind of got it right from the outset, you know, like there is a,

00:55:53.120 there is a cycle of regimes. Uh, there is, there are only so many forms. You have to obey the forms.

00:55:58.000 You will move through these things, uh, if you're not paying attention. Uh, and so it's, it's not

00:56:03.120 surprising that the United States ended up in the same way that Roman ended up again, nothing is

00:56:08.220 perfect. One-to-one history doesn't, doesn't photocopy itself, but we can see that there are certain

00:56:14.580 undeniable, undeniable patterns to the way that says that civilizations develop. And we're kind

00:56:20.440 of in that spot right now. Wouldn't hurt to, uh, require military office of, of, uh, or require

00:56:27.220 military service, uh, for, for aspiring politicians or, or who knows for anybody to, to vote. That would

00:56:34.200 be bringing us more in line with, with the historical Republics of the past for sure.

00:56:39.500 Well, and if you look at, uh, you know, if you look at the federalist papers, you can actually

00:56:44.120 see that echoed even again by Hamilton at that time, because he's saying, well, look, we all know

00:56:48.660 that standing armies are bad for Republic. So like, we're obviously not going to have a standing army,

00:56:52.580 but if you want us to not have a standing army, you need to turn control of your state militias over

00:56:56.920 to the wider, uh, you know, federal government, uh, because that's the only way we can avoid

00:57:02.440 building a standing army. Now, later on, obviously we had directly to the standing army, but the,

00:57:07.940 you know, the libs aren't wrong about the fact that ultimately the second amendment was made

00:57:11.820 for the militia, but just, we were always supposed to have the militia. Like that was supposed to be

00:57:16.380 it. Like that the founders expected us to never have a standing army and to always have this citizen

00:57:21.680 militia that, you know, uh, that, that had to constantly be armed itself, uh, which would have

00:57:25.700 put us very squarely in that kind of classic, uh, Republican tradition. So the fact that we've kind

00:57:30.100 of moved away from that, and many people will point out probably correctly that at the scale of

00:57:33.820 warfare and the professionality of warfare at this point, you have to have a professional force.

00:57:38.140 You have to have a standing army. You can't, you can't just train up the citizens and draw them

00:57:42.600 in at any given moment, but you know, then you are ultimately sacrificing. I think what is a key

00:57:48.040 aspect of a Republican identity. And if you don't have that, then I think it's really hard to keep

00:57:53.060 a Republic, which is what the founders warned us about at the end of the day.

00:57:56.260 Indeed. It's hard to imagine JD Vance going back to his farm at this point.

00:58:04.040 Yeah. Grow some cabbages. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this

00:58:11.020 up. Of course, please make sure to check out, uh, Alex's podcast. If you enjoyed what we are doing

00:58:16.840 here today, there's just a lot more of it over there. And if it's your first time on this channel

00:58:21.520 on YouTube, you need to go ahead and click subscribe, the bell notifications, all that

00:58:25.700 stuff. So, you know, when we go live, if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you need to

00:58:29.220 subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform. And if you do leave a rating or

00:58:33.820 review, it really helps with the algorithm magic. Thank you everybody for watching. And as always,

00:58:37.580 I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 31, 2025

The Government Shutdown Means the End of the Republic？｜ Guest： Alex Petkas ｜ 10⧸31⧸25

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