In the latest episode of Matt Keeby's documentary series, The Cover-Up, he joins Dr. Richard Ebright as he walks us through a series of embarrassments that begins with the recurrence of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and culminates in the coming of COVID-19.
00:01:49.760Most Americans have been aware of Anthony Fauci since the COVID pandemic really took off in 2020.
00:01:56.140But Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist from Rutgers University, has had Fauci on his radar since the 2001 anthrax scare,
00:02:05.080After which Dick Cheney empowered him and the NIAID with the authority and funding for biodefense once reserved solely for the Department of Defense.
00:02:14.720In the latest episode of Matt Keeby's documentary series, The Cover-Up, he joins Dr. Ebright as he walks us through a series of embarrassments that begins with the recreation of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu and culminates with the coming of COVID-19.
00:02:31.240Together, Matt Keeby and Richard Ebright will connect the dots and trace the funding, giving you the answers you've been demanding for years about the dark research fraud and corruption surrounding Anthony Fauci.
00:02:43.940It's a fatal culture of hubris and graft that left so much destruction and mistrust in its wake.
00:02:50.400You can watch episode four of The Cover-Up, Smoking Gun on Blaze TV available now.
00:02:56.700You just have to become a subscriber by going to FauciCoverUp.com slash Oren and using the code SMOKINGGUN for $30 off your subscription.
00:03:05.880That's FauciCoverUp.com slash Oren and the code is SMOKINGGUN for $30 off your subscription.
00:03:19.300A lot of people don't necessarily like that title, but it is the truth.
00:03:23.620And all empires go through certain phases of expansion and contraction that can decide whether or not they continue on being a strong player on the world stage or someone that overextends and weakens itself.
00:05:41.280And he is working in a world where Rome has really achieved a height of power.
00:05:48.340So Rome has been functioning since, as a republic, for the first 450 years or so, from around 500 BC down to 31 BC.
00:06:04.140But even as it was a republican government, you know, with the senate and consuls and, you know, elected officials and, you know, rule by some kind of an oligarchy with the participation of the people, it had an empire as early as the 4th or 3rd century BC.
00:06:26.360So they, you know, they win a war with Carthage and they get their first overseas territory in Sicily in the early 3rd century BC and then on and on.
00:06:36.200And by the time of Augustus, even before this transition from republic to what we call the Roman Empire, the monarchy in 31 BC, they already have this overseas expansion.
00:06:46.700They controlled most of the Mediterranean by that time.
00:06:49.460And so this transition from republic to empire that Trajan is inheriting is, has been stable since 31 BC.
00:07:01.920He's, so it's more than 100 years old.
00:07:04.940And some things that, that changed that are interesting about the Roman Empire, as opposed to the Roman Republic.
00:07:11.820Like Augustus, the first emperor decided to keep around a lot of the old institutions of the republic, at least it's kind of vestigial organs.
00:07:20.640So you have like the consuls still, a senate still, it doesn't wipe all that away immediately.
00:07:29.220There's still notionally elected offices of the emperor really gets to pick who gets elected, as it were.
00:07:36.220Um, and, and that was how Augustus wanted it to be, uh, because you still need to rule with the consent and help of, of the, the nobility, the most wealthy, talented men in the empire.
00:07:48.820And so, uh, that's the kind of structural status of the empire.
00:07:54.760You've got an emperor sitting at the top of what was once a Republican constitution.
00:07:58.720Um, one of the things that Augustus did was, um, to set borders firmly on Roman imperial expansion.
00:08:10.460So he conquers Spain and he knocks around and firms up the, the, the Germans, uh, and the, the border on, on the, the Rhine with the Germans.
00:08:21.700And goes on a few campaigns, but, but says towards the end of his reign, my advice citizens is that we keep the borders the way they are right now.
00:08:35.260It just, it's just not within our, uh, power as, as a, as a, uh, an empire to, to go beyond the Rhine border and the Danube and further push further into the East.
00:08:46.180You know, they already control the Levant, Syria, Palestine, but he says, don't, you know, don't try to go conquer Parthia or don't try to colonize all of Germany and Northern Europe.
00:08:56.920And, um, and we, we couldn't sustain it.
00:08:59.360And that was the inherent, the, the situation that most of the emperors up through, uh, Trajan had adhered to with the notable exception that under Claudius in the forties, the Romans conquered Britain.
00:09:10.760Um, Julius Caesar had, had made an expedition there, but had never set up an official Roman presence.
00:09:16.760So that's, that's kind of the, the, the status quo of the empire when, when Trajan inherits it roughly.
00:09:24.320And I think that's a really important thing to note because this again mirrors so much of the confusion that I think occurs in the American instance.
00:09:33.060It's, as you point out, Rome was a Republic while it was still operating as an empire.
00:09:39.300And so this artificial binary of, you know, we have a Republic and then we flick a switch with Julius Caesar.
00:09:47.000And all of a sudden we have an empire just, just isn't correct.
00:10:02.240It doesn't have to have an emperor to be an empire.
00:10:06.440And then when it changes from what we would recognize as far more, uh, Republican rule to a return to the monarchical structure, they still keep many of the aspects.
00:10:19.700The forms of the government tradition are still observed.
00:10:24.480A lot of this stuff, the consuls are still there.
00:10:27.160And so for the average person, they would know something had changed, but a lot of what they recognized as central to Roman identity as a Republic still remained after they crossed into the period that we recognize as Imperial.
00:10:44.520And all of the people leading up like Marius and Sulla to Julius Caesar.
00:10:49.600And then Augustus, obviously they cut a figure that is as close to a dictatorship in many ways as Caesar did.
00:10:59.380So the idea that that was just the, the, the crux, it is a little bit of a narrative shift for us.
00:11:05.600And so as we look as Americans at our own situation, it's important to remember that we're not the first country to go through significant changes in the way that we are governed while still considering ourselves to have a continuity inside the original form of governance.
00:11:23.960You know, I don't think Octavian really went out and said, the, the Republic is dead and now I am the emperor, right?
00:11:30.800He was very careful not to do that for good reason.
00:11:34.160And, and any American president, be it Lincoln or FDR or others that fundamentally shifted the way that America operates were also relatively careful to maintain many of the aspects of American tradition while changing significantly the way that it operates.
00:11:53.160And so I think it's a good thing to understand that Trajan is entering into a system that has undergone significant shifts, but not quite the binary switch that we're thinking of.
00:12:04.140It's been a slow shift over time into this imperial identity that we look back and kind of impose on today, but he, he is entering into a situation that has been evolving towards kind of his current rule.
00:12:18.940And, and, and, and continuity was so important to keep the peace for, for Augustus.
00:12:26.160And, you know, another thing that is an important continuity with the Republic is that, you know, you might think that in the Roman Empire, all of the free people are Roman citizens, but that's very much not the case.
00:12:40.420You know, Paul has, you know, Paul has, in the book of Acts has this special status as a Roman citizen.
00:12:45.740It's quite exceptional for a provincial to, to have Roman citizen status.
00:12:51.100And in the Republic, the Rome, the Romans were very jealous with citizenship grants because, you know, kivitas comes from the word for city.
00:13:00.020And the idea of having a citizen of, you know, a grand kingdom was, was kind of a category mistake for the early Romans.
00:13:07.040And so they, they slowly expanded citizenship and, you know, it was by the time of Augustus, it's, you know, mostly restricted to cities and nobilities in Italy with the occasional, you know, very honored provincial getting citizenship status.
00:13:24.800You know, citizenship gives you legal privileges and citizenship gives you the, theoretically, the ability to run for office.
00:13:32.180But you can be a subject of the emperor and a free person without being a citizen.
00:13:36.820And, and, and this ends up being, you know, one of the, one of the issues that kind of ties into the challenges that Trajan and his successor Hadrian are dealing with is, you know, how do you maintain happy provincials who are willing to help you out with the business of, say, tax collecting, keeping the peace, just doing a lot of the grunt work of the administration without them necessarily being citizens.
00:14:03.220What is the basis of fostering, what is the basis of fostering, what is the basis of fostering a willing sense of unity in these people?
00:14:09.080Because the way that the Romans rule and want to rule is with willing subjects and with, with justice.
00:14:15.620This is very much a part of the Roman self-image that they are, they are the justice of peoples and, and they are the, you know, the, the, the people protected by Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the king of the universe, who is the king, you know, the, the, the God of justice, right?
00:14:31.240So, so that's, that's something that we'll see playing out in, in the reign of both Trajan and Hadrian is like, how do you keep these people united and, and what does it mean to be a citizen?
00:14:48.880I'm like, oh no, buddy, like that's like the, the, the Italians had to go to war to get citizenship from the Romans.
00:14:56.060They literally had to start multiple wars in order to finally win the right of citizenship.
00:15:02.660So that your concept, your modern concept of kind of the mass franchise just did not exist even to the people who you are trying to scribe that to, you know, the, we always get this with, you know, the, the Greeks and then the Romans like, oh, well they, they had democracy.
00:15:20.920They had, it's like, no, it's, it's not even close to what you were thinking.
00:15:23.880Like, yes, they called certain aspects of this democratic, but it is wildly different than anything.
00:15:29.660The Athenians would have laughed at your understanding of democracy.
00:15:32.680And so, so with the Romans, the, the idea that an immigrant could walk in and two or three years later raise their hand and suddenly, you know, have the full rights of a, of a Roman born citizen or an Athenian born citizen just did not exist for these people.
00:16:00.580And as you said, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the empire had been kind of given these boundaries, uh, previously, why does he end up in a situation where he's rethinking those and considering conquest?
00:16:13.740So Trajan comes to power, uh, he, he builds his career as a soldier mainly under Domitian, especially Domitian was, um,
00:16:25.640Domitian is a man that Trajan wants to contrast himself with.
00:16:28.720So Domitian was, um, you know, hated by the Senate for being authoritarian and kind of priggish and sort of weird.
00:16:37.080Um, but, but also a micromanager and, you know, for all that the Senate hated him, he was quite a capable administrator.
00:16:42.240And, um, he, um, he had firmed up the boundaries of the Roman, uh, you know, Lee mace and, um, been a very jealous garter of the, the solidity of the currency.
00:16:54.940But, uh, he gets murdered by some, uh, slaves within his court, I think that, that just came to detest him.
00:17:04.780Uh, and, and so the Romans pick this guy, Nerva as, as his successor, who's a sort of a safe, very safe candidate, very old candidate.
00:17:17.140So it's not much risk if the guy is, you know, pushing his mid seventies, right.
00:17:22.160Uh, to, to pick that guy's emperor, he's a political survivor.
00:17:25.360Nerva is, he's a Senator from a good family.
00:17:28.960Nerva picks very quickly Trajan as his adoptive son and successor.
00:17:34.060And that's, you know, a lot of people joke that this is the greatest act of Nerva's reign, which was very short.
00:17:41.220And he picks Trajan as his successor and essentially dies within 18 months of, of becoming emperor.
00:17:49.560And so Trajan is left, uh, around 40 years old as, as the sole ruler of the greatest empire history had ever seen.
00:17:57.080And, um, and one of the, the first things he does is he comes to Rome after really, it really takes his time to come back to Rome.
00:18:05.400Cause he's off, uh, firming up the defenses on the Rhine boundary.
00:18:10.880He comes to Rome and he says, it's a new era.
00:18:13.260No more secret police like you had under Domitian.
00:18:16.840He frees a bunch of political prisoners.
00:18:19.860He, uh, he returns a lot of property that the Imperial Fisk had confiscated from, uh, Domitian's enemies.
00:18:27.080And, you know, he quickly establishes himself as, uh, a favorite of the Senate.
00:18:32.840He cuts back the bureaucracy that just had as a tendency to increase his kind of alternate power structure under the emperors.
00:18:40.320The emperors want to have direct control and, you know, they, they, they often recruit people from outside the senatorial ranks, freedmen, you know, there's eunuchs running around.
00:18:50.480So, so Trajan tries to kind of, kind of dry that out a little bit.
00:18:55.280And, um, he, he quickly, uh, before he gets to Rome, he makes a tour of the borders of, of the Roman empire, which as we said, are, you know, basically the Rhine and the Danube, you know, running through Germany, Switzerland, Austria, uh, down through, uh, Bulgaria is where the Danube empties into the Black Sea.
00:19:16.760And while he's in the Balkans, he notices something fishy is going on.
00:19:23.140So there's this area of, uh, in the, in the central Balkans, now modern Romania called Dacia.
00:19:32.020And one Greek commentator from earlier in the, in history had, had observed that if anybody were to unite these incredibly warlike tribes of this area of the Balkans, that man could, could be a challenger to, to any earthly power.
00:19:50.960I mean, these people are incredibly warlike and somebody has risen to power that has done just that, united all these Dacians under, under one throne.
00:19:58.800And his name is Decebalus or Decebalus.
00:20:01.980And, uh, he actually was, um, he was, you know, engaging in raids across the Roman border.
00:20:08.520These are lands that are not controlled directly by Rome, north of the Danube.
00:20:11.720He sees raiding and Domitian kind of buys him off, basically.
00:20:15.960He says it's not worth it to try to go to war with these people.
00:20:18.480And so essentially to the, to the shame of, of, uh, of Rome, Domitian starts sending payments to, to Decebalus on the condition or with the promise from Decebalus that, oh, you know, Decebalus has all these even more warlike barbarian tribes north of him.
00:20:38.760The Sarmatians and the Marcomani and the Getai, and he's going to build a bunch of forts to, to serve his dutiful role as a buffer state for the Romans.
00:20:49.140But when Trajan gets there, he's in Moisia, the nearby province, he, he, he gathers information.
00:20:56.880He realizes Decebalus is not fortifying forts against his northern enemies.
00:21:03.020He's fortifying a bunch of forts with, uh, as it were, the guns pointed towards Rome.
00:21:08.020He's actually fortifying himself to become an independent King.
00:21:11.620And, you know, if this guy can rally other tribes like the Marcomani and the Sarmatians, I mean, they could, they could lop off a huge chunk of the Roman empire.
00:21:20.560So, so Trajan decides something's got to be done.
00:21:23.840And, uh, these, these Dacians kind of remind me of the Mexican cartels in a way there, there are these half civilized, but very, very warlike, very kind of militarily sophisticated people.
00:21:35.240They have great, um, siege proof forts.
00:21:40.300They have engines of war and they have a strange religion that, that, um, teaches that, uh, you know, if you, if you die in battle, you can, you can live forever.
00:21:51.700It's like a gateway to immortality, you know?
00:21:53.560So like if the, if a Dacian charges into a Roman line and, and, and gets run through with a spear, you know, he goes straight to Valhalla as it were.
00:22:02.160And he makes these people incredibly brave, uh, in, in battle.
00:22:05.840And so, um, so they're, they're very fearsome people and a very worthy rival for the Romans.
00:22:12.520And, uh, so Trajan starts circulating the propaganda and he, and he quickly makes his way to Dacia and, and the Senate loves it.
00:22:20.200You know, this is, this is a hark back to the old times.
00:22:22.960We got a soldier emperor on the throne, a guy like Cincinnatus or a Cato, the elder.
00:22:29.560Um, and, and, and it has this kind of good old days energy.
00:22:32.680Like finally another manly conquest of these tribes that have never been under Roman sway.
00:22:43.980I was just gonna say we, so we have an interesting reversal for what a lot of people would see as the high and low versus middle dynamic of power.
00:22:52.000As you point out, most emperors recognize that the Senate, the aristocracy is a limit on their own power.
00:22:59.400And so they try to elevate people from outside.
00:23:02.660We see this over and over again, upstart emperors or people that want to, uh, change the kind of entrenched social status inside the power structures inside Rome.
00:23:12.640They go out, they get freedmen or they get barbarians or they, they elevate a lot of people to the senatorial rank that otherwise wouldn't have this.
00:23:20.060Or yeah, they put them in charge, uh, in a little way we can see this with Trump now, right?
00:23:24.540He's pulling guys like RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, people who specifically have been treated as, uh, basically enemies of kind of the entrenched interest currently.
00:23:36.320And he recognizes that elevating them, people who are going to be loyal to him for their elevation rather than to the system that the, the current, uh, ruling oligarchy gives him an advantage, right?
00:23:47.300And, and this is what a lot of emperors did, but Trajan goes the other direction.
00:23:51.040And he decides that he is going to ingratiate himself with the senatorial class, with the established, uh, kind of oligarchic understanding the aristocracy, because he is going to hearken back to these glory days, right?
00:24:05.400As you're saying, uh, he's going to create a form that is going to encourage, uh, what, what, what is kind of the legacy of Rome at that time?
00:24:13.520What many in the aristocratic class would have recognized as the height of Rome.
00:24:17.320We're going to go out, we've got a soldier in charge again, we're going to, you know, conquer territory again, this is going to bring us back to greatness.
00:24:24.920And this, this is the kind of thing that the good old boys like to see, right?
00:24:28.960And so, uh, that, that's, uh, one of the things that is, it's a different way to derive power, but it is an avenue to power to kind of, uh, almost a revanchist strain, right?
00:24:38.900We're, we're going to return the Senate to some level of power.
00:24:42.440We're going to ingratiate ourselves with it.
00:24:44.240Uh, you know, we're, we're going to do some important works and we're going to put a soldier who's going to go out and capture, uh, territory back at the head of the empire.
00:24:51.960This is something that's going to excite the, the classic aristocratic, uh, sense inside the Senate.
00:24:57.280Exactly. And I think Trajan felt when he, when he came to power that, you know, he had, um, the, the emperor is in a really strong position compared to where, where he was with Augustus.
00:25:08.140You know, there's, there's talk, uh, in the days of Caligula and, uh, maybe even Nero of like bringing the Republic back.
00:25:15.700That's all totally gone at this point.
00:25:18.040And so now, you know, he, he can afford to, to ingratiate himself with these, um, with these old families and, and indeed he does.
00:25:26.760And, and so they, they, they, they marched this, uh, army out to Daisha and, um, the first try at it doesn't go all that well.
00:25:36.340I mean, he, they win, you know, some very costly bloody victories and they, they get a sense of how difficult these people are going to be to defeat.
00:25:44.360And before Trajan can really get on a roll and steamroll them, Decebalus, the king, surrenders.
00:25:51.260And he says, I'll be your, your client and, you know, let's, let's make a treaty.
00:25:55.900And, uh, Trajan says, you know, he's, he's taken a few punches at this point.
00:25:59.100They've won some victories, but they've been very costly.
00:26:01.940And they, they, they, uh, annex a little bit of Dacian territory and they make him destroy a bunch of his forts.
00:26:08.660And, uh, he promises again to fortify the Northern border and, uh, but Trajan and on leaving, just to be sure, he builds this massive, famous bridge across the Danube and which was the greatest bridge ever built at that point.
00:26:24.200And, um, piles of it still stand today.
00:27:00.060He escapes, but the, the, he's chased down by horsemen and he commits suicide.
00:27:05.020And this is all depicted on Trajan's column that we'll get to in a moment.
00:27:08.500Uh, but, um, one of the things that he gets from this conquest is, so Decebalus had this crafty idea of, Decia is a very, very wealthy region because it has some of the best gold mines in the Mediterranean at that time.
00:27:24.440So what Decebalus does is he, he, uh, buries his royal treasure in a stream bed.
00:27:29.380He redirects a stream and then digs it up, buries all the gold and loot and covers it with rocks and then redirects the stream back over the river.
00:27:38.220And it's a secret that nobody's supposed to know, but somebody betrays this fact to, to Trajan.
00:27:42.980And so of course, you know, Romans, the world's greatest engineers, they, they, they, they find the treasure and he, and he brings back this incredible loot back to Rome.
00:27:52.060Like one of the greatest troves of treasure that had ever been brought back to Rome, you know, since the days of Pompey, the great conquering Mithridates.
00:28:00.640And, uh, and so with that money, Trajan starts on this glorious building campaign.
00:28:05.880He builds the form of Trajan, which is by far the greatest of the Roman imperial forums.
00:28:11.560You know, he builds the, the, the column of Trajan with a, the kick-ass Trajan statue on top of it.
00:28:19.200And the column still standing today, uh, the Christians replaced it with the statue of St. Peter, uh, on top instead of Trajan.
00:28:26.980Um, but so, and he builds baths and, you know, Trajan just becomes this incredibly popular emperor.
00:28:59.600And he's, and he's turned Dacia into a province notably.
00:29:01.780And, um, Dacia continues to be a Roman province for about 150 years.
00:29:05.720And he, uh, you know, it founds the origins of the, the Romanian people, you know, who speak a Latinate language to this day because of Roman Dacia.
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00:29:41.720So I think this is important for people to recognize whether you're skeptical of the empire or you're someone who, uh, you know, approves of this.
00:29:54.360It's important to recognize that the imperial expansion is popular, right?
00:30:05.380Everyone likes to see a bunch of extra money flow into the coffers.
00:30:09.200Everyone likes to see these great works built, uh, you know, this is something that cements legacies.
00:30:14.600And so the incentive structure for imperial conquest is incredibly high.
00:30:21.400Like that, that, that is something that, uh, you can understand why the people who do it are remembered as great.
00:30:27.040And you can understand why people are regularly driven to do it, even if they know it comes with consequences and downsides.
00:30:35.820And so, again, no matter where you stand on that issue, if you're worried about the expansion of an American empire, or you think ultimately that's great that America is this, you know, doing kind of the turbo America thing.
00:30:46.460Just remember that the, you know, the, the, the incentives for leaders to commit to this, it's not just their own personal greatness though that that matters, but this is what people often want.
00:30:58.100This is what, uh, ruling classes often want.
00:31:01.160This is what elevates people to greatness.
00:31:03.620There's a reason that, uh, guys like bronze age pervert recognize that this is, uh, you know, something that is a great cultural achievement and it is a natural impetus for many, uh, cultures to kind of assert their will on others.
00:31:18.800So it's a very, it's a deeply human, uh, impulse and it's one that again, whether you approve of or disapprove of is always with us and is incredibly popular for a reason.
00:31:29.300So speaking of, of contrast, uh, obviously Trajan, you know, you're, he's building orphanages.
00:31:35.820Like you're talking about is creating these, these programs.
00:31:38.540There's an, another force in the empire at this point, Christianity is growing, right?
00:31:44.920We know that this is a force that is increasing.
00:31:47.400It's a, it's a strange religion for a lot of Romans, but it's having a deep impact, uh, across what is true, uh, Trajan's interaction with the Christians?
00:31:59.460How is that impacting the way that he is building his empire or expanding his empire?
00:32:04.820Yeah, I think that this, uh, Trajan was also remembered as a great peacetime ruler and his dealings with the Christians, uh, you know, arguably show some moderation.
00:32:13.100Uh, we know a lot about, um, what Trajan did with the Christians and what, what happened to Christians in his time because of this letter exchange that he has with this guy, Pliny.
00:32:23.920Pliny, the younger was, um, a great man of letters and a Senator and a lawyer, but he, he gets sent out to Bithynia, which is an Asia minor kind of on the, just on the Asian side of the Bosporus.
00:32:38.840Um, and, uh, and he's, he's trying to deal with local problems.
00:32:43.900Trajan's attitude toward provincial administration in general is very decentralized, very hands-off.
00:32:49.160You know, Pliny keeps coming back with these sort of potentially micromanaging problems that a guy like Domitian would, would like, you know, want to give him a specific instructions and know everything that's going on.
00:32:59.900And Trajan's general attitude is, Pliny, you got this really, I trust your judgment.
00:33:04.480In most cases, um, there is one interesting instance where Pliny talks about, uh, how local, some local city is wanting to start their own fire brigade.
00:33:15.560Um, and, uh, on this, you know, Trajan, uh, sort of pushes back and he says, these things tend to get political very quickly, which I think is really interesting.
00:33:24.640You know, so if you want to, if you want to kind of form your own base of power, maybe you should start a local fire brigade, uh, that, that, that's, the Romans were, were very suspicious of these associations.
00:33:35.000And that's one of the reasons why the Christians were a problem.
00:33:38.520And, and Pliny, um, writes this long letter, letter 97, uh, to Trajan's, you can, you can look this up if you're interested, uh, detailing this, this, this, this issue that he's had with local Christians.
00:33:49.340And, um, so the Christians are, um, one of the big problems with the Christians, they're sort of a known quantity to, to governor, like Pliny at this time.
00:33:58.840And Trajan's sort of familiar with the Christians by this time, you know, there were, uh, talks of them being burned and, uh, on, on pyres and the reign of Nero.
00:34:09.180So, but, um, but by this time, the, the Christians are known for being, um, stubborn and superstitious, possibly meeting in secret to eat babies.
00:34:20.180You know, there's all these lurid accusations that the apologists talk about, but, uh, the main thing that the Romans are frustrated with the Christians on is that they won't typically, if they're, if they're really obdurate Christians, they won't sacrifice to the gods and they won't sacrifice to the genius of the emperor.
00:34:39.040You know, the, the, the, the emperors have been divinized upon death since, uh, well, since Julius Caesar, Augustus did at first.
00:34:46.320And there's a kind of imperial cult already at this time where you're supposed to burn incense, you know, to the guarding, guiding genius of, of the emperors and sort of in front of the statue of an emperor.
00:35:02.780And it's seen, you know, and kind of like in the way that Fustel de Kalange talks about how, you know, religion, the, the, the ancestral hearth is the, the foundation of, of the family unit.
00:35:14.580The tribal hero cult is the foundation of the tribal unit.
00:35:18.900And similarly with the city, you know, the, the, the state cults are sort of like the basis of whether or not you're in the community and whether or not your community is doing well is whether you're sacrificing regularly.
00:35:29.960I mean, there's a lot of ways, similar situation with the, the Roman imperial cult.
00:35:34.160It's like the proof of whether you're, you're like a citizen in good standing or not.
00:35:38.480And so, uh, Pliny, you know, says I've executed a few and they've been stubborn and, you know, asked them a few times and threatened them.
00:35:47.300And I thought, you know, just their stubbornness was grounds enough to execute these people.
00:35:52.480Um, but I want to read for you like a little passage that I think is really interesting.
00:35:56.000It's from this famous letter that, uh, that gives you a sense of what the Christian's situation was from the eyes of Pliny.
00:36:01.820Um, so here's, here's, here's Pliny on the Christians.
00:36:05.720And, and one of the things he says that there's a key point is there's been, you know, once it's gotten out that the governor has been, uh, prosecuting Christians for, you know, sedition, uh, these accusations have started to, uh, to, to flare up as often happens, right?
00:36:24.960People are like, ah, I could get so-and-so's farm if I get him, you know, accused of being a Christian.
00:36:30.140Um, uh, but, but here's what Pliny says.
00:36:32.480Others were named by an informer, uh, who were named by an informer stated that they had been Christians and then denied it.
00:36:40.440They, the informer said that, and they denied it.
00:36:43.240They said that, in fact, they had been, but had abandoned their allegiance some three years previously, some more years earlier, one or two, as many as 20 years before.
00:36:53.140All these as well worshiped your statue, Trajan, he's writing to Trajan, with, and images of the gods and blasphemed Christ, which Pliny notes is something that you can't get, uh, a confirmed, um, Christian to do.
00:37:06.540They maintained, however, that all their guilt or error involved was, all that their guilt or error involved was that they were accustomed to assemble at dawn on a fixed day, presumably Sunday,
00:37:18.680to sing a hymn antiphonally to Christ as God and to bind themselves by an oath, not for the commission of some crime, but to avoid acts of theft, brigandage, and adultery, not to break their word and not to withhold money deposited with them when asked for it.
00:37:34.740When these rites were completed, it was their custom to depart, and then to assemble again to take food, which was, however, common and harmless.
00:37:44.180They had ceased, they said, to do this, following my edict, by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had outlawed the existence of secret brotherhoods.
00:37:54.180So I thought it all the more necessary to ascertain the truth from two maidservants who were called deaconesses, even by employing torture, I found nothing other than a debased and boundless superstition.
00:38:09.080Uh, so the thrust of the letter is, you know, I'm, I've got the Christian problem taken care of, but, you know, advice on some particulars.
00:38:15.320And Trajan's, here's Trajan's, here's Trajan's very brief response to Pliny.
00:38:18.980He says, you have followed the appropriate procedure, my, my Pliny, Secundus, in examining the cases of those brought before you as Christians, for no general rule can be laid down, which would establish a definite routine.
00:38:33.080Interestingly, Christians are not to be sought out, but if brought before you and found guilty, they must be punished.
00:38:40.760But, in such a way that a person who denies that he is a Christian and demonstrates this by his action, that is, by worshiping our gods, may obtain pardon for repentance, even if his previous record is suspect.
00:38:53.920Documents published anonymously, this is key, must play no role in any accusation, for they give the worst example and are foreign to our age.
00:39:03.740And so, as somebody who's seen friends become the victims of anonymous accusations ending in cancellations, I think, I, you know, there's, there's a kind of like an anti-woke strain in Trajan.
00:39:17.440And, you know, he's talking about, you know, this is foreign to our age.
00:39:21.760We're not in the age of Domitian anymore when, when people can get, you know, canceled, as it were, executed for, you know, anonymous allegations of, of, you know, whispering against the, the print caps.
00:39:33.740It feels like there's a little bit of don't ask, don't tell policy involved here, right?
00:39:38.100Where, like, yeah, okay, maybe he's a Christian, maybe he's not, but unless he's being explicit about it, then, okay, if he is explicit, then we got to do something.
00:39:47.580But, you know, in general, and leave a path back in case it's, it's, it's more of a, we know we need to keep the forms of this up, but we're not going to go out of our way to make, you know, this a horrible offense, or we're not going to go after people really hard and make it impossible for them to kind of work their way back to us if they're, if they're found out.
00:40:08.420And, and, uh, that, that's a very interesting shift.
00:40:11.720And you mentioned, uh, the ancient city there, which, uh, you know, I'm just going to do my, my brief plug.
00:40:17.260If you have never read this book, uh, go read this book.
00:40:20.260It is such a amazing book, but most importantly, it really shifts the way that you understand the role of religion in the lives of ancient peoples.
00:40:31.120Like this is such an alien way for people to operate in, in a Christian society, but particularly in this like post-Christian secular understanding, it could just, the, the, the way, as you say, the, the fact that Christians would not participate in these rituals that were really designed to bond, uh, you know, the, the city, the Civitas, you know, together.
00:40:52.400Like this, this is really the, the reason that Christianity is a problem.
00:40:57.240If they could just go through the rituals that still bound everyone together, plus Christianity, it probably wouldn't be a big, big deal.
00:41:03.960But it's the fact that they reject those rituals that traditionally bound these societies together and have been core, you know, uh, really changes the way that people understand these interactions.
00:41:14.700And so, uh, yeah, just, just give my, my plug constantly for the ancient city, cause it's so good, but we've already gotten well past, uh,
00:41:22.340the halfway part in the hour and we haven't even mentioned the second emperor we're discussing yet.
00:41:26.840So, uh, I hate to do this, but can we speed run, uh, our Trajan so we can, we can move on to Hadrian.
00:41:33.140What, what else do we need to know about Trajan's reign before we move on?
00:41:37.960So the, the, the last hurrah of Trajan is he sees some, he sees an opportunity in, uh, the Parthian empire.
00:41:47.820There's trouble in the Parthian state and, uh, some kind of civil discord.
00:41:52.340And there's a, he uses, uh, uh, a dispute as a pretext to invade the East.
00:41:57.620And so the, it has to do with the, the King of Armenia.
00:42:02.400We don't need to get into the details, but he annexes Armenia, which was a kind of a Roman Parthian shared client King.
00:42:09.420Um, and, uh, he makes it a Roman province and then he marches his army into Mesopotamia and he conquers it.
00:42:17.280Um, and, um, and he gets all the way to the Persian Gulf to, um, you know, near Basra today.
00:42:26.240The shore has gone out a little bit and he erects a great statue of himself and true Trajan Trumpian fashion.
00:42:34.320He loves to put these great statues of himself in places.
00:42:36.920Um, and, uh, you know, did that on the bridge and, and it was pretty easy.
00:42:41.620Actually, the campaign was remarkably easy.
00:42:44.120He sacks Ctesiphon and Susa, these Parthian capitals, old capitals of Persian empire.
00:42:49.780Um, and, um, it's, it's remarkably easy because the, the Parthians have all their forces committed elsewhere, but, you know, he does have to fight some battles and they win.
00:42:58.520Um, but he wants to leave, um, he wants to leave in dignity and go to Babylon and visit Alexander's house, the, the, the house in which Alexander died in Babylon and make a, you know, sacrifice to the genius of Alexander who he admired.
00:43:14.900Um, but he's cut short by another problem that kind of relates to the Christian problem of assimilation is, which is the Jews, uh, the, the Jews, uh, right around this time, probably seeing the fact that Trajan was over committed in the East, uh, decide to stage a huge, bloody uprising.
00:43:35.300And so Jews take over Cyrenaica in Eastern Libya, they take over Cyprus, they take over and they, they, they rise up in Northern Mesopotamia.
00:43:46.780They're upset about, about Roman oppression.
00:43:49.240You know, the Romans have had a relatively peaceful relationship, uh, you know, uh, with the exception of the massive bloody Jewish wars of around AD 70 that ended in the destruction of the temple.
00:44:01.500You know, there's, there's a lot of assimilation on the part of Jews, but it's, but it isn't perfect.
00:44:06.780The Romans have let the Jews exist, uh, in a way they haven't let the Christians exist because they're ancient, you know, and they conquered, they, you know, the Jews were worshiping their God first.
00:44:15.560And so the Romans sort of tried to respect that fact as long as they could keep the taxes and keep the peace flowing.
00:44:22.180But, uh, but this is kind of what, what ends up detaining Trajan and can't get the Babylon to do his Alexander worship.
00:44:30.320And he, and he comes back and he's already kind of getting sick.
00:44:33.080He's like 60 years old at this point, 117, 117 AD.
00:44:37.520And so he ends up, um, not abandoning his conquests, but sort of cutting them short and to try to deal with his Jewish problem.
00:44:44.980He has a, some subordinates take care of it.
00:44:47.340But before he can really see it through, he dies on the shores of Asia minor and sort of leaving all of his Eastern conquests and doubt.
00:44:56.660And sure enough, Hadrian comes on the scene at this point and starts changing things fast.
00:45:01.300All right, well, let's just roll right into it.
00:45:41.320Um, so before, before the Senate can say anything about it on, on the single day, they get news that Hadrian has been proclaimed emperor and he's been, uh, proclaimed as such by the army.
00:45:52.300And there's nothing you can do about it, get used to it, um, which, uh, you know, is, is sort of disturbing for them.
00:45:58.980They'd like to have a say in it, at least ceremonially, but it's a fait accompli when it gets reported to them.
00:46:04.040Um, and, um, and quickly on in Hadrian's reign, he ends up, well, um, maybe calling for the execution of four prominent senators who've been ex-consuls.
00:46:15.320Uh, maybe it was on the independent initiative.
00:46:25.800And so the Senate really doesn't like Hadrian from the start and for, for basically all of his reign, uh, Trajan just has this very kind of rough relationship with them.
00:46:35.560He's very kind of, uh, kind of closed and hard to approach and, you know, suspicious in, in the eyes of the Senate and later historians.
00:46:44.340Um, he tries to make some, some concessions early on.
00:46:47.780He tries to say, all right, we'll make the Senate the final court of appeal, uh, and, and no appeal can be made if a Senate, the Senate rules in a case, even to the emperor himself, trying to give them, throw them a little bone.
00:47:01.920Um, it doesn't really, doesn't really work.
00:47:05.120And, and, um, he continues to just rule by imperial decree rather than by senatorial decree throughout his reign.
00:47:11.760But one of the first things he does that really makes him unpopular with the Senate is he essentially abandons Trajan's Eastern conquest.
00:47:46.840But, um, you know, that's kind of his first act as emperor is, is retrenching because he just felt that the Eastern provinces couldn't be held, I suppose.
00:47:55.980And, and Rome kind of returns on the Eastern end to its natural borders.
00:47:59.860So you end up in the scenario where he is in many ways, um, having the opposite effect with the Senate.
00:48:07.720Uh, he, you know, Trajan is somebody who is, uh, well-liked by the Senate who's ingratiated himself with that class.
00:48:13.980Uh, Hadrian is not, uh, Trajan is somebody who's expanding the borders, winning big territory, uh, you know, building momentum.
00:48:22.200Uh, Hadrian has, uh, you know, the, the idea that no, we can't really afford to overextend.
00:48:28.580This is going to cause a lot of problems for us.
00:49:18.220And, um, it's, it was the biggest dome in, in Europe until, um, until the, uh, Florentine Duomo and, you know, the, the Renaissance.
00:49:29.280Hadrian was, uh, fancied himself an architect.
00:49:33.520There's a story that, um, the guy that Trajan had to, as his chief architect who built the bridge and, you know, the, the forum, this guy Apollodorus, you know, they, they had, he and Hadrian kind of sparred before Hadrian became emperor.
00:49:47.700He sort of made fun of Hadrian's architectural sketches.
00:49:51.480And, uh, when, when he was looking at one of Hadrian's architectural sketches, when he was emperor, I mean, this, this uppity Greek says something like, okay, in this temple that you just sketched out, the statue, if it stood up, would bump its head.
00:50:09.700He doesn't have that affability and he ends up, uh, having the guy exiled and executed on some trumped up charges.
00:50:15.960But, you know, he does, uh, he's one of Rome's great builders.
00:50:20.240He also builds, um, the, this, the, the, the largest temple ever in Rome, this, um, temple to Roma and, um, and, uh, Venus.
00:50:33.740And, uh, it's, it's a kind of a Greek temple.
00:50:36.560Um, so, and he has these massive games that he stages to, to win popular acclaim.
00:50:41.900And, you know, this, this soothes things with the Senate to some extent, but, but he's really eager to get, get the hell out of Rome as soon as he can, once he starts these building projects.
00:50:51.340And, um, and he does, uh, very quickly head to the Rhine border to, to start his, is, uh, a further kind of like, one of, one of his great achievements is sort of like, um, Hadrian's wall.
00:51:06.020So on a step to that, uh, we'll get to Hadrian's wall in a sec, but he, he firms up the, the Rhine border.
00:51:12.920He sets the legions to work building a palisade.
00:51:15.740And in a way, it's, it's a way of pointing out, you know, we don't, we're not going to expand any further, right?
00:51:22.140I'm not going to try to clobber the Germans.
00:51:24.720This is where Rome ends and this is all that matters.
00:51:27.860And, and he does a similar thing in, in, in England, in, in Scotland, right?
00:51:33.080Hadrian's wall is, you know, very close to the Scottish border today.
00:51:36.800It had been conquered under Domitian, actually, this guy, Agricola, um, the Tacitus writes the biography of, captured it.
00:51:43.540And, uh, Hadrian said, nope, we're going to, we're going to retrench and this is where civilization ends and that's where barbarism begins.
00:51:51.960This is what matters on this side of the wall.
00:51:54.080And that, that, you know, we, we don't, they're not even worth conquering.
00:51:58.340I think that's a lot of the message of, of his walls.
00:52:00.740And he makes another one in Mauritania and similar fashion.
00:52:03.760So, so he keeps on his retrenchment process, which does not win him a lot of favor with the Senate.
00:52:08.700Um, but it is kind of, um, tied in with, uh, something that we should talk about is Hadrian was incredibly popular in the provinces too.
00:52:19.500Well, let's, yeah, let's go ahead and address this because you already mentioned that Roman citizenship was a huge problem, uh, for both Trajan and Hadrian.
00:52:28.820The issues that they had to tackle questions of citizenship.
00:52:32.240And like you said, provincial citizenship was pretty rare in general.
00:52:35.620So what was his relationship with the provinces?
00:52:39.200What was the, uh, way in which he approached Roman citizenship and how that play back in the homeland?
00:52:47.000Well, one of the things you see in, um, Hadrian is he loves being out in the provinces.
00:52:55.000He's, he's out, out of Rome more than he's in Rome.
00:52:58.560He's no emperor traveled as much as him.
00:53:00.860Um, he makes a big circuit of, of the whole empire and, um, he ends up, uh, in Greece, spending a lot of time in Greece.
00:53:09.260He was particularly fond of, he's called by jokingly by some of his contemporaries, the little Greek, Grykoulos.
00:53:15.940Um, and, uh, because, you know, he's, he's a fan of Greek philosophy and art.
00:53:21.280And so, uh, he builds the temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens and he elevates a couple of important, um, citizens to, uh, senatorial status in Greece.
00:53:34.000He celebrates the Eleusinian mysteries.
00:53:36.800You know, this is all kind of part of Hadrian's vision of turning Rome into a commonwealth with a common culture that's founded on Hellenism.
00:53:45.540You know, the, the Romans were great conquerors, but even early on in the days of, uh, the, you know, the Punic Wars and Scipio Africanus, the third century, the Romans really started to admire Greek culture, the mythic tradition, the philosophy, the rhetoric, the history, the first Roman histories were written in Greek.
00:54:02.440So it's a big part of the cultural DNA of Rome.
00:54:05.180Um, and Hadrian really wanted to lean into that and to spread this kind of Roman Hellenism as a civilizing force, uh, as a, as a kind of cultural unity, even if, even if the people in the far flung provinces aren't necessarily Roman citizens, at least we can all agree that we have a kind of cultural commonality.
00:54:24.000Um, but, but, but for citizenship in particular, what he does is he kind of, citizenship has started to get diluted.
00:54:34.180So this is one of the things that he, that the Romans did not do.
00:54:38.160They did not really until at least the edict of Caracalla in 212, citizenship wasn't really the basis of Roman unity.
00:54:45.080Um, but, but one of the things that he did was to legalize this distinction between honestiores and humilioris.
00:54:53.180So like the, the nobler people and the more humble people who have literally different legal privileges.
00:54:58.320There's a kind of a two tier system of citizenship because they, you know, as, as citizenship expanded, the Romans felt that something was missing from the, from the, the package.
00:55:08.560And, you know, so humilioris could be citizens, but they could be flogged, for example, whereas you couldn't physically punish or flog a Roman citizen.
00:55:18.180You couldn't crucify, uh, or you couldn't physically plot or, flog or punish a Roman citizen in the past, but now, uh, uh, one of the honestiores.
00:55:27.080And, um, and also you couldn't crucify a Roman citizen in the past, but then you can crucify a citizen who's in the humilioris.
00:55:34.280So he, he introduced that legal distinction to kind of solve that problem, um, and really sees culture as the basis of, of the United empire that he wants to found.
00:55:43.420Again, something that we could probably, uh, take into our modern day where people are trying to find a binding agent for an American empire that has sprawled and growed so many and, and, and, you know, brought so many people in from the provinces and doesn't know how to handle, uh, that, you know, who is a, who's a citizen, who isn't, what does citizenship mean?
00:56:06.020What binds you together? Uh, we even have tried to implement in some ways, our own two tier, uh, system of justice, uh, which, which, uh, has not gone very well.
00:56:16.020Uh, but we can see that there's nothing new under the sun here, right? Like these, these problems, they change, they shift, they take on, uh, new technological issues, these kinds of things.
00:56:25.740But at their heart, these are the struggles of all empires, all peoples, all rulers, all nations. Uh, and so we, we see this echo throughout history, even if the, the dynamics shift, uh, due to, uh, you know, technology, other advancements, these kinds of things. Uh, so you said that, uh, Hadrian having issues with, uh, kind of the Jewish rebellion and putting that away, uh, would come back to bite him. What'd you mean by that?
00:56:53.940Well, so the Jews are, uh, pacified after the, the, the diaspora revolt, the second Jewish revolt, but, um, and Hadrian kind of, um, sees the, the, the, the solution potentially to the Jewish problem is making them more Greek and making them more Roman.
00:57:13.420Um, and, uh, it's, the, the, the details are kind of hazy because of the sources are very spotty, but essentially what, what seems to have happened is he went to Jerusalem and he, um, he, he decided that one of the big problems with the Jews is they have this capital that, um, and, uh, and they have these hopes of restoring the temple.
00:57:36.900Uh, there was still prophecies that the temple would be rebuilt 70 years after it was destroyed under, uh, under Titus and Vespasians, AD 70.
00:57:45.260So, you know, it's around 130 AD that, uh, he decides to crush those hopes finally.
00:57:51.400And he renames Jerusalem, Ilea Capitolina.
00:57:54.520And, uh, it's named after Ileas is his family.
00:57:58.100And then Capitolina is, um, because he dedicates the city to the worship of Capitoline Jupiter, the, the, the supreme God of the Romans, Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
00:58:08.500And he has a great temple of Jupiter, Capitolina is built there.
00:58:12.340So he just finally quashes all the hopes of, of, uh, you know, the Jews restoring the sacred Jerusalem.
00:58:19.340He bans Jews from entering the city ever on pain of death.
00:58:24.520And this probably was one of the causes of, uh, a great bloody revolt under the leadership of a guy named Simon Bar Kokhba.
00:58:34.940Um, that's what the Romans called him at least who, uh, shadowy figure, unfortunately we don't have great sources on him, but he leads this really successful.
00:58:44.720Well, not successful, but, you know, longstanding and very bloody guerrilla revolt against the Romans.
00:58:50.120And, and the, the Romans have to commit something like, I think it's like 10 legions.
00:58:54.900He has, Hadrian has to call in legions from the, the Danube borders.
00:58:59.160And it's just this incredible bloody demoralizing defeat, uh, revolt that he has to put down that kind of, that kind of like crushes his, his hopes for, you know, Roman unity under Hellenism.
00:59:11.940Like there's, there's going to be some element in society potentially that's just not going to ever be able to get on the program.
00:59:17.900Um, and that's, um, that was the legacy that, that Hadrian had to, had to leave by, by crushing this revolt, by renaming the province of Judea, Syria, Palestina.
00:59:29.280So Palestine is an old name, but, you know, he re basically renames it Palestine and says an end to the memory of the Jews.
00:59:40.440Um, and, uh, and, and that would, that was what happened with the, the second Jewish, the third Jewish revolt, actually.
00:59:45.900Yeah. And again, that draws us a very interesting parallel to today where so much of our rulership is trying to crush the particularity out of individual peoples in the hope that they can create some kind of unifying understanding, some kind of unifying culture.
01:00:00.720And what, you know, a guy like Hadrian comes to find is that no matter how grand your efforts are and how much power you wield, there is always some element of peoples brought under your rule that are just not going to conform.
01:00:17.980And that is, uh, always the difficulty with trying to kind of impose these, uh, supranational identities across, uh, people that just aren't naturally born to them.
01:00:27.940Right. Like you, you probably could get a lot of Hellenic culture into many of the Roman peoples because, uh, they had been aping it for so long.
01:00:35.360Uh, you know, that that's the, the Romans inherited so much from the Greeks and had been admiring aspects of us for so long.
01:00:42.740Uh, but once you stretched it out far enough to people who just had no real connection to it, uh, eventually kind of fell apart.
01:00:50.040And once again, we can kind of see how obviously the attempts to do similar things, uh, by the United States has, you know,
01:00:56.940we're just not going to get democracy in Afghanistan.
01:00:59.500Like it's not gonna, it's not gonna happen.
01:01:02.000Right. And so that it's pretty easy to, to understand that.
01:01:04.700All right. Well, we're, we're coming up near the end here.
01:01:07.460So I'll guess, uh, not to try to crush too much of this into the last few minutes, but you know, the, the story that I always heard, right.
01:01:16.200Uh, was that Trajan is the last great expander.
01:01:21.180Like the, he's the, the glory of Rome, the, you know, we're, we're going to go out.
01:01:25.600And like you said, uh, we're going to be this military empire.
01:01:28.400The, the Senate is going to be rah, rah for this great soldier.
01:01:31.480Who's going to go out, you know, push the boundaries as much as possible.
01:01:35.360And he acquired a lot of glory and, and, and rightfully so in that manner.
01:01:39.720But Hadrian was really the emperor that helped, uh, the, uh, the empire to continue for probably much longer than otherwise would have, because he understood that while the glory was important and the majesty of, of conquest was important that proper, uh, administration, restraint, understanding, unification was important to continue the legacy of the empire.
01:02:05.980And so it wasn't so much the geographical boundaries that ultimately would, uh, determine whether or not Rome continued, but its ability to perhaps, uh, you know, have, have a little bit of its own, you know, exercise some prudence, recognize when, uh, holding back, uh, limiting, uh, unifying was more important than necessarily pushing out, expanding, you know, building, building the greatest statue to the glory of your conquest.
01:02:33.920What do you feel about that contrast? Do you think that Hadrian's approach did ultimately, uh, you know, increase the longevity and health of the empire?
01:02:45.040I think so. And, and he was, you know, very unpopular with the Senate, even in the historians of the time, they, they have a much dimmer view of Hadrian.
01:02:53.920He's not as bad as Domitian, but, but they, they preferred Trajan to, to Hadrian. And yet, you know, if you go to any museum in the Mediterranean, you're more likely to see a statue of Hadrian than you are of Trajan.
01:03:06.040He was wildly popular among the provincials. Um, if you see a statue of Antinous, that was Hadrian's little kind of Greek boyfriend, uh, another story for another time.
01:03:16.900He's, he's everywhere too. And that's, that's a, that's a token of their appreciation of Hadrian. They want to look good in the eyes of Hadrian because they love him.
01:03:24.120So they make a statue to this, this, you know, lover Antinous who died tragically at age 20 in a boating accident.
01:03:29.700So I, I think that, you know, Hadrian really did set the empire on, on a firm footing after him, you get Antoninus Pius, one of the most peaceful, uh, kind of not story worthy emperors of all time, you know, just nothing, nothing much happened under Antoninus Pius.
01:03:46.280Um, and he adopted, uh, he also made Antoninus Pius adopt Marcus Aurelius as his successor.
01:03:51.860So another, one of the five good emperors of the so-called adoptive Kaiser site of Germans.
01:03:57.740And, uh, you know, it was Gibbon gave them credit. It was, it was one of the happiest periods of, uh, of all mankind, uh, under the, under the five good emperors of Rome.
01:04:07.540And Hadrian was kind of the pinnacle of that for Gibbon.
01:04:10.980Excellent. So, like I said, I think this is just a fascinating, uh, period of history, no matter what, uh, cause I'm just a huge nerd for Roman history, but also, uh, I think this is a very interesting period for us to reflect on in our own moment.
01:04:24.680Uh, obviously things are different that, you know, history rhymes, but it doesn't necessarily repeat.
01:04:29.780Uh, we can see the themes, we can see the problems that have been addressed and the way that they've been addressed, the tensions and the way that they echo into our own, uh, moment.
01:04:39.500And that can help us decide, you know, do, do we feel we are in this Trajan moment or do we feel we're more of an, in a Hadrian moment?
01:04:46.540What, what, what do we as Americans need for the wellbeing?
01:04:50.940Do we, can we practice the discipline necessary to make a Hadrian move if we need to, or is the glory and expansion of a Trajan really ultimately what we're looking for?
01:05:01.300I think these are all important things to consider again, as Donald Trump, who I feel embodies a little bit of both of these guys, right?
01:05:08.300You know, a lot of his supporters and are asking for fewer foreign wars, fewer expansions, but he recognizes the glory of being able to go out and acquire territory and what is best.
01:05:22.700Again, I just think it's a fascinating moment to reflect on history, these examples and carry that forward into, uh, what we might want to do as a nation, as a people.
01:05:33.300So Alex, uh, for those who want to learn more, uh, be familiar with your work, where, where should they be looking for what you're doing?
01:05:42.480Well, you can find the cost of glory podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube or go to cost of glory.com.
01:06:05.020And of course, if it's your first time on this YouTube channel, you need to subscribe, click the bell notifications, all that stuff so that you know when we go live.