TRIGGERnometry - The Great Leaders of Antiquity Explained in 60 Minutes - Barry Strauss

00:00:00.640 Alexander wanted to and succeeded in conquering the Persian Empire, the greatest empire that the

00:00:06.160 West had known to date. Hannibal wanted to defeat Rome, which he saw as a threat to his own country

00:00:12.640 of Carthage. He failed, but in doing so he had some very glorious moments. And finally there

00:00:18.000 was Julius Caesar who first conquered Gaul and became the leading man in the Roman Empire. No

00:00:23.200 one had ever had as much power as he did for one brief moment before it all came crashing down. 0.98

00:00:28.080 One of the things that occurs to me is these great, I mean, these people are maniacs.

00:00:33.520 Baris Strauss, such a pleasure to have you on the show. We sat down at a table next to each other

00:00:38.560 here at Ark. I said, what do you do? You said I'm a historian of ancient civilizations and military

00:00:43.360 historian. And I was like, we have to get you on the show right now. Come on over. We dragged you

00:00:48.960 in here. That's why we're here. We cannot wait. One of your books particularly really piqued our

00:00:53.520 interest, which is about the great leaders of antiquity. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hannibal,

00:01:00.080 etc. Let's get into it. What were the themes that sort of bound those people together? Was there

00:01:06.800 common threads that run through their histories, their lives? And why are they such significant

00:01:12.160 people in the history of the world? Yeah, I mean, all three of them were immensely ambitious

00:01:18.880 and wanted nothing less than to be great conquerors. They belonged to what Abraham Lincoln would later

00:01:24.480 call the tribe of the eagle. And the tribe of the eagle is like eagles. They're immensely impressive

00:01:30.880 and powerful, but they're not always nice. And nobody would accuse these three guys of being nice.

00:01:36.640 They waded through seas of blood in their attempt to conquer. Alexander wanted to and succeeded in

00:01:46.880 conquering the Persian Empire, the greatest empire that the West had known to date. Hannibal wanted to 0.99

00:01:54.720 defeat Rome, which he saw as a threat to his own country of Carthage. He failed. But in doing so,

00:02:00.160 he had some very glorious moments. And finally, there was Julius Caesar, who first conquered Gaul

00:02:07.360 and changed the face of history. And then saw himself pitted in a war against the Roman Senate

00:02:14.400 and defeated all of them as well and became the leading man in the Roman Empire. No one had ever

00:02:18.960 had as much power as he did for one brief moment before it all came crashing down.

00:02:23.120 That's right. And was it really just about these guys' egos? Or were there economic and other

00:02:30.240 processes that made them want to be conquerors, made them want to expand their empires? Or was it

00:02:36.080 really just a big dig waving competition? Well, ego was a very big part of it. But it wasn't just about

00:02:43.040 the ego in all three cases. So Alexander could have seen Persia as a threat to Greek civilization.

00:02:50.880 And he saw himself as the avatar of the Greeks, somebody who was going to 0.93

00:02:55.040 spread this civilization and create a new empire. So there was that. He had been a student of no

00:03:01.120 lesser person than Aristotle. So he had a sense of grandeur and a sense of mission. Hannibal saw

00:03:08.080 himself as on a defensive mission to protect his country from Rome. But also, and most important for

00:03:15.360 him was revenge. His father had been defeated by Rome. Or rather, his father had been the last

00:03:20.720 Carthaginian general standing who had not been defeated by Rome in an earlier war. And now Hannibal

00:03:25.440 wanted to avenge his father who had since died and put the Romans in their place to protect Carthage 0.65

00:03:31.600 forever. Caesar, like any ambitious Roman, wanted to add to the empire. So there was that for his

00:03:38.800 country. He might have seen Gaul as a threat, although it really hadn't been much of a threat

00:03:43.360 for several generations, the Gauls that is. He also was, by the standards of Roman politics,

00:03:49.840 a populist. And he wanted to use his wealth for the good of the Roman people. But make no mistake

00:03:55.920 about it, all three of these men had huge egos. And that was always a part of what they did.

00:04:01.520 Do you think a lot of them believed in their own sense of the divine destiny,

00:04:04.800 that they were destined to be rulers of the world? Was that partly what drove them as well?

00:04:09.120 Yes, absolutely. In the case of Alexander, you know, Alexander's mother was a woman named Olympias,

00:04:16.640 who told him that his father, his alleged father, Philip II wasn't his real father. He had been

00:04:22.160 the product of a union with a snake, who was Zeus. And later on, he believed that he was

00:04:29.280 that he was the son of Zeus, that he was nothing less than divine in his inspiration. And many people

00:04:35.200 believe that as well, because how else could he possibly have conquered this great empire?

00:04:39.840 Hannibal did not believe he was divine, but he thought that he had the gods on his side. Before

00:04:46.800 setting off on his expedition against Rome, he left from southern Spain. He went to the temple

00:04:52.000 of Hercules, who the Carthaginians called Melcart, which is in what is now the city of Cadiz in Spain.

00:04:59.920 It's on the Atlantic Ocean. And the thought was that only Hercules could have dealt with some

00:05:03.920 place so terrifying as the Atlantic, because these were Mediterranean folks. And then when he invaded 1.00

00:05:09.600 Italy, he made a big show of the fact that he had Hercules on his side. And the Romans felt they had 0.66

00:05:15.200 to do something with the Hercules gap. They had to create altars to Hercules to counter Hannibal.

00:05:20.080 Caesar of the three was, I think, the most skeptical. He was a philosopher. I don't think

00:05:27.440 he had the gods on his side so much. But the Roman Senate, either to flatter him or to insult him,

00:05:34.240 give him a difficult political position, voted to name him a god to make him one of the gods of Rome.

00:05:40.960 And I can only imagine Caesar having a somewhat amused attitude about that.

00:05:45.520 I was in Rome a few years ago, and I went to Caesar's grave in Rome.

00:05:50.880 Yes.

00:05:51.280 And there is an eternal flame that still burns for Caesar. And it just blew me away,

00:05:56.720 this man who lived thousands of years ago. There is still an eternal flame,

00:06:00.960 and people still laid flowers at his grave.

00:06:03.680 Amazing. I know. There's an Italian scholar who wrote a book about Caesar called Julius Caesar,

00:06:08.640 Caesar the Democratic Dictator. And so there is this notion that Caesar was a man of people,

00:06:15.200 he wasn't a man of people, but that he represented the people, that he was a populist. There are those

00:06:20.400 who see him that way and think that he sincerely believed in the cause of the Roman people. There

00:06:26.400 are others who would say, well, maybe, but he believed in himself above all. And he didn't

00:06:32.080 shrink from starting a civil war to defend himself in his position.

00:06:36.160 And I don't know about Alexander the Great, but the other two met pretty grisly ends. And it seems that

00:06:44.880 when you talk about these type of great leaders, it's like tragic characters in the great plays,

00:06:51.520 if you think about in Greek tragedy. Yeah. So what were their flaws? What did they have that

00:06:58.480 eventually led to their own demise? Well, I think all three of them shared an inability to know when

00:07:04.720 to stop. And that's certainly true in the case of Alexander, who after having conquered the Persian 0.78

00:07:11.440 Empire said, I'm bored with governing. This is not what I want to do. And he was preparing to start

00:07:17.360 a new war against Arabia when he died in June of the year 323 BCE.

00:07:24.000 How did he die?

00:07:24.880 Well, that is the interesting question. So the ancient sources say that he died of a fever,

00:07:30.480 but they also say maybe it's also possible that he was poisoned by those around him.

00:07:35.760 Because many people had come to the conclusion that Alexander was mad, that he had gone insane,

00:07:41.440 that only a lunatic would want to keep fighting this way. He said that after Arabia, 0.65

00:07:45.920 next was Carthage. And after Carthage, he was going to go after Rome. The guy seemed as if there was

00:07:51.920 no off button. He just wanted to keep fighting. Whereas most of his soldiers said, we're rich now,

00:07:57.440 we want to kick back and enjoy life. So there is a minority opinion in the ancient sources. It's not

00:08:02.560 a modern theory that say, well, you know, he might have been poisoned. And I think there's a real

00:08:06.560 possibility. That's very interesting. Barry, one thing that strikes me is we haven't actually told

00:08:11.200 anyone listening or watching this what these men did. So then that is entirely our fault,

00:08:18.400 not yours. So could we maybe get a kind of couple of minutes about each of them, what they did,

00:08:23.840 who they were, where they started? Because not all of these men started with great power and privilege

00:08:29.440 at the beginning of their lives. Sure. So Alexander comes first chronologically. He was born in the year

00:08:34.720 356 BCE and died in 323. He was born to privilege. His father was the king of Macedon, Philip II,

00:08:43.360 who was the most consequential king this country had ever had. He did nothing less than create a

00:08:48.080 modern state, a modern innovative army, revolutionary army, and then conquered all the Greek city-states

00:08:54.000 and began what he thought would be his life's work to conquer the Persian empire. He'd started the 0.55

00:08:59.120 invasion, sent an advance force when Philip is assassinated, and young Alexander, at the age of

00:09:05.040 20, is now the king of Macedon. His enemies both at home and abroad thought he'd be a pushover,

00:09:10.960 but they didn't understand the guy was a military and political genius and that he was made of iron.

00:09:16.080 Can I just interrupt that? How does a man at 20 become a military genius?

00:09:21.920 That is a really good question. First of all, he had been trained by his father,

00:09:28.080 who was absolutely a brilliant, brilliant military commander. Secondly, he'd been trained by Aristotle,

00:09:34.240 who was his tutor. Third, the guy really just was very, very intelligent. Fourth, his mother had

00:09:40.160 convinced him that he was a god, and so he thought he had this destiny. In fact, there's a theory that his

00:09:44.400 mother's behind the assassination of his father, Philip, because Philip had moved on to many other wives,

00:09:49.600 and he had a wife who had just given birth to a son who many thought would be the real heir.

00:09:56.800 But the other thing is actually, and your question's a really good one, one of the reasons Alexander did

00:10:01.040 so well is that he was humble enough and smart enough to realize he didn't know everything.

00:10:05.440 And so he kept around some of his father's advisors, some of his father's top generals,

00:10:09.920 and he knew when to listen to them when it's absolutely necessary. After finally conquering most of

00:10:15.280 the Persian empire, he has them assassinated. He gets rid of them, but he knows he needs them for a 1.00

00:10:19.360 while, so he keeps them around. Why did he assassinate them? Because he thought they had

00:10:25.280 sons who were plotting against him, and that's the reason he gave. He might have been right. 1.00

00:10:31.440 They may have been plotting against him, because the Macedonian nobility, the Borgias have nothing 1.00

00:10:37.360 on these people. They were assassinating each other again and again and again. That was their national 0.68

00:10:41.840 sport. So it's not surprising. Okay. So how old was Alexander when he dies? How old is he when he dies?

00:10:47.760 He's just before he turns 33.

00:10:51.840 I'm sort of feeling a bit inferior. Okay. So that's him. Then Julius Caesar or Hannibal?

00:10:57.920 Hannibal is next. Hannibal is next. So Hannibal is born in 247, so about a century later,

00:11:03.440 and he dies around 183. This is all BC, BCE. Hannibal is also the son of a great general. His father's

00:11:10.880 name is Hamilcar Barca, which is Hamilcar the lightning bolt. He's a terrific general. He's

00:11:17.360 commanding the Carthaginian forces in Sicily, and Rome and Carthage is fighting this about 25-year-long

00:11:22.960 war for control of Sicily. Hannibal is never defeated on land, but the Roman navy defeats the

00:11:30.080 Carthaginian navy at sea. Carthage has to surrender, give up Sicily. And then the Romans 0.94

00:11:37.920 are not very helpful when Carthage's mercenaries revolt and Hamilcar is in the fight of his life

00:11:43.760 to save his country from the mercenaries. He defeats them. Then he gets the idea to go and start

00:11:48.640 a new empire in southern Spain, which is rich in mineral resources and warriors who can fight for

00:11:54.800 Carthage. And he is fighting there when he is killed in a skirmish. He brings with him his young

00:12:01.520 sons. Hannibal is the oldest. Allegedly, when Hannibal is eight, the father makes him swear on

00:12:07.520 an altar, eternal vengeance against Rome. So Hannibal grows up and he eventually becomes the

00:12:14.480 leader of the Carthaginian army in Spain. The Romans are getting wind of the fact that Hannibal is

00:12:21.040 expanding. Hannibal attacks a Roman ally, sort of an ally, a semi-ally. And the Romans send an 0.74

00:12:28.400 ultimatum to Hannibal and the Carthaginians saying, stop it. You know, admit that we are superior and

00:12:34.080 we'll call the shots. And Hannibal says, no way. We want war. Because he is truly, of all three of them,

00:12:41.200 no one is better at war than Hannibal. The overused term military genius applies to few people in the

00:12:47.840 way that it does to Hannibal. And how does he become a genius? Because he's young as well when

00:12:52.080 he becomes... He's not as young as Alexander, you know, but his father was the greatest general of

00:12:56.560 his age. And his father raised him to fight. When his father dies, he doesn't immediately take over.

00:13:02.800 I think it's his brother-in-law. Some other member of the extended family takes over and then he's

00:13:07.280 assassinated. So Hannibal has a number of years to learn the art of war. But as with, you know,

00:13:13.040 all things, it's part learning and it's part intuition and it's part natural talent and ambition.

00:13:18.320 So he's got all of those. Also, Carthage was a place where the Greek experts in the art of war,

00:13:24.640 and Greece was really where the fancy dancers of war came from. They had taught the Carthaginians

00:13:31.520 how to fight. The Romans were more sloggers than maneuver warfare. But Hannibal was an expert 0.94

00:13:38.400 at maneuver warfare. That's his thing. So he goes on this long march, this 900-mile long march

00:13:44.880 from southern Spain all the way across the Pyrenees, across the Rhone River, across the Alps,

00:13:51.040 into northern Italy, with his 37 elements. One of the great epics of history, how Hannibal pulls this

00:13:57.520 off. And then he immediately starts wiping the floor of the Romans, because he knows this new way 0.98

00:14:02.480 of war that the Romans had never seen before. You know, the Romans are like an American football team 0.99

00:14:07.840 that only has one play, which is to take the ball and run up the middle. And Hannibal is executing all

00:14:14.240 these fancy plays. And he destroys Roman army after Roman army after Roman army. He has a strategy.

00:14:20.240 His strategy is to get the allies of Italy to defect from Rome and to join him.

00:14:27.120 How does he do that?

00:14:28.400 Yeah. He is a very fast talker. So when he defeats the Romans, and Roman armies would consist of Roman 0.99

00:14:35.200 citizens and allies, the Roman citizens become prisoners, and some of them are sold to slaves,

00:14:40.400 some of them are killed. The allies, Hannibal says, you guys go home. You're Italians. We're here to 1.00

00:14:45.040 free Italy. Italy for the Italians. We're here to free you from the Romans. Remember, the Romans are 1.00

00:14:49.680 only a small part of Italy. Most of Italy is made up of other peoples. Hannibal is very successful in 0.99

00:14:55.920 the north of Italy and in the south of Italy, getting people to rebel against Rome. But he's

00:15:00.160 not successful in the central part of Italy. That's the nut he doesn't know how to crack.

00:15:05.760 And so, although he hands the Romans one of the two greatest defeats they would ever have, 0.67

00:15:10.800 the defeat at the Battle of Cannae in August of 216, the Romans refused to surrender. And one of the

00:15:17.120 reasons they refused to surrender is they still have these allies in central Italy, and they provide

00:15:21.760 the manpower pool that allows the Romans to fight and fight and fight. And Hannibal has a problem.

00:15:27.520 He's figured out how to win battles, but he's not figured out how to win a war. What if you do,

00:15:31.840 if the enemy you keep defeating says, we're not surrendering. We're going to go on fighting.

00:15:36.080 It's a little bit like Hitler's problem with Britain in World War II. When Hitler says,

00:15:39.600 okay, I beat you. Time to surrender. And they say, no, we're not going to surrender. 0.99

00:15:43.440 But Britain had territorial separation. Britain's an island, whereas central Italy isn't.

00:15:48.960 No, it's not an island, but these are fortified cities. They all have walls.

00:15:52.320 Ah, he can't sack them.

00:15:53.680 He can't because Hannibal has a big problem. His problem is he doesn't like sieges. He's not

00:15:59.200 good at them. They're boring to him. And in a siege in Spain, he's wounded in his leg by an enemy

00:16:07.600 arrow. I think he never forgets this. He never puts in the effort to laying siege to

00:16:13.360 these cities. And that's a real problem. Wow. See, he literally lost a war because

00:16:19.360 he didn't want to do sieges because he had a bad experience.

00:16:22.240 Ah, I don't know if that's true. I wouldn't go that far. That's my five and dime psychology.

00:16:27.200 But he never does these sieges. He never pulls them off. And, you know, after he wins the battle

00:16:32.560 of Cannae, one of his generals says to him, we've won Hannibal. Let's march to Rome. The cavalry can be

00:16:38.480 there in a few days and the army will follow afterwards. And the Romans are terrified now.

00:16:43.040 We've killed 50,000 Romans out of about 80,000 who fought. They're going to surrender. We're 1.00

00:16:48.560 going to win. Some traitor will open the gates. And Hannibal says, we can't do that. You know, 0.94

00:16:53.760 our army is too exhausted. We took casualties as well. By the time we get there, the Romans will 0.99

00:16:59.280 be prepared for us. And the guy looks at him and says, Hannibal, you know how to win a victory,

00:17:03.840 but you don't know what to do with it. And we're told that years later, Hannibal said,

00:17:08.080 eh, he was right. If only I had figured out then to go against Rome.

00:17:11.520 Wow. And what happens from there?

00:17:13.200 So what happens from there is that Hannibal, you know, he now gets Rome's most important ally,

00:17:19.760 a city called Capua, to defect against Rome. You may never have heard of Capua, and there's

00:17:24.960 a good reason for it. Because when this war is over, the Romans make sure that you'll never hear 0.97

00:17:28.800 about, never hear of Capua. But Hannibal has southern Italy and northern Italy. He doesn't have central

00:17:35.120 Italy. And the Romans have finally figured out that the way to fight Hannibal is not to fight Hannibal.

00:17:40.400 They adopt, they appoint a dictator named Fabius Maximus. And Fabius comes up with what we now call

00:17:49.760 the Fabian strategy. That is to say, a scorched earth strategy, harass the enemy, deny him food,

00:17:56.320 because Hannibal didn't bring food with him, but don't actually fight him. So they're cutting around

00:18:02.240 the edges of Hannibal. But Hannibal, they can't get him out of Italy. They understand that they're

00:18:08.960 not going to win this war in Italy. They think they originally wanted to invade Carthage, but they

00:18:13.280 couldn't do that because Hannibal was so disastrous to them in Italy. So instead, they invade Spain,

00:18:19.440 where Carthage has this really important colony. That's the heart of its empire, aside from the North

00:18:24.400 African parts. But the Carthaginian armies are too sophisticated and too good for the Romans. 0.97

00:18:30.720 Unfortunately for Hannibal, one of the reasons the Romans are so successful is they're really 0.99

00:18:35.600 flexible. They're really adaptable. They're not like the Greeks who would say, you know, 1.00

00:18:39.600 we have our philosophy, we have our way of doing things, and we're not going to change. The Romans

00:18:44.000 say, we're Romans, you know, we're pragmatists, we're going to do what works. So they violate their

00:18:49.280 own constitution and they appoint a young man before the age of 35 to become their general.

00:18:53.920 And he retrains the Roman army to fight like Hannibal. And he brings the Roman army to Spain.

00:19:01.120 His name is Scipio, eventually Scipio Africanus, because he defeats Carthage. And the first thing

00:19:07.760 he does in a shock move is he takes the Carthaginian capital in Spain. It's called New Carthage,

00:19:14.640 nowadays Cartagena in Spain. And he takes it by surprising the defenders at a place they considered

00:19:22.560 the wall, that no one could climb the wall because there was water there when the tide came in. I

00:19:30.240 think it's probably not a tide, but there's some meteorological effect. He uses the right moment to

00:19:36.080 attack. They're not prepared for him. And he takes the Carthaginian capital in Spain. He then proceeds

00:19:41.760 to defeat the Carthaginian armies in battle because Hannibal's brothers, although they're

00:19:46.320 very good, they're not up to Hannibal's standard. And so young Scipio has conquered Spain.

00:19:54.480 Hannibal's still in Italy. He had two brothers. One of them's killed. One of them survives. And the

00:19:58.640 surviving brother comes to Italy, bringing an army. He may have had three brothers. Sorry,

00:20:03.600 I don't quite remember. Anyhow, one of the brothers brings an army to Italy and he's there to relieve

00:20:09.120 Hannibal. But unfortunately for him, the Romans have gotten better and better. And they have a 1.00

00:20:14.160 lucky break. They capture his plans. A courier is carrying his plans. They capture his plans.

00:20:21.280 And they manage to surprise him. And they destroy the army of Hannibal's brother at the Battle of

00:20:27.920 Metaurus. They kill him. They behead him. And a fast rider goes to southern Italy, where Hannibal was, 0.96

00:20:34.000 and tosses the brother's head over the wall of Hannibal's stockade. And Hannibal realizes this is

00:20:39.840 not going to end well. So now Scipio convinces the Roman Senate that what we need to do is invade

00:20:50.240 North Africa. They really don't want to do it. They think it's too risky. But talk about a member of 1.00

00:20:55.040 the tribe of the eagle. Scipio really is that. So he does invade North Africa. And he forces Hannibal

00:21:03.120 to leave Italy. Nothing the Romans have done up to then would have forced Hannibal to leave Italy. He

00:21:08.400 could have stayed there for good. But this forces him back home. To make a long story short, Scipio is

00:21:14.720 one good general, but he's also a very good diplomat. And the Carthaginians also depended on allies, as the

00:21:20.400 Romans did. Their most important ally was the Numidians, roughly today's Algerians. And what

00:21:26.320 they brought to the table was they were the best light-armed horsemen in the world. They were tremendously

00:21:31.920 good, fast cavalrymen. A staunch ally of Carthage, but Scipio manages to talk them out of it. It's a

00:21:40.000 long, fascinating story involving a woman. It's a great story, but we could spend the rest of the time

00:21:44.800 talking about it. In any case, Scipio sets this up for a final battle against Hannibal. And believe

00:21:51.280 it or not, before the battle, the two men meet, Hannibal goes to a meeting with Scipio. And it's

00:21:56.240 one of the great dramatic moments in history. To have been a fly on the wall of that tent would have

00:22:00.480 just been amazing to hear the two of them talk. It's one of my favorite moments.

00:22:04.720 It would have been a hell of a podcast.

00:22:06.320 Right.

00:22:06.640 Yeah, it would have been a hell of a podcast.

00:22:08.640 And do we know what happened in that meeting at all?

00:22:11.280 Uh, well, we know that Scipio, um, Scipio was playing a double game. He was waiting for his

00:22:17.680 Numidian allies to show up. And so he was stalling for time. Uh, and Hannibal played for it, except

00:22:24.000 Hannibal, uh, fell for it, rather. Except I think Hannibal, I think is really, really intelligent. I think

00:22:29.200 Hannibal understands that his chances of losing this battle are pretty great. And Hannibal is already

00:22:34.480 thinking to the day after, okay, I lose the battle. Then what? Do I want the Romans to come 0.98

00:22:40.160 and, uh, ask for my head, which they might do? Or do I want the leading Roman general to think

00:22:45.280 we're buddies and that he can deal, do business with me afterwards? So I think that's why Hannibal

00:22:50.080 agreed to this meeting, even though he knew he was probably not going to get anything out of it.

00:22:54.240 So they have the meeting. They start the battle. Uh, Hannibal is doing brilliant stuff with

00:23:00.960 what he's got left. He doesn't have the great army he had before.

00:23:04.560 Um, and he's quite successful, but the Numidian cavalry show up and they destroy the Carthaginian 0.74

00:23:10.240 army and Hannibal has to flee. Um, so that is the end of his attempt to conquer Rome. But Hannibal

00:23:17.360 has, if we have time, he has a little really interesting afterlife. So, um, his friendship

00:23:22.320 with Scipio really pays off. Scipio convinces the Senate to let Hannibal live and to let Hannibal

00:23:28.000 be essentially, uh, the quasi dictator of Carthage. Carthage is still a very prosperous

00:23:34.160 city. And, um, um, Hannibal puts Carthage back on its feet to pay the reparations to the other

00:23:41.120 Romans, but he puts it back on its feet too much. The Romans are afraid Carthage is going to come

00:23:46.160 back again. So they drive him out. Hannibal in exile now goes to what is nowadays Turkey, uh, to

00:23:52.720 become a military advisor to, um, the, uh, king there, a man named Antiochus. Uh, and Hannibal is, uh,

00:24:00.560 uh, uh, the strategist of his war against Rome. He fails in the end and ultimately the Romans

00:24:09.360 corner poor Hannibal, um, and he commits suicide. He has poison in his ring. He takes the poison. It's

00:24:15.040 outside of Istanbul, uh, today. And you can actually go to the place where Hannibal committed suicide,

00:24:20.800 but you probably won't because almost nobody knows where it is. I know this seems like a very specific

00:24:25.440 question. How quickly does this poison work? Is it instant? Do we know? I don't know. No,

00:24:30.880 I, I, uh, um, we might know, but I don't know. You know, I'm just curious because it's like you take

00:24:36.080 the, if you've been cornered, they better work quick. Otherwise you're just going to suffer for

00:24:39.360 a long time. That's a really good point. Yeah. Well, you know, the ancients were experts in pharmacology,

00:24:43.760 uh, and I'm sure Hannibal had access to, uh, to an expert. We'll look it up. We'll look it up.

00:24:49.520 All right. Barry, I was going to ask you something, which is you've described these three

00:24:54.800 men as geniuses. And of course that seems entirely accurate. Why haven't you described

00:24:59.520 Scipio as a genius? Oh, I could describe Scipio as a genius as well, but I believe in,

00:25:04.080 in trinities. So I do focus with three. Barry's Catholic then.

00:25:08.080 Yeah, that's right. So, and that is amazing. And now let's move on to Caesar. Yes. So Caesar,

00:25:16.560 what was his story? So Caesar, uh, unlike any of these other three, isn't raised by a famous father.

00:25:24.000 He comes from the Roman nobility, but it's a family that's a bit down on its luck. He's raised

00:25:28.880 in Rome. His mother, Aurelia Cotta was always a very big influence on his life. And she lives,

00:25:34.480 he's well on advanced in, in years. His father dies. We think of a stroke when he's fairly young.

00:25:40.720 Uh, but Caesar is immensely ambitious. And like any ambitious young Roman noble, he goes into the

00:25:47.600 military. That was what they're expected to do. And already at the age of 18, he's a military hero.

00:25:53.200 He saves a Roman soldier's life in the siege of the city of Mytilene on a Greek island. Uh, and he is

00:26:00.400 given, uh, um, um, he's given a crown. Um, he's given a wreath of glory and he's so important now,

00:26:08.480 uh, that Roman senators have to stand up. And when he enters the room, uh, which could go to the head of

00:26:14.320 an 18 year old and kind of pisses off a bunch of Roman senators who think, who is this kid?

00:26:19.120 Caesar's the guy who's, when you meet him, he's always looking over your shoulder to see who can,

00:26:23.600 uh, help him further. Um, he is ambition defined, white hot ambition. Uh, and he wants nothing but

00:26:30.880 to restore his family's glory, uh, and to rise to the top of the Roman world. Uh, his uncle by marriage

00:26:36.880 was Marius as in Marius and Sulla. Marius was a popularis, which I would translate as populist,

00:26:44.080 but some of my fellow scholars think they weren't populist, but they kind of were populist. Uh,

00:26:49.040 even though they themselves were not men of the people, they were very, very wealthy,

00:26:52.640 but we can see even nowadays we have populists are not men of the people. Um, and Caesar in a period

00:26:59.040 in which Roman politics was always divided between, um, the, the men of the people and the men of the

00:27:05.040 few, the oligarchs and the populist, he was always on the side of the populist. Um, he wanted to rise

00:27:11.920 to the highest political office in Rome, uh, to become, uh, the consul and then to have a military

00:27:18.080 command, which will allow him to win glory. Supposedly when he's in his thirties, he has a

00:27:23.120 relatively minor command in Spain and he sees a statue of Alexander the Great. And supposedly he

00:27:28.720 starts crying. Alexander was dead, uh, when, when he was at my age and he'd already conquered the world.

00:27:34.880 What have I done? So he's, he, Caesar has it all. He's a great general. He's a great speaker. He is

00:27:42.800 a great political manipulator and he's also a great writer. I mean, he writes great literature,

00:27:48.000 the Gallic Wars and the civil wars. Um, they're hard to translate, so it's hard to get it in English,

00:27:52.800 uh, but they really are quite something. He wrote other works as well, which no longer survive.

00:27:57.200 Uh, and as a beside behind the scenes manipulator, he creates, uh, uh, a conspiracy, uh, with two other

00:28:05.440 leading politicians, more prominent than him, Crassus, who's the richest man in Rome and Pompey,

00:28:10.560 who's the most successful general to date. They're going to do a deal. Caesar's the guy who can make it

00:28:15.040 happen. He's the deal maker. Uh, they each get something. Caesar gets to be consul. Pompey gets his,

00:28:21.840 um, the steps that he's taken in the East. He gets them approved by the Senate and he gets

00:28:27.120 his men, um, uh, settled on land in Italy, his veterans, and Crassus gets the command to fight

00:28:33.120 a war against Parthia, uh, Iran, basically in the East. Uh, Crassus fails and he's killed in battle.

00:28:40.800 Uh, Pompey gets what he wants. Um, but he is Caesar's son-in-law. He's married to Caesar's

00:28:46.640 one and only legitimate child, his daughter. Uh, but she dies in childbirth and Crassus is

00:28:52.080 increasingly jealous of Caesar. Excuse me. Pompey's increasingly jealous of Caesar.

00:28:56.080 Sorry, I'm confused. She dies in, oh, she dies in childbirth as in, but she's not the child.

00:29:01.760 Sorry, I was like, he was married to a baby? No, no, no. Pompey's older, a few years older

00:29:06.320 than Caesar. Sorry, I was being stupid. No, not at all. He marries Caesar's daughter, 0.99

00:29:09.840 so he is technically Caesar's son-in-law. Yes.

00:29:11.920 The Romans, like the mafia, did these kind of marriages all the time to seal political deals. 0.99

00:29:16.000 Right. And, uh, in the meantime, Caesar gets what he really wanted, command of Gaul to start a war

00:29:22.480 in Gaul and conquer all of Gaul, which is basically France and Belgium. And just for good measure, 0.75

00:29:28.000 he crosses the Rhine and invades Germany. And then he crosses the channel and invades England, which 0.90

00:29:33.760 to the Romans was the equivalent of going to Mars or the moon. Wow. The Atlantic Ocean, the English 0.96

00:29:40.160 channel is so scary, but he does it. Pompey's getting more and more jealous of this guy. You know,

00:29:46.800 I thought I was the greatest general in Rome. Who's this guy? He thinks he's the greatest general.

00:29:51.200 So, uh, when Julia, Caesar's daughter, John dies in childbirth and Caesar says, don't worry, I got a

00:29:58.400 niece. I'm married to my niece. Pompey says, I don't think so. And Pompey now moves to the other side

00:30:03.920 and the other faction. After Caesar conquers Gaul, he wants to come back to Rome and have a second

00:30:10.160 slot as consul, uh, be respected as the leading man in Rome, pass some laws that will help his

00:30:17.600 constituency, the poor people of Rome and settle his veterans. But he has made huge enemies, very

00:30:24.240 powerful enemies. Anyone in Rome who considers himself a conservative, uh, of any sort at this

00:30:30.240 point thinks that Caesar is a threat, uh, to their way of life. Why? Ah, that is a good question.

00:30:37.280 There's two theories of scholars. Uh, one is that they were dyed-in-the-wool purr-blind fools 0.99

00:30:44.720 who didn't understand that Rome needed to change. Um, they thought they could, uh, turn the, 0.99

00:30:50.320 the hourglass back and keep Rome the way it had always been. Rome had acquired an empire of 50

00:30:55.520 million people at a minimum, uh, but it was governed by a few families in the city of Rome. This was crazy.

00:31:01.200 They had to bring in the outsiders. Both Pompey and Caesar knew that, but the old-fashioned senators 0.87

00:31:06.160 didn't. There is a second theory. And also the old-fashioned senators hated the Roman people

00:31:11.280 and they didn't want to see them get more power. But there's a second theory that says,

00:31:14.800 well, that's all well and good. But the truth is that Caesar was an egomaniac who wanted to dominate

00:31:20.240 Rome as no one had ever done before. I actually think both theories are right. I think that, uh,

00:31:25.760 these, uh, senators really didn't understand that Rome needed to change. They didn't like the Roman

00:31:31.040 people, but Caesar was no pussycat. Uh, Caesar wanted to enjoy a kind of, the Romans made a

00:31:37.360 distinction between power and authority. Power is legal powers written in stone. Authority is the

00:31:42.880 informal power and they called it actoritas. And there's no doubt in my mind that Caesar wanted to

00:31:48.320 have the kind of actoritas that would make him the greatest mafia don of all time. Uh, after all,

00:31:53.440 he settles for nothing less than Cleopatra as his woman. Um, and she bears his son, almost certainly 0.61

00:31:59.600 bears his son. They see this. They, he's not with Cleopatra yet, but they see him as a threat,

00:32:05.280 uh, to their way of life. And so, uh, they demand, they fire him and, um, say, say, step down,

00:32:12.720 come back to Rome, stand trial for your crimes. And Caesar says, I don't think so. I think I'm going

00:32:17.920 to invade Italy instead and start a civil war. And he says, I'm doing this for two reasons. One is to

00:32:23.200 defend the Roman people because the, the, um, the tribunes of the plebs who are in technically

00:32:28.880 defends of the Roman people in the constitution. Uh, they have been dissed by the Senate, which

00:32:33.120 was true. They had been dissed by the Senate. But the second reason he says, and to me, this is

00:32:36.960 vintage Caesar. It's because my rank and standing is greater to me than my life itself. In Latin,

00:32:42.560 my dignitas is greater to me, is dearer to me than life itself. And dignitas doesn't just mean dignity.

00:32:48.640 It means my rank, my standing, my reputation. So for this, he starts a civil war. It's a civil war

00:32:54.480 that rages for four years. It ends up seeing, um, his opponents, Pompey being, uh, murdered,

00:33:01.200 Cato committing suicide, the other generals being killed in battle, and Caesar winning it all,

00:33:06.880 including Cleopatra. He is now the, uh, dictator for life, dictator in perpetuity. There's never been

00:33:13.440 anyone like this in Rome before. And it's that when a conspiracy of senators decides, no moss,

00:33:20.800 we've got to stop this guy. And do they say that because he's essentially usurped all the

00:33:26.480 power that there was? And they're like, this guy's out of control. Yes. By now he is really

00:33:30.480 out of control. And even some of his former supporters say, wait a minute, we didn't sign

00:33:35.600 up for this. You know, we didn't sign up for this guy behaving like a mafia Don and giving the

00:33:40.800 choicest jobs to his family members. We didn't sign up for this guy basically abolishing elections.

00:33:46.080 He didn't technically abolish them, but de facto abolished them. And the Romans really cared about 1.00

00:33:50.640 elections. So, uh, and they didn't like the idea that he was dictator in perpetuity. What does this

00:33:55.520 mean? Uh, no one, Romans never, dictator specifically for six months only. Um, and they didn't like the

00:34:01.440 idea that the Senate had declared him to be a God. Um, so for all, and they didn't like the idea that

00:34:07.520 his, he had a Roman wife, but his mistress, who, by the way, he kept in a palace across the Tiber,

00:34:13.360 Caesar's palace, we'll call it now Caesar's villa really was, that's where Cleopatra was at the 0.94

00:34:18.000 time of his assassination, hanging out in Rome. Um, and she was probably pregnant with his second

00:34:23.840 child, but she has a miscarriage. So there are just a lot of people in Rome who've had it with

00:34:29.440 this guy. That makes sense. And Barry, it's so interesting to me because I've never, we've never

00:34:34.480 interviewed a historian about these individuals in this way. I'm just, this is a brilliant conversation.

00:34:39.200 I was so happy to have you on. It's fantastic. One of the things that occurs to me is these

00:34:43.920 great stories. I mean, these people are maniacs in a way. Yeah. I mean, that if you had a guy now 0.97

00:34:50.240 who came along and was like, look, I want to be great. Therefore let's go and invade France. I mean,

00:34:55.600 France is, yeah, invade France. I've got no problem invading France, but invade some other country, 0.97

00:35:01.520 kill loads of people so that I can raise my status in the hierarchy of my society. We would say that 0.98

00:35:07.840 guy's a lunatic, lock him up. But if, but it's not only that, but it is that, but it's not only 0.99

00:35:12.320 that, but look at some other modern examples. Look at Abraham Lincoln. He has a choice. He can make

00:35:17.280 peace with the South and say, well, at least nobody died or he can fight the war, however it takes.

00:35:23.440 And by the time the war is over, 600,000 people are 600,000 Americans on both sides are dead.

00:35:28.960 The South is in ruins. And finally, the last casualty is Lincoln himself. Some people might say,

00:35:34.000 that's crazy. Or Churchill, you know, Britain could have made peace. Thank God they didn't. But

00:35:40.320 Churchill basically said, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, you know, and if Britain's

00:35:45.200 going to be in ruins and a lot of British people die, that's what we have to do to save our way of 1.00

00:35:51.440 life. And that's different, isn't it? That's different because both Lincoln and Churchill,

00:35:56.080 they're also fighting for an idea. Well, whereas here, it seems much more about personal ego,

00:36:02.480 power. Maybe because I've made it that way. But no, you're right. There is a difference.

00:36:07.200 Because, but it's also from our point of view, Caesar would have said, I am fighting for the

00:36:13.200 Roman Empire. We Romans believe that we are destined to govern the world. As his successor,

00:36:18.880 Augustus says, empire without end. That comes from Virgil's The Aeneid. And that's what Romans thought.

00:36:24.320 And Caesar would also have said, the Gauls have threatened Italy's security in the past,

00:36:28.400 and that will never happen again. They hadn't threatened Italy's security for 60 years,

00:36:31.920 but never mind. And also Caesar believed, and I'm the only one who stands up for the common person

00:36:40.080 in Rome. So there's that too. But you're absolutely right. In all three of these cases,

00:36:45.680 there's ego. Hannibal thinks he's defending his country and getting revenge. Alexander thinks he's

00:36:50.320 defeating the Persian threat and making Greece and Macedon the greatest power in the world and 0.89

00:36:56.080 changing history and spreading civilization, which in fact he did too. So, you know, it's not-

00:37:01.520 Let me rephrase what I mean. If we found out that Rishi Sunak or Joe Biden are sitting in their

00:37:09.760 offices in the Oval Office and in Number 10 Downing Street, and they're saying, well, you know,

00:37:16.000 my mother told me that I am born of a snake that is God, and therefore I am entitled to conquer the world,

00:37:25.680 we'd get the mental hospital out there urgently to deal with them.

00:37:31.200 I can imagine Trump saying that.

00:37:32.560 It is possible. Which I think it's fair to say some people have criticized him for,

00:37:41.520 to put it mildly. Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, is it fair to say that not only is it that

00:37:47.120 these men are different, but the culture in which they operate is so different that we would probably

00:37:52.640 struggle to relate to at this point?

00:37:54.160 Yes and no. Yes and no. I mean, we have politicians today who might say,

00:37:58.880 I really think I'm here for a reason. God put me here for a reason. And my reason is to help

00:38:04.960 the people. The reason is to defend my country. We could imagine a politician saying that.

00:38:10.880 So, I mean, these are countries with different religions.

00:38:13.600 So-

00:38:14.160 Well, I mean, Vladimir Putin almost certainly thinks in this world.

00:38:16.640 Sure. And I mean, there were other Greeks at the time who couldn't stand what Alexander said.

00:38:20.560 Alexander later in his life passes decree saying, I need to be worshipped as a god. I insist that

00:38:25.760 everyone worships me as a god. And the various Greek city states, you know, couldn't agree fast

00:38:30.720 enough to do this, except Sparta. Sparta says, if Alexander wants to be worshipped as a god, let him.

00:38:37.600 I mean, the Spartans were, they were pretty badass, weren't they?

00:38:40.320 They were pretty badass. Yeah.

00:38:41.440 Yeah. Yeah. You've got to have a really strong sense of identity to stand up to Alexander the Great.

00:38:49.120 No, they were happy in this instance. They went along with it, right?

00:38:52.240 No. No.

00:38:52.960 No, no, no. Sorry. I mean, you know, the idea was, if that's what he wants, go ahead.

00:38:59.200 More like, go ahead and make my day.

00:39:00.640 Oh, I see. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

00:39:02.000 They basically gave him the finger.

00:39:03.360 Oh, I see. I misunderstood.

00:39:04.560 Exactly. They were giving him the finger. Thank you. You put it so well.

00:39:08.960 So, we'll move back to season in a second. So, what actually happened with the Spartans when they

00:39:15.280 gave him the metaphorical finger?

00:39:16.720 Nothing. Nothing happened. I mean, for one thing, Alexander was far away. He was in Iraq.

00:39:23.680 For another thing, nobody really cared about Sparta that much anymore. And besides which,

00:39:28.480 it would have been bad for business for the Macedonians to have destroyed Sparta, 0.84

00:39:32.640 just as it was bad for business for them to destroy Athens. Athens rebelled twice. They didn't

00:39:37.760 destroy it. They did destroy Thebes, which they could get away with because all of Thebes'

00:39:42.960 neighbours hated Thebes and wanted to see it destroyed. At this point, Sparta was no longer

00:39:48.560 a great power. It was on the decline, and yet it had a lot of prestige for what it had done for

00:39:54.560 the Greek world. So, they got away with it. And then Alexander died, and his successors had other 0.99

00:39:59.520 things to do, like fighting each other. So, they didn't hear that much about Sparta.

00:40:03.120 So, moving back to Caesar then. So, we're talking about essentially the end of Caesar's life.

00:40:08.960 Yes.

00:40:09.360 How did the conspiracy arise? How did the plotters get together? And how did they execute it?

00:40:15.680 So, the conspirators, there were three main conspirators, two who we know from Shakespeare,

00:40:22.000 Brutus and Cassius. And there's a third one who Shakespeare just kind of disses, really. His name is

00:40:28.960 Decimus Brutus. He's a distant cousin of Brutus and Cassius. Brutus and Cassius had both fought

00:40:33.840 against Caesar in the Civil War, and then after being defeated, had asked for a pardon for Caesar,

00:40:39.840 and he gave it to them. Decimus Brutus is different. He'd always fought for Caesar and with

00:40:44.560 Caesar, both in Gaul and then in the Civil War. But he changes his mind, possibly because of his wife,

00:40:51.360 who comes from an anti-Caesar family. And partly, possibly because he sees that Caesar is moving on

00:40:58.560 to new favorites. Caesar is planning to invade Iran. That's going to be his life's, cap his life's work,

00:41:05.520 invade the Parthian Empire. But he's leaving Decimus Brutus at home. And so, Decimus is pissed off about this.

00:41:14.080 Brutus and Cassius. Brutus is a philosopher. He is married to the daughter of Cato the Elder,

00:41:20.800 who is Caesar's most vehement enemy. And Brutus really believes in the principles of the Roman Republic.

00:41:28.880 Cassius is more of a military man, less of a philosopher. But they both don't like the way that Caesar has

00:41:35.440 gained power. And Decimus decides to go over to their side. So, they gather together a group of,

00:41:42.880 depending on who you believe, either 35 or 60-some-odd senators, or 60-some-odd senators,

00:41:49.200 let's say, to join this conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar. And they want to do it in a way. They

00:41:56.720 want to do it themselves, first of all. They could have hired thugs to do it. They want to do it.

00:42:00.720 They want to do it themselves to show that this is not just a garden-variety murder,

00:42:04.720 but it's something for the sake of Rome. And they want to do it in a meeting of the Roman Senate. Again,

00:42:10.000 to make the point, we're not killing him out of pique or an ambition. We're doing it out of idealism

00:42:15.280 for the Roman Senate. They manage to keep it secret because Caesar doesn't really believe it.

00:42:21.600 It's not as if he doesn't get rumors of conspiracies against him. The problem is what

00:42:25.840 they call noise. He's getting rumors every single day of conspiracies against him. And so,

00:42:31.520 Caesar also thinks, whatever. The other thing is, Caesar's very arrogant. We've seen this a lot 0.98

00:42:37.200 in history. Caesar thinks, who would be crazy enough to kill me? Rome has just gone through a 0.97

00:42:42.400 four-year civil war, and it was disastrous. Huge casualties. Huge destruction. If you kill me,

00:42:48.640 Civil War II, the sequel, is going to break out. Who would do that? I'm untouchable. And we see the result. 0.99

00:42:55.680 It brings up an interesting question, branching out beyond these three figures specifically,

00:43:00.480 Barry. As you mentioned, and from the way you tell the stories, it seems certainly true that

00:43:05.520 these guys really didn't know when to stop. They didn't know when to stop. They absolutely

00:43:08.800 didn't know when to stop. Are there leaders of their magnitude and history who did?

00:43:12.800 Yes. I'll give you a couple of examples. One is William the Conqueror.

00:43:19.360 After conquering England, he says, that's nice. I think I'm going to administer this place.

00:43:24.800 He didn't go on. I suppose the difference there is he conquered a kingdom that he didn't have. He

00:43:31.680 wasn't a king before, right? Right. But he could have gone and tried to conquer more kingdoms.

00:43:35.440 That's true. That's true. But yes, Alexander conquers a kingdom he didn't have before.

00:43:39.920 But wasn't he king of a kingdom already? Yes. Right. That's the difference.

00:43:43.440 But William was the Duke of Normandy, which is no mean place.

00:43:46.880 Yeah. Sure, it's a big place, but he's no king. So that's one. And he stays and governs.

00:43:52.400 Yeah. Anymore?

00:43:53.360 Yeah. Ataturk.

00:43:54.960 Yes. Ataturk, you know, Turkey's a satiated power. He said, that's enough. We don't need to do this 0.97

00:44:00.960 anymore. Don't need any more. I mean, he wasn't a nice guy, but he doesn't know when to stop.

00:44:06.880 Um, in a sense, George Washington, sorry, my British friends, but Washington could have become

00:44:12.480 a king. And he said, no. And he could have been president for more than two terms. And he said,

00:44:16.400 no, that's, that's enough.

00:44:18.560 Is it, is it partly because these figures come later on in history, therefore they don't have

00:44:25.920 this idea that they have been ordained or by God or representing God or even being literally God?

00:44:32.880 Um, I don't know. Napoleon is later than, than, uh, it's pretty late in history, but he doesn't

00:44:39.680 know when to stop.

00:44:40.400 Yeah. You can say that again.

00:44:41.840 Hitler's pretty recent and he didn't know when to stop. Um, you know, I think another person who 1.00

00:44:47.520 knows when to stop is Franco, you know, also not a nice guy, but you know, Hitler saying to him, 0.62

00:44:52.800 hey, come on, come on. Don't you want to join me and Mussolini in the war? And he says,

00:44:56.160 I don't think so. No, no, no. We have a lot of, we have problems in Spain. No,

00:45:00.400 I think we'll be neutral. Imagine if Mussolini had stayed neutral in the world war two,

00:45:04.560 he would have survived, you know, and Italy would have been spared a lot of ruin. So, um,

00:45:11.040 so there are people who know when to stop. They really are.

00:45:13.520 And going back to the question of fatal flaws, was that the all that was that their fatal flaw of

00:45:19.840 these three great men, which is the inability to stop or was there something else as well?

00:45:24.880 Oh, something else. I mean, um, it's less true of Hannibal, though you can make a case for it,

00:45:30.480 than it is of Caesar and Alexander, but they're so arrogant. These, they're just so arrogant. Uh, 0.96

00:45:38.160 the idea that, um, it's related to knowing when to stop, but the idea that we keep on going after

00:45:44.800 what they had done or that Caesar would thought that he was untouchable or if Alexander really was

00:45:49.600 poisoned that he didn't see that coming either. Um, Alexander had actually murdered one of his

00:45:55.200 leading generals in a fit of rage earlier on in his life. Um, and that certainly impressed

00:46:02.000 some of his generals with thinking the life expectancy in this job is not very great.

00:46:06.480 So, I mean, they made enemies that they, that, that they didn't need to make for Caesar to think

00:46:11.440 that he was, that he was untouchable. Uh, before we, uh, wrap up, we've only got

00:46:16.880 10 more minutes or so before we go to questions from our locals, uh, you're a military historian

00:46:21.120 as well. And one of the things I was fascinated about when you were talking about how the Greeks,

00:46:25.680 while the Romans were these kind of sluggers, but perhaps not very skilled tactically, 0.79

00:46:30.240 the Greeks came up with new ways of fighting. Yes. What was it? Was it technologically based?

00:46:35.280 Was it intellectually based? Did they come up with tactics that were powerful? What was it?

00:46:39.200 So, I mean, the Greeks, and it's really the Macedonian Greeks who, who come up with this,

00:46:43.600 um, they create a combined, combined arms military that uses the infantry and the cavalry working

00:46:50.480 together. Um, and that is a very, very potent combination when you can do that. The Romans are 0.97

00:46:55.040 really not good at that. Um, the Macedonians, so Greek armies were pikemen, the armies of the city 1.00

00:47:02.640 states. Shield and spear. Shield and spear. And, but they didn't, not a javelin, but a pike, 0.99

00:47:07.120 you know, come up against the enemy and just hit and hit and hit. It was pretty simple. Um,

00:47:11.360 but the Macedonians come up with a, a new system whereby, um, so the pike of the Greek, uh, hoplites 0.92

00:47:17.680 was infantrymen was nine feet long. The Macedonians come up with a new pike that's about 15 feet long. 1.00

00:47:23.920 Wow. Uh, the pike, a nine foot long pike you can hold in one hand while you have a big body shield and 1.00

00:47:29.920 you hold through a thong with your left hand. You can't hold a 15 foot, uh, spear in your hand.

00:47:35.840 It's too heavy. You need both hands. Uh, so, uh, the solution, and you can't have, uh, uh,

00:47:42.320 you don't have a hand to hold the body shield. If you put the body shield and the thong around your

00:47:45.840 neck, it's going to choke you. So the solution is to have a little shield. How do you do that?

00:47:51.040 Uh, well, the Macedonians are the hardest drinkers in Greece. So they go into battle, uh, having had

00:47:56.640 Dutch courage as it were, and a lot of Dutch courage. The other thing is that the Greeks 0.90

00:48:00.160 in the city states are citizens. If the generals had told them, you don't have,

00:48:04.640 you can't have so much protection anymore. They would have fired the generals.

00:48:07.680 Macedonians are subjects in a kingdom. The king has more power. And frankly, they're kind of hillbillies. 0.97

00:48:14.240 And, um, they're willing to take chances because they want to get rich, uh, in a way that Greek 1.00

00:48:19.280 citizens weren't. Uh, they trained year round. These were professional armies. And the Roman 0.89

00:48:23.920 armies weren't professional armies in the beginning either. Uh, that gave them an advantage and then

00:48:28.400 it allowed them to maneuver, to do things, for instance, like feigning a retreat, a very hard

00:48:33.120 thing to do. And when you draw the enemy in, feigning retreat with half your army, draw the

00:48:37.520 enemy in and then turn around and hit the enemy on two sides. That's the kind of thing that, um,

00:48:43.200 these Greek armies could do. And then use the cavalry to disperse the enemy and then use the infantry,

00:48:48.960 uh, as the hammer. Um, that's the sort of thing it's difficult to do. Hannibal could do that

00:48:54.720 brilliantly. Uh, the Romans couldn't until they learned to, uh, beat him at his own game. 0.97

00:48:59.440 And why couldn't they do that? Do you, does it take some kind of signaling or command or training?

00:49:05.040 No, not at all. It's culture. I mean, culture is in many ways the most important factor for any,

00:49:10.560 uh, any military. Um, you know, um, why do army national armies fight in the way they do?

00:49:17.600 It's the culture of the country. I mean, why do the Russians think you should just

00:49:22.000 send in men like cannon fodder and slog and slog and slog? Because that's the Russian way of war. 0.99

00:49:26.560 I mean, it's just, that's just the way that they do it. Uh, why are some countries very good at

00:49:32.880 cunning, uh, and, uh, special operations and others not? It's everything to do with culture.

00:49:38.560 And just touching the, the culture that's always really interested me is the culture of the Spartans.

00:49:44.240 Yes. I just, as I remember as a kid- He's watched 300.

00:49:48.080 Yeah, I've watched 300. And I've read the comic.

00:49:52.560 But as a child, I was obsessed with ancient Greece and I was particularly obsessed with

00:49:56.720 Sparta. I remember people going, it was a bit weird, but he just sits and reads books about

00:50:00.560 Sparta. But what, what made them such incredible warriors, Spartans?

00:50:04.960 They were professionals. You know, they were professionals. Uh, they were the only professional

00:50:10.400 military in Greece before the Macedonians, before Philip and Alexander. Sparta was a society,

00:50:16.400 was a pyramid. Uh, at the bottom were the helots. These were the serfs. At the middle were the

00:50:21.680 neighbors. Um, they could lead relatively ordinary lives, but they had to serve as Spartan allies when

00:50:26.960 needed. And at the top was a small group of full Spartan warriors, the so-called peers, 9,000 of them

00:50:34.000 at the population height. They, all they did was train for war. Um, and they had a bizarre educational

00:50:42.160 system. Uh, uh, they were taken from their parents at the age of seven and they went to live in age-graded

00:50:48.800 barracks, um, where they were, uh, their primary group was boys of the same age. And there they were

00:50:54.560 taught how to fight. Uh, and they were also taught how to be tough, uh, to, uh, live out in the wild,

00:51:00.080 to steal, to kill, to do what you needed to do to survive. So they had the most professional

00:51:06.560 and toughest soldiers in Greece. Um, so that, that is, uh, one of the reasons they were so strong. Also,

00:51:12.240 their entire society is set up on a military basis. It's an austerity society. Uh, ain't no,

00:51:18.320 uh, none of this culture stuff. The only songs they sing are military songs. The other thing is

00:51:24.480 the role of the Spartan woman, which is a very big part of it. Uh, women in Sparta were meant to be

00:51:29.600 wise mothers breeders, and their job was to tell the men to buck up, uh, the famous staying of the 1.00

00:51:36.880 Spartan mother to a son when he once goes off to battle with it or on it. Come back with your shield.

00:51:42.080 Don't throw it away like a coward or come back dead on your shield. I'd rather have you dead 1.00

00:51:47.680 than to have you alive without your shield. Um, Spartan, uh, girls were the only girls in 0.98

00:51:52.560 Greece to have a public education. Um, they were, uh, trained to run the household when the men were 0.84

00:51:59.520 away. Uh, but they were also trained in gymnastics and they were trained in the nude. Greek boys were 0.99

00:52:05.840 trained in the nude. Nothing unusual about that, but only in Sparta were girls trained in the nude as 0.93

00:52:10.880 well. And boys and girls would see each other in the nude in public. Uh, the idea was to get everybody

00:52:16.640 really horny. Uh, so they would go off and make future Spartans. So, uh, it's a whole society 0.71

00:52:22.480 that's set up for war. It's really quite remarkable and horrible.

00:52:26.080 It sounds like, you know, the, the comic, uh,

00:52:30.320 movie or whatever it is, is actually not that inaccurate in terms of how they were trained.

00:52:34.400 No, it's not that inaccurate. It's not that inaccurate. Yeah.

00:52:37.440 And it's very interesting as well, particularly brutal, the way they treated boys who

00:52:42.800 weren't going to make it or they didn't think were. Well, so, I mean, the Spartans had this

00:52:48.480 system that when a baby is born, a baby has to be inspected by a public inspector.

00:52:53.280 Uh, and if they think the kid is sickly or not going to make it, they expose the child on a

00:52:59.040 mountainside, uh, where the baby will either die or somebody might take him and enslave the, uh,

00:53:05.120 enslave the child. The Sparta was the only Greek state that did this as by government initiative.

00:53:10.560 Um, but the other Greek states, a father had the authority to do this to his own child,

00:53:16.640 but it'd be much more difficult for a father to sacrifice his own child than it would for an

00:53:21.200 impersonal state to do it. And why did they never, because if you look at the militarily and,

00:53:26.880 and the fighters that they produced, they're, they're still famous now, the Spartan warriors,

00:53:32.240 still, even people may, may understand very little about the culture that still resonates.

00:53:37.520 Why is it they never went on to conquer the world?

00:53:40.000 Well, because you don't win, it's a great question, but you don't win wars just by having,

00:53:43.920 uh, having good soldiers. For one thing, the most important thing you need to have to be

00:53:48.160 successful at war is money. And Sparta didn't have any money. Spartans abolished money. Uh,

00:53:53.200 they had a barter system and they had, uh, ungainly iron spits because they thought money was

00:53:58.080 corrupting, corrupting. Um, and that's the other side of the Spartans. They really didn't want to

00:54:02.480 conquer the world. They wanted to be pure. They wanted to be great, pure warriors. So they conquered the

00:54:08.320 Peloponnesus, the Southern Peninsula of Greece and part of central Greece. So they didn't want to go

00:54:12.320 any further. The other problem is that reason is they have a security problem. Um, all Greek city 0.99

00:54:17.520 states have enslaved labor, unfree labor, but Sparta is one of the only ones in which the unfree laborers 0.92

00:54:23.200 are Greeks. In Athens, the unfree laborers are all kidnapped, enslaved, brought in from abroad, and then, 1.00

00:54:29.760 um, they're bred enslaved families. In Sparta, they basically, most of the people they've enslaved 0.65

00:54:35.600 are their neighbors to the West, the Mycenaean Greeks. Uh, and the Spartans make the mistake of

00:54:41.120 letting these people to continue to live in their national homeland. Um, they want their country back,

00:54:46.320 uh, and they rebel against the Spartans whenever they can. The Spartans, young Spartan boys, as their

00:54:51.680 initiation into the military, have to spend two years living in the countryside where the hellats are 1.00

00:54:56.400 and making their lives miserable. Uh, they have the right to kill them. Every year on New Year's 1.00

00:55:01.120 Day, Sparta declares war on the hellats and says, we can kill these people if, if necessary. Um, so, um, 0.99

00:55:08.320 they have this security problem, but they have this notion of purity, which is not really what you

00:55:12.960 want. If you want to conquer the world, you need to be a pragmatist. And the Spartans are anything but

00:55:17.440 pragmatic.

00:55:18.080 Gary, I mean, I, I hope we get a chance to have you back about 50 times because we can talk about the

00:55:25.360 Romans as an empire, the Greeks, there's so many other things we can talk about. And Carthage is

00:55:30.160 one thing that we don't know about because the Romans kind of make sure we don't know about it.

00:55:35.200 So, uh, if you have time at some point, we would love to have you back on the show for now. We're

00:55:39.920 going to head over to locals where we ask you questions from our audience, but it's been an

00:55:43.680 absolute pleasure. Of the leaders you have written about or researched, who would be perfect to lead

00:55:50.480 the West out of the current situation? And whom should today's leaders emulate?

TRIGGERnometry - January 28, 2024

The Great Leaders of Antiquity Explained in 60 Minutes - Barry Strauss

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