TRIGGERnometry - Why Rome Collapsed - Barry Strauss

00:00:00.520 The empire is in terrible trouble.

00:00:03.000 There were plagues, there was inflation, there were assassinations,

00:00:06.560 there were revolving door emperors.

00:00:08.680 You have huge extremes of wealth,

00:00:11.500 and you have all these slaves as well who are skewing the economy.

00:00:16.340 So these are the preconditions for a series of civil wars.

00:00:20.320 They're waged on and off for nearly a century,

00:00:23.260 until the end of the Republic comes.

00:00:25.640 Barry, non-historians like to draw comparisons

00:00:28.240 between what they see in the West today and the Roman Empire.

00:00:30.880 Is there a legitimacy to this?

00:00:32.020 Absolutely.

00:00:33.080 I mean, I think one of...

00:00:34.400 I was kind of hoping you'd say no.

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00:01:09.000 Barry Strauss, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:01:11.360 Thank you.

00:01:11.840 It's great to be here.

00:01:12.740 Oh, it is great to have you.

00:01:13.840 We had you on about a year and a half ago.

00:01:15.560 We talked about the great generals and military leaders.

00:01:18.680 It wasn't an interview that did huge numbers,

00:01:20.800 but it's genuinely probably one of our very absolute favourite interviews

00:01:24.400 that we've ever done.

00:01:25.320 And I hope more people go and watch it now that you're on.

00:01:28.400 But what we want to talk to you about today is Rome, the decline and fall.

00:01:32.420 Yes.

00:01:32.740 Before we do, we might want to tell people what Rome was.

00:01:36.060 What was this great civilisation?

00:01:37.840 What were some of the key beliefs and values?

00:01:39.620 And perhaps that will lead into why eventually the decline and fall.

00:01:42.080 Well, Rome was a great empire.

00:01:44.400 It stretched from Edinburgh all the way to Syria and Arabia,

00:01:49.380 and for a short period, all the way to the Persian Gulf.

00:01:51.960 The Romans were some of the greatest soldiers in history.

00:01:54.900 They were conquerors.

00:01:56.460 They were tough guys.

00:01:58.540 And they conquered this empire of about 50 million people.

00:02:02.500 They're also extremely good at politics, at bargaining,

00:02:06.520 at making friends, at using carrots and sticks.

00:02:10.280 They're ruling 50 million people.

00:02:11.540 They've conquered them all.

00:02:12.500 They only have 300,000 men in their army,

00:02:14.920 which isn't a huge army.

00:02:16.160 When you have an empire, it stretches 3,000 miles and 50 million people.

00:02:20.020 So they had lots of revolts.

00:02:22.380 They were civilised.

00:02:25.820 Rome was originally a city-state, very influenced by Greek culture.

00:02:30.180 And the Roman ideal was an ideal of cultivated gentlemen

00:02:33.600 who were public-spirited, who were educated.

00:02:37.220 Ideally, they should be wealthy.

00:02:39.420 And the wealthy elite should do public service

00:02:43.840 and dedicate themselves to the good of the city and their country.

00:02:49.980 Citizenship was a major part of what made the Romans great.

00:02:54.560 When Rome was a republic, the fact that there was a corps of citizens

00:02:58.740 who all had military services, military service,

00:03:02.560 who all served the republic, who would be called on to fight for the republic,

00:03:05.820 that was the basis of Roman greatness.

00:03:09.860 Also, Roman government was not a democracy.

00:03:12.400 It was what the ancients called a mixed regime.

00:03:15.280 The Romans referred themselves as SPQR,

00:03:19.000 Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and the Roman people.

00:03:23.120 They're not just the Roman people.

00:03:24.540 They're the Senate and the Roman people.

00:03:26.080 Senate is a word that we now have the word senility.

00:03:29.160 It means elders.

00:03:30.700 The Senate is the council of elders.

00:03:33.380 Quite appropriate, actually.

00:03:34.460 Yeah, they didn't consider themselves senile, of course.

00:03:37.480 But these are supposed to be the wise men.

00:03:39.760 They've served in a variety of public offices.

00:03:42.860 Many of them have served in more than one.

00:03:45.140 And they have huge authority in guiding the Roman state.

00:03:50.420 The people have assemblies.

00:03:52.200 They're politicians.

00:03:53.240 There are elections.

00:03:54.280 The elections are raucous.

00:03:55.640 They're wild.

00:03:56.640 They're a bit like our elections nowadays.

00:03:58.340 And so with this political system, which is very solid and very able to call on the responsibility and the loyalty of the people to fight for Rome,

00:04:13.300 they also create this great army, which is flexible.

00:04:17.580 It's orderly.

00:04:19.020 Ultimately, it becomes a professional army.

00:04:21.680 Ultimately, Rome suffers from its success, pays the price of success.

00:04:26.660 And conquering an empire turns out to be too big a burden for one small city-state in central Italy to govern.

00:04:34.880 Also, all this money pouring in, huge numbers of slaves pouring in, competing with free people, free labor, which can't compete with it.

00:04:43.580 Huge turmoil.

00:04:44.600 The army goes from being a citizen militia to a professional army.

00:04:50.580 And the soldiers go from being middle-class farmers to being poor people.

00:04:55.920 The Roman word for poor people is breeders.

00:04:58.700 They're mere breeders.

00:05:00.620 Latin for that is proletarian. 0.86

00:05:02.400 That's where we get the word proletarian from.

00:05:05.280 Ultimately, these proletarians follow the strongest generals and who get people like Marius and Sulla and, of course, Caesar.

00:05:12.780 And there's a series of civil wars.

00:05:16.660 And when the smoke clears, Rome becomes an empire, a monarchy.

00:05:20.360 It's no longer a republic.

00:05:22.260 There's still a senate.

00:05:23.540 There's still citizens.

00:05:25.260 There's still a sense of loyalty to the center, loyalty to the emperors, even when they're a bit wacky.

00:05:32.680 But in time, Rome faces more and more pressure from invaders from both sides of the empire.

00:05:40.480 In the west, various Germanic tribes.

00:05:43.740 In the east, various Iranian regimes.

00:05:46.640 First, the Parthians, one dynasty, and then the Sassanians, another dynasty.

00:05:51.880 The pressure grows greater and greater.

00:05:54.420 And the Roman Empire should have died in the year 260.

00:05:57.720 That's the year that the Roman emperor is captured in battle by the Sassanian king.

00:06:02.240 And the Sassanian king, to humiliate the emperor, uses him as a footstool to climb on his horse.

00:06:08.340 And he carves this in a big stone relief, which you can still see in western Iran, this humiliation of the Roman Empire.

00:06:14.880 The empire is in terrible trouble.

00:06:16.780 There were plagues.

00:06:17.860 There was inflation.

00:06:19.060 There were assassinations.

00:06:20.360 There were revolving door emperors.

00:06:22.180 But a series of soldier emperors, strong men, rose to the occasion.

00:06:28.040 They saved the empire by making it more authoritarian, by raising taxes, by taking away freedoms, by ultimately abolishing the power of the Senate, making it more centralized.

00:06:41.800 And finally, the one thing they did was they felt that the gods were no longer with them.

00:06:46.200 The Romans were pagans, of course, like the Greeks, and they felt the gods are no longer with us.

00:06:50.940 We either have to return to the old gods, bring back the old-time religion, or try something new. 0.69

00:06:56.560 And they tried a variety of things until they finally settled on one thing, Christianity.

00:07:02.160 Constantine is the first Christian emperor.

00:07:04.760 And although he doesn't require that everyone become Christian, he and his successors make it pretty clear that the way to success in the Roman Empire is to become a Christian.

00:07:13.580 And people will convert either out of sincere religious belief or because they think the god of the Christians must be right because, after all, look how successful it's been.

00:07:24.840 And so the Roman Empire is revamped, retooled into the 300s A.D. with these new dynasties.

00:07:33.340 But then trouble arises.

00:07:35.820 The Germanic peoples in the west and in the north organized themselves.

00:07:40.660 They group themselves into what one historian has called supergroups.

00:07:44.880 Instead of being 50 different Germanic tribes, there are now really only four different Germanic tribes.

00:07:49.940 They learn the art of war from the Romans. 0.97

00:07:52.020 They covet the Roman lands. 0.95

00:07:53.920 They're raiding the Roman lands. 0.54

00:07:55.940 That might have been the end of the problem.

00:07:57.760 The Romans might have been able to handle that, except for a couple of things.

00:08:01.440 One, the Huns arrive on the scene. 0.98

00:08:04.640 Attila the Hun and his warriors from the steppes arrive on the scene, and they are attacking the Germans in the various lands in which they live and driving them into the Roman Empire. 0.75

00:08:14.680 And they find themselves forced to fight the Romans, and they're very successful at defeating the Romans.

00:08:20.980 Nonetheless, the Romans still have strong armies, and they still have terrific generals who might have recouped.

00:08:28.840 But there are two other problems.

00:08:29.980 We get a series of incompetent emperors.

00:08:33.740 In fact, for 50 years in the 5th century, we're now in the 400s A.D., Rome is governed by these two incompetent emperors, two child emperors when they start out, boy emperors, and there's rot at the top.

00:08:48.700 Second problem is that once these barbarians come and settle in the empire, and Rome is forced to let them settle in the empire, they take away the tax base. 0.99

00:08:59.200 If you don't have the tax base, people aren't paying taxes to Rome, but they're paying taxes to the barbarian chieftains.

00:09:05.980 Instead, you can't have the professional army.

00:09:08.960 So now we turn to the old Roman way of doing things. 0.94

00:09:12.100 We turn to the Roman citizens, but there aren't any Roman citizens anymore.

00:09:16.620 Citizenship, of course, technically there are Roman citizens, but the bond between the citizen and the state is gone.

00:09:23.240 The loyalty of the citizens to the state is gone.

00:09:25.960 When Rome was rising, Rome and then all Italy supplied soldiers to conquer this empire.

00:09:31.640 By the time we get to the 400s A.D., and well before that, there are no soldiers in Italy anymore.

00:09:37.320 The Italians are, the Romans are becoming the Italians. 1.00

00:09:40.480 They're enjoying the good life.

00:09:42.040 They're not fighting.

00:09:43.320 They use people from the outskirts of the empire, and often Germans, to do the fighting for them. 0.93

00:09:49.540 So this is a ship that's very hard to turn around.

00:09:53.440 In fact, it turns out to be impossible to turn around.

00:09:58.580 That's the big picture.

00:10:00.240 Well, that's so interesting, and it's a breakdown, but we want to delve into it a little bit.

00:10:05.100 One of the interesting things for me is, am I right that the Romans had, even in the Republic period,

00:10:12.400 that you could, at times of war, appoint people who were temporary dictators, effectively?

00:10:18.400 Is that right?

00:10:19.040 Yes.

00:10:19.940 So the word, the dictator, is a temporary office.

00:10:23.180 It's a six-month office.

00:10:25.000 And when a dictator is appointed, it means that a normal Republican government stops,

00:10:31.100 and the dictator has supreme power for the period of war only.

00:10:35.220 So it's an office the Romans used. 0.76

00:10:37.220 There's something like this in Britain in World War I, when the Defense of the Realm Act was passed.

00:10:41.020 And there was a sense that ordinary government business would have to be put on hold for the sake of the country.

00:10:50.420 Or in the Civil War in the United States, when President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.

00:10:56.380 And people said, you can't do that.

00:10:57.800 You have no constitutional right to do that.

00:10:59.720 And his answer was, I want the Republic to survive, so I'm going to have to do it.

00:11:04.060 And how did the transition happen in terms of, you know, what was the culture and the history and the events

00:11:10.800 that led up to the fact that this society, which was a republic, became, you know, a monarchy or whatever you want to call it?

00:11:19.020 Yeah.

00:11:19.280 Well, I think, in part, as I said, it's the problem that success spoiled the Romans.

00:11:28.820 They bring in so much wealth that you have people who now feel, if I'm so wealthy and I've conquered kings abroad,

00:11:37.960 why don't I get to be a king?

00:11:40.180 You have a series of generals like that.

00:11:41.940 You also have the problem of the poor, because another thing that the Romans get is they get slaves, 0.99

00:11:47.640 massive numbers of slaves.

00:11:49.680 And Roman Italy becomes one of the most egregious slave societies in history. 0.63

00:11:54.140 This is a problem if you're a poor, free farmer, because you can't compete with this slave labor anymore.

00:12:02.400 And there are some very unscrupulous wealthy people who are snatching up the common land that's needed for poor people

00:12:10.560 to pasture their sheep and cattle and goats on.

00:12:14.360 That disappears as well.

00:12:15.520 And in some cases, they confiscate the farms of the ordinary people and the poor.

00:12:21.860 So you have huge extremes of wealth, very, very wealthy people who have ambitions beyond those of their fathers and grandfathers.

00:12:31.460 You have very poor people who are looking for some way to make a living.

00:12:34.740 And you have all these slaves as well who are skewing the economy.

00:12:39.620 So these are the preconditions for a series of civil wars that they're waged on and off for nearly a century until the end of the Republic comes.

00:12:53.640 And a lot of people listening to what you just listed might be thinking, that sounds a little bit familiar.

00:13:01.040 I mean, we have in our societies extreme wealth inequality.

00:13:04.700 You might say we have a slave class, which is illegal, often immigrants or immigrants who are being paid in a way that means the local population can't compete.

00:13:14.840 We're fat and wealthy, we're fat and wealthy, you've got these billionaires who are wealthy beyond the aspirations of any human in history, etc.

00:13:22.840 And non-historians like to draw comparisons between what they see in the West today and the Roman Empire.

00:13:28.320 Is there a legitimacy to it?

00:13:29.480 Absolutely.

00:13:30.520 I mean, I think one of...

00:13:31.900 I was kind of hoping you'd say no, but I'm...

00:13:34.180 Sorry, I have to agree with you.

00:13:37.920 You know, one of the lessons of the Roman Empire is that societies with strong citizenship can weather the storm.

00:13:46.340 And once that bond goes, they're in deep, deep trouble.

00:13:50.300 So earlier on in the 3rd century BC, when Hannibal invaded Roman Italy and inflicted some of the worst defeats and more that the Romans ever had,

00:14:00.900 the Romans are able to bounce back because they have this strong citizenry.

00:14:05.100 And they also have a series of alliances with people in Italy, especially in central Italy.

00:14:10.320 The Romans are very good at making deals, at saying one hand washes the other, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. 1.00

00:14:17.860 And they're quite good at making ties with these citizens.

00:14:25.680 The Romans, excuse me, with these allies, they're good at making ties with these allies.

00:14:29.200 One of the things that the Romans do, so the Romans come in and they conquer you, and they say, 1.00

00:14:33.520 who are the wealthy people in town?

00:14:35.140 Who are the important, wealthy, influential people in town?

00:14:37.040 They say, look, you didn't want to lose the war, but you lost.

00:14:40.460 And we're going to confiscate 10% of your land.

00:14:42.920 But I'll tell you what, if you behave, we'll let your sons marry Roman women, and their children can become Roman citizens. 0.99

00:14:51.400 And we'll let you and people like you in your country, we'll let you do business with Rome without paying any extra taxes.

00:14:59.300 We'll give you privileges.

00:15:00.680 The Romans are very clever at this.

00:15:02.660 They're very clever at co-opting people.

00:15:04.460 So they build these bonds of loyalty that hold the empire together.

00:15:09.980 But citizenship is the core of it.

00:15:12.580 And isn't the problem, though, is that you keep granting more and more people citizenship, you dilute the meaning of citizenship.

00:15:19.440 Yes, they do.

00:15:20.240 And that's very insightful.

00:15:22.240 So in the beginning of the 3rd century, I think the year is 212, the Roman emperor decides, you know, we've been giving citizenship, we've been doling out a little bit more, a little bit more over the years.

00:15:33.500 Let's cut to the chase and make everybody Roman citizens, and they're all going to have to pay taxes now. 1.00

00:15:38.440 But it's diluted.

00:15:40.660 Now that everyone's a Roman citizen, it loses its meaning. 1.00

00:15:44.460 And in fact, the Romans come up with a new distinction, because they want to have distinctions, between the greater people and the lesser people.

00:15:53.660 I'll translate that as.

00:15:54.740 And that replaces, in a way, the distinction between citizen and non-citizen.

00:15:59.920 And so the distinction between a citizen and non-citizen is what would you get as a citizen?

00:16:05.560 What do you get as a non-citizen?

00:16:06.880 Because also the problem comes, Barry, is that I imagine if there is no pathway for a non-citizen to become a citizen, the problem is, is that you're going to get resentment, anger, frustration, social instability.

00:16:19.980 You do.

00:16:21.000 You do.

00:16:21.560 But the Romans are rather elitist people, and they can't imagine how you can have a society where everybody shares in the privileges.

00:16:29.320 They think that it makes society more effective if you dole out the privileges little by little.

00:16:35.280 And that's how you get people to buy into the system and to work for you.

00:16:38.720 But an example of answering your question, what do you get?

00:16:41.040 So St. Paul, he's in Judea.

00:16:44.100 He gets in trouble with the authorities.

00:16:46.120 They're putting him on trial.

00:16:47.700 And he says, Kiwis Romanusum.

00:16:50.700 I am a Roman citizen, which he was.

00:16:52.800 And that entitled him to a trial in Rome.

00:16:55.600 So he goes to Rome.

00:16:57.840 So it means you're going to be treated better than someone who's not a Roman citizen. 0.99

00:17:02.500 If you're punished, you can't be whipped.

00:17:05.280 You can't be crucified if you're a Roman citizen. 0.96

00:17:08.200 You have to get better treatment.

00:17:09.740 And you have certain tax privileges as well.

00:17:12.220 And when we're talking about the fall of the Roman Empire, and we talked about many things,

00:17:18.200 what about corruption?

00:17:19.340 Because corruption seems to me, as I've seen a society fall in Venezuela, and corruption was the main reason why it fell.

00:17:27.760 No, society, corruption is not.

00:17:29.640 I mean, you're right.

00:17:30.940 There was corruption in the Roman Empire.

00:17:32.600 But corruption was endemic to ancient governments, as is probably endemic to all governments.

00:17:37.820 There's no reason to think there was more corruption in the 400s AD than there had been earlier.

00:17:43.940 So I don't think corruption was the reason for the fall of the empire.

00:17:47.320 I would say much more the loosening of the social bonds, the loosening of the notion of citizenship and citizen responsibility.

00:17:54.140 Because, you know, there's people who frequently talk about the collapse of the Roman Empire, and we're talking about corruption. 0.91

00:18:00.500 This is a point where a foamy-mouthed conservative smashes the table, and they're going, they're having too much sex with the wrong people. 0.97

00:18:09.520 That's why it all went wrong. 0.99

00:18:11.160 Yeah, but they've been doing that for hundreds of years, and they had their empire.

00:18:14.420 So I don't think we can say that.

00:18:16.280 Oh, really?

00:18:17.200 Because there's also other people who go, well, you know, it's all about once a society starts playing with gender, that's a sign that it's in terminal decline.

00:18:25.360 Is that another conservative fallacy?

00:18:29.000 Yeah, it is.

00:18:30.720 I mean, the Romans will only tolerate so much of this.

00:18:34.180 So when you get someone like Nero, who's playing very interesting games, he offends Roman sensibilities, he offends the conservative morality of Roman society.

00:18:45.840 There's a bunch of things he does, and ultimately he is informed that he should commit suicide.

00:18:51.520 That would be the honorable way out.

00:18:53.980 He's forced to do it.

00:18:56.160 But I don't think the case, the case of Rome is a case that these people were sexually corrupt,

00:19:02.740 and that's why the Roman Empire fell.

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00:20:19.160 What were the Roman moral sensibilities around sex, sexuality, women, etc.?

00:20:25.900 Well, they were pagans.

00:20:28.220 So, I mean, on the one hand, they can be pretty conservative.

00:20:32.020 They have nuclear families.

00:20:34.180 They have clans as well.

00:20:37.800 On the other hand, and women had to be chased or they couldn't be married. 0.98

00:20:42.720 But on the other hand, they had the double standard.

00:20:46.800 Roman men could fool around just as long as they weren't fooling around with someone else's wife, especially not another citizen's wife. 0.95

00:20:53.540 So, they're Italian, basically.

00:20:55.280 Basically.

00:20:55.920 They're Mediterranean.

00:20:56.780 This is a Mediterranean society.

00:20:58.340 Yes, well said.

00:21:01.160 Very interesting.

00:21:02.560 And in what other ways?

00:21:07.360 What I'm really curious about, Barry, is to try and understand, you know, we do this in the modern world, too.

00:21:13.180 There's this thing called mirror image bias where we assume that everyone's like us.

00:21:16.380 That's right.

00:21:16.740 But I imagine the Romans, as a culture, were quite, even though we are, to a large extent, descended from them, were quite different to us.

00:21:24.640 What would you say are the key differences about the way they thought about things and the world and all sorts of things?

00:21:31.000 Well, okay, some key differences.

00:21:34.300 First of all, family was much more important to the Romans than it was to us.

00:21:38.360 And your ancestors were much more important to the Romans than they are to us.

00:21:43.720 The wealthiest Romans, when a member of the family died, maybe just the men, they would make a wax effigy, a funeral wax.

00:21:52.540 And they kept these effigies in special closets to keep them cool in their houses.

00:21:58.420 And whenever there was a new funeral in the family, they would parade these effigies of the great ancestors who had died.

00:22:06.640 So the wealthiest Romans had this sense of ancestral responsibility and ancestral pride in their family.

00:22:16.440 Honor was immensely important for the Romans in a way that it's not for us.

00:22:20.740 I mean, we talk about reputation, but I think even reputation has faded a bit in our society from what it was 100 years ago.

00:22:28.320 But honor was immensely important for the Romans.

00:22:33.880 Authority.

00:22:34.440 So in our society, in our political system, we have constitutions, we have laws, we have traditions.

00:22:43.020 The Romans had all that, but they also had something called auctoritas, from which we get our word authority.

00:22:49.460 But this is authority on steroids, auctoritas.

00:22:53.220 Auctoritas is the honor and respect you pay to someone, not because of the legal power that person has,

00:22:59.780 but because that person is great and noble and powerful.

00:23:05.000 So the Roman Senate, for instance, had very limited legal power.

00:23:08.900 But in the Republic, it was all powerful because of its auctoritas.

00:23:13.420 It was understood that these were people that you needed to respect, you needed to pay attention to.

00:23:19.240 Now, of course, having a system like that, originally there's 300 senators and there was one point there's as many as 900.

00:23:25.380 Having a system like that, of course, is anti-democratic and it is elitist.

00:23:30.540 That's the bad side.

00:23:31.700 The good side of it is that you get a number of people to buy into responsibility.

00:23:37.400 And here you have all these wealthy people who are not saying, what I really only care about is my corporation.

00:23:42.180 They're saying, I care about the government.

00:23:44.900 It's important that I be part of the ruling group of the state.

00:23:49.680 And societies that have an institution like that really have a leg up because you have these people who are responsible.

00:23:57.060 They're not going to go sit, cultivate their own gardens.

00:24:00.420 They're going to be public spirited.

00:24:03.540 Another factor that makes the Romans different from us is their system of clientage. 0.69

00:24:07.820 So Roman society has been described as a pyramid or a series of pyramid.

00:24:13.960 And it gets narrower as you go up.

00:24:16.140 At the top are a few very wealthy people.

00:24:20.540 And as you go down, as you go down the pyramid, you get, of course, poorer and poorer people.

00:24:28.260 Everyone in Roman society has a patron.

00:24:31.460 And everyone in Roman society, with the exception of the emperor, is a client, is somebody's client.

00:24:37.340 And it was felt that the responsibility of clients to their patrons and vice versa was sacred.

00:24:43.280 So how would it work?

00:24:44.600 Okay, so you're a Roman senator.

00:24:47.260 And you're going to want to go out to the forum and you want to make an impression.

00:24:51.920 Your clients are expected to accompany you.

00:24:54.700 They might even have to be there when you wake up in the morning, like Louis XIV.

00:24:59.620 La levée du roi.

00:25:01.640 There was something like that in Rome, that you would be there for the senator or the emperor.

00:25:08.880 And if you have a case in court, your client is supposed to be there to cheer for you.

00:25:13.480 If you're running for public office, your client is supposed to support you and get other people who support you.

00:25:18.860 The other side of the coin is, what happens if there's a crop failure and your clients are starving?

00:25:23.840 You, as a patron, are expected to take care of your clients.

00:25:27.780 So it's a much more vertical society than ours.

00:25:31.060 It's a much less egalitarian society than ours.

00:25:33.640 But it's a society with all these ties.

00:25:37.800 And, Barry, was there a central myth to Rome in the same way that, you know, there's a central myth for America?

00:25:44.440 You know, the American dream that anyone can come, they can make it.

00:25:47.320 If you only work hard enough and you believe in yourself and your abilities, did Rome have that?

00:25:54.500 Yes.

00:25:55.020 Not that anyone could make it and anyone could be rich, but that Rome had a destiny.

00:26:02.140 Rome had a destiny to rule the world, to tame the proud, as one Roman poet said.

00:26:08.700 And to teach laws to other people.

00:26:15.420 So there was a sense that Rome was greatness.

00:26:18.940 And if you wanted to buy into this greatness, you wanted to become a Roman citizen.

00:26:23.040 And you wanted to be part of this great enterprise.

00:26:25.820 As I said, there were all these rebels.

00:26:27.560 There were lots of rebellions against the Roman Empire.

00:26:30.040 People who are not buying this.

00:26:31.880 But there are a lot of people who think, it's not just that the Romans are powerful.

00:26:36.000 They're great.

00:26:36.700 Look at what they've achieved.

00:26:38.700 Look at their army, which is like no army that the world had seen before.

00:26:43.060 Look at the city.

00:26:45.660 Very early on, they think of Rome as the eternal city.

00:26:49.280 So it's not a myth that the Roman dream, everybody gets to have a house in the suburbs and two cars in the garages.

00:26:57.680 But rather that if you buy into Rome, if you become part of Rome, you become part of this greatness.

00:27:07.300 I think that's a big part of it.

00:27:08.680 And sorry to jump in, Francis.

00:27:10.200 I'm curious.

00:27:11.500 This idea of Rome being essentially bringing civilization to other people.

00:27:15.680 Right, yeah.

00:27:16.000 Was this accurate?

00:27:16.920 Were the people that they were conquering really quite inferior to them?

00:27:20.640 You know, technologically, culturally, militarily, etc.?

00:27:23.500 They were militarily inferior.

00:27:25.300 They weren't technologically or culturally inferior.

00:27:27.720 Really?

00:27:28.500 Well, technologically, the Romans had a few things that others didn't.

00:27:31.640 They were incredible road builders.

00:27:33.480 And the Romans, to take the technology of the dome, I don't know if they invented it or not, but they take it to places where it hasn't been before.

00:27:44.300 Roman law, it's not as if the Romans are the only people in the ancient world, but the Roman law code becomes particularly orderly and codified.

00:27:53.360 I would say the one thing the Romans have over others is they just have this fantastic military, and they have a political system that's immensely flexible, and that draws on the loyalty of its own people, and that is able to make ties, make new friends in the places that the Romans conquer.

00:28:12.500 Romans are very good at this.

00:28:13.940 These are not Nazis coming in in jackboots and killing everyone, although the Romans are capable of genocide if absolutely necessary.

00:28:21.700 But we like to do things nice.

00:28:24.120 We don't find out to do things nasty.

00:28:26.120 We don't find out to do things nasty.

00:28:26.280 We don't really have to.

00:28:27.660 We're civilized cigarettes.

00:28:29.240 No, the Romans, they do engage in genocide from time to time.

00:28:33.400 Well, Carthage would be one example, right?

00:28:35.440 Carthage, Jerusalem, Corinth.

00:28:39.280 Oh, there's quite a few then.

00:28:40.100 There's quite a few.

00:28:40.960 There's a small city in Italy whose name is escaping me.

00:28:47.160 I'll come back to me.

00:28:48.640 Early on, Numantia in Spain.

00:28:52.180 When the Romans conquer Gaul, Caesar brags that he's killed a million people and enslaved a million people.

00:28:58.380 But that's probably a vast exaggeration.

00:29:02.800 So maybe he's only killed 100,000 and enslaved 100,000.

00:29:05.840 And why did he do that?

00:29:06.900 Was it because they resisted as much as they did?

00:29:09.060 They resisted, yes.

00:29:10.400 So it's kind of like the Mongols. 0.79

00:29:11.620 Like, if you don't resist us, we will tax you and leave you be, basically.

00:29:16.220 Yes. 1.00

00:29:16.700 But if you resist us, we're going to slaughter you all. 1.00

00:29:18.740 That's right. 0.99

00:29:19.580 And is that how, basically, warfare was always conducted in those times?

00:29:23.300 Or is that quite an original, unique, unusual?

00:29:26.280 It depends.

00:29:26.760 Unusual.

00:29:27.400 If you're fighting war against people who you consider your kin, like the ancient Greek city-states, in general, no.

00:29:33.720 In general, war was, I wouldn't say it's bloodless, but the casualties are much smaller.

00:29:38.820 The wars typically are fought by battles on just one day, one day battles.

00:29:44.340 It was much more civilized, it was much more like an athletic game, like an athletic competition, like a sport.

00:29:52.000 If you're fighting people who you consider to be inferior to you, then the knives come out.

00:29:57.920 And we see that again and again.

00:29:59.500 So Alexander the Great, for instance, when he invades Central Asia and India, he engages in a kind of atrocities.

00:30:06.980 He hadn't engaged in, by and large, further west, although he did engage in some atrocities there as well.

00:30:12.600 And, Barry, did this change when the Roman Empire turned into the Holy Roman Empire?

00:30:18.000 Because, obviously, the religion of Mars and the other gods is very, very different to the religion of Jesus Christ and Christianity.

00:30:27.880 Right.

00:30:28.400 Well, you know, really good question.

00:30:30.540 Edward Gibbon, who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the 18th century, famously says that the empire was ruined by barbarism and religion.

00:30:38.680 He blames Christianity for turning the Romans soft.

00:30:42.760 And making them incapable of resisting. 0.95

00:30:45.420 This is nonsense for a bunch of reasons.

00:30:49.120 First of all, the entire Roman Empire was converted to Christianity with a few pockets that weren't.

00:30:55.060 But most, the whole thing was the most Christian part of the empire is the eastern part of the empire.

00:31:00.900 That's where Christianity has its deepest roots.

00:31:03.580 That's the part of the empire that's not conquered by the barbarians. 0.88

00:31:07.000 That's the part of the empire that survives.

00:31:08.920 So, if Christianity makes people weak, it makes them only selectively weak.

00:31:13.340 It only makes them weak in the west, not weak in the east.

00:31:16.460 For another thing, Christianity was a fighting faith. 0.98

00:31:20.120 Christian language in the later Roman Empire is infused with militarism.

00:31:28.260 And the idea of Christian soldiers, of soldiers of Christ, is a very big metaphor.

00:31:35.480 So, the Roman Christians absorbed the militarism of pagan Roman society. 0.58

00:31:44.180 So, I don't think Christianity has anything to do with the fall of the empire.

00:31:48.700 And when did it move from Rome to Constantinople?

00:31:52.880 Okay, great question.

00:31:54.760 So, Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, even before him, the Romans had realized that the burdens of running this empire,

00:32:03.940 and it's a big empire, 3,000 miles with pre-modern technology, and that's facing attacks on two frontiers, both east and west,

00:32:12.780 it's too much for any one individual.

00:32:15.180 So, they decide they will split it, and they have emperors in the east and the west.

00:32:19.780 Constantine doesn't.

00:32:21.000 He wants to rule the whole shebang.

00:32:23.180 But more and more, they're dividing the empire.

00:32:25.920 And ultimately, by the end of the 4th century, the empire is now permanently divided between an eastern emperor and a western emperor.

00:32:32.900 Constantine creates the city of Constantinople.

00:32:36.120 Constantinople means Constantine City.

00:32:38.340 He names it after himself.

00:32:39.700 There's many emperors made cities they named after themselves.

00:32:43.260 And it becomes the new Rome, as it is ultimately called.

00:32:48.780 It becomes the capital of the eastern empire.

00:32:52.880 And in many ways, it's a wealthier city than Rome.

00:32:56.400 Rome itself ceases to be the capital of the western empire.

00:33:00.340 Rome is something like Disneyland.

00:33:03.140 It's a place that people respect.

00:33:05.580 It's a university town in a way.

00:33:07.980 But the real capital of the western empire is first Milan in Italy, and then Ravenna in Italy.

00:33:14.340 Milan is a base for the land army.

00:33:17.560 Ravenna is a base for the Roman fleet.

00:33:21.180 Also, for a time, the Roman empire is governed from the city of Trier in Germany, in the Moselle River Valley off the Rhine, what's now northwestern Germany.

00:33:30.820 So the western empire is governed more and more from the frontiers.

00:33:33.980 And Rome fades into the background.

00:33:37.320 So then that becomes the preemptive capital.

00:33:41.500 That becomes the main capital.

00:33:43.580 And then how does that change the empire?

00:33:46.440 Because the moment you change from an empire with one central location where everything is governed from into almost three, that must change practically everything, doesn't it?

00:33:58.620 Well, not everything, but a lot.

00:34:01.120 It means there is a giant sucking sound of money and power going to the east.

00:34:06.200 Because Constantinople, Milan and Ravenna are military bases as well as cities.

00:34:12.680 Constantinople is not just a military base.

00:34:14.720 It's a magnificent city.

00:34:16.000 And also, it has the best fortification walls in the world, and it has a fantastic location, you know, on a peninsula, on the edge of Europe, with Asia across the way.

00:34:27.460 It's very defensible.

00:34:29.660 And nobody takes it for almost a thousand years after it's founded.

00:34:35.080 And so when did that empire begin to degrade and fall?

00:34:39.460 The Eastern Empire.

00:34:40.340 The Eastern Empire, yes.

00:34:41.440 So the Western Empire falls in the year 476 A.D.

00:34:46.820 The Eastern Empire continues in one way or another for almost a thousand years.

00:34:52.340 Constantinople isn't finally defeated until the year 1453, when the Ottoman Turks conquer the city.

00:35:00.360 However, the Eastern Empire remains a big empire for about 150 years after 476.

00:35:08.240 New people come in, and they conquer a lot of it.

00:35:10.820 And that is the Arabs. 0.96

00:35:12.840 The Islamic conquest conquers most of what had been the Eastern Roman Empire.

00:35:17.820 And the Byzantine Empire, as we call it, is reduced mostly to what's now Turkey, Anatolia, and part of what's now Bulgaria and Greece, and some of the islands as well.

00:35:28.800 They lose most of their territory.

00:35:30.960 But they're very well organized.

00:35:33.420 They really are the heirs of the Romans. 0.86

00:35:34.980 And they hang on, as I said, for almost a thousand years after the fall of the Western Empire.

00:35:39.240 Barry, in terms of Christianity, coming back to this discussion, how does it happen that these people who throw the Christians, the early Christians, to the lions, and suppress them by any means they possibly can, then adopt this religion as the state religion?

00:35:57.000 Because I imagine, Emperor Constantine, great, but I imagine by the time he says this is what we're doing, there's quite an upswell already of whatever.

00:36:06.540 Yeah, we don't know how many Christians there were, but you're right. 0.99

00:36:09.660 Christianity has spread quite a bit.

00:36:11.120 Some people would say 10% of the empire, some people would say 30% of the empire.

00:36:16.440 Certainly not the majority, but we don't know.

00:36:18.220 But there are a lot of Christians, and they're in strategic places.

00:36:23.400 The Roman elite is divided.

00:36:25.880 They've concluded, after all the problems they have, they concluded that the gods are no longer on their side, and they need to do something.

00:36:33.900 And the first thing they do is they create a worship of the sun, the S-U-N. 1.00

00:36:39.620 They worship the sun as a god.

00:36:41.640 And the next thing they do is to say, we want to double down on the old gods.

00:36:46.200 We want to revive the cult of Jupiter, you know, the chief god of Rome.

00:36:51.160 And while we're at it, they say, you know why the gods don't like us anymore?

00:36:56.240 It's because we have these atheists who live among us.

00:36:59.780 We have these people who don't believe in the gods.

00:37:02.340 They think there's only one god. 0.55

00:37:04.680 Those are the Christians. 0.63

00:37:06.000 And so they turn on the Christians, and the emperor before Constantine, a man named Diocletian, undertakes the great persecution of the Christians.

00:37:15.920 When he tries to wipe out the church, it doesn't go as he had planned.

00:37:21.020 It turns out, although some Christians do recant, and they accept the pagan gods again, there are a lot of martyrs.

00:37:29.780 And as the saying goes, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

00:37:35.060 The martyrs impress people that this church ain't going anywhere, and these people really believe.

00:37:42.300 So after Diocletian, there's another civil war or two, and Constantine comes to the throne.

00:37:48.760 Before he conquers the city of Rome, he has accepted Christianity as his religion. 0.85

00:37:54.700 And the famous battle that he takes, Rome, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, a bridge north of the city over the Tiber, he sees a vision.

00:38:03.880 He sees a vision of the cross in the sky, and it says, in this sign you shall conquer.

00:38:09.340 And so when he becomes emperor, for the first time in Roman history, not only are the Christians not persecuted, but they are supported by the emperor and his taxes.

00:38:20.660 And now Constantine's building churches.

00:38:23.180 He builds the church of St. John Lateran, which is still the basilica of the city of Rome.

00:38:28.720 He builds St. Peter's.

00:38:30.940 He builds a variety of churches.

00:38:32.500 He sends his mother, Helena, St. Helena for most Christians. 0.97

00:38:37.920 He sends her to what is then Palestine, the Holy Land, to find the places where Jesus walked and where the apostles walked, and to build churches there.

00:38:46.540 And to try to convert the Jews who are still there and the pagans who are there into Christianity. 0.94

00:38:51.840 And to encourage monks to move to the Holy Land and set up shop there.

00:38:57.440 And he closes pagan temples.

00:38:59.320 Or he doesn't close them so much as he takes away public support from them.

00:39:03.220 We're not giving any tax money anymore.

00:39:05.140 You want to sacrifice expensive bulls? 0.75

00:39:07.700 That's your problem, buddy.

00:39:08.940 But you're not going to get any money from the Roman state anymore.

00:39:11.600 Smart.

00:39:12.180 Yeah.

00:39:12.440 And so quickly, people begin to convert to Christianity.

00:39:16.800 And why is Constantine himself so?

00:39:18.460 Is he just a true believer, and this is why he's doing it?

00:39:21.000 Or are there a political and cultural reason?

00:39:23.480 I think, you know, all of the above.

00:39:26.740 I mean, Constantine is a very powerful man.

00:39:30.800 He's a politician.

00:39:31.840 He's a warrior.

00:39:33.500 He can be very violent.

00:39:36.180 And why he becomes a Christian? 0.69

00:39:39.760 We think his mother was a Christian.

00:39:42.480 The Christian tradition is that Constantine converts to Christianity and his mother then converts after him.

00:39:47.420 But there are ancient sources who say otherwise, and that his mother was Christian first.

00:39:52.980 His father, we know, was friendly to Christians.

00:39:55.400 He was not a Christian himself.

00:39:57.100 There seems to be some family background for this.

00:40:00.920 Constantine sees, I believe it's an eclipse of the sun.

00:40:04.960 Maybe not an eclipse of the sun, but it's a solar phenomenon.

00:40:08.580 I'm afraid I don't remember the scientific term, but the sun does funny things.

00:40:14.240 And he says, I went and asked the priest to explain what was going on, and they couldn't answer it for me.

00:40:21.440 The only people who could, the pagan priest, that is, the only people who would explain it to my satisfaction were the Christian priests.

00:40:28.840 And he says, that's one of the reasons he becomes a Christian.

00:40:32.860 And the sun is really important because, as I said, an earlier emperor had tried to establish the worship of the sun.

00:40:38.820 Constantine's father was a worshiper of the sun.

00:40:42.020 He was a general, very high in the service of this earlier emperor.

00:40:45.560 So Constantine is saying, in a way, the sun hasn't saved Rome.

00:40:50.560 So maybe the son of man, if you will, will save Rome.

00:40:53.380 Maybe Christianity will save Rome. 0.99

00:40:54.980 And why did Christianity, which we now, most people would conceive it to be a religion of compassion and mercy and the meek and all of that stuff,

00:41:06.600 you mentioned that actually it was a very warrior religion at the time.

00:41:10.060 It was both.

00:41:11.040 That's a really great question.

00:41:12.120 It wasn't just a fighting faith, although it was a fighting faith.

00:41:16.000 But Christianity, like most religions, was extremely flexible.

00:41:19.340 Christianity arose in an opposition to a lot in the Roman world.

00:41:26.240 After all, Jesus was crucified by the Romans and St. Paul, St. Peter are killed by the Romans.

00:41:33.160 And the Christians are in trouble with the Roman state in big ways from early on.

00:41:37.940 But by the time of Constantine, Christianity had become Romanized.

00:41:43.060 And Christian intellectuals, Christian thinkers, had, to a certain extent, made their peace with Rome.

00:41:49.540 If you would have looked for Christians in Roman society before the conversion of Constantine,

00:41:55.340 you would have had a hard time finding them because they looked like everybody else.

00:41:58.640 They dressed like Romans, talked and acted like Romans.

00:42:02.680 They just didn't go to the temples.

00:42:04.660 And they met mostly in private houses because, by and large, churches were illegal.

00:42:08.980 One of the appeals of Christianity was Christian charity.

00:42:15.400 And so Christians would love each other, as they said.

00:42:21.080 And this was quite appealing to many people.

00:42:25.520 That doesn't go away.

00:42:27.380 That's still part of it.

00:42:28.960 But what's not a part of Christianity in the Roman Empire is turn the other cheek.

00:42:35.140 They're still Romans. 0.92

00:42:36.840 They're not going to turn the other cheek.

00:42:38.980 And one of the reasons for Christianity's success is that it makes these compromises.

00:42:44.100 And you can imagine why Christians might say, we can't have everything that we want. 0.79

00:42:48.540 But we don't live in a perfect world.

00:42:51.680 We live in the real world.

00:42:53.480 So maybe we have to be warlike.

00:42:55.820 And maybe we have to have soldiers.

00:42:57.780 But we can also do good deeds.

00:43:00.080 We can also have charity.

00:43:01.400 We can also spread the faith.

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00:44:41.060 So it's pragmatic.

00:44:42.440 And staying on the theme of Christianity, we have the Christian church in Rome, which I

00:44:47.880 associate with Catholicism, and then we have Christianity in Constantinople, which I associate

00:44:53.860 with the Orthodox Church. 0.89

00:44:55.420 Correct me if I'm wrong and I'm being silly.

00:44:57.940 Is that accurate?

00:44:59.760 That there's two forms of Christianity being practiced in both of these cities?

00:45:04.660 Yes and no.

00:45:05.440 There are many forms of Christianity.

00:45:07.540 And as soon as you get Christianity, you get Christian heresies. 0.94

00:45:10.620 We don't have the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church yet.

00:45:15.820 That comes later.

00:45:17.820 The Bishop of Rome does have a certain authority.

00:45:21.880 And the Bishop of Rome is very important in turning back Attila the Hun.

00:45:27.560 I mean, there are many stories about that.

00:45:29.560 But the papacy, as we've come to know it, is still in its formative stages in this period.

00:45:36.020 Likewise, the Orthodox Church is still very much in its formative stages.

00:45:41.080 But there are a variety of heresies.

00:45:43.540 There is a Christian thinker, I believe a monk from Egypt named Arius, who had a view that

00:45:49.520 eventually becomes heretical.

00:45:52.780 Don't ask me what it was because I've forgotten.

00:45:54.900 But many barbarians, when converted to Christianity, are converted to Arian Christianity.

00:46:00.060 By the way, it has nothing to do with the Arians and the Nazis.

00:46:02.600 It's named after a guy named Arianus.

00:46:05.820 And so there are all these disagreements.

00:46:09.020 And even in the East, when the Eastern Empire survives, there are those who insist that

00:46:17.620 Jesus was only of one nature, not of two natures.

00:46:22.360 And they don't believe in the Trinity in the same way that people do in Constantinople.

00:46:26.600 And there's huge disagreement, bad blood between the different groups in Christianity.

00:46:31.060 But this must have destabilized the empire, because what you're now introducing is essentially,

00:46:37.280 potentially, the beginnings of a religious civil war, like we see with the Sunni and the 0.97

00:46:41.200 Shias and Islam.

00:46:41.940 Yes, but I would maintain that it doesn't destabilize them to the point where the Romans are incapable

00:46:48.260 of fighting the barbarians.

00:46:49.940 I think the reason the Roman Empire, I basically buy the military explanation, both all of the

00:46:55.560 Roman Empire and behind the military explanation, the political, economic and social and cultural

00:47:02.380 factors that made the Roman army unable to deal with the task.

00:47:06.980 I don't think religion played a very big role.

00:47:09.840 And prime among this, from what I understood, and correct me, is that you're not actually

00:47:14.000 saying the Romans got worse at fighting.

00:47:17.560 But what happened is, because the concept of citizenship eroded, people were far less

00:47:23.440 committed to the country in which they lived.

00:47:26.220 And therefore, they wouldn't go and fight for it.

00:47:28.260 Therefore, they had to get, essentially, outsiders to fight on their behalf.

00:47:32.100 Yeah.

00:47:32.960 And outsiders will never fight for your land the way that people who actually live there 1.00

00:47:38.040 would.

00:47:38.200 That's absolutely true.

00:47:38.960 That's one factor.

00:47:39.880 Another factor is you have to pay professional soldiers.

00:47:42.800 And if the barbarians have come in and taken your land and you can't collect taxes to pay 1.00

00:47:47.260 your professional soldiers, you got a problem.

00:47:50.320 I would really contrast it.

00:47:51.760 To me, the opposite case is Britain in the Second World War.

00:47:55.860 So here's Britain that goes on fighting against the Nazis when everyone else has surrendered. 0.57

00:48:01.880 They're out of the game.

00:48:02.780 The Brits are doing it alone.

00:48:03.940 They have a whole-of-society effort.

00:48:07.700 And it only works when you can mobilize all of society to do this.

00:48:13.240 And again, I think the Soviets do the same thing.

00:48:16.340 They can mobilize all of society.

00:48:18.440 They do it, of course, in very different ways.

00:48:20.580 The British aren't shooting a lot of people for not going up to the front.

00:48:23.420 But the Romans can't do that anymore.

00:48:26.500 They have this new challenge.

00:48:27.960 The barbarians have gotten better, much better than they ever were before. 1.00

00:48:31.260 And the barbarians have even more- 0.93

00:48:32.880 Why?

00:48:33.520 Yeah.

00:48:33.920 They learn how to fight from the Romans.

00:48:35.680 And they, as I said, they start out in 50 tribes.

00:48:39.740 It's not so difficult to defeat 50 tribes. 0.62

00:48:42.100 Divide and conquer is the principle the Romans always follow. 1.00

00:48:46.140 But what if you now have four tribes?

00:48:48.220 That's it.

00:48:49.220 And they're organized.

00:48:50.240 They're grouped together.

00:48:51.140 And they've learned to fight.

00:48:52.100 Because many of them have fought in the Roman armies all their lives.

00:48:55.580 And they're looking across the Rhine River.

00:48:58.420 And they're saying, it's pretty rich and soft over there.

00:49:01.120 The pickings look good.

00:49:02.760 Yeah, but the Romans still have a professional army.

00:49:04.780 It's not so easy.

00:49:05.720 But then, oops, here come the Huns from Central Asia. 0.99

00:49:08.800 And they are really barbarians. 0.55

00:49:10.540 They make the German tribes look kind of peaceful.

00:49:13.760 They're pushing them across.

00:49:15.360 And these German tribes say, we're crossing the Rhine. 0.97

00:49:17.420 We're crossing the Danube.

00:49:18.500 We're getting into Roman territory. 0.99

00:49:20.280 We don't care who we have to kill.

00:49:21.920 Because now we're pretty good at fighting. 0.85

00:49:24.380 And now we can take on the big boys.

00:49:26.460 We can take on the Roman army.

00:49:28.540 And now, if you're the Roman government, what are you going to do?

00:49:32.600 You can't call on the loyalty of your people in a way that Rome could have in an earlier period.

00:49:40.880 So what would you say, if such a thick question is reasonable, are like warning signs that an empire,

00:49:50.040 a civilisation, is starting to trend in the wrong direction?

00:49:53.800 What would you see?

00:49:55.020 I would say we have these warning signs today.

00:49:57.320 When you have a society in which the concept of citizenship fades, when you have a society

00:50:03.220 in which in an earlier generation, young people were taught civics, as they were in the United States,

00:50:08.860 but now they're not taught it anymore.

00:50:10.300 When you have a society in which young people were taught their country was good and they

00:50:15.380 should be loyal and serve it.

00:50:17.620 You know, when I was growing up in the U.S., we had to say the Pledge of Allegiance every

00:50:20.860 day in the classroom.

00:50:22.240 But when you have a society when that's gone and when it's not cool to do that, I think

00:50:27.700 you're in trouble.

00:50:28.660 I think that's a sign of society that's in trouble and is going to have a hard time being

00:50:33.540 resilient.

00:50:34.080 When you have a society that trashes its institutions, and when you have a society where you don't

00:50:40.360 have strong leadership, then you're in real trouble.

00:50:43.580 The Romans had all those problems.

00:50:45.880 They had these warning signs.

00:50:47.800 It works fine until, well, maybe not fine, but it works until somebody outside comes along

00:50:53.720 and says, you know what?

00:50:54.540 I think I'm going to conquer you.

00:50:56.240 And we have that now.

00:50:58.040 China.

00:50:59.060 China is aiming at the United States. 0.57

00:51:01.820 Maybe they don't want to conquer us, but it sure looks like they want to conquer us.

00:51:06.740 Why?

00:51:08.020 Throw America off its pedestal, maybe, but conquer?

00:51:10.880 Really?

00:51:11.740 Okay.

00:51:12.360 Maybe not occupy the United States, but definitely knock it off its pedestal.

00:51:19.500 Definitely drive the United States out of the Western Pacific.

00:51:23.560 And they're doing it in ways that are very threatening to the United States.

00:51:28.360 The Chinese are very good at war. 1.00

00:51:30.220 War, the Chinese way of war.

00:51:32.100 Is this too off topic?

00:51:33.460 No, no, no, no, nothing.

00:51:34.900 Okay.

00:51:35.220 No, this is right on topic.

00:51:36.460 This is where our audience have woken up.

00:51:38.360 Yeah.

00:51:39.440 Finally, another video about the collapse of the West.

00:51:42.600 Excellent.

00:51:43.300 The Chinese way of war is based on the writings of Sun Tzu.

00:51:49.140 If you haven't read Sun Tzu, everybody should read Sun Tzu.

00:51:52.680 It's a great and important book.

00:51:54.080 And Sun Tzu says, the art of war, war is the art of deception.

00:52:00.420 Deception is at the height of warfare.

00:52:02.620 He also says that the greatest victory is not crushing your enemy.

00:52:06.220 He's not Conan the Barbarian.

00:52:07.580 The greatest victory is getting your enemy to surrender without you fighting a blow.

00:52:11.840 Now, that's kind of mind-boggling if you think about it.

00:52:15.700 And it's not as if deception isn't something that we have in the West, but it's never been

00:52:20.600 essential to the Western way of war as it is to the Chinese way of war.

00:52:26.300 You familiar with the book, Unrestricted Warfare?

00:52:28.920 No.

00:52:29.120 Oh, I've got to read it.

00:52:30.920 It's available online for free.

00:52:33.260 It's a book that was written by two Chinese colonels, I believe in 1999, but in the late

00:52:38.280 1990s.

00:52:39.240 And it basically says, we're at war with the West, and the way to win this war is there 0.96

00:52:44.240 are no limits, and we have to subvert them from inside.

00:52:47.720 It's not a matter of attacking them frontally, although eventually we'll be able to do that.

00:52:51.240 But it's a matter of subverting them, subverting their institutions, subverting their culture.

00:52:55.940 And this is the Chinese way of war. 0.77

00:53:00.660 It's a big part of the Chinese way of war.

00:53:02.700 And this is the challenge that faces the West, and particularly America today.

00:53:07.360 So it's a process of demoralization.

00:53:09.760 Yes.

00:53:10.200 Which is what Yuri Bezmenov talked about, who was a Soviet defector, who basically made 0.74

00:53:13.900 all those very same points.

00:53:15.100 That's what the KGB would do.

00:53:16.480 Yes.

00:53:16.820 I mean, the Russians were and are very good at this.

00:53:20.020 As you know, Russia has no natural boundaries, at least not in the West.

00:53:24.300 And so for many centuries, they've used propaganda, and they've used head games as a way of getting

00:53:31.160 themselves a boundary.

00:53:32.340 Maskarovka is something they talk about a lot.

00:53:35.400 Camouflage.

00:53:36.280 That's a very big part of the Western, of the Russian way of war.

00:53:40.100 You know, when you talk, Barry, I'm always, I was reading about this stat, about this,

00:53:45.320 I can't quote the exact numbers, but the percentage of young people who are willing to go to war

00:53:50.940 for their countries in the West are dismally low.

00:53:54.320 Yeah.

00:53:54.760 I think it's even lower in Britain than it is in the United States.

00:53:57.300 But it's low.

00:53:58.380 It's low in both places.

00:54:00.620 I mean, for me, the legacy, the central lesson of the classical world is citizenship and the

00:54:06.220 importance of having a citizen state.

00:54:09.040 You know, the Greeks and the Romans don't invent the city state.

00:54:11.800 The Phoenicians had that. 0.81

00:54:12.880 The Sumerians had that.

00:54:13.880 But they do invent the citizen state.

00:54:16.380 And that is a society in which there's a notion of citizenship and there's a notion that the

00:54:21.060 citizens have a stake in the society and they're willing to give something back to their society.

00:54:26.100 And that's what the Romans lose. 0.91

00:54:28.500 And as I said, they can survive without that until bad, really bad times come and really

00:54:34.260 bad times came.

00:54:35.480 And then they were, you know, they were shooting blanks.

00:54:38.900 They didn't have what you needed in order to survive.

00:54:41.340 So let's say I had the power vested upon me by the United States.

00:54:45.520 I crowned you.

00:54:46.080 Please, dear God, no.

00:54:47.340 Yeah.

00:54:48.000 Listen, I made it great again.

00:54:50.960 But I anoint you, Emperor Barry Strauss.

00:54:54.080 Yes.

00:54:54.700 Using the lessons that we have learned from the ancient world, what would you do to the

00:55:01.700 United States or what would you suggest policy-wise that could prevent us from going down this

00:55:08.720 particular path?

00:55:09.500 Well, I think we want to reintroduce the idea of citizenship.

00:55:16.460 I mean, I do a lot of the things that we've talked about at this conference, the ARC conference

00:55:21.560 that I just attended.

00:55:24.020 We'd want to absolutely revitalize the idea of citizenship.

00:55:28.080 And we have to do it when they're young.

00:55:30.680 Education is absolutely central to classical civilization and classical notions of citizenship.

00:55:36.160 So you have to educate people in what, to me, was like not even controversial when I was

00:55:42.980 growing up.

00:55:43.660 Love your country.

00:55:44.880 Be patriotic.

00:55:46.260 Find out what's good about it.

00:55:47.720 And certainly also learn its history and find out what's bad about it.

00:55:52.520 But say that on balance, as I think anyone in a Western society should, we live in good

00:55:58.020 countries.

00:55:58.520 We live in countries that we should love.

00:56:00.040 And as citizens, we have a stake in this society.

00:56:04.580 And we have certain rights, but we also have certain responsibilities.

00:56:08.360 I think we have to go back to that.

00:56:10.060 We have to educate people that way.

00:56:12.340 We can't go on.

00:56:15.240 We won't survive if we have an educational system and a culture that says we're bad, we're

00:56:20.220 terrible, we're the worst ever, they're victims.

00:56:23.620 We've done it.

00:56:24.380 We're bad.

00:56:25.160 We deserve to do penance.

00:56:27.120 And if we're going to be conquered by outsiders, so be it, because we deserve it. 1.00

00:56:32.580 They don't really mean that.

00:56:33.680 They have no idea what they're talking about.

00:56:35.220 Yes.

00:56:35.640 But that's the road on which I think societies that give up believing in themselves, that's

00:56:41.740 the danger that they're exposing themselves to.

00:56:45.340 It's really fascinating you talk about rights and responsibilities, because it seems to me that

00:56:50.680 everybody always wants to talk about their rights.

00:56:53.160 This is my right.

00:56:54.880 Don't do that.

00:56:55.600 Now I have the right to this.

00:56:58.000 Very few people talk about the other side of the coin, which is responsibility.

00:57:01.640 So let's focus on that.

00:57:02.780 Yeah.

00:57:03.080 What do we mean by that?

00:57:04.100 Well, you know, so for example, in classical Athens, in Athenian democracy, one of the

00:57:12.040 models was, in Athens, we don't say that people who don't take part in public life are minding

00:57:17.300 their own business.

00:57:18.020 We say they have no business being there at all.

00:57:20.060 Do you know what the ancient Greek word for somebody who doesn't take part in public life

00:57:24.020 is? 1.00

00:57:25.100 Idiot. 1.00

00:57:26.280 That's idiotes. 1.00

00:57:27.980 Idiotes is somebody who does not take, who is not a citizen, who does not take citizen 1.00

00:57:33.160 responsibility seriously. 0.99

00:57:35.360 So the ancients didn't really have a developed notion of the rights of citizens.

00:57:41.560 It was mostly the privileges of citizens and the responsibilities of citizens.

00:57:46.740 For the Greeks in particular, citizenship was, in a way, it's analogous to our idea of owning

00:57:53.500 stock in a company.

00:57:55.400 If you are a citizen of Athens, you have a share in Athens.

00:57:59.660 They actually talked and used that language.

00:58:02.300 You have a share in Athens.

00:58:04.380 And as part of your share, you have to do your duty.

00:58:07.120 Can I play devil's advocate a little bit, Barry?

00:58:12.120 I'm curious, just thinking through this logically firsthand, so, you know, first impression,

00:58:16.680 so it could be totally off pace.

00:58:17.860 But isn't that really the problem with Christianity?

00:58:20.900 Because Christianity says you're made in the image of God.

00:58:23.760 You have value and worth by virtue of the fact that you are human.

00:58:27.300 You are endowed with these inalienable rights by your creator.

00:58:30.920 Right.

00:58:31.080 And we seem to have a society in which we really do practice that.

00:58:34.820 Like, you're born, therefore you have a whole bunch of rights and a bunch of things you're

00:58:37.840 entitled to, and you're entitled to, you know, health care and food and shelter and all of

00:58:43.040 these things, which goes completely at odds with what you're talking about, which is your

00:58:48.120 rights ultimately do come from your responsibilities.

00:58:53.180 These two things are matched.

00:58:54.860 And so you don't get stuff until you do stuff.

00:58:58.040 That's a great question.

00:58:59.120 I don't think that Christianity says that you're entitled to health care or all of these

00:59:04.640 goodies.

00:59:05.780 You know, one of the reasons the West has succeeded is that in the Middle Ages, in Western Europe, 0.69

00:59:10.840 they developed a notion of the separation of church and state.

00:59:14.620 You know, it's often, it's been said by some really great historians that in a way, the

00:59:19.180 defeat of the, the decline of all the Roman Empire was good news in the long term. 1.00

00:59:23.060 Because what it meant was there was no longer a central authority, but rather there were

00:59:27.780 a series of these small, petty states.

00:59:30.920 And the only reason culture survived in these barbarian states is because of the church, 0.99

00:59:35.040 beginning with the monasteries and then later on in more open church institutions such as

00:59:41.140 the university.

00:59:41.800 Universities were established by the church.

00:59:45.240 But the church leadership and the secular leadership were at each other's throats.

00:59:50.700 And that turned out to be a really good thing because it created space.

00:59:55.920 It created space.

00:59:56.900 It didn't allow either one of them to become supreme.

01:00:00.560 And citizenship and the rights of individuals kind of sneaks in between the, sneaks in between

01:00:06.720 the church and the state.

01:00:08.420 I mean, one of the things that Christianity does give is it gives the idea of human dignity. 0.54

01:00:15.660 And this gets from Judaism, of course, the idea that human beings are created in the image 0.90

01:00:21.540 of God.

01:00:22.220 That's what it says in the beginning of Genesis.

01:00:24.900 The Greeks and Romans didn't believe in human dignity. 0.90

01:00:27.820 In Latin, the word dignitas, dignity means rank or station in society.

01:00:33.720 Julius Caesar, when asked why he's going to go to civil war rather than obey the Senate,

01:00:39.000 which wants him to stand down, he says, it's because my dignitas is dearer to me than life

01:00:43.600 itself.

01:00:44.400 My rank is dearer to me than life itself.

01:00:47.220 It's not a notion of human dignity.

01:00:49.540 But Christianity takes this notion from Judaism and it spreads it to everyone in the Roman Empire 0.92

01:00:55.260 and ultimately to all mankind.

01:00:57.420 So people have inalienable rights.

01:01:00.840 But those, actually the declaration says unalienable rights, but we say inalienable now.

01:01:06.440 Those rights, as the declaration goes on to say, are the rights to life, liberty, and the

01:01:10.820 pursuit of happiness.

01:01:13.500 Those are real rights, but they're also kind of limited rights.

01:01:17.680 And so from this conflict of church and state, ultimately the notion of limited government

01:01:24.380 comes out.

01:01:26.020 And so citizens have responsibilities to their government, but they also have responsibilities

01:01:30.340 to their God.

01:01:31.620 And those responsibilities are pre-citizen.

01:01:34.740 They're separate from being a citizen.

01:01:36.440 And ultimately they're more important than being a citizen.

01:01:40.960 But I think what's good about the West is that we have a balance.

01:01:44.640 Well, speaking of balance, my other devil's advocate question was going to be...

01:01:48.560 I love devils.

01:01:49.380 Well, I guess with my Russian background, I'm always trying ideas on in my head as I listen

01:01:55.340 to them.

01:01:55.700 And as you well know, I agree with you about the greatness of the West and the importance

01:02:00.160 to teach children correctly about that.

01:02:02.620 And then I also think about what's happening in Russia today, where a historian like you

01:02:09.100 isn't allowed to investigate or research certain things about Russian, well, particularly Soviet

01:02:14.980 history.

01:02:15.960 The gulags and all of that is the crimes of Stalin are covered up.

01:02:19.800 And in fact, now there are lots of people who think that he was a great guy who did lots

01:02:24.020 of great things.

01:02:26.560 The huge atrocities that the Soviet Union committed in World War II.

01:02:30.600 Now, look, without the Soviet Union, I think it's very clear that we don't win World War 0.99

01:02:34.900 II.

01:02:35.160 And so the sacrifices that were made by my ancestors, among others, were hugely valuable.

01:02:39.880 That does not eradicate the terrible atrocities that also happened that we should be able

01:02:44.860 to talk about.

01:02:45.840 But in Russia, all of this is prevented from being talked about.

01:02:48.780 So how do we balance our desire to give our children a clear eyed view of our history with

01:02:57.860 also being avoiding that trap of becoming these militaristic, nationalistic people who think

01:03:04.140 they've been perfect their entire history?

01:03:06.180 Yeah.

01:03:06.540 Well, great question.

01:03:07.920 But of course, the Russians have a very different heritage than Western Europe does.

01:03:12.020 They didn't have the separation of church and state.

01:03:14.000 They didn't have this space where individual freedom and liberty could develop.

01:03:18.960 I mean, we want our children, the other value that we have to give them is freedom of speech.

01:03:23.380 And in the ancient republics, the ancient city-states, this was absolutely essential, freedom of speech.

01:03:29.640 And that's another thing that fades under the emperors.

01:03:33.300 Freedom of speech is taken away from the Romans bit by bit. 1.00

01:03:36.420 But there is no freedom of speech in Russia.

01:03:39.640 There's limited freedom of speech in the Russian tradition.

01:03:42.280 Maybe ironically, it was at its height in the late czarist empire.

01:03:46.820 Even then, it wasn't complete.

01:03:49.100 There was a secret police, et cetera, and so forth.

01:03:51.920 But I think we have to teach our children about the West, about its achievements, about this

01:03:59.420 balance, and about the classical heritage.

01:04:01.480 And we should also teach them it's very fragile, it's very precious.

01:04:06.680 I guess it was Ronald Reagan who said something like, freedom is only one generation away from

01:04:12.100 being lost.

01:04:13.040 And I think that's absolutely true.

01:04:15.220 You can't have a citizen society.

01:04:19.060 You can't have a republic without educating the young.

01:04:21.640 And one of the terrible things that's happened in the United States in the last 40 years is

01:04:27.220 that education has been taken over by people who don't believe in the country's good and

01:04:31.860 who don't believe in freedom of speech in the same way.

01:04:35.700 I mean, I think they should be absolutely allowed to have their opinions.

01:04:39.480 I think it's great that we have a clash of opinions.

01:04:43.480 But we have to be very careful what we teach the youngest children.

01:04:46.480 And I think it's very dangerous to take the youngest children and just expose them to propagandas

01:04:51.960 and expose them to woke ideas.

01:04:54.240 I think we want to build them up slowly to where they have the freedom of speech and thought,

01:04:59.160 where they can judge for themselves.

01:05:01.020 I never want my students to mouth the party line back to me.

01:05:04.800 How boring is that?

01:05:06.500 I want them to be able to stand on their own two feet and to be able to have the strength

01:05:11.000 of mind to do that.

01:05:11.640 And to do that, they need to learn about the Western heritage.

01:05:14.240 There's probably a millennial or a Gen Z, and they're listening to this on the bus or on

01:05:19.060 the subway or whatever.

01:05:20.600 And you're talking, and you mentioned about having a stake, the Greeks talking about having 0.98

01:05:26.020 a stake in the city.

01:05:27.380 Right.

01:05:27.720 And for a lot of young people and people in our societies, they see having a stake in

01:05:31.980 society as owning property.

01:05:34.540 So they're probably thinking, well, I'm not being allowed to own a stake in society.

01:05:39.900 Therefore, why should I believe it?

01:05:41.740 Why should I believe it?

01:05:42.820 They feel excluded.

01:05:43.760 I think that's probably a big part of it as well.

01:05:46.000 I think it is.

01:05:47.080 And I think here we have the problem that we talked about earlier, the concentration of

01:05:50.660 wealth and the growing extremes between the rich and the poor.

01:05:53.320 We have to have prosperity.

01:05:55.300 It's very clear that in Athenian democracy, it was based on prosperity for the middle class.

01:06:02.460 And the notion of citizenship as it develops in Greece and then Rome is based on the idea

01:06:07.360 that you're going to have a solid middle class.

01:06:10.040 And so if the middle class is threatened, I think that's the whole ballgame is threatened.

01:06:16.360 So I'm really glad that you made that point.

01:06:18.680 And, you know, we have to bring prosperity back.

01:06:22.300 Barry, it's been a superb interview.

01:06:23.960 Thank you.

01:06:24.440 We could do one of these every week.

01:06:26.700 We wouldn't run out of things to say.

01:06:28.340 So thank you very much for coming back on the show.

01:06:30.820 Final question is always the same.

01:06:32.340 What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

01:06:34.920 You're not talking about my new book, which is this great and wonderful book that's going

01:06:39.100 to be appearing in August 2025, Jews versus Rome, two centuries of rebellion against the

01:06:44.900 world's mightiest empire.

01:06:46.600 And these two centuries from 63 BCE to 136 CE are some of the most pivotal years in history.

01:06:54.900 It's the years when the temple is destroyed, Jerusalem is destroyed, when Judaism retools, 1.00

01:07:00.660 and when Christianity is born.

01:07:02.860 Few things are more important than that.

01:07:04.520 And if you want to know where it came from, read my book, which is also a great read,

01:07:08.380 if I do say so.

01:07:09.340 Sounds fascinating.

01:07:10.300 I cannot wait to read it.

01:07:11.920 Thank you.

01:07:12.140 Also, I cannot wait to go to Substack, where you get to ask Barry your questions.

01:07:15.840 So follow us on over there right now.

01:07:19.300 What is your favorite what if moment from the Romans or Greeks? 1.00

01:07:24.520 Are any particular stupid drunken slash horny moments that changed your history that you 1.00

01:07:29.540 particularly enjoy? 1.00

01:07:34.520 We'll be right back.

01:07:35.220 Bye.

01:07:39.740 Bye.

01:07:44.260 Bye.

01:07:45.640 Bye.

01:07:48.380 Bye.

01:07:49.040 Bye.

01:07:50.020 Bye.

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01:08:02.500 는데 room.

TRIGGERnometry - May 28, 2025

Why Rome Collapsed - Barry Strauss

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Transcript