#418 - "Secret BANKERS!" - Roman Empire Expert on Alexander, BLOODLINES & The Vatican | Jeremy Ryan Slate • 418

Summary

Julian Dorey Podcast #418 — "Secret BANKERS!" — Roman Empire Expert on Alexander, BLOODLINES & The Vatican | Jeremy Ryan Slate

Date: May 6, 2026
Guest: Jeremy Ryan Slate
Main Theme: Drawing parallels between the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and modern America, with a focus on power, monetary debasement, social patterns, political corruption, and the influence of banking families, using lessons from Roman, Greek, and post-Roman history.

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Episode Overview

This episode is a sprawling, engrossing exploration of the Roman Empire through the lens of both history and modern relevance. Host Julian Dorey invites Jeremy Ryan Slate—a classically trained historian and podcaster—to discuss the empire’s real dynamics, Alexander the Great’s enduring mythos, the phenomenon of civilizational rise and decline, and the recurring influence of "secret bankers" and political elites through history. Together, they draw bold and provocative parallels between ancient events and today's America, touching on questions of currency, citizenship, power accumulation, and social cohesion.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Backgrounds & Love for Classics

[00:11–02:54]

• Jeremy recounts his academic path in classics (Seton Hall, Oxford) and how a viral meme about men thinking about Rome led to his enduring focus on Roman history in podcasting.
  • “I had this idea about the first Roman emperor, Augustus, that he basically used the model of Alexander the Great to convince people he was God…” (Jeremy, [05:04])
• Lighthearted banter about teaching, powerlifting, and how studying Rome and teaching high school sophomores both give insight into human nature.

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2. Greek and Roman Attitudes Towards Divinity and Power

[03:09–06:58]

• Discussion of ancient wrestling, Greek influences, and the blurred lines between myth, sexuality, and cultural norms in Greek and Roman societies.
• Emperors emulated Alexander’s perceived divinity for political legitimacy—Augustus especially exploited this after Actium by connecting himself with Alexander’s image.

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3. Climate & Historical Change: The Roman Climate Optimum

[06:58–08:34]

• Jeremy explains how Rome’s ability to feed its people (thanks to climate) was central to its success; the end of the "Roman Climate Optimum" triggered crisis and unrest.
  • “By 250, [Emperor] Decius is dealing with this inability to feed people. They’re kind of in the depth of something called the crisis of the third century.” (Jeremy, [07:32])

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4. Religion, Power, and the Peace of the Gods

[08:14–11:24]

• Rome’s flexible approach to religion—adaptation and importation of gods—served political needs, especially to restore order during crisis.
• Sacrifice to the emperor and Roman gods became a test of political loyalty; resistance from Christians and Jews was interpreted as sedition, not just religious dissent.
  • “To Romans, that’s not a religious problem, it’s a political problem… They didn’t see a difference between political life and religious life.” (Jeremy, [09:51])

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5. History as Patterns—Mark Twain, Parallels, and Propaganda

[11:24–13:59]

• The host and guest agree that history rhymes—familiar cycles recur, if not in exact repetition.
• Augustus’ propaganda: leveraging Alexander’s divine seal, statues, and strategic uses of titles (princeps civitas) to maintain the illusion of republican norms while consolidating power.

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6. Divinity, Bloodlines, and Rulership in Greece, Rome, and Egypt

[13:59–25:11]

• Ancient leaders traced ancestry to mythic heroes (Heracles/Achilles); Alexander saw himself as semi-divine—a tradition Augustus exploited.
• The blending and tension between myth, politics, and family lineage remains a throughline, visible from Greek myth to English monarchs.

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7. Who Writes History? Manipulation and Mythmaking

[25:53–31:39]

• They probe the reliability of history: most "primary" sources come from later, literate, politically motivated chroniclers.
  • “You have to consider—who’s writing your history? ...A lot of ancient historians and late antique historians...tend to be very strong about those opinions…and even if you say something that's your opinion, you're wrong. And that's the problem we have with ancient history.” (Jeremy, [27:00])
• Examples: Livy and Virgil shape Roman national myth under Augustus.

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8. Founding Myths and Savage Origins

[32:48–37:35]

• The Romulus and Remus story (fratricide), the abduction of the Sabine women, and other violent legends highlight Rome’s self-conception as a tough, even beastly society.
  • “The tale is what it is…early on, the way that they get their women...the men kidnap and rape all the women. And that is apparently where the first Roman children are said to have come from.” (Jeremy, [33:06])

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9. Bloodlines, Royalty, and the Obsession with Lineage

[37:58–40:01]

• Comparison to European royal inbreeding; the biological and political stakes of dynastic continuity.
• Tie-in to Alexander’s own potentially inbred half-brother, and class mobility based on lineage through history and today.
  • “For some reason, to these people, bloodlines really matter…that's where the phrase blue blood comes from...” (Jeremy, [39:04])

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10. Patterns in the Rise and Fall of Civilizations—The “Roman Pattern”

[60:36–63:24], [165:29–166:24]

• Jeremy shares his thesis: Three factors doom civilizations—monetary debasement (currency collapse), unmanaged immigration/loss of social cohesion, and shortsighted, self-dealing political elites.
  • “There’s three things that cause every civilization to collapse: The first is monetary debasement…The other is when immigration and border management start to really become a problem…and the third is when politicians become so shortsighted they just care about what gets them in power right now.” (Jeremy, [60:36])

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11. Roman Monetary Collapse and Modern Parallels

[80:45–89:18]

• Detailed rundown of Roman currency debasement: under Severus, military pay and donatives are doubled, rapidly depleting coin silver content (95% to 5%); inflation hits 15,000% by 284 AD.
  • “In the first century, the coins are 95% pure. By the time you get to the 270s, they are 5% pure…People start refusing the money. They don’t even want the coins.” (Jeremy, [83:41])
• Comparison to U.S. monetary policy: "Quantitative easing" and “printing” money as hidden inflation, invisible to most but devastating for the working class.

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12. Empire & Power: The Role of Local Elites and Provincial Rule

[112:00–116:25]

• As Rome’s core weakens, capitals move, power centers shift, and local elites (senatorial class) follow the emperor rather than the city of Rome; the state becomes more decentralized.

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13. Collapse: From Empire to Kingdoms and the Gradual Nature of the Fall

[161:57–167:30]

• Describes the sack of Rome by Alaric (410 AD), the rise of Germanic kingdoms, and the official last emperor (Romulus Augustulus, deposed 476 AD).
  • “For a regular guy, it wouldn’t have mattered that much. Now, the political classes—there would have been a lot more to look at because...they would look at, well, where is my power coming from…And the final Roman emperor is a guy named Romulus Augustulus. He’s a child and he’s being run by a barbarian commander named Odoacer.” (Jeremy, [161:57–163:04])
• Regular people’s daily hardships—disease, sanitation, taxes—were more pressing than imperial politics.

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14. Modern America: Patterns of Power, Corruption, and Oligarchy

[140:12–147:32], [174:13–177:52]

• "Big club" mentality: persistent oligarchic structures, nepotism, and the influence of concentrated wealth (banking families from Medici and Jakob Fugger to today’s financiers).
• Parallels to democracy’s drift toward oligarchy and demagoguery, as described in Plato’s cycle.
  • “Our economic system is showing the fall of an empire; our political system is showing the fall of a republic. They're kind of moving on two different timelines…It's almost like a superstorm in a lot of ways.” (Jeremy, [165:29])

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15. Key Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On History Rhyming:
  • “History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme in a lot of ways.” — Jeremy, [11:03]
• On Roman Collapse:
  • “A civilization is as strong as the money that it mints. And when you don't have strong money and it's not backed by anything, you can do whatever you want with it.” — Jeremy, [94:23]
• On Modern Corruption:
  • “You can control the money, you don't have to be the king, but you can control the king.” — Jeremy, [145:45]
• On Political Patterns:
  • “Patterns are indicators, they don’t have to be results. Just because part one, two, and three happen, it doesn’t mean part four has to happen.” — Jeremy, [178:23]
• On Hadrian’s Attitude:
  • “He was someone that was typically never in Rome—he was always around the empire…there’s a story about a woman actually walking up to Hadrian, grabbing his toga…as a citizen of Rome, you had the right to address your grievance to the emperor.” — Jeremy, [178:52]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:11]–[02:54] — Personal histories, how meme culture revived interest in Rome
• [05:04]–[08:34] — Divinity models: Augustus, Alexander, and religious-political fusion
• [09:51] — Sacrificing to the emperor: politics and religion fused
• [25:53]–[31:39] — Who tells the story: the victors, the literate, and the motivated
• [33:06]–[37:35] — Rome’s savage founding myths and recurring brutality in human conduct
• [60:36]–[63:24] — The Roman Pattern: Three causes of civilizational collapse
• [83:41]–[89:18] — Hyperinflation in Rome; coin debasement analogies for today
• [140:12]–[147:32] — Modern oligarchy echoing ancient banking dynasties (Fugger, Medici)
• [165:29]–[166:24] — U.S.: Fall of a republic or of an empire? Two cycles at once
• [178:23]–[179:39] — Patterns as indicators, not destiny; Hadrian as people’s emperor

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Notable Quotes (with Attribution)

• Jeremy Ryan Slate [11:03]:
  “Mark Twain is famous for… ‘history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme in a lot of ways.’”
• Jeremy [83:41]:
  “In the first century, the coins are 95% pure. By the time you get to the 270s, they are 5% pure…People start refusing the money. They don’t even want the coins.”
• Jeremy [60:36]:
  “There’s three things that cause every civilization to collapse: The first is monetary debasement…The other is when immigration and border management start to really become a problem…and the third is when politicians become so shortsighted they just care about what gets them in power right now.”
• Julian Dorey [174:13]:
  “I love people. That’s why I do this job…What I never want to see is when…we start othering people...and also equating people with their governments…this is a really critical moment.”
• Jeremy [178:23]:
  “Patterns are indicators, they don’t have to be results. Just because part one, two, and three happen, it doesn’t mean part four has to happen.”
• Jeremy [179:39]:
  “Hadrian was one of my favorites…he was someone who was...concerned for the people living in his territory and was very often trying to see how he could improve things.”

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Flow, Tone, and Takeaways

• The conversation blends historical detail with casual, even irreverent, humor and modern analogies (“blue bloods,” deadlift records, "big club and you ain't in it," etc.).
• Jeremy’s expertise is balanced by his humility; he admits gaps in knowledge, focuses on patterns, and repeatedly notes the limits and biases of historical sources.
• Both host and guest express cautious optimism: though patterns are instructive, destiny is not fixed—cycles can be broken if observed and acted upon.
• The show's refrain: Study the past not for nostalgia or fatalism, but as a toolkit for fixing what is broken today.

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Final Section: Patterns as Warnings, Not Destiny

Patterns of collapse—be they in Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, medieval kingdoms, or modern America—all stem from the same triangle of monetary rot, loss of identity/borders, and political self-dealing. But patterns can serve as warning signals—not inevitabilities—if we’re vigilant, historical, and locally engaged.

“Patterns are indicators, they don’t have to be results…Just because part one, two, and three happen, it doesn’t mean part four has to happen.”
— Jeremy Ryan Slate [178:23]

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Recommended For: Anyone fascinated by the Roman Empire, the mechanics of power, or those seeking context and warning in present-day political and economic tumult. The episode is a masterclass in “applied history”—delivered with both humor and urgency.

Transcript

[A]

I love when I have the Rome. This shit never gets old, bro.

[B]

You know, the wild part about it is, like, I went to school for this, like, 20 years ago almost. And it's like, I didn't do anything with it. And then that stupid meme popped up about men. Think about the Roman Empire. And. And James Altucher reached out to me. He's like, I got an idea. Because I know. Do you know James? I know James pretty well. He's in the. He was in the city at that point in time. He moved out.

[A]

He wrote that legendary piece back in 2020. Like, New York City is dead and it's never coming back. I am glad he was wrong about that.

[B]

But it was interesting. We did an episode on that. It was like. It was kind of wild, but, like, he DM me. He's like, I got an idea. So we ended up doing this episode about Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire and everything. And then next thing you know, two years later, I'm literally still doing podcasts on Rome.

[A]

That's awesome, man. Because my friend told Instone, I know you checked out that podcast before he came in here. That was his third time on the show. I love talking with that guy. He always jokes about it, though. He did, like, seven years of a Ph.D. and there was no job at the end of the tunnel.

[B]

Yeah, I have an MA and it's like, you don't have a PhD so nobody wants you, but you have an m. A. So it's like, good luck getting a job. So it's like, I taught at a private school in Wayne for a couple of years.

[A]

Another. Another Wayner.

[B]

You're from Wayne? I taught at the Paul Catherine. I can't get away from you.

[A]

Fucking yeah. When did you teach at the pole?

[B]

Oh, gosh, 2000. Maybe 11 or 12 or something.

[A]

So Nico's there. Our boy Nico Aronson was there. Oh, shit.

[B]

Really?

[A]

And then my buddy Chad Servino is like my older brother. He's like the most legendary football player in the history of New Jersey. He was the DePaul Catholic.

[B]

Oh, that's wild.

[A]

Back in the day. Yeah.

[B]

I taught sophomores, so it's like they're not scared of. They're not scared of anything anymore because they're not freshmen.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But they're not juniors. They don't care about graduating yet.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

It's like year animal taming. That's pretty much what it is.

[A]

Teaches you a lot about life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, you can think about the Roman empires through the lens of Sophomores. Yeah.

[B]

And especially, like, I'm not a tall guy, so it's like all the athletes are like a foot taller than me, so it was like.

[A]

It was. I see, you know, you're working.

[B]

I was a competitive powerlifter in my 20s.

[A]

That's all right. Good. So, you know, what's going on.

[B]

I was. I was. I'm like 165 now. I was 215 at that point. Deadlifting 6. 35 was my best squat, squatted 705, benched 455.

[A]

No shit. Good for you. I love that.

[B]

And then I kind of realized I didn't fit in clothes anymore and, like, you know, started having kids. So, yeah, at some point you get

[A]

rolled a little big. You roll it back just to be strong.

[B]

Sweatpants everywhere is, like, kind of not fun anymore. I still deadlift 500, so, you know, it's not bad.

[A]

That's fucking awesome, man. Deadlift is my favorite lift. Yeah, it's the best thing ever.

[B]

I don't squat anymore, though. I've had knee surgery like, 15 years ago. Everything feels good, and I want to keep it feeling good.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, you can. You can find other ways to do it. Were they lifting back in Rome, back in the day? What were they doing?

[B]

Wrestling was really the main thing. They were wrestling, and that was really, like, from Greek civilization. Wrestling was a really, really big, important thing. And because military was, like, a way of life. Right. So anything related to military training was kind of a big part, but wrestling was really the main thing.

[A]

That Greek wrestling got a little interesting.

[B]

It got a little interesting, and there's some things you could say about that. You know, there's often tropes about Alexander the Great that his first general, Hephaestion may have been a little bit more than a first general. We don't know. I don't know if you saw the Oliver Stone movie. You see the Oliver Stone movie?

[A]

No. Yeah, Oliver Stone, Alexander.

[B]

I saw that. It's like three hours and whatever. And they're kind of alluding to the fact that he and Hephaestion are like, lovers or something like that.

[A]

But, yeah, if you're watching that Netflix docusignment they put out, it's like it just comes out nowhere at the beginning. Like, suddenly they're just, like, fighting. Next minute you're like, oh, oh, all right. That escalated.

[B]

But it was like, not that I agree with it. It was culturally acceptable at that point in time. It was very. And that's why Romans, the way they looked at Greeks, they Saw Greeks as, like, these effeminate boy lovers. And as you look at kind of the Hellenization of Rome, like, as it becomes more Greek, you start to see more of those things come in. Like the Emperor hadrian in the 120s. First Roman Emperor to have a beard. He had a lover. I think his name was Antoninus, or Antinous was his name. And he was married, but he didn't have any children. And Antinous, he falls in the Nile and drowns is how he dies. And Hadrian actually makes statues to him because he's so in love with this guy.

[A]

Oh, he fell in the Nile. What a way to go.

[B]

He's from Spain.

[A]

So what was his name? Antinous.

[B]

Antinous, I think was his name Antinous?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, you know, law of average.

[B]

I'm definitely not the world's, like, top Rome expert, but I try to remember most names.

[A]

Yeah. So you majored, like, in. Specifically in what? Like, in ancient Rome? History itself.

[B]

So I went to Seton Hall. So I did my undergrad at Seton hall in theology, and then I studied at New College, Oxford in literature. I had the works of Lewis Chesterton, things Tolkien, things like that. Then I came back to Seton hall and did my master's. And so if you're looking at ancient history, it would fall under what's called Classics. And Seton hall got rid of its Classics department for grad school. So I had this idea about the first Roman emperor, Augustus, that he basically used the model of Alexander the Great to convince people he was God. And I found this. It was like a really weird, really obscure thing. And I brought it to the dean of the history school and I'm like, I have this idea. He's like, you can do whatever you want. So they let me import all of the Classics professors into the graduate school. So technically it's a history degree, but it's actually a Classics degree through the History department. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I read this weird, obscure article that after the battle of Actium in 31 BC, when Augustus defeats Mark Antony, he goes and prays in front of the sarcophagus of Alexander. And I'm like, that's really weird. Why did he do that? And if you look after that point in time, Augustus starts using the seal of Alexander to seal all of his letters and documents and things like that. And if you look at his life, he does a lot of things that Alexander the Great did to really build this worship cult of the Roman Emperor, which is going to last like, 500 years. Now, if you look, the worship cult of the Roman Emperor, it's a gradual thing, right? It's not like he starts this idea of divinity, because when Julius Caesar, who's his adopted father, dies, there's a comet that goes across the sky and Caesar's deified. So if your dad, your adopted dad is deified, well, that probably says something about you. So it's a lot of propaganda things he did. And it starts this idea that the Roman Emperor might be something more. So everybody was expected to offer sacrifices to the Emperor on his birthday, but it doesn't become like outright sacrifices to the Emperor as a person until you get later in the empire, by the 250s, under Decius, they're dealing with something called the end of the Roman climate optimum. Rome had perfect weather from 200 BC to 200 AD.

[A]

How would you define perfect weather?

[B]

Like, you could grow grapes and things in areas that you can't currently do that. So they had the ability to grow a lot of food, actually feed this empire. And that's one of the big reasons that Rome rises. So that starts to end around 250. And they're freaking out and they're doing.

[A]

Do you know what made that end?

[B]

Climate cycles. You know, as much as they freak out about climate, it changes over time, right? It's not like the Romans were driving diesel trucks around that were destroying the ozone layer. But basically they're dealing with. There we go. There's a Roman climate optimum thief on it.

[A]

Look at that chart.

[B]

So basically, this is one of the key reasons that Rome rises is because they can feed people really, really well. And that starts changing around the year 200. So by 250, Decius is dealing with this inability to feed people. And they're starting to. They're kind of in the depth of something called the crisis of the third century. And that's where the Empire is starting to break apart. So he's dealing with that. They're also dealing with barbarians coming across the borders, because in the crisis of the third century, emperors are fighting each other for who can be the next emperor. So people are really kind of seeing the shit hit the fan. So when he looks at that, he says, well, we need to do something about that. And whenever things were bad, an emperor thought he had to restore what's called the peace of the gods.

[A]

The peace of the gods.

[B]

The peace of the gods. So they would demand that sacrifices be offered to Roman gods, because though Rome had its pantheon of gods, they would import gods from other places, like you might bring in the God Elagabal from Syria. Or you might bring in, think, gods from Greece you could worship.

[A]

How does that work? I've never actually, I've never had this conversation. So what's this?

[B]

So it's permissive in a lot of ways. Like Rome had its traditional pantheon of gods, but when you look at the pantheon of gods, you could even worship different versions of the gods. Like the king God is Jupiter, but you could worship him as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which is the king of the gods, or Jupiter the Conqueror, or. So there's different ways you could worship a God in addition to just who he was.

[A]

Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the king of the goddess name.

[B]

It's a great name. Right. Next kid, maybe, I don't know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But my wife turns down all my Roman kid names. My youngest is named Persephone, so she did let me name her after the wife.

[A]

You don't have like a fucking Diocletian or something though, right?

[B]

No, and I don't know if I want to name my kid Diocletian. He wasn't that great of a guy, but Eyeball girls too, but. So he basically requires that sacrifices be offered to Roman gods to restore this peace of the gods. And you get one of the biggest Christian persecutions in the empire at this point in time.

[A]

This is around 250.

[B]

This is around 250 now. This is going to happen several times, like it happens under Nero, a bit under Marcus Aurelius, but it wasn't actually done by him. It was done by people in the provinces that were kind of like minor governor government characters. But it is something when times aren't going well, the emperor decides he needs to restore the peace of the gods. And you do that by making everyone offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods. And Christians and Jews weren't going to agree to that. Right. Because they're monotheistic. So to Romans, that's not a religious problem, it's a political problem. Because they didn't see a difference between political life and religious life. They were the same thing for them. So it's almost seen as like an uprising if you're not sacrificing to Roman gods.

[A]

Isn't that so fast?

[B]

It's wild. Because if you can even see that in like some modern societies now, right, like you look at areas of the Middle east, it's. It really does change how a society functions.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, It's. There's some tales about human nature that are as old as time and find a way to repeat themselves in different ways. But when it Comes to the ultimate question of them all, of what it's all about, where it's all from and where we're all going. When it's done, which we all have in common, we're all gonna go. The fact that literally all of history in some way or another has been fought around that question, or at least parallel related to that question.

[B]

Yeah. It can be divisive.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And Mark Twain is famous for. I'm gonna butcher this quote, but it's the idea that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme in a lot of ways.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I think if you look at patterns throughout history, you see similar things, maybe with different groups. You know, you might see something from Pope Alexander VI that you're going to see from a Roman Emperor, or you might see something from a current political leader that you saw from Roman Emperor. But these patterns tend to repeat throughout history. It doesn't mean they're exactly the same. But there is really a rhyme there in a lot of ways.

[A]

Absolutely. It's one. You know, obviously there was the meme, like you said a few years ago, where it's like, how much do you think about the Holy Roman Empire or whatever? But like, it is something I've always thought about in my life because there are so many, you know, parallels, or if you want to use Twain's term, like rhymes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That occur within our civilization, this beautiful experiment that is America. But even before that, you know, we. We just went through way different parts of the timeline there. I love.

[B]

Yeah, sorry, I jumped around a bit.

[A]

I love that in episodes like this. But you mentioned something really important when you were talking about after the battle of Actium and Augustus. You said Augustus, right?

[B]

Augustus. Yeah. He prays before that. And there's a funny trope about that too, that he might have broken the nose off the sarcophagus. That had been. Because Alexander the great dies in 323. So this is like almost 300 years after that. He breaks. Broke the nose off of the sarcophagus.

[A]

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[B]

Apparently something that broke the nose.

[A]

You ever seen that guy in, I think it's in Italy who is like the patron saint of fertility. And all the ladies go up and like pull their panties up and I

[B]

am not aware of this.

[A]

Oh yeah, can you pull this up?

[B]

His name. We can show this Ricky Martin if he was straight, I don't know.

[A]

Yeah, this guy, his sarcophagus, his face is literally like, oh, that's wild way. Because they just sit on his face and gyrate back and forth. To have a kid.

[B]

I have not heard of this. I think there's a, there's a tombstone somewhere like that that is like.

[A]

No, that's what it is.

[B]

That the one. Okay, so the tombstones, like it's all like worn down from everything that's happened to it.

[A]

He has women of every background and creed sitting on his face in the afterlife and you know why him?

[B]

What did he do?

[A]

He was some God of fertility or something like that. The sexiest tomb in the cemetery from the Daily Mail. Can we play this? All right. We don't need volume on it. Thief. So, yeah, See how his mouth and nose are, like, tarred away because they've been sitting on it.

[B]

And he was a journalist.

[A]

Yeah, he. It's something about women. And. And so the women come and they put a flower there and then they sit on his lips and, like, move back and forth.

[B]

That is.

[A]

But there's a crazy image. Can we Google woman sitting on tomb of fertility guy or whatever. There's crazy images and, like, they're hot too. Like you said. Like, you see these. You see these bullets heading on there and you're like, wow.

[B]

You know, it's like, don't get us in trouble there.

[A]

Yeah, the one in the middle on the right. Right there. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

What the heck.

[A]

No, they, like, come there and they do this.

[B]

So Victor Noir is his name.

[A]

Victor Noir, that's right.

[B]

Dudes, there's another one. I've heard of this and actually, like, a tombstone that's like this. And I don't know where it is. And it's like the tombstones, like, all ground down. Like, it's like one of those, like, monument tombs where it's flat.

[A]

Well, his face is ground down. So, yeah.

[B]

Any.

[A]

I'm a little scarred from that. I'm like, you know, anyone says something about the sarcophagus, like, coming off or something like that, what are they doing?

[B]

Well, exactly. You know, it's. But I think the thing that's interesting is Alexander the Great was this very important character in history because Greek history and Roman history a little bit different in the way that they saw divinity, because Greeks thought. Saw this idea that gods walked among men, right? Like. And they had this idea that their people came from. Because the Greeks didn't call themselves Greeks, they called themselves Hellenes. And Helene is the. Is the kind of mythical founder of Greek civilization, like a Lada today, like

[A]

how they say it is derived from.

[B]

And Helene has these sons that Greeks will trace themselves back to. And I think. I don't know if you know who Adrian Goldsworthy is, but he's one of my favorite ancient historians, and he'll talk about. People have this idea of Greece that it's not this united civilization, it's a bunch of civilizations had a similar culture, but they didn't exactly get along. Right? Like, the Spartans weren't going to go hang out with the Athenians or Something like that. And because of the city state structure, they function a lot differently. But the spiritualness of it, they literally saw themselves as divine.

[A]

Real quick though on that point.

[B]

Why did it work?

[A]

If they. If they were so separate and didn't fuck with each other, why did it didn't quite work?

[B]

Right, because they're conquered by the Persians after the battle thermopyl years.

[A]

Right?

[B]

It did. Unless there was a big force coming against them. And the Persians are going to be a big problem for the Greeks, which for the late Romans the Persians are going to start to become a problem again. There was actually the video we did this week is about the emperor Valerian, which actually had a coin with me from if you want to see it.

[A]

Oh yeah, this shit was cool, man.

[B]

I gotta give a shout out to Dean Kinzer from Kinser coins. Cause he supplies these to me. But this is a coin of Emperor Valerian.

[A]

Valerian.

[B]

Valerian.

[A]

Valyrian steel.

[B]

He's beaten by Shapur ii. And Shapur ii actually he's the first Roman emperor to be captured. And Shapur uses him as a footstool for his entire life. And he's possibly flayed towards the end of his life. So the Persians are a problem for not just the Greek civilization, but the Roman civilization. But now what's interesting about that is the Greeks actually, during the time of Alexander the Great, borrow a lot of that. They borrow a lot of things from that area in terms. So when Alexander goes and conquers Persia, he takes over Babylon and a lot of these different things. So he's going to take a lot of the traditions. And one of the ruler in Babylon is seen as divine. So one of the major things that he adopts is this thing called pro skinesis.

[A]

Pro skinesis.

[B]

So pro skinesis is, if you've ever seen somebody like bow before someone else. Proskinesis is where you put your entire body on the ground and he starts making people do this. So he starts adopting some of these Babylonian things. So you have this idea that Greeks already see this divinely inspired where they came from. But now Alexander starts adopting some of these Persian ideas. So now he's really starting to establish the idea of his divinity. And he has a couple weird experiences in his life. So his mother Olympias had traced her lineage to Heracles. So he has this idea. Well, I'm related to the Hercules is what the Greeks would call him. So the Greeks call him Heracles. So he had this idea that he has this divine lineage from Heracles. So that's one part of it. Now when he goes into Egypt, the Egyptian pharaoh is seen as a divine ruler of Egypt. So when he enters the oracle at Zeus Ammon, Amman is a city in Egypt. He's greeted as greeting son of God. So he starts to have this idea, okay, I have this divine lineage. I'm greeted as a son of God. I'm having people bow in front of me. So they're really in the East. There's this divine worship that starts to begin of Alexander. So when a Roman emperor sees that, how do I do that? Right. And so Augustus looks at that and he starts to apply some of these things in his life, including the coinage he makes. Because if people start seeing your face on a coin, it's propaganda, right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

People, the coins they pay the military is the first major purpose of them. So the military is going to see, well, this is the powerful guy.

[A]

They always make them look hard as fuck.

[B]

Oh, they do, right. Well, in the third century too, which is where that coin is from, they tend to put like a crown on them or a diadem to make them look more powerful.

[A]

A diadem?

[B]

Diadem is a Greek name for a crown.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

But it's something that happens a lot more in kind of the late stage Rome because they're actually weaker, so they want to look stronger. So coins are a really interesting piece of propaganda. One of the other things Augustus does is he puts statues of himself across the empire, but around the age of 30, because if you're divine, you don't age. So that's a very interesting point as well. Now another thing he does too is Romans had naturally hated this idea of kings because I guess to kind of back it up and I apologize if I'm jumping around a lot.

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna bring you back at some point, but stay on this.

[B]

Yeah. So Rome is three eras in time in the west, and if you count the east, it's four. Because the Byzantine Empire is technically Roman, but it's a kingdom first, then it's a republic and then it's an empire. So the republic is where Augustus is at the late republic stage. And he's the first emperor. But what he manages to do, because Romans hate the idea of kingship, because the last king is kicked out of Rome by the first consul, Brutus. Now Brutus is the same family that's going to kill Julius Caesar because Brutus and Cassius are the assassins of Caesar. So he knows that to call himself a king wouldn't be a great idea. So what he does is he borrows a bunch of political offices and pulls them to himself. The first is the power of the tribune to propose laws and to veto them. He also pulls in the power of the censor. So the censor counted people, so that's where we get the idea of a census. But also is responsible for managing kind of the moral decay of society. So he could remove people from the Senate. He could declare certain immoral acts illegal. So there was a lot he could do with that. He also pulls in the chief priest of Rome. Who is the. The name has suddenly slipped my mind. But he pulls in the office of the chief priest of Rome.

[A]

How did he become. What did you have to do to become the chief priest in a day like that?

[B]

So in that period in time, the priest offices were actually voted for Pontifex Maximus. So Julius Caesar was the Pontifex Maximus at one point in his life. So he actually ran for election of Pontifex Maximus earlier in his life. He was a religious office called the flamen. And the flamen was something you did for your entire life. You weren't supposed to get married. He wants to get married, which he eventually does, so he doesn't hold that office forever, but the flamen dialis. So he pulls all these powers to himself, meaning Augustus. And what he's managed to do is create this position that didn't exist before. And he doesn't know what to call himself. So he comes up with a brilliant idea. The speaker of the House for the Roman Senate, just to kind of put it in modern terms, so you understand, is called the Princeps senatus, or the prince of the Senate. He calls himself the Princeps civitas, or the prince of the city. And we translate this modernly to mean first citizen. So he's really just the first citizen among other citizens. So I'm just like you, except I have preference. I have preference. And you could die. So it's a very interesting position that he creates. And the name emperor we use actually comes from the chief army general, which was called a imperator, and that's where the word emperor comes from. He pulls that power to himself, too. So he combines all of these offices and all these religious ideas to create what will become the emperor.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

So that was. That was pretty deep, but I'm very deep.

[A]

And we're going to be. There's parts of that that we're going to be coming back to when we go through the timeline here. But the Alexander point. Yeah, because there's so much.

[B]

Yeah, I got Far off of that. So.

[A]

Sorry. No, it's okay. Like. Because I loved what you.

[B]

I'm definitely not an expert in Alexander, by the way, so.

[A]

It's all right.

[B]

I'll tell you what. I know.

[A]

Just, I'm looking at it more on a. On a broad level because clearly, like, you understand his life story and you understand, most importantly, the historical context of the lens through which he was viewed in the Roman Empire, which. This is fascinating.

[B]

So. Bingo. That's actually, like, what my skill is. I look at patterns in history.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I'm not a Rome expert, I'm not a medieval expert. I look at patterns in history and that's really what I'm looking at.

[A]

Separate conversation. But with Alexander, the first question is, he goes through. He obviously is this unbelievable conqueror, conquers everything that's in his sight, including Afghanistan, which is crazy.

[B]

It was called Bactria in that time period.

[A]

Right. Whatever it was at the time.

[B]

And he actually marries a Bactrian girl named Roxana.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That was just like a fake marriage, right?

[B]

No, he marries her and has a child with her name Alexander iv. Because he's Alexander.

[A]

I mean, Hillary and Bill have a child, too, but it's not like.

[B]

It doesn't mean that they were hanging

[A]

out all the time.

[B]

But he did at least have one kid, right?

[A]

Okay. So he lives this quick life, though. He dies 33, and then he's buried in Egypt. And this is why Alexander's so fascinating to me, because to me, he is in some ways symbolically. I mean, this figuratively rather than literally in some cases. But he's like the bridge between Greece, Rome and Egypt.

[B]

Correct. Because Roman emperors very much wanted to emulate Alexander. Like, that was something who wrote his history first. There's a lot to that. So there's. You're going to have. Plutarch is going to write a life of Alexander, but he's a Roman historian, and so it's going to be a little bit later.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you have Plutarch, you have Arrian, that's also more of a Roman historian that's going to be writing his history. There was another Greek historian at that time period. I can't remember the name offhand. So you do have quite a few ancient sources are going to talk about him. You don't have a ton in his time period. He brings Callimachus, who's a writer, with him to actually write about what he's doing while he's there. So you do have some sources from Callimachus that do this.

[A]

Oh, we have those records.

[B]

Callimachus would be the writer he actually it's kind of smart. It's like bringing your publicist with you on campaign. But he brings Callimachus with him who writes about him. I believe they have a falling out later in his life and I don't. I don't know if Callimachus survives all the campaigns but he does initially write about the life of Alexander.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Deep pulled up the most comprehensive surviving

[B]

history Aryan is the best campaigns of

[A]

Alexander was written by the 2nd century 80 Greek historian and Roman senator Arian of Nicomedia in his work Anabasis of Alexander based in detailed military focused account on earlier now lost conveniently lost primary sources primarily those by Alexander's generals P. And Aristobulus.

[B]

So Ptolemy is the. Is the dynasty that takes over Egypt. That's actually the dynasty that that Cleopatra VII the last Ptolemy is from that dynasty.

[A]

I have to be fair with this though because I asked this question of everything in every part of history, regardless of what it is. If we don't have access to some of the primary sources that they're basing it on and things are written later and this is purely speculative. We're just having fun here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is it possible to say or reasonable to speculate that there could be elements of Alexander's story that were maybe slightly exaggerated?

[B]

So this is one of the problems with the classics with ancient history is the best written about time period. And this is mainly because Cicero was alive is the late Roman republics. That's people like Caesar, Pompey, we know a lot about their lives because Cicero loved to hear himself talk and he loved to write. So that's something it's the lack of sources which is one of the problems with the classics. And a lot of ancient historians and late antique historians, they have opinions on what happened and they tend to be very strong about those opinions. And even if you say something that's your opinion, you're wrong. And that's the problem we have with ancient history is it is a lot of looking at these pieces and trying to decide what actually happened.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

But now the thing you have to understand as well and this is a conversation I have a lot is who writes your history? And that's what you have to really think about because literacy rates are very low. You have to think at its high point. You probably have about 10% of the Roman Empire that's actually literate and you're going to have on average 5 to 10% literacy. So the literate people are the ones writing history and they're also the people with political power. So you have to think about there's works that were written during the life of Nero that make Nero look like a great guy. Then Nero dies and everybody's opinion suddenly changes because their life isn't a threat. So you have to consider who's writing your history, who are they trying to please, what is that person trying to accomplish and what does it mean? And I think that's one of the major problems we have in looking at the classics in an ancient history is sure we have some primary sources, but not a lot of them are written in the time periods of the things they're talking about. And they're written in times when they're trying to please somebody. Like Augustus is a great example of that. The Roman historian Livy wrote his famous Roman histories during the life of Augustus. Well, he's going to want things to look good by this new powerful man in Rome. Right. So it's probably swayed by that. Or you have the Aeneid written by Virgil. It's written during the life of Augustus and he actually didn't finish it. He died before he finished writing it. And so in his will he wanted to have it destroyed because it wasn't complete. So Augustus has that nixed. And we still have the Aeneid today because of that. And it ties the Aeneid to the Trojans or the Romans to the Trojans. So there is a really do that. There's a man called Aeneas which is the main character of the Aeneid. And after the end of the Trojan War he carries his father on his back and lands in this area which pre Rome is called Alba Longa. And the kings of Alba Longa are kind of the first kings that are going to become the Roman kingdom. And that's how the Romans tend to tie themselves to Troy in the battle. In the battle of the Trojan War. So it's. And that's a very political move because the thing you have to consider is before this, the Romans didn't really have their own Iliad or their own Odyssey. And this is something that Augustus really wanted. So he's one of the main person responsible for pushing Virgil to actually write the Aeneid because he wants this epic to be a Roman epic.

[A]

And Virgil wants to make him happy because he's the leader.

[B]

And a great example of the opposite is the poet Ovid who writes the Metamorphosis when he's not in Rome. And when he's in Rome he writes erotic poetry. And Augustus Is very conservative. Doesn't like this. He banishes Ovid from Rome. So he really is taking early Roman Empire. You know, I don't know if they called it an empire. They called it a principate because of the princeps running it. But he's semantics. He's establishing kind of what is the moral acceptance or what is the accepted history or what is our accepted literature. So these are things to really consider when you're looking at your history.

[A]

It's fascinating whenever you look throughout history how any rising. Let's just say like gdp, civilization, if you will.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Loves to find something, you know, like a spirit animal that came before them in a way. Right. Spirit animal of a civilization, if you will.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That they're like, we're descendants from that. And then they find.

[B]

The Greeks often saw Heracles as that. Everybody wanted to tie themselves to Heracles.

[A]

Right. They want to tie themselves to something that. That is legendary in a way, and then say, that runs in our veins. That's who we are. So they, they tie themselves to Troy, which is fascinating because I don't know if we've really talked about that before. I want. I do think Tollenstone mentioned that once, but we didn't really get into it. That said, like the origin story of Rome, which is like a fable more than anything. Correct. Is pretty gangster.

[B]

Like, it's, it's pretty. There's. There's a lot to it. And the, the historian Mary Beard, who's like, she's awesome. She's one of the. She's the most famous, I would say, living historian on, On Rome right now. Yeah.

[A]

I'd love to get.

[B]

Did you read her book? SPQR.

[A]

But all her documentaries on YouTube, I watch.

[B]

They're really, really good. There's a little bit of a. A woke bend to some of this stuff, but it is what it is. She's. She's. Her work was really big in my thesis. She was one of the biggest writers about Roman religion. But she talks about the first Roman emperor, Romulus. And if you look at Romulus, there's this kind of trope. Did he give his name to the city or did the city give the name to Romulus because he's this Mr. Rome character. Anything we don't know where it came from? Well, of course Romulus did it. And if you look at these seven mythical kings, there's things that Romans didn't know how to explain. They tied them to different things that Roman kings might have brought in. So it's a really kind of interesting way to talk about your history by having these mythical characters that probably, if they were anything, they were warlords, they weren't like kings, like we would see kings. So he's the least likely of the seven traditional kings to have actually existed.

[A]

But they were suckling from the wolf.

[B]

Romulus and Remus.

[A]

Romulus and Remus. And then Remus eventually dies. What was the story with that again?

[B]

It's coming back. There's like five different versions of it. So it depends on which one you prefer. Romulus and Remus both decide that they're going to found their own cities. And in one of the stories, they both pick Rome. And Romulus kills his brother because he sees six vultures hovering over this area. Had an awesome professor in grad school, Dr. Shawn Lake, and the word for six in Latin is sex. So he saw sex vultures and he goes, that was my band in high school. But when you look at that. So it really could be by fratricide that Rome was actually founded. And then early on, he founds Rome by pulling in whatever criminals or whatever people that were around there to found the city. And they're mostly men. And early on, the way that they get their women. Can I say the r word? On YouTube, you say whatever you want. Okay, so whole market, it's what's called the, the rape of, of the Sabine women. So they, these first Roman men don't have any women, so they invite this neighboring people called the Sabines to dinner. And during dinner, the men kidnap and rape all the women. And that is apparently where the first Roman children are said to have come from. And the Sabine men decide they're going to rescue the women. And the women decide, well, even though these men have just raped them, apparently there are husbands now. And that is one of the major founding stories of where Rome comes from. It comes out of this terrible event of this man that likely killed his brother to found a city.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

There is something so obviously brutal and like, and I don't obviously mean this is a compliment, like beastly.

[B]

You could say that because that throughout history, like it's kind of a less civilized way of being. I guess you could say, of course.

[A]

But the reality is that you're talking about something that happened in 600, 700 BC. But these things still happen today all over the world. Sure. It's a part of war.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't. I say that obviously decrying it. It's, it's horrible. But like it's, people think like the world is so different from like some of the shit you see as like a write off in Game of Thrones that human nature doesn't change when you know, people aren't around and the most brutal things have been going on and you know, a bunch of hyped up dudes with guns who have just conquered some new place decide, hey, I gotta let off some steam.

[B]

If you even look at like, I know this is way off topic But Genghis Khan and a lot of his conquering, they would rape the women in the territories they moved into, because it wasn't about, like, the sexual punishment, it was about ending the line of those people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And making the people, the line continue now with them. So there is historically a lot of real brutalness to conquest.

[A]

The obsession with bloodlines.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Is right in the same vein as well.

[B]

Ask the Plantagenets about that. You know the Plantagenets, the early English kings. The last Plantagenet is Henry vii or not Henry vii, Richard iii. And Henry VII is the first Tudor monarch. So English people really care about their bloodlines.

[A]

Wait, what does that mean? Going from.

[B]

Okay, so Plantagenet to Tudor Henry the. Henry the. I think it's Henry II is the first monarch. He comes from France and he marries Eleanor of Aquitaine and they create this kind of English dynasty that's called the Plantagenets. And a lot of the famous rulers that, you know in English history come out of this Plantagenet line. Like the son of Henry II is Richard the Lionheart and his brother, King John.

[A]

And then they would, like, they would fuck each other, though. Like, they. The cousins would be the ones that they have to.

[B]

That's how it worked. Because they wanted to keep the bloodlines together. Like, for some reason to these people, these bloodlines really matter. It's kind of freaky.

[A]

Yeah, but how.

[B]

Like, that's where the phrase blue blood comes from, because it's like you're intermingling the bloods.

[A]

Oh. But like, a lot of them weren't retarded. So how does that.

[B]

Oh, yes and no. Because you could go back to Alexander the Great now, and he had a brother named Philip Aradeus that had a lot of mental disabilities and was likely from inbreeding and things like that.

[A]

Some of that.

[B]

It does happen.

[A]

It does happen. But you would think it would happen, like, every time.

[B]

Well, yeah. I mean, when you're Should. Yeah.

[A]

Brothers and sisters sometimes, like, you know, that is biologically not the way the universe is designed things to be at all. And some of that still happens tonight, by the way.

[B]

Well, look. Look at royal families, right? They're all related in some way.

[A]

They all tie back together. That's definitely a little scary. But back. Back on the Alexander thing, just because I'm, like, very obsessed with that.

[B]

So being obsessed with Alexander, by the way, is what got me interested in Rome. My library at home. I have an obnoxious number of books on Alexander the Great.

[A]

But you're not an expert on.

[B]

I'M not an expert. I just very, very interested. My favorite movie is actually Oliver Stone's Alexander.

[A]

Get out of here. I'm gonna to call you an expert. You've been Chris.

[B]

Yeah, but I can't remember every battle and everything like that. Like. Like Kyrenia was his first major one and admit that, you know what I mean?

[A]

We'll just skirt around it.

[B]

Well, I hate the idea of being like the dubbed anointed person because then history people, if you're wrong, they tend to like destroy your heart and soul.

[A]

In. In all fairness, I do appreciate the humbleness as well.

[B]

Because I don't know everything.

[A]

There are people who. You are 100% right.

[B]

There are people who, and I'm willing to be wrong.

[A]

Talk out of. That's important. There are people who just totally talk out of their ass on Stu. Grab a thread and then go four threads past that when the first thread was wrong and they get caught out.

[B]

But I think that's really important in history. I do think it is. Because to think you know everything about everything, you're not open to what could have happened. Right. Because to think that it goes back to our conversation about sources. Well, if your source says this and mine says this, well, who's to say who's wrong?

[A]

Yeah, and that's the thing, like I'm all about like present the evidence. And the reality is we're not always going to be able to know the answer. As long as people are coming with something hard core that they can point to and say this, you know, or because of the context here, you could surmise this, then that's fine, you know, let people out there decide what they think it was. I wish we could know everything about history. Maybe AI will figure it out for us, but I doubt it. Yeah, exactly. AI is going to start telling us like, no, it's actually all wrong and then control us.

[B]

Who is Julian Do? He doesn't exist anymore.

[A]

Yeah, he's not here. He was never here. That was obviously a joke, people. I hope that doesn't happen. But it would be cool if. If like AI could help in re. In recharting like some physical things to. To understand what stuff might have looked like.

[B]

I use it for script writing. Like I'll outline like, because I do long monologues. I have two YouTube channels. Hidden forces in History. We look at the forces behind history and the Roman pattern where we look at the civilizational collapse model. But I often will outline 40 minute episodes and then I'll use GPT to help me kind of make them a little bit more narrative driven. Because I'm a history writer, we're not that interesting. So you do have to kind of lean on tools when you can.

[A]

You got to punch it up. What's your name? Your GPT?

[B]

I didn't give it. You can give it a name.

[A]

I, I haven't named it, I just

[B]

call it Chat GPT. That's all I call it.

[A]

What do you name yours, Steve? Amelia?

[B]

Emilio.

[A]

Emilio, that's right.

[B]

It's a good name.

[A]

Yeah. Emilio, spit out this 40 minute script for me. I need Alexander looking like a hero. Exactly, that's it.

[B]

Well now I usually give it like a full outline. Like I want this, this and this. These are the dates these things happen. Just make it, you know, more narrative driven. Don't change it and don't change it because it will make it up. I remember like the first time I had tried to use it, I was doing like more political stuff and I wrote a script about, I ended up not using it, but I wrote a script about that train disaster in Ohio.

[A]

And was that the Palestine.

[B]

Palestine, Ohio. That was when it had data that like, that was a couple years old, didn't have new data yet. So it like made up some train crash in like Kentucky and like, and I was like, none of those things actually happened. So anyway, yeah, you gotta be careful of that.

[A]

But you know, once Alexander dies and then we laid out like some of the people that wrote about him and wrote about him later, you were talking about the obsession like Augustus had with Alexander. But even right after he died, what was the, the Greek empire as we know it, Ancient Greece, like it wasn't that much longer before it kind of fell. No.

[B]

Well, some of that's from Alexander and from his father. His father Philip II basically conquers Greece because Greece is all these city states, they're not a united. Like when people think of Greece, it's not like modern Greece where all these people live here and they're all Greek. You had Spartans, you had Thebans, you had people from Athens. And they all sought their city state because these cities were states. So they were Greek by ancestry and Greek by heritage. But they didn't work together in a lot of ways. So it does make them very open to conquest. So Philip ii, who's Alexander's father, who had one eye. So one of my favorite teachers used to call him the one eyed cycloptic leader of Macedonia. He conquers. And the Macedonians were looked at kind of as like these like backwater Greeks. They weren't seen as, like, high Greeks, and he conquers Greece. So Alexander basically just inherits his father's kingdom when his father is assassinated by a guy named. I think his name is Pausanias, and he basically inherits this kingdom. And Philip had all these other sons that somehow it just falls to Alexander because he's the one that's able to get the wheels of power quick enough. And so he gets this society and then he's able to use those wheels of power to basically conquer Persia. So if you look at it quick, too, pretty quick. Like, his first battle is Kyrenean338, where he actually fights for his father. It's not long after that that he wins the battle of Granicus, which is his first battle in Persia. And within a few years he's conquered Babylon and he spends the rest of his life kind of going through Asia.

[A]

Yeah. Now he. Alexander obviously was one of the preeminent military strategists to ever live.

[B]

Yeah. Napoleon was reading a lot of the works of Alexander and Caesar.

[A]

Right. So that's what I'm saying. Like, these guys still inspire military people in more modern history and even today, like. Like people study them. But I'd asked Tollenstone something similar, but I. I'd like to pose it by anyone that looks at this era like, what. What was. Was it just like childhood training? What made him so brilliant as a military strategist right off the bat?

[B]

That's really hard to say. Right. Because he has Aristotle before. He's kind of like Aristotle, if that makes sense. He's not really famous yet. He's his teacher when he's a child, so he's learning a lot of that philosophy. He would have been doing sports, like wrestling, which is kind of like, for them, it was a very important way of life. But he also, if Philip II wasn't his father, he might not have become the man he became. Because Philip II changes a lot of how the Macedonian army fights.

[A]

He.

[B]

So pikes are those giant kind of like stabbing things they use when they're marching. So Philip takes the pike and he makes it 19ft long, and it's called a sarissa. So now Macedonians can fight guys from a lot further away. And he also, as a child, he's a captive. Well, not as a child, but as a young man, he's a captive in Thebes. And Thebes had this army called the Sacred Band. And the Sacred Band was. I think it was either 100 or 150 gay lovers. And they would fight Much harder because they were fighting for the man next to them, because they were literally fighting for the man next to them. So he saw military formations very differently than a lot of Greeks were because the Thebans were one of the most powerful militaries in that period of time. So had Alexander's father not been Philip, he might not have become what he became. He really stepped into this perfect situation. Now, if he was an idiot, if he wasn't brave, he wouldn't have been Alexander the Great. But he does step into kind of the perfect situation. And you have to look at Augustus the same way. Like, Augustus basically steps into this power vacuum and he's the last guy standing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So there is a lot going back to that. It's kind of this idea of opportunity meets the right person.

[A]

Right, so. Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite heavy infantry select soldier consisting of 150 pairs of mate couples, 300 men total, organized by age and formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BC. It was first organized under Commander Gorgiadis in 378 BC and later Pelopida Pelopidus, and played a crucial, crucial role in the Battle of Luktra. It was annihilated by Philip II of Macedon and young Alexander the Great in the Battle of Sharonia, Kyrenia and 338 BC. Wow.

[B]

But you have to think about, like, he was a captive as a young man in Thebes, so he knew how this army worked. He'd seen how they work. Now, that doesn't mean his army is going to be male pairs like that. But he's, he's seen a different functioning army, so he's going to use cavalry a lot more. He's going to use. One of the big things that they did is they would soften the middle of their army and come in from the flanks. That's one of the things that Alexander is going to do as well. So there's a lot of brilliant military things he inherits from his father, but at the same time, you have to be brave to make a lot of those moves. So the guy's got balls.

[A]

That's right. What do you think drove him? Was it just pure I want to be a conqueror or.

[B]

I think it was glory. It really was glory. Because there's this, this tale about Alexander. And once again, Adrian Goldsworthy says, we don't know if this is true or not, but it's kind of fun if it is, that he slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, he really saw Achilles as this. He wanted to be Achilles or he wanted to be Heracles. So for him, it really was this conqueror culture wanting to be that guy. So I think that is a very big part of what drove him, is he just wanted glory.

[A]

Well, we can also. You talk about like the story and it being written down and, you know, what could have been changed or what primary sources we'll never know about that could have said something different.

[B]

But we even look at how Plutarch wrote. Like Plutarch, the reason he wrote was to teach a lesson. So he's going to tell the story in a certain way to teach you a lesson about that person. Right. So that's also which could be changing. Right.

[A]

Fit the lesson.

[B]

Exactly. That goes.

[A]

But there is, you know, we do have archeological evidence of a lot of the places he was and ties that show like, hey, yeah, civilization took over here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like they built this shit right here. We can date it back to this time period, which would line up with shortly after Alexander came through here. Right?

[B]

Yeah. No, it's. Those things do exist. And even we have modern evidence of Troy existing. So there. There is a lot of these different things. And obviously that's way before because it's an archaic age before Alexander, but there is a lot of evidence of these things existing.

[A]

Where. Where did they say Troy is again? We just talked about that. I can't.

[B]

It's in Turkey, so it would have called itself Ilium. I think it's like on the coast. You'd have to look that up. I don't know offhand, but they have modern evidence that it likely existed.

[A]

When did they come across that?

[B]

Like last 20, the last couple years. Like, because they originally had thought they found it and then I think modernly they had there was more evidence.

[A]

Troy was an ancient city located in northwestern Anatolia in modern day Turkey, specifically on Hiselark Hill, near the town of Jack Cale. Situated near the Darnellis Strait and the Scamander river, it held a strategic position for trade between Europe and Asia. The site is famously recognized as sighting for the Trojan War. And then. Can we just see the map one more time? Deep. I'd forgotten where this was, but yeah, nice piece of real estate right there. It's a good spot.

[B]

And right above that, that those two areas coming together is called the Hella Spot. So that was like really important to the great.

[A]

And then that can connect you over to Asia. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. You excited for the new Nolan movie?

[B]

I don't Know.

[A]

You don't know.

[B]

We'll see.

[A]

I feel like he's gonna body it.

[B]

No. Well. So here's the thing. There's part of me that loves a movie that's like, very well theatrically done. Right. So it's like, you look at. I know you're a big Gladiator guy. Not really historically accurate.

[A]

Don't do that.

[B]

I won't do that. But an incredibly good movie. Right. Because of the way it's put together. It's very historic. So a lot of the armor and things that they use in the movie, like on X, I have a. Like a chat thread of all the historians that I'm friends with, and they're all going back and forth about, oh, the armor is not the right armor and things like that. But it looks like it still could be a cool movie. So I think it's okay to be a cool movie but be wrong. Like, you know what I mean? You can look at it for what

[A]

it is in this household. It's right.

[B]

So Maximus is real?

[A]

100%. 100%. He's a composite character of a few people. His armor was perfect.

[B]

Perfect.

[A]

Someone bought his armor and owns it today. It's like a fucking tech guy. Is it Ohanian?

[B]

Yeah, but people do things like that.

[A]

I think Serena Williams husband. I might have made that up.

[B]

The Emperor Caracalla supposedly found the breastplate of Alexander the Great and wanted to wear it in marches.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Thief's pulling it up. Was that it, though? Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think.

[B]

Think $96,000.

[A]

Yeah. Can you scroll down? Was it Ohanian?

[B]

That did.

[A]

Does it say there? Can you type in Ohanian gladiator armor?

[B]

Sotheby's.

[A]

I feel like it was him who bought it. The Reddit guy. Serena Williams husband.

[B]

Oh, she's married to the Reddit guy.

[A]

Yeah. Am I right? Yes, I am right. Yes, I own the helmet. It was the helmet. It's from Alexis Ohanian. Yes, I own the helmet from Gladiator. And no, it doesn't fit on my giant head. But that's what kids are for. Must have a big head because Russell Crowe's got a dome. Russell Crowe's got a dome and it doesn't fit on his head. That's crazy.

[B]

There was a picture of him recently in front of the Coliseum, and it was like taking my kids to work day. Russell Crow.

[A]

Yeah, he. I. Russell Crowe is one of my favorites of all time.

[B]

But I love Gerard Butler fan because he was so good in 300 he,

[A]

he, he nailed it, that role, man.

[B]

And that was really, from a comic book perspective, but it was so good. Was such a good.

[A]

Yeah, but that's what it goes back to.

[B]

It doesn't have to be right if the theatrical element is really good.

[A]

They, they basically were telling you in the first frame of that movie that they were suspending disbelief.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like this was gonna be a little different.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But like, the idea is. Yeah. You know, there's some guys that held this area.

[B]

But the reason I think something like that is important is once again, doesn't have to be right, but it gets people to be interested.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And that's why I look at what I do. Am I right about everything? No, but if I get people to be interested and look for themselves, well, I think that's really important because we forget these things. Right.

[A]

Let me not censor you. Let's. Let's do this conversation, painful as it might be. I'm not talking about Gladiator 2. I'm talking about Gladiator here. Yeah, that's what you're bringing up. But what. Outside of maybe some of the armor and the time period of it, what is so wrong? And the fact that they invented a character.

[B]

Well, how Cometus dies, Commodus is like. Because he dies in the arena in that movie. Is that correct?

[A]

Yeah. That's a nice ending.

[B]

So how he actually dies is he's very hated in Rome. And his death kicks off what's called the Year of the Five Emperors, that the last guy coming out is going to be a North African named Septimius Severus. And they try to assassinate Commodus many times. And it gets to the end where finally his concubine tries to poison him. And he's so drunk when they give him the poison, the poison's in wine, that he actually throws up the poison.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And then they get to the point at the end that a wrestler, so not quite a gladiator, but a wrestler, strangles him to death in the bath. So.

[A]

All right, that's not that far off.

[B]

It's not that far off, but, you know, it's not exactly a. Now, he did like to fight as a gladiator, but how he fought as a gladiator because once again, he's afraid of hurting himself is he would kill emperor or kill emperors, kill animals from a platform. They would stand up a platform and he'd stab and shoot those animals from

[A]

a platform, like with a crossbow and stuff.

[B]

Well, not a crossbow.

[A]

When he was shooting him bow or

[B]

A spear or something like that, he would kill them from a platform because he once again wanted to be in danger. You know, I'm still an emperor. Yeah, but he did want to fight in the arena. That was important.

[A]

So he did really go down in the arena.

[B]

And he was. Well, he didn't go down in the arena. He went down in his home. You know, gladiator gets him in the bath and strangles him to death.

[A]

Oh, no, I know, but I'm saying when he was doing the Gladiator, he did do that.

[B]

Yeah, right, he did do that. And he was another guy that was obsessed with Heracles, because once.

[A]

Commodus.

[B]

Commodus. And I think that's an important distinction because I said the Romans have a God named Hercules. The Greek version is Heracles. But as kind of the Roman Empire becomes more Greek, which is called the Hellenization, they start to really get interested in the God Heracles. And Heracles, one of the big symbolisms of him was the lion head. So if you've seen the imagery of Alexander wearing the lion head helmet, it's because he was positioning himself as Heracles. Commodus often fought with a lion head helmet because he wanted to be Heracles. And if you look at a lot of his imagery on coins and things like that, they would have a lion head on Commodus because they wanted to see. He wanted to see himself more as this Heracles figure.

[A]

But you said that, you said in there that they started viewing themselves as more and more Greek. What, what, when did that specifically start to happen? That Hellenization period?

[B]

It's around the, the mid first to late or early second century, you're going to start to have more Greek culture coming into Rome because after. So 31 BC is the battle of Actium, not far, not long after that, you're going to have the last Hellenistic kingdom. So I guess let's back it up. The successors of Alexander are called the Diadocoi. Those are his generals that basically go out and conquer places, like you have Antigonus, you have Ptolemy, you have Seleucis. And they create these different empires.

[A]

So it goes from a monopoly to an oligopoly.

[B]

Right. Because Alexander, they say, well, who do you leave your empire to? And he says, to the strongest. Well, they're like, oh, I'm the strongest. They used to say that. So they create these empires among themselves throughout time. As Rome starts to rise in the late Republic, it's becoming more empire in a way of conquer like not quite a political empire yet, but it's an empire in the way it's conquering people. It starts to conquer these Greek territories. And when it's bringing conquering those Greek territories, it's bringing in culture. So you're going to have, after the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty In the late first century B.C. a lot of that culture starts to become a part of Roman culture. So you're going to have, you know, more beards, more of these other things that Greeks would have had. Because Romans would be clean shaven. They wouldn't have beards.

[A]

They didn't have beards before.

[B]

The first one, we mentioned this earlier. The first one with the beard was Hadrian.

[A]

Right. Well, that was the leader. But like the Romans in general would

[B]

have been culturally, they didn't have beards, they were clean shaven.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now that what's also fascinating about that is when you think of conquering throughout history, the conqueror imposes the will of their culture. In many cases, not all cases, but in many cases upon the conquered, they

[B]

say, but Romans borrowed things they saw as useful.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

They would borrow things they saw as useful.

[A]

They like, respected. They'd be like, ah, we just conquered you, but we really fuck with that. So we're going to do that now.

[B]

If you pay your taxes, if you give us soldiers, you can continue to be how you are and we might borrow some things for you. Yeah, they would borrow gods, they would borrow culture. Like in the mid second century, there's this teenage emperor named Elagabalus and he's the priest of a cult called Elagabal which is in Syria. They worshiped a conical black rock and he brings that rock into Rome and makes everyone come to a wedding where that rock gets married to a Roman statue. So there are a lot of these things that get pulled in through the places that Rome conquered.

[A]

Does that not eventually create a lack of identity though?

[B]

When you're pulling, eventually it's going to become part of the problem. There's a, if you can find it at some point. There was a really good Twitter thread between Elon and a guy named Roman Helmet Guy on X and they were talking about like the idea Roman helmet guy is great if you ever follow him. But they were talking about this idea of less Roman ness. And if you look at it does start to become more of a problem because it's less of a cohesive culture. Right. So the thing that makes Rome rich is eventually going to be part of what starts to pull it apart. Is this idea of becoming less Roman.

[A]

All right, let's talk about that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I think it's a. I think this is an amazing moment in history to learn a lesson from something like this as well. Because to me, not a historian, but, you know, it strikes me as a fine example of where equilibrium is ignored. And you go from 0 to 100. Right. 0 being we are only doing these five sets of things because that's what we do, and everybody else. And we're not going to appreciate anything, no matter how good or beautiful it may be. 100 being, just let everything in, whether it's good or bad or whatever, just take it all. You want to be in the middle there, where it's like Bruce Lee said, you take the good, you discard the things. You're like, yeah, that's not as good. So this is a slow burn, like

[B]

you said, a very slow burn.

[A]

Would you say this something like this in Rome occurred over a 3,400ish year period?

[B]

I would say about that much. And this gets back to kind of my core thesis, which is what I call the Roman pattern, that there's three things that cause every civilization to collapse. The first is monetary debasement. Romans were at 15,000% inflation by 284 AD. 15,000%. Everybody looks at me like that when I say that. The other is the immigration and border management starts to really become a problem where you start to lose your identity. And the third is where politicians start becoming so shortsighted, they just care about what gets in power. Right now, those three things are what drives you kind of into a civilizational collapse. So this immigration issue is a real part of the problem. And the thing I see with that pattern is you can survive one, but you can't survive all three. And if you had to look at it this way, as a hierarchy, money is the biggest part of it, because if you have strong currency, you can deal with the other two. If you don't have a strong currency and people identify with a country because of the currency, when you don't have that, that's where your collapse starts to happen. Yeah.

[A]

And you know what? There was when, when I worked on Wall street before this, and I'd be talking with people about, you know, kind of how they get their priorities in life in order. I hated this. I hated that this was true, but it was true. I would. I would ask people to question, you know, what are the two or three most important things to you in your life? And it would always be, you know, family, health and like freedom or something like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But specifically with the family and health, those would almost always be the first two. And I'd say it is very sad for me to say this, but it is just reality and that's what I have to live in in this job. Money pays for both.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, and so when we hear this phrase now when we're talking about voting, that's just very common sense, if you will, when people are presented with a decision of A or B or whatever, people vote where their wallets are.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

At that time. And then everything.

[B]

Well, gas prices go down before an election, all those things.

[A]

Socioculturally, everything is downstream from that, including immigration or something like that.

[B]

Because you can survive other things if you have a strong currency. Yeah. And I think Thomas Massie wears this pin that shows the national debt going up in real time. And it's. To me, that's the thing I worry about the most right now is how messed up our money is. Because when I look at civilizations and Ray Dalio was just talking about this on Tucker, if people don't handle their currency, you don't have much of a future. Because then the people that are there like, like talking about immigration, if people are in a place for the things they can get from that place and that place can no longer give them those things, well, what's the reason to identify as that culture? It comes back to money. It really is kind of the senior to the others, the other things.

[A]

Well, money, the problem with the policy is that the people making it are people who are here for a finite term, just like, you know, well, we don't know exactly what it is, but they're here and they're going to die one day. They're going to be out of power one day and they're going to hold on to power for as much as they want. And so the story over time of human nature is that they kick the can down the road to the next guy because that's. That's the person that'll have to worry about it or whatever. And you can look at something like FDR takes over with in the Great Depression and is handed this worst shit sandwich of all time. And he's doing whatever he can to try to fix the problem and in doing so, invent some things that eventually weren't going to be able to pay for themselves.

[B]

FDR and deal with it. FDR and Wilson are two key moments in American history, of course, and they're not. They're not talked about enough. Yeah. Because there was an article from Time magazine that came out, I think like three or four years ago. And it was like, is Donald Trump Julius Caesar? And it's kind of like to me, that's comical. Like, I can't see Trump leading an army with the big hair and everything like that. But like, people like to compare current politicians to people that are very polarizing in history for, I guess, whatever effect it's going to create. But if you really want to look at the cliques, but if you want to look at it, you could see Wilson really more as your Caesar character. And you could see a. You could see FDR more like your Augustus character because.

[A]

All right, let's.

[B]

Wilson really does. And once again, they're not direct foils to each other, but it's the idea of Wilson ends the previous thing and FDR creates the new thing. Right. Like, because 1913 is a very pivotal year in American history. This is, this is something I talk about a lot. There's three things that happened that year. The income tax, the Federal Reserve, which passes over the Christmas break when nobody's around to vote for it, and is created on Jekyll island by the Warburgs, the Rothschilds and whoever else you want to throw in there. I just did a video on this. And so they love news cycles. Oh, they love news cycles. Yeah. So that there's that and there's also the one people don't talk about enough, and that's the 17th amendment. So the 17th amendment made it so that state legislatures no longer selected senators because the reason that our or the House and the Senate are set up the way they are is the House was to represent the people and the Senate was to represent the will of the states.

[A]

Oh, no one talks about this.

[B]

Nobody talks about this right now. If you guys remember during COVID when they were going on, on about a lot of the mandates and things like that, for a Congress person in a joint session to get to speak, they have to have a senator speak for them. So the Senator speaks first and then the Congressperson lets. This is if they have a joint session. So if the House and the Senate are voted for the exact same way, it's all popular vote now. And if you remember during that time period, state legislatures weren't happy with a lot of mandates and things happening, but the Senate is voted for by popular vote. So the states actually lose their voice and it all becomes basically no longer Republic, but just straight democracy. And that was one of the really important key things to our system that changed after the 17th amendment.

[A]

So go Back to that last part and just qualify that about the states losing their voice. Yeah, extrapolate on that.

[B]

So state legislatures would basically select senators. Now the thing I will say is they were trying to handle a problem because of corruption. The governor might say, hey, my brother in law, great senator, he could get the job. So they are trying to handle that is a problem. Right. People shouldn't just be thrown in there because it's nepotism or they know somebody. But what would happen is now if people are selecting, meaning the people are selecting the Senate and now the state legislatures aren't. Well, now the state legislatures don't have a combined group that represents them. So you just have the House and the Senate that do pretty much the same thing functionally and how they're put together. So you have the states start to lose a voice and it just becomes by popular vote. So then your highest population centers start to push the country in the direction it's going. So that's why California has so much push and New York State has so much push because they have the highest population centers. And that's why our government was set up the way it was, was so that these small states like Delaware or something like that would still have as much of a voice as a state like California because they're a member of the country.

[A]

Okay, this is really fascinating, but it's

[B]

not talked about enough.

[A]

So effectively, ironically, the people, we, the people wouldn't have had the power to decide who the senators were before the 17th, but the people we elected at the lower level.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Do and can therefore then decide that. But the irony of taking the power out of the hands of the people in the back room and putting in the. In the hands of the people on Main street is that the populism can take over for the worse sometimes. You're saying.

[B]

Yeah, because democracies can. And once again, I'm not saying a democracy is a bad thing, but they can become tyrannical in a lot of ways. Right. Because you promise people a bunch of things, you're probably not going to do any of them. And that's how people get elected. Right. They get elected by whatever passionate things are coming out at that time. Yeah.

[A]

Release the Epstein files, right? Oh, yeah, that's right.

[B]

We're not gonna do that. Yeah, we're not gonna do that. There might be people in there. Like, was it. The Treasury Secretary was apparently in there. Howard Lutnick.

[A]

So Howard Lutnick, Larry Summers, Leslie Wexner. I mean, it's a who's who.

[B]

But that basically becomes the problem now is the purpose of the Senate was for states to have equal voice. Delaware or New Jersey would have just as much voice as California or New York. That isn't really the case now. It's population centers. And that's why Tim Pool has talked about this a lot with immigration. The thing that people aren't considering is under Obama, the law changed by you could. As if you're illegal and you're here and you're entering the Senate or the census, you could get deported. Like there were issues around that. That law changes under Obama where now the census can be filled out by anyone. The Congress representation is picked by the number of people in that state, not the citizens, just the number of people. So you have states like California that have maybe five or seven seats. They shouldn't have because the number of people that are in the state doesn't mean they're citizens.

[A]

Ironically, the same guy who was the deporter in chief.

[B]

Right. So what starts to happen is this idea of democracy can start to become tyrannical in a lot of ways if we just start kind of, I guess, setting the game up in a way that it's going to benefit you. You get what I'm saying?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So that's what was important about the idea of having a republic is you would vote for people that represent you and the state voted for people that would represent them because states should have. They have interstate commerce, they have things that matter to them that the people might not care about or might not know as much about and it doesn't matter as much. Do you know what I'm saying?

[A]

Yes, I do.

[B]

So it ends up saying that the state doesn't have a voice like, like people might not care about trade. But I can tell you right now, you know, a small state, like, you know, Illinois or another state like Idaho or something like that, Idaho is a much smaller population state would care. But for sure it's going to be different based on the people that live there or the representatives that are shoved in because of population size changes.

[A]

All right, before I ask, before I have some questions on this, Steve, can you pull up.

[B]

Oh, Roman helmet guy is the man.

[A]

Just so that we're operating on the wavelength here, can you pull up definition of republic? Let's literally read what the definition is.

[B]

And I think it's Plato that has

[A]

kind of like the definition of democracy.

[B]

And if you can find it after this, Plato has kind of a life cycle of how the, the life cycle of government and how like one degrades into another.

[A]

All right, so we'll. We'll go to that third. But let's start with republic.

[B]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

A state in which supreme power. Power is held by the people and their elected representatives and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch. That's a republic. Okay, now let's do democracy, a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. Go back to republic real quick.

[B]

There's not a ton of differentiation between them.

[A]

Yes. What it feels like the way they write it is tomato, tomato.

[B]

It's a very small differentiation, but it matches matters for representation, but effectively at the purest form.

[A]

America being a blend of the two. Correct.

[B]

And that's what our founding fathers are looking for. We're supposed to be not a straight

[A]

republic or not a straight democracy.

[B]

We're not a democracy. But in some ways they looked at. Because if you look at why an executive or the president was chosen, well, when the time had happened, he had to be able to speak to monarchs. So it was important to have somebody that was elevated above others. So we have kind of parts of each system. We have parts of monarchy, parts of republicanism, and parts of democracy. They kind of took the best parts of each.

[A]

But the presidency is elected and it's not. It's not headlines. And eventually it had term limits. So it's.

[B]

Unless you're a Bush then, Right?

[A]

Unless you're right. All right, so now let's do Plato government. What you pulled up? So Plato's government life site. Can you go back? Plato's government life cycle, detailed in the Republic, is a theory of political degeneration where states, like human souls, decline from the from their ideal to the worst form, moving through five stages. Aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. So the cycle of degeneration. Aristocracy, rule of the best. The ideal state governed by the ideal state, governed by philosopher kings, guided by reason, wisdom and justice. Justice Democracy. Rule of honor degenerates when education fails and warrior rulers auxiliaries prioritize ambition, competition and military honor over wisdom. 3. Oligarchy. Rule of the few arises as rulers become obsessed with wealth, creating a divide where the rich rule and the poor are oppressed. That sounds familiar. 4. Democracy. Rule of the people. The poor overthrow the wealthy. Oligarchy bringing excessive freedom and equality, leading to chaos and lack of discipline. 5. Tyranny. Rule of the despot emerges from the chaos of democracy when the leader, promising to protect the people, seizes absolute power, becoming a tyrant who rules with Fear. Okay, this is really interesting. There's two, there's two things.

[B]

Have you ever had anybody bring up Plato's life cycle?

[A]

No, this is great. There's two thoughts I have here right away. Number five is a perfect example of what follows three and four with the French Revolution. Yes, most perfect example that I can think off the top of my head. But there's plenty.

[B]

Plato's writing way before that.

[A]

Number three. We are at number in between number three and four.

[B]

I would agree with that because.

[A]

And that's, that's the thing, because if

[B]

you look at Congress people and the amount of wealth they get in Congress and the amount of I don't even care Epstein fileness they get in Congress

[A]

and things like that, the con, the congressional.

[B]

They're never going to tell you because they'd have to put out their own dirty laundry.

[A]

Nancy Pelosi's worth the $120 million. It's horrible. She should be.

[B]

She's a better investor than Warren Buffett.

[A]

She's a better. It's brilliant. Whatever. Nancy Pelosi is worth the ashtray money of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, all these big people. We have created a system. It doesn't mean every person in, in. In there is bad, but where there is a lot of rot where the people who actually decide things are where the money talks and they have an inordinate amount of wealth. Correct. I'm not a socialist. I'm not saying they should therefore be talk so much. 99%. No, that's not how it works. But we have seen people who have been, who have in some cases perfectly earned without generational wealth, self made, incredible wealth through doing great things, who cross over this Rubicon and become this other thing. And there is no greater example of where the evil of that comes in than what we are seeing in these Epstein files. These people who, whether they're from new money or old money, decide we're better than everyone else. We are above you. It's not just the fact that my bank account says xxxxx, it's also the fact that therefore I am genetically a specimen that you're not. And I can only talk with people who are in this type of crew. And by the way, you know, if they're out here like kids and stuff like that, don't worry, we'll ignore that.

[B]

Yeah, well, that and that. And that's the problem, right, is if you look at it, we are kind of far along in this life cycle. And I think you have to wonder Are we at a point where we can come back from that or can we come back from that? And I think part of the issue is you have to fix currency, but the other part is like. And this isn't saying. I'm like, we have to be the most upstanding moral society, but we need some sort of moral reform. It's a little bit ridiculous.

[A]

What do you mean, moral reform?

[B]

Well, you shouldn't have pedophiles and political positions and things like that. Oh, you mean like the most base level. I mean the most base level. Right. Like if we have classified files that are protecting people. And the thing you have to consider is they're gonna vote based on how good it is for them. Right. And that wasn't exactly this, but if you look at late stage Rome, they're gonna go with whoever's gonna give them the most power, whoever's not gonna get them in trouble or who's not gonna get them killed.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And the will of the people is gone when that happens. And that's what you have to really consider because they're looking at what's best for them and what can keep this game going.

[A]

So this. This is where at moments like this, the one we're sitting in right now with the disgusting stuff we're seeing come out every day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With this Epstein story in particularly, and the social, cultural, and geopolitical implications of it, it gets deeper and deeper the more we see. Obviously, a term like nuance on something like that doesn't exist. There's no nuance about some fucking pedophile elite being protected. The aftermath and the results of what we as a society do to fix a problem. Like, this is where the word nuance comes in. And this is the part that, you know, I really try to pull people back to, like, hey, let's not fight each other. Let's. Let's coalesce, regardless of what our political beliefs are around one really common thing, which is like, fuck these people. Yeah, right. What you don't want to happen is if, let's say we move this fight from horizontal. We're all the left and right. I watch all these people fight each other all the time. Now the side go vertical and realize, wait a minute, this is a very small few who are just trying to decide our lives and playing with us. Like chess pieces on a board.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like pawns on a board. And fuck those people. Let's get them out. Great. I'm with that, like, by all means.

[B]

But then you get to your last thing There you have to bring a tyrant.

[A]

That's what I'm talking about. It's fun to say burn it all down. Well, like get rid of everything. Just hear me out on this point because I want you to respond to this. Okay, it's fun to say that. It's fun to say get rid of every institution, it's all rotted to the core. Get rid of every three letter agency, get rid of every piece of government, make every single person resign. You have to think about being tactical about, let's get rid of the individuals and the groups within some of these different places that are clearly rotten to the core, while also maintaining some semblance of a body that exists of what it was supposed to be when this thing was built so that we can rebuild it for the better, instead of having a public square where, you know, the French say, you know what? We're just going to kill everyone no matter what. No trial. You see what I'm saying?

[B]

No, it's very reactionary.

[A]

Yes. There has to be a. All right, let's get this right now.

[B]

Well, it's very reactionary, right. And if you, if you look at. It's one of the major problems that Rome had because Rome didn't have a written constitution. They had what was called the most myorum, or the ways of the ancestors.

[A]

Most myorum.

[B]

It's the ways of the ancestors. So this is how we've done it. This is how we're always going to do it. Now, the problem was if a crisis came up, that constitution would change and the way things do, we do things would change. So I think this is a problem throughout history, and I don't think anybody's actually found a solution as the real problem. Now we have a Constitution that is well written. Some of the amendments, like I mentioned, the 17th Amendment is a problem. But then there's even Supreme Court decisions like the one that allowed political action committees and super political action committees. It's not supposed to be that way where you just have the most money you can buy a politician. And that's what political action committees do. So. So there are a lot of things that have been added in that break the system. I think really, if we get back to constitutional government the way it was written and the way it's supposed to function and remove a few things like get rid of the income tax amendment, get rid of the 17th amendment, get rid of the Federal Reserve Act. If you got rid of some of these things, you could get back to more of how things function, but they're Very ingrained in the system. So I think that is a real problem.

[A]

We're going to bridge back.

[B]

Yeah, sorry, between.

[A]

No, this.

[B]

I'm jumping a little bit.

[A]

Nothing to apologize for. I have you on it right now. I'm saying we're going to bridge between modern day and Rome because there are some interesting parallels here. We can go to. So I want to go back to Rome for a second because maybe this can help me better understand exactly where we stand maybe financially right now. You mentioned that they got up to a 15,000% inflation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So let's start at the bare bones. You talked about the coins earlier. You talked about the monetary system. Can you break down how once the Emperor period came into play in Rome, how their monetary system worked and what the slow road to getting to 15,000 inflate percent inflation looked like?

[B]

Okay, good. So this might take me like 25 minutes. So stop me if I go four hours. I don't care.

[A]

Whatever you want.

[B]

I think the thing to understand, as I mentioned, Comodus is killed in 192 and then there's five emperors that year. The last of the five is a guy named Septimius Severus. He's from North Africa, so he wouldn't have been black, but he wouldn't like darker skin, like more Semitic looking. And the thing that he does that's different is he's a military commander. And so him, the army behind him is going to be very important. So he basically comes in, takes over Rome, kicks out. I think, is it Didius Julianus at that point? I can't remember which emperor is at that point. Didius, great name. Oh, did he? Well, because that year is kind of a rough year. You have Pertinax, who basically the Praetorian Guard auction off the Roman Empire to him. So he basically becomes Emperor because he has the most money. He pays the guard, he's the next emperor. Then you're going to have Didius Julianus not too far after him. And Didius Julianus Julianus is executed. And then Severus kind of comes in and says, all right, well I'm bringing order back. But he does it with the military. And what Severus does, it's a great name by the way, Juliannes. But what he does is he first of all disbands the Praetorian Guard and creates a new Praetorian Guard from only his loyal men. So that's the first thing he does. The Praetorian Guard were responsible for protecting emperors, but they also killed somewhere between 17 and 20 of them if they didn't approve of them. So they're a kind of a power behind the power, if you want to look at them that way. So now what Severus does is when an emperor took power there would be what's called a donative. So that comes from the Latin word do dare or to give. And he would give them this giant gift when he became emperor, this donative. So he gives the largest donative ever to the Roman military. The next thing he does is he doubles legionary pay and he doubles the size of the military. So this is going to be something that emperors after him are going to take that pattern and apply it when they become emperor. Bigger donative than the previous emperor. Double pay, enlarged allegiance. Now what's going to happen is these coins that they have are in the first century, in the time of Augustus, they're 95% pure. By the time you get to the 270s under Aurelian, they're 5% pure. They're mostly bronze because they would take other base metals and add them to the coins. So like this coin here, this is an almost totally bronze coin. This is a mid third century coins, almost totally bronze. There is no silver in it. Whereas that one you have over there, that's got a high silver content because they start to reform the currency again.

[A]

This is beautiful and this is shit.

[B]

And people are going to recognize that when they're holding a coin, right? So they're going to start debasing this money over the next 200 years and they add in copper, they add in other things where the silver content goes down and down and down. So then people aren't going to be accepting that money, right? So prices are going to start to rise because, well, you're one coin, I now want five coins for that. So the denarius itself, the coin that they used, is going to be now seen as less valuable. And this is a process that's going to continue through the third century. Because the third century there is a phenomenon known as barrack emperors, meaning military barracks. They take the pattern that Severus did, conquer Rome by force, declare myself Emperor and pay the military really well. 238 to 285 or 284 is what's called the crisis of the third century. In this period there's around 26 different guys that claim to be emperor and they're going to use that same pattern of I'm emperor because I have a military behind me and I'm going to attack everybody else. So the empire itself starts to fall apart. The Western Empire is going to break off and become what's called the Gallic Empire. Under a guy named Postumus, the Eastern Empire is going to break off and become called Palmyra, under a guy named Odinathus, I think, actually quote tweeted you on this one, and he's going to die, and his wife Zenobia is now going to rule the eastern part of the empire for a good 10 to 20 years. So the emperors are fighting themselves. It's falling apart. And then you have barbarians that start to come in from the north. So it's a really not great time in the third century to be a Roman. Your money's getting destroyed. Your empire's falling apart. And then in the 270s, you have a guy named Aurelian, reconquers the west, reconquers the east, fixes the money.

[A]

How does he fix the money?

[B]

He brings it back to a higher silver content, and he's assassinated for his troubles.

[A]

Okay, all right. Before that, let me back up one second to understand today. If you go to the average person on the street and you say, can you define inflation for me?

[B]

So that's the problem. People don't know it.

[A]

They may not really know what to say. But if you say to them, are eggs more expensive than they were two years ago? How's your grocery bill looking? What does gas seem like to you? Does it feel like you're behind on your bills, even though you're making more money technically on salary than you did a couple years? They can answer these questions, meaning they can feel it?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So my question is, in a more primitive time where we're not all interconnected, you can't talk to people on the Internet. You can't compare things and data and all this stuff. Were people in the 2nd century and 3rd century feeling it and talking about it? And do we have a record of like, you know, the people themselves being like, yo, I can't pay my bills?

[B]

So that's the problem, once again, is we don't have a record of regular people. We have records of the people that were literate and the people that had money. And this is one of the things that ancient historians talk about a lot. We can surmise what was happening, but we don't know a ton about what regular people were thinking. Now, the thing you have to consider is they would see the color of their coins changing, right? The weight of their coins changing. So to them, it's going to be very physical. And I think when you look at inflation modernly, it's very abstract to us. Right. If I handed you a coin that was different than what you're using, well, you'd be shocked. But now it's ones and zeros in a computer. And the Federal Reserve likes to have great words for them or like quantitative easing. Quantitative easing means we made a bigger quantity of money, there's more of it. So prices, for the most part, stay a constant. It's the value of the dollar that changes. And as the value of the dollar goes down, well, your prices are perceived to go up.

[A]

It's unlegislated taxation.

[B]

It's unlegislated taxation. And that's the really difficult part about it. It's with the Federal Reserve playing with interest rates and things like that and then just printing more money. There's. When you look at the money supply, there's different numbers for when they were printed. So there's like M1 and I think M2 money supply that are currently in circulation. 80% of all M2 money supply dollars were printed after 2020. So that shows you how much inflation's gone crazy. And a lot of that is the, the, the loans that were given out from the government that were forgiven and things like that. So it's your. Your money is rapidly becoming worth nothing. And that's a really, really dangerous thing. But for most people, it's not a physical coin. They're paying with things in, so they aren't seeing the weight change, they aren't seeing the color change, they aren't seeing the size change. And as well, I think I have another one here like that too.

[A]

There is. Yeah, I like this bag of goodies.

[B]

Yeah. Once again, shout out to Kinser Coins Dean Kinser, he is the man. He just sends me these. So if you notice on this one,

[A]

send me some kids. Let's go, baby. Love it.

[B]

Well, the ones in plastic he actually gave me for you, so. But, so.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

Thank you. Notice on the edge, you know how it's not. It's not like cut. Well, it's like kind of like cut on an angle.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So when Romans made coins, they used a mold that's called a die, and they would take it, hit it with a hammer, and they would make the coin. That way when a die is wearing out, it would stop cutting a sharp coin. So if you got a coin like that, you would know a lot of coins were made that year because the die is no longer sharp. Do you see how it is in the edge? How it like bleeds over?

[A]

Yes,

[B]

so we don't know what regular people thought. But you can surmise that the weight, color, and shape of their coins are changing. They know. And if you look at the modern quarter, you know how it has etching on the edges, like how it's not smooth, it's rough.

[A]

I feel it.

[B]

That's because they want you to be able to see that that coin wasn't clipped. They want you to see this is what the edge of the coin should look like, because they would actually physically take pieces of the coins off to make them smaller and make them weigh less. So it would have been very real and physical. But to us, it's just. You go to the grocery store and your eggs are seven bucks. Now, it's very different. And it's actually for that reason, it's a bit more evil, if that makes sense. It is a bit evil because it's very covert.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. And. And they. They tell you they're helping you. They tell you, oh, well, we're doing this. I'll make one up so we can keep interest rates on your mortgage low or whatever. Yeah, but how are you doing that?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're doing it by making money worth less.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

You know, and there is a reality, like, I don't want to call it the zero sum game to make it really cold, but, like, yeah, there's gonna be winners and losers in an economy where I run into a problem is when the game gets rigged such that there's only a few winners and people lose without doing anything wrong on their own devices.

[B]

Correct. They might be working hard, they might be doing all the right things, but now their dollar is shrinking.

[A]

Like, the fact that, I mean, obviously, like, part of it is in running a business. And you want. Thank you. In. In running a business, like, obviously you bring in revenues, and then you got to spend a lot because you got a payroll, you got re. You got overhead and all that. But, like, the fact that I can't afford to get a house, like, at this point, if you would have told me that six years ago when I started this, hey, this is where you're going to be at. This is where your revenues are at least going to be. We can talk about profits later because that'll be, like, eventually you can decide what that's going to be. Hopefully I get to that point. But you're not going to be able to buy a house.

[B]

Well, that's one of the reasons I live where I live, like, living in northern New Jersey, like. Like, land is cheap where I live. Right. So it's like over where you are, right down here. It's not. Because there's not a lot of it. Like, I have five acres, so it's like, you can get that up there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we were looking specifically at certain towns because the taxes in our town are affordable. The town next to it, it was like $20,000 a year in taxes. So these are things to really consider where regular people can't deal with that. I'm not gonna buy a house where I'm throwing away $20,000 a year.

[A]

It's nuts.

[B]

It's nuts.

[A]

It's nuts. And it's like I, I had, I was doing some content for my buddy Nico, who's a real estate agent, and my friend Arab, the YouTuber, that's his name on YouTube, just happened to be here. He's like, hey, I'm gonna come over and hang out. I'm like, great. We're just doing this random content.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Nico's like going through like his whole philosophy as a mortgage agent. And Arab's like, you know, mortgage means like, what was it? Death, death toll or something like that. He's like, it's French, look it up. And Nico's like, yeah, no, but it's useful in this way. It's like, yeah, but look, it means like death toll. And you start to think about this stuff and you're like, well, even the

[B]

Trump touting the idea of doing a 50 year mortgage, that's terrifying. A 50 year mortgage, your mortgage is. That's like a student loan. You pay till you die.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. It's, it's like again, he's death pledge. That's. That's what.

[B]

And if you look at the late Roman Empire, you know what starts to Happen is in 284, Diocletian, who you mentioned earlier, would have been a great kid name, he does these reforms in the empire to try and fix a lot of these things that are happening. He does a monetary reform which doesn't do real well because people really don't trust the coins and they're hoarding gold. He fixes prices because he says, okay, we're going to have the edict of maximum price. We're going to try and make it so people will only charge so much in the market because people are charging to actually get what something should cost. It's kind of like in health care where a doctor is charging whatever insurance is going to give them back.

[A]

Or like almost, almost like in a different way, like a tariff kind of

[B]

deal in A way. And then one of the other things he does as well is he takes people and sets them in their profession. If your father was a farmer, you are now a farmer. Oh, that's fucking. So you start to see kind of this. You know, a lot of medievalists fight me on this, but you start to see kind of the establishment of the early medieval world after Diocletian. And if you look at what's happening now, we know we're not exactly locked in our career and things like that. But you are starting to see a bit of serfdom as we're kind of moving into that, you know, and you're starting to see people locked in, paying for things. Maybe they can't change careers because if they do, they can't afford that student loan or they can't afford that mortgage. So you do see a little bit less social mobility and a bit of being a Russian serf in a lot of ways.

[A]

You know, it's worse than that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're making financial decisions on being able to have a kid or not.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

It's anti evolutionary. Yeah. And I'm not blaming people at all. Everything's so fucking expensive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like you are now calling reproduction a financial decision because of where we got. I mean, it's very scary. And I agree with you. The empirical data points to printing money and things that are done without any say from the people. That's democracy, republic, whatever you want to call it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or as it should be. The combination of both.

[B]

A civilization is as strong as the money that it mints. And when you don't have strong money and it's not backed by anything, you can do whatever you want with it.

[A]

Now I cut you off. But the guy that tried to fix it and then they would not. Diocletian, the other one. The one that they wept.

[B]

Oh, Aurelian.

[A]

Yeah. What happened there?

[B]

So he reconquers the Gallic empire. He reconquers Palmyra.

[A]

What year?

[B]

This is 274. When he dies. And he strengthens the borders a bit. He.

[A]

How does he do that?

[B]

He kind of makes new agreements with a lot of barbarians in the borders. I don't know as much about the border part of this, but then.

[A]

So like the border patrol back then.

[B]

Yeah, he kind of. He strengthens how the borders are functioning.

[A]

Because a beard like you shall not pass.

[B]

Because you start to have. You start to have. And this is more towards the time of Constantine, which is like 50 years after this. He creates what's called the fitterati and the Federati are basically, you're allowed to be part of your tribe, but you fight for Rome and you can live within the Empire and on the borders of the Empire. This is kind of an early precursor to that. And it gets stronger to Diocletian, but the Fterati actually comes about under Constantine. Okay. And he also mints new silver coins with a higher purity. And he's killed by his secretary. This is. But this is one of the problems that Roman emperors.

[A]

What did the secretary. What did secretary do? Kill him?

[B]

I don't know how he killed him, but he was killed. I don't know how he was killed.

[A]

Interesting. So the secretary was like, I don't like what you're doing. You're out.

[B]

Secretary doesn't live long after that. So then the Senate says, we need a new emperor. So they pick an elderly man named Tacitus who's related to the Roman historian Tacitus, that wrote long before this. Because they're like, we just need somebody that's got Senate support and he doesn't even want to be emperor.

[A]

Here we go. Roman Emperor Aurelian was assassinated in September, 275 A.D. near. I ain't going to try to say that. Whatever that is. In Thrace, while preparing to campaign against assassinated Persians, his senior officers and members of the Praetorian Guard, led by a secretary named Eros, murdered him after being misled by forged documents into believing they were marked for execution. The conspiracy. The plot was triggered by a forged list created by Aurelian Secretary, often named Eros, who feared punishment for his own corrupt actions and fabricated a list of names of officials supposedly marked for death by the Emperor who he was going to kill. That's interesting. He marked himself for death. Officers fearing for their lives due to the forged list took preempt. Oh, I get it. Took preemptive action. The act was also fueled by discontent among military leaders regarding Aurelian's strict, harsh disciplinary measures against corruption. Okay, so some of the leadership of the military was. Was on the list. And they're like, oh, fuck, so let's just kill the guy because he's.

[B]

Well, because that was something that would happen. They had two different processes. One was called proscription. And that's going to come about way earlier during the Roman Republic. During the late Roman Republic, from a guy named Sulla is one of the first ones to really do this. Proscription was. You'd put names on a list. Those people could be killed. And then if you were the one that Brought their head to the forum. Well, you could get their stuff and their titles and everything else. So proscription is one process and the other is a word that we use a lot, but we don't use it for its correct meaning. And that's decimation, and that's the idea of killing every 10th man. And the ones that did the killing then had to sit outside of the camp and eat barley because barley gave you gas.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why'd they have to do that?

[B]

It was a punishment to have gas from barley.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

That's. Well, they would. They would kill every tenth man, the one. And then the ones that did it would then sit outside of the camp and eat barley. That was what their part of their punishment.

[A]

Okay, so this guy was trying to fix the money and then he gets killed in something that seems to be unrelated.

[B]

Correct. Which we don't know. Could have been related.

[A]

Maybe it was.

[B]

Could have been part of the powers that be not being happy with what was happening.

[A]

How did they. By the way, you might have started to say this when you were explaining the coinage system, but how did they do, like. Wasn't the same thing, but from like a central banking perspective.

[B]

They didn't really have that. They didn't really have central banking as a thing. That's more of a.

[A]

So how did they measure it? How could they measure inflation if they didn't have, like, a central place that was like, counting the.

[B]

It would be like weights and measures. Right? Like, does this coin weigh enough? You know, what's the silver content of this coin and things like that. So they could see that. They could see the value in something. So if you had like. So like the two coins I gave you, if you saw one that's shinier, well, you're going to know that has more value because it's likely got a higher silver content. You're going to weigh it and then you're going to see that, okay, it weighs enough. If it's darker and it's smaller and it doesn't weigh as much. Well, there's something wrong here. Right. Okay. And people be weighing their coins when they're basically taking them.

[A]

Here's a better question. How should I ask that? How did they arrive at the 15,000% number?

[B]

Empirically, that's a modern number that we kind of look at the graph over time and we say, based on what the value of it was, this is about where they were. It's not something that Romans would have been looking at. It's something modernly. We look at it. And we say, well, based on what the value of it was from the time it was minted, you know, in the early first century to the time that we're looking at dian in the two eighties, it's about 15,000%. Okay? It's not. Romans are like, oh, my gosh, we're 15,000% inflation. They're just looking at, well, my coin doesn't weigh as much. It doesn't have as much silver. I now need 10 of them to buy something. This is a problem. And that's going to drive prices to skyrocket. It's going to fuel a black market. And when Diocletian does price fixing, one of the things that ends up happening is people start bartering again because they don't even want the coins. So it is a real problem of people realizing these coins aren't worth anything now.

[A]

So Aurelian's killed around 275, 274. 274.

[B]

He ruled. He. He rules for about five years. Dies in. In 274.

[A]

And then who takes over for him again?

[B]

Tacitus. He's not going to be an emperor for very long.

[A]

He totally takes away all the monastery reform.

[B]

You have a series of smaller emperors until Diocletian, who's going to be ruling from 284 to 305. So a little over 20 years.

[A]

And then it's Constantine.

[B]

Constantine is in 311 is when he wins the battle of Milvian Bridge. And he's going to be emperor until, I think, 336 or 337 when he dies.

[A]

What happened at Milvian Bridge again?

[B]

So Milvian Bridge is kind of where he has this Christian conversion. He sees the chi and the row, the two Greek letters that stand for Christ in the sky. And he sees this. Here's this phrase under the sign you will conquer. So he has his soldiers put this sign on their shields and he goes against. Because basically what he's trying to do is be the emperor ruling all the empire again. Because there had been so I guess to go backwards because once again, they have to understand some stuff. Diocletian creates this system called the tetrarchy, or rule by force. Two senior emperors, two junior emperors. So now we have four emperors. What Constantine wants to do is kind of be the only guy in charge. So it's down to just two emperors at that point. Him and a guy named Maxentius. So if he beats Maxentius, well, now he's the guy in charge of everything again. He wants to be the one emperor to kind of rule everything. So at this Battle of Milvian Bridge, after seeing under this sign, you will conquer. He beats Maxentius and then in 313, the Edict of Milan. He makes Christianity legal because Christianity had been practiced and unless times were bad, it was permitted.

[A]

All right, let's dig into this history a little bit because you mentioned earlier the different times where there were Christian persecutions. You mentioned them. What was The 1 in 250 again?

[B]

250 was an Odysseus.

[A]

Okay, so this, this guy, Jesus Christ exists within the Roman Empire down in the Holy Land. He's killed and then.

[B]

270s. Okay, cool.

[A]

And look at that. Yeah, that one's hard too. So Jesus dies in roughly 33 AD,

[B]

which may have been off by a few years because the English monks that put the dating together, give or take, might have done their math wrong.

[A]

So in that area, 30 to 40 A.D. he does. And the empire obviously continues along. He's also. It's so interesting when you look at when his life was and all the, the stuff that was going on outside the Holy Land at that time. The Battle of Actium, all this stuff is happening. No, that battle of actium is 31. Right.

[B]

BC oh, that's BC BC.

[A]

Ah, sorry. But there's still a lot going on in there.

[B]

This would have been during the time period of the second emperor, who was Tiberius.

[A]

Tiberius. Okay, so you have Rome massively expanding, though in a relatively new what's now termed empire. And then in the midst of this empire, you have the Holy Land.

[B]

And they would have called it a principate. They wouldn't have like, okay, you have

[A]

this guy Jesus who lives and then dies, and then his story is written down over the next century by a bunch of people. It starts to get passed around underground. You were defining earlier what Roman religion looked like. It was a bunch of different gods that would be termed now, like pagan gods. And the Christians were like an underground. Viewed as like an underground kind of culture. But eventually it grew to, if I'm remembering, correct me, correct me if I'm wrong, it's like 20. 20 to 25% of the empire by the time of Constantine was more to

[B]

like 2 to 5%, but 2 to 5. So it wasn't really. It wasn't really a major, like known religion at that point.

[A]

Right. It was in there somewhere. 25. 2 to 5.

[B]

And Romans didn't quite understand the. The difference between Judaism and Christianity was a little confusing to them. So there's if you look at, I think around the year, like around the year 80 A.D. so somewhere around there, Vespasian, who's actually the emperor that builds the Flavian amphitheater, which is what we call the Coliseum, it's a little bit before that because he dies in, I think around 78 or something like that. Anyway, he's writing to. Pliny the Elder, is writing to him, and he's describing these early Christians, and he's kind of confused by how to explain it. Well, they're not Jews, but they are Jews and they eat some guy's body. Like, the letter is very confusing. So they didn't quite understand Christianity, but unless times were bad, they permitted it. And that's how they were with most religions. Okay, so that's kind of the scene you're sitting in is like, so you have the fire of Rome in 64 AD, Nero blames it on the Christians and there's a big Christian persecution. You have decius in the 250s that you mentioned earlier, that he's trying to restore the peace of the gods. So he's going to persecute Christians, Jews, anybody that won't sacrifice to the Roman gods to bring back this peace of the gods. Diocletian is going to do that as well because he's trying to kind of, in his mind, bring the peace of the gods. So Christians are very often persecuted. So to go from Christianity being legal in 313 is A. Is a really big deal because it had been this thing that was persecuted a number of times by a number of different emperors. And then by 380 under Theodosius the Great, it becomes the official religion of Rome. So you had this kind of over 313 to 380, this morphing from a pagan empire to a Christian empire.

[A]

So. So Constantine has this moment where he believes Christianity helped him win this battle.

[B]

Yeah. And I guess the thing I have to say about that is you have to realize that there's also political means at work too. Right. If people are under a whole bunch of things, to bring them under one thing makes a lot more sense. So there's definitely the spiritual aspect of it, but I think there's also political aspects of it. So to say it's all one thing is to not really look at the reality of it.

[A]

Right. Obviously, he's taking advantage of the situation for sure, because he sees an opportunity.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And he sees a way to use power. But then there is the very highly debated Council of Nicaea in 3:13. Well, 313 to what 325 is while they were deciding?

[B]

325, I think, was Nicaea. Don't quote me on that, but I think it's around 325.

[A]

Can we pull that up to make sure we got that right? What happened in 313?

[B]

313 was the edict of Milan, which made Christianity legal.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So the Council nicaea happens in 325, but basically there's a period. That's what it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's a period from the Edict of Milan to the Council of Nicaea where this transitional period is happening when a

[B]

lot of people have the wrong idea about what Nicaea was about. And they often say, oh, the books of the Bible and things. Those weren't done at the Council of Nicaea, those were done at later councils. The Council of Nicaea was just to decide, well, what do we believe in Christianity? Because there was a number of different sects of Christianity going around. The biggest one was called Arianism, and it was a kind of molding of Christianity and Zoroastrianism, and it was under this preacher named Arius. So they were trying to decide what is kind of orthodox Christianity versus what's heresy. That was really the purpose of the Council of Nicaea. Now, the interesting thing about that is it doesn't exactly stamp out Arian Christianity because Constantine dies and his son Constantius II ends up becoming an Arian Christian. So it is something that's going to take a while to change, but. But really the purpose of the Council of Nicaea to decide what do we believe, what does Christianity believe? And the Emperor attends, but he's supposed to attend as a layman. Once again, we don't know how much control he had over the situation, but it is this idea of getting all the bishops together and deciding, well, what does Christianity believe? Because we have this heresy we're trying to handle.

[A]

Well, that's the strange part too. And I've had people from all different backgrounds in here talk about the council in Icea, from my man Gnostic informant to West Huff, which is two very opposite ends of the spectrum and everyone in between. But like, you have this base story, you have historical record written down. You have a bunch of different historical records written down. And again, you said it wasn't decided at Council Nicaea, which ones they were like going to make the Bible and all that.

[B]

It definitely wasn't too long after that. I don't remember which council it was. Either way. Yeah.

[A]

With the Council Nicaea, it's fascinating to me that a bunch of Guys got in the room 300 years later and said, this is what we're going to decide it is. And therefore, that is, this is the edict and that's what it's going to be. And it doesn't make the story fake or anything like that. But you wonder what aspects of the story were potentially changed there and then at later points. Right?

[B]

That's fair, because I think that the problem is. And you can even look at the, like, medieval church about this. If you look at, like, you know, the Borgia popes, or you look at the Medici popes and things like that, you have to understand that people are corruptible.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They're political. They're also going to look at what makes them powerful.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

It doesn't make religion bad, but it does mean that men can use it for their own means. So I think there's a mix between people wanting to just handle beliefs and there's others that are like, well, I want good politics. Right. So there is definitely a lot of different things that go into it. You know, it's. That's a kaleidoscope of things a lot of times. Yeah.

[A]

And I don't want to get, you know, it's tough with any ancient tradition that points to any organized religion to not get cynical about some of that. But when you see the term power and political power specifically mixed in with what is decided as a belief system, it does make you question

[B]

it once goes back to who writes your history. Right. That's a big part of it. And it can be the difficulty in it. And so that's why I think it's hard to say, 100% divine inspiration with no human agency. There's always human agency. Right. And humans are motivated by what's good for them. So I think it's looking at something for the good it can cause and also at the same time realizing that human agency can create some of the bad.

[A]

Now, what happened in the immediate years after this becomes a thing where Constantine declares that the law of the land, that Christianity is now a religion, what types of social and cultural changes occur and what impact did that have on greater Roman society?

[B]

So one of the things you're going to start to have, and Edward Gibbon actually talks a lot about this in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is kind of the most famous work on it. You start to have monasteries developing. So you are starting to have men pull out of society a bit. You start to have bishops get some political power. But if you want to look at what Constantine does. And this is actually one of the things that starts to push early conversion is he starts to favor Christians in political positions. But I think that the bigger thing about Constantine that doesn't get talked about enough is he's the one that actually fixes currency. He's the one that actually takes currency and fixes it. And after he dies, it's going to go for about 700 years in the east without inflation.

[A]

Wait, so he fixed the 15,000% inflation

[B]

in the east because the west was already falling apart. Right. Because the east and the west are going to split again.

[A]

Define the west and east geographically, if you want.

[B]

The east is going to be around Byzantium, which is what ends up being called Constantinople. So if you want to look at kind of like modern Turkey.

[A]

Istanbul.

[B]

Yeah, Istanbul in that area. The west is Rome proper. And the capital is going to start changing because Rome starts to be harder and harder to defend. So it's going to move to Ravenna at one point, it's going to move to Milan at one point. But the capital city of the west starts changing because they become harder and harder to actually protect Rome.

[A]

Why was that?

[B]

Well, the political means of things had started to destroy. Well, I guess. Let's go further back. One of the things that's really important is being able to feed people. The east was much easier to feed people. Constantinople itself is much harder to attack. And as the west starts to degrade, it's going to become harder to protect Rome and harder to feed people. So they're going to start moving the capital around to where they feel like they can protect it. Ravenna is pretty good because it's surrounded by swamps. Milan is pretty good because it's near mountains. So they're going to start moving away from Rome just for the sake of protecting the city.

[A]

And what happens to Rome when they actually physically move away, the capital of the empire, does it change drastically in those time periods?

[B]

Well, you're going to have basically the wealthy people in the senatorial class going wherever the emperor goes. So they're going to start moving their power centers as well. So Rome just becomes a less important city. So it is something to consider. And as it moves to. From being an empire and more to barbarian kingdoms, you are going to have the early barbarian kings actually start to take some of the Roman monuments and rebuild them, because they do see value in those things. But Rome as a city starts to kind of fall apart a little bit because they're moving the power center away and the political classes are moving wherever the Emperor is.

[A]

What about the power center of the Vatican being there? Does that impact keeping it a power place like the surrounding area of Rome?

[B]

Well, so the, the first church of the Bishop of Rome, because it's not really the Pope yet, that starts to be established a little bit later is the Church of St. John Lateran, and I believe that's built in the 5th century. The actual St. Peter's isn't built until Pope Julius II in the 1500s. So that's not really a power structure yet. It will be later on as kind of the. The empire itself starts to collapse. And even the modern word diocese that we use comes from the divisions that Diocletian created in the empire. He divides the empire into kind of military divisions. They'd always had provinces, right, as their divisions. But he creates these stronger military divisions called dioceses. And those diocese, each one is managed by a man named a vicar, which medievally is going to be a word that's used for a priest. So you do have some of these kind of, of power structures that start to develop. But you are going further into late antiquity before you're kind of seeing like, you know, the power of the Vatican or things like that. Early on, it's just. You have the church of St. John latter in the 5th century. The Pope is just kind of the bishop of Rome. There's other bishops. He starts to get more power because he's. When bishops start to disagree, they bring him in as an arbiter. So he starts to kind of get the power because he's helping to kind of handle these disagreements between people. So it's early on, it doesn't. It's not really a power structure, if that makes sense.

[A]

How did the people of the Roman Empire take to Christianity when it was declared overnight, when only 2 to 5% of them were Christians in the first place? And it was declared overnight. Oh, everything we worship that. We're not doing that anymore. We're doing Christianity. Everybody get on board. That's what the emperor says.

[B]

Adoption is going to be very slow because the regular people, especially in the provinces, like the further away, get away from major cities, are going to continue just doing what they've always done. So it's going to really be just major cities that you're going to see conversions in at first, because those are the kind of where the political classes are, where the culture is, things like that. But in the provinces, it's going to take a really long time before their life changes.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting because what you're talking about is they're disconnected. But you're also talking about an element of groupthink and it ties.

[B]

Yes and no. But it's also just being close to. Well, you could say that because people are kind of thinking of what's good for, for me as well, because Constantine was putting Christians in early political positions. So that's one of the early reasons to become a Christian if you didn't really have the belief system yet. So I guess in some ways. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because like what I was going to tie it to is what you were talking about earlier with population centers. When you have a big population center like New York with a lot of people in close proximity to each other, certain broad ideas may spread as accepted rule much easier than it does in a place where people are more spread out and less.

[B]

Well, population density is a huge part of that. Yes, a huge part of that. And that's why in the provinces would be harder because they're disconnected. Like they may be miles away from a city.

[A]

Right. So that's why I, that's why I bring that up. It's like they could, the adoption could have been there because yes, there's incentivization for sure, but secondly, if you're looking around and all your neighbors are getting on board with this thing and people are in close proximity to talk to each other about it, well then yeah,

[B]

it's gonna make a lot of sense. It's just access. It's access.

[A]

Now you said there were three things to look at with the fall of Empires. The currency, immigration. What was the third thing again?

[B]

Where political classes care kind of less about what's happening in the future and just right now.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I think the crisis of the third century is a big example of that.

[A]

How.

[B]

Because what's happening is you would have army commanders or even their armies dress them in purple because purple was the color of emperors. And they would attack each other and declare themselves the next emperor. And if they could rule, if they could stay alive, well, that was great. So they weren't thinking about where is this empire going to be in 10 years. They're just thinking about, can I keep from dying? Because you have over this 50 year period, 26 guys claim to be emperor. So it's in some ways a death sentence to become the emperor once you get the power. So that's going to make it. So they're not thinking in futures, they're not thinking in long term vision. And if you look at even politicians now, they're just thinking about how do I win in two years? Four years, six years, whatever it might be. They're not thinking about where is this country going to be in 50 years. They're just not considering that. And you might not have politicians raising armies against each other, but you do have kind of of fifth generational warfare. You have a lot of warfare for your mind going on, and you do have kind of this political warfare going on, like a propaganda war. So it's not an exact kind of parable, I think, in a lot of ways, but I think it does show you what happens when they're just worried about another election cycle or how I get power.

[A]

What do you think? Like we talked earlier about Alexander's quest for power and that being driven by legacy and trying to be considered among these other greats, he wanted to be

[B]

a, a Greek hero.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What do you think? You know, it's kind of tough, especially like in one period if you're talking about 26 different people all buying for it. But do you think it was legacy in the annals of history that drove men like this to fight each other for the throne, or was it something different?

[B]

I think there's so many different motivations. You know, there's, there's probably even a simple one of I could do it better or that could be me, me. Right. So I think there's different motivations for everybody that I'm a better general than he is. I could be emperor. Right. If that's all you had to be to be emperor was just to now be a general. Well, I have a bigger army. I have. You know, maybe they could even look at who they're related to. Right. So that it's, I'm more Roman than him or I've lived in this province. So those are things to consider. Right. Like you look at a guy like Maximinus Thrax, who's one of the first big emperors of the crisis of the third century. He reigns in, I think, 238. He's like one of the main guys that kicks it off. And allegedly he's like 7ft tall. He's supposed to be like this massive guy. And for him he just hated the political class and he wanted to be emperor in order to just take power away from them. And the Senate hated him. So the Senate then named two more emperors, Claudius II and Claudius iii. So it's, it really creates whatever motivates them. Right. So everybody's motivation, I think might be a little bit different. Yeah, because he's a guy from Thrace. He was born in the provinces, he's Going to hate the rich people. So he wants to be emperor to take power away from them. And he hated the city of Rome and had never been to it. So, you know, different motivations across the board.

[A]

Yeah, I. I'm so fascinated by that subject matter in, in human nature. And there's. There's all different motivations, as you alluded to, for sure. But there's something about people wanting other people to be able to come to them and be the central resource, if you will. That seems to be a huge part of that. That's a common thread. When I look at guys throughout my life who I've observed who are really successful, who never hang it up or are always trying to get the next thing, no matter what.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They accomplish and maybe sometimes in some cases lose sight of the things that are important in life. There's like this greater purpose that all of them. And there's other motivations too, to be clear. But there's this greater purpose that all of them that I've observed seem to have, which is that they like just being the guy.

[B]

Well, it's even the simplicity of why does. Why does an athlete play too long? You know what I mean? It's like. It's like. Like look at a guy like Paul Goldschmidt, who the Yankees just signed on a $4 million contract for one year. Guy's 38 years old. He could retire. He barely hit.270 last year, hit 10 home runs. So you could look at it as, why do athletes keep playing? And why don't they hang it up? There's something about them that says, I have to keep doing this. Lindsey vonn tears her ACL. She's in her 40s. She could just retire. She doesn't have to ski again. And she tries doing it again and breaks her leg. It's something like that. Why does somebody not stop? And I think they're. There's so many motivations you could pull on that. For some of them, it's just the love of the competition. That's it. It's the love of being in the game and being in what they're doing. Yep. It doesn't necessarily even have to be the end result of it.

[A]

Yeah, there. There is a point that some of these people, especially nowadays, you know, when you look at the wealth gap and everything, where they. They reach, you know, the financial stability, if you will, quickly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it. And then it, It. Money just becomes a way of keeping square. Yeah.

[B]

Well, you look at a guy at the end of his career like, you Know what's his name that just relive the Browns. The defensive end, anyway.

[A]

Not Miles Garrett.

[B]

Miles Garrett was talking about, like, I want to play in a different city. Yeah, well, because he wants to win a Super Bowl. Right. He's been playing for 15 years, and he doesn't want to retire without winning a Super Bowl. So at the same time, what motivates somebody to do that? You know, it's. There's something in them that says, I have to have that thing.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, they're chasing something for sure. So the. The immigration, because we kind of got off that. But you were saying, like, they might have Germanic warriors, like, man in the borders and stuff. But it's crazy to think about in a time like this where it took three weeks to get a letter from France to Rome. If. Or maybe more. You know, you're managing this whole empire that stretches as far as the UK and as. And as east as Turkey and. And all these different places. Mesopotamia for sure. Like. Like, how do you even define a border? How do you manage any of that?

[B]

Well, early on, it's going to be by having actual troops on the border to define where your border is. And Diocletian is going to make this a lot more. I don't know of an exclamation point of what a border is, because one of the things he does is he creates these military divisions that we talked about, but he also creates new positions. He creates something called a dukes dux, which is later going to become the. In the Middle Ages can be called the duke. He also creates something called a comas, which is where the word count's going to come from. And he actually puts these counts at military garrisons around the border. So he starts to manage borders if you want to go even earlier. The Roman Empire reaches its furthest extent in 117 AD under Trajan. In the 120s, Hadrian's going to build that first wall in Britain. Now there's going to be a later wall built by the. By the Antonines that's a little bit further into Scotland. But they cared about not going further and not having the picks come in. So they start to worry more about borders when they stop expanding. Right, because expansion is what fueled Rome. It's what brought in wealth. It's what brought in slaves. It's what brought in a lot of the things they needed. When they stop expanding is when they're going to worry more about borders, because now they have this thing to protect where the word for the Mediterranean Sea, what the Romans used to call it is. They used to call it Mare Nostrum. Rc.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because if you were Roman, everything was yours if you could get it. So that's what you have to consider is once you start just worrying about borders, well, now you're preserving something. You're not worried about getting more of something.

[A]

All right. You just open up a can of worms. Hold on. Because I've never thought about this before, but it's like, you know, if a shark's not moving, it's dying. Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So.

[B]

Woo.

[A]

People are going to get pissed off in the comments, but, but let's bring it back and relate it back again. Yeah, yeah. To modern day. If you stop being imperialist and you stop conquering places over, I don't know.

[B]

Oh, you want Greenland? Is that what's happening?

[A]

I'm not saying that. I'm not. Listen, this isn't an opinion, it's, it's analysis. If you stop, I don't know, overthrowing governments over banana companies with the CIA in South America.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because you know, we don't do that here anymore, allegedly. You know, and you, you just start trying to protect and things think, I don't know, more scarcity mindset rather than abundance mindset. The irony of being perhaps more diplomatically fair to the world ends up being the very thing that turns you in on itself when other places like China, you know, stuff like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

May not be thinking the same way. They may be thinking like you used to think and trying to be imperialist.

[B]

Yeah. Because there's the argument. Yeah, because. And it's a hard argument to have because at the same time, like, you know, I don't know if you've read Confessions of an Economic Hitman, but it's like I interviewed John a number of years ago, but it's like Perkins, I don't know if I quite agree with like the idea of conquest either. And it's, it's hard, right, because you have to keep your civilization preserved. And if you look at kind of the timeline of civilizations, Napoleon, civilization, it existed as long as he could conquer. Right. The, the Second World War kept going as as long as the Nazis could keep going forward. The Roman Empire existed as long as it could keep growing. And then it started preserving and trying to save itself. Now does that mean America should be conquering the world? I don't think so. But it's like at the same time you have a real point that if they're not growing, they are dying a lot of ways.

[A]

Oh, wow. Because, you know, I, I'VE talked about this in a bunch of contexts, but it feels relevant here as well. We have such amazing invented principles in America that were unique to this place because of how it was founded. And then, you know, mixing in a lot of different cultures and that. And that's, again, part of the reason, like, you. Maybe the comparison you can make is like a Rome or something like that in some ways, you know, but it's this unbelievable experiment, but it can be used against itself. You know, like in China there, they're communists, so they get to rule with an iron fist.

[B]

I don't know if you exactly say their communism. It's kind of like communism with whatever suits them, too. You know what I mean? Like, XI is going to do whatever is good for Xi for sure.

[A]

But Buck stops with him.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Okay. That's what I mean.

[B]

When I.

[A]

When I mean, like, I'm talking the iron fist, the government said, oh, Jack, ma, you're worth $55 billion. But you just.

[B]

Nobody's seen him in five years.

[A]

No, but nobody gonna see you again, pal. That's. That's iron. Iron fist to me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like they can do all these things that take away their own people's freedoms because they have the right to do that. And that's very bad. I disagree with that, obviously.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But they can then come into our system and the freedoms we have, borders, stuff like that. And which. Some of that, obviously we got to legislate, but, like, actual freedoms of, like, constitutional freedoms and use it against itself. So we have freedom of speech here. So guess what? They can run by bot campaigns through their VPNs and get into our freedom of speech when we can't do it as well in reverse. It's such a tough one to look at because it's like you want to be the best example in the world. And I agree with that, and we should be. But that means we're all. We also have to accept the fact in there that we're operating strategically from behind, and it may lead to the scarcity mindset.

[B]

And that goes back to, like, even looking at somebody like Alexander the Great, you know, it runs on a razor's edge because Alexander the Great is schooled by Aristotle as a child. He wants to be a philosopher king, and he goes to being a conquering maniac. You know, early on, he is the philosopher king, though. He's conquering, but then he starts to become a bit more tyrannical. Power and freedom are both on a razor's edge. Right. There is Very little that keeps them in place.

[A]

That's very well said. Real quick, I gotta take a piss, but we'll be right back.

[B]

Yeah, sounds good.

[A]

Wait, so what's. What's your friend's name?

[B]

Marcus Aurelius Anderson.

[A]

That's a real guy?

[B]

That's a real guy.

[A]

Did he change his name, like at the DMV or something or. That's actually what his name.

[B]

That's his name. That's.

[A]

All right. Can we pull this guy up?

[B]

Who is he? Marcus Aurelius?

[A]

Yeah, we're on right now. So he's an author.

[B]

He's an author. He was a chiropractor and then he.

[A]

Stay with that mic, by the way.

[B]

He was a chiropractor and he decided like later in life, like, he's always wanted to be in the military. So in his early 40s, he joined the late 30s. He joined the military.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

He was, I think para jumping or something in camp. And however he fell, he. What? Paralyzed. And he got heavily into stoicism and.

[A]

Oh, he's paralyzed?

[B]

No, got heavily into stoicism and a lot of that philosophy. His body works now. No, I've actually interviewed the guy on stage. He's a pretty incredible dude. Dude.

[A]

And. And he believes that it was like the mentality of stoicism.

[B]

Mentality of stoicism helped fix him.

[A]

That's amazing.

[B]

Guy's got an incredible.

[A]

I've never heard of this guy. And he's got the hardest name I've ever heard in my life.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Yeah, that's like a. Wow. Okay, I gotta.

[B]

He's writing a book with. He's writing a book with the guy that wrote the War of Art. He's doing some really.

[A]

Oh, Steven Pressfield.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, that guy.

[B]

He's doing some cool stuff.

[A]

Yeah. War of Art is. I remember I had never heard of that. And then I was. I listened to. To. Is it back in 2018, 2019. I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with him from back in the day and then he would talk about it.

[B]

Yeah, he does some stuff with Pressfield. He's a cool dude.

[A]

Dude, Pressfield, like that. But you re. It's a quick read and I retweet it from Joe Rogan. Like, if. If you have a dream on anything, read it. Because that guy just puts the mentality right there. And there is a lot of. Yeah, there's a lot of aspects of stoicism to it.

[B]

It for sure. Well, and even how Marcus Aurelius, like the guy. Marcus Aurelius Looked at it, he didn't intend the Meditations to be published.

[A]

He didn't.

[B]

He didn't. It was his journals. Because in his life, he spends a good deal of his life fighting in the Danube, you know, around where Hungary would be today. And he's fighting a tribe called the Macromani. And then I forget what the other tribe is. He's fighting. So he spends, like, 20 years, his life in military camps. He's seeing bodies, he's seeing death. There's a plague that comes through Rome and ripes out, like, 10% of the population. 10%. So the guy is just trying to deal with the realities of life. And he was very into to Stoic philosophy. But the Meditations, he didn't write a book because he wanted people to write a book. This was his journals. And then it was later published.

[A]

Yeah, I have them hanging out there.

[B]

It was. It was written for him to deal with what he was dealing with at that point in time. Time.

[A]

Well, I'm glad it was later published because it's so true. Like, what those are. Those are, you know, those are legitimately words I say every morning.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it's like, you're like, God damn, this guy had bars 2,000 years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it is relatable, like, to. I. I do believe in that. That's something that I would have been, like, more cynical about when I was younger. Like, you can't just speak about things and it'll be true. But, like, when you put those thoughts in your head to start your day, like, it's something I say out loud because I haven't memorized. So, like, I'll say it out loud to myself, like, right in my head before I walk to the gym. And it kind of sets the tone for my day because it. The biggest thing about the Meditations, to me is that it's all about your mindset and how you view your opportunity in the world without, you know, doing it in a humble way, but in a driven way where there's an expectation that you have to maximize your time here on Earth. And there's something very beautiful about that and profound.

[B]

Yeah. And I guess the sad part is that his son is Commodus.

[A]

Listen, we'll get to that.

[B]

Not everybody wins.

[A]

So maybe he didn't have, you know, he had important things to do on the road. He couldn't be home and be a father, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I gotta. I gotta make excuses for him.

[B]

And he's the last of what are called the five good Emperors. Who was the first of Them Nerva was the first one in 96 or 90, I think it was 98.

[A]

And why do we call them the good emperor?

[B]

So the thing that's different about them is before them, we had the Julio Claudians, which are kind of the first emperors. Then we have the family of Vespasian, which are called the Flavians. And it's a very mixed bag. You get a great emperor like Augustus and a great emperor like Vespasian. But then you have Vespasian's kid, who was his first one's Titus, which is actually seems a pretty good guy, but he dies young. And then his brother Domitian, who is terrible. And there was a trope about Domitian that people would ask, where is the emperor? And he'd be in his room ripping the wings off of flies. So they say with no one, not even a fly. Or you go back to, you know, with the Julio Claudians, you get Caligula, you get Nero. Claudius is. Okay. So it's a very mixed bag of emperors. The thing that's different about the five good emperors is in the ancient world, you could adopt fully grown adults. And what that meant is they got your titles, they got your wealth, they got access to whatever you had access to. And that's why you even look at Augustus. He's born Gaius Octavius, He's Julius Caesar's great nephew, but in Julius Caesar's will, he adopts him and he becomes Julius Caesar.

[A]

Oh, so is it more of like a figurative.

[B]

It's figurative, but they would also. Because when Augustus gets that name, when he's Octavian, he becomes the richest man in Rome. Right.

[A]

Meaning it's more for continuity rather than like, hey, son. Yeah, got it.

[B]

Let's go play ball, kid. They're not gonna go grab a glove and grab the yard and play ball, pat each other on the back. That was a good curve ball, kid. No, it wasn't like that, but no, it was the idea that you would basically be setting up the next generation. So the thing that the five good emperors do is they would adopt somebody that's politically qualified and militarily qualified to be the next emperor. And that works really well for Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius. And the finest is final is Marcus Aurelius.

[A]

And I just want to have context deep pulled up the timeline so people out there can see.

[B]

And Lucius Varus is like the co. Emperor of Aurelius for a little bit.

[A]

Of Marcus Aurelius.

[B]

Yeah. Because Anthony Pius has two adopted sons, and they're Co Emperors for a bit.

[A]

Is that why they name the son Lucius in Gladiator? Lucius Verus. That was his name.

[B]

That could be. I don't know, they could have gotten the name from there. But Lucius Varus is basically Aurelius adopted brother.

[A]

All right, so basically 96 AD to. What is that? 189.

[B]

18180 AD 180.

[A]

So you have.

[B]

Aurelius dies in 180.

[A]

You have over 80 years of these five emperors and shit's pretty good.

[B]

It's a very stable empire. You know, a lot of it could be called the Pax Romana. It is a very good time to be in Rome. Edward Gibbon and Decline and Fall the Roman Empire calls it. And once again, this is a paraphrasing, but he calls it the greatest time in human history to live. Because it's a very stable time period because they would pick somebody they thought would be good and it worked well for five emperors. Now Aurelius has a natural born son. The other four did not. They weren't really procreating. And as I mentioned, Hadrian likely was, as I mentioned, he had that, that, that boy lover.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So for, you have to understand, for Aurelius and I guess it's kind of poetic justice, he's a Stoic, he's in a difficult position. He has a son and if he doesn't name his son Emperor, he could create a civil war because then his son could go get an army and say, you know what, dad, you didn't play baseball with me in the yard. And you know, he didn't name me Emperor, so I'm going to attack Rome. So you could really give, I guess, feel for the guy in that way that he's in a position of damned if you do damage if you don't.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And in the other. Because if he doesn't name him, he has to kill him. Right, because he is creating a civil war.

[A]

Oh, he has to kill him.

[B]

Well, ostensibly to prevent a civil war, he would have to kill his son. Right. I'm not saying there was a law. He had to kill him.

[A]

Him. Yeah.

[B]

But it puts him in a position where what do I do other than name my son? And he put a lot of time into Commodus. Commodus spent a lot of time with him. Oh, he did in military camps though he didn't really want to be there.

[A]

Wait a minute, so he did spend a lot of time with him then and he just kind of.

[B]

It just didn't really work out.

[A]

False.

[B]

As a son yeah, and he definitely didn't kill his father. That was, that was an interesting thing seen in the movie. But it's a good scene. It was a good scene. But he really does pour into Commodus. It just doesn't really work out. So in some ways you have to feel for the guy. You know, he. He breaks this pattern that worked really well for the four emperors before him. But he's in a difficult position of if I don't name my son Emperor, am I creating a civil war

[A]

that is. I can't even fathom that type of decision.

[B]

It's a lot of pressure, yo.

[A]

That's a lot of pressure. Did in Marcus's journals. Does he really write specifically about this and playing with that decision in his head?

[B]

So I know there's mentions of that and there's. But there's mentions of them from the positive way, like of, you know, being upstanding and there's a lot of mention of his wife being upstanding. But she may or may not be running around on him.

[A]

So, oh, she was cheating on Marcus.

[B]

Thoughts that she could have been with who? Other wealthy and rich men.

[A]

So like, was she back home?

[B]

Like Marcus is a guy that wanted to see the best in everybody. And I think that's the difficulty because that can really put you in a tough position.

[A]

I mean you're the emperor and your wife's sleeping around. I don't know about that. Was she back home?

[B]

She was back in Rome. She wouldn't be on campaign.

[A]

Ah, so there's no. Yeah, so she's biding her time, if you will.

[B]

In some ways. Yeah.

[A]

Now did he. Was he fucking around though too?

[B]

He's the Emperor. You have to imagine he probably was. We can't say that he was or wasn't.

[A]

But I mean he's got to get the stress out some.

[B]

Probably likely that he did.

[A]

Right. So it's aight. It's a two way street.

[B]

Yeah, it's tough. Well, and especially like you have to understand, especially in politically connected people and rich people, that was just done. You know, it's. Marriage was done, but it was done in a lot of ways for political position.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. Was this an arranged marriage or was a marriage for love?

[B]

At that level it would have been typically an arranged marriage. Like this is a good family. This is a good family. Like even look at why did Augustus marry Livia and he never had children with Livia? Because it's a political marriage. In those places they would have been political marriages.

[A]

That's a strange thing about elite society. And again, we can bring it back to modern day.

[B]

Goes back to power, though. You're really trying to preserve power.

[A]

I was talking with someone yesterday who is not from that society, but in recent years has, like, been in some environments where he's around people like this, where it's like he. He was saying it's all the same people. When you. He was. I'm not gonna list places he went, but, you know, some enclaves. He's like, it's. It wasn't Epstein's island, by the way, but, you know, normal places. But he's like. Like, it's all the same people. It's all the same families. They all hang out, their kids go to all the same fucking private schools. They all marry each other. And it's like some of it, by the way, if you want to go the highest level, some of it still happens right in front of our face. Look at, like, King Charles and Diana. Arranged marriage. That fucking went well. You know what I mean? Like, these people.

[B]

It's a created political class.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I think that goes back to. We were talking about earlier with the life cycle of government, because it starts to be more of an oligarchic system.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You have to be in the club. You know, it's like George Carlin used to say, it's a big club and you ain't in it.

[A]

Quote it every day.

[B]

But it's. It's. It's very true. Right. It's. It's a political class. It's like, you know, why can you. You know, there. There was. Was it the mayor of D.C. that was, like, doing coke or whatever. This. Not the current one. This is like 20 years ago. And somehow he's, like, still in power and all these other things, or somebody could be accused of being in the Epstein fight files, and they're still in power because it's a big club and you ain't in it.

[A]

Yeah. That's not.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

That's. That's where I draw the line.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No pun intended.

[B]

Oh, that's funny.

[A]

No, but it's. It's a. It's. It's a great point, man. Like, it's rules for thee and not for. Not for me. And, you know, I. I don't know that there's a better example of it right now than Howard Lutnick, who, you know, I savaged in that. In that Patreon that ended up going public. And I. I don't regret any of that.

[B]

I've seen people posting that, like, everywhere.

[A]

Oh, dude, I will continue to do it because we.

[B]

Then you guys are talking about.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that. We then ended up clipping that up and half the Internet clicked. Clipped it up. And then this guy went in front of Congress and had to answer for this and has the audacity.

[B]

Like, I've saw things that he may be leaving. Is he actually leaving?

[A]

He. As of the time of this recording, he has not. This is going to come out next week, so hopefully when this comes out, he's gone and we never hear from him again. What really pissed me off is I've defended Howard Lutnick in the past. I've known Howard Lutnick story forever. He's the Caner Fitzgerald guy. He lost his brother in the tower. He lost 646 people from his company in one day and somehow kept the lights on. He was a Wall street street legend in a way, and there was a lot.

[B]

Sounds like he knew the right guy.

[A]

I mean, it sounds like he did.

[B]

You know, now somebody keeping the lights

[A]

on for him now you gotta wonder, right? But to see, like, I just. Every time I watch that clip of him on that New York Post podcast, just telling that story, like, in this

[B]

tone so perfectly, and his hands are like this.

[A]

And he goes.

[B]

So he gets right up in my face and says, I get the right kind of massage.

[A]

And in the six to eight steps it takes to get from my house to his house, I looked at my wife and we decided that we will never spend a second around that disgusting individual ever again. And then he lists off business, socially or philanthropy. And they're literally all the emails he's on business, social and philanthropy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Coming out in these files. And he has the audacity to go into Congress and answer the questions where they're like. And they asked him, by the way, very nicely nicer than I would have, ironically enough, where they're like, you see why we have a problem here, Howard? Like, you told this story so vividly about nothing. Spending time around this guy after 2005. And then we have a bunch of emails of you getting drinks with him, visiting him on the island with your whole fucking family and shit. And he's just like, yes, I did visit, admitting openly that he lied. Yes, I did visit him on the island, but there was nothing untoward about it. Which, listen, you elites, you gotta get rid of words like untoward. That's just a dead giveaway. And, you know, we went there with my wife, my kids, our nannies, and we left with the kids and the Nannies. As opposed to what, leaving them there? And then he walks out, and they're asking, like, yeah, is he going to resign? And you got the speaker of the House. Like, no, he's doing a great job.

[B]

Like, what the fuck?

[A]

You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, this is a big club, and you ain't in it. And that's. Politics is a story as old as time.

[A]

It's. It's crazy, man.

[B]

If you hold the wheels of power, you make the rules. And this. I've been doing a series lately on my YouTube channel about banking families, banking founders. And if you look at. There's a banker in. I think it's the 1500s. Jakob Fuga. And he was actually the guy that funded the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V and helped him get elected.

[A]

How do you spell that?

[B]

Jakob? So it's J, A, K, O, B. Jakob Fuga. It's Fugger. It's spelled Fugger, but it's Fuga is how it's pronounced.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

F, U, G, G, E, R. I

[A]

never heard of this guy.

[B]

So he basically funded the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. How did he do that? He bribed the people. So there's these seven electors that would pick the Holy Roman Emperor, and he bribed the electors by giving them whatever they would want, and they picked his guy. So the next thing you know, every decision Charles V makes looks a lot like a decision Jacob Fuga would make. Or you look at the Medici. The Medici in the Middle Ages. At one point, they funded a pope. Pope. Later on, they have a pope with Leo X who's Giovanni de Medici. So these banking families have been doing these things for a very long time now. It doesn't mean that, you know, they are Epstein, but at the same time, these same type of operations, whether they're through corruption of money or corruption of sex, they've existed for a very long time. Yeah.

[A]

Who controls the money, holds the power.

[B]

You control the money. You don't have to be the king, but you can control the king. All you got to do is control them.

[A]

All these politicians that we put into office, they're all funded.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

They all have to answer to Daddy.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Daddy's who's the money.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Right. And that's everything from farming, a big, big banking, all of it. This guy. The spelling of this guy's name is hilarious, though.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Fugger.

[B]

Fugger.

[A]

What a way to go through life.

[B]

He looks like a real Fugger.

[A]

That's.

[B]

That's why the German pronunciation is Fuga.

[A]

Fuga.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The richest man who Ever lived. Jakob Fuga, that's. Is that a real thing? He was the richest guy who ever lived?

[B]

I can't speak to that, but I know he was pretty rich.

[A]

Jakob Fugger, the merchant and banker of Augsburg. Prominent merchant.

[B]

He started as a, like a wool merchant and later on he, he kind of gets into power broking because he gets all this money by. He's basically becomes a supplier back and forth. So he becomes kind of like a mercantilist of like, you know, you need this, I can get you the money for that. You know, like supplying the loans for the, for the imports.

[A]

He's right.

[B]

Makes a lot of money doing that and that, that's how he's able to buy someone like Charles V. Because this

[A]

time period as well, obviously. What does it say at the same time he was a cleric and held several pre bends? I can't say so. American journalist Craig Steinman has estimated his overall, his overall wealth to be around 400 billion adjusted to 2015, equivalent to 2% of the GDP of Europe at that time.

[B]

And have you ever heard the name before? No. Neither did I till about a month ago. No, it's one of the, it's one of the fun things about looking at hidden forces in history.

[A]

The foundation of the family's wealth was created mainly by the textile trade with Italy. Yep, that's what you were saying.

[B]

Because he goes early in his life, he goes to Venice and he's kind of observing a lot of the mercantilism in Venice and he's like. Because he's, he's becoming a priest at this point in time and he looks at that and he's like, well, why would I, why would I be a priest if now I understand how mercantilism works? And then he goes back to Augsburg and he builds this empire.

[A]

Now what becomes of that once he dies? Does he hand it off to his sons and they kind of blow it.

[B]

It does lose a lot of power when it loses him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the, the Fuga don't last very long. It's, I think, a generation or two after him. Yeah. But they're a very interesting, I guess, early banking family, if you want to look at it. Like the, the Medici are very similar. They were the bankers to the popes early on. And then they, you know, with Leo, the 10th Giovanni de Medici, they have a Medici pope and that become the most powerful family. And, and Leo X is actually the one who, he doesn't build kind of the Vatican. He's the one that finishes it. And he Creates indulgences in order to pay for it.

[A]

Indulgences.

[B]

Indulgences were basically these things you could buy that forgive the sins of people that have already died to get them out of purgatory. It's the thing that basically motivates the 95 thesis of Martin Luther. So thanks to the. The Medici for that.

[A]

And then we're still living an age where Joel Osteen and.

[B]

Who's the crazy guy?

[A]

Ken. Kenneth Copeland and all these people. And I don't even know who it was, but the people who were selling plots of lands in heaven, that megachurch.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

It's just. Time's a flat circle, bro.

[B]

Yeah. But it's. It goes back to money. And power is a game as old as time. Time it is. And you know, in that point in time, you know, banking's kind of always been a wheel of power. But blackmail operations like that's been happening with Epstein. Those are also things that. Because you and I were talking the other day about the work of Whitney Webb, There is a huge web this, between prohibition and bootlegging and the Seagram's family. And these things have lasted for a long time. It doesn't mean that there's something new. I think a lot of people think that, oh my gosh, this is something new under the sun. These are old as time.

[A]

Time, espionage and the levers of power that it creates have existed since the beginning of time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you can look at all these different empires, all the ones we've talked about today. Greece, Egypt.

[B]

Well, you can. Even if you go back to Rome, the most powerful man in Rome was the guy that ran the grain supply. Because Rome, in 133 BC, there's two brothers, the Gracchi brothers. So they're the oldest. Gaius Gracchus fought in the last Punic War. And he's on his way back to. On his way back to Rome. He observes all these people farming, and they're very poor and they can't feed their families. So he creates this thing called the grain dole. And the idea was that everybody would be given a certain amount of food by the Roman government and grains that they could eat. And Julius Caesar is actually going to take this and make it a much smoother process. I think in 46 or 44 BC, somewhere along that.

[A]

That.

[B]

But it becomes a really big part of Rome, because now the most powerful man in Rome is the one that feeds everybody. So the. The one that actually runs the grain supply is one of the most powerful Men in Rome. And it was often a position appointed by the emperor. Earlier I mentioned Elagabalus, who was the. The teenage emperor that came from Syria. He was the worship of black rock. He respected the Senate so little. He put his hairdresser in charge of the grain supply.

[A]

That seems like a bad idea.

[B]

He's a very. He's one of the more interesting characters in Rome. Like, if you want to talk about debauchery, this is the guy. He is a teenage emperor. He doesn't live very long. He has a wedding for his black rock to another rock and everybody has to come. He held orgies that he forced the Senate to go to and that they. It's one of the reasons he's killed is the Senate is not happy about these orgies. He would advance men in political position by the size of their member. He was often pulled around Rome in a chariot pulled by prostitutes. And he married a Vestal virgin. So he's, you know, definitely a guy you want next door taking your daughter to the prom, you know.

[A]

Seems like a great character now. He was. When did he rule?

[B]

From 218 to 222.

[A]

Okay, so. And he died at age 18. For the best. He didn't follow up Commodus, did he?

[B]

No, he was.

[A]

There was someone between them, so.

[B]

Well, no, there's several between them. So you have Commodus, you have the. We talked about Pertinax, Didis, Julianus, then Septimius Severus comes out of that. Septimius Severus has a son. That son's name is Caracalla. Caracalla and his brother Gaeta are going to reign for a little bit. Caracalla may or may not have killed his brother Gaeta.

[A]

That's who they base Gladiator 2 on.

[B]

Yeah, Caracalla, who, by the way, would not have looked like the funny little diminutive guy they made him into. He would have been darker skinned, since he's from North Africa then I believe after that, Macrinus, who's a character they take a lot of liberty with in the Gladiator movie, who's the Praetorian prefect has Caracalla killed?

[A]

That's Denzel.

[B]

That's Denzel. He's Emperor for a little bit. And then you have the mother of Caracalla and her brings her sister into Rome and her sister has this kid who's Elagabalus. And they try to claim he's basically Caracalla's son. That can't be proven. Either way, Caracalla dies and the guy that follows him is another guy that, like, oh, this is Elagabalus brother. His name's Severus Alexander. So he does reign for about 20 years, but he's another very kind of teenage type emperor. In the beginning, he's ruled by his women in this time period, the Severin women. So I think Julia Domna, I believe, was the first one, the wife of Severus. These women are very, very powerful. So basically the Severin women are running Caracalla, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander. So they're not really the power, it's the women behind them.

[A]

So you know how in today's society we view someone as passing from a minor to an adult at age 18?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

It's kind of a, you know, randomized number. But when. What was their number back then?

[B]

It was a lot.

[A]

13.

[B]

It was like 13 or it was 13 or 16, I can't quite remember. And they would. They had a chain they would wear around their neck as a child and they would take it off when they became an adult, which is around 13. Even though, you know, 13 hasn't even dropped on something. Yeah, like 13 isn't really a. You know, they don't even shave yet at that point. But, like, that was seen to be a man at that point in time.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Which meant men had the position in a household of being what's called the Dominus of the Lord, which meant that he had the right to kill family members. And at that point in time, when he became a man, even his mother would have to listen to him.

[A]

He had the right to kill them.

[B]

That changes a lot later on. But they did have the right to. They had the right. The right to execute family members if they wanted to because they were the lord over their house.

[A]

How, when you have rules like that in society where every house can be the fucking purge on a given day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How does something like this last hundreds of years?

[B]

The most maiorum, the ways of the ancestors. Our ancestors didn't kill people who were innocent or they only killed the worst. The Romans were very, very entered into tradition. And one of the things that shows this is they would have these wax death masks in their house of their ancestors. So if you look at a guy like Brutus, who's the assassin of Caesar, his great ancestor 500 years before that is Brutus, who's the first consul of Rome.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Consul. If you want to kind of simplify it, you can look at it like a president. But Rome had two of them every year because they didn't want one man to hold power, so there'd be two at the same time and they'd mark the name of the year by the name of the consuls. So his ancestor ended the kings of Rome. Caesar was ostensibly becoming a king. So he saw it as an ancestral duty to take out Caesar. So it held a lot of power over them. So they're not just going to go willy nilly killing family members. They did really look at, is there a reason to do this? Will this cause a problem? Is this person a problem? Their heritage and their ancestry was very powerful to Romans. It was something that was really, really important to them because their constitution wasn't written. It was an oral constitution.

[A]

It's all oral.

[B]

It was all oral. And for from 509 when it became a republic till 31 that lasted that's almost 500 years.

[A]

That's. I mean that's amazing. But it's also like society's agreeing on a verbal story that's passed down and just ingrained in society without having something to point to and be able to say. Here's in section 1B5.

[B]

Well, that is going to change too because like there are ebbs and flows to the republic itself. You're going to have, in the early republic you have basically the rich classes doing whatever they want to the plebs or the poor classes. So you'll have actual written law codes that come out called the 12 tables. Citizenship is going to become something that's discussed later on because a lot of the people living in the provinces didn't have citizenship. So have someone like Marius around the year 100 trying to get citizenship for people in the provinces. So things do change to try and make things better, but for the most part they stick by. Well, what did our ancestors do? How did,

[A]

what did class mobility look like? Could, could someone be born lowborn and find a way strategically to get their hands on power, even if it wasn't

[B]

being an emperor, often through the military would be the biggest way to do that. You could use military position to do that because there's a lot to it to explain this because Rome had different social classes. They had their equites, which are their knights class, they had their plebeians which are lower class. Then if you want to look at the politics, they had the Populares, which were a party for kind of the regular people. You had the Optimades, which is the party of the Senate. So, so it is a very closed system. But at the same time there was mobility. You could come into Rome as a slave, somehow managed to buy your freedom and hold a good position in the republic or later in the empire. Or you look at somebody like Maximus Thrax that we talked about early on. Maximus Thrax was a soldier out in the borderlands from Thrace. He manages to get into the legions, get a military and make himself emperor. Or you look at someone like Hadrian. Hadrian was born in Spain out in a Roman province and manages to become emperor. So there is, and there isn't class mobility. You know, it's hard. It's. There's certain times when it works. Military was a really big part of it because you could use your success in the legions to do something with that. But at the same time, especially during the Republic and during the early empire, they cared a lot about what family you came from. It was really important. Yeah.

[A]

Now, like you were saying earlier, we didn't, we don't have good written history of Main street normal folk. We don't, you know, the people that weren't in power. But we do see the pattern. We're going to get to the actual fall of the Roman Empire in a few minutes. But before that, in the build up to it, that third segment of the three that we've been talking about today, where it's like the elites start not caring about the people below them in a way, and separating themselves from, from society and ruling in that way. What historical records can we point to that captures the vibe of the people in the 4th century, into the 5th century of the Roman Empire to where suddenly the blacksmith, the baker, the, the grain merchant all start waking up to the fact that, like, there's a bunch of people on an island, fucking little kids and they're running our government, you know, and then.

[B]

All right, Alex Jones.

[A]

Yeah, maybe, maybe they had like their own Alexius Jonesy or something back then. But like, when did that. How do we know what the vibe shift was? And, and when it really happened, I

[B]

feel like he would have been a Maximus, by the way. Alexius Jones Maximus. But anyway, I think the hard thing is, once again to, if you want to look at regular people, you have to look at what were the things that would be most hazardous to their health. Sanitation is a huge problem. You know, Romans a lot of times in cities lived in these things called insulis, which are giant apartment buildings, and they were expected to go to the bathroom at a copper pot, walk out into the street and dump it into the nearest gutter. What they would often do is just dump it out the window. So sanitation is a big problem. And rich people often didn't walk around because they didn't want to walk in the urine and excrement that would be in the streets. Have you ever been to like Pompeii or anything like that?

[A]

That I have been to Pompeii.

[B]

Have you seen how high the curbs are?

[A]

It's been a while, so I can't

[B]

say they're high because a lot of the excrement and things you would have dealt with and they wanted to like, keep it in one place. And you all said the horse is going to the bathroom. So you have sanitation is a huge problem. You have disease is a big problem. You have a high rate of children dying and not making it to adulthood. So for them, that's honestly what they would have cared about. They wouldn't really have that much contact with the emperor. They wouldn't have that much contact with the political classes. They would worry about paying their taxes. So for them, when it changes from a Roman Empire to barbarian kingdoms, it's not that much different. It would have mattered for political classes. So I think to say if you look at a guy in 370 versus a guy in 470, a regular guy wouldn't have known that much difference. Right? Because it's a very cosmopolitan empire in a lot of ways. It's brought in a lot of other places to roam and they're just worried about not getting disease, not dying, and they're. And actually being able to continue to live their lives. So for regular people, it wouldn't have mattered that much. Now the political classes, there would have been a lot more to look at because they would look at, well, where is my power coming from? And that's why, you see, in the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries, Rome starts using the. The Fitterati that we talked about earlier, and they start using barbarian commanders to run Roman legions. And you'll have a guy like

[A]

the

[B]

sack of Rome that happens in 410. Alaric, the commander that does that at one point was a Roman commander. He goes back to being a barbarian commander. The east and the west were actually using Olarich against each other to kind of play a power power game. And he conquers the. The city, or not conquers, but sacks the city of Rome. So what did that look like when he sacked would have been something that was just. It wouldn't have been like a total collapse, if that makes sense. It would have been enough to get money, get wealth. They would have attacked it for a few days. To weeks. And that would have been the end of it. And they would have left. The thing that happens after this point is Rome starts paying tribute to the Visigoths. So that means they start paying an amount of money to them every year to not attack us. And if you look at the last like 410 to 476, those emperors are just prop ups for barbarian commanders. And the final Roman emperor is a guy named Romulus Augustulus. He's a child and he's being run by a barbarian commander named Odoacer. Being run, basically he's running the empire through this child.

[A]

Is this like a six year old?

[B]

No, he's like a teenager. He would have been like a teenager. And Odoacer deposes him. So he retires him, gives him a pension, says you're not the emperor anymore. Could you imagine talking to this guy as an adult? Because he was one point in his life emperor and then Odoacer sends the imperial regalia back to Constantinople and he says there's no more emperors here. We don't have a need of them. I'm the king and he's the first king of Italy, what year? This is 476. And you're going to have, he has a short reign, you're going to have a guy named Theodoric after him, which is a little bit more of a well known king after that point in time.

[A]

And that's the fall of Rome from the inside.

[B]

Effect from the inside is basically they have gotten to the point where these emperors don't have any power and they're being propped up, you know, could be political action committees, could be banks, you know what I mean?

[A]

How did the. Over the next 50 years, what were the biggest changes in the culture? As a result of this change, it

[B]

becomes a much more localized culture because you start to have, have, you're going to have tribes like the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Suave, the Vandals. In North Africa you're going to have the Franks and kind of the further in the west. So they start to form their own little kingdoms on Roman land. So it's going to become a more localized type of leadership in a lot of ways. So that's going to be the major difference you're going to see. And that's where you start to see more of the rise in church power because these, these quote unquote barbarians, a lot of them are Christians. So you are going to start to see more rise in church power in these individual little kingdoms.

[A]

The Barbarians were Christians.

[B]

They were mostly Aryan Christians in the beginning. And that's going to change a little bit.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So it had spread up to them.

[B]

It spread up to barbarians because once the empire itself becomes Christian, well, barbarians that are living on the borders and within the empire, they're going to start to become Christian as well.

[A]

Okay, let's bring it back to modern day again with patterns here. When I was talking to Toltenstone about where he looks patternistically at America, he said, actually it feels a little more like the change of the Republic to the Empire rather than the fall of the empire itself. And he wasn't saying it like on a straight years basis, meaning therefore we're going to last another 500 years. That's not what he was getting at. He was saying like the vibes of it on a broad level. How do you view it?

[B]

So here's the difficulty, and I actually wrote an X thread about this about a year ago. And the problem we're seeing is our economic system is showing the fall of an empire, our political system is showing the fall of a republic. They're kind of moving on two different timelines, if that makes sense. So it's almost like a superstorm in a lot of ways. If you want to say that we're showing results of blood things, and a civilization has never seen anything like that before. So I guess the question is, can we survive two systems going through two different changes at the same time? And what comes out of that? I think that's the real concern. So to me, I think it's hard to say. And I know it's. I'm picking both. So, you know, it's not really the best answer, but it's like at the same time our political system and our economic system are showing different symptoms. Symptoms. And I think that's the really difficult part about it.

[A]

It's tough. It's. It's tough to put your finger on it because you're in it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right now. You know what I mean?

[B]

And I think that's the, the major point. Because if you look at it, somebody living during the American Revolution. The American Revolution was what, like 20 or 30 years? So if you look at that. Yeah, you know what I mean? You don't know the significance of something till after it's over.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And that's, you know, going back to forced in history. If you look at that, you don't know something is significant until after it's happened or down the road.

[A]

Hindsight's 20 20, when you're looking at it, but you're. Yeah, you're going back. Maybe the Stamp act, if I'm Remembering this right, 1763. Ish, something like that. And then the little out of my.

[B]

My realm of expertise.

[A]

The war is not over till 1783. So, yeah, you're talking in two decades.

[B]

It's a generation. Right. And I think that's the hard thing is somebody wouldn't have known. Like, you know, I'm in the American Revolution now, or the Fort Sumter battle happens in the Civil War. They didn't know they were in a Civil War. There were people in Charleston that were still doing their own thing. So it's not like, all right, this battle has happened. We are now in a Civil war. These things happen in gradual places and eventually the state of everything changes.

[A]

You have to tell the story after.

[B]

And if you look at, let's say 2020, you have the George Floyd riots, you have all these different things happening, their pockets. It doesn't mean the whole country is going that way. But it's a climate change change, Right. It's a climate change of political and economic climate. So I think to look at what we are in now, we're in a bit of an age of a revolution. I don't know where we are in that. It does feel like something significant. I think that's closer to. I don't know if you've read the book. I was just going to say that Neil Howe, I think, is the author's name, right. And he's written like four different books on it. And the latest one's called the Fourth Turning is here. So could we be in some sort of a power change maybe? You know, cycles are 80 to 100 years. Where are we in that cycle?

[A]

The fourth turning rhyme is unbelievable. I've talked about it so much on this show, charting all the way back to like episode 43, I mean, with Matt Kiminach. Like, I just. I'm obsessed with it because so many historians are actually often, no offense, like, usually not the best.

[B]

I don't consider myself a historian. I'm a regular guy that sees patterns in history and I try to make them make sense.

[A]

All right, tomato, tomato. You know, a lot of historians tend to not be the best predictors of the future. And it's not. It's not a shot. It's just because this thing happens where you study things so hardcore in the past that you almost like biologically start to assume without realizing it subconsciously, that you can therefore predict what will happen. And in the process actually change the way patterns work. What. What Howe and Strauss did when they wrote the Fourth Turning, I guess in like 96, 97, is they just said, yo, we're. We're going to look at what things have been and we're just going to take that and we're not going to tell you how or when or just. And we're going to leave it like that. And the accuracy of how they describe these different generations. And I always recommend this book to people to check it out. But. But you essentially, without going through the whole thing, you have four different eras that occur in 20 to 25 year periods. They estimate it like 21 and a half. And in these four eras, you have four different types of generations that exist, and the generations always exist in the same type of era. And so we were talking about the revolution a minute ago. You know, first of all, 1776 to 1783, 80 to 85 years later, Civil War, 1861 to 1865, 80 to 85 years later, World War II, 41 to 45, 80 to 85 years later, boom. We're right in the middle of it right now with COVID and all this that's going on. Look at the generation who led the revolution, though. These are the guys who cut their teeth coming of age as young men fighting in the back backwoods during the French and Indian War.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And then they led the next young men who were going to go through the revolution as like, yo, we've done this. This how we gonna take out these red coats, you know what I mean? And so what I look at now is I'm like, do we have weaker generations? Do we have people who are supposed to be the quote unquote hero generation who aren't in a position to be heroes?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, they've been neutered.

[B]

I did a podcast in December of 2019 with Dan Carlin from Hardcore History.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And he. It was right after his book came out. It was asking the idea, like, have we become weaker? I. I forget the exact name of the book, but it was. That was the concept. And Dan goes, you know, imagine if something like a pandemic struck. Like, how would we react? I was like. I said to him after. I'm like, dan, I don't know if we should do another podcast after. After that one. But it really.

[A]

Do you have that on video?

[B]

I have the audio. I can send it to you. I don't have it on video.

[A]

Oh, God. At the moment with really said that,

[B]

he said, what if we have another pandemic. Oh, I don't have it on my YouTube channel anymore, so I'll have to send the audio to you.

[A]

Yeah, please do. But.

[B]

So it makes you. And this is why people. When people ask the question, are we wrong? I think that's the wrong question. I don't think we're wrong, but I think at the same time there are patterns. And this goes back to what you were saying. There are economic patterns. They're generational patterns. I think if you can be somebody that can observe to learn or learn to observe patterns, then you do have a better chance of actually doing something. Now the question is, where in the pattern are we, you know, are we in that fourth turning? Are we in the fall of something, in the birth of something new? Because at the same time, and they talk about it in the. The works around the fourth turning, what comes after the bad age is usually something great. So are we heading into something better?

[A]

You know, and that's. The optimist in me sees that turning the corner of.

[B]

I am ultimately optimist. I don't want things to be terrible. I don't want things to be gloom and doom. I want to be hopeful. I have kids, I have three soon before, you know, so it's like, I want a great world for them. But I think it's important that we observe what's happening now and don't go in the wrong direction.

[A]

That's right. That's the. I love how you look at that. That's exactly. Man, I wish people could have that perspective. And you understand history.

[B]

Yeah, too.

[A]

Which is great. And it's like, you know, don't ignore the bad in front of you. Don't ignore the evil. Don't not speak out about that because it'll just work itself out. You have to raise your voice.

[B]

You have to confront it.

[A]

It doesn't for sure, but like, we're in that crisis quote, unquote, period that they define in the four turning.

[B]

But then how you react to it is what causes what's next.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And that's why you have to be careful how you react to it. Because if you look at the Weimar Republic, how they reacted to it created Hitler.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

That doesn't mean we're going to have another person like that again. But it does mean how we react to it creates the results. So we have a ton of responsibility in that.

[A]

And we also have a ton of responsibility in what we create with that. Because, like, obviously Germany litigated World War I and that was wrong and all that, and there's a price to pay for that, for sure. But when you look at what Wilson and, you know, the Allies essentially did at the Treaty of Versailles, really fucking cutting their nuts off in every possible way, it created an environment that eventually led to a vacuum where a voice like Hitler could actually come up.

[B]

And that's why you have to be careful how you react to things.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I think this is the problem with modern systems. It's the problem with modern politics. We don't have forethought. We're not planning ahead. We're reacting as something happens. And we need more people looking at the future, but they're not. And I think we need to change that somehow. I don't know how, but we do need to.

[A]

I agree. And I think, you know, I love people. That's why I do this job.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I get to talk to people from all over the world, all different backgrounds, people I disagree with, people I agree with on certain things. And I. I get all these different ideas and they change my opinions on things all the time. You know, it's a beautiful thing. But what I never. What I never want to see is like, when we have our government and we look at other governments around the world and powerful people and powerful structures who are doing awful things, of course we have to call that out every time and call it what it is. But when we start othering people and we start focusing in on one or two boogeymen or something like that, and ignoring all the other boogeymen, by the way, and also equating people with their governments. I mean, we also did this after 9, 11 with like, all Arabs equating

[B]

them with their governments. Go further back, because even what we were trying to do about the Russians helped to create Afghanistan. So it's like we have to consider what our actions create in the future, not just what it does right now.

[A]

So we have. My point is like. Like this is a really critical moment and my little teeny platform piece of it here. I'm going to do my best to contribute to a better future, and hopefully a lot of other people out there, far bigger than me, will do that as well. You know, in. In my opinion, we really got to come together on the things that unite the masses in so many ways.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And like, there are a lot of people in this country who have a lot of different, you know, that family backgrounds and stuff like that, who want the same things and are having the same problems. And there's a very small group of people who have decided that they're better than us. And that's, that's the fight that needs to happen. We need to stop going after each other because we disagree on how to do this solution or that solution that can get litigated at some point. And the left and right can figure that out with themselves, have fun. But like, like, it's an important moment socio culturally in America right now in many, many ways.

[B]

But I think that the bigger problem is everybody gets upset about what's happening on the national stage. And I've asked this question to General Mike Flynn, and I asked this question to Colonel Douglas MacGregor, and I said, you know, what would you care the most about? They said, local politics. Because everybody's pulling out of their local communities because they're so concerned about what's happening at the, the federal government level or what's the president doing, what's the Congress doing, who's on your school board, who's on your town council, who's running for mayor in your town. Because if you can handle your sphere and everybody can do that, not everybody can handle national politics or state politics, but you can handle who's on your school board or run for your school board. So I think that's what we have to take a look at is what can we actually handle and confront. We can all handle the local level. We can.

[A]

It's an interesting point. My, My cousin, Aunt, the bookie back in episode 28. It always sticks with me. There's lines that stick with you over the years, but he was like, if you're waking up every morning and you're thinking about your first thought is who the president is. Priorities are out of whack. You know what I mean? How much can you do about that? Nothing. And until you vote four years later and you're one of 180 million people that vote. You know what I mean? But like, if you can, to borrow another line from another friend of mine on the podcast, Tommy G. It's like you can't boil the ocean, but you can focus on boiling your own pot every day.

[B]

Correct. Correct.

[A]

Do what you can with what you have as best as you can.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's, that's what it is. But it's, it's always fascinating to tie these beautiful stories from the past that unfortunately always come to an end to what we have today to see how maybe we can change the pattern.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, and we, you know, you don't have to be. We sit back to that abundant scarcity thing. We were Talking about, you don't have to be like this empirical, conquer everything empire in a world where everyone is now actually interconnected. Correct. The click of a button. There has to be like. I, I don't. The term new normal is a dangerous thing to say because that's what people say throughout history. But like, why can't at some point we actually try to create one rather than already assume it exists?

[B]

Patterns are indicators. They don't have to be results. And I think too often, just because part one, two and three happen, it doesn't mean part four has to happen.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Or it means that part four could be different this time. And I think that's what you have to consider is be aware, see what's happening, figure out what you can do. But it doesn't have to be terrible.

[A]

Who is the best emperor of Rome, in your opinion?

[B]

Hadrian was one of my favorites because he was a very active emperor. He was somebody that was typically never in Rome and he was always around the empire trying to make sure his empire was doing well. And there's a story about a woman actually walking up to Hadrian and grabbing his toga and trying to bring up her small little concern to the Roman emperor. And as a citizen of Rome, you had the right to regress your, to address your grievances to the emperor. And she asked, he was kind of like, why are you bothering me with this? And she says, well, will you not continue to be the emperor? And he helped her with her situation. So I think at the same time, he's not the paradigm or the best, but he's somebody that was concerned for the people living in his territory and was very often and trying to see how he can improve things.

[A]

Fascinating story related to today. Once again, it's like the people who are the men of the people, regardless of what their solutions and ideas might be, those are the people who grab onto people's hearts and win.

[B]

And I think at the same time, especially for people to get power, you have to find a way to stay like that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because I think once you become kind of too high on your own supply, I guess is a good way to put it, you stop caring about those things that got you that there.

[A]

Well said, dude. This has been a lot of fun. There was there and there's a whole history, obviously after 476. That's very fascinating that you cover a lot. So we'll have to cover that another time and do a whole podcast on that. And I know you and I were talking about like the whole Bronze Age and everything off air. So I would love to do that. But yeah, I love the back and forth patterns with the modern day when we're looking at really cool history like this. So it's, it's a, it's a great perspective you have and I appreciate you coming here to do it.

[B]

Hey, thank you so much for having me, man. I appreciate it.

[A]

All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought, get back to me. What's up guys? Thanks so much for watching the video. If you have not subscribed, please hit that subscribe button before you leave as well as leaving a like on the video. It's a huge, huge help. You can join my Patreon via the link in the description and you can also join my Clipping community via the Discord link down below. See you for the next episode.