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- [00:00]
Chris Williamson
Why is learning about Roman history useful or instructive at helping us in the modern world? Why should anybody care?
- [00:08]
Alex
I think that. So when I was starting my podcast, I'd been doing it for a couple of months with a kind of hunch on this question. And I wasn't really able to articulate it to my satisfaction. But a friend of mine a few months in recommended that I read this book by Nietzsche, one of his early books. That. And I'd read some Nietzsche before. It's called on the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. And Nietzsche talks in there about how history can sort of drain the life out of you and turn you into a kind of crippled shell of a person. It can kind of get you in this state where you question all of your decisions. It can kind of overload you with knowledge and cause you to retreat into the cloister or the library or be a kind of opiate for a life that is not fulfilling. But he says that, and he quotes Goethe at the beginning of that book that something like Goethe said, I hate all knowledge. That does not quicken and enliven me. Like, away with it. And history can be very quickening and enlivening. And the way that Nietzsche frames it is. The most enlivening approach to history is embodied by one of his favorite authors, Plutarch, this great ancient philosopher who was also one of history's most widely read and entertaining biographers. And Plutarch embodies this mode of reading history, or mode of approaching any number of subjects, really, not just history, kings and battles, but art history or engineering, statuary. And he calls it monumental, the monumental approach to history, where you're looking not so much for precise facts, although the facts kind of matter for the story. You're looking for examples of greatness, and you're looking for those examples. And this is me interpreting Nietzsche a little bit. But I think of history as a kind of source for finding your true self. For, like, you're kind of looking for yourself. You're looking for somebody who's trying to do something that is the. That represents a version of the greatest thing that you could do with your own life. And so it's about, like, finding resonance for. For achievement. And I think this is what the greats tend to get out of history. There's a lot of stories of this happening. Julius Caesar and the statue of Alexander is a famous one. So that's what I look to history for. And it's where I've gotten a lot of my own inspiration. And I think it's about, ultimately about emulation, imitation. And there's a lot of philosophy around this that we could dig into a little deeper.
- [03:31]
Chris Williamson
Isn't it crazy that we think about history as being one thing, or at least the uninformed amongst us think about history as being one thing. But I found out recently that ancient Egypt had their own Egyptologists because Egypt was so old that 2,500 BC was studying 5,000 BC.
- [03:52]
Alex
Yeah.
- [03:53]
Chris Williamson
So the same thing that people of history were learning from people from their history.
- [03:58]
Alex
Yeah. And I studied for a little while with this great scholar when I was in grad school and he said he was a specialist in the late Roman world, like 4th century A.D. and it's, he would always say, you know, Late Antiquity is a very old world. And, and it is because they have been, they are in the, in the 4th century A.D. they're as far away from Homer as we are from Charlemagne. You know, it's crazy to think the world hasn't changed as much for them as it has for us since that, that time period. But even Plutarch, who's a kind of model for so many things, for me, he's this Greek philosopher living in the Roman Empire in the reign of Hadrian Trajan. So Roman peace, about 100 A.D. is like his apogee. He's studying and doing the biographies of figures that lived 500, 700, down to around 100 to 200 years before him. So it's all really old. They already kind of have this deep conception of what history is, what, what it's for, and, and, and a sense of tradition and like, you know, I think we, we, we can learn a lot from the way that they approach their own history, which is often very different from the way that we approach them or we approach our own history.
- [05:18]
Chris Williamson
What about Julius Caesar? What can we learn about living a good life from him?
- [05:23]
Alex
Well, to, to come back to this example, that is probably my favorite story about Caesar. And it's a famous story. So, you know, people might have heard of it, but, uh, maybe they haven't like kind of grasped the true meaning of it. So Caesar is a young man in sort of mid career, early 30s. He's gotten a job as a quester. And that's like for, for what? He gets sent, sent off for his tour of duty one year to Spain, which is a Roman province. And a quester is like a chief of staff, the paper guy for like a Roman governor, a consul or a pro consul. And at one of, one of his leisure moments, Caesar is going around with his friends in a temple. And a temple, it's a temple to Hercules. And a temple in antiquity is kind of like a museum that's like where you would put great statues and art and the, know, dedications and, you know, gold and stuff on the walls. And he's going in there, they're like touring the museum, as it were. Caesar and his buddies and, you know, his buddies kind of keep moving on and they realize, they look back, Caesar is not with them. And he's standing in front of a statue of Alexander the Great in this temple of Hercules. And they're like, caesar, are you coming? Wait a sec. Are you crying? Because he's weeping in front of the statue of Alexander the Great. And he looks to them and he says, do you not think it is a matter for tears that when Alexander was my age, he was the ruler of so many great peoples and yet I have done nothing worthy of great renown? And this is only one of two instances that we know of where Julius Caesar cried. The Romans weren't really into crying as much as the Greeks. I think they were a little bit more open. They were about like us. The Greeks are crying all the time. I mean, if you read Homer, you know, Achilles is, you know, bawling and throwing ash on himself when his buddy Patroclus dies in the Trojan War and in the Odyssey, it's like. It's like every single time somebody mentions the word Troy, like everybody just bursts out in tears. And, you know, his family's always crying for him because they don't know where he's. Where he is. And Odysseus is always crying about everything. But the Romans were a little bit more restrained. So I think for Julius Caesar to cry there, something happened that was really significant for him. And how I read that is Caesar. I mean, he's already had a pretty promising career so far. Some great stories already have happened from early in his youth. He's a questor, which is not nothing. He's got the RO Roman medal of honor equivalent, the civic crown, for risking his life to save a fellow citizen. But he's kind of looking back on his 20s and he's thinking, I've just been screwing around the whole time. This is what I have to do. He's realizing in this moment what his destiny is, or if you want to not use the word destiny. He's realizing what he should be doing. And that's the moment where it kind of hits him. It's painful to realize that you haven't been living the Life to the full extent of what you should be doing and are capable of doing. And I think that's a really powerful moment for. And it kind of like encapsulates how this is why I think it resonates with me so much. That's how we need to be approaching history. That's how we need to be approaching the greats. You need to be looking for that moment of resonance with somebody that just like cracks you open and like, ah. I realize it now personally, I don't have that with Julius Caesar himself. You know, I'm not trying to do the Julius Caesar thing. And it's not every Roman who's great who had that kind of thing with Alexander the Great. I mean that, that says a lot about a man that he really sees himself as like somebody who needs to emulate Alexander. But you can definitely learn from that lesson of trying to find that unique resonance with somebody who tells you what you're supposed to be like. And I think that Caesar had this depth to him that illustrates also what
- [09:59]
Chris Williamson
does that tell us about Caesar's ambition? Level of ambition?
- [10:02]
Alex
Yeah, well off the charts for sure. But I think that you can also understand a lot about Caesar's ambition from looking earlier in his childhood. And there's a great story on this, but I kind of give the context like laying out Caesar's world. So he grows up in Rome and he's from this great family on the one hand, so he's got on his mom's side the Enki Marki go back to the king Ancus Marcus. It's the Marci family that go back to King Ancus Marcus. It's quasi mythical Roman king from the 6th century BC, you know, 500 years of history on his mom's side and then on his dad's side they're the Julius clan and they go all the way back to the mythic founder of Rome, Aeneas, who was the son of Venus and immortal. And so they, you know, 1200 years on that side. So they've got some real blue blood, but they're kind of, they haven't really accomplished a lot in the past few generations. They're not one of the like power elite families like the Metelli or the Cornelii. There's, there's like other families that are a lot more prominent than the Julius family. And they live in a kind of seedy part of Rome, the Sabura. And he grows up in this kind of dirty part of town. I mean I know you worked in the kind of event in the Nightclub world like, Caesar would have been like a kid hanging out in the street playing dice with his buddies outside of, outside of a bar. The Sabra was a kind of place that you didn't really want to live if you had that better option. But, you know, every young aristocrat on a summer night like to go visit. There's like, brothels and, and so he's in contact with the underbelly of Rome, and his family is aligned on what you call the Roman left of politics. There's two main, you can call them factions or kind of political styles, but there's two kind of main poles in Roman politics. And on the one hand, there are the optimates, the kind of oligarchic or aristocratic faction who stand for the ancient prerogatives of the Senate and the, you know, the tradition. They, they tend to monopolize the priesthoods. They're all about, what family are you from? Who are you marrying? And so, and so's great, great grandfather was a consul. Who were you? That whole attitude. And they're, they're, they're very much for the status quo. And on the other hand, you have the populists who are about things like land reform, redistributing public lands. They're really into merits and promoting talented outsiders. And Caesar has really strong connections there because his aunt is married to one of the greatest populist figureheads in Roman history, this guy Gaius Marius, who was an outsider himself to the Roman power elite, but kind of forced his way in by talents. He wins a number of wars for them. And so he grows up with Gaius Marius as his uncle. And Marius made a big fortune in his career from starting very low. And then he kind of married into respectability, which Caesar's family represents, kind of poor respectability. And, and then there is. Caesar loses his dad when he, when he's a teenager. This, his dad, like, drops dead tying his shoes one day. Kind of a freak thing. Maybe he had a heart attack and maybe Caesar's probably early teens at that point. And his dad actually looked like he was on a good track. He been a preter, hadn't been consul. Praetor's the second highest office, Consul's the highest. And he, he died just before he got a shot to run for console. So Caesar, like, had a f. Father figure but lost him. And then, so I, I, I imagine Gaius Marius might have been kind of like a father figure to, to Julius Caesar. I mean, we don't know a lot about that, but what, what hap, what ended up happening is Caesar. Promising young man, 16 years old. He gets a great opportunity to marry the daughter of one of the most powerful men at Rome. Who is Marius? Colleague, his associate, this guy Cinna, who has a run for, he's consul for like three years and also a populist, also kind of against the oligarchic establishment. And right around the time that this is happening, this incredibly bloody war breaks out. Civil war between the optimates and the populists. And it's very complicated. We go in the details if you want, but essentially Marius dies toward the beginning of the war. Cinna dies a little, a little further in and the, the optimates, led by a man named Lucius Cornelius Sulla, win this war. Just like blood running through the, the whole, like every valley in Italy. I mean tens of thousands, maybe more than a hundred thousand Roman citizens, Roman allies killed. It's, it's just horrific and it's, it's probably worse than, than the civil war that he ends up fighting later in his life. But so Caesar is married to Sinna's daughter and when Sulla comes like marches into Rome after winning the civil war, he was, you know, came like invaded Italy from a foreign campaign. He comes into Rome and he gets elected dictator. He kind of forces himself to be elected dictator, which is like a temporary office at Rome. And he's, he's kind of mopping up. He does famously the, this campaign called the Proscriptions, which is basically a purge of all of his enemies. Never been done in Roman history. They'd never had a civil war before. For 400 years they'd had civic more, more or less civic concord. And there had been some incidents in the previous generation, but nothing like this. Sulla posts the names of all the people from the leadership classes of Rome. The rich, some of the richest men, the most influential, well connected, grand family men from the populist faction he blames for picking this fight and starting the war. And if your name is on that list in the proscriptions, he posts them in the Senate. You have a bounty on your head and your entire estate is confiscated state property now. And there's more than a thousand names that end up getting put up in those proscription lists. So heads roll. People are tossing heads in front of the feet of Salla as he's sitting in his like consular throne. They're collecting their reward. It's a, it's just this reign of terror for a few months. And Saleh is also calling other kinds of starts. I mean he's Rewriting the Constitution as a dictator, he's trying to make sure that the populists could just keep their head underwater for generations, that nothing like this war could ever happen again. Because his enemies and the kind of principles that they represent will just be so hamstrung and handcuffed. But one of the things that he does is he approaches younger men at Rome and kind of test their loyalty by making them get divorces. Pompey is another promising young man around this time who ends up being Caesar's friend and rival. He's a few years older, and he goes to Pompey Sulla and he says, pompey, you know, you've been a loyal servant. You brought me a legion in the civil war. You sided with me early. I'm very grateful for that. But you know what? You're married to the wrong woman. I have a better one for you. And Pompey says, yes, sir. And he divorces his former wife and he marries whoever Sulla picks for him. And then Sala, remember, this is a guy who, okay, a subordinate of Salah, a friend of his, wanted to run for consul after Salah becomes the dictator. You know, there's still elections going on, there's still offices that need filling. This guy comes to Salah and he says, hey, Salah, I wanna. You know, we won the war. I. I want to run for console. And Sal is like, you know, you haven't even been preter. This. This would. This would be a bad look. I don't think this is your year. You should stand. Says, thank you for your advice. I'm going to run anyway. And so one day, Sulla is sitting in. In like one of his cural chairs there in one of the public buildings looking out over the Forum and watches as the men that he ordered to do the deed go up to this guy and murder him in broad daylight in the Forum. Because he. He defied Sulla and he tried to know, run for office when Sulla said no. So this is the kind of guy you're dealing with now. Sulla comes to Caesar. Caesar's 18 years old. And he says, caesar, you're married to the daughter of one of my late worst enemies, Cinna. He's, you know, and you can understand his perspective. You know, Cinna was a symbol of everything that Saul wanted to crush. And. And he says, you need to divorce her. And Caesar says, thank you very much for your advice. Go screw yourself. And he skips town. He says, no. So Caesar is running through the mountains of central Italy. He's on the run. Sulla's got guys hunting him down. This goes on for several weeks. Caesar gets dysentery and. And, you know, Oregon Trail style. And he just. He gets caught and manages to bribe the people who catch him to not bring him back to Sulla, but to bring him back to his. His family, to, like, his relatives and friends. And then they go and they. They go and plead with the dictator Sulla. Geez, you know, this was really out of line on the part of Caesar. He's a young hothead, you understand. You know, he'll be good. We'll make sure that he behaves himself. He's only a kid. Don't worry. Please, can you please spare him? You know, because Salah wants to execute him, obviously. I mean, he's got an image to uphold, right? Like. And Sulla relents and he says, very well, but you are fools if you don't see many a Marius in that boy. And so Caesar gets off. Now why did he do that? Like, what does that say about him and what he's got in mind for his future? All right, one explanation is Caesar's a showman. He's a natural showman. He knows if he can defy the dictator and get away with it, people are going to be talking about this for his entire life. They're going to talk about it all around town. Sure enough, you know, we're still talking about it today. Like it worked as a. As a kind of PR stunt. On the other hand, he knows that this girl is. Is a symbol of. Of his. All of his populist connections that have mostly been decapitated. Like, everything that Caesar had, had, like, aspired to, you know, think. You think as a teenager, you know, you got a great career ahead of you. You know, you're, you know, the top guys in this party. Like, the, the trajectory is clear. It's all just been, like, liquidated, turned to blood. And she's like one of the last living symbols of that. And he knows that if he, he knows the kind of, like, he's kind of calling his shot in a way. He's. He. He's. He's seeing a career for himself on the populist side, on the kind of revolutionary, if you will, side of Roman politics. And he's sort of building. Building a career with this clairvoyance about where he's headed for the rest of his life already there at age 18. And I think that one final piece of this is it had a lot to do with just family, you know, and who he was. And he didn't want to be pushed around by anybody. And he was willing to die rather than to let that happen. And the fact that he, I think one of this, the final things that this illustrates about Caesar is Caesar was, for all that you could criticize about the guy, he was incredibly loyal to the people that, that were close to him, to his friends, loyal to a fault. And he was loyal to this, to this wife, Cornelia, all the way up to her death. And I can't prove this, and I wouldn't even try, but Caesar was famously good with the ladies and slept with a lot of senators wives and so forth, and had a lot of girlfriends on the side. But we don't know of any specific cases where he did that while he was married to his first wife, Cornelia. And she ends up being the mother of his only daughter, his only child up until the very end. Julia. But I think that it was something about proving loyalty to that woman. But I think you see in that, to answer your question about what are his ambitions? They're grand. Already. You can see that in him as a young man. He knows he's destined for something big. He's smart, talented, handsome and so forth. And he was going to ride that horse as long as he could.
- [24:30]
Chris Williamson
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- [25:52]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, that's another great story. Another kind of flash of his brilliance. So he's, he's off cavorting in Asia, Asia Minor as a young man. And this is before Pompey cleans up the seas from the pirates. And so he gets captured by pirates as one does during those times. And he, I think he's like on a study trip actually at the time. So it's, he's very young, like 20, 23. And the, the pirates want to ransom him. And Caesar says, what you're asking is insulting. Like you're asking 20 million sisters, you need to double it. Like you don't know what you've got on your hands here. Because I think partly because. To kind of troll them, partly because he is, he knows that if he gets ransomed for more money going to make a better story and people are going to think more of them. Because like, you know, the Greek word for honor is team A. It means price. You know, it's, it's the pri. It's literally the price that you, your comrades would be willing to ransom you for if you got captured. Like, it's quantifiable. It's very quantifiable. Like in Homer, you know, it's. We think of honor as this abstract thing, but it's like, how much are you really worth? You know, you could put a number on that. So Caesar kind of gets that.
- [27:21]
Chris Williamson
He basically bids on his own auction.
- [27:23]
Alex
Yeah, right. And, and, and the funny thing about that story is. Well, there's a lot of funny things. But, you know, while he's there with the pirates, Plutarch, who's his greatest biographer, says, you know, Caesar would sort of, he was, he would joke around with them and he would write compositions. He's like, you know, rocking around in the hole there writing speeches. And he would, he would declaim them in front of the pirates and he'd make them laugh and cry. And then he would just say, you people have no taste. I can't believe that I'm, I'm hanging out with you. And they would say, oh, Caesar. And then he said, you Know, someday I'm going to come back after, after you ransom me and I'm going to execute every single one of you. And they said, oh, see this kid, we love this kid. Pour him another drink, you know, and then that's exactly what he does, right? He gets ransomed and, and he, the, the local governor that, that is responsible for that part of the sea is I think he, no, he raises a fleet with his own funds. He goes and he, you know, he knows where these guys hide out, their little cove. And he captures the pirates and he brings them to the governor. And the governor is sort of dawdling. He doesn't really have a great plan for these pirates. And so Caesar goes and he crucifies all of them to make a statement. But you know, because they were such kindly hosts to them, he does them the courtesy of having their throat slit before they get crucified. So they don't, you know, have to be there in agony for several days, dying. He gives him a short death. So I think it's perfect combination of his winning charm, his deep sense for the political stakes of every single thing that he does. Raising his price, making a scene and making a statement by fulfilling his promise in the most cold blooded way possible.
- [29:26]
Chris Williamson
Why did he become so popular? What were the levers that he was pulling on?
- [29:31]
Alex
Well, before he becomes a commander, at least Caesar is just a really stylish guy. He, he has a flair for fashion. You know, he wears his, his toga a little differently than, than everybody else. It's a little looser. You know, it's kind of like, you know, when I was in high school a lot, a lot of kids would like let their pants sag down. It was like the cool look. Yeah, the Caesar's doing that. Like let's, let's let our toga sag a little bit. But it, but it was, it was like, you know, it was stylish and classy and, and kind of. And, and you know, the older men at Rome would say, oh, that's effeminate. But Caesar knew that it would draw, draw attention that he could pull it off. And one of the ways that he attracts attention is by prosecuting corrupt governors. When he's just in his 20s, you know, he, he does these sort of, sort of publicity stunt DA like young DA Prosecuting the, whatever city councilman. And he, he loses I think most of these, but he makes a statement of what he stands for. And, and I think he knows from a very early age that he's kind of an anti establishment Figure Sala has dies soon after he becomes a dictator. And, and like in his youth, Saleh basically firmly established the optimate oligarchy. And everybody in power now in Rome was like a buddy of Sulla. And they have no serious challengers. They're corrupt, they're fat, they're slow, they're plundering the provincials. And Caesar kind of takes a stand for justice like throughout his early career. And you know, one of these, one of these cases he, There was a, there was a riot 30 years earlier. This is funny. And some populist leaders, people from Caesar's faction got murdered. Saturninus was the most. Well, there was a riot in the Forum and then they arrested the guys, they put them in the Senate house and then people snuck up to the roof in the night, they removed the roof tiles and they hurled these roof tiles down on Saturninus and his buddies and they killed him. So there was some violence in the streets in Rome the generation before. And so Caesar picks one of the last surviving men to have been vaguely implicated in this riot as somebody with blood on his hands, metaphorically for the death of Saturninus and his associates. And the guy is like this emaciated old, old gentleman, Riberius, and he says, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna hold you responsible for your crimes 30 years ago. Like Rome is, Rome is a place of justice. And they basically, you know, long story short, they get, they get him convicted and in the special court that they call the punishment is crucifixion, like so they're going to publicly execute this like 80 year old man who probably doesn't even know what day it is. And there's some last minute political shenanigans by Riberius's friends. They like raise this flag and they, you know, there's a kind of like political chicanery where you can say the omens are bad and it kind of calls off the whole thing. And Caesar, I think kind of expected them to do that. But the point was about the statement, you know, that oligarchs, aristocrats from the establishment can't get away with murder anymore, not in this town anymore. I think that was a big piece of why he was popular before he ever led an army. Now when he started leading armies, that's a whole different story. Like he was a master at getting like winning the respect of his soldiers. He was always fighting in the front lines. There's many stories about this, the incredible loyalty that, that his soldiers in particular had for him. But you know, he's kind of a playboy in his, in his youth and he just was, was a fun guy to be around. He's always giving gifts. He's, he's in debt all the time up to his ears and he somehow always finds a way to pay off his creditors. He was just a really magnetic guy to be around.
- [34:03]
Chris Williamson
What was the loyalty that he generated? Just how loyal were his followers?
- [34:07]
Alex
Well, so one instance of this is in the civil war that illustrates this is this guy, Grannius Petro is a guy, we wouldn't know his name otherwise, but he's a questor in Caesar's army and gets, he's ship captain gets, gets his ship captured by Caesar's enemies in the civil war. And, and so he's brought aboard the ship with his fellow sailors and, and the, the enemy commander, the optimate commander says granny is Petro. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna be nice to you guys. Now normally since you, you all are traders, what we should do is slit your throats and throw you overboard. But we're going to be very kind. You know, Caesar's a kind man. We know he's the enemy of the state and tyrant and lawless, but we're going to, we're going to not let him morally outclass us. We're just going to sell you in the slave market, all of you, and hopefully you'll get ransomed. Maybe. But granny is Petro. You however, may go free. He's the, he's their leader and, but you have to go and tell Caesar what we did here and tell him that his war effort is futile, that he should surrender to the lawful government of the republic. And Granius Petro says it is the custom of Caesar's soldiers to give mercy, but not to receive it. Then he pulls out a dagger and he stabs himself to death right in front of the, the enemy consul. That's the kind of loyalty that Caesar had. Like this guy would rather die than, you know, be ashamed by letting his enemies spare him another great instance. I mean, the Caesar's soldiers had this incredible endurance throughout all of his campaigns. They're willing to fight for him to the death. You know, stories about soldiers getting shot in the eye, shot in the arm, shot in the leg, taking hundreds of blows, and then they don't leave the fight, they just have to be dragged away by their companions. One instance again later from Caesar's career, he's fighting this great kind of trench war, siege war with Pompey. There's like a 17 mile wall that he's built around Pompey's camp to wall him into the coast in Greece. And Pompey's built another counter wall. So it's this dragging, dragging, long siege warfare. And the supplies are getting choked. Caesar cuts off the water to Pompey. The animals are starving and dying in Pompey's camp. But Caesar is even in worse straits because they've eaten. He's got 20,000, 30,000 men. They're eating all the food in the area. They're, like running out of food, and they're having to go and collect weeds and bake them into these horrible, disgusting cakes and just eat them. And at some point, Pompey's guys have enough food and water personally, even though the animals are dying. They call over to Caesar's men across the wall, they say, you know, hey, Roman, getting hungry over there. And Caesar's soldiers catapult over some of these horrible loaves of nasty food that they're eating just to show what they're willing to eat. They're willing to, like, starve to death before giving up the fight. And one of these, these cakes, you know, imagine like a cow patty. One of these cakes is brought to Pompey, you know, his. His en commander. And he says, good God, we are fighting with beasts. And they go to Caesar and they say, we would rather eat tree bark than surrender. And how was he able to generate that? He fights in the front lines with them all the time. He risks his life right up there with the centurions. He knows all the centurions in his army by name. There's like one centurion for every 80 men, and he's got an army of 30,000. He remembers their names. He, like, takes the time to do that. He. He also is. He's very generous with. With gifts. And what he'll do is he'll eat the same food that they eat. I don't know if he ate those cow patties, but I imagine he did because he had this habit of like, if. If the. If the olive oil was rancid and there was good olive oil, but the troops were eating the bad olive oil, he would eat the bad olive oil. If his troops are sleeping on the ground, if his officer corps, they're, you know, he's always going around like lightning speed, blitzing around campaigns, and often they have to stay in weird places. You know, if his officers are sleeping on the ground, he'll sleep on the ground. He'll give a good one bed. We'll give it to the weakest of us, which is not me, you know. So he's always there with them. But he's also, he's very lavish with these guys too. Like he, his, his what he does, he does amass a lot of money when he's conquering Gaul, for example, but it's always only to give it to his friends, to give it to the people of Rome, to do something with it. It's all. He always sees money as a tool and, and riches as a tool and gift as a tool to, to, to like, win, to bind people closer to himself. Because this is where his real power lies. And this is where I think in general, real power lies.
- [39:51]
Chris Williamson
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- [41:17]
Alex
Yeah, so Pompey is. They're friendly for most of their career and Pompey is a kind of moderate populist Pompey mostly wants to. In his early career he's a, he's fights for Sulla but soon after Sulla dies, you know, Pompey doesn't, he's not really into politics that much. He mostly wants to just get himself sent off as commander of Rome's armies to fight all kinds of wars because that's, I think that's his happy place. Pompey is an excellent administrator, he's great at logistics. I think he's kind of a big guy too. And so Caesar helps him a lot in his early career to get these extraordinary commands is what they call them. Like Pompey doesn't hold office until he's 35 and usually to become consul, which is what he becomes, you would have to have a whole sequence of offices. But Pompey, he's just the golden boy. Pompey is. He's got this combination of charm and he's got this boyish look. He's got this little quiff in his hair. He kind of looks like Alexander and he kind of models himself off of Alexander the Great. I mean Caesar and Pompey both are like Alexander, Alexander Stans and. But he's also got this ruthlessness to him too. They called him the kid butcher when he was younger and the Romans just loved this combination of cold blooded forcefulness, brutality even, you know, in a controlled way and boyish charm, which Pompey had. But the way that they really get in, into cahoots in the first Triumvirate is so even though Caesar's kind of friendly with Pompey, helps him out here and there, he's not like really tight with Pompey. Who he is tight with is Crassus, the richest man in Rome, Another fascinating figure that I did a, did a biography on the castle glory. He Crassus finances Caesar's career. He's basically the one holding the note for all of Caesar's colossal political debts. And there comes a point when Caesar is ready to run for consul, that Crassus has a problem and Pompey has a lot of problems that they can't get solved in the Senate and in politics. Pompey has just come back from this glorious eastern campaign. He's defeated this general Mithridates, he's essentially conquered Judea and he's defiled the temple in Jerusalem. But he's come back glorious with a bunch of soldiers that need rewards. He wants to settle his soldiers. He wants the Senate to ratify all of the arrangements, the treaties that he made appointing a client King here, you know, getting a city constitution ratified there. And he's got a lot of. A lot of interest in that, like, materially, you know, people sending him money and promising to support him in war or politics. So Pompey has a lot of needs. And. And this. It's all getting blocked by the Senate. He's just not that great at the political game. His. And. And by this point, Pompey is sort of an outsider from the. From the optimates, from the kind of establishment conservatives who are blocking Pompey. They think he's getting too powerful. Caesar is nobody at this point. I mean, yeah, he's a promising young politician, but he's not, like, a powerful man. So we talk about the triumvirate, but it's Caesar brokering a deal with Pompey. And then Crassus, on the other hand, has some tax breaks he wants for his. Basically, his portfolio companies who are equestrian tax collectors, and they can't get it through the Senate. Both Pompey and Crassus are outsiders to the optimate establishment. The main guy who's the kind of figurehead of the. Of the conservatives is this young guy, Cato, who becomes. Who's the stoic, famously becomes Caesar's worst nemesis. And Caesar basically comes to these. These two big shots, the two big fish in Rome, Pompey and Crassus, richest man and then the most glorious general. He says, you guys hate each other. You've hated each other for a long time. You've always been trying to smile in public when you're next to each other, but then stab each other in the back behind the scenes. But look, you both have needs. I can fix them. I can fix this. I can get your legislation passed. Pompey. I can get your legislation passed. Crassus, support me in the consulship, and I'm going to ask for a favor down the line, but let's not worry about that right now. And they say, all right. And so it's basically the Triumvirate. Is Caesar brokering this deal between these two top guys, which is a great. That's a great strategy. I think if you're. If you're, like, down here, and there's men up here that have a need to help find the way to help them out. And. And they're. And the biggest thing that's blocking each of them really is each other. Like, Crassus is, like, pushing the Senate to not ratify Pompey's legislation. Pompey is going to use his clients to kind of push against Crassus, so making peace between the two of them. And it was a pretty good relationship for a long time. And once Caesar gets elected consul, his dear, dear daughter Julia, his one child up to that point, he marries her off to Pompey the Great and he becomes Pompey's father in law, even though he's a younger man somewhat. And by all accounts, that marriage was not just a political marriage, but became a very loving relationship. And so, you know, they had this long connection long before the civil war that made them mortal enemies of each other, which I think is what makes it kind of even more tragic and bitter.
- [47:33]
Chris Williamson
And then how do Pompey and Caesar end up at war?
- [47:37]
Alex
Well, that's, you know, a long story, I guess. But in sum, when Caesar, how it all happens, how, how this breakdown happens is when Caesar goes off, when he finishes his consulship, he gets Pompey and Crassus to support him, to have himself sent off to Gaul. So far, you know, Caesar hasn't had his Alexander moment. This is his chance to do some real world changing conquest. And he spends the years 59 is the first triumvirate. So he spends the years 58 through 52 conquering Gaul. And Rome controls a little strip along the coast. Gaul is France, of course, but. But the Gauls, the Celts is the other name for them. They are not just a kind of, you know, peaceable farmer, unsuspecting society of, you know, we just, we just want to like, live our, our peaceful lives. Why are these Romans coming and conquering us? I mean, this is a confederation of war, incredibly warlike tribes who have threatened Rome on many occasions. And just in the previous generation, there was a great Gallic invasion that stopped by Gaius Marius. And so several centuries earlier, the Gauls actually sacked the city of Rome, taken it the only time that ever happened up to that point. So there's a real threat there, arguably. And we could get into how Caesar conquered Gaul, but how Pompey and Caesar fell out with each other is. It's a long story that basically while Caesar's away, he is absent from the city of Rome and from Italy for seven years, well, really eight years before the conflict between them breaks out. And while he's away, Crassus dies. And Crassus was a kind of fulcrum balancing out Caesar and Pompey, he dies on this great Persian expedition, this campaign to invade not Iran, but Iraq, where the Persians were in charge. So that was the kind of last. When you have three men, they can kind of balance each other out. But when it becomes two men, there's, there's a polarity there that can really be inflamed. And this is exactly what the establishment people see. People like Cato see Caesar has always been a revolutionary in their opinion. He's always been trying to make a grab at supreme power. They, they, they, they had their eye on him since he was, since he was a young man. Sulla was right about this kid. There is many Mariuses in him and they, you know, Pompey has, has been an outsider but they, they see sort of late in the game after Crassus dies, that if they can kind of court Pompy into the establishment, he's always wanted their approval. You know, Pompey has always just wanted to be this glorious general, welcomed by the blue bloods, the great families, and they never really had it. And so they see their chance. Cato and Co. Like, let's make Pompey a respectable man. Let's make him our shield, our shield against Caesar. Because Caesar's going to come back at some point and he's going to come back richer and more powerful and more glorious than ever. And he's going to just push us around in politics and, and maybe, maybe, maybe he's going to try to take over the thing and make himself a monarch, which I think was a self fulfilling prophecy. Like that wasn't really his intent at that point. But basically they say Caesar, it's like 51 BC at this point. Caesar's been in Gaul for eight years. He's got so many well trained legions and basically his enemies are saying, you can't, we're not going to let you come back except under circumstances where you will face accountability, prosecution potentially for all of the bad things you did in your earlier career, including when you were consul. And they basically, you know, long story short, they kind of play Pompey and they especially kind of get into Pompey's head and play him off of Caesar in this gradual shift of alliances. And importantly, importantly Caesar's daughter Julia, Pompey's, you know, the love of Pompey's life. By all accounts, she dies in childbirth in 54. And that was like the link that held the final tether, final tether that held them together and after that the
- [52:37]
Chris Williamson
civil war, because otherwise there would have been some leverage over Caesar. Yeah, we have your daughter.
- [52:43]
Alex
Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. But I think they couldn't have gotten Pompey's head because you know, they would have had a Caesar's grandson, Pompey's son, would have. Would have bound them together. It was a boy that was born, that died soon after his mother died. So I think that it wasn't an obvious fit for Pompey to be their shield, their man. He had always been an outsider, and Caesar could have kind of kept him loyal. It's very hard when you're in France and this is all happening in Rome, but Caesar has a lot of lieutenants, really, you know, men of letters, trying to kind of keep the peace and keep up his contacts in Rome. But, like, if he had been able to be there in person, he believed he could have. He could have settled the seas and won Pompey back over. And this is one of the things, after the war broke out, that he kept trying over and over again, like, let's just meet.
- [53:35]
Chris Williamson
The Civil War.
- [53:36]
Alex
Yeah, the Civil War. Yeah, let's just meet. Let's. Let's work this all out.
- [53:39]
Chris Williamson
But he didn't want to.
- [53:40]
Alex
Yeah, Pompey didn't want to. At that point, he'd already hardened his heart.
- [53:44]
Chris Williamson
He was supposed to be. Pompey was supposed to be one of the greatest generals ever.
- [53:47]
Alex
Right.
- [53:48]
Chris Williamson
And did he not outnumber Caesar as well?
- [53:50]
Alex
Yeah, he greatly did. Pompey was brilliant in the civil war. He defeated Sertorius, he conquered the pirates in, like, three months earlier in his career. I mean, he's a brilliant administrator. Some people think he's overrated as a general. I mean, he was really good, but I think Caesar was a better general. But.
- [54:12]
Chris Williamson
But Pompey evidently.
- [54:13]
Alex
Evidently. But he. He definitely had, by all, by the look of it, all the advantages when Caesar invades Italy, crosses the Rubicon. You know, Pompey has a lot of legions on paper, but they're. They're fresh recruits.
- [54:28]
Chris Williamson
What's the story of crossing the Rubicon?
- [54:30]
Alex
Yeah.
- [54:31]
Chris Williamson
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- [55:55]
Alex
Yeah, so there's a kind of complicated buildup, standoff. You know, everybody's always kind of ratcheting up their demands as Caesar's like, I want to come back to Rome, don't. Without prosecution. And the Senate's like, over our dead bodies here. You know, concessions going back and forth being rejected. And so as this is all going on, Caesar's getting his, getting his armies ready. He doesn't want to fight a civil war. I think he's, you know, and he always said that, and I think it's
- [56:26]
Chris Williamson
right because he's just come back from Gaul.
- [56:28]
Alex
Yeah, he's just come back from Gaul.
- [56:30]
Chris Williamson
Seven year campaign, eight year campaign, straight into a civil war.
- [56:33]
Alex
Right, right. Basically he's, he's at war from 58 BC until 45 BC almost constantly. I mean, the energy of the man and, and he's got two advantages. So, so basically he's got, I think he's got 10 legions at this point, something like 40,000 men. But they're all kind of strung out over Gaul and forts. They're, they're not close. He's got one legion with him on the border, the legal border between Italy and basically northern Italy. What we call northern Italy today was what they would call Cisalpine Gaul. It's not like Italy proper. And if you lead an army into Italy without disbanding it. It's technically an act of war. Consuls are supposed to disband their armies before they reenter Italy. And so the border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper is the Rubicon River. It's this insignificant stream near Ravenna in northern Italy on the Adriatic coast. And so Caesar's camps at Ravenna, and he is negotiating with the Senate envoys, going back and forth, back and forth. It's not looking good. Caesar doesn't want to fight a war, but he's going to be ready. You know, he's not. He's not about to pretend like this couldn't happen. I think Pompy wasn't really ready for it, but. So he's got one legion there with him at Ravenna. Not a lot of men. 400, 4000, 500 men or so. And at. At. At this final moment, the negotiations break down and the Senate declares him a public enemy. They say Caesar is. Is. Is. You know, he's not responding to our demands. We've had enough. And they officially basically declare war on him. And the moment he gets that advice, the very next day, actually, he was. He knew what he was going to do the next day, but he pretends like nothing's happening on that day. He's going to go about his business in Ravenna. He goes to the gladiatorial shows, he inspects his troops, he has dinner with his friends. It's just a normal day, no big deal. But he secretly sends the order out to his troops to muster, and he finds his way to the Rubicon. He apparently gets lost in the woods because it's dark. I mean, there's all these kind of elaborate tales about this. And one of the ancient sources, not Plutarch, who's a little bit more sober, one of the ancient sources, Suetonius, I think it is, says, you know, you know, as he stood there before the Rubicon, he saw a great winged figure blowing a trumpet. It's like the gods are, like, calling him to war. It's like the Valkyries or something. But what he says is he's there with his officers, and he knows if he crosses that river that he's declaring war back on the Senate. And so he says, let the die be cast. And the famous words is actually a quote from one of his favorite dramas or a comedy from Menander, like, let the die be cast, as one does when one is entering upon a highly risky thing with uncertain results, as Plutarch says. And so he crosses the Rubicon very quickly, and Within a day, he has just blitzed down and captured a city in Italy proper. And he. Just. One of his advantages, as I was saying, is he loves to be underestimated, and he's really good at getting himself underestimated. And they didn't think he would do it. And he. He only goes into Italy with one legion, and this. The senate has, like, 10 legions in Italy. I mean, he's vastly outnumbered, but everybody else arrives really quickly. The other advantage is he's really fast. And so he blitzes through Italy, and pretty soon Pompey and the Senate decide they've gotta. They've gotta get out of there. They've gotta think, rethink their grand strategy. And they. They. They go to Greece to basically muster up and collect a bunch of ships and a bunch of troops in the east and come back and reinvade Italy and destroy Caesar. But. But it doesn't work out that way.
- [61:12]
Chris Williamson
Why?
- [61:12]
Alex
Well, they were hoping. They knew that Caesar didn't have any ships. Basically, he doesn't have troop transports, so he's not able to cross over and catch them and take the war to Greece. He's not able to draw on his great advantage, which is speed. And they're hoping to essentially kind of blockade Italy and starve them out. Rome, if you blockade Rome, the people will starve quickly because they're getting the majority of their grain from places like Sicily, North Africa, not yet Egypt, but it's a. You know, it's the biggest city in the world at that point, at least in the West. Million people, maybe. And you can't get that much grain in from the countryside on carts, you know, so they bring it in on ships. So they're hoping to basically starve, starve the people of Rome and makes Caesar really unpopular, and so he doesn't have ships, he can't go catch them. So there's also. Pompey's got guys in Spain that start up holding out against Caesar, and Caesar's only controls Italy and Gaul. And so he has to go fight a war in Spain first before he can go catch Pompey in Greece. And, you know, basically by. By leaving. By leaving Italy rather than settling it then and there, his enemies are essentially saying they're willing to make this a world war, which is exactly what happens. There's a war fought in Spain first. Caesar comes and he. And he defeats them in Greece. Then he goes to Egypt. There's another war there. Then there's another war in Asia Minor. Then there's a war in North Africa, and Then there's the final kind of embers of the war in Spain. I mean, he visits every single province in the Roman Empire and carries war to almost all of them. Wow.
- [63:07]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, you mentioned Egypt there. What's the story of Caesar and Cleopatra?
- [63:11]
Alex
Yeah, well, so fast forward. Caesar's first campaign is in Spain. His second campaign in the civil war is. Is in Greece, where he defeats Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus, which is the. Really should have been the. The last battle, should have been the decisive battle. And Pompey flees and makes his way to Egypt. They don't know where he went for. For a while, but Caesar finally figures out he's gone to Egypt because Pompey has friends there. And as soon as he gets on shore, actually, he doesn't ever, ever reach the shore. He basically comes up with his warships. And the Egyptians say, oh, yes, we're really glad to see you, Pompey. Come, come, come ashore. We've got the whole reception ready for you. Just get in this little boat and, you know, there's, there's reefs that a big ship like yours would. Would probably founder on. So just trust us, we're going to get you in this little boat and take you to shore. And, and, and, you know, Pompey gets on the boat. He. He probably knows what's gonna happen, but he's. He has no hope at this point. He's just crestfallen. He's. He's dispirited. He thought he was gonna win against Caesar. It was an upset victory at Pharsalus, and I think it just kind of shattered him. And I think there's. I'm trying to remember exactly how they frame it. There's a moment where the. The boat captain is like, come on, Pompey, there's nothing to be worried about. You can trust us. And Pompey said, you know, if I were worried about my life, I would not get in this boat. Like, I mean, I think he knew because on that boat, they murdered him in front of the eyes of his son, in front of the eyes of his wife, in front of the eyes of all of his friends. Once they get a little away from the warship, he never makes it to shore. They murder him.
- [65:17]
Chris Williamson
Who's they?
- [65:18]
Alex
The Egyptians. So who is they? What's going on in Egypt right now is there's a civil war happening. Egypt is ruled at this point by the Ptolemies, who are a Greco Macedonian ruling class. Their capital is Alexandria, which is a great Greek city founded by Alexander the Great. He's everywhere, isn't he? And so there's a conflict going on between these two. Like teenage. One is a teenager, one's a 20 year old. Like siblings of the pharaoh who died. You know, it's funny to think of these Greeks as pharaohs, but that's what they would have called them in Egypt. And Pompey was hoping that all the favors he did for them earlier would ingratiate him to the Egyptian regime. But they basically saw Caesar won at Farclus. He's probably going to be the winner in this war, even though it might go on for a while. What would. What would make Caesar really happy is if we just killed Pompey and presented Caesar with Pompey's head and said, hey, we did you a favor. And if we did that, you know, if. If we let Pompey live, he's probably going to try to raise an army and try to use Egypt as a base and drag on the war. And we're going to have Roman troops just ripping this in the middle of our own war, in the middle of our own war. It's going to be just a total mess. So they kind of nip it in the bud and I kind of made sense. I think what would have made more sense is for them to just arrest Pompey because Caesar wanted Pompey alive.
- [67:00]
Chris Williamson
Actually, he kept on pardoning his enemies
- [67:03]
Alex
during the civil war. Yes, he wanted to pardon Pompey. He pardoned enemy after enemy. Domicius, Petro, Petraeus. I mean, you could list names and names. He's always sparing his enemies. Some would say that he was too kind to his enemies because they end up assassinating him. We'll get to that maybe, but. And Caesar also knows that if Pompey, if he captures Pompey and spares him, if he. If he could just get in the same room face to face with this man that he hasn't seen in the better part of 10 years, that they could work something out. He could convince Pompey to get the troops to stand down, to get everybody to stand down. There's no way that this war could carry on if Pompey and Caesar come to an agreement finally. That's what he really wanted. He wanted to make peace. He didn't want to fight this war, but he was willing to fight it if they wanted to fight it with him. And so, you know, when he lands ashore, they present him with the signet ring of Pompey. This has a great. I think it had a. A lion on it. It was unmistakable. And then they give him the head of Pompey.
- [68:13]
Chris Williamson
Just in case you weren't sure.
- [68:14]
Alex
Here you are.
- [68:15]
Chris Williamson
Just in case you weren't sure whose ring that is. Came from the hand of the head, that is.
- [68:19]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know? Do you want to guess?
- [68:23]
Chris Williamson
There it is.
- [68:24]
Alex
And that's the second time that. That he's said to have cried. You know why? Consul of Rome, He. I think he cried because this was his friend. It really was his friend. And he. All his. Well, the cynics will say that there were crocodile tears, that Caesar was secretly happy. I think that's totally false. Like, he really wanted Pompey alive. And I think he did still kind of hold out hope that they would, you know, be able to come to an agreement. Of course, Caesar would be the. The big man now, and Pompey would be kind of. His career would be over. Let's be frank. After losing a civil war, maybe he could go into a dignified exile. But this was the father of his. Of his son. Before the son died. This was the. The man who. Who took care of his daughter. Like, they had this really personal relationship. And so Caesar was actually quite pissed, and he. He ended up killing all the men who. Who called the hit on Pompey.
- [69:27]
Chris Williamson
No way.
- [69:27]
Alex
Yeah, because they were basically the. The sibling of the rival Ptolemies. That's controlling Alexandria is this kid ptolemy. Ptolemy the 13th. I think he's like, 15. And it's. It's actually. He's kind of. He's being kind of ruled by this general that he has and this court eunuch, as one has in Egypt. One needs eunuchs to do things. And one of them was the kind of chamberlain and was kind of pushing the kid around and calling the shots. And so the way that the war goes, basically, Ptolemy and Cleopatra are. Cleopatra is the other. The other sibling. I forgot to mention that she's off in the wilderness. Who knows where she is. When Caesar arrives, Caesar is welcomed with kind of, you know, fake smiles by the Egyptians who just want the Romans gone. Egypt has been. It's not a Roman province. It's important to understand it's a Roman client kingdom. They're independent. They have their own tradition. They want to keep it that way. Alexandria is the most glorious city in the Mediterranean. Rome might be bigger, but it's a dirty place. Alexandria is a city of marble and culture. They've got the library. They've got, you know, Alexander's tomb there, and they just want the Romans to kind of leave them to Their own devices, maybe be allies, but basically they want Caesar gone as soon as possible. And Ptolemy represents the kind of more Egyptian independence party in Egypt and Alexandria. He's loved by the people. Actually, Cleopatra is actually the unpopular one, and that's exactly the kind of person that Caesar likes to support, because the story is he's been there for a couple of years, weeks.
- [71:38]
Chris Williamson
This is after he went to go and find Pompey.
- [71:41]
Alex
Yeah.
- [71:42]
Chris Williamson
Finds head and hand.
- [71:44]
Alex
Yeah.
- [71:44]
Chris Williamson
And sticks about.
- [71:46]
Alex
Yeah. He's. He's sticking around in Egypt, in Alexandria, trying to figure out what he's going to do. There's a war going on there, and anytime the Romans see a war amongst people on the fringes, they see an opportunity to come in and intervene. And that's a way to kind of extend your power and maybe end up controlling the place directly. Egypt is the most, by far the richest kingdom land area in all of the Mediterranean.
- [72:13]
Chris Williamson
Why? What have they got?
- [72:15]
Alex
So, for one thing, they've got the Nile, which, you know, you can, like, eat an apple and spit the seeds on the ground and get wonderful fruit. I mean, it's incredibly fertile because of the flooding of the Nile. They've also got very, very rich mines, like mineral resources in the. In the eastern desert especially. So, you know, por. Exotic marble, porphyry, gems, you know, agate, amethyst, emerald. I don't know what the difference between any of these things is, frankly, but. And they've got a lot of gold, too, in those mines. There's still gold in Egypt. They're still mining gold there. So it's incredibly rich. It's. You know, Alexandria is a city of marble and gold, and it ends up later becoming Rome's breadbasket. You know, just. You can feed the entire. You could feed a lot of people from the Nile. And Romans have kind of like wanted. Pompey, wanted to intervene in Egypt. There was another conflict with the fat king that died, the father of Cleopatra and Ptolemy. And people were hoping to pluck that cherry, but it just never worked out. Egypt is kind of despite. It's kind of incredible that Egypt was still independent at that point, because Rome, the Roman, kind of greedy Roman governors had just been circling it like vultures, and they just hadn't had their chance yet. Now Caesar has the chance, you know, but they don't want that to happen. So Cleopatra enters the story at this point. Caesar's in the royal palace. And. And I don't know if you've seen that movie with Elizabeth Taylor, the Cleopatra movie, but.
- [73:57]
Chris Williamson
No.
- [73:58]
Alex
So the way that they portray it in the movie is not that far off, but basically Caesar's there in, in a study in the library or in, in the palace. And a servant comes in with a rug. He's like Caesar, we have a gift for you. And he says, all right, well what's in, what's in the rug? And he tries to, threatens to poke at it. But basically Cleopatra sneaks herself in on a little, on a little raft and is carried in as though she's a mattress. As like a rolled up mattress is, is what Plutarch says.
- [74:35]
Chris Williamson
Someone's got a yoga mat under her arm. But it's secretly Cleopatra.
- [74:38]
Alex
Yeah, yeah. And then, and then, you know, it's presented to Caesar as a gift.
- [74:43]
Chris Williamson
Jared chatgpt this image, I want to see what it looks like.
- [74:45]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a great scene from the Cleopatra. It's a rug in the movie, which is a great movie and the most expensive movie ever when it was made.
- [74:56]
Chris Williamson
No way.
- [74:56]
Alex
Actually. Yeah.
- [74:57]
Chris Williamson
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- [76:15]
Alex
So she gets carried in and, you know, she knows how to make an entrance, too. From that moment, Caesar sees like, all right, this is. This is another show person like myself. She's 20 years old, so she's the oldest of the siblings. Speaks all kinds of languages. Obviously, she knows she's a native Greek speaker. She speaks Egyptian and Latin and, you know, Syrian and on and on. She's very, very charming and clever. She might not have led with her looks, but you'll hear stories that Cleopatra was actually kind of ugly and she was, you know, more of a great conversation partner, but she was, she was beautiful. Like, she. Maybe she wasn't like a 10, but she was an 8 at least. Yeah, that's a great image. See if you can do Cleopatra Elizabeth Taylor rug scene. See if that turns up some results. And she had a knack for power. Like, she knows how to play the heartstrings of a man. She's. She's got. She knows Caesar's weakness. Caesar has this weakness for smart, high status women. He's on his third wife now, but she's back in Rome. Yeah, yeah. You want to play it?
- [77:41]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. The rug is such a delicate weave. If I may untie it for you. Turn it over first. But the rug is now right tied up. I understand, but I wanted the wrong side up. Or should I flip it over with my sword?
- [77:55]
Alex
No, no, no.
- [78:01]
Chris Williamson
I find one can tell more about the quality of merchandise by examining the backside first. All hail Cleopatra, kindred of Horus and Ra, beloved of the moon and son, daughter to Isis and of upper and lower Egypt, queen.
- [78:28]
Alex
A damsel. Thank you. So, yeah, she knows how to make an entrance, right? It was something like that. It's not far off. And she also knows how to play the kind of wound. I mean, I think Elizabeth Taylor does that really well. Oh, my back.
- [78:50]
Chris Williamson
Oh.
- [78:51]
Alex
Oh, let me help you up, madam. And so basically, Cleopatra wins him over very quickly. And because she does this, she's. She's sort of on the losing side of the war currently. But Caesar says we can reconcile. You guys, I'll be your mediator. And, you know, Ptolemy hates this idea. Or his. Rather his eunuch and his general hate this idea because they know, like, it's
- [79:22]
Chris Williamson
nice that the eunuch has got such say here. Hey, let's listen to the guy that chopped his dick off.
- [79:27]
Alex
Yeah, well, you know, he's a very learned man. You know, he has other talents.
- [79:31]
Chris Williamson
Well, he's got nothing else to do, right?
- [79:34]
Alex
And you know, I think. I don't know how they did this In Egypt. But often like it would be the parents that did it to like it's an offering. Yeah. Promote the kid and yeah, there's, there's something really.
- [79:46]
Chris Williamson
You gotta do it with the second one. If you do it with the first one, you're like, if we don't have another one, that's the end of the bloodline.
- [79:50]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, okay. But if he does well, you know, he could, he could do great things for his nephews at least.
- [79:59]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [80:01]
Alex
There's no way to make that a good deal. So anyway, Caesar basically offers to moderate between them and the offer is rejected. And long story short, he ends up picking Cleopatra and Ptolemy ends up.
- [80:21]
Chris Williamson
Who's the younger brother?
- [80:23]
Alex
The younger brother? Yep. Yeah. He ends up sort of getting his hand forced by his, by his general Achilles and, and the eunuch. And they try to have another like coup attempt against Caesar. Caesar defeats them and the boy is apparently drowned in the Nile. In a. Boating the younger brother. Yeah, yeah. Like not, not like he's murdered, but there was a battle and he was just not found. Probably drowned in the Nile. It was tight.
- [80:55]
Chris Williamson
Family would be Ptolemies then.
- [80:58]
Alex
I mean they are always trying to murder each other and one up each other. And sure enough, Cleopatra has this younger sister too, Arsinoe, and she tries to revolt and Caesar crushes her as well and actually captures her and takes her back to Rome and marches her in the triumph.
- [81:15]
Chris Williamson
Was there any suggestion that Cleopatra and Caesar got it on?
- [81:19]
Alex
Oh, more than a suggestion. Like they become lovers for real. And they have a kid too. Which is fascinating to think about the ramifications of this. But so yeah, basically Caesar's never going to turn down a, a good offer from a high status woman. And you know, she's a living goddess by Egyptian tradition.
- [81:44]
Chris Williamson
She is daughter of Isis.
- [81:45]
Alex
Daughter of Isis? Not just daughter of Isis, but living embodiment of Isis. Like just like she said, there's a kind of, you know, fully God but fully human sort of thing going on with, with the pharaohs. Son of son and kind of like divine avatar of Amun Ra. Or is it Osiris? It's Osiris with the pharaohs. So anyway, she's worshiped as a divinity while she's alive. There's great reliefs like. So she, she gets portrayed as a Greek to her Greek subjects, as the Ptolemies do. Like you know, looks like a normal human kind of classical statue face. And then there are reliefs of her portrayed as like an Egyptian hieroglyphic lady too. Might be Worth pulling out, Jared?
- [82:31]
Chris Williamson
I want to. I want to see this.
- [82:32]
Alex
Cleopatra, Egyptian relief, something like that. A really interesting place, you know, Ptolemaic Alexandria.
- [82:43]
Chris Williamson
It's blending two things together. It feels like the phasing out of the old world and the phasing in of what would sort of become this. What then would be more cosmopolitan, what then would be built more around rhetoric, philosophy. What then would have been seen as modern and sort of this sort of passing off. But you've got the. Both of them are happening at the same time. I guess it.
- [83:04]
Alex
There you go. That's her. And I think that's her and her brother. Oh, that's her son. Cesarean. So there's Cleopatra on the left, and the other one is the son of Julius Caesar. That's their kid, Cesare.
- [83:18]
Chris Williamson
No way. The image on the left. Open that up, Jared.
- [83:21]
Alex
There you go.
- [83:24]
Chris Williamson
Wow. Yeah. So that's proper 3000 BC. Luckin', right?
- [83:29]
Alex
Like that. You could. That could be like scratched into a pyramid. You wouldn't know the difference.
- [83:33]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. And there's a guy in the bottom corner. Look at how huge that is.
- [83:38]
Alex
Really big.
- [83:39]
Chris Williamson
Holy shit. And that's the son.
- [83:42]
Alex
That's the, you know, illegitimate son of Cleopatra.
- [83:45]
Chris Williamson
Not that illegitimate. I mean, he's 15ft tall.
- [83:47]
Alex
I mean, legit to me.
- [83:48]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. What was he called?
- [83:49]
Alex
Caesarion was his nickname. Little Caesar? Yes. He started a great pizza chain and didn't go so well.
- [83:59]
Chris Williamson
And then he became a pizza magnate.
- [84:01]
Alex
Saw where the real money was.
- [84:03]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [84:04]
Alex
But he. His official name was, I think like Ptolemy the 14th. You know, like every single frickin person in that dynasty is named Ptolemy if they're a boy, or either Cleopatra or Arsinoe. There's not a lot of names. I think that might have something to do with this idea that like, you continue to be the embodiment of the same God through the generations. So you like, have to take on that dynastic.
- [84:29]
Chris Williamson
You know, Dali's story. Salvador Dali.
- [84:32]
Alex
I don't know if I do.
- [84:32]
Chris Williamson
So his parents had a son about a year or so, year and a half before Dali was born. No, sorry. Two years before Dali was born, who was also called Salvador. And that son died. And then they had another son and called him the same name. And when he was age 2, took him to his dead brother's grave and said, this is who you are. This is you. You are the reincarnation of your dead brother. Wow. I mean, it's just you. It's you again. So that was the start of his life. Dali's fucking fascinating, but, yeah, that was how he was sort of brought into the world as this weird recreation of a dead baby.
- [85:17]
Alex
That is amazing.
- [85:18]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. Cool, eh? Alright, so what was Caesar's last night like? You mentioned he's accumulated a bunch of enemies, but maybe not shaken the Etch A Sketch enough to actually get rid of them all. Keeps pardoning them. He's maybe erroneously deciding to be forgiving. What does the final day of Caesar's life look like?
- [85:40]
Alex
So the lead up to this is important because Caesar is, you know, he knows that there are assassination plots. There were even assassination plots 18 months earlier when he got back to Rome finally from the African campaign where he defeated Cato and friends. And Cicero mentions this in a speech. He gives a speech in front of Caesar. He's like, caesar, I have heard. It is. It has been said that you, you tell people, I have lived long enough, either for nature or for glory, because he knows about assassination attempts and he dismisses them. He says, you know what, if they want to kill me, I've had a good run.
- [86:27]
Chris Williamson
How old is he at this point? He is.
- [86:29]
Alex
So this is 46 when he gets back. So he would be 54, born in 100 BC. And 44 is the ides of March when he dies. So that's how old he ends up being. But, I mean, that's pretty old for a Roman. He's had a pretty good run so far. But he dismisses these plots and, you know, the information just keeps coming in. Sure. And sure, people are trying to kill you. Caesar, can you please up your security detail? Can you please give yourself a bodyguard, like, we're begging you. His friends are begging him and he says, not gonna do that. That's what tyrants do. And sure enough, like, this is the kind of classic mold of how tyrants seize power. Pisistratus at Athens. I mean, you can multiply a lot of examples. You get a bodyguard. First you say, oh, no, there's threats against my life. I need a bodyguard, citizens, I just want to be your servant. And, and, and then that's how you seize power. And Caesar knows that. That's the pattern. He's not going to do it. And. And it comes to the point where people are continuing to bring in names of potential conspirators. And Caesar says, I've had it. Anybody bringing me more talk about an assassination plot is going to face consequences. He's like, you're going to get fired. If I hear another about you bringing me an Assassination plot. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to hear it. I think that's because he didn't want to rule over a subjugated, you know, cowed populace. He wanted to rule over free Romans, and he didn't want a police state. He didn't want. He wanted people to feel free to say whatever they wanted to say. This is clearly demonstrated by a lot of his actions. You know, people are criticizing him, they're making jokes about at Caesar's expense. You know, there's certain lines that you don't cross. But he doesn't want to up his security detail. The very last night, the 14th of March, he, you know, it's a normal day of business, busy day at work, and he's got this incredible crushing burden of, you know, cases to hear and petitions and laws needing passing. And he's also preparing for this great expedition to Parthia. He's going to avenge Crassus. Crassus was killed by the Parthians. They captured Roman Eagles about 10 years earlier. So he's. He's just trying to get. Get through the next three days to get out of town and go back to. I mean, Caesar was good at politics, but I think better at war. I think he's better at war. He's equally as good at war. And it's probably a happier place for him.
- [89:24]
Chris Williamson
Even in BC times, people were still drowning in admin, is what you're saying.
- [89:28]
Alex
Oh, yeah. I mean, like the load that he's carrying. Yeah. It's a universal problem. Once they invent writing, you know, it's over.
- [89:38]
Chris Williamson
Fucking game over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the email inbox of ancient Rome.
- [89:41]
Alex
Yeah. And it's funny you should mention email. So on the last night, Caesar is having dinner, as you know, he. He has a, like, formal dinner every night. There's like nine seats. At a typical Roman feast, you circle around on couches around a central table, and everybody kind of lies down. It's. It's weird, but that's how they did it. And horrible for the digestion. It's horrible for the digestion. Digestion. But one advantage is everybody has to have the same conversation because you're all pointed toward the center of the circle.
- [90:13]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. As opposed to an elongated table where this group over there is speaking like that. In this group.
- [90:19]
Alex
Yeah.
- [90:19]
Chris Williamson
It's interesting. I remember. Was it. Who is it that suggested that the size of glasses of wine were getting too big around the table? Was it maybe Aristotle? And he made a special kind of cup. And if you Overfilled the cup. The entire thing drained.
- [90:38]
Alex
Oh, yeah.
- [90:39]
Chris Williamson
Basically his problem was that he wanted to have these really interesting conversations at dinner and people were just getting too drunk. This is before coffee came around. And there's this interesting story, which before Newtonic, before. I mean, they should have had the nootropic toothpicks. There's that big transition. Was it in sort of the Middle Ages in the uk where Britain started to go from just having ale houses to having coffee shops as well? And this is a boon in innovation because people aren't just pissed all the time, they're just not drunk as much. They're stimulated and they're going and getting stuff done. Anyway. I think it's Aristotle that had this issue. And his problem was, I want to go to dinner and have all of these interesting conversations, but everybody drinks their wine so fast.
- [91:27]
Alex
Yeah.
- [91:28]
Chris Williamson
That the. The conversation degenerates into nothingness. So his suggestion was to his host to make the cup smaller. Says people will drink the same number, but they'll not realize that they're having less. And it's supposed to be. I think it's like an Aristotelian cup. Jared, do a chatgpt search. What was the ancient cup that was made to ensure people didn't overfill it? Maybe Aristotle. And it's this interesting point that. Okay, well, if we reduce it down, it means that the conversational quality will be a bit better. But I suppose if you're sat in a. You're probably thinking of the Pythagorean cup. Yeah. Also called the cup of greed or greedy cup. It's a special drinking cup from ancient Greece, designed so that if you fill it past a certain level, it empties completely. Isn't that cool?
- [92:15]
Alex
That's brilliant. Oh, because it's a siphon.
- [92:17]
Chris Williamson
Yes, that's right. It's got a hidden siphon inside the central color. If you pour wine below the marked line, the cup works. Normally if you pour above the line, the siphon activates and the entire cup. Cup drains out through the bottom of the stem. For someone who tries to take more than their fair share, they end up with nothing. Legend says Pythagoras used it to teach moderation and fairness among workers or students. And the lesson is, greed causes you to lose everything. Isn't that cool?
- [92:40]
Alex
So Greek. Isn't that sick? Moderation.
- [92:42]
Chris Williamson
Yeah.
- [92:43]
Alex
Wise man, Pythagoras. Well, you know, it's funny because, I mean, and Plato's Symposium, that, that they decide to pour the. The wine, they pour water in the wine, often for moderation, so that you drink less. But they wanted to pour the wine really, really light that night because they. They all got smashed the night before, and they want to have, like, a chill conversation. And I. But Cato, Caesar's nemesis, was actually known to be a bit of a tippler. Like, he would. He would often show up to the Senate kind of smelling of wine. Yep. And. But that would be because he liked to drink for a long time, having philosophical conversations. And it was this kind of conversation that was happening Caesar's last night. So Caesar is at the house of Lepidus, and he invites a number of people to be among the nine. Lepidus is good, trusted friend of his, and one of them is Decimus Brutus. This is not the Brutus that appears in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. And you too, Brutus. It's a different Brutus, but actually was a Brutus that was closer to Caesar in point of fact, historically, funny enough.
- [93:58]
Chris Williamson
So does Shakespeare get that confused? Does he amalgamate the two on purpose?
- [94:02]
Alex
Plutarch gets it confused. This is like, one of the kind of flaws of Plutarch's biography of Caesar. He thinks that Marcus Brutus, who is actually not, I mean, close to Caesar, he is because he's the son of Caesar's favorite girlfriend, Servilia. But Decimus Brutus was a lot closer to him because he was a lieutenant of his in Gaul. I mean, they're distantly related, these two Brutuses, but they're not close or anything. But Decimus was, like, naval commander against the Veneti. He's been brilliant in the Civil War, crucial in the Battle of Marseilles. And in fact, Decimus Brutus was in his will as a second. Decimus is one of the men who stabbed him the very next day. He's sitting there with him at dinner the night before, and they're sitting there having their conversation, as one does, as a lot of final night scenes of, you know, great Romans and great Greeks are like these, like, philosophical conversations. And I think that's because they had them a lot, actually. It's very normal. And so, like the Last Supper for Jesus.
- [95:18]
Chris Williamson
That's. I mean, there were maybe a few additions, but he was probably speaking like that most of.
- [95:22]
Alex
Yeah, they like. All right, here we go again.
- [95:25]
Chris Williamson
Just a Tuesday.
- [95:27]
Alex
So Caesar is sitting there as the conversation's going on. I find this really fascinating. He's clearing his inbox, actually, because he's a busy guy. One has to. And his secretary's sitting there Kind of feeding him letters that need to go out, that he needs to sign. And so he's writing sincerely on them, you know, signing his name. Right. But the way you do that in Latin, the custom is you write, vale, farewell. So all through the night he's writing farewell, farewell, farewell on these letters.
- [96:04]
Chris Williamson
And that's what you would have done,
- [96:05]
Alex
typically, that's what you would have done to say goodbye. But. But I mean, the fact that he's like, filling out letters during dinner. I mean, this guy has got a shit ton of work to do.
- [96:14]
Chris Williamson
Yep.
- [96:15]
Alex
And he's just trying to get. It's brainless. He's just kind of whatever. Yes, and. Go on, Cassius. Yes. And. But I find that striking. But at some point in the night, he proposes a theme for the philosophical conversation that's going on. Decimus is sitting right there. What is the best kind of death? And the conversation goes this way and that way. Somebody brings up the example of Cyrus the Great, the great king of Persia, who founded the Persian empire. Xenophon says, doesn't he, that Cyrus made all these arrangements before his death, that he wanted to be buried in this way and this should happen and so forth. After he was. After he was gone. And of course, Caesar had read this book, Xenophon Cyropidea. And Caesar's turn comes to him and he says, that sounds horrible. I don't want a long, slow death. The best kind of death is one that comes sudden, swift and unexpected. Yeah. What is Decimus thinking at that. At that moment, but that. That's well attested. That that's what the conversation was about at some point that night.
- [97:29]
Chris Williamson
Prophetic.
- [97:30]
Alex
Yeah, man. And then, you know, he goes home late and bad dreams. You know, if you've heard the. Read the Shakespeare play, there's all these omens. You know, his wife has this dream that she's. She gets him up in the middle of the night. That, like, wind blows open the shutters and, you know, he has to get up and shut them and calm down Calpurnia. And she had this dream that she was, like, holding the Bloody Caesar, like, looking at their house as it's like, burning and collapsing. There's all these, you know, birds are acting weird, so the story goes. I mean, a lot of these omens typically happen around great events in the ancient sources, but, you know, who knows? I mean, the murder of a guy like Julius Caesar really is a kind of like, if ever a death is a rip in the fabric of reality, you know, like that. That comes pretty close. So that was how he spent his last night. It's a very unsettled night.
- [98:25]
Chris Williamson
And what about the next day?
- [98:27]
Alex
So it's. I think Caesar was. He has a reputation for dismissing omens. He did this when he was consul. You know, his enemies are trying to obstruct him. And in the. In the assemblies and they're. They're saying, oh, I saw a bird flying the wrong way, and I heard thunder. I heard thunder. It's a blue sky. And he's like, I didn't hear you, though. Let's get on with business. You know, he's just ignores omens for most of his career. Sometimes the omens are bad, and he's like, let's fight the battle anyway, and he wins. But all these, you know, his wife is saying, I had a bad dream. I don't have a good feeling about this. And ancient omens, I think, are often kind of. It's a system that's in place. So before you go into a campaign, before you go into battle, you sacrifice to the gods, you cut open a piglet or whatever it is, and you read the entrails, or you get the sacred chickens out and you see, do the sacred chickens want to eat their. Their. Their feet, or are they staying in their cage? You know, what does this mean? It's kind of like opening up a space for intuition. The generals often have to make decisions. Leaders often have to make decisions. That could be the right decision. But to have to explain why you're making that decision is. Would. Would. Would undermine the project somehow. Like, you. Don't you want to have a way of explaining intuition? That's. That's how a lot of anthropologists explain. I think that's really compelling. But. So I think his wife had a bad feeling. I think he had a bad feeling at some point. He was apparently kind of un. Like stomach issues. It's unspecified, but he felt like out of sorts that morning. And he was supposed to go to the Senate. There was some business, some important business at hand, a dispute between Mark Antony and Dolabella, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, maybe I don't want to go to the Senate today. I'm feeling out of sorts. My wife is telling me to stay home. He goes, you know, down the street. He lives in the Forum, the Senate's meeting, about a mile away. He goes down the street to a buddy's house and to say hi, and they do a little sacrifice. And that sacrifice contains bad omens. We don't know the details, but, like, he's. This is really striking. So he. He decides to just stay home that day. Who shows up at his door but Decimus Brutus, the guy he was having dinner with last night. He says, caesar, I heard that you are listening to the. The ravings of a. Of a woman. I mean, I've never heard Caesar to be bothered by omens in his career. Think of all the battles that we've won after bad omens like, come on, Caesar, let's, you know, the Senate's counting on you. They all cleared their schedules, they're busy men. And, you know, you're really trying to make them feel like Rome is the same Rome. This is a whole other issue that, you know, he is kind of becoming this monarchic figure in Rome. He's getting accused of wanting to make himself king. He's getting accused of wanting to make himself a God, which is not entirely off base. We could get to that. But so, you know, Decimus makes some good arguments. Come on, soldier up. He's a fellow soldier. And so Caesar, reluctantly at first, but, you know, he kind of allows himself to be persuaded by Decimus. And it's funny, you know, I mean, whenever Caesar goes anywhere in Rome, the crowds, the throngs, people are saying, caesar, kiss my baby, or can you cancel my debt? Blah, blah, blah. And this is again, well attested. This happens in Shakespeare's play. But apparently he had a client, like a friend of his whose house he had stayed at in Asia once. And the young man, the son of the house, was in Rome studying philosophy and probably was connected with the other Brutus, Marcus Brutus, who was one of the ringleaders of the assassination. And this kid, I forget what his name is, comes up to Caesar and like, Caesar knows him, and he passes a letter to Caesar. He says, caesar, you have to read this urgently. Caesar's probably being carried in a litter. But he gets the letter to Caesar. And apparently Caesar has this in his hand and plans to read it. But this would have been. Basically, the guy was trying to tell him about the plot that was very much in action that day. Underway, that was underway that he was walking right into.
- [103:22]
Chris Williamson
So Brutus went to try and encourage Caesar to leave the home, to sort of question his agency and sovereignty and belief in himself, to remind him of what he'd done in the past in an attempt to get him out of the house so that he could be carried through, so that he could arrive at the place for the assassination.
- [103:39]
Alex
Well put. Yeah. So that was, you know, the Senate meeting that they were. That they ended up doing the deed at murdering him in the Senate. And, and they're, you know, the two Brutuses. The one that he was with dinner with the night before was the. The guy who got him to come. The guy that's in his will. Incredible. And so he. Yeah, he gets to the Senate House. Once again, the omens are bad. You know, as you always sacrifice, do some. Whatever you do before going into the Senate to kind of inaugurate the meeting. Consuls usually do this, I think Caesar's console that year. And omens are bad, but he goes in anyway. Yeah. And he's. He's in the Senate House and it's his throne as dictator is right under the statue of Pompey the Great. Because the place that they're actually meeting is not the old Senate House, which burned down a couple of years earlier. It's this new complex that Pompey built with the spoils of his war in the East. And it's like a little basement. Not basement, it's like a room off the complex that Pompey built for the Senate to meet in, in the Forum. So it's outside the Pomerium. It's in the Campus Martius now. So it's. I forget what that part of Rome is called, but basically it was an area that wasn't very built up, so you could plant this massive stone complex with multiple buildings pretty easily in this unclaimed land. So he had to actually walk from the Forum. It was like probably a 20 minute walk. Yeah. But that is where the Senate is now officially meeting. And of course, there was a statue of Pompey as conqueror, you know, in this prominent place in the Senate House. And it's in front of the statue of Pompey the Great that the petitioners come up, or that the assassins come up pretending to have some urgent business. Please, my brother is in exile. Caesar, can you get him pardoned? No, this is not the time. Please, Caesar. And Brutus comes up, and Decimus comes up, the other Brutus and Cassius comes up. Caesar, this is a worthy friend of yours. We, we, we. We beg you, please. You know, you. You must spare. And then that's when they have him distracted. They grab his robe and he. At some point, before he actually gets stabbed, he's like, they're grabbing him. He's like, what's going on here? This is violence. And, and that's, I think, when he realizes, at least when the first blow struck, every man that's surrounding him, 15 or 20 guys probably, there was a bit. There were More people in on the plot, but some are holding the doors, you know, keeping the perimeter to make sure. But yeah, and then they did the deed. And, you know, after they kill him, after they stab him, there is that moment that is in Plutarch where he turns to Brutus, the. The more famous one, his. And this is, remember, like, he's the son of Caesar's, like, top girlfriend, Servilia, and he had a relationship with this kid, like he was looking out for his career. He was promoting him. The kid fought on Pompey's side in the Civil War for some family reasons, but he spared him. So many of these men he's spared, and some of them are his trusted, like, long term loyalists. It's not just former enemies that were spared, that were resentful, it's former loyalists. And. And he says to Brutus, you too, child. Kaiseutechnon. Et tu, Brute. As. As Shakespeare says. And then they, you know, he bleeds out. Who knows how long it takes? But amazingly, the Senate clears out. Pandemonium. I mean, to kill Julius Caesar, like, this is. This is like a horrifying idea because it really threatens to plunge the Republic back into civil war again. He's the lid holding it all down. This is why Cicero told him that he needs to have a bodyguard, because so much is at stake. If you get killed now, we're all screwed. That's what Cicero was saying 18 months earlier, and he was very much correct. And. But the Senate House clears out, and he's just there alone on the floor, and nobody wants to approach him and draw close because they're afraid that, you know, one of the assassins will see them. And, you know, nobody knows, like, what is. What is the potential risk of me tending to Caesar's body. And so he just lies there first that become powerless. Yeah, yeah. And then eventually some of Caesar's slaves go in there. They can only find three men. It takes four men to hold a litter. They can only find three guys to carry Caesar's body back to his house. And it starts to rain on their way back, and the streets are lined. People see his, like, arm hanging out, and he's brought back to Calpurnia, so. Still gets me. I mean, I think. I think that you can. You could say a lot about Caesar, but I do think that he, He. He managed to identify his own success, his own legacy, with what he saw as the flourishing of Rome. You know, it wasn't just about his own glory or it was, but to the extent that he felt like he was the man most responsible for whether the state survived and flourished. And so I, you know. But that's not how his enemies saw it.
- [109:50]
Chris Williamson
Was it what convinced them that he needed to go?
- [109:54]
Alex
Well, they saw that after the civil war, Caesar was unquestionably not just the first among equals, not just the first man in Rome, but like something was changing. Caesar had fought all of his career to end corruption and the stranglehold of the establishment oligarchy over offices. I mean, there was incredible wealth inequality, and there's this kind of like, tight clique of people that control everything, and they get to abuse the provincials at will if they're. You know, the typical way that you rise up in Rome is by winning elections and then going out and being governor. And usually it's very expensive to get elected, and then you have to go into debt and you recoup your money by, by robbing the Greeks or the Gauls or the Spaniards and taking bribes and stuff. It's a system that highly incentivizes corruption. And Caesar wanted to change that, among other things. And, and, and I think he eventually decided that this whole game that we've been playing at Rome for 450 years, since the Republic was founded, since they drove out the kings, you got to remember the Romans have been inoculated against kings, much in the same way we are as Americans. Like America was founded by us rejecting King George iii. Rome was. The Republic, rather, was founded by driving out Tarquin the Proud, who was this brutal, corrupt tyrant in their eyes. And then it was a collective government. You have elections for office, you have assemblies to vote on laws and all this stuff. That's what the Republic is to them. That's what Rome is to them. And, and this is also the game that people like Decimus Brutus, his friend Brutus, the other Brutus Cassius, basically everybody in the Republic, every, everybody in the leadership classes had been playing, had been. Had been expecting to play for their whole lives, which is, this is how you get honor. You get honor by service to the Republic. You get honor by winning elections, you get honor by winning wars. But now Caesar is basically trying to kind of transition the political system into something resembling a monarchy. He doesn't want to call it a kingship, he doesn't want to call himself king, but he's really deliberately taking all the authority into himself, because I think he sees that his legacy depends on if he releases power. He's kind of a control freak, you might say. If he lets go, then it's all going to kind of Dissolve again. That people are going to undo his legislation and they're going to go back to revert to the way that things were. And this is one of the reasons why he just feels like he has to hold on to power. But what it puts him in this uncomfortable position for is every honor in the past used to be given by the Roman people. You used to have supreme responsibility as a consul. If you're going to command Rome's armies, you are the guy who wins the victory. If you win the consulship, it's because the people of Rome elected you consul, and so on and so on. Honor is granted by the state. And now it seems clear Caesar's been handing out offices basically like he's been picking the consuls, he's been picking the praetors, he's been drafting the laws and getting the Senate to rubber stamp them all. The honor flows from this one man. And how is that not slavery in the eyes of a proud Roman? Aristotle talked about the most difficult thing that a politician has to do. And their most important duty of a statesman is to correctly, wisely distribute honors. Because this is for a guy like Caesar and for a guy like Decimus, for any of these, you know, super Chad, Roman statesman aspirants. The thing, the prize that you're playing for is not wealth, at least it shouldn't be. It's not pleasure. It's not like fame as such or status as such. It's honor. That's what Aristotle would say that the highest form of the statesman, the great souled man, is one who desires great things, considers himself worthy of them, and is correct in that judgment. And that means being worthy of great things. But what are the greatest things to desire? I mean, this is a question that's perplexed philosophers. Aristotle.
- [115:14]
Chris Williamson
What is a good life?
- [115:16]
Alex
What is a good life? What is worthy of desire? What, what is it? What does it mean to be worthy of something? And Aristotle says the highest thing that you can desire of external goods is honor.
- [115:30]
Chris Williamson
The price that you would be paid for a ransom note.
- [115:33]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, essentially. And, you know, you can desire virtue, you can desire inner peace, you can desire wholeness, you can desire wisdom, but those are all internal goods. But, but of, of the things that you can kind of strive for, it's honor. And so this is the highest prize that, that an ambitious man could like, you know, make a career on, pursue virtue. You need to be virtuous to be really worthy of honor, et cetera. But, and you know, for, for a great souled man, even honor is maybe a small prize because, like, honor can be corrupted. Right. Corrupt people get. Get voted honors all the time. So I don't think that's a problem Caesar had solved. He's brilliant, brilliant statesman, legislator, politician. Brilliant with people, but like, to get a whole political class of ambitious young men. I mean, all the guys that kill him are like late 30s, early 40s. They're like in their prime and they still got a lot of gas left. And they're seeing the whole game has been just screwed. Like, I was raised to want honor, and honor is. Is what the people of Rome give you. And now I'm. I'm supposed to, like, do all of this stuff that I was going to do. Command armies, you know, pass laws. I'm gonna all do it as Caesar's employee. Right, right. Never a boss, never a patron, always a client. I think that was intolerable for them. It was like a meaning crisis for them.
- [117:16]
Chris Williamson
But the situation that they did put themselves into is that for the rest of time, they would be seen as an assassin. Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe it's preferable to be a powerful assassin than a. A peaceful subordinate, maybe in Roman times, or at least in their version of this philosophy.
- [117:37]
Alex
Yeah.
- [117:38]
Chris Williamson
You know, it's an interesting blend to think that it would be better to be mutineers and a rebel against somebody that was a great leader, but may have pushed the power too far compared with being a part of an existing structure that had sort of raised Rome up to be a really great empire.
- [118:02]
Alex
Yeah. At the very least, they saw more meaning in that path than the other path at the time.
- [118:08]
Chris Williamson
There's more self determination.
- [118:09]
Alex
Yeah.
- [118:10]
Chris Williamson
Which is super important.
- [118:10]
Alex
They had a lot more agency. I mean, it's very understandable. Dante still puts them in the ninth circle of hell. Betraying a friend. Yeah.
- [118:23]
Chris Williamson
Alex, you absolutely rule. Dude, this has been so much fun. So great. And there's, you know, literally 2000 years of history that we could go through before we close.
- [118:33]
Alex
I got you a little gift.
- [118:34]
Chris Williamson
Oh, thank you.
- [118:36]
Alex
You know, I don't know how much of a Roman Empire fan you are, Chris, but I'm trying to make you one.
- [118:42]
Chris Williamson
Okay.
- [118:43]
Alex
So this is a coin that I got from Kinser Coins, which I recommend. It's Hadrian. You're a Northern Brit, right?
- [118:54]
Chris Williamson
Yep. I've been to Hadrian's Wall many a time.
- [118:56]
Alex
I figured. I figured. And you know, if you look at this, he's got a nice little beard. I mean, I see a little resemblance there. As a matter of fact, it says on There. Hadrianus, Augustus. Hadrian, Augustus. And dude, this is so cool. It says cos on the other side that means console. So it was minted when he was a console.
- [119:19]
Chris Williamson
And is that. Are those stars?
- [119:21]
Alex
I think they're stars on the.
- [119:23]
Chris Williamson
What would be the bottom.
- [119:26]
Alex
The. Yeah, this is what is on the back.
- [119:28]
Chris Williamson
That someone stood in a toga.
- [119:30]
Alex
Yeah. I think that this is Roma who, like she's the. The goddess that embodies like the divine tutelary goddess of Rome.
- [119:43]
Chris Williamson
I can't believe you got me that.
- [119:44]
Alex
Yeah. That is so fucking co. Hadrian is the last emperor that Plutarch lived under. So he's kind of special to me. Not to be emulated in everything. You know, Hadrian had a. He did a lot of things Greek style, but he was a great. He was a great fan of the Greeks. The patron of the Greeks.
- [120:05]
Chris Williamson
This is so good. Thank you so much. This honestly is. I could have sat and listened to you for the rest of the month. Where should people go? You've got so much stuff going on.
- [120:15]
Alex
Yeah. Cost of Glory podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Spotify. I'm on YouTube too. We're trying to make more videos to the audio content and you can go to costofglory.com and I do other stuff
- [120:29]
Chris Williamson
beside the retreats and stuff. Right?
- [120:30]
Alex
Yeah, yeah. We run retreats in Greece and Rome
- [120:34]
Chris Williamson
and then go and reenact. Is this LARPing? Are they reenacting?
- [120:38]
Alex
We haven't done a larp battle yet. We've gotten some demand from that and we've got.
- [120:42]
Chris Williamson
You're really tapping into the men think about the Roman Empire once every 30 minutes thing.
- [120:47]
Alex
Yeah, we're trying to crank that up. It's not enough.
- [120:49]
Chris Williamson
I want to get it up to every 15.
- [120:50]
Alex
Never enough. Yeah. Can you ever forget it?
- [120:53]
Chris Williamson
Oh man, this is so good, dude. Today's been unreal. I appreciate you. I can't wait to have you back on.
- [120:58]
Alex
Yeah. Anytime.
- [121:02]
Chris Williamson
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