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- [00:00]
Host
You know, life's better with a good hack, like learning the secret menu at your favorite restaurant or stumbling upon a buy one, get one sale at the mall. Well, there's a wireless hack, too, and it's called Visible. Visible's like ordering from the secret menu in wireless. You get unlimited data and hotspot, and plans start at just $25 a month for one line, taxes and fees included. Plus, Visible runs on Verizon's 5G network for great coverage. Feature fast speeds and a seamless connection. And it's all digital. Don't like going to the phone store? Visible doesn't have them. You switch from your phone and manage your plan in an app. Now, that's a hack. If you're ready for wireless that lets you live in the know, make the switch@visible.com plans start at $25 a month. For our best features, get the new Visible Plus Pro plan for $45 a month. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. I've got some tour dates to tell you about. We've got Cedar Rapids. That's where we're headed. St. Paul, Minnesota. Fargo, North Dakota, Rapid City, South Dakota, Philadelphia. Rochester, New York, Detroit, Michigan. That's where we're going with the Return of the Rat tour. It's almost over. You can get tickets@the ovon.com t o u r and thank you so much for the support. Today's guest is a historian, an author, and a podcaster. He created the very popular History of Rome podcast, which spanned more than 175 episodes over five years. I'm really grateful for this walk through history, learning about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire with today's guest, Mr. Mike Duncan. Mike Duncan.
- [02:10]
Mike Duncan
I'm here.
- [02:11]
Host
That's you. Yeah.
- [02:12]
Mike Duncan
Thank you for having me.
- [02:13]
Host
Thank you for joining me, man. I appreciate it. You have a famous series called the History of Rome that is on YouTube.
- [02:19]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. And available where all fine podcasts are found. You can get it on Spotify, you can get it on Apple, you can get it anywhere.
- [02:27]
Host
How extensive is.
- [02:30]
Mike Duncan
Took me five years to write and it is 189 episodes long. And it will take you through the complete history of the empire, at least through the fall of the West. It starts with Aeneas arrival in Italy, which is sort of a precursor to the founding of Rome, the legendary founding of Rome, and then takes you through a thousand years worth of history, all through to the end of the four hundreds when the Western empire collapses.
- [02:54]
Host
It's one of the few things on YouTube where I hear that people will go back, like, at certain points in their lives or years later and be like, okay, I'm starting again.
- [03:03]
Mike Duncan
Yes. You know, there's a lot of re. Listenability in the history of Rome, and I've definitely heard that from people there. You know, I've listened to this 10, 15 times, and I'm like, I listened to it like, twice, you know? Cause I, like, record an episode and then I listened to the episode, and then one time I kind of went back through it to, like, remember what I had written. Um, but, yeah, people. People who get into it and like it, they really love it and they go back to it and, you know, it reminds them of the time in their life when they listen to it for the first time. So they're. They're. It enters, like, this sort of, like, emotional connection beyond just, like, what they're learning about Roman history.
- [03:36]
Host
Well, yeah, I think that's something that certainly happened recently. There was, like, a lot of social media. There was this buzz that happened a few months ago. It was like women asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire.
- [03:47]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah.
- [03:48]
Host
And right when I saw that, I was like, oh, my God, I think about the Roman Empire all the time.
- [03:55]
Mike Duncan
Right.
- [03:55]
Host
Like, I don't know. Sometimes I don't know what exactly I think about it, but it pops into my head as this. I don't know where it connects to me or where do you think the Roman Empire can. Why does. Why was that so popular, that meme?
- [04:10]
Mike Duncan
I mean, when people would ask me that, they're like, do you think about the Roman Empire every day? I'm like, yeah, I've thought about the Roman Empire every day for, like, 25 years. I'm writing a book about the Roman Empire as we speak. Like, I'll probably think about Rome once a day for the rest of my life, but I'm on, like, a very extreme edge of all this, and I am a sicko for Roman history. Like, other people can be more casual about it, but I'm a sicko for this stuff.
- [04:32]
Host
You're like the Marilyn Manson of Rome.
- [04:34]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, I'm really, really into it. But I think Rome is always going to have a hold on our collective consciousness because we're living in a post Roman society. Most of the cultures, nations, countries, whatever that we think of sort of in the west have roots in Roman history, or at least have a phase in their own history where this is, like, the Roman period, because the Romans eventually expanded to control the entire Mediterranean basin. Like, all of North Africa, like, all of what we now consider the Middle east. And then they're up into, like, France and Britain. And this is a single unified state that has never been repeated in history. Like, you look at a map of, you know, Europe in the Mediterranean today, you know, it's 30, 35 different countries. And once upon a time, this entire thing was the Roman Empire. And so their culture, their modes of doing things, their laws, their language. Right. I mean, French, Spanish, Italian, these are all, like, post Roman languages. These are all Romance languages. And so I think that because there is this, like, point at which they were just everything for like a. I mean, not for a thousand. They didn't run the Mediterranean for a thousand years, but that they were just this thing that we all come from. I think it's going to be very difficult to ever, like, purge the Roman Empire from the collective consciousness. And I really don't think we should do that.
- [06:00]
Host
Even hearing you say that, I didn't realize that romance comes from Rome.
- [06:05]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's all linked to it. And.
- [06:09]
Host
Yeah, I never thought about that. It was like. Or does it come from.
- [06:11]
Mike Duncan
Because I don't. Yeah, yeah, I don't know about that. I actually don't know about the etymology of romance versus, like, the city of Rome.
- [06:18]
Host
The word romance originates from the Latin word romanicus, meaning of a Roman style or in the Roman style. Because it's just so funny because we all kind of romanticize it, that it's that present. Right. That it's that present. We don't even notice when it's in a term that we use to describe how we feel about it.
- [06:34]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, it's. It's everywhere. It's in tons of invisible ways.
- [06:38]
Host
How long was the Roman rule? Like, just in years, just a blanket, like, including, like, the Republic, the Roman Empire.
- [06:47]
Mike Duncan
So, okay, there. There's many different ways we can answer that question. So. So, like, in. In terms of, like, the legendary origins of the city, it's founded in 753 B.C. this is when Romulus kills Remus. And they found this city in the, you know, the legendary Seven Hills. And it goes in the west through 476 AD. So that right there is, you know, 750 plus another 500. So we're like, at 1200, 1300 years. And then we only hear talk about sort of the Western Empire. That's sort of what had captured the European imagination because they're in a post Western society. But the Eastern Empire just transformed seamlessly into what we now call the Byzantine Empire. And that lasted for another thousand years after that. So if you say that there is a continuum between Romulus founding Rome in 753 and the final fall of. Of Byzantium in the 1400s, you know, now we are over 2,000 years.
- [07:45]
Host
You hear the fable about Romulus and Remus, right? Can you tell me that fable of how Rome was fat? This is like kind of a mythological fable. Do you know what I'm talking about?
- [07:54]
Mike Duncan
Oh, yeah, for sure. It's. And it is one of those, like, these are archetypical. This is archetypical mythos, right? And what it is, is we have a couple of babies who were put into, like, a little, like, manger thing and sent down a river. They had to be purged because there was a king who was afraid of them. These are very standard stories. I mean, these are biblical stories in the same way. And they allegedly wash up into some reeds and then a wolf comes along and they suckle. Yes, there it is. They suckle at the teat of the wolf and then they grow up big and strong and they wind up, you know, they do overthrow the king who was afraid of them and found their own city. And I was actually just talking about this with some friends the other day because there's a great bit in Livy, who's one of the great, you know, Latin historians who was writing L I.
- [08:42]
Host
V V Y L I V L.
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Mike Duncan
I V Y L I V Y. Yeah. And he was. He was around during, like, the age of Augustus. So. So he's writing about stuff like this is 750 years later. Like, he's. He's talking about this and he's like, well, you know, it doesn't really seem plausible that it was a wolf. So I' that maybe it was like a. Maybe it was like a corruption of language and that there was like, a local prostitute whose name was Wolf, and she was the one who got. So it's really funny, like, watching him sort of wrestle with the mythos of Rome, like, even trying to make this, like, a true story at that time, at that. Even at that time. And because he's 750 years beyond all that. Like, we go back 750 years from now. Like, we're like in Robin Hood days. That's how far away Livy was from the origin of his own city.
- [09:29]
Host
So the myth isn't true, but how did it actually begin?
- [09:35]
Mike Duncan
In my opinion. Right? And I think in the opinion of, like, if I was going to offer, like, sort of the most generalized and acceptable explanation for this. It's basically that at the Tiber river, which Rome is adjacent to, and sort of runs through Rome, there was a bend in it, so there was an easy place to cross the river, to ford the river. And right next to that is a couple of prominent hills. And if you're. If you're a very, very early society and you're looking for a place to build a settlement, you know, it's very nice to have some hills around because you can build a little fortification on top of it. And if anybody comes around to mess with you, you have a really nice defensible position. So it really seems like there were just some. Some early people who, you know, come across these hills who recognize that there's this nice ford in the river. And now they're sort of on the trade routes that are running, like, up from southern Italy into Etruria and then deeper into the European interior and stuff that's coming down from the interior and out through southern Italy.
- [10:33]
Host
So location, location, location, location.
- [10:35]
Mike Duncan
And then the soil around Rome and in that whole swath of Italy is very fertile. So they plop themselves down. They've got some good farms going, They've got trade routes coming through. They have a defensible position. And they've actually done archaeological excavations, you know, especially around the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine Hill, which is where all of this stuff got going. And, you know, the earliest things that they find are not too far off of, like this, you know, alleged 753.
- [11:04]
Host
And these are some of the early findings there on Palatine Hill excavation. Wow.
- [11:09]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
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Host
And there's.
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Mike Duncan
And there's just layers and layers and layers because they, you know, they built on top of what had come before them. And so do you think we found.
- [11:17]
Host
A lot of the stuff that's there, or do you think there's still a lot to be found?
- [11:20]
Mike Duncan
There's always more to be found. And actually, an interesting thing about just sort of archeological theory is that some of these places that you go to, they know that there is stuff that is buried that they are intentionally not excavating, because that what we have right now, the tools that we have right now for archeology, it's inherently destructive. Like, you're going to wind up destroying things in order to get it what you're looking for.
- [11:45]
Host
Destroying things in the ground. Like.
- [11:46]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, destroy. Yeah, just. Yeah, destroying things in the ground. And so there are definitely places where it's like, we know that there's stuff there. We're not going to touch it because who knows, maybe in 20 years or 30 years or 50 years, we'll have better technology and we can analyze this stuff and dig into, like, maybe literally dig into this stuff without damaging as much as we know that we would damage it today.
- [12:06]
Host
That's pretty amazing forethought, you know, so when you look. So going back just to that fable of Remus and Romulus, right? And Romulus, Rome. That was how the name comes through, through the fable. Like, how big was myth and fable at the time when Rome began?
- [12:22]
Mike Duncan
Very big. I mean, this is. You know, early human societies have all had myths and legends about their own origins. Like, this is one of, like, the most basic things that you will find in, like, every society. You know, indigenous tribes in North America, indigenous tribes in Siberia, you know, the realm. Native Americans. Native Americans. We have our own origin myths here in the United States of America. Right now we've got, you know, George Washington, like, never telling a lie. Like, these are. These are myths that we tell ourselves.
- [12:52]
Host
Christopher Columbus in Thanksgiving. Whether there's truth to it or not, but it's still. These are myths that we tell ourselves.
- [12:56]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And so this is a very common thing to just all human societies. And so, yeah, them telling this story, and it helps you. And it becomes less about telling an accurate story of where we came from, as opposed to telling a story about what kind of society we want to be right now. What are our values, what are our morals, what is it that we take seriously, what is it that we think you should do or not do? And a lot of early Roman history, like, most of the stuff that we read today, to try to glean factual information from Livy, from Polybius, from Plutarch, whatever. Those guys were using the past to tell moral stories for their own contemporaneous audience, to get certain things across to people. Like, Marius had an issue with ambition. Let's explore that. Let's talk about that. And that was really, for them, the purpose of history was to tell these moral stories. And that's, you know, that's. That's a very common thing in all societies. And it was certainly true for the Romans in a really big way.
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Host
Dude. Having an issue with ambition. What an interesting thing.
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Mike Duncan
Ambition's a dangerous thing, man. Like it for. You know, we can't do anything without ambition. Like, nobody can do anything without ambition. I would not have done what I did without ambition. You would not be sitting here without a little bit of ambition to go.
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Host
You want to think about it?
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Mike Duncan
Yeah. You want to go do stuff. But if. But it's like it's anything. It's. It's everything in moderation. If you indulge too much in ambition, ambition, now you're willing to do anything and break anybody, do you know, whatever it takes to get ahead. And now you're into hubris, and now the gods are going to punish you. And nobody wants to be in the land of hubris, where the gods are like, we have to show this person who's actually in charge. And it's not him, it's the gods.
- [14:41]
Host
Yeah, it's fascinating, man. Where did we get all of the information we have on Rome?
- [14:46]
Mike Duncan
There's many different places. I think we could start by talking about what are called the literary sources, which is collections of either Latin histories or Greek histories that were written at the time. And again, when I say at the time. And I'll just keep going back to Livy. Livy was writing at the time, but he's telling us about events from 200 years earlier, 400 years earlier, 600 years earlier. So it's not really a contemporary history, but, you know, he's a huge source of information.
- [15:15]
Host
Sorry to interrupt you, but why weren't there histories at the time?
- [15:18]
Mike Duncan
Some of them were. And the ones that we like a lot are the ones that are written very close to events. Like, there's a guy called Sallust who wrote a couple of histories where he is writing about events very near to his own lifetime, where he is able to talk to people who were there at the time. And he himself was a political actor. He was in Caesar's faction during the wars. And so some of what he's writing about happened at the time. Polybius definitely gets into stuff that happened in his own lifetime. And then sort of off of Rome, there's a great history of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, who's one of the main sort of architects of what we think of as history. And he was definitely like, you can't write about history if you can't talk to people who were there. That was his theory. So there is sort of two branches of the literary sources. Most of the literary sources that existed have been lost. We are dealing with a. A microscopic fraction of what actually existed at the time. And the thing that is very frustrating is, like, we know that there were these great histories that were written that are referenced by other historians. And you're like, God, if we could just get a hold of that. Oh, my God. I mean, the great white whale is the Emperor Claudius wrote, and he comes from the Julio Claudian dynasty. And he wrote a history of the Civil wars that put the Julio Claudian dynasty in power that was allegedly subsequently destroyed. For what reason? Because it was too honest and it was too truthful. And so, like, oh, man, Claudius. History of how the Julio Claudians got into power. Like, I would love to have a piece of that, but so we only have, like, a microscopic amount. And this stuff is like, you know, how did it get to us? It's like. It's stuff that winds up in, like. In, like, monasteries, you know, like, monks are copying this stuff down and forwarding it along. Things are just, like, found randomly in libraries. So those are the literary sources. And then we supplement that with a lot of archeology and analysis of material culture, because there are limits to what the literary sources can tell us. And this is how we know more about how they lived on a daily basis. Because we've got pottery, we've got different. How did their furnaces run? How do their ovens run? All of this stuff is coming from. Is coming from archaeology. In Roman history in particular, we also do a lot of study of coins because they were constantly pumping out coins. And coins were a means of sort of universalizing. You could call it propaganda, but, like, messages that the emperor, the state wanted to put out there.
- [17:53]
Host
And I think that was a big thing. If you started to get some control, you'd have a coin almost. It was the.
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Mike Duncan
The thing, like, you could almost say that, like, what did it mean to be the Roman emperor? And there are lots of different sort of things that that means. The main thing it means is that your face is on the money, and your. Your face goes on the money. And when we talk about, like, people rising up and trying to usurp like. Like rival emperors, like, there's always this point where they start minting their own coins with their own face on it. And that's. Okay. Now we've got a viable dude here because he's got control of a mint, right?
- [18:26]
Host
Instead of show me the money, it's like, show the money me.
- [18:28]
Mike Duncan
Show the. Show the money to the people. And it's. And it's always stuff like, I love the army. And then they bump out all these coins. And then the army's like, oh, he loves us. Maybe we should support him.
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Host
Oh, they would put little slogans on them.
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Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they had all this, like, shorthand for, like, what different symbols meant. And they would recognize these things. Like, Romans would recognize these things at the time. Where these days, you've got to Be an expert to really, like, decode what's going on on these coins.
- [18:53]
Host
But they had slang at the time almost. Or like, almost emoji. Not emojis.
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Mike Duncan
But I mean, emojis isn't far gone. I mean, it's iconography. Emojis are just iconograph. And there's also changes in, like, sort of how the faces are depicted depending on what era of Roman history we're into. And so people can spend their entire lives just studying, like, Roman coinage. But those are roughly like the three main pillars of then how we. How we know things about the Roman Empire.
- [19:23]
Host
So did people at the time keep diaries? Did they think about, like, writing about their own lives at the time? Like we do, like, recording ourselves as much or that wasn't.
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Mike Duncan
I think for most people, they're illiterate. I mean, mass illiteracy is definitely a thing. So when we are talking about what was it like for the Romans on a daily basis, I think the first thing to say is, well, it depends on what era, because we're talking about thousands of years here. And it does change over time. But in the main, the ancient world was largely rural and agrarian. Most people were doing farming. Most people were doing either subsistence farming or, you know, maybe they've got a surplus that they can sell into the market. And so you are living and working on farms in those little communities. And it's kind of the same way that we think about, you know, rural agrarian communities. At any time in place, you're kind of circumscribed, you're probably not going within 50 miles of where you grew up.
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Host
You're living in dying further than you mean.
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Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excuse me.
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Host
Like, similar still to today.
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Mike Duncan
It's very. It's very similar. This is. These are very human things. People don't go far from home. That's their life. They are living a life of rural, agrarian work, which is either nice or not, depending on if you like the work. When it's going good, it's going good. If there's a drought and then famine is sweeping through, and that's not so good. But we also do have at this point, the rise of, like, major urban centers. So there is. There. There is a major urban society that is happening inside Rome.
- [21:04]
Host
When you say a major urban society, like, what does that mean?
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Mike Duncan
I'm talking metropolises, cities in the way we think about cities.
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Host
Okay.
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Mike Duncan
And Rome, for example, was the first city in history to go over a million people. That's how big it was at its height. Is you know, there's a million people there.
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Host
Let's, you know, as big as Tucson, I think. How many people are in Tucson, Arizona? I bet that's about the same. Oh, Tucson only has 542,000.
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Mike Duncan
Try Milwaukee. Milwaukee's probably, like, 500,000.
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Host
Yeah. But it's.
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Mike Duncan
Look at that.
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Host
So the size of Milwaukee and Tucson combined, there we'll go.
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Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah.
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Host
Double. Double.
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Mike Duncan
Double the size of Milwaukee.
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Host
I love Milwaukee.
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Mike Duncan
I do, too. Yeah, Milwaukee's a great little city.
- [21:44]
Host
Dude. Milwaukee is. We've been touring for, like, years. But one of the. One of my font. One of the places I found that surprised me the most was Milwaukee. It's got, like, really cool old architecture. It's right there on this bay, and it has, like, this whole, like.
- [21:57]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. I'm about, like, I don't know, 90 minutes west of Milwaukee, and so I'll get over there a couple times a year, usually for a Brewers game, and then I'll, like, stick around.
- [22:06]
Host
Wisconsin's amazing man. Lacrosse was one of the other favorite places that I've found.
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Mike Duncan
Lacrosse.
- [22:11]
Host
Yeah.
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Mike Duncan
All right. That's a deep cut.
- [22:14]
Host
Just a perfect.
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Mike Duncan
Great. Yeah, yeah. I've been through. I've been through lacrosse.
- [22:18]
Host
Yeah.
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Mike Duncan
But anyway. But getting back to it, so. So Romeo actually is, like, a huge city, and there are other cities that are, you know, over 100,000 people. This is. This is big for the ancient world. And inside of those cities, you do have sort of this. This is when you have a different life depending on what era of Roman history you're actually talking about, whether you're there as a wage worker, whether you're an artisan, whether you're one of the elite, and whether you're involved in the law. Like, there's this whole, like, stratification of. Of, like, professions that you can have. And then we get into later, sort of like the bread and circuses aspect of Roman civilization, where the empire itself became so rich and so powerful and all, like, the wealth of the entire Mediterranean world is, like, flowing into this city. And this is what's causing people to, like, move there and come into Rome. And then, you know, we do need to feed these people. And so you start getting, like, grain doles. And then, you know, circuses and games were always a huge, huge part of Roman society. And so they would throw these spectacles for people. And there is a book about daily life in ancient Rome that, you know, at the height of the Empire, a lot of what you were doing is kind of, like, bouncing around from patron to patron, picking up A few coins from this guy, picking up a few coins from that guy, getting through your day, and then getting up the next morning and doing it all over again. And you didn't really have a profession. You were able to just kind of.
- [23:41]
Host
Like, bum around, figure out your hustle a little bit. And what was the religion at that time like? Did things start to change from mythology into actual religion during Rome?
- [23:52]
Mike Duncan
I think those two things are very linked. The Romans are very, very religious people. They were very into ritual and sacrifice, and they took it really, really seriously. And when we look at the myths that they told about themselves, you know, the first king of Rome is Romulus. And what was Romulus? Romulus was a warrior above all. And this is actually, like, what the Romans are above all. They are the children of Mars. They do war. They're really good at it. That's why they conquer the entire Mediterranean world. They're better at it than just about anybody else.
- [24:29]
Host
So it's a very masculine society.
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Mike Duncan
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's the patriarchy to the max. And. And they were very martial society. And they're sort of martial society, martial society. And, like, their political institutions are mirroring their military institutions. And the consul and their leaders are simultaneously. You know, they're the political leader, but also the leader of the armed forces. This is actually what their job is.
- [24:54]
Host
Wow.
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Mike Duncan
The other role of the consul, however.
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Host
The consul.
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Mike Duncan
The consul, right. Which is, you know, one of the key leaders in the Republican era, is overseeing these critical sacrifices and critical rituals that the Romans felt that they had to perform and needed to do in order to stay on the right side of the gods. And that was the job of the political leadership, was to defend the city using the armies and to make sure that the gods were happy by making the proper sacrifices. And so the second king of Rome, this guy called Numa, he was all about religion. And so when they tell this story, they're like, the first guy is war. And then the second guy comes in and he's like, we need religion to, like, guide this in, like, an ethical way and, like, to make sure that we're not just, like, insane barbarians that we actually, like, have an ethical and moral structure to our society. And those are the two things. And then the next, there's legendarily, like, seven kings of Rome. Like, there's seven hills, there's seven kings of Rome. Like, you know, seven's a lucky number. It kind of always has been. And so when you. When we talk about the seven kings of Rome, there's like, it Goes like warrior, religious guy, warrior, religious guy, warrior, you know, religious guy in. Because those two things go hand in hand.
- [26:02]
Host
Like one side, the other, one side, the other. So even that's even still today in our society, it kind of seems like it's like there's two parties sort of and it's one, it's one side the other, one way, the other.
- [26:10]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
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Host
And then, and what those sides and what they are change and their values change over time.
- [26:14]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And, and when we talk about them being a religious people, you know, this is, this is sort of pagan, polytheistic religion. And so there were different gods. Right. And we, and we know these gods, a lot of them were borrowed from, from the Greek. So it's, you know, it's Jupiter is, is Zeus and there's, you know, Minerva and there's, you know, Bacchus and, and all of these, you know, different gods that are out there. So they didn't have religion in the sense of like there was one thing that everybody did and was a part of and, and everybody went to church on Sundays. There were just, there were different temples in different places. And like one city their patron would be Apollo, another city their patron would be Diana. Right. And so it would, it would change from time to place. And so they had this very open mindedness towards religion and how you practiced religion. When they would come across a new society and by come across, I mean conquer, they would often incorporate those religions or they would, or they would make sort of what they were doing, their religious sacrifices, their gods and they would be like, oh, this is analogous to our thing over here. It's probably two aspects of the same God that we're talking about and it would all just be integrated into one thing.
- [27:25]
Host
And how were they able to master that control? But just because their army was so.
- [27:29]
Mike Duncan
Powerful at its base, the legions do a lot to keep people in line.
- [27:37]
Host
So the political leaders were often also the leaders on the battlefield.
- [27:40]
Mike Duncan
They were.
- [27:41]
Host
Wow.
- [27:42]
Mike Duncan
They were, that's what, that's literally what they were there to do.
- [27:45]
Host
Wow.
- [27:45]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [27:46]
Host
So that's as if James Carville would actually would also then have a military. He would have to be a politician or Fetterman, you know, the laid back warriors, but anybody or the casual dress down Friday warriors, you know, which I think would be. They would love it.
- [28:04]
Mike Duncan
Great.
- [28:05]
Host
They would love it. But those people also, if. I love the fact that if they made rules for people, they also would have to get out on the battlefield and at some way they have to put their money where they have to Put their blood where their mouth is 100%.
- [28:18]
Mike Duncan
And it actually goes deeper than that. So, yeah, if. If you're run. If you're running for console, and you want to be console, the thing that you want for yourself and expect for yourself is to be the leader of the legion and then go out and defeat something or someone on behalf of Rome and then come back and have a triumph. And the triumph is you getting to parade through Rome and show off the spoils of your conflict. And sometimes there were actual wars to fight, and sometimes there's this very funny thing. It's called triumph hunting, which is when a consul comes into power and he's like, there's nobody to fight. And so he'll just pick some random tribe and attack them and be like, oh, I defeated such and such a people so he can have his triumph.
- [28:56]
Host
Which we still do today in different ways.
- [28:58]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [29:00]
Host
Create enemies. I mean.
- [29:01]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, we do invent enemies and then go fight them, don't we? But there is a thing, like, in early Roman society, really, through almost to the end of the Republic, there was a property qualification to serve in the legions, because you had to have enough money, you had to have enough land to participate in the legions. Their assumption, their sort of cultural assumption, was that the people who constitute this society that we are in are fundamentally like the landowners. And so if you own a plot of land, then you're a part of the society. You're the people who go and fight for this society and defend this society. If you are, you know, if you're in poverty, if you don't have land, you don't qualify for service in the legion, because in their mind, you're not actually really, truly a part of this thing that we are trying to defend.
- [29:51]
Host
Right. So how could you put that? You're all into it. If you don't have something, you don't have a vested interest. Almost.
- [29:56]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And then the leaders. And then. And then, yeah, the higher you go, the more you are out there. Now, granted, like, they're in the command tent, you know, you're not like, on a horse, like, literally leading the charge, but you were expected to be out there and an active military leader and everybody who had a stake in that society, that meant that you also had to be there. The richest people in society went off to war. The poorest people stayed behind. And we have kind of flipped that.
- [30:24]
Host
Yeah. God, that's fascinating. I can't even imagine it, but it sounds like, you know, you always hear like, oh, I wish all of these, you Know, if these politicians had to have their children go off to war, they would feel totally different about the things that they send children off to war to do, you know?
- [30:39]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. They're called chicken hawks.
- [30:41]
Host
Yeah.
- [30:41]
Mike Duncan
Wow.
- [30:42]
Host
I didn't know that that was the term. It is.
- [30:44]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. Yeah.
- [30:44]
Host
Chicken hawks.
- [30:45]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. We've had chicken hawks all throughout history. The people who will bang the drums of war and then send other people off to die. Wow.
- [30:53]
Host
A chicken hawk has. Go back up to the top. Sorry. Has multiple meanings in bird names. It refers to three hawk species, Coopers, sharp shinned and red tailed. In gay slang, it's used to describe an older man who prefers younger males. Okay. And politically, it can describe someone who supports war but avoids military service. Ah. Like draft dodgers, kind of.
- [31:15]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [31:15]
Host
Similar to that.
- [31:17]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And we've had a whole run of them as presidents. You know, Clinton got out of it, Bush got out of it, Trump got out of it. Oh, yeah. You know, Obama I don't think had.
- [31:24]
Host
The opportunity to, but yet we certainly have not followed that same steed where the people who are writing the rules are the same one who have to go out there and make sure it's not. Make sure it's their own blood that's providing the ink.
- [31:37]
Mike Duncan
Yep.
- [31:38]
Host
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- [34:08]
Mike Duncan
So. So I go. I go on book tours.
- [34:10]
Host
Okay.
- [34:11]
Mike Duncan
And I do that. I did two years ago. I went. I wrote a 75 minute monologue that's just me, like at a table, talking for 75 minutes and took that around. And that was moderately successful. There was sort of like a big, you know, meta. Not analysis, but like meta take on history and how we tell stories and what the stories of history mean to us. And it is like a lot of what I just said, how we shape our present society, is the stories we tell about the past.
- [34:40]
Host
I could see this being a fascinating tour. I don't know exactly how you do it, but I just. You got to do a tour. This. I could see this. I want to talk at the end about what it would be like if we had a tour that you went on, like, with some visual.
- [34:52]
Mike Duncan
We're actively planning this now. Yes. Great.
- [34:54]
Host
Good. This is how things happen.
- [34:56]
Mike Duncan
Yes, it is. Because we both got a little bit of ambition, don't we?
- [34:59]
Host
Yes.
- [35:00]
Mike Duncan
Yes, we do.
- [35:01]
Host
That is fascinating. And the fact that if a government found a way to curtail people's ambition. Wow, how fascinating that is. Because you never even think that that could be happening to you. You know, were they curtailing people's ambition during Rome?
- [35:16]
Mike Duncan
Well, I mean, certainly a slave was encouraged to not think that there was anything else that they could do but be a slave. A woman was encouraged to believe that there was not anything that she could do but be a woman who was mostly there to make little Roman boys. So, yeah, there was an elite that was allowed to have these kinds of ambitions, but a lot of other people were supposed to know their place.
- [35:36]
Host
Got it. So it was a caste system pretty much.
- [35:39]
Mike Duncan
Y. Yeah. And like stoicism, there's lots of great stuff about stoicism as one of the main sort of philosophies that comes out of the ancient world. But one of the sort of, I think, negative things about stoicism is. It encouraged people to just do the best they could with whatever they were meant to be. And so, yeah, if you're a slave, you were just told, well, be the best slave that you can be. That's not really a great message. And Marcus Aurelius, who's one of the great voices and stoicism, would be like, we all have our role to play in this and I should be the best emperor that I can be, and you should be the best soldier you can be, and you should be the best slave you can be. And aren't my burdens the same as that of the slave? And it's like, well, Marcus Aurelius, I'm not actually sure that's true. It's a nice thought. And I do understand that there are burdens to being emperor, but it's easy.
- [36:27]
Host
For you to say that.
- [36:28]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, it's pretty easy for you to say that. Less so for the slave.
- [36:33]
Host
What did people wear during the time? Like, what was some common garb kind of.
- [36:38]
Mike Duncan
Well, I am not an expert on what they were wearing around. Yeah, I feel that for sure. But, you know, I can say this. The sort of the togas that we all imagine them wearing, this is very upper crust wear. The toga was, you know, practically a tuxedo. Like, you would clock that in Roman society as like, this person's walking around in something very fancy and it's something that the senatorial clock class would wear around. So, like, most people are not bumming around in daily life wearing a toga. They. And those were actually like, they're very cumbersome. Right. To wear around. It was, it was a, it was a cumbersome piece of clothing.
- [37:15]
Host
Yeah. It's almost like you're playing hide and go seek in your own clothing.
- [37:18]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [37:19]
Host
You know, because you think it's going to be easy. You got to keep this end up. It's like people's like, yeah, I'm a go, I'm, I'm a ghost or whatever. But. And you probably had a nice piece of fabric from somewhere, which was something only wealthy people would have.
- [37:30]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. And when you get into sort of like, what, what are the fruits of having this kind of empire and having trade routes that are now reaching to China. Yeah, they, yeah, they've got silks coming in, they've got other kinds of like, fancy finery that they get to wear. But like, most people are, are in rough tunics, you know, and like some sandals and that's about what they're wearing.
- [37:51]
Host
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You didn't have any Air Force ones or anything, did they have. What were people eating at the time?
- [38:00]
Mike Duncan
If you are just a peasant, you're eating whatever's around, you know, barley, millet.
- [38:07]
Host
You know, like parts of beer.
- [38:11]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of barley and millet, you know, that's going around. You know, if you're on the coast, you know, you've got fish coming in and you've got, you know. You know, different kinds of, you know, the fruits of the fruit de mer.
- [38:24]
Host
Right.
- [38:24]
Mike Duncan
In French, which is the fruits of the sea, which is seafood. There's some, you know, there's meat. There is red meat that people are eating, but it's, you know, in. In far less quantities than we eat today. And then, you know, you can get Roman cookbooks today where people go through, like, different recipes that we sort of knew that they had. And, like, you know, dormice always seem to show up as one of the things that people like to eat.
- [38:49]
Host
A little door mouse.
- [38:50]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. A little dormouse action. We always got to do that when we do Roman food. There's a great sort of, like, fish sauce called garum that they were all, you know, that they were wild for, which is actually the principal export of Pompeii. Before they was garum. Yeah, before. Yeah, they were. Yeah, they're famous. Famous for their fish sauce. And then, you know. And then. What are they drinking? They're. They're drinking wine. And, you know, there's a lot of wine being consumed in the ancient world. And they would. They would make this, like. It was. It was very. It was a very thick wine. And so you.
- [39:25]
Host
So port almost.
- [39:26]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, but so much so that, like, you would cut it with water. And so it was. It was almost like concentrate, right in the way. It's like. Like Kool Aid.
- [39:33]
Host
I remember we used to have, like that. They used to have the. Sell that orange juice concentrate, like.
- [39:37]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [39:38]
Host
Frozen block.
- [39:38]
Mike Duncan
Oh, yeah, that's good.
- [39:39]
Host
Mom would buy that.
- [39:40]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [39:40]
Host
And put that into something.
- [39:42]
Mike Duncan
So it's. Yeah, it's basically that. That's. That's a lot of what, their wine.
- [39:44]
Host
Ah, so a lot of their wine was a concentrate.
- [39:46]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [39:47]
Host
And then people would splash, would cut it with water and then have themselves a bit.
- [39:51]
Mike Duncan
And. And there would be, you know, there would be sort of like, you know, if. If somebody was really, you know, had a problem with alcohol, you would say that they drank it without cutting it. You know, that was. That was like a thing that would get passed around.
- [40:03]
Host
Oh, yeah.
- [40:05]
Mike Duncan
Oh, yeah. He just. He would just drink it straight. That's not so good.
- [40:08]
Host
Oh, Ricky's drinking it straight. Oh, he's not doing well.
- [40:10]
Mike Duncan
No, he's not doing well. We need to have an intervention.
- [40:13]
Host
Yeah. Could a peasant rise up in society at the time, was there any chance that, like, because you always. There's this. I think there's this idea, right, that like, you're the peasant in the. At. On the parade route and you see the princess go by and you catch her eye and then you have a chance to be her boyfriend or whatever. Spouse or whatever, you know, you have. I think that's every, like, poor kid's dream, you know, like, certainly when I was growing up, you would think, like, some rich girl would see you and then her dad would think you were nice and then you would have a chance to help run his car dealership one day.
- [40:49]
Mike Duncan
Right. And that's the dream.
- [40:53]
Host
Or coin car wash, dude. We had this hottie at our school, dude, named Emily, dude. And her dad had two coin car washes, bro.
- [41:02]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [41:03]
Host
Oh.
- [41:04]
Mike Duncan
Aspirations of a lifetime.
- [41:06]
Host
Oh, man. Yeah.
- [41:07]
Mike Duncan
And that's what you could have been doing. And instead you're stuck here doing this. I bet that. What, what an awful turn of events. You could have had to coin operated car dealerships and instead you just have a very successful career in podcasting.
- [41:20]
Host
But you know, it's funny, there's a part of me that's still just. You just still want to be picked by her.
- [41:25]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [41:26]
Host
To be the inherited of those two coin op car washes. God, they were nice, boy. And I still, man, that just the idea that still just pressure washes my soul, you know.
- [41:37]
Mike Duncan
So to answer your question, you know, social mobility in the ancient world ain't great. Okay. You know, if you were born a peasant, you're almost certainly going to die a peasant. There are, you know, once we move along through the empire, sort of the Republic has fallen. We are now into the imperial age. There's certainly like, commoners who are elevated a little bit in the way that you're talking about. They become a favorite of the emperor and then there's a lot of like, griping like, who is this guy? Why does he get, you know, access to the emperor when we don't? This is all very embarrassing that we have this commoner around and that'll happen sporadically over hundreds of years. It didn't happen very often. When you get into sort of like the second and third centuries, there is a phenomenon of being able to enter the army and having that be the Main sort of avenue of social mobility. And this is actually, now that I think about it, this is actually true for most of the. Of the empire. At least once the legions become professionalizes, how do you move up in the world?
- [42:45]
Host
The legions? And when you say those are the bad, the.
- [42:47]
Mike Duncan
Those are just the armies.
- [42:48]
Host
The armies, okay. We're just talking about when they become professionalized.
- [42:51]
Mike Duncan
They become professionalized.
- [42:52]
Host
So when people start to see that as a way to move up rank.
- [42:55]
Mike Duncan
And if you're provincial and there is a.
- [42:57]
Host
And what does provincial mean to see?
- [42:59]
Mike Duncan
A provincial is somebody who lives in the province, lives in a province of the Roman Empire, who is not themselves a Roman citizen. Okay, okay. So these are the provincials. And a provincial could become a citizen through service in the army. And if you somehow managed to make it through 20 years of service, you would be discharged with citizenship papers. And there are tablets, they're called resumes. You can find them in museums. That then you would carry that around like for the rest of your life. It was like the most precious thing in your possession. Right. If you had one of these things. Because then wherever you went, you're like, like, you have to treat me differently because I have citizenship. You can't mess with me. And so these are very, very important things that people would have. When the empire starts to run into troubles militarily, socially, politically. Like in the second and third century. There is a run of emperors in the third century who become emperors because they had risen through the ranks from the lowest rank all the way up. Because when you're in a crisis, there's kind of two paths in front of you. You can either cling to the leadership that had been leading you before and in fact probably created this crisis, or you allow talent to rise up and you're like, okay, let's have the people who know what they're doing, wherever they come from, who cares? Let's have them be in charge. And so there's this run of emperors from Illyria who, when we look at their biographies, it's always like they were peasants, they were commoners, they enter in the lowest possible rank. And then they, through talent and through will and through merit to become generals. And then that's the transition point into becoming an emperor. But when you actually dig into it, there's this way of, if you're really rich and you're like, oh, that person came from nothing. A lot of the times they're just talking about a regular middle class kid, not really somebody who grew up in poverty, it's just Somebody who grew up without insane amounts of wealth. And so sometimes when they're like, oh, this, this future emperor came from nothing, it was very possible that they were like a well to do local family who rise up. Right.
- [45:09]
Host
They just want royalty.
- [45:10]
Mike Duncan
They just. Yeah, they just weren't royalty. So it's, so it's kind of difficult to tell. But there is, but, but in general, that's how you're gonna go from being what you were, which is nothing, to maybe being something is. It's the army that's gonna do it for you. Wow.
- [45:22]
Host
And it was. But it's been that way for a long time in America. So I don't feel like. I don't know if it's that way as much now, but I certainly felt like it used to be that way more.
- [45:30]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, I mean, America's experience with armies is different, but very similar to what it was kind of in the early days of Rome, where it's not so much like only rich people would go off and serve in war, but when we did have broad based conscription for World War II and for the Korean War and for World War I, like all of society is kind of going off and, and being a part of the army and then you come back and yeah, maybe you have like, you rose up the rank and now you're a captain. And then when you come back to civilian society now you've got some stature, you know, you've, you know, you've, you've proven yourself and now your resume looks quite a bit better, for sure.
- [46:08]
Host
Oh, yeah, I remember, yeah. When military guys would come to visit your school or something. I mean, it felt like it meant something, you know, certainly when I was a child, and not that it still doesn't. I just think there was probably more combat then or coming off of more combat or you had more friends, dads who gone into heavy combat. And so you would. Those stories were more plentiful probably in society at the time. That's why I say that. What were women regarded like at the time? Did they. Because there were female gods. Goddesses.
- [46:37]
Mike Duncan
Sure.
- [46:38]
Host
So obviously there was a, and it was a war society and you had like Athena, the God of war, Athene. But you had female goddesses that were powerful. How, how were women viewed in society during Roman times?
- [46:53]
Mike Duncan
So it's a strongly patriarchal society and the head of the household is invariably a man and they are in charge of everything. And so if you're a woman in one respect, you don't really have rights at all, like who you marry. What happens to you, where you go? Like, most of these things are completely out of your hand. Wow. And what you're really there to do, the most important thing that you can do is make babies to fill the legions so that we can continue to be this strong military society that we are. But all of that said, the Romans also did have written into law, actually, there did become spaces for women to own property in their own right, to be able to manage some of their own affairs financially. A lot of early Christianity, for example, is bankrolled by wealthy widows because they had had a husband, they had had a family. That husband dies, they don't remarry. There is legal space for them to exist. As a widow who's unconnected to a man who controls her own money. And the story of early Christianity, like, who was a patron of this? Like, who was patronizing these early Christian groups, a lot of it is, like, wealthy widows is where the money is coming from. So it's a mixed bag. But I would say, like, in the main, if you were a woman in Roman society, you do not have a ton of rights at all.
- [48:21]
Host
Were there? What did they do? Like, if children were born with disabilities, handicaps, and stuff like that, how were people treated like that?
- [48:28]
Mike Duncan
Not great. You know, exposure is a thing, you know?
- [48:31]
Host
And what does that mean, exposure?
- [48:33]
Mike Duncan
Like, put them out on a trash pile. Really? Yeah.
- [48:36]
Host
That's crazy, dude. What did people think of life at the time? Did they value their life? Did it mean as much to them as it feels seems like it does to us today in America. America. Does that make sense to you?
- [48:47]
Mike Duncan
It does, and I think it did. I think their lives did matter to them a lot. And even though, you know, we were just talking about, like, exposing babies because they couldn't live. Right. That was, like, a difficult choice that they would make. But we often today, because we have all this advanced medical technology and because we have vaccines and because we've basically eradicated childhood diseases, which is one of the biggest killers in world history. Like, childhood vaccines is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of human civilization. Right prior to the 20th century, the mortality rates for children were appalling. And this is why you had to have six, seven kids, because three or four of them might not live to adulthood. Wow.
- [49:30]
Host
Bring that up.
- [49:31]
Mike Duncan
And so we think these days that, like, oh, because of that, because there was that much death surrounding them at all times, because loved ones were dropping dead left and right, that they must have been more callous. They can't possibly have cared about each other. As much if they're just going to die. And I have, in all of the historical studies that I have done, I just don't find that to be true. People loved their children. We love our children as human beings. Right. It wasn't different for them. If a woman gives birth to a child, she loves that child. And if that child dies at the age of 18 months, that is a. A devastating tragedy. It is. The worst thing that can happen to a person is the death of a child, full stop. Nothing else even comes close. It affected them in that way. They cared about each other in that way. They tried to protect each other and save each other. We always, we are always fighting for life and we are always fighting to save people that we love. And so it is absolutely not the case that they were more callous or more hard hearted.
- [50:29]
Host
Why do we get that idea then? Because I see what you're saying. Because. Yeah. God, I can only imagine.
- [50:34]
Mike Duncan
Because we. Because we can't conceive of what that must have been like. Because if, you know, if I had five kids, I mean, if either one of my kids died, I'd be, that's it. I'm a wreck. Like, I don't even know how to recover from that.
- [50:48]
Host
Yeah. We just had a guy on Kevin Von Erich and he has a famous movie. He has a famous life. His five of his brothers died.
- [50:57]
Mike Duncan
Okay.
- [50:58]
Host
They were professional wrestlers in the 80s 70s and 80s in Texas, and five of them died. Suicides in different. And he said that he's just a remarkable man. He said, I lost all my brothers. He goes, but I could not imagine losing one of my children. And it was just fascinating. Not fascinating to hear that, of course. You get that. But, you know. Yeah. It's interesting to think that. That the weight of that would be. It's interesting to have some quantifiable weight of that coming from someone like him and hearing it from you. Let me see. In ancient Rome, infant mortality was significantly higher than today, with estimates suggesting that about 25 to 30% of children died in their first year of life.
- [51:39]
Mike Duncan
Wow. That's. Every single one of those deaths mattered. Every single one of them mattered.
- [51:46]
Host
You almost had to have three children to get two children.
- [51:50]
Mike Duncan
Yep. God, it's hard. It's hard, man. And that's why, that's why vaccines are so great. That's why it's so important that they exist. Because what was killing these kids? It was early childhood diseases.
- [52:02]
Host
Yeah. Bring up the. Bring up. How did vaccines change the life expectancy of children? Just so we Know that we've never looked at that. You hear everybody talk about vaccines. We've talked about, We've listened a lot about it in here. Let me see. Child immunization specifically started with Edward Jenner's successful smallpox vaccination in 1796. The practice of vaccination, including for smallpox, gained traction throughout the 19th century with Massachusetts being the first state to require it for school children in 1853.
- [52:30]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, great, dude.
- [52:31]
Host
They should require it in Massachusetts just for that accent, you know what I'm saying?
- [52:36]
Mike Duncan
But I mean, this is obviously something that has been at the forefront of like scientific investigation. Correct? Right.
- [52:42]
Host
The fact that they. That it was such a problem that they were losing this many children, that it was like, this is something we have.
- [52:49]
Mike Duncan
If we can figure this out and stop this, let's do it. Because every one of those deaths, it's not just like we've lost that person. Every person who was connected to that kid is now traumatized by that. So you have these societies that just everybody is walking around, not hard hearted, not caring about these things, but basically victims of trauma. They've all been traumatized. And that does inform what previous societies were like. That had a lot more to do with the fact that we care about each other than the fact that we did not care about each other. Wow.
- [53:21]
Host
And I bet care was almost at a different depth then because it moments probably meant something more because you. There was. I mean, it was literally in the trash pile of your. Like the mourning was on the curb of not only of your heart, but of your home. Oh, I can't even imagine that.
- [53:40]
Mike Duncan
It's a hard thing to imagine. Yeah.
- [53:42]
Host
And God, I think imagine how much more light, how real it was then. We are one. I guess it's a blessing that we have today is how we're able to kind of hide things from our own reality in a way, if that makes any sense. Kind of especially visually, you know, we're able to. You know, one thing I always that I thought was neat about being like. Because we grew up in like a really poor area and you couldn't hide anything. Like if somebody's getting a butt whooping, if somebody was. If parents were fighting everything, it was all right there. Right. And it was a blessing and a curse. It was like it was too much information for a kid. But then also it was like, this is real. I'm involved in a show. Right. Like, nobody's talking. Anybody in the nightlife in my room. Gave up two years ago. He moved to Minneapolis. It's like you know, it just. I don't know, there was something real about. And then when you have some money, you got, like, you can get hedges and you get a fence, you get an attorney, you get things to hide behind.
- [54:41]
Mike Duncan
Well, I mean, I grew up in the affluent suburbs of Seattle, Washington, Right. So I'm from the suburbs of the 80s and 90s. And so, yes, it was very much not that it was. Everybody's fine, everything is great. We all go to our little single standing houses, and every family is doing great. And then behind closed doors, we're listening to Nirvana. And underneath all that, yeah, of course I listened to nirvana. I was 11, man, when you. And, yeah, when Smells Like Teen Spirit came out, like, I was 11 years old. So I was just deep in the scene. Of course I was. Yeah.
- [55:15]
Host
Oh, those early mosh pits, dude. Every one of my friend's older brothers was in a horrible band that would play. It would be like a pet store. They would move all the cages into the back and they would have a little mosh pit, and they would put it.
- [55:27]
Mike Duncan
Cause Eddie Vedder showed everybody that you could sing with a kind of deep voice, which we can all kind of do. And so it was like, oh, my God, this is the thing that we can do now. And like, like. And so. Because we can all do that. Whereas before that, it was all the glam metal guys with these, like, registers that were just like. I don't even know how you do that. Like, I can't even hear that.
- [55:45]
Host
Yeah, like Vince Neil, those guys.
- [55:46]
Mike Duncan
Exactly. Yeah. Like, I can't. I can't emulate that. But Eddie Vetter, I can do and, like, you know, screaming into him. I, I, I come from punk, right? That was sort of my, like, Skinny.
- [55:55]
Host
Puppy, that type of stuff.
- [55:56]
Mike Duncan
Oh, no. Like, you know, like 90s third wave stuff, you know, like rancid and bad religion and no effects.
- [56:01]
Host
Acid bad.
- [56:03]
Mike Duncan
No, not acid Bath.
- [56:04]
Host
Okay.
- [56:04]
Mike Duncan
Sorry.
- [56:04]
Host
It's okay.
- [56:05]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. All right. Slipknot. Gas Huffer.
- [56:07]
Host
Yeah.
- [56:07]
Mike Duncan
Well, no, Slipknot is like, now we're. That's metal, right? We're getting into metal. And I've, like, I'm not a metal guy. I do not. But I do not believe that there is a split between metal and punk. I think we have far more in common with each other than we don't. And so I will always be a peacemaker and an ambassador between metal and punk. Because I don't want us to fight. I want us to be on the same side. Because we're all probably throwing shows at the Same crappy little place.
- [56:30]
Host
I love that. And if there's ever a treaty to be signed, I'd love for you to do that.
- [56:33]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Metal. Metal and punk, right? We need to stand in solidarity with each other. But that said, I do not listen to metal at all. I think it's. I think it's overblown and ridiculous. I want three chords and some incoherent yelling.
- [56:44]
Host
Yeah, that's.
- [56:45]
Mike Duncan
That's what I. That's what I want out of music.
- [56:48]
Host
Dude, that's so cool, man. Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping? Is porn affecting your relationship or dating life? Well, you're certainly not alone. Watching pornography has become so commonplace today. And oftentimes men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety and depression. Shame and stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and getting help for them. I want to introduce you to my friend Steve. Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery, a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity. Steve is a long term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and has dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same. Steve is an amazing person and he is a close friend of mine. I mean that. Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long term recovery and will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn more about Valor Recovery, please Visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at adminallor recovery coaching.com. thank you. What did the kings and the royalty live like? Were they living. Was it just like a. What was it like over there? Could you just knock on the drawbridge? How did you even get over there?
- [58:36]
Mike Duncan
Well, for one thing about the Romans is they did not have kings anymore. And this is an important part of their political ideology. Once they kick the kings out in the legendary date of 509 BC There aren't kings anymore.
- [58:49]
Host
Okay, and why did they kick the kings out?
- [58:52]
Mike Duncan
For a variety of reasons. Most especially like it was immediately caused by the aristocrats, the senatorial class not liking the last king of Rome. And it's actually a story that he raped the daughter of a prominent senator. And so that's what precipitated the overthrow of, of the last Tarquin king.
- [59:13]
Host
And that was the from Rome. That was in the Roman. That's how the Roman Republic started.
- [59:17]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. Because, like, if you go back, like, romulus allegedly founds Rome 753, and then they're kings of Rome for like 250 years.
- [59:24]
Host
Okay.
- [59:24]
Mike Duncan
And then around 500, that's when the republic gets going.
- [59:27]
Host
And what started the republican. Take me through that story.
- [59:30]
Mike Duncan
The, like, the, the legendary story is that there's a last king who was the, the, the local senatorial elite in Rome did not like him very much.
- [59:39]
Host
What was his name?
- [59:40]
Mike Duncan
Tarquin.
- [59:41]
Host
Okay.
- [59:41]
Mike Duncan
And the Tarquin family comes from. Yeah, yeah, Tarquinius Superbus. But they were an Etrurian family. And Etruria is north of Rome, not Roman. So it was a foreign monarchy that had.
- [59:53]
Host
So they were provincials.
- [59:55]
Mike Duncan
The Romans were being ruled. Yeah, the Romans were being ruled by a king who came from someplace else. That's all it is. It's a foreign monarch, which is something that is common throughout history. And so they don't like the foreign monarch. And this is all trying to like, like, sort of capture how the Romans get out from under the cultural hegemony of Etruria at the time, because the Etruscans were quite a bit better at things earlier than the Romans were. And then the Romans come along and supplant them. But to your question, which is really like the high aristocracy, the senatorial class, and then ultimately the emperors, like, how are they living? Well.
- [60:29]
Host
Oh, and wait, did we finish the story? What happened? Oh, you told us about the story about what happened the, with the, with the. Oh, yeah.
- [60:33]
Mike Duncan
According to, according to the story, Tarquin rapes the daughter of. Of a prominent setter in Rome. And, and that guy goes and he rallies all of his, you know, his brothers and his allies and his friends, and they overthrow the king and they kick him out. And then they say, we're not doing kings anymore.
- [60:46]
Host
Wow.
- [60:46]
Mike Duncan
We are going to do a, like, job rotation system and set up proto democratic assemblies. And then that's how they ran themselves for like 500 years.
- [60:57]
Host
And is that how democracy began?
- [60:59]
Mike Duncan
Well, democracy, it's. I mean, it's one of the places like. Yeah, I mean, democracy is coming from like Greece. Right. They're taking cultural cues from what's happening over in Greece because, like, just as. And there, there is debate about when the Roman Republic was actually founded, because you do get sort of Solon coming over to Athens and being like the great lawgiver of Athens and sort of the, like, I'm going to get this date wrong. But it's like around 470 is when he's the Lawgiver of Athens. And this is when you start getting sort of like what we think of as democratic government. And it's entirely possible that later Roman historians went and backdated, like, they retconned their own history so that they would come along, like, 30 years before that, because everybody knew about what was going on in Athens, and they were like, actually, we got there 30 years earlier, which is just them, you know, doing a little light revision of their own history in order to make sure that they were always the super bus.
- [61:50]
Host
It's like an Instagram filter. It's like an Instagram filter.
- [61:52]
Mike Duncan
Exactly. Yeah.
- [61:53]
Host
Full of Jakarta.
- [61:54]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. But, you know, if you're a senator.
- [61:57]
Host
So now we have the republic going on. This is where the Republic of Rome. This is the second of kind of three of the one. This is second of kind of the three main parts of Rome. Then we get into the Roman Empire.
- [62:07]
Mike Duncan
Exactly.
- [62:07]
Host
Okay.
- [62:08]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [62:09]
Host
So now we no longer have kings.
- [62:10]
Mike Duncan
No longer have kings. Kings bad. You cannot be a king. In fact, if anybody tries to be a king, if anybody tries to become a king, any Roman citizen can kill that person.
- [62:19]
Host
Oh, yeah.
- [62:20]
Mike Duncan
Kill the kings.
- [62:21]
Host
Oh, yeah. Sacramento kings.
- [62:23]
Mike Duncan
There is a reason why the emperors are not kings, because kings are verboten. Right. You are not ever going to be a king. And every Roman senator ultimately thought that they were superior to any king. And there were kings throughout the Mediterranean world who would be, like, clients of the Roman Empire. And any Roman senator considered themselves socially, morally, politically above a mere king.
- [62:47]
Host
So you have the Republic now, and the counselors of the Republic, the rich guy, how were they living at the time?
- [62:55]
Mike Duncan
The people who were sort of the aristocrats, which is synonymous with the senatorial class, they are the major landowners of Rome, and so they do not have occupations. They are living off of the rents of their land. They're living off of the produce of the peasants who are living on their land, and then ultimately the slaves who are living on their land. That's where their income is coming from. That's where their wealth is coming from. They themselves don't have to do anything. They don't have to have a profession. They don't have to have a job. And in their minds, this is what made them the perfect people to lead the Republic, because they were the only people who had the leisure time to be literate, to read things about history, to learn things about how to actually do statecraft, to have the time to engage in all of those pursuits. And that made them, like, uniquely able. And then if you say like, well, hey, maybe we should educate everyone then. And then we can have all these. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to go that far. Because really they just wanted to be in charge. But there is sort of a self justifying ideological project there, which is like, we're the ones who have the time to do this and so we will be the ones who do it. And so, you know, they would have country villas. They would usually have like a place in the city, a lot of them clustered on the Palatine Hill. That's. I mean, to this very day, you know, jockeying for a house in the best neighborhood. This is, I mean, this is a tale as old as time. What was going on on the Palatine Hill? You know, you wanted to be in a good house and a bigger house.
- [64:30]
Host
Amongst the other people who are thinking and making decisions. But at this time, even literacy was kind of a delicacy.
- [64:37]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. Literacy was a. Was a very rarefied thing.
- [64:42]
Host
And did they have like, prostitutes and stuff like that? What was that? Was that going on?
- [64:46]
Mike Duncan
Oh, sure, man. I mean, that's the world's oldest profession, so.
- [64:50]
Host
Yeah, dude.
- [64:50]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. They were, yeah, there were sex workers. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, they would do whatever they wanted to do, but they're, you know, they're living off the best food. They have household slaves who are doing all the manual labor for them, you know, up to an extreme, including at certain points, like literally hand feeding them. You can really.
- [65:13]
Host
You could have them do it. Would people get kind of exorbitant at that time? How strange did it get? Do you feel like.
- [65:19]
Mike Duncan
Well, it probably got pretty freaky. There is definitely. There's some satires that were written. There were some humorous sort of satires that were written about the life of the aristocracy and, and these are very much like. Oh, yeah, yeah. What was going on behind closed doors was quite.
- [65:40]
Host
You know, we would consider it taboo. Like, was it perverted? Like, was it like. I mean, I know, like, was it like pedophilia type stuff?
- [65:47]
Mike Duncan
No, no, no, nothing. No, I don't think it's anything like that. Although in some times in places. Yeah, for sure. Because that's always been something that's been with us, unfortunately. But yeah, you know, there's orgies, there's drinking parties, there's, you know, they're putting on, you know, theatrical plays and, you know, it's body. It' rivaled, you know.
- [66:07]
Host
Bacchanalia.
- [66:08]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, bacchanalia. I mean, that's that's where this stuff comes from.
- [66:12]
Host
Yeah. I grew up in New Orleans area, so it's like we would. You know, you'd see the fl. You know, the different parades. I mean, the list we put up earlier, that was. That's 80% of the names of all the. All the different parade groups that are there.
- [66:24]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [66:27]
Host
So the rich were living it up. They were enjoying themselves. They were the ones who were getting together and thinking. They were the ones that were strategizing. Are they still the ones that are going out into the battlefield fields, too?
- [66:37]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. For. For, you know, centuries. Absolutely. You know, and. And, you know, whether they liked it or not, Cicero famously, you know, complained about having to do military service because he wasn't a soldier. He didn't consider himself a soldier. He wanted to, you know, he was engaged in the law. He didn't have to be like, Cicero could have just sat around and done nothing for sure if he wanted to. But. But he does get, you know, involved in, you know, basically having a legal career and. But he had to go do his service in order to qualify to be a consulate, even though he wasn't a soldier at all. And also, there's a very famous or famous inside the Roman historian world where a buddy of his is writing to him and is like, how do you feel about being a consul and having to be in charge of all these religious things when you're an atheist? And he's like, well, yeah, I'm an atheist. I don't believe any of it. Not necessarily. But we go through the motions, don't we?
- [67:30]
Host
How did. And how did people. What was plumbing like? Waste management? How did people wash their clothes?
- [67:38]
Mike Duncan
Okay. These are not areas I'm an expert in.
- [67:42]
Host
Okay.
- [67:42]
Mike Duncan
So. But I can, you know, I can tell you some things because the Romans were very good about aqueducts and sort of having running water in different places. But, you know. Yeah, they've got pipes, they've got public latrines, but sometimes you've also just got chamber pots that you're filling up and throwing out the window when you're done with it. One of the things about the past is that it probably stunk to high heaven anywhere you go. Yeah. When you read about the way people live. Yeah. When you go back to the past, oh, it'd be so great. It's like, yeah, this smells gross. Because I've done a lot of work in French history, too, and, like, in the Louvre, which used to be, like, the palace of the King, they would talk about this is up through, like, the 15, 1600s, just like princes and nobles. Like, if they had to go to the bathroom, they would just literally go pee in the corner of a room. This is what they were doing. No way. And this is something that is a.
- [68:46]
Host
Sig app or whatever.
- [68:46]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. Like, okay. Because we've gotten very used today to the glories of indoor plumbing and what it can do for us.
- [68:54]
Host
It's kind of cool, though, to just be like, keep talking. You just turn your back and just piss the other way. Or somebody comes by with a little piss head and you piss in there and they run off with it or. Or whatever. I don't even know what they would do with it. Would they recycle the urine at all? Did they need, like, fluids that bad back then?
- [69:12]
Mike Duncan
So not fluids, but what they did need was, like, the. Like, the. The chemicals that are in human urine, like, to actually. This ties directly into your point of, like, how did they do laundry? Those chemicals that could be extracted from human urine was great for washing clothes. Yeah, this is really.
- [69:31]
Host
Romans clean their clothes using a mixture of water, alkali, often urine, and fuller's earth. The urine provided ammonia, a natural detergent, while the fuller's earth acted as an abrasive to remove dirt. The process involved washing the clothes in vats, often with the Fullers or their slaves treading on them to agitate the clothes. After washing, the clothes were rinsed and dried. That's kind of crazy to think that you would use urine and earth to clean something.
- [70:02]
Mike Duncan
And who figured that one out?
- [70:05]
Host
Some.
- [70:05]
Mike Duncan
There's. You know, it's like. There's like, the thing. The bravest man who ever lived was the first person to eat an oyster. Yeah. You know, there's like. There's those little things. It's like, okay, there was a guy who figured out that if you peed on clothes, you could get them clean. Who was that guy? What was that guy's story? Because we have no idea who it was.
- [70:23]
Host
Yeah, and it'd be. Yeah, it'd be tough to convince somebody that today. What were their news sources? Like, how did they get information?
- [70:32]
Mike Duncan
So information is going to be passed through, like, traders. Okay. So that's one way that you're going to find out what is happening throughout the world. And so, like, obviously, if you live in a port of some kind, you're going to be more hip to what's going on in Egypt or North Africa than if you're just somebody who's living in some little village in the interior of Gaul, which you have no idea what's going on? The Romans do develop an incredibly extensive network of roads. Like an insanely extensive network of roads. This is one of also their greatest accomplishments. And a lot of these Roman roads basically still exist. A lot of what we use today, or, you know, this is where the Roman road used to be. And so especially among the upper classes, there's extensive correspondence that is going on between people in the upper classes. And, like, if somebody goes off to a posting someplace, they're writing back. There's exchanges of letters and correspondence that is happening all the time. And then the government itself has agents and then ultimately, like bureaucrats who are producing material and sending it back to the center and passing information amongst each other. And all of that is being done, you know, via these road networks. Or like, you know, people. People who are traveling from here to there, like. Like tell you, oh, well, this is what was happening down there, and then this was happening down there.
- [71:55]
Host
Would they spread misinformation, too? Would they send false information out? Like, was that a thing then?
- [72:00]
Mike Duncan
Oh, I'm sure. Like, I mean, not on. Not on the regular. Definitely. Is there bad information? Yeah, because it's like a telephone game, right. And by the time you get to the other side, you're like, monkey, banana raffle. That does not mean anything to me. And it started out with, like, there's a war in Egypt. And it's like, by the time it gets to g. Monkey, banana, raffle. I do not know what that means. But yeah, I mean, when you were engaged in a war, they were definitely intelligent enough. I can't think of any anecdotes right off the top of my head, but to try to trick people into thinking things and the sort of the hidden army trick is always a thing. Hannibal managed to slip. Hannibal managed to slip the Romans at one point in the Second Punic War by tying torches to. To some oxen and sending them off in the middle of the night. And then the Romans were like, oh, the army's leaving. And then, you know, it's just a bunch of oxen.
- [72:51]
Host
In the Roman Empire, Octavian used coins as a tool for spreading fake news. He had slogans and messages printed on them to discredit his political opponent, Marcus Antony. This strategy of using easily distributed small items like coins to spread political messages is an early example of using medium for propaganda. Just like you said earlier, the coins, how that was such a big thing.
- [73:09]
Mike Duncan
Exactly.
- [73:09]
Host
And to think, oh, nobody would take a coin and make it fake to create a bad message. And that guy did.
- [73:14]
Mike Duncan
Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, and what Octavian was doing just then is making Mark Antony out to be no longer a true Roman. Because at this point, Antony has gone east and he's now hooked up with Cleopatra. And the Romans had this very sort of like, not standoffish attitude towards the east, but they were very much like, oh, that's the, like, effete, like effeminate. This, like, orientalized part of. They're just into luxury. And the old, old Roman conservative guard was always trying to, like, protect Rome from, like, these Eastern ideals. This is sort of like what's rattling around in their heads. And Octavian uses this to great advantage because he starts painting Mark Antony as somebody who is no longer truly a Roman. He's been easternized, he's been orientalized. He's gone native over there with Cleopatra, you know, which was a little bit true.
- [74:05]
Host
So propaganda was. There was propaganda then, for sure.
- [74:08]
Mike Duncan
Oh, propaganda. Propaganda is relentless. Yeah, of course. Were they. You know. Sure. They were probably doing the equivalent of photoshopping stuff too.
- [74:17]
Host
Did regular people live in fear at the time? Did they? Because if you were just a peasant, it's a regular person. Was a lot of your life dictated by what your gut. Not, I guess. Yeah, your. What your government chose kind of for you?
- [74:29]
Mike Duncan
A lot of people who are just living their lives don't encounter the government at all. Right. Like when we think about, especially like the high empire, the. The interaction between even the imperial bureaucracy, let alone the emperor themselves, and really like these peasant communities in Spain or in Gaul or in Syria or whatever. Almost certainly you're not encountering the Romans and. And Roman bureaucratic, administrative anything at all. You're going to encounter your local elite because they're going to come around and ask you for taxes. And that's the main thing is, like, are you paying your taxes? Are the taxes of your community being generated? Most of that work, though, is being done either by private contractors, which they had an extensive private contracting operation to do tax collection, or it was the local elites who are doing this. So mostly you are just going about your own daily life. You. You're not really thinking about the wider world at all. You're certainly not encountering the Romans in any real way. And when we talk about sort of the tyrannical emperors, like the worst emperors, like Nero and Caligula, and we hear these stories about how horrible they were to people. All of that was being done to the senatorial class, right? The senatorial class were the people who were actually in the orbit of the emperor, such that the Emperor and the emperor's power could touch them. Them immediately. You could be arrested and you could be executed by a mad emperor at any time. But that's not happening to peasants. It was not about the oppression of the people. And in fact, if we really went back through it and really started doing revisions of what we think about things, there's definitely a revisionist case to be made for Caligula. There's a revisionist case to be made for Nero that they were actually, if you talk to regular people, they were like, like, we loved him. That guy was great. He looked out for us. He gave us money. The only people who don't like him are the senators, because he's abusing the senators. But who writes the history?
- [76:35]
Host
The senators.
- [76:36]
Mike Duncan
The senators write the history. And so now we hear all the bad things about these guys because they were mostly bad to the senatorial class. Maybe they get into the equites a little bit.
- [76:44]
Host
But I still love that the effects of things fell on the higher ups. Like even the higher ups, like you're saying, had to go out and fight the battles, like still. Because it seems like now more the effects of things.
- [76:58]
Mike Duncan
Right.
- [76:58]
Host
Because it's so capitalistic now that the effects of things fall in the lower class. But even then the effects of things fell on the higher class. What were things that Nero and Caligula were accused of for being bad?
- [77:09]
Mike Duncan
Oh, well, I mean, a lot of it is sort of arbitrary arrest and execution. That's always going to be a fear. That's. That's bad. Bad.
- [77:16]
Host
Just arresting people for no reason or whatever.
- [77:18]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [77:18]
Host
Having them killed type of thing.
- [77:19]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And.
- [77:20]
Host
And, you know, or for bad information.
- [77:22]
Mike Duncan
Seizing, you know, seizing property is a big one. And then, you know, it's sort of like there's always this. They're living too luxuriously. They're like, they're. All they're doing is throwing parties and not actually paying attention to, to statecraft and this, you know, and, you know, that's a, that's a, you know, that's a fair hit on Nero. Nero wanted to be a musician and an actor. He did not want to be, be like an emperor necessarily. Like his passion was the liar.
- [77:49]
Host
Yeah, it's hard to go to open mic night when you're the emperor.
- [77:51]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. But. But he kind of did. And it was very embarrassing to, to the Roman aristocracy that he would, he would debase himself and give these performances because in Roman society, the absolute like not counting the slaves, but the absolute lowest rung on in the Roman social order Was like actors and musicians, really, they were the lowest of the low and like B and, and like being caught around and of course. And people would slum it. Like, of course they would. You'd go down and you'd slum it and you'd hang out with these people. And Salah very famously, like, spent a lot of time slumming it with actors. But this is like a disreputable thing really, for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time. And this is again, one of those things. It's like it's completely flipped because now musicians and actors are, you know, that's, that's, that's s tier level celebrity for us. But for them it was like, like, no, you. These, this is the scum of the earth. You got to keep these people separate.
- [78:47]
Host
Why was it looked at so poorly?
- [78:48]
Mike Duncan
You feel like, I don't actually know. It was just like. It certainly. It's not productive in any way.
- [78:56]
Host
You know, it's not real. Probably for one, it's like they're pantomiming things, they're reenacting things. I bet it probably didn't have as much value at a time when it was like, you know, we, we want the real, you know, you know, the grab. There's no real gravitas here. Maybe.
- [79:13]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, but at the same time, like, there's theaters everywhere. Like, theaters are like, are like the thing that we have a lot of the time that is like leftover. So like, they cared about drama, they cared about performance. They just like on the, on a social level, they were just treated as really, really second, second rate, second class. And so for somebody like Nero to be doing these things is really like, oh, my God, that is not what we want him to do. So this is Nero, but the people.
- [79:40]
Host
Probably thought he was pretty relatable.
- [79:42]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, well, and he also, you know, he also spread the money around, right. And he was, he was good at that. So this is him, you know, playing the liar when Rome burns. Like, this is not true. Like, he didn't actually do this. And I think, you know, it's been a minute since I've gone through the exact details of this, but Nero definitely was trying to organize fire relief in Rome. Rome when. Because the fire is real. Like, okay, like Rome, Rome. Rome would burn periodically.
- [80:08]
Host
Like, but the. Rome was burning. You always hear that term, right? Rome was burning.
- [80:12]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, Rome burned a lot. It's, you know, wood, wood burns. And they don't exactly have fire codes at the time. And so, you know, any little thing could, could set off a Blaze. And portions of the city would burn. And in fact, like, if you look at the. The sort of. The buildings that they would live in, because they did have kind of like tenement buildings a lot of the time.
- [80:34]
Host
What does tenement mean?
- [80:35]
Mike Duncan
Just, you know, just like a multi story housing unit.
- [80:37]
Host
Okay.
- [80:38]
Mike Duncan
Right inside the city itself. And these days, where do the rich people live in a building?
- [80:45]
Host
They live upstairs.
- [80:46]
Mike Duncan
They live upstairs. They live in the penthouse. Right. Like, that's the best place you can be. During Roman times, that was the absolute worst place you could be. And so if you had money, you were living, like, on the ground floor. Why? Because if there was a fire, you could get out, get out first. And if you're on the seventh floor and a fire breaks out, I'm sorry, you're dead.
- [81:01]
Host
Yeah. Dang. How did they get up and down? Through stairs and stuff.
- [81:05]
Mike Duncan
Wow. Yeah. Stairs, ladders. And then there's like, there's great stories about, you know, how to combat fires. Right. And combating fires was often sort of like private companies, like basically like privately organized things. And Crassus, who's very famous in Roman history, he was connected to Pompey the Great and Caesar and this thing called the Triumvirates. And they are a major force in sort of collapsing the Republic and turning it into an empire. Each one of them thought they were using the other two to advance their own interests. And then Caesar is the one who winds up getting killed.
- [81:40]
Host
It's like a spider man meme. Kind of like.
- [81:42]
Mike Duncan
Did you ever do Game of Thrones?
- [81:44]
Host
Yeah.
- [81:45]
Mike Duncan
Great. So there's a part in Game of Thrones in the very first season where that guy gets the molten gold poured down his. Okay, so that's Crassus. That's the death of Crassus. That's where that from. Comes. Comes from.
- [81:54]
Host
And is that supposedly true?
- [81:55]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, Well, I mean, it's allegedly true because he goes off and tries to conquer Syria and winds. Or he tries to conquer Parthia and winds up getting caught. And Crassus was the richest man in Rome. Right. This is the thing about it. Like, Crassus is one of the richest people who ever lived. He acquired most of his, you know, real estate portfolio during a thing called the Sullen Prescriptions, when he was in charge of going around and finding the enemies of Sultan and killing them. And he would often find that the enemies of Sulla were people who had really nice estates that he would like to own. Right. And this is what he would do. And once he's sort of past that phase he had a little fire brigade, and your house would be burning down, and this fire brigade would come around and say, like, well, give us money, we'll put it out. And if you don't, then we won't.
- [82:41]
Host
So, like Mafia style.
- [82:42]
Mike Duncan
Yep. And there's definitely stories that. That these fires were being started on purpose. And then he would send his little fire brigades in, or he would say, sign over the deed to this place and we'll put the fire out. Right. Then you can have your stuff, but I'm gonna own the property.
- [82:57]
Host
That flame mafia right there.
- [82:58]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, man. And like this. And this is how you get rich. I mean, there is a thing like, no great. For like, all great fortunes begin with a crime. And that's. I've largely found that to be true.
- [83:10]
Host
I think that that still is true today. Wow, that's wild, dude. In Crassus, that's where we get the term crass from That I do not know, actually. Where does that come from? Crass. Because people say that's so crass.
- [83:22]
Mike Duncan
Crass.
- [83:23]
Host
The only true punk, late 15th century. In the sense dense or coarse. From Latin, crassus, solid or thick.
- [83:29]
Mike Duncan
Okay. I mean, it comes from the same.
- [83:31]
Host
Word then, so probably maybe not far off.
- [83:34]
Mike Duncan
Stupid. Stupid, insensitive blundering. I mean, yeah, yeah.
- [83:38]
Host
Who knows? But that's how he allegedly died. They poured that gold down him.
- [83:41]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, because he was captured.
- [83:43]
Host
Really? So what? Take me through that. What was that story?
- [83:45]
Mike Duncan
Oh, well, like I said, if you wanted to be a major political player in Rome, you needed to win battles. Right. That was the currency. That was the currency of the realm in terms of, like, your political influence. Caesar had gone off and conquered Gaul. He did some light genocide along the way, which is, you know, not so great. Yeah, but he was definitely winning battles on behalf of rock Rome and conquering territory for Rome. That makes him huge. Pompey the Great had a whole resume of battles that he could point to and say, like, I did this for Rome and that for Rome. I conquered the pirates. I conquered all this territory in the east. And that's why I'm Pompey the Great. And Crassus was rich. And Crassus wanted in on political power. Of course he did. But he didn't really have a great military victory to point to and say, this is what I've done. Because when he was consul, the war that he had to fight was the war against Spartacus and the slaves, which is not the same as going off and conquering, you know, some. Some group of people far away. Like you're just fighting slaves. Like, is that even really that big of a deal? So if you watch Spartacus, right, the movie Spartacus, like Crassus, Michael Douglas. Yeah, yeah, so, so Crassus is, you know, are probably the main.
- [84:55]
Host
Kirk Douglas. Sorry.
- [84:56]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, Kirk Douglas, yeah, he's the main antagonist. Like he's the one who's fighting against, against Spartacus. And so that wasn't that great of a moment. And so he's still looking for, he's triumph hunting. He's still trying to figure out what he can do. And so he, he. So he picks the Parthians, who are basically the, the heirs of the Persian Empire, who then become the Sassanids. This is now basically like Iran, who controlled things all the way into Mesopotamia. And so Crassus is going to try to go in and, and take Mesopotamia and conquer that for the Romans. And he was led astray and he made some mistakes and his legions were defeated and he died. And then they tell this story about having gold poured down his throat, which to tie this all the way back to what we were talking about at the beginning and how Roman history was morality tales more than it was like a factual accounting of events. Look what happened to the richest man in Rome. Look at what happened to the man who spent his entire life doing nothing but trying to, to acquire money. He died in the desert having molten gold poured down his throat.
- [85:59]
Host
Right. Which is like, could you be happier? Your life's over. Here you go.
- [86:02]
Mike Duncan
So what's the lesson to be learned from that? You know, maybe dial back the greed a little bit and you won't die like that. You'll die like Caesar, stabbed many times in the back by your best friends.
- [86:12]
Host
But still a little more respectable, maybe.
- [86:15]
Mike Duncan
A little more for respectable death.
- [86:17]
Host
What inventions or practices did they start in Rome that we still have today?
- [86:22]
Mike Duncan
A lot of things that the Romans were doing, you know, are still around. Like they were, they were great at aqueducts, they were brilliant at road building. I think like Roman concrete is still like a legendary, a legendary mixture for, for keeping things together.
- [86:39]
Host
Yeah, Bring that up about concrete in Rome. That's fascinating.
- [86:41]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Roman concrete.
- [86:43]
Host
Ancient Roman concrete, a blend of volcanic ash, lime and aggregate, was a remarkable building material that enabled the construction of massive enduring structures like the Pantheon and Coliseum. Its longevity stems from the interaction of lime, volcanic ash and seawater, which promotes the growth of minerals like tobur morite that seal cracks and strengthen the concrete. Modern concrete, in contrast, often relies on Portland cement, which is more prone to.
- [87:10]
Mike Duncan
Degradation Yeah, I mean, Roman concrete was like better than what we have.
- [87:15]
Host
Oh, give me a couple grams of that.
- [87:17]
Mike Duncan
And so the Romans are like brilliant engineers. Like brilliant engineers. They're road building, they're monumental building.
- [87:24]
Host
And they take pride in it too.
- [87:26]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, very much so. And like through all. They're maintaining the roads through all of this, they're maintaining these buildings through like all of this.
- [87:34]
Host
So a lot of civil engineering going on.
- [87:36]
Mike Duncan
A lot of civil engineering going on, like a lot. And building projects like this was another way, like I said, military victory is the main thing. But if you were an up and coming politician and you wanted to get your name out there and you wanted people to know who you were and the great thing you were doing, you would sponsor things, you would sponsor games, you would sponsor chariot races, or you could construct a building and then that building would have your name on it. The Appian Way is called the Appian Way because a guy called Appian started its construction. The Flaminian Way is called the Flaminian Way because that guy, I started construction of it. And so it was another way to demonstrate how rich, how important, how powerful you were and how much you were committed to improving the well being of your society. Like improving the society you were living in. So to commission a great work like this and then have it be carried out to the end, this is a way that you would spread your own name.
- [88:32]
Host
And now we've kind of flipped it where they'll name a street after you if they choose to kind of.
- [88:36]
Mike Duncan
Right. It's an honor to have something named after you as a. But, but we definitely still have people, you know, like, if you look at like universities, like, where are they getting their. Oh, because if you call it the so and so and so and so, like, or whatever. Bill Gates. Exactly. And that, and that's. It's exactly the same kind of vanity and name spreading that the Romans.
- [88:56]
Host
Gulf of America.
- [88:57]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But you know, one of the other interesting things about the Romans and like the ancient world in general is that we, you know, we have this very sort of like technological progressive mentality.
- [89:10]
Host
Yes.
- [89:11]
Mike Duncan
Like, like modern society.
- [89:12]
Host
I just interviewed Mark Zuckerberg the other day.
- [89:13]
Mike Duncan
Okay, great.
- [89:14]
Host
Like, so it was crazy. I'm like sitting in front of literally. And this is the. I felt like this an emperor.
- [89:19]
Mike Duncan
Okay, well, that's what he would like you to think. He's really big on Roman history. And I think he kind of thinks that he's Augustus, he's got the haircut, he, he's done the reading Like, I know this about Zuckerberg.
- [89:30]
Host
Oh, it was fascinating. I mean, there's some little things you see right now. You see, like. Like Bernie Sanders is preaching against, like, these oligarchs, you know, when you see.
- [89:38]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, so he's the groi.
- [89:39]
Host
And you see, like, there's a lot of, like, people that just have so much wealth, and a lot of it is in tech, you know, And I believe that we've kind of become this privatized communism. Right. That's a thing that I believe. It's like a lot of people are like, you know, I feel like the government is.
- [89:59]
Mike Duncan
Is.
- [90:00]
Host
You know, it's almost. I'm not saying it's disappearing, but people are having to hire their own fire departments to take care of their buildings now. It's like it's getting more privatized than it is public. Public.
- [90:13]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah. A lot of our commitment to universal civic values has declined.
- [90:18]
Host
Has declined.
- [90:19]
Mike Duncan
And if. And if we can privatize it, we will privatize it. And if we can turn this thing that used to be just a public utility or a public good or a public space and make it private so that we can make money off of it, we will definitely do those things.
- [90:32]
Host
Right. And I don't even know, but it doesn't feel like our government's doing any. I mean, they're doing some stuff, but it feels like our. It's all become privatized now, which is kind of crazy, you know, and that's very scary. Anyway, where are we going?
- [90:43]
Mike Duncan
The point I was going to make is that. Is that for the last couple hundred years, really coming out of, like, the Enlightenment, we have a very progressive mentality that. That we want to improve things, we want to reform things. We're having these great technological breakthroughs, and our society and our lives are driven by rapid technological progression we lived through when I was born. There's not really personal computers. They don't even exist. And then personal computers come along and the Internet comes along, and before that it was tv, and before that it was cars. And so every generation is living a very, very different life because of all this technological progress. And we just assume that's the way things are. And, like, so. But then you go back to the Roman Empire and you go back to the Roman world, and, yeah, they tinkered with stuff and they improved things. And, you know, they would do things like, you know, make this better form of concrete. So I don't want to say that they were not interested in, like, invention or improvement, but they kind of fundamentally had like a small C conservative of approach to the world, that they wanted today to be like yesterday and they wanted tomorrow to be like today. They liked that there's a stasis there, that that's what they were aiming for. And especially the political elite want things to just stay the same. Just basically stay the same. And so they're not really aggressively trying to. They didn't have like legions of inventors. They're not constantly trying to like, invent a new way to do things the way that we, you know, we've got, you know, scientists, we've got institutions, we've got people who are constantly trying to make a better world for us. And the Romans. Right.
- [92:22]
Host
And at the cost, though, of a lot of stasis, it feels like a lot of times it's like things have become so, you know, it feels, I don't know, at the cost of almost homeostasis completely sounds. Because it feels like you're not human sometimes.
- [92:34]
Mike Duncan
Sometimes, like at a certain point.
- [92:36]
Host
Like how much technology. I'm good. Yeah.
- [92:38]
Mike Duncan
Yep. I mean, I think we're due for a little bit of a reset. You know, I would love to get away from having a screen in my pocket all the time. And it's annoying because, you know, like, I've got kids and so, like, I always have to have my phone on me because I could get a call from the school, like at any moment. Like I could. There's an emergency at any moment. And so I gotta have the thing that is like my phone, that's my communication device with me. But then it's also like this stupid thing that is just designed to. To be addictive. And the next thing you know, you're just staring at these screen because they're like the most fascinating thing that we can look at with our eyeballs. And so what I want. There was. There was this very. Now we're really getting off on it. But there was a very specific moment in like cell phone technology where we had was kind of like the BlackBerry T Mobile Sidekick. Exactly where we had. Yeah. Where we've got. Because I want to be able to text, you know, because I don't want to talk to you on the phone a lot of the time. I want to text with you.
- [93:30]
Host
Yeah, it's nice.
- [93:30]
Mike Duncan
So I know a QWERTY keyboard because I don't want to do like the three tap to that. We had to do like in the.
- [93:35]
Host
Late 90s and early saying if you saw someone doing that now, you would literally euthanize them.
- [93:40]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [93:41]
Host
You would drop him off on the trash.
- [93:44]
Mike Duncan
17 year olds. But it is kind of proof that like humans can kind of get good at anything if it's what they need to do. Like 17 year olds in 2003, being able to run the little like ABC thing and just like fire off texts. Like I was never even that good, good at it, but have it. So having the QWERTY keyboard, being able to make a phone, be able. Being able to make a phone call, be able to text, but then not have it be like a screen. That is my window into the world. That, that would, that would actually feel great. It really would.
- [94:09]
Host
Yeah. I wonder if there's a point where technology, they don't even think what happened. I mean it, I wonder if it's a point where being human is just like, ah, we're good. It, you know, just like it go. And then it just, you know, it's like, nah, we. You know what I'm saying? Like at a certain point, just whatever's inside of us that wants to be human has just been pushed too far. It just. The governor strikes and it just comes.
- [94:31]
Mike Duncan
Back and we just pop back. Because fundamentally we're human. And I think we're experiencing that some with AI. You know, the things that AI is putting out there. I mean we're looking at it now. God knows if that stuff is even true. Because a lot of what AI is spitting out is just like garbage slop. That spot being fed off of its own like pack of lies or it's.
- [94:52]
Host
Data, but it's data can be manipulated.
- [94:53]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, exactly. But being a human being and encountering other human beings and encountering the artistic work of other human beings. There is a difference between a poem that is written by AI and a poem that is written by a person. And we can feel that. And you know, this like going out and doing like live events and like live music performances and live comedic performances, there's nothing like a room full of people who are all participating in the same thing together. That's really the essence of the good stuff of life. And we've always been communal creatures. We've always wanted to come together in these ways. And so I do think that those kinds of direct human interactions like inherently matter more to us and we will be more willing to shed. But of course we're all addicted to it right now, which is the problem. And addiction is a hell of a drug.
- [95:40]
Host
Yeah, Hell yeah, it is. I'm all so much addicted to. To everything. But I'll probably. Okay, but speaking of communal things, tell Me? Take me into like the colis. Take me into. How we get into the Roman Empire.
- [95:53]
Mike Duncan
How do you get into it?
- [95:54]
Host
Like from the.
- [95:54]
Mike Duncan
From where?
- [95:55]
Host
From the Republic.
- [95:56]
Mike Duncan
Oh, how do we get into it? Oh, not like if. If you're in Germany. How do you get to the Republic? Well, you got to go through the limest Germanicus. Probably got to check in with a legionary and then they let you cross and, you know, trade your wares. And then you go back and you pick up some amber from proto Russians and then you bring that back.
- [96:09]
Host
Almost like the term.
- [96:10]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. You know. Yeah, yeah. You stop off at a brothel and it's great.
- [96:14]
Host
Did they have brothels then?
- [96:15]
Mike Duncan
Of course, yeah. Brothels are everywhere, always. Especially around legionary camps.
- [96:19]
Host
Really?
- [96:20]
Mike Duncan
Of course. For the war, for just being a soldier. And a lot of times it's, you.
- [96:25]
Host
Know, are they cool or what? Were they like, do they have AC in there? No ac, huh?
- [96:28]
Mike Duncan
They have AC in the brothels. Crazy. They did not. It was hot in there, but they have a cold.
- [96:34]
Host
God as fuck.
- [96:35]
Mike Duncan
Well, they, you know, but, you know, their, you know, their baths were incredible.
- [96:40]
Host
Oh, really?
- [96:40]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, sure. And they had like, you know, Roman. Roman baths had like a. A tepidarium and a frigidarium. And the frigidarium is like the cold room in the cold bath. And you could go in there and. And cool off. And they would do this like the hot plunge and the cold plunge and, you know, they had this all down to a science man.
- [96:56]
Host
That's one of them.
- [96:57]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. They did understand. They did understand how to make a good bath house. That is absolutely true.
- [97:02]
Host
And were the brothels hooked to the bathhouse? A lot of times I.
- [97:06]
Mike Duncan
That I don't know. Probably they were close to each other, you know, but I don't want somebody to now send me an email and be like, no, that's not actually for the brothel.
- [97:16]
Host
People are sick. I hope that. I mean, I don't know. I mean. Yeah, they seem. Both seem pretty good.
- [97:22]
Mike Duncan
Oh, there you go. According to the AI, right? Who knows if it's true?
- [97:30]
Host
It's crazy, man. I thought about this years ago. I thought people are like, well, people can make information that's not true, right? But then I thought, what if the paper can adjust the information you put on it? That's what I started to think. This is like about three years ago. I started to say, well, at some point, but the. Imagine you wrote a letter to somebody, but then the paper got to determine what you actually said.
- [97:51]
Mike Duncan
Right?
- [97:52]
Host
That's the kind of Place I feel like we're entering.
- [97:53]
Mike Duncan
Yep.
- [97:54]
Host
Where it's like you can say whatever you want.
- [97:55]
Mike Duncan
Yep.
- [97:56]
Host
But now the paper, and whoever owns the paper, they can construct the ink to create whatever the. You're not allowed to say. But what can be said.
- [98:07]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. The. The next. The information environment of the next 10, 15, 20 years is going to be really tough to navigate, even for people who are bright and who know what's going on.
- [98:18]
Host
It's going to get triggered.
- [98:19]
Mike Duncan
Tricky. It's going to get very tricky because these AI machines are going to be feeding off of themselves and they are going to be fed bad information that they will then spit out in very authoritative ways. And there are. You know, this is going to trick human consciousness into thinking that what you're looking at is a true thing. It's a true statement.
- [98:36]
Host
It's already happening. Heavily already.
- [98:37]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, exactly. We all believe. And the thing is, like, you know, I've been tricked by things. I'm sure you've been tricked by things. And I'm fairly conscious of. Of like, what I'm paying attention to and how this is all being manipulated.
- [98:49]
Host
Yeah. I'm not illiterate or anything. And I'll get tricked by a video and then I'll be upset about it, and now I'm animated about it. And then somebody like, that's not even real.
- [98:57]
Mike Duncan
And then we're stuck in this place where it's like, anything cool that you see, you know, on an Instagram reel or like on a TikTok, you're like, okay, well, that's probably fake. You know, that probably never happened. That probably is fake. That probably never happened. And now. And now we're in a place where we don't trust anything, even real things. And people are like, no, this really cool thing happened. It's like, yeah, probably not, though. So that. Where does that leave us?
- [99:18]
Host
Right there.
- [99:19]
Mike Duncan
Not trusting anything or anyone for any reason, but also believing everything for every reason.
- [99:24]
Host
Like, this is perfect time for assimilation theory type of idea.
- [99:28]
Mike Duncan
Perfect time to talk to historians. Kind of true.
- [99:32]
Host
Right.
- [99:32]
Mike Duncan
See if we can't figure out how to pick our way through this mess. Because we've gone through stuff like this before, and it's like, outside of my specific area of expertise, but, like, when the printing press came along, you know, know, very similar issues came out of the arrival of the printing press, where the Catholic Church used to be able to control all information, and now suddenly kind of anybody can print anything. And, you know, what's being put out there, what people are reading. There was There was no controls on it. There was. There was no fact checking to any of this stuff.
- [100:00]
Host
And that's a great point. If something was printed on paper, you almost thought it was true just because it was written down.
- [100:04]
Mike Duncan
Sure, yeah. If it's in a book, it must be true. You know, the, that. That kind of mentality. And, and we come out of like the end of an era where there is robust and extensive editorial vetting of like a lot of things. Like, certainly in the newspaper and like.
- [100:18]
Host
Right now or earlier.
- [100:19]
Mike Duncan
Earlier, like, you know, probably, you know, like through the 20th century, right?
- [100:22]
Host
Oh, for sure.
- [100:23]
Mike Duncan
There's. There's robust checks. And even though there's like, there's an elite ideological consensus and like, what is allowed to be printed and what is not allowed to be printed is a part of like a cold war consensus, like all this stuff. Stuff. But, you know, if you're reading it in the newspaper, there's a very good chance that it's true and it was fact checked and there they have sources. And now the things that you fire up and read, no idea where any of this comes. Who knows where any of it's from.
- [100:47]
Host
And a lot of them, I notice, are created just by some automat, like a bot or something. Like, I'll see things of myself online with quotes that I've never said.
- [100:56]
Mike Duncan
Sure.
- [100:56]
Host
And I'll see it shared thousands of times or commented on. And it's like, like, I never said that. You know, I'll see, like, news articles that have been put together. It's all misinformation about a celebrity or about a place that you could go visit or something. And it's all. It's a complete lie. But you'll see it has 30,000 views. Like, what is. That's. It's just crazy to think, oh, I don't want to forget what was. Did take me into the Coliseum. What was that like? Did people go to it? Was everyone allowed?
- [101:24]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Coliseum is open.
- [101:26]
Host
And why did it happen? Why did they build a Coliseum Colosseum so?
- [101:31]
Mike Duncan
Well, because they're Rome and they are hugely wealthy and hugely powerful, and so they need to have the biggest, you know, theater.
- [101:38]
Host
So it was like Texas. We want to have the biggest thing.
- [101:41]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, we want to. We want to have the biggest thing going. Right? That's. That's what we want to have. The Coliseum is a. Is like a later addition. Like, it doesn't come until the imperial.
- [101:51]
Host
Times in the 400 something. When was the Coliseum?
- [101:54]
Mike Duncan
No, no, the Coliseum is, you know, in the first Century is when it's coming around. It's like Vespasian is the one who kind of kicks off that project, and then it takes many, many years to get built. Vespasian also famously, when he was collecting taxes off of the urine that they would collect, and people were like, that's a little disrep.
- [102:14]
Host
Oh, they were collecting urine.
- [102:15]
Mike Duncan
When they're collecting urine so that they could do all the. So they could wash the clothes, right? And he would collect a little tax on that, and he would get money and be like, oh, that's kind of a gross way to make money. And he goes, money does not smell. And so he also started construction of the Coliseum. But so they do this. So in Roman society, like these games, right, gladiatorial games, the chariot races, all of these things are tied to religious ritual. It's all a part of these religious rituals and performances that were integral parts of their society. And so a lot of these games are in honor of this or that God, right? And we're making sacrifices to the gods. That's sort of the origin point of all of this stuff.
- [102:57]
Host
Was that true or you think it was just a selling point?
- [103:00]
Mike Duncan
Well, it starts that way, for sure. I think it starts out as very much a religious obligation and a religious thing, and it turns into. I do think that there's probably just mere lips. If you're a spectator, you're there to see the action. Right? They were sports fans, Right. Anybody who's a sports fan would fit right in in ancient Rome, because the Romans were nuts for sports. They loved gladiatorial combat. They loved chariot races. The best gladiators were famous celebrities. The best chariot racers were famous celebrities. And as you sort of go forward and get over into the Byzantine Empire, I mean, there were warring political factions that were tied to chariot teams. You know, like. Like, there was a huge riot in Constantinople between chariot teams that was very politicized. So they took all this stuff, like, very, very seriously. And throwing these games was a way to bring people in and entertain them, so that. I mean, a little bit so that, you know, it's the opiate of the masses kind of stuff. Speaking as a sports fan who enjoys sports, I think that there's quite a bit more going on inside of sports than just like. Like, oh, this is just a distraction by the ruling class to trick you into not paying attention to what's really going on. It's like, no, I mean, feats of athletic strength are, like, pretty sweet, right? Yeah. Like, watching great athletes be great athletes is, like, Pretty cool, right? It's like the pinnacle of what the human body can do, and I love that stuff. And if you can get passionately committed to something that is happening down there, then I think that that's really fun, especially if you're doing it with your friends and neighbors and parts of your community. I think sports is actually a really cool, great part of civic life.
- [104:45]
Host
Yeah. It's entertainment as well. I mean, it's. Yeah, you marvel at some of them.
- [104:48]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [104:48]
Host
You yourself maybe played something at some point so you can envision yourself or live vicariously through them.
- [104:53]
Mike Duncan
I mean, you watch, you watch, you watch some. I mean, I'm not even like a football fan, but you watch some wide receiver sprinting down the line, doing an over the shoulder catch while tiptoeing both of his lines, like in bounds, making the catch. Like, like this stuff is like crazy. And you're like, like, you watch it and you're like, this is just inherently cool. Like, don't tell me this is cool.
- [105:14]
Host
Almost erotic too, at times.
- [105:16]
Mike Duncan
I mean, they are fit, aren't they? Yeah, they are, but so that kind of stuff, like that kind of like, you know, enjoying sports in that way and competition in that way is a very human thing. And the Romans were huge, huge for it. So that's where the Coliseum comes from.
- [105:32]
Host
Is it true that the animals would fight the people and stuff?
- [105:35]
Mike Duncan
I mean, this stuff gets into, like, those were usually. I mean, it's overblown. Like when you see it in the gladiator movies, certainly things would go on, but those were usually like, if the exotic animals. So like, exotic animals. Absolutely. Brought in to the mix.
- [105:50]
Host
Okay.
- [105:51]
Mike Duncan
Which showing off an exotic animal is both. Take a look at this exotic animal. Isn't that cool? But also think about how much I had to do, how powerful and influential I needed to be to bring elephants to you, to bring tigers to you. Like, like this. Like, aren't you impressed with what I've been able to do?
- [106:09]
Host
So really showing off your wealth.
- [106:10]
Mike Duncan
Exactly. Like, you're really showing it off. So there. But there would be hunts, right? And there would be like hunting sort of exhibitions. Like, great, you know, great archers taken. They would go out and. And shoot tigers. That's, that's usually at least my understanding of what would go on and as opposed to send a gladiator out there and have them fight. But, you know, it definitely did happen.
- [106:32]
Host
How much of ancient history from Rome is factual, do you think? Or how much was adjusted to make things look a certain way?
- [106:40]
Mike Duncan
That's a. You Know, I don't know what percentage I could give on things, you know, how much of it is true? Like, some of it for sure, because we can independently verify it from inscriptions and from other sort of physical evidence. But like I said at the beginning, what the Roman and Greek historians were mostly interested in was telling these morality tales about how to live a contemporaneous, how to live in contemporary society, rather than sort of fidelity to the objective truth, like, this is what really happened. Now, that said, they cared a lot about. They were looking through documents the same way that historians do today. Livy is. Or excuse me, like, Polybius is interviewing people. He's looking at documents, and they are trying to tell a correct story. I think that they're definitely trying to do it. But if the sort of morality tale runs into the facts, like, which is going to win, they're going to massage it towards the morality tale. And then you have to sit down and you have to ask yourself, okay, well, where did this person come from? What is their own social position? What is their own family connection? There's a. For some reason, we keep going back to Livy because he's just apparently on the forefront of my mind. But there's a description of the Battle of Cannae, which is Cannock. Cannae. C, A, N, N, A, E. Okay. And this is one of the greatest defeats in Roman history. This is Hannibal is defeating the Romans. He just absolutely wipes him out. This is during the Second Punic War. And the story that Livy tells is about one particular Roman consul who was basically an idiot and caused all of this to happen, right? That one consul did not want to go into battle. The other consul did want to go into battle. And they alternated days of who was in charge, right? So it's like, I'm in charge on Monday, you're in charge on Tuesday. I'm in charge on Wednesday. And so the guy. Yeah, so the guy who was in charge on Wednesday was like, we're going into battle, and you couldn't argue because he was the consul and he was in charge that day. And then they get wiped out by Hannibal. And then you go look into Livy's past and his own family tree, and you find out that he's maybe trying to make one of his ancestors look better than they actually were. So this is. And this is actually, like, if you lean into it, this is one of the. It is a fun part of sort of deconstructing and decoding these things. If you really get into it, this stuff is fun. It's kind of. It's entertaining and it's interesting because you.
- [109:11]
Host
Have to examine the author and some of his motivations and how much would he be willing to adjust things and possibly why. And then you have to put that on the same scale, on the other side of the scale of the facts and information that you do have.
- [109:23]
Mike Duncan
The book that I'm writing right now, which is about the crisis of the third century, has like a missing battle that we have to contend with where there's this huge inscription of these great Sassanid kings, this guy Sharpur and Ardashir, who have this huge monuments that were built to them. And then on the side of these cliffs, they etched in huge letters, like basically their resume, all of their accompl, all the things that they did. And one of the things references this battle where they defeated the Romans. And then you go look through the Roman historical record and it's patchy at the time, right? This is one of the things about the crisis of the third century is we don't have a ton of information because it was so chaotic, but we don't have any reference to this battle. And they're specifically referencing which emperor was defeated. So it's like, who's lying? Are the Romans trying to cover up a defeat by not mentioning it? Or did this guy just make up a battle to tell his own people, look, I defeated the Romans this time too, and he did beat the Romans many times. We don't. And the thing is, we don't know. Absent a time machine, there's ambiguity in the historical record at all times. And this is again, when you become a real sicko for history, you stop needing history to be just an objective set of events. Like, just tell me what happened is something that, like, take out your ideological biases. Like, take this. Like, just tell me the facts. That never happens. And it can never happen because humans are always going to be writing in their own subconscious biases. When we pick and choose what information to share, when we pick and choose how to frame a certain, certain event, nobody can ever just sit down, even me, as I'm just trying to tell you the facts of Roman history, of course my little biases are coming into it. Of course my opinions are coming into it. There's no sort of escaping that. And once you understand that, it's inescapable, then it just becomes a layer to have an even greater understanding of the human condition and human society, which is, I think, what we're really after when we study history.
- [111:31]
Host
Oh, yeah, that's Fascinating. I was going to ask you kind of what makes a good historian, but obviously one of the things is being able to recognize that you're not going to be able to get something absolute because it's kind of impossible.
- [111:43]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's impossible. Now, leading up to that, like, what makes a good historian? Yeah, fidelity to the facts, fidelity to the sources. Like, don't say something if you don't have a source backing it up. Up. Go to the primary sources, read those primary sources, try to present those sources in as accurate a way as possible. And so it's absolutely not the case that professional historians are just running around out there, only publishing their biases, only doing things in the service of their own political or social beliefs. Most historians most of the time are trying to do that project of like, I just want to examine this, I want to examine the evidence and I want to talk about it.
- [112:24]
Host
It.
- [112:25]
Mike Duncan
It's just that it's an impossible dream. But moving towards that dream in a way that is rooted in the facts is really important. And that does make a good historian, for sure.
- [112:39]
Host
Yeah, we certainly got off that path in the past 20 years where it's like, it felt like news outlets had. It used to feel like it was real information and it was factual and it wasn't biased. And then they went down this other road. It felt like, like, you know, but then it's always been like, can you trust your government? Can you trust the reporting? Can you trust these, you know, the councils that are running things? You know, who can you trust? You know, and that's feels. It seems like from listening to you, that it's. That's kind of. It's always been some version of that since the beginning, certainly through. Through Roman times when, you know, you, you always hear people say now, well, we're gonna fall. Rome fell. The society, American society will fall. What comparisons do you see between the two? Or what. Or is there any, like, footprints in the sand that you can f. That you can follow? To see a path, to see like a. A story arc of how societies fall, do we, like, are we parallel enough to Rome to even have the same trajectory as them? What do you think about some of that?
- [113:50]
Mike Duncan
There is. I mean, it's like both simultaneously. Right. Because on the one hand, all civilizations and all societies are unique unto themselves. And it's not the case that we just are reliving some thing over and over again, that there actually is, like a cycle to these things that is objectively true. And we're Just sort of bit players in a historical force that's beyond our control. But also, we are humans who have come together, and humans often behave in very similar ways and respond to certain things in very similar ways. And yeah, I mean, Rome is a huge civilization that we see the entire course of it, from its founding to its growth to its peak, to its decline to its fall. Was it even a fall? Was it merely a transformation? Probably just a transformation. Calling it a fall is probably too dramatic. And of course, the Eastern Empire is going to keep going for another thousand years. And, like, is America going to fall the way that Rome did? Well, number one, the United States of America is going to go away eventually. There's no timeline that you can extend out far enough that does not involve the United States eventually disappearing from the face of the Earth. That's just what's going to happen.
- [115:03]
Host
Really? What makes you say that?
- [115:04]
Mike Duncan
Well, we're not going to last for 10,000 years.
- [115:06]
Host
Years.
- [115:06]
Mike Duncan
We're not going to last for a million years. The United States will eventually not be a thing anymore. I'm not saying it's going to happen 20 years from now or 100 years from now. Million years from now. Are we here? No, dang, no, of course not. Of course we're not here. So live it up. Yeah, yeah, live it up. Because we're not going to be here in a million years, so you may as well get your kicks in now. Exactly. And so, but like we talked about the very beginning, you know, our society is rooted in Roman history. Like, and a lot of the things that stamps our political, our economic, our legal and social culture, like, comes from Rome, comes from the Roman experience. And so it's not outside. I don't think it's out of bounds to say, like, yeah, like, there's probably going to be some, some similarities into how these things progress, how great empires rise and fall. Like, we've seen, seen this happen before. So where are we in the Roman timeline? Right? Like, are we at the end? Are the barbarians at the gate? You know, is America about to fall? I certainly don't think so. You know, that's, that's not my opinion at all. I don't think we're anywhere close to the end of this. And I certainly don't think that, like, poor people coming from Guatemala or El Salvador are like, literally the Goths, which is, is how they're often portrayed in media. They're like, oh, you know, the Roman Empire fell because of immigration. Now the Roman Empire, number one, didn't really fall because of immigration. And number two, like, trying to make the Huns or the Goths analogous to the kinds of people who are moving to the United States today is like, wildly. It's like insanely inaccurate.
- [116:47]
Host
Yeah. I don't know if I ever would think that. The problem is that at the everyday man level, to me, the problem is at the top. You know, the problem is at the. In that upper aura. You know, I think that you. We've started to fall apart of having a purpose and feel a connection to our country. And I don't know why. I mean, there's a ton of different reasons for that, and there could be different reasons for people that have even different political beliefs or different ideologies, but it certainly used to feel like we were all Americans, and now it still feels like we're all Americans, but people have a lot of different thoughts about. About it.
- [117:22]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [117:22]
Host
And so I don't know how that, like, kind of permeates as time goes on.
- [117:27]
Mike Duncan
Well, so, so, so, like, when I look back on this, and actually my first book, which is called the Storm before the Storm, the Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, is about the decline and fall of the Republic, not the whole empire.
- [117:41]
Host
Right. So that was when the Republic turned into the Roman Empire.
- [117:43]
Mike Duncan
When the ro. When the Republic becomes an empire. And what I went. And what I was curious about is, is when Caesar comes along and Crassus and Pompey come along and effectively destroy the Republic, but then goes to Octavian and Antony, and Octavian wins that battle. What was going on 50 years before that, 80 years before that, that sort of starts knocking out the foundations of republican society. The Roman Republic lasted for 500 years. They went through a lot. They went through huge wars. They went through huge upheavals. They were. There was ambitious men coming and going left and right for hundreds of years, and the Republic continued to persist. There was a Senate, there was assemblies. This republican project continued. So what is it that started to go wrong prior to the collapse of the Republic? And then it turns into this authoritarian military dictatorship.
- [118:35]
Host
That's what the Roman Empire was.
- [118:36]
Mike Duncan
The Roman Empire becomes an authoritarian military dictatorship after the fall of the Republic. What Octavian did when he becomes Augustus, which is like, you know, he's the first emperor of Rome, though he doesn't say, like, I am an authoritarian dictator now. He doesn't say, like, I am now, you know, the emperor. They didn't even call themselves emperors. That's just something historians call them to describe the person who had all of the sort of Powers of the Republic. They were simultaneously a tribune and a consulate and a pro consul and an aedile. They themselves had. They were the Pontifex Maximus. They were the head of sort of the Roman. The Roman religion.
- [119:15]
Host
So they were the senate, they were the representatives. Yeah, they were every. They were the senate, they were the congress, they were the.
- [119:22]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, it's as if one person was president and speaker of the house and majority leader of the Senate and ruler.
- [119:29]
Host
Of the military and the.
- [119:30]
Mike Duncan
And of course, commander in chief. Of course. Commander in chief of the military. Four star general and five star chef, even. No, no, they pay for the five star chefs. They don't cook for themselves. And then also, like governor of 25 of the 50 states. Right. That's what Augustus is. Augustus did this, like, power sharing thing with the Senate when he was trying to settle things afterwards. And he's like, okay, we'll divvy up the provinces. You can run half of them, I'll run half of them. Every province that Augustus had were the provinces with armies. And all the provinces the Senate was allowed to govern were the provinces that did not have armies. So who's actually in power here? But the stuff that went on prior to the collapse of the Republic is the stuff that when I look around in contemporary American society, I wrote that book because I was like, I sure see a lot of echoes here. Is it going to proceed exactly the same? No, but can history rhyme? Yeah, I think history can rhyme a little bit. And there's a quote from Plutarch that I use in my book that's just like, if the sort of the constituent parts of a historical moment are the same here and the same there, it's not unreasonable to think that the outcome will be the same or at least very similar. And if we're studying history, there is a point at which, like, what is the purpose of studying history? It's a little bit to learn what happened before, what mistakes were made, how events unfolded so that we can, like, maybe do it better.
- [121:05]
Host
Well, for surely it's like, why. It's like rewatching a football game. It's like, why you ran these plays. You ever ran these plays? Didn't this happen? And this happened.
- [121:11]
Mike Duncan
This work didn't. Let's never run that play again.
- [121:14]
Host
And then we don't do that again. And then over time, you have tons of games. You're like, okay, these are the plays. And then you'll build up statistics. So at a certain point, yes, you could. I mean, I'm surprised It's not on DraftKings yet, whether or not there will be a, you know, a spread on. On the fall of America. What were some of the early things that you noticed?
- [121:31]
Mike Duncan
Well, one of the biggest is there was runaway economic inequality that was happening where, you know, like, we talked about how you had to, like, have a certain amount of property in order to join the legions. And when they got into these protracted wars, people would be brought into the legions. They would have to go off and fight in Spain for, like, five years. And while they were gone, their little plot of land back in Italy would fall into disrepair, and you wouldn't really be able to make it productive. Maybe you'd be down on your luck financially and you would sell it off to your rich neighbor. And the richest component of Rome, the senators, There had always been stratification in the wealth. There had always been rich, there had always been poor. But the rich started becoming, like, super.
- [122:14]
Host
Rich during the Roman Empire.
- [122:15]
Mike Duncan
During the Roman Republic, the later days of the Roman Republic.
- [122:18]
Host
Okay, that's what you were talking about. Yeah, you said that's what the book is about.
- [122:20]
Mike Duncan
Exactly. When you start getting these large estates, like insanely large estates, as opposed to merely big estates that were surrounded by people, families who had their own individual plots, and basically the small holders of Italy are pushed out, out of. Of the picture. They kind of don't exist anymore in Roman history. And so there is that. There is an economic inequality that is unfolding at the time that puts stress on the society, because now they can't recruit for the legions, for one thing.
- [122:53]
Host
Because you can't recruit for the legions because they don't respect you anymore, because.
- [122:56]
Mike Duncan
They don't meet the property qualifications.
- [122:58]
Host
Oh, that's right.
- [122:59]
Mike Duncan
So then what you got to do is you got to lift the property requirements and say, okay, now we can recruit anybody, and they will be paid. And who's going to pay them? They're going to be paid by the person who's organizing that legion. Where's that money going to come from? It's probably going to come from them conquering something or defeating something and getting the spoils of war. So now we're going off and we are conquering things, not just for political reasons, but also to sort of enrich the army. And then this is where you get personalist armies, where the legions aren't fighting for Rome. They are fighting for. For Caesar, for Marius, for Sulla. I'm here to fight for Sulla. That's who I'm fighting for. And so that has a major effect on the internal coherence of the Roman Republic.
- [123:42]
Host
I don't know if we're there in a war sense, but we're there in a capitalistic sense. It feels like.
- [123:51]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that gives me some hope is that one of the things that Augustus did during his settlements to kind of. Because the Romans lived through like a 50 year period of non stop civil war. And one of the things that Augustus did accomplish was like ending those civil wars. And one of the things that he did was he regularized the pay of the legions. He put out these mints. You were paid by the central state. You were no longer getting your money from your local commander. You were getting it from the central state.
- [124:20]
Host
So like a UBI kind of.
- [124:22]
Mike Duncan
Well, and it's basically like what we have have in the military today. And one of the reasons we don't have to worry about the army or the navy or the Marines, like hauling off and following some general or some political leader as opposed to like sticking to the Constitution, is because their paycheck is coming from the centralized political authority, not from somebody else. And so dismantling that, creating private armies of mercenaries, like, that's when it starts to get a little sticky.
- [124:51]
Host
And I don't think they would even let you do that in America.
- [124:54]
Mike Duncan
Oh, I mean, you know, like there's, there's the Erik princes of the world.
- [124:56]
Host
Like things could happen.
- [124:58]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. But it's, but it's definitely not at the scale that.
- [125:01]
Host
Right. Where, where it's popularly known.
- [125:04]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And then like there's this other sort of thing.
- [125:07]
Host
I'm sure there are people, there's very wealthy people that have their own small military.
- [125:12]
Mike Duncan
Definitely. But not like nothing that can take the 82nd Airborne. Right, right, exactly. And that's the thing is you would have armies that could take the 82nd Airborne. And then, you know, to about talk it later to like the, like the immigration issue. The, the reason why the Goths and the Huns were such a powerful force in smashing the empire is because they could take the 82nd Airborne. They were strong enough and big enough and well armed enough. There's nothing that can touch the United States military right now. There's not a thing on earth that can touch us. Not really.
- [125:40]
Host
Unless the people in it who were fighting for it started to realize that they were being you. If they decided that they were being used for practices that weren't good for the country.
- [125:52]
Mike Duncan
Right.
- [125:52]
Host
But were just good for a select few. Is that right, you think? Or how would that happen? Well, I've thought about this.
- [125:58]
Mike Duncan
Okay.
- [125:58]
Host
You know, and it's weird to say it because I have a lot of friends in military. You start to think, well, how does a military get compromised? How do they choose to become like the people in. What was that movie with. Oh, in the Patriot.
- [126:14]
Mike Duncan
Right.
- [126:14]
Host
How do they. You know what I'm saying? Like, how do they decide that who they're fighting for isn't who they thought they were fighting for?
- [126:22]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And that's, you know, it's the plight of grunts throughout time and history. Right. You are ultimately just following orders and you have to go do it. And can you have a large enough mutiny to overthrow a government because you don't like how you're being used anymore? It's happened. It's largely the story of the Russian Revolution. You know, those guys were being so badly mistreated that the army mutinied and winds up overthrowing the Tsar. That's definitely a major constituent part of the story of the Russian Revolution. So what was one of the other. There is this overarching notion that the Romans themselves often pointed to is that they had been engaged in this long struggle with Carthage, Carthage as this great rival in the Western Mediterranean. This is where the war against Hannibal comes. This is a series of wars against Carthage where Rome and Carthage are kind of equal going into it. And whoever wins this war is going to be the dominant power in the Western Mediterranean and then ultimately the entire Mediterranean. So who wins this war is really important. The Romans win the war after 100 years. 130 years is how long these things go on between the first.
- [127:36]
Host
First.
- [127:37]
Mike Duncan
Between the first battle and the last battle.
- [127:39]
Host
I think it's like 103 generations.
- [127:40]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, I think it's maybe it's like 110 years. I don't want to exaggerate. But once the Romans sort of lose that great unifying enemy, you start getting political rivalries inside the senatorial class breaking out beyond the bounds of what used to be acceptable practices. There used to be a really strong elite consensus, and they did stick together at all times. And there were. There were things that you didn't do or wouldn't do even if you like, even if you lost a consulship. And you were pissed about it because I hate that family over there.
- [128:18]
Host
Like, you did not break the code of conduct.
- [128:21]
Mike Duncan
You didn't break the code of conduct. You didn't go get an army and then like, overthrow that person because you're pissed off that you lost an election. You just simply wasn't done. After the punic wars are over. This is when we. It's like, this is when it starts happening. And it's like the internal cohesion of the elite ruling class breaks down, and then they start seeing their own political ambitions as something that don't really need to have a check. Because I'm not worried about being defeated. We're not worried about being defeated by some foreign enemy. So I'm just going to keep going. We can have a civil war, it doesn't matter, because we don't have to worry about Carthage. And so if you're doing this, sort of like, let's unfocus our eyes and look at sort of the beats of history. Okay, so what purpose is the Cold War serving for the United States of America through all of this? Is it a unifying force that enforces elite consensus and keeps things in bounds? Yeah, it sure does. And when we lose the Communists as a unifying force that keeps the political class together is that when we start seeing as early as the 90s, great frayings in that fabric and people being willing to do things that are way outside the bounds of what would have even been considered possible 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier, because we don't have to worry about the communists anymore. We won. Everything is great from here. And kind of ever since then, there's been vague attempts to who's going to be the new enemy that unifies us. And nothing has really done it the way that the Cold War did terrorists, like it was terrorists for a while, but that never really did it. People try to demonize China and try to turn them into something, but it doesn't take the same way because it's not really the same thing. So you lose that external threat and now you start having the political ruling class being willing to turn on each other. And yeah, the political environment right now is absolutely toxic.
- [130:15]
Host
Oh, it's bonkers.
- [130:16]
Mike Duncan
Absolutely toxic. And. And it's because people, I don't think, are afraid of the consequences of pushing things all the way to civil war.
- [130:25]
Host
Yeah, I think some people, you start to feel like what I say doesn't matter. What I feel doesn't matter. I don't even know if my vote counts because we don't even know if they're being tabulated fairly or not. I mean, you just don't know, you know, and there's so much misinformation. You don't know. There's never been such a wealth in the power of such few. And you start to feel like. I mean, we talk all the time on here about we Just have Mike Rowe on. We're talking about having purpose, like having a job. What it means to you to have a job and to do something and to make something and be a part of something. And once you don't have a purpose anymore, you'll kind of fall for. You'll find anything. You'll find. You'll find a purpose. It just sometimes can be kind of on the darker side of things. Things. But I think in the end, it's for some sort of form of self preservation. So I don't know what that looks like. I wonder if there would be a civil war. Where do we meet up if there is? That's my big question.
- [131:22]
Mike Duncan
Where do we meet up? Like, you and me?
- [131:24]
Host
I mean, I'm.
- [131:26]
Mike Duncan
Oh, man. Where's a good place to meet up?
- [131:28]
Host
I think Denver.
- [131:29]
Mike Duncan
Denver. Okay. Should we should go. Should we go to the Rockies?
- [131:33]
Host
Here's the thing. You've already said. You got to get a face with some.
- [131:35]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, you gotta.
- [131:36]
Host
You got, you got.
- [131:36]
Mike Duncan
You gotta get some. You got to get some elevation. Absolutely.
- [131:39]
Host
I just don't want it to come that day. And it hits, you know, say it hits on a Thursday night. You've already had a long week. You're like, yep, you know, because you had the weekend off or whatever, but now you have to do civil war or whatever. And then you're like, where do I go? I do not want that. You're not gonna be able to text and find out.
- [131:54]
Mike Duncan
No, it's. No, it'll. If it comes, it'll be a huge mess. And civil wars are like the worst. Just. Just the worst thing. They're just the worst thing.
- [132:06]
Host
Oh, yeah. Even if nobody wants to do, you.
- [132:08]
Mike Duncan
Know, even if they're fought for a good reason. Right. Like, you're only destroying yourself. You're only destroying your own infrastructure.
- [132:16]
Host
It's on your own front yard a lot of times.
- [132:18]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. The English Civil wars, which happened, you know, this like, Cromwell era, like Stuart England, you know, they. They called those civil wars a war without an enemy. You know, like, because that's, That's a lot of. Of what it is. And so we should definitely try to avoid civil war. But also there are things that if things get pushed too far and we're allowed to have values, we're allowed to care about things. And if literally every single thing that you believe in has to be sacrificed to avoid a civil war. Right. Like everything I believe in will no longer exist, but at least we won't have a civil war. Is that civil war worse than fighting for the things that you believe in.
- [133:01]
Host
I think at a certain point you choose to fight. I feel like.
- [133:03]
Mike Duncan
I think so too.
- [133:04]
Host
You know, I really believe that.
- [133:06]
Mike Duncan
And I'm saying that as somebody who, like, I've studied civil wars. I don't want any part of a civil war. And I don't like people who play fast and loose with talking about civil wars.
- [133:15]
Host
No.
- [133:15]
Mike Duncan
I don't like people who romanticize it. I don't like people who talk about it. Because it is an awful, awful, awful thing. Sometimes though, you. Yeah, yeah.
- [133:24]
Host
Well, it's just a, It's a think. It's a thought of like, well, how did that happen? Right. Because I'm sure if you'd asked people 100 years earlier, that would never happen. Right. And how do you get to things like that? And then. Yeah, I don't want to not have some place to meet up. I do not want to not have Denver. And look, I'll even do. We'll do Milwaukee, dude, if we want to have two places to meet up.
- [133:46]
Mike Duncan
Because I got, I got some property out in rural Wisconsin.
- [133:49]
Host
Okay. I'm not going to Denver as far though, for everybody.
- [133:51]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [133:52]
Host
So you don't want people having to go to freaking trying to think of one other spot.
- [133:57]
Mike Duncan
Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you this. Like, if there's actually gonna. The, the shape of the second American Civil War has less to do with like territory in that way. Like this, these states versus these states, it's gonna be very rural versus urban. And that's, that's the one of the main political divides I think, right now. Now. And so, so cities are one thing and sort of the surrounding environs are a different thing. And that will be the shape of things. There will be 50 regional simultaneous conflicts between people in the rural areas and people in the cities. And that's, I think, how it would go. Dang. Mikey D. Which I don't, I don't want any part. I don't want any part of that either. I don't. I, I was just, I was just joking that I was raising my son to be John Connor. To like fight. To fight AI when it tries to take over. I'm just like, why do you think I'm trying to teach you these things, man? Anyway, let's go back to lock picking.
- [134:55]
Host
John Conifer, Columbus, we're going to call him. Dude, somebody's got to go into AI and save us.
- [135:01]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. I mean, I showed him the Terminator movies. I'm like, this is what we, this is what we got to avoid, man. And it's, it's up to you. Because, because I, I can't do it.
- [135:08]
Host
You know, where will we find our allies at those times? If that were ever to happen? What do you think people find an ally in them. Like, how do you, how would you say this person is my ally in a civil war? You think.
- [135:21]
Mike Duncan
There are ways to do it. Right. You're in an area that has a lot of like minded people. We all have our own social networks that already exist.
- [135:29]
Host
Yeah.
- [135:30]
Mike Duncan
You know, and like, yeah, I mean, my existing social network, like I'm pretty sure would all be on one side of a civil war and I would be on that same side as them. And that's a lot of how people wind up joining these things. They join in groups. A lot of companies are sort of self raised from some local area. And so those kinds of things. It is that kind of personal trust that goes a lot into it. But of course it's also difficult because there are people who are intentionally trying to trick you into thinking that they're on your side, but they're not really. And then you got to have internal secret police and purges and executions. And now you're living the worst, worst life you can possibly think of. So let's just not do it, okay, America? Let's just not do it.
- [136:17]
Host
Okay, Mike? Okay, I hear you there.
- [136:18]
Mike Duncan
Great.
- [136:19]
Host
We'll have to talk about that another time. We'll talk about some revolutions and things like that. I would love to get into another conversation about it, man. How did people say Rome fell? Some people say it's just kind of. It's kind of just took on different. Like it became the Byzantine Empire. Some people say different things. Right. What is kind of classified as the fall of Rome? How did, did it fall? Hypothetically?
- [136:40]
Mike Duncan
Right, Yeah. I mean, if you buy into the framing, it's a lot of the central state stops being able to draw on the wealth of its own society. Some of this is the result of civil wars and ongoing civil wars. Some of it is the result of migrations and population pressures where the Romans used to be very good at fighting wars and battles beyond their own frontiers, they would expand. Right. So you're never fighting on your own territory. You're fighting on their territory, then you're beating them and then you're moving on to the next territory beyond that. And by the third century and by the fourth century, the Romans are fighting wars on their own territory. And so you're not getting the spoils of war. You're not getting booty, you're not getting, you're getting spoiled.
- [137:26]
Host
Even if you win, you lose.
- [137:27]
Mike Duncan
Yep, yep. Things are getting, things are getting trapped. And so there is a long term degradation in sort of the military and political and economic strength of the empire, such that on the other side, like on the other side of the Rhine and on the other side of the Danube, you have all these Germanic tribes who at one time were smaller and disconnected. And so it was very easy for the Romans to do like divide and conquer. Like, we'll give this chief a bunch of money and he will be our ally and you'll be our representative there. And then these guys won't. But this guy will always be our friend because he knows that his local power is backed entirely by Roman gold. So he's with us. And the Romans could keep these groups kind of disunited. This is classic divide and conquer. Eventually those groups become larger and larger and they form their own larger and larger confederations such that they're able to build up manpower, weaponry, strength that can go toe to toe with the legions in a straight fight. And then the Romans are also saying to themselves, we don't have the manpower that we used to have. And so if we want to win wars, we need to kind of outsource some of our fighting to these groups. And this becomes an incredibly, there's a couple hundred years of incredibly complicated political and military sort of maneuverings between the Romans and these groups. Groups where Alaric and the Goths, this is the people who sack Rome, which is sort of one of the big moments that we point to and say, like, gosh, that was a big deal. Rome had not been sacked in like 800 years. That was a big deal. It's not the case that this was Alaric and the Goths marauding into Italy and mindlessly destroying Rome and looting it of its wealth. Alaric had been off and on, allies and auxiliary and a general who commanded army spirits for rome for like 20 years.
- [139:25]
Host
So he'd been a contractor for a long time.
- [139:26]
Mike Duncan
Long time. Long time. And was actually a vital component of the Roman national security state, if you could call it that at the time. And he was just looking.
- [139:36]
Host
Alaric the Ambitious.
- [139:37]
Mike Duncan
Alaric the Ambitious.
- [139:38]
Host
Is that his name?
- [139:39]
Mike Duncan
No. Is it, Is that what they call him? I don't call him that. I call him Alaric the Goth. But he was trying to get what was owed to him by the Emperor. They had promised him, they had made promises to him. And what he really wanted was to be more formally integrated into the society to not just be a mere auxiliary, but to be entered into the fabric of Roman society when they wouldn't let him, which by this point, they're hiding in Ravenna because it's like behind a swamp and like. Yeah, no, they didn't let him because of prejudice, partly because of ethnic prejudice against him. And he said, look, if you don't follow through on your promise, promises, you got nothing. Protecting your most important city. I can just do this if I want, anytime I want, I can just go and do it. So follow through on your promises to me and I won't do it. It's pretty simple. They didn't follow through on their promises. So he said, fine, I'll go do it. I didn't want to, but I'm going to. So that sack is a very sort of calculated political move on his part. And that's part of the story about how Rome doesn't just fall, it's transforming into something else. It's not just. Just mindless barbarians destroying civilized life. You know, like, in that sense, I think that Alaric was acting in a more civilized way than the emperors in Ravenna were acting, because they were acting like petulant little liars. And Alaric was trying to do something.
- [141:02]
Host
What is it? Is it greed that. Hurting those.
- [141:05]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, greed, prejudice. Just sheer myopia, you know.
- [141:10]
Host
What does myopia mean?
- [141:11]
Mike Duncan
Myopia means an inability to see outside of your own little narrow, circumscribed world. And by that point, like I said, the political powers that be had left Rome for a while. Milan was the capital of the empire because it was closer to the Alps, which put them closer to the borders, which allowed them to run things better. Rome is kind of deep in the Italian peninsula. And then when things really started getting bad, they moved over to Ravenna, because Ravenna's on the coast, and so you can supply it really easy. You can. It's difficult to besiege. And then also it was surrounded by swamps, so it's difficult for a land army to get in there. And so now you've got, like, the imperial court planted, like, in the middle of a swamp, just disconnected from everyone and everything, and they didn't know what was going on. It's like we got child emperors who have no idea what's actually. Yeah, yeah. What's actually happening out there in the world. And so this, you know, the story of the collapse of Roman civilization is a lot to do then with. With, like, really poor leadership and poor disorganization. Yeah, poor Leadership decisions on top of all the material reasons why it collapses.
- [142:17]
Host
Who was one of the most gangster, like children emperors that they have?
- [142:22]
Mike Duncan
Gangster of the children emperors.
- [142:24]
Host
Who was somebody that was like, oh, this dude should not be in there?
- [142:28]
Mike Duncan
Oh, I don't, I mean, I mean, one of the great lessons of the history of Rome is don't give teenagers pass power. Like, don't do that, right? Like, no, like, no. Bad, but you know, like Honorius. Oh, yeah. Who were, who are the other guys that were. Oh, yeah, these are the classics. Gordian III was pretty good.
- [142:45]
Host
Gordian iii.
- [142:46]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, Gordian. Gordian III was actually pretty good. I'll give, I'll give a shout out to Gordian III, emperor at age of 13.
- [142:53]
Host
Yeah.
- [142:53]
Mike Duncan
Wow. Yeah. Which he, he, he emerges from the year of the six emperor emperors, in case you're wondering how crazy things got during the crisis of the third century.
- [143:02]
Host
In one year.
- [143:03]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, there's. It's the year of the six emperors and he. And Gordian emerges as the, as the last of them because the Praetorian Guard supported him and liked him. And actually the people of Rome supported and liked him.
- [143:14]
Host
And what were his vibes like? Would he have a good, pretty good vibe or was it like.
- [143:17]
Mike Duncan
I think he did have a pretty good vibe. Yeah. He had a, he had a really great advisor who was with him for like four years. This, this particular guy who I'm doing even going to attempt to pronounce his name because every time I try I completely fail. But he had good advisors and he had good people around him and he seemed to be sort of educated and chill enough that he wasn't just like, I'm here to just use this power that I've been given any way that I see fit. There did seem to be some sense of I have a civic duty and my role as an emperor matters. And I think that was true with him and I think that was true of this guy Alexander Severus too, and.
- [143:54]
Host
Who was a psycho. Any of them? Well, or just like, you know, just self absorbed.
- [144:00]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, I mean, the list, the list is Carala Nero, Algobalis, Caligula, and then those guys at the end, Honorius, they're just, they're just completely out to lunch. So they're just completely out to lunch. And, you know, and my, you know, my big theory is that as they are, you know, as Rome is falling into disrepair and they are resisting fully incorporating the Goths into Roman society, that it was that resistance to incorporating the Goths that is what meant that the power of the Roman Empire just ceased to matter. You know, like the people who would come along who were heirs to the Roman Empire were often still acting under the auspices of like the emperor back in the east, that like, like the guys who come along after, like, oh, I'm doing this because so and so told me that I could be in charge over here. They were still referencing the power of the emperors. But if you're going to keep all your generals and the people who are actually running your society on the outside and not giving them any real political power, eventually they're just going to stop caring. Because force is power. Force is what underlies everything, Everything, every society. All political power is rooted in brute force. And if you can't command brute force, and they can, they're gonna take over. And so what the Goths wanted was to be fully integrated, which the Romans had been so good at. It's one of their greatest strengths.
- [145:34]
Host
Like you said in the beginning, they would take over lands, they would incorporate the people, incorporate the religions, everything. Yep.
- [145:38]
Mike Duncan
And like, and if, you know, they weren't an inventive people, but if they find a better sword that you were making, they're gonna take the land that along. If you have a better way to build an aqueduct, they're going to copy that. And the book I'm writing right now is about the crisis of the third century when the Roman Empire nearly fell, but did not. Who saves the Empire? It's a bunch of guys from Illyria, which is the Balkans. It's a bunch of dudes from Croatia and Bosnia who are the ones who saved the empire because they had been fully integrated into the system and they believed in Rome and Roman ness. There was never an ethnic component to Rome, not really. And certainly it's not the case that when Rome stopped being fully pure blood Italian, that's when things started to go wrong. Actually in many cases the thing that stopped things from going wrong was that we weren't listening to the full blooded Italians anymore. We were giving power and authority to people who would not have traditionally been in power, but because of the way that Roman society worked, could now be in power. And to have not done that at the end with the Goths, like I think there is a moment when there is a sister of the emperor and a brother of the chieftain. It's Alaric's brother, they get married and they have a kid. And if that kid, that kid died. Because kids die in the past. Right. We've talked about this. And if that kid had lived and gone on to become Emperor and integrated the Goths into Roman society. I think, I think that buys them a couple hundred years easy, man. That's. But that's my own. That's my own little pet theory, which I came across by studying the collapse of Roman civilization on a. Practically on like a day by day level and just being like, nap. You guys fucking blew this one, didn't you? You didn't have to, but you did.
- [147:26]
Host
It just shows you. Every day counts, huh? Yep, every day counts. You have a series that you're working on now about. It's in the. In the future.
- [147:36]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. Yes, yes. We'll radically bounce 2,000 years.
- [147:42]
Host
That's okay.
- [147:43]
Mike Duncan
Into the future. Yeah. So the other show that I have done is Revolutions, which each season of Revolutions covers a different great political revolution in history. And it is the case, I have found that a lot of revolutions do follow a similar trajectory. There's an ancien regime that's falling apart, there's discontentment among the elite, there's new ideas that have been entered. And then there's a liberal nobility, there's pissed off lawyers and journalists. A lot of these things are similar. There's a first wave of the revolution and then there's a second wave of the revolution that often throws out the people who started the revolution. This is kind of how the French Revolution goes and the Russian Revolution goes. This is where the Jacobins come from. And then there's always a war, there's always a civil war. So these things, these large structural beats of the story of a revolution, there's a lot of similarities. And so what I have done is I have taken those structural beats and I'm writing a completely fictitious future history of a revolution on Mars in 2247. And I walk it through day by day, and I'm 20, I am 23 episodes into it.
- [148:56]
Host
I love it.
- [148:58]
Mike Duncan
What is, what is that? Where are you getting that from?
- [149:00]
Host
Revolution.
- [149:01]
Mike Duncan
That's. That's fan art. That's not me.
- [149:04]
Host
Well, it's still nice. Pretty nice fan art.
- [149:06]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, it's nice fan art. Yeah. My fans are good. Wow.
- [149:11]
Host
I just think it's so fascinating because you have to take such a breadth of history and information and then put it into something that's like so, like imaginative, you know, but also quickly coming with the future.
- [149:29]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. And then, and then a lot of the things that are happening in the Martian revolution, if you listen to it, you'll be like, oh, I see he's also commenting on present society and where we are. Because all good science fiction is not actually about the future. It's about the present. And so the Martian revolution is that too. But it's a pretty. When all is said and done, it's going to be 125,000 words that I wound up writing in six months to crank out this massive, epic history of a science fiction revolution, which, if you're into that kind of thing, come along for the ride. It's pretty fun. And every part of it is constructing a mosaic where every constituent part has a reference point in history somewhere. Like, I'm trying to tie all of these different things together. Like, oh, this is an element from the Mexican Revolution combined with an element of the Russian Revolution combined with an element of the French Revolution, and then moving on to the next thing. And, oh, I'm going to take this thing from the Haitian Revolution, and I'm going to take this thing from the English Civil wars, and we just go through it. I've got six episodes left. I don't know. By the time this thing airs, there'll be, like, three probably left.
- [150:35]
Host
Congratulations, man.
- [150:36]
Mike Duncan
I'm coming down the barrel of it. It's gone really well. Well, I really enjoyed writing it.
- [150:41]
Host
Oh, well, it's just fascinating, man. It's interesting to talk to a historian. It's interesting to talk to someone with so much knowledge. Yeah, I'd love to talk about revolution sometime. I appreciate it, man. Thanks for taking us. Yeah, just. It's just interesting to. To be like. Because you always fantasize in your head, like, you know, oh, I think about the Roman Empire, man. I could have been. And you always fantasize yourself as. I never fantasize myself as one of, like, the slaves or anything like that. I don't think you always kind of fantasize yourself at least somewhere in the middle or upper echelon, you know?
- [151:12]
Mike Duncan
Yes.
- [151:12]
Host
Why does our brain do that, I wonder?
- [151:15]
Mike Duncan
Because we want to be safe and protected. And so we put ourselves in a safe and protected environment where the society is working for us rather than us working for the society. Nobody wants to imagine themselves as a slave. And so, yeah, when. When people fantasize about being in the Roman Empire and they're like, oh, it would have been so great. It's like. Like, yeah, for, like, 27 guys, you know, like, for the emperor and some people around him, everybody else. It was kind of rough going. And there's a very good chance you died at the age of three. And if you didn't die at the age of three, there's a very good chance you died at the age of seven. And if you didn't die at the age of seven, there's a very good chance you died at the age of eight. Right. Like, you're probably not living very long. So was it that great? So. So as a historian, sometimes people are like, would you want to go back and live in some period in the past? And mostly, I really like modern medical technology and a lot of the things that we have. I am pampered that way. If I get sick, I want antibiotics. I don't want to just die of some festering wound because we don't have antibiotics yet. I love all those things where I would really go. If I had a time machine, I could go anywhere. I'd go back to those primordial forests before, like, humans were even a thing. Like, I'm from the Pacific Northwest.
- [152:30]
Host
Yeah, it's beautiful up there.
- [152:31]
Mike Duncan
It's beautiful up there. And, like, I would go to, like, you know, like, basically, like, where Lake Washington is right now, or, like, the Puget Sound before humans were even a thing. Just these ancient primordial forests and just hang out there for a little bit, get.
- [152:43]
Host
Get a nice little cabin and hear the sounds that. And I bet animals made cooler sounds before we came around and started listening to them.
- [152:49]
Mike Duncan
They would certainly behave differently, you know, because right now, like, there's no interacting with wildlife. Not really, because they all learned to stay away from humans.
- [152:57]
Host
Yeah. And a lot of the parents have been locked up, too, in zoos or whatever. So I think a lot of them, it's gotten.
- [153:02]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. So, like. Yeah, you go out to the Olympic Peninsula and you kind of get a glimpse of what that stuff used to be. Or, like, when I was writing about Russia, and, like, you think about, like, these huge primordial forests that, like, stretched all the way from, like, Europe all the way to China. Just these amazing. You know, just this amazing number of trees and, you know, animals and plants.
- [153:22]
Host
Mother Nature.
- [153:23]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [153:24]
Host
Just.
- [153:24]
Mike Duncan
Just go chill with Mother Nature. Once humans come along, it's like, all right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna head back to where I can go to the hospital if I. You know, if things get really bad.
- [153:35]
Host
Sometimes I wonder if we're helping. Things are hurting them. Mike Duncan, thanks so much, man. I appreciate your time. And, yeah, everyone can check out. If you want to hear more about Rome, you have two books. Your second book, the new book that you have out is the book I'm.
- [153:52]
Mike Duncan
Writing right now, which is. I'm not turning the manuscript in until September. So it won't be out till 2026, but yeah, these are the ones like Storm before the storm, the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic, which is a lot of what we talked about today. Like, if you're interested in those sort of like parallels between what kind of trajectory it feels like we are on as a society and what trajectory the Romans were on. That, that's, that's my best stab at sort of talking about that.
- [154:14]
Host
The storm before the storm.
- [154:15]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, storm before the storm. With the storm being like the civil wars that destroyed the Republic.
- [154:20]
Host
Yeah.
- [154:21]
Mike Duncan
And then out of, you know, outgrowth of, of my work in revolutions, I wrote a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, who is a guy who had like a 50 year long revolutionary career. And we only ever think about him as he's like this like 19 year old kid who like hung out with George Washington for a few years. And we like him because we all like a Frenchman in a uniform, but he actually lived like this insane 50 year life in and out of revolutions. And you know, as I was right as I was writing the show, I was like, God, this guy just keeps popping up. So I wound up writing a whole biography about him.
- [154:52]
Host
He was a gangster, huh?
- [154:54]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There he is. There's my boy. Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.
- [155:01]
Host
There he is. Mike Duncan, thanks so much for your time and I appreciate it.
- [155:04]
Mike Duncan
Thank you very much for. Thanks for having me.
- [155:06]
Host
Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these.
- [155:11]
Mike Duncan
Leaves I must be cornerstone oh but when I reach that ground I'll share.
- [155:20]
Host
This piece of my life out I.
- [155:23]
Mike Duncan
Can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take a little.