00:00:00Why is learning about Roman history useful or instructive at helping us in the modern world?
00:00:05Why should anybody care?
00:00:07I think that—so when I was starting my podcast, I'd been doing it for a couple of months
00:00:17with a kind of hunch on this question, and I wasn't really able to articulate it to my satisfaction.
00:00:25But a friend of mine a few months in recommended that I read this book by Nietzsche, one of
00:00:33his early books that—and I'd read some Nietzsche before—it's called On the Advantage
00:00:40and Disadvantage of History for Life.
00:00:44And Nietzsche talks in there about how history can sort of drain the life out of you and turn
00:00:52you into a kind of crippled shell of a person.
00:00:57It can kind of get you in this state where you question all of your decisions.
00:01:04It can kind of overload you with knowledge and cause you to retreat into the cloister
00:01:10or the library or, you know, be a kind of opiate for a life that is not fulfilling.
00:01:19But he says that—and he quotes Goethe at the beginning of that book—that something
00:01:24like Goethe said, "I hate all knowledge that does not quicken and enliven me."
00:01:32Like, away with it.
00:01:34And history can be very quickening and enlivening.
00:01:37And the way that Nietzsche frames it is—the most enlivening approach to history is embodied
00:01:44by one of his favorite authors, Plutarch, this great ancient philosopher who was also
00:01:50one of history's most widely read and entertaining biographers.
00:01:55And Plutarch embodies this mode of reading history, or mode of approaching any number
00:02:04of subjects, really.
00:02:05Not just history, kings and battles, but art history or engineering, statuary—and he calls
00:02:13it "monumental," the monumental approach to history, where you're looking not so much
00:02:20for precise facts, although the facts kind of matter for the story, you're looking for
00:02:27examples of greatness.
00:02:30And you're looking for those examples—and this is me interpreting Nietzsche a little
00:02:33bit—but I think of history as a kind of source for finding your true self.
00:02:45You're kind of looking for yourself, you're looking for somebody who's trying to do something
00:02:52that represents a version of the greatest thing that you could do with your own life.
00:02:58And so it's about finding resonance for achievement.
00:03:03And I think this is what the greats tend to get out of history, there's a lot of stories
00:03:07of this happening.
00:03:08Julius Caesar and the statue of Alexander is a famous one.
00:03:12So that's what I look to history for, and it's where I've gotten a lot of my own inspiration.
00:03:21And I think it's ultimately about imitation—there's a lot of philosophy around this that we could
00:03:29dig into a little deeper.
00:03:31Isn't it crazy that we think about history as being one thing—or at least the uninformed
00:03:36amongst us think about history as being one thing—but I found out recently that ancient
00:03:41Egypt had their own Egyptologists because Egypt was so old that 2500 BC was studying 5000 BC.
00:03:53So the same thing—that people of history were learning from people from their history.
00:03:57Yeah, and I studied for a little while with this great scholar when I was in grad school,
00:04:05and he said—he was a specialist in the late Roman world, like 4th century AD.
00:04:13And he would always say, "Late antiquity is a very old world."
00:04:19And it is, because in the 4th century AD, they're as far away from Homer as we are from Charlemagne.
00:04:28It's crazy to think—the world hasn't changed as much for them as it has for us since
00:04:34that time period.
00:04:35But even Plutarch, who's a kind of model for so many things for me—he's this Greek
00:04:40philosopher living in the Roman Empire in the reign of Hadrian, Trajan, so Roman peace about
00:04:47100 AD is like his apogee—he's studying and doing the biographies of figures that lived
00:04:54500, 700, down to around 100 to 200 years before him.
00:05:01So it's all really old.
00:05:02They already have this deep conception of what history is, what it's for, and a sense
00:05:09of tradition.
00:05:10And I think we can learn a lot from the way that they approach their own history, which
00:05:14is often very different from the way that we approach them or we approach our own history.
00:05:18What about Julius Caesar?
00:05:19What can we learn about living a good life from him?
00:05:22Well, to come back to this example, that is probably my favorite story about Caesar.
00:05:29And it's a famous story, so people might have heard of it, but maybe they haven't kind of
00:05:34grasped the true meaning of it.
00:05:37So Caesar is a young man in sort of mid-career, early 30s.
00:05:44He's gotten a job as a quaestor, and he gets sent off for his tour of duty one year to Spain,
00:05:54which is a Roman province.
00:05:57And a quaestor is like a chief of staff, the paper guy for a Roman governor, a consul or
00:06:05a proconsul.
00:06:06And at one of his leisure moments, Caesar is going around with his friends in a temple.
00:06:14And a temple, it's a temple to Hercules, and a temple in antiquity is kind of like a museum.
00:06:19It's like where you would put great statues and art and dedications and gold and stuff
00:06:28on the walls.
00:06:29And he's going in there, they're like touring the museum, as it were, Caesar and his buddies.
00:06:35And his buddies kind of keep moving on, and they realize they look back, Caesar is not
00:06:39with them.
00:06:40And he's standing in front of a statue of Alexander the Great in this temple of Hercules.
00:06:46And they're like, "Caesar, are you coming?
00:06:50Wait a sec, are you crying?"
00:06:53Because he's weeping in front of the statue of Alexander the Great.
00:06:56And he looks to them and he says, "Do you not think it is a matter for tears that when
00:07:00Alexander was my age, he was the ruler of so many great peoples, and yet I have done nothing
00:07:07worthy of great renown?"
00:07:10And this is only one of two instances that we know of where Julius Caesar cried.
00:07:17The Romans weren't really into crying as much as the Greeks.
00:07:22I think they were a little bit more open.
00:07:24They were about like us.
00:07:26The Greeks are crying all the time.
00:07:27I mean, if you read Homer, you know, Achilles is, you know, bawling and throwing ash on himself
00:07:33when his buddy Patroclus dies in the Trojan War.
00:07:36And in the Odyssey, it's like every single time somebody mentions the word Troy, like
00:07:42everybody just bursts out in tears and, you know, his family is always crying for him because
00:07:46they don't know where he is, and Odysseus is always crying about everything.
00:07:50But the Romans were a little bit more restrained.
00:07:53So I think for Julius Caesar to cry there, something happened that was really significant
00:08:00for him.
00:08:02And how I read that is Caesar, I mean, he's already had a pretty promising career so far.
00:08:11Some great stories already have happened from early in his youth.
00:08:15He's a questor, which is not nothing.
00:08:18He's got the Roman Medal of Honor equivalent, the civic crown for risking his life to save
00:08:24a fellow citizen.
00:08:25But he's kind of looking back on his 20s, and he's thinking, I've just been screwing
00:08:33around the whole time.
00:08:35This is what I have to do.
00:08:37He's like, he's realizing in this moment, what his destiny is, or if you want to not use the
00:08:45word destiny, he's realizing like what he should be doing.
00:08:49And that's the moment where it kind of hits him, it's painful to realize that you haven't
00:08:53been living the life to the full extent of what you should be doing and are capable of
00:09:00doing.
00:09:01And I think that's a really powerful moment for, and it kind of like encapsulates how,
00:09:08is why I think it resonates with me so much.
00:09:12That's how we need to be approaching history.
00:09:14That's how we need to be approaching the greats.
00:09:16You need to be looking for that moment of resonance with somebody that just like cracks you open
00:09:22like, ah, I realize it.
00:09:24Now personally, I don't have that with Julius Caesar himself.
00:09:27I'm not trying to do the Julius Caesar thing.
00:09:29And it's not every Roman who's great who had that kind of thing with Alexander the Great.
00:09:35I mean, that says a lot about a man that he really sees himself as somebody who needs to
00:09:41emulate Alexander.
00:09:44But you can definitely learn from that lesson of trying to find that unique resonance with
00:09:49somebody who kind of tells you what you're supposed to be like, and I think that Caesar
00:09:52had this like depth to him that illustrates also.
00:09:58What does that tell us about Caesar's ambition, level of ambition?
00:10:02Yeah.
00:10:03Well, off the charts for sure.
00:10:05But I think that you can also understand a lot about Caesar's ambition from looking earlier
00:10:12in his childhood.
00:10:16And there's a great story on this, but I kind of give the context, laying out Caesar's world.
00:10:25So he grows up in Rome, and he's from this great family on the one hand.
00:10:31So he's got on his mom's side, the Anki Markii go back to the King Ancus Markius.
00:10:40It's the Markii family that go back to the King Ancus Markius.
00:10:43Quasi-mythical Roman king from the 6th century BC, you know, 500 years of history on his
00:10:50mom's side.
00:10:52And then his dad's side, they're the Julius clan, and they go all the way back to the mythic
00:10:58founder of Rome, Aeneas, who was the son of Venus and a mortal.
00:11:04And so they, you know, 1200 years on that side, so they've got some real blue blood.
00:11:11But they're kind of, they haven't really accomplished a lot in the past few generations.
00:11:15They're not one of the like power elite families.
00:11:20Like the Metelli or the Cornigli, there's like other families that are a lot more prominent
00:11:25than the Julius family.
00:11:26And they live in a kind of seedy part of Rome, the subura.
00:11:31And he grows up in this kind of dirty part of town.
00:11:35I mean, I know you worked in the kind of event in the nightclub world.
00:11:39Like Caesar would have been like a kid hanging out in the street, playing dice with his buddies
00:11:44outside of a bar.
00:11:46The subura was a kind of place that you didn't really want to live if you had a better option.
00:11:54But you know, every young aristocrat on a summer night liked to go visit, there's like brothels.
00:12:00And so he's in contact with the underbelly of Rome.
00:12:05And his family is aligned on what you call the Roman left of politics.
00:12:14There's two main, you can call them factions or kind of political styles, but there's two
00:12:18kind of main poles in Roman politics.
00:12:22And on the one hand, there are the optimates, the kind of oligarchic or aristocratic faction
00:12:28who stand for the ancient prerogatives of the Senate and the tradition, they tend to monopolize
00:12:37the priesthoods.
00:12:38They're all about what family are you from, who are you marrying, and so-and-so's great-great
00:12:44grandfather was a consul, who were you, that whole attitude.
00:12:49And they're very much for the status quo.
00:12:54And on the other hand, you have the populists who are about things like land reform, redistributing
00:13:00public lands, they're really into merit and promoting talented outsiders.
00:13:08And Caesar has really strong connections there because his aunt is married to one of the greatest
00:13:18populist figureheads in Roman history, this guy Gaius Marius, who was an outsider himself
00:13:23to the Roman power elite, but kind of forced his way in by talents.
00:13:27He wins a number of wars for them.
00:13:31And so he grows up with Gaius Marius as his uncle.
00:13:34And Marius made a big fortune in his career from starting very low, and then he kind of
00:13:41married into respectability, which Caesar's family represents kind of poor respectability.
00:13:47And then there is, Caesar loses his dad when he's a teenager, his dad like drops dead tying
00:13:59his shoes one day, kind of a freak thing, maybe he had a heart attack, and Caesar's probably
00:14:04early teens at that point, and his dad actually looked like he was on a good track.
00:14:10He'd been a praetor, hadn't been consul, praetor's the second highest office, consul's the highest,
00:14:16and he died just before he got a shot to run for consul.
00:14:20So Caesar had a father figure, but lost him.
00:14:25And then, so I imagine Gaius Marius might have been kind of like a father figure to Julius
00:14:31Caesar.
00:14:32We don't know a lot about that.
00:14:33But what ended up happening is, Caesar, promising young man, 16 years old, he gets a great opportunity
00:14:50to marry the daughter of one of the most powerful men in Rome, who is Marius's colleague, his
00:14:57associate, this guy Cinna, who has a run for, he's consul for like three years, and also
00:15:03a populist, also kind of against the oligarchic establishment.
00:15:09And right around the time that this is happening, this incredibly bloody war breaks out, civil
00:15:16war, between the optimates and the populists.
00:15:19And it's very complicated, we can go into the details if you want, but essentially Marius
00:15:22dies toward the beginning of the war, Cinna dies a little further in, and the optimates
00:15:30led by a man named Lucius Cornelius Sulla, win this war, just like blood running through
00:15:37the whole, like every valley in Italy, I mean, tens of thousands, maybe more than a hundred
00:15:42thousand Roman citizens, Roman allies killed, it's just horrific.
00:15:46It's probably worse than the civil war that he ends up fighting later in his life.
00:15:52But so Caesar is married to Cinna's daughter, and when Sulla comes, like marches into Rome
00:16:02after winning the civil war, he was, you know, invaded Italy from a foreign campaign, he comes
00:16:07into Rome and he gets elected dictator, he kind of forces himself to be elected dictator,
00:16:13which is like a temporary office at Rome, and he's kind of mopping up.
00:16:18He does famously the, this campaign called the proscriptions, which is basically a purge
00:16:28of all of his enemies, it's never been done in Roman history, they'd never had a civil
00:16:32war before, for 400 years they'd had civic, more or less civic concord, and there'd been
00:16:39some incidents in the previous generation, but nothing like this, Sulla posts the names
00:16:45of all the people from the leadership classes of Rome, the rich, some of the richest men,
00:16:53the most influential, well-connected grand family men from the populace faction that he
00:16:58blames for picking this fight and starting the war.
00:17:05And if your name is on that list in the proscriptions, you know, he posts them in the Senate, you
00:17:10have a bounty on your head, and your entire estate is confiscated, state property now,
00:17:18and there's more than a thousand names that end up getting put up in those proscription
00:17:22lists, so heads roll, people are tossing heads in front of the feet of Sulla as he's sitting
00:17:28in his, like, consular throne, they're collecting their reward, it's just this reign of terror
00:17:35for a few months, and Sulla is also calling other kinds of stocks, I mean, he's rewriting
00:17:41the constitution as a dictator, he's trying to make sure that the populace could just keep
00:17:45their head underwater for generations, that nothing like this war could ever happen again
00:17:51because his enemies and the kind of principles that they represent will just be so hamstrung
00:17:56and handcuffed, but one of the things that he does is he approaches younger men in Rome
00:18:05and kind of tests their loyalty by making them get divorces.
00:18:12Pompey is another promising young man around this time who ends up being Caesar's friend
00:18:17and rival, he's a few years older, and he goes to Pompey, Sulla, and he says, Pompey,
00:18:22you know, you've been a loyal servant, you brought me a legion in the civil war, you sided
00:18:28with me early, I'm very grateful for that, but you know what, you're married to the wrong
00:18:32woman, I have a better one for you, and Pompey says, yes, sir, and he divorces his former
00:18:39wife and he marries whoever Sulla picks for him, and then Sulla, remember, this is a guy
00:18:46who, okay, a subordinate of Sulla, a friend of his, wanted to run for consul after Sulla
00:18:54becomes the dictator, you know, there's still elections going on, there's still offices that
00:18:58need filling, this guy comes to Sulla and he says, hey, Sulla, I wanna, you know, we won
00:19:03the war, I wanna run for consul, and Sulla's like, you know, you haven't even been praetor,
00:19:10this would be a bad look, I don't think this is your year, you should stand down, and the
00:19:15guy says, thank you for your advice, I'm gonna run anyway. And so one day, Sulla is sitting
00:19:22in like one of his curule chairs there in one of the public buildings, looking out over
00:19:26the forum, and watches as the men that he ordered to do the deed go up to this guy and
00:19:33murder him in broad daylight in the forum, because he defied Sulla, and he tried to, you
00:19:41know, run for office when Sulla said no. So this is the kind of guy you're dealing with.
00:19:45Now Sulla comes to Caesar. Caesar's 18 years old, and he says, Caesar, you're married to
00:19:53the daughter of one of my late worst enemies, Cinna. He's, you know, and you can understand
00:20:01his perspective, you know, Cinna was a symbol of everything that Sulla wanted to crush. And
00:20:08he says, you need to divorce her. And Caesar says, thank you very much for your advice,
00:20:15you know, go screw yourself, and he skips town. He says no. And so Caesar is running through
00:20:24the mountains of central Italy, he's on the run, Sulla's got guys hunting him down, this
00:20:31goes on for several weeks, Caesar gets dysentery, and you know, Oregon Trail style, and he just,
00:20:37he gets caught, and manages to bribe the people who catch him, to not bring him back to Sulla,
00:20:45but to bring him back to his family, to like his relatives and friends. And then they go,
00:20:50and they go and plead with the dictator, Sulla, geez, you know, this was really out of line
00:20:56on the part of Caesar, he's a young hothead, you understand, you know, he'll be good, we'll
00:21:02make sure that he behaves himself, he's only a kid, don't worry, please, can you please
00:21:06spare him, you know, because Sulla wants to execute him, obviously, I mean, he's got an
00:21:11image to uphold, right, like, and Sulla relents, and he says, very well, but you are fools if
00:21:19you don't see many Amarius in that boy. And so Caesar gets off. Now, why did he do that?
00:21:30What does that say about him and what he's got in mind for his future? All right, one
00:21:37explanation is, Caesar's a showman, he's a natural showman, he knows if he can defy the
00:21:43dictator and get away with it, people are going to be talking about this for his entire life,
00:21:49they're going to talk about it all around town, and sure enough, you know, we're still talking
00:21:53about it today, like it worked as a kind of PR stunt. On the other hand, he knows that
00:22:04this girl is a symbol of all of his populist connections that have mostly been decapitated,
00:22:15like everything that Caesar had like aspired to, you know, you think as a teenager, you
00:22:20know, you've got a great career ahead of you, you know, you're, you know, the top guys in
00:22:23this party, like the trajectory is clear. It's all just been like liquidated, turned to blood.
00:22:31And she's like one of the last living symbols of that. And he knows that if he, he knows
00:22:37the kind of like, he's kind of calling his shot in a way. He's, he's, he's, he's seeing
00:22:43a career for himself on the populist side on the kind of revolutionary, if you will, side
00:22:49of Roman politics. And he's sort of building, building a career with this clairvoyance about
00:22:55where he's headed for the rest of his life already there at age 18. And I think that one
00:23:00final piece of this is it had a lot to do with just family, you know, and who he was.
00:23:05And he didn't want to be pushed around by anybody. And he was willing to die rather than to let
00:23:10that happen. And the fact that he, I think one of the final things that this illustrates
00:23:16about Cesar is Cesar was, for all that you could criticize about the guy, he was incredibly
00:23:21loyal to the people that, that were close to him, to his friends, loyal to a fault. And
00:23:29he was loyal to this, to this wife, Cornelia, all the way up to her death. I can't prove
00:23:37this and I wouldn't even try, but Cesar was famously good with the ladies and, you know,
00:23:44slept with a lot of senators' wives and so forth and had a lot of girlfriends on the
00:23:49side. But we don't know of any specific cases where he did that with, while he was married
00:23:54to his first wife, Cornelia. And she ends up being the mother of his only daughter, his
00:24:00only child up until the very end, Julia. But I think that it was, it was something about
00:24:06proving loyalty to that woman. But I think you see in that, you know, to answer your question
00:24:10about, you know, what are his ambitions? Like, they're grand already. You can see that in
00:24:15him as a young man. He like, he knows he's destined for, for something big. He's smart,
00:24:21talented, handsome, and so forth. And, and he was just going to, he was going to ride
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00:25:43drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. What was that story about Caesar and the pirates? That was when
00:25:50he was young, right? Yeah, yeah, that's another great story. Another kind of like flash of
00:25:54his brilliance. So he's off cavorting in Asia. Asia Minor is a young man. And this is before
00:26:01Pompey cleans up the seas for the pirates. And so he gets captured by pirates as one
00:26:08does during those times. And he, I think he's like on a study trip actually at the time.
00:26:17So it's, he's very young, like 20, 23. And the pirates want to ransom him. And Caesar
00:26:30says, what you're asking is insulting. Like you're asking 20 million sesterces. You need
00:26:36to double it. Like you don't know what you've got on your hands here. Because I think partly
00:26:42because to kind of troll them, partly because he is, he knows that if he gets ransomed for
00:26:49more money, it's going to make a better story. And people are going to think more of him because
00:26:53like, you know, the Greek word for honor is, is Tima. It means price. You know, it's, it's
00:27:00the price, it's literally the price that you, your comrades would be willing to ransom you
00:27:07for if you got captured. Like, it's quantifiable. It's very quantifiable. Like in Homer, you
00:27:13know, it's, we think of honor as this abstract thing, but it's like, how much are you really
00:27:18worth? You know, you can put a number on that. So Caesar kind of gets that. He basically bids
00:27:22on his own auction. Yeah, right. And the funny thing about that story is, well, there's a
00:27:29lot of funny things, but you know, while he's there with the pirates, Plutarch, who's his
00:27:34greatest biographer, says, you know, Caesar would sort of, he would joke around with them
00:27:41and he would write compositions. He's like, you know, rocking around in the hole there,
00:27:47writing speeches, and he would, he would declaim them in front of the pirates and he'd make
00:27:51them laugh and cry. And then he would just say, you people have no taste. I can't believe
00:27:56that I'm hanging out with you. And they would say, oh, Caesar. And then he said, you know,
00:28:01someday I'm going to come back after, after you ransom me and I'm going to execute every
00:28:06single one of you. And they said, oh, see this kid, we love this kid, pour him another drink,
00:28:14you know, and then that's exactly what he does. Right. He gets ransomed and he, the local
00:28:22governor that, that is responsible for that part of the sea is, I think he, no, he raises
00:28:31a fleet with his own funds and he goes and he, you know, he knows where these guys hide
00:28:36out their little cove and he captures the pirates and he brings them to the governor and the
00:28:42governor is sort of dawdling. He doesn't really have a great plan for these pirates. And so
00:28:46he, Caesar goes and he crucifies all of them to make a statement. But, you know, because
00:28:52they were such a kindly host to them, he does them the, the courtesy of having their throat
00:28:58slit before they get crucified. So they don't, you know, have to be there in agony for several
00:29:03days dying. He gives them a short death. So no, I think, you know, perfect combination
00:29:07of his, his winning charm, his deep sense for the political stakes of every single thing
00:29:14that he does, you know, raising his price, making a scene and making a statement by, you
00:29:20know, fulfilling his promise to, in the most cold blooded way possible. Why did he become
00:29:26so popular? What was, what were the levers that he was pulling on? Well, before he becomes
00:29:32a commander, at least Caesar is just a really stylish guy. He, he has a flair for fashion.
00:29:40You know, he wears his, his toga a little differently than, than everybody else. It's a little looser.
00:29:46You know, it's kind of like, you know, when I was in high school, a lot of, a lot of kids
00:29:51was like, let their pants sag down. It was like the cool look. Yeah, the Caesar's doing
00:29:56that. Like let's, let's let our toga sag a little bit. But it, but it was, it was like,
00:30:00you know, it was stylish and classy and, and kind of, and, and, you know, the older men
00:30:06at Rome would say, oh, that's effeminate. But Caesar knew that it would draw, draw attention,
00:30:14that he could pull it off. And one of the ways that he attracts attention is by prosecuting
00:30:21corrupt governors when he's just in his twenties. You know, he, he does these sort of, sort of
00:30:28publicity stunt DA, like young DA prosecuting the whatever city councilmen. And he, he loses,
00:30:37I think most of these, but he makes a statement of what he stands for. And, and I think he
00:30:42knows from a very early age that he's kind of an anti-establishment figure. Sala has dies
00:30:48soon after he becomes a dictator. And, and like in his youth, Sala basically firmly established
00:30:56the Optimate oligarchy. And everybody in power now in Rome was like a buddy of Sala and they
00:31:02have no serious challengers. They're corrupt, they're fat, they're slow, they're plundering
00:31:08the provincials and Caesar kind of takes a stand for justice, like throughout his early
00:31:12career. And, you know, one of these, one of these cases, he, there was a, there was a riot
00:31:2130 years earlier. This is funny. And, and, and some populous leaders, you know, people
00:31:27from Caesar's faction got murdered. Saturninus was the, the most, well, there was a riot in
00:31:33the forum and then they, they arrested the guys, they put them in the Senate house and
00:31:37then people snuck up to the roof in the night. They, they removed the roof tiles and they
00:31:42like hurled these like roof tiles down on Saturninus and his buddies and they killed them. So there
00:31:49was some violence in the streets in Rome that the generation before. And so Caesar picks
00:31:55one of the last surviving men to have been vaguely implicated in this riot as somebody
00:32:03with, you know, blood on his hands, metaphorically for the, for the death of Saturninus and his
00:32:08associates. And the guy is like this emaciated old, old gentleman, Riberius. And he says, you know,
00:32:19we're gonna, we're gonna hold you responsible for your crimes 30 years ago. Like Rome is,
00:32:24Rome is a place of justice. And they basically, you know, long story short, they get, they
00:32:29get him convicted. And in the special court that they call, the punishment is crucifixion.
00:32:38Like so they're going to publicly execute this like 80 year old man who probably doesn't
00:32:44even know what day it is. And there's some last minute political shenanigans by Riberius's
00:32:52friends. They like raise this flag and they, you know, there's a kind of like political
00:32:58chicanery where you can say the omens are bad and it kind of calls off the whole thing.
00:33:02And Caesar, I think it kind of expected them to do that. But the point was about the statement,
00:33:08you know, that oligarchs, aristocrats from the establishment can't get away with murder
00:33:15anymore. Not in this town anymore. I think that was a big piece of why he was popular
00:33:20before he ever led an army. Now when he started leading armies, that's a whole different
00:33:24story. Like he was a master at getting, like winning the respect of his soldiers. He's
00:33:31always fighting in the front lines. There's many stories about this, the incredible loyalty
00:33:37that his soldiers in particular had for him. But you know, he's kind of a playboy in his,
00:33:43in his youth. And he just was, was a fun guy to be around. He's always giving gifts. He's,
00:33:50he's in debt all the time up to his ears and he somehow always finds a way to pay off his
00:33:56creditors. He was just a really magnetic guy to be around.
00:34:02What was the loyalty that he generated? Just how loyal were his followers?
00:34:06Well, so one instance of this is in the Civil War that illustrates this is this guy Granius
00:34:14Petro is a guy we wouldn't know his name otherwise, but he's a quaestor in Caesar's army and gets
00:34:26he's a ship captain, gets, gets his ship captured by Caesar's enemies in the Civil War. And,
00:34:35and so he's brought aboard the ship with his fellow sailors and, and the enemy commander,
00:34:44the Optimate Commander says, "Granius Petro, you know, we're going to, we're going to be
00:34:49nice to you guys. Now normally since you, you all are traitors, what we should do is slit
00:34:55your throats and throw you overboard, but we're going to be very kind. You know, Caesar's a
00:34:59kind man. We know he's the enemy of the state and tyrant and lawless, but we're going to,
00:35:04we're going to not let him morally outclass us. We're just going to sell you in the slave
00:35:08market, all of you. And hopefully you'll get ransomed maybe, but Granius Petro, you, however,
00:35:15may go free. He's the, he's their leader. And, but you have to go and tell Caesar what we did
00:35:22here and tell him that his war effort is futile, that he should surrender to the lawful government
00:35:27of the Republic. And Granius Petro says, "It is the custom of Caesar's soldiers to give mercy,
00:35:35but not to receive it." Then he pulls out a dagger and he stabs himself to death right in front of
00:35:41the enemy consul. That's the kind of loyalty that Caesar had. Like this guy would rather die than,
00:35:48you know, be ashamed by letting his enemy spare him. Another great instance, I mean,
00:35:57the Caesar soldiers had this incredible endurance throughout all of his campaigns. They're willing
00:36:03to fight for him to the, to the death. You know, stories about soldiers getting shot in the eye,
00:36:10shot in the arm, shot in the leg, taking hundreds of blows, and then they don't leave the fight. They
00:36:14just have to be dragged away by their companions. One instance, again, later from Caesar's career,
00:36:20his, he's fighting this, this great kind of trench war, siege war with, with Pompey. There's like a
00:36:2917-mile wall that he's built around Pompey's camp to wall him into the coast in Greece. And Pompey's
00:36:36built another counter wall. So that is this dragging, dragging long siege warfare and the
00:36:41supplies are getting choked. Caesar cuts off the water to Pompey. The animals are starving and
00:36:46dying in Pompey's camp, but Caesar is even in worse straits because they've eaten. He's got a
00:36:5020,000, 30,000 men. They're, they're eating the, all the food in the area. They're like running out
00:36:57of food and they're having to go and collect weeds and bake them into these horrible, disgusting cakes
00:37:05and just eat them. And, and at some point Pompey's guys having a food and water, personally, even
00:37:12though the animals are dying, they call over to Caesar's men across the wall. They say, you know,
00:37:17"Hey Roman, getting hungry over there?" And Caesar's soldiers catapult over some of these horrible
00:37:25loaves of nasty food that they're eating, just to show what they're willing to eat. They're willing
00:37:31to like starve to death before giving up the fight. And one of these, these cakes, you know, imagine
00:37:39like a cow patty. One of these cakes is brought to Pompey, you know, his enemy, the commander. And he
00:37:45says, "Good God, we are fighting with beasts." And, and, and they go to Caesar and they say,
00:37:53"We would rather eat tree bark than surrender." And how was he able to generate that? He fights
00:38:00in the front lines with them all the time. He's, he risks his life right up, right up there with
00:38:08the centurions. He knows all the centurions in his army by name. There's like one centurion for
00:38:13every 80 men. And he's got an army of 30,000. He remembers their names. He like takes the time to
00:38:20do that. He, he also is, he's very generous with, with gifts. And what he'll do is he'll eat the
00:38:34same food that they eat. I don't know if he ate those cow patties, but I imagine he did because
00:38:38he had this habit of like, if, if the, if the olive oil was rancid and there was good olive oil, but
00:38:45the troops were eating the bad olive oil, he would eat the bad olive oil. If his, if his troops are
00:38:49sleeping in the, on the ground, if his officer corps there, you know, he's always going around
00:38:54like lightning speed, blitzing around campaigns. And often they have to stay in weird places. You
00:39:01know, if his officers are sleeping on the ground, he'll sleep on the ground. He'll give a good one
00:39:05bed. We'll give it to the weakest of us, which is not me, you know? So he's, he's always there with
00:39:11them. But he's also, he's very lavish with these guys too. Like he, his, his, what he does, he does
00:39:24amass a lot of money when he's conquering Gaul, for example, but it's always only to give it to his
00:39:32friends, to give it to the people of Rome, to do something with it. It's all, he always sees money
00:39:36as a tool and riches as a tool and gift as a tool to, to, to like win, to bind people closer to
00:39:45himself. Cause this is, this is where his real power lies. And this is what, where I think in general,
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00:40:57What was the relationship between him and Pompey? Because you said previously they were sort of
00:41:03loosely affiliated and then they do the triumvirate. So instead of trying to beat them, he actually
00:41:09decides to do that thing with Crassus and Pompey. What's the arc of his big enemies across his life?
00:41:17Yeah. So Pompey is, they're friendly for most of their career. And Pompey is a kind of moderate
00:41:26populist. Pompey mostly wants to, in his early career, he fights for Sulla, but soon after Sulla
00:41:35dies, Pompey doesn't, he's not really into politics that much. He mostly wants to just get himself sent
00:41:43off as commander of Rome's armies to fight all kinds of wars. Because I think that's his happy
00:41:49place. Pompey is an excellent administrator. He's great at logistics. I think he's kind of a big guy
00:41:57too. And so Caesar helps him a lot in his early career to get these extraordinary commands is what
00:42:04they call them. Like Pompey doesn't hold office until he's 35. And usually to become consul,
00:42:11which is what he becomes, you would have to have like, you know, a whole sequence of offices. But
00:42:16Pompey's just, he's just the golden boy. Pompey is, he's got this combination of charm and he's
00:42:26got this boyish look. He's got this little quiff in his hair. He kind of looks like Alexander and
00:42:31he kind of models himself off of Alexander the Great. I mean, Caesar and Pompey both are like
00:42:35Alexander, Alexander stands. But he's also got this ruthlessness to him too. They called him the kid
00:42:46butcher when he was younger. And the Romans just love this combination of cold-blooded forcefulness,
00:42:54brutality even, you know, in a controlled way, and then boyish charm, which Pompey had. But the way
00:43:02that they really get into cahoots in the first triumvirate is, so even though Caesar's kind of
00:43:12friendly with Pompey, helps him out here and there, he's not like really tight with Pompey. Who he is
00:43:22tight with is Crassus, the richest man in Rome, another fascinating figure that I did a biography
00:43:29on on the cost of glory. Crassus finances Caesar's career. He's basically the one holding the note
00:43:39for all of Caesar's colossal political debts. And there comes a point when Caesar is ready to run
00:43:46for consul that Crassus has a problem and Pompey has a lot of problems that they can't get solved
00:43:53in the Senate and in politics. Pompey's just come back from this glorious Eastern campaign. He's
00:43:59defeated this general Mithridates. He's essentially conquered Judea, and he's defiled the temple in
00:44:09Jerusalem. But he's come back glorious with a bunch of soldiers that need rewards. He wants to settle
00:44:16his soldiers. He wants the Senate to ratify all of the arrangements, the treaties that he made,
00:44:24appointing a client king here, getting a city constitution ratified there. And he's got a lot
00:44:31of interest in that materially. People sending him money and promising to support him in war or
00:44:39politics. So Pompey has a lot of needs, and it's all getting blocked by the Senate. He's just not
00:44:44that great at the political game. And by this point Pompey is sort of an outsider from the optimates,
00:44:52from the establishment conservatives who are blocking Pompey. They think he's getting too
00:44:58powerful. Caesar is nobody at this point. I mean, yeah, he's a promising young politician,
00:45:03but he's not a powerful man. So we talk about the triumvirate, but it's Caesar brokering a deal with
00:45:10Pompey. And then Crassus on the other hand has some tax breaks he wants for basically his portfolio
00:45:17companies who are equestrian tax collectors. And they can't get it through the Senate. Both Pompey
00:45:24and Crassus are outsiders to the optimum establishment. The main guy who's the kind
00:45:32of figurehead of the conservatives is this young guy Cato, who's the stoic, famously becomes Caesar's
00:45:39worst nemesis. And Caesar basically comes to these two big shots, the two big fish in Rome,
00:45:46Pompey and Crassus, richest man and then the most glorious general. He says, "You guys hate each
00:45:52other. You've hated each other for a long time. You've always been trying to smile in public when
00:45:58you're next to each other, but then stab each other in the back behind the scenes. But look,
00:46:02you both have needs. I can fix them. I can fix this. I can get your legislation passed Pompey.
00:46:09I can get your legislation passed Crassus. Support me in the consulship. And I'm going to ask for a
00:46:15favor down the line, but let's not worry about that right now." And they say, "All right."
00:46:20And so it's basically, the triumvirate is Caesar brokering this deal between these two top guys,
00:46:25which is a great, that's a great strategy I think. If you're down here and there's
00:46:30men up here that have a need to help find a way to help them out. And the biggest thing that's
00:46:35blocking each of them really is each other. Crassus is pushing the Senate to not ratify
00:46:43Pompey's legislation. Pompey is going to use his clients to push against Crassus. So making peace
00:46:48between the two of them. And it was a pretty good relationship for a long time. And once Caesar gets
00:46:54elected consul, his dear, dear daughter, Julia, his one child up to that point, he marries her off
00:47:04to Pompey the Great. And he becomes Pompey's father-in-law, even though he's a younger man
00:47:09somewhat. And by all accounts, that marriage was not just a political marriage, but it became
00:47:15a very loving relationship. And so, you know, they had this long connection,
00:47:23long before the Civil War, that made them mortal enemies of each other, which I think is what makes
00:47:28it kind of even more tragic and bitter. And then how do Pompey and Caesar end up at war?
00:47:36Well, that's a long story, I guess. But in sum, when Caesar, how it all happens, how this breakdown
00:47:47happens is when Caesar goes off, when he finishes his consulship, he gets Pompey and Crassus to
00:47:57support him, to have himself sent off to Gaul. So far, you know, Caesar hasn't had his Alexander
00:48:05moment. This is his chance to do some real world-changing conquest. And he spends the years,
00:48:15'59 is the first triumvirate, so he spends the years '58 through '52 conquering Gaul. And Rome
00:48:24controls a little strip along the coast. Gaul is France, of course. But the Gauls, the Celts,
00:48:31is the other name for them. They are not just a kind of, you know, peaceable farmer,
00:48:39unsuspecting society of, you know, we just want to live our peaceful lives. Why are these Romans
00:48:45coming and conquering us? I mean, this is a confederation of incredibly warlike tribes
00:48:52who have threatened Rome on many occasions. And just in the previous generation, there was a great
00:48:58Gallic invasion that stopped by Gaius Marius. And several centuries earlier, the Gauls actually
00:49:09sacked the city of Rome, taken the only time that ever happened up to that point. So there's a real
00:49:14threat there, arguably. And we could get into how Caesar conquered Gaul, but how Pompey and Caesar
00:49:23fell out with each other. It's a long story that basically, while Caesar's away, he's absent from
00:49:31the city of Rome and from Italy for seven years, well really eight years, before the conflict
00:49:42between them breaks out. And while he's away, Crassus dies. And Crassus was a kind of fulcrum,
00:49:50balancing out Caesar and Pompey. He dies on this great Persian expedition, this campaign to invade
00:49:58not Iran, but Iraq, where the Persians were in charge. So that was the kind of like last...
00:50:06When you have three men, they can kind of balance each other out. But when it becomes two men,
00:50:11there's a polarity there that can really be inflamed. And this is exactly what
00:50:19the establishment people see, people like Cato see. Caesar has always been a revolutionary,
00:50:25in their opinion. He's always been trying to make a grab at supreme power. They had their eye on him
00:50:31since he was a young man. Sulla was right about this kid. There are as many Marius's in him.
00:50:36Pompey has been an outsider, but they see sort of late in the game after Crassus dies that if they
00:50:45can kind of court Pompey into the establishment, he's always wanted their approval. Pompey has
00:50:51always just wanted to be this glorious general, welcomed by the blue bloods, the great families,
00:50:57and they've never really had it. And so they see their chance, Cato and company.
00:51:03Let's make Pompey a respectable man. Let's make him our shield, our shield against Caesar. Because
00:51:09Caesar's going to come back at some point, and he's going to come back richer and more powerful and
00:51:14more glorious than ever, and he's going to just push us around in politics. And maybe, maybe,
00:51:20maybe he's going to try to take over the thing and make himself a monarch, which I think was a
00:51:24self-fulfilling prophecy. That wasn't really his intent at that point. But basically they say,
00:51:28Caesar, it's like 51 BC at this point. Caesar's been in Gaul for eight years. He's got so many
00:51:39well-trained legions. And basically his enemies are saying, we're not going to let you come back
00:51:49except under circumstances where you will face accountability, prosecution potentially,
00:51:58for all of the bad things you did in your earlier career, including when you were consul.
00:52:03And they basically, long story short, they kind of play Pompey and see, especially kind of get into
00:52:10Pompey's head and play him off of Caesar in this gradual shift of alliances. And importantly,
00:52:17Caesar's daughter, Julia, Pompey's, the love of Pompey's life by all accounts, she dies in
00:52:26childbirth in '54. And that was like the link that held the final tether that held them together.
00:52:35And after that, the civil war. Because otherwise there would have been
00:52:39some leverage over Caesar. We have your daughter. Oh yeah. I hadn't thought about that, but I think
00:52:45they couldn't have gotten Pompey's head because, you know, they would have had a Caesar's grandson,
00:52:51Pompey's son would have bound them together. It was a boy that was born, that died soon after
00:52:56his mother died. So I think that it wasn't an obvious fit for Pompey to be their shield,
00:53:05their man. He'd always been an outsider and Caesar could have kind of kept him loyal. It's very hard
00:53:12when you're in France and this is all happening in Rome, but Caesar has a lot of lieutenants,
00:53:17really, you know, men of letters trying to kind of keep the peace and keep up his contacts in Rome.
00:53:22But if he had been able to be there in person, he believed he could have settled the seas and
00:53:28won Pompey back over. And this is one of the things after the war broke out that he kept trying over
00:53:33and over again, like, let's just meet Pompey. The civil war?
00:53:35Yeah, the civil war. Let's just meet. Let's work this all out.
00:53:39But he didn't want to? Yeah, Pompey didn't want to at that point.
00:53:42He'd already hardened his heart. He was supposed to be, Pompey was supposed to be one of the
00:53:45greatest generals ever, right? And he did not outnumber Caesar as well?
00:53:50Yeah, he greatly did. Pompey was brilliant in the civil war. He defeated Sertorius. He conquered the
00:53:58pirates in like three months earlier in his career. I mean, he's a brilliant administrator.
00:54:04Some people think he's overrated as a general. I mean, he was really good, but I think Caesar
00:54:09was a better general. Evidently. Evidently. But he definitely had, by the look of it,
00:54:17all the advantages. When Caesar invades Italy, he crosses the Rubicon. You know, Pompey has
00:54:23a lot of legions on paper, but they're fresh recruits.
00:54:28What's the story of crossing the Rubicon? Yeah.
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00:55:34join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. I mean, it's something that I've
00:55:43heard people say all the time. It's a Rubicon moment, crossing of the Rubicon. I have no idea
00:55:48what that means. I don't know the story. I don't understand why it's significant. I don't know what
00:55:53it's supposed to symbolize. Yeah. So there's a kind of a complicated buildup, a standoff, you know,
00:56:01everybody's always kind of ratcheting up their demands as Caesar's like, I want to come back to
00:56:05Rome without prosecution. And the Senate's like over our dead bodies. You know, concessions going
00:56:13back and forth, being rejected. And so as this is all going on, Caesar's getting his armies ready.
00:56:21He doesn't want to fight a civil war. I think he's, you know, and he always said that. And I think it's
00:56:25right. Because he's just come back from Gaul. Yeah. He's just come back from Gaul. His seven-year
00:56:30campaign, eight-year campaign, straight into a civil war. Right. Basically, he's at war from 58 BC until
00:56:3745 BC, almost constantly. I mean, the energy of the man. And he's got two advantages. So basically,
00:56:48he's got, I think he's got 10 legions at this point, something like 40,000. But they're all
00:56:52kind of strung out over Gaul and forts. They're not close. He's got one legion with him on the border,
00:56:58the legal border between Italy and basically Northern Italy. What we call Northern Italy
00:57:05today was what they would call Cisalpine Gaul. It's not like Italy proper. And if you
00:57:13lead an army into Italy without disbanding it, it's like technically an act of war. Like,
00:57:22consuls are supposed to disband their armies before they re-enter Italy. And so the border between
00:57:29Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper is the Rubicon River. It's this insignificant stream near Ravenna
00:57:37in Northern Italy on the Adriatic coast. And so Caesar's camped at Ravenna and he
00:57:49is negotiating with the Senate, envoys going back and forth, back and forth. It's not looking good.
00:57:55Caesar doesn't want to fight a war, but he's going to be ready. He's not about to pretend like this
00:58:00couldn't happen. I think Pompey wasn't really ready for it. So he's got one legion there with him at
00:58:08Ravenna. Not a lot of men. 400, 4,500 men or so. And at this final moment the negotiations break
00:58:20down and the Senate declares him a public enemy. They say Caesar is, you know, he's not responding
00:58:28to our demands. We've had enough. And they officially basically declare war on him. And the
00:58:34moment he gets that advice, the very next day, actually he was, he knew what he was going to do
00:58:42the next day, but he pretends like nothing's happening on that day. He's going to go about
00:58:48his business in Ravenna. He goes to the gladiatorial shows. He inspects his troops. He has dinner with
00:58:53his friends. It's just a normal day. No big deal. But he secretly sends the order out to his troops
00:58:59to muster. And he finds his way to the Rubicon. He apparently like gets lost in the woods because
00:59:06it's dark. I mean there's all these kind of elaborate tales about this. And one of the
00:59:11ancient sources, not Plutarch who's a little bit more sober, one of the ancient sources Suetonius
00:59:17I think it is says, you know, as he stood there before the Rubicon he saw a great winged figure
00:59:25blowing a trumpet. It's like the gods are like calling him to war. It's like the Valkyries or
00:59:30something. But what he says is he's there with his officers. And he knows if he crosses that river
00:59:40that he's declaring war back on the Senate. And so he says let the die be cast.
00:59:53And the famous words, there's actually a quote from one of his favorite dramas or a comedy from
01:00:00Menander, like let the die be cast. As one does when one is entering upon a highly risky thing
01:00:07with uncertain results as Plutarch says. And so he crosses the Rubicon very quickly and within a day
01:00:15he has just blitzed down and captured a city in Italy proper. And he just he has one of his
01:00:24advantages as I was saying is he loves to be underestimated. And he's really good at getting
01:00:30himself underestimated. And they didn't think he would do it. And he only goes into Italy with
01:00:40one legion. And the Senate has like 10 legions in Italy. I mean he's vastly outnumbered. But
01:00:46everybody else arrives really quickly. The other advantage is he's really fast. And so he blitzes
01:00:51through Italy and pretty soon Pompey and the Senate decide they've got to get out of there. They've got
01:00:57to rethink their grand strategy. And they go to Greece to basically muster up and collect a bunch
01:01:05of ships and a bunch of troops in the east to come back and reinvade Italy and destroy Caesar. But it
01:01:10doesn't work out that way. Why? Well they were hoping, they knew that Caesar didn't have any
01:01:17ships. Basically he doesn't have troop transports. So he's not able to cross over and catch them and
01:01:24take the war to Greece. He's not able to draw on his great advantage which is speed. And they're
01:01:30hoping to essentially kind of blockade Italy and starve him out. Rome, if you blockade Rome,
01:01:37the people will starve quickly because they're getting the majority of their grain from places
01:01:43like Sicily, North Africa, not yet Egypt. But it's the biggest city in the world at that point,
01:01:51at least in the west. A million people maybe. And you can't get that much grain in from the
01:01:56countryside on carts. So they bring it in on ships. So they're hoping to basically starve
01:02:01the people of Rome and make Caesar really unpopular. And so he doesn't have ships. He
01:02:08can't go catch them. So there's also Pompey's got guys in Spain that start up holding out against
01:02:17Caesar. And Caesar only controls Italy and Gaul. And so he has to go fight a war in Spain first
01:02:24before he can go catch Pompey in Greece. And basically by leaving Italy rather than settling
01:02:32it then and there, his enemies are essentially saying they're willing to make this a world war.
01:02:38Which is exactly what happens. There's a war fought in Spain first. Caesar comes and he
01:02:45defeats them in Greece. Then he goes to Egypt. There's another war there. Then there's another
01:02:53war in Asia Minor. Then there's another war in North Africa. And then there's the final kind of
01:02:57embers of the war in Spain. I mean, he visits every single province in the Roman Empire and carries
01:03:03war to almost all of them. Wow. Yeah. You mentioned Egypt there. What's the story of Caesar and
01:03:10Cleopatra? Yeah. Well, so fast forward, you know, Caesar's first campaign is in Spain. His second
01:03:20campaign in the civil war is in Greece where he defeats Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus,
01:03:27which is the really should have been the last battle, should have been the decisive battle.
01:03:32And Pompey flees and makes his way to Egypt. They don't know where he went for a while. But
01:03:42Caesar finally figures out he's gone to Egypt because Pompey has friends there. And as soon
01:03:49as he gets on shore, actually doesn't ever reach the shore, he basically comes up with his warships
01:03:56and the Egyptians say, oh, yes, we're really glad to see you, Pompey. Come ashore. We've got the
01:04:03whole reception ready for you. Just get in this little boat. And, you know, there's reefs that a
01:04:10big ship like yours would probably founder on. So just trust us. We're going to get you in this
01:04:14little boat and take you to shore. And, you know, Pompey gets on the boat. He probably knows what's
01:04:24going to happen, but he has no hope at this point. He's just crestfallen. He's dispirited. He thought
01:04:30he was going to win against Caesar. It was an upset victory at Pharsalus. And I think it just kind of
01:04:36shattered him. And I think there's, I'm trying to remember exactly how they frame it. There's a
01:04:41moment where the boat captain is like, come on Pompey. There's nothing to be worried about. You
01:04:45can trust us. And Pompey said, you know, if I were worried about my life, I would not get in this boat.
01:04:55Like, I mean, I think he knew because on that boat, they murdered him. In front of the eyes of his son,
01:05:09in front of the eyes of his wife, in front of the eyes of all of his friends. Once they get a little
01:05:12away from the warship, he never makes it to shore. They murder him. Who's they? The Egyptians. So who
01:05:19is they? What's going on in Egypt right now is there's a civil war happening. Egypt is ruled
01:05:27at this point by the Ptolemies, who are a Greco-Macedonian ruling class.
01:05:34Their capital is Alexandria, which is a great Greek city founded by Alexander the Great.
01:05:39He's everywhere, isn't he? And so there's a conflict going on between these two, like,
01:05:47teenage, one is a teenager, one's a 20-year-old, like, siblings of the pharaoh who died. You know,
01:05:55it's funny to think of these Greeks as pharaohs, but that's what they would have called them in Egypt.
01:05:59And Pompey was hoping that all the favors he did for them earlier would ingratiate
01:06:06him to the Egyptian regime, but they basically saw Caesar won at Pharsalus. He's probably going
01:06:15to be the winner in this war, even though it might go on for a while. What would make Caesar really
01:06:20happy is if we just killed Pompey and presented Caesar with Pompey's head and said, "Hey, we did
01:06:27you a favor. And if we did that, you know, if we let Pompey live, he's probably going to try to raise
01:06:35an army and try to use Egypt as a base and drag on the war. And we're going to have Roman troops just
01:06:41ripping this place apart." In the middle of our own war. "In the middle of our own war,
01:06:45it's going to be just a total mess." So they kind of nip it in the bud. And it kind of made sense.
01:06:54I think what would have made more sense is for them to just arrest Pompey because Caesar wanted
01:06:58Pompey alive, actually. He kept on pardoning his enemies during the civil war. Yes, he wanted to
01:07:04pardon Pompey. He pardoned enemy after enemy. Demetrius, Patreus. I mean, you could list names
01:07:13and names. He's always sparing his enemies. Some would say that he was too kind to his enemies
01:07:18because they end up assassinating him. We'll get to that maybe. And Caesar also knows that if Pompey,
01:07:26if he captures Pompey and spares him, if he could just get in the same room face to face with this
01:07:32man that he hasn't seen in the better part of 10 years, that they could work something out. He could
01:07:39convince Pompey to get the troops to stand down, to get everybody to stand down. There's no way that
01:07:45this war could carry on if Pompey and Caesar come to an agreement finally. That's what he really
01:07:51wanted. He wanted to make peace. He didn't want to fight this war, but he was willing to fight it
01:07:57if they wanted to fight it with him. And so when he lands ashore, they present him with the signet
01:08:03ring of Pompey. This has a great, I think it had a lion on it. It was unmistakable. And then they
01:08:10give him the head of Pompey. Here you are. Just in case you weren't sure whose ring that is.
01:08:15Came from the hand of the head. Do you know whose ring that is? Do you know? Do you want to guess?
01:08:21There it is. And that's the second time that he's said to have cried. He was a consul of Rome.
01:08:31I think he cried because this was his friend. It really was his friend. And
01:08:40well, the cynics will say that there were crocodile tears, that Caesar was secretly happy.
01:08:48But I think that's totally false. He really wanted Pompey alive. And I think he did still kind of
01:08:53hold out hope that they would be able to come to an agreement. Of course, Caesar would be the
01:08:57big man now and Pompey would be kind of, his career would be over, let's be frank,
01:09:01after losing the Civil War. Maybe he could go into a dignified exile. But this was the father of his
01:09:08son before his son died. This was the man who took care of his daughter. They had this really
01:09:14personal relationship. And so Caesar was actually quite pissed. And he ended up killing all the men
01:09:24who called the hit on Pompey. Why? Because they were basically the sibling of the rival Ptolemies
01:09:35that's controlling Alexandria is this kid Ptolemy. Ptolemy the 13th, I think. He's like 15.
01:09:44And it's actually, he's being kind of ruled by this general that he has and this court eunuch,
01:09:57as one has in Egypt. One needs eunuchs to do things. And one of them was the kind of
01:10:04Chamberlain and was kind of pushing the kid around and calling the shots. And so
01:10:11the way that the war goes, basically Ptolemy and Cleopatra are, Cleopatra is the other sibling,
01:10:21I forgot to mention that. She's off in the wilderness, who knows where she is when Caesar
01:10:27arrives. Caesar is welcomed with kind of, you know, fake smiles by the Egyptians who just want
01:10:33the Romans gone. Egypt has been, it's not a Roman province, it's important to understand.
01:10:40It's a Roman client kingdom. They're independent. They have their own tradition. They want to keep
01:10:47it that way. Alexandria is the most glorious city in the Mediterranean. Rome might be bigger, but
01:10:53it's a dirty place. Alexandria is a city of marble and culture. They've got the library. They've got,
01:10:59you know, Alexander's tomb there. And they just want the Romans to kind of leave them to their
01:11:04own devices, maybe be allies, but basically they want Caesar gone as soon as possible.
01:11:09And Ptolemy represents the kind of more Egyptian independence party in Egypt and Alexandria. He's
01:11:23loved by the people actually. Cleopatra is actually the unpopular one. And that's exactly the kind of
01:11:28person that Caesar likes to support. Because the story is, he's been there for a couple of weeks.
01:11:37This is after he went to go and find Pompey. Yeah. Finds head and hand. Yeah. And sticks about.
01:11:45Yeah. He's sticking around in Egypt and Alexandria, trying to figure out what he's going to do.
01:11:50There's a war going on there. And anytime the Romans see a war amongst people on the fringes,
01:11:57they see an opportunity to come in and intervene. And that's a way to kind of extend your power and
01:12:03maybe end up controlling the place directly. Egypt is the most, by far the richest
01:12:07kingdom, land, area in all of the Mediterranean. Why? What have they got? So for one thing,
01:12:15they've got the Nile, which, you know, you can like eat an apple and spit the seeds on the ground and
01:12:19just get wonderful fruit. I mean, it's incredibly fertile because of the flooding of the Nile.
01:12:24They've also got very, very rich mines, like mineral resources in the Eastern desert,
01:12:32especially. So, you know, exotic marble, porphyry, gems, you know, agate, amethyst, emerald. I don't
01:12:39know what the difference between any of these things is, frankly. And they've got a lot of gold
01:12:44too in those mines. There's still gold in Egypt. They're still mining gold there. So it's incredibly
01:12:50rich. Alexandria is a city of marble and gold. And it ends up later becoming Rome's breadbasket.
01:12:57You know, just you can feed the entire, you can feed a lot of people from the Nile.
01:13:03So, and Romans have kind of like wanted, there's, you know, Pompey wanted to intervene in Egypt.
01:13:11There was another conflict with the fat king that died, the father of Cleopatra and Ptolemy.
01:13:19And people were hoping to pluck that cherry, but it just never worked out. Like, Egypt is kind of,
01:13:25despite, it's kind of incredible that Egypt was still independent at that point because Rome,
01:13:30the Roman, kind of greedy Roman governors had just been circling it like vultures and they just hadn't
01:13:37had their chance yet. Now Caesar has a chance, you know. But they don't want that to happen.
01:13:42So Cleopatra enters the story at this point. Caesar's in the royal palace.
01:13:50And I don't know if you've seen that movie with Elizabeth Taylor, the Cleopatra movie.
01:13:56So the way that they portray it in the movie is not that far off, but basically Caesar's there in
01:14:04a study in the library or in the palace. And a servant comes in with a rug and he's like,
01:14:13"Caesar, we have a gift for you." And he says, "All right, well, what's in the rug?" And he tries to
01:14:19threatens to poke at it. But basically, Cleopatra sneaks herself in on a little raft and is carried
01:14:29in as though she's a mattress, as like a rolled up mattress is what Plutarch says.
01:14:34Someone's got a yoga mat under their arm, but it's secretly Cleopatra.
01:14:37Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, it's presented to Caesar as a gift.
01:14:42Jared, chat chippy to this image. I want to see what it looks like.
01:14:45Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great scene from the Cleopatra. It's a rug in the movie,
01:14:51which is a great movie. And the most expensive movie ever when it was made.
01:14:55No way.
01:14:56Actually, yeah.
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01:16:12Okay, so she gets carried in. So she gets carried in and, you know, she knows how to make an interest
01:16:19too. From that moment, Caesar sees like, all right, this is another show person like myself.
01:16:27She's 20 years old. She's the oldest of the siblings. Speaks all kinds of languages.
01:16:35Obviously she knows, she's a native Greek speaker. She speaks Egyptian and Latin and, you know,
01:16:41Syrian and on and on. She's very, very charming and clever. She might not have led with her looks,
01:16:50but you'll hear stories that Cleopatra was actually kind of ugly and she was, you know, more of a great
01:16:57conversation part. But she was, she was beautiful. Like she, maybe she wasn't like a 10, but she was
01:17:02an eight at least. Yeah, that's a great image. See if you can do Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor rug scene.
01:17:11See if that turns up some results. And she had a knack for power. Like she knows how to play the
01:17:23heartstrings of a man. She's, she's got, she knows Caesar's weakness. Caesar has his weakness for
01:17:33smart high status women. He's on his third wife now, but she's back in Rome. Yeah,
01:17:39yeah. You want to play it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rug is such a delicate weave.
01:17:43If I may untie it for you. Turn it over first. But the rug is now right tied up. I understand,
01:17:51but I wanted the wrong side up. Or should I flip it over with my sword? No, no.
01:17:55I find one can tell more about the quality of merchandise by examining the backside first.
01:18:08All hail Cleopatra, kindred of Horus and Ra, beloved of the moon and sun, daughter to Isis,
01:18:19and of upper and lower Egypt, queen.
01:18:21A damsel.
01:18:29So yeah, she knows how to make an entrance, right? It was something like that. That's not far off.
01:18:41And she also knows how to play the kind of wound. I mean, I think Elizabeth Taylor does that really
01:18:48well. Oh, my back. Oh, oh, let me help you up, madam. And so basically Cleopatra wins him over
01:18:58very quickly. And because she does this, she's sort of on the losing side of the war currently.
01:19:04But Caesar says, we can reconcile you guys. I'll be your mediator. And you know, Ptolemy
01:19:15hates this idea or rather his eunuch and his general hate this idea because they know.
01:19:20It's nice that the eunuch has got such say here. Let's listen to the guy that chopped his dick off.
01:19:27Yeah. Well, he's a very learned man. You know, he has other talents.
01:19:30Well, he's got nothing else to do.
01:19:31Right. And you know, I think, I don't know how they did this in Egypt, but often like
01:19:38it would be the parents that did it to like.
01:19:40To an offering.
01:19:41Yeah. Promote the kid. And yeah, there's something really.
01:19:46You got to do it with the second one. If you do it with the first one, you're like,
01:19:48we don't have another one. That's the end of the bloodline.
01:19:50Yeah. Yeah.
01:19:51Okay.
01:19:51But if he does well, you know, he could do great things for his nephews at least.
01:19:57Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:20:00There's no way to make that a good deal. So anyway, Caesar basically offers to moderate between them
01:20:10and the offer is rejected. And long story short, he ends up picking Cleopatra. And Ptolemy ends up.
01:20:20Who's the younger brother.
01:20:22The younger brother.
01:20:23Yep.
01:20:23Yeah. He ends up sort of getting his hand forced by his general Achillas and the eunuch. And they try
01:20:34to have another like coup attempt against Caesar. Caesar defeats them and the boy is apparently
01:20:43drowned in the Nile in a boating.
01:20:45The younger brother.
01:20:45Yeah, yeah. Like not, not like he's murdered, but there was a battle and he was just not found.
01:20:51Probably drowned in the Nile. It was.
01:20:55Tight family with the Ptolemies then.
01:20:56I mean, they are always trying to murder each other and one up each other. And sure enough,
01:21:02like Cleopatra has his younger sister too, Arsinoe. And she tries to revolt and Caesar
01:21:09crushes her as well and actually captures her and takes her back to Rome and marches her in the
01:21:14triumph.
01:21:14Was there any suggestion that Cleopatra and Caesar got it on?
01:21:17Oh, more than a suggestion. Like they become lovers, like for real. And they have a kid too,
01:21:25which is fascinating to think about the ramifications of this. But so yeah, basically
01:21:33Caesar's never going to turn down a good offer from a high status woman. And you know, she's
01:21:40a living goddess by Egyptian tradition.
01:21:43Daughter of Isis.
01:21:44Daughter of Isis. Not just daughter of Isis, but living embodiment of Isis. Just like she
01:21:50said, there's a kind of, you know, fully God, fully human sort of thing going on with the
01:21:58pharaohs. Son and kind of like divine avatar of Amun-Ra. Or is it Osiris with the pharaohs?
01:22:08So anyway, she's worshiped as a divinity while she's alive. There's great reliefs. So she
01:22:16gets portrayed as a Greek to her Greek subjects, as the Ptolemies do. Like, you know, looks
01:22:21like a normal human, kind of classical statue face. And then there are reliefs of her portrayed
01:22:26as like an Egyptian hieroglyphic lady too. Might be worth pulling out.
01:22:30Jared, I want to see this.
01:22:32Cleopatra, Egyptian relief, something like that. Really interesting place. You know, Ptolemaic
01:22:40Alexandria.
01:22:43It's blending two things together. It feels like the phasing out of the old world and the
01:22:47phasing in of what would sort of become. It's what then would be more cosmopolitan, what
01:22:51then would be built more around rhetoric, philosophy, what then would have been seen as modern, and
01:22:58sort of this sort of passing off. But you've got the, both of them are happening at the
01:23:01same time. And I guess it...
01:23:03There you go. That's her, and I think that's her and her brother. Oh, that's her son,
01:23:07Cesarean. So there's Cleopatra on the left. And the other one is the son of Julius Caesar.
01:23:16That's their kid, Cesarean.
01:23:17No way. The image on the left. Open that up, Jared.
01:23:20There you go.
01:23:21Wow. Yeah. So that's proper 3000 BC luck in...
01:23:28Right. Like that you could, that could be like, scratched into a pyramid. You wouldn't know
01:23:32the difference.
01:23:33Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. And there's a guy in the bottom corner. Look at how huge that
01:23:37is.
01:23:37Really big.
01:23:38Holy shit. And that's the son...
01:23:40That's the, you know, illegitimate son of Cleopatra.
01:23:44Not that illegitimate. I mean, he's 15 feet tall.
01:23:47Looks pretty legit to me.
01:23:47Yeah, exactly. What was he called?
01:23:49Cesarean was his nickname, Little Caesar. Yeah. Yes. He started a great pizza chain and didn't
01:23:57go so well.
01:23:57And then he became a pizza magnate.
01:24:00Saw where the real money was.
01:24:02Yeah, yeah, yeah. But his official name was, I think, like, Ptolemy XIV. You know, like,
01:24:10every single frickin' person in that dynasty is named Ptolemy, if they're a boy, or either
01:24:17Cleopatra or Arsinoe. And there's not a lot of names. I think that might have something
01:24:21to do with this idea that, like, you continue to be the embodiment of the same god through
01:24:26the generations. So you, like, have to take on that dynastic.
01:24:29You know Dali's story? Salvador Dali?
01:24:31I don't know if I do.
01:24:32So his parents had a son about a year or so, a year and a half before Dali was born. No,
01:24:40sorry, two years before Dali was born, who was also called Salvador. And that son died.
01:24:47And then they had another son and called him the same name. And when he was age two, took
01:24:54him to his dead brother's grave and said, "This is who you are. This is you. You are the
01:24:59reincarnation of your dead brother."
01:25:01Wow.
01:25:02It's just you. It's you again. So that was the start of his life. Dali's fucking fascinating.
01:25:07But yeah, that was how he was sort of brought into the world as this weird recreation of
01:25:15a dead baby.
01:25:16That is amazing.
01:25:18Yeah, cool, eh? All right, so what was Caesar's last night like? You mentioned he's accumulated
01:25:24a bunch of enemies, but maybe not shaken the Etch-A-Sketch enough to actually get rid of
01:25:28them all. He keeps pardoning them. He's maybe erroneously deciding to be forgiving. What
01:25:36does the final day of Caesar's life look like?
01:25:39So the lead up to this is important because Caesar is, you know, he knows that there are
01:25:51assassination plots. There were even assassination plots 18 months earlier when he got back to
01:25:56Rome finally from the African campaign where he defeated Cato and friends. And Cicero mentions
01:26:05this in his speech. He gives a speech in front of Caesar. He's like, "Caesar, I have heard
01:26:11it has been said that you tell people I have lived long enough either for nature or for
01:26:17glory," because he knows about assassination attempts and he dismisses them. He says, "You
01:26:22know what? If they want to kill me, I've had a good run."
01:26:26How old is he at this point?
01:26:27He is, so this is 46 when he gets back, so he would be 54, born in 100 BC. And 44 is the
01:26:36ides of March when he dies. So that's how old he ends up being. But I mean, you know,
01:26:42that's pretty old for a Roman. He's had a pretty good run so far. But he dismisses these plots.
01:26:55And you know, the information just keeps coming in. Sure and sure, people are trying to kill
01:27:00you, Caesar. Can you please up your security detail? Can you please give yourself a bodyguard?
01:27:08Like, we're begging you. His friends are begging him. And he says, "Not going to do that."
01:27:14That's what tyrants do. And sure enough, this is the kind of classic mold of how tyrants seize power
01:27:21by sisterhoods at Athens. I mean, you can multiply a lot of examples. You get a bodyguard first. You
01:27:25say, "Oh no, there's threats against my life. I need a bodyguard, citizens. I just want to be
01:27:29your servant." And then that's how you seize power. And Caesar knows that that's the pattern. He's not
01:27:34going to do it. And it comes to the point where people are continuing to bring in names of
01:27:40potential conspirators. And Caesar says, "I've had it. Anybody bringing me more talk about an
01:27:49assassination plot is going to face consequences." He's like, "You're going to get fired if I hear
01:27:54another about you bringing me an assassination plot." He doesn't want to hear it. I think that's because
01:28:00he didn't want to rule over a subjugated, you know, cowed populace. He wanted to rule over free Romans.
01:28:12And he didn't want a police state. He wanted people to feel free to say whatever they
01:28:19wanted to say. This is clearly demonstrated by a lot of his actions. You know, people are
01:28:24criticizing him. They're making jokes about that Caesar's expense. You know, there's certain lines
01:28:28that you don't cross, but he doesn't want to up his security detail. The very last night,
01:28:36the 14th of March, he, you know, it's a normal day of business, busy day at work. He's got this
01:28:47incredible crushing burden of, you know, cases to hear and petitions and laws needing passing. And
01:28:55he's also preparing for this great expedition to Parthia. He's going to avenge Crassus. Crassus
01:29:02was killed by the Parthians. They captured Roman eagles about 10 years earlier. So he's just trying
01:29:08to get through the next three days to get out of town and go back to, I mean, Caesar was good at
01:29:16politics, but I think better at war. I think he's better at war. He's equally as good at war. It's
01:29:22probably a happier place for him. Even in BC times, people were still drowning in admin is what you're
01:29:27saying. Oh yeah. I mean, like the load that he's carrying. Yeah. It's a universal problem. Once they
01:29:35invent writing, you know, it's over. Fucking game over. Yeah. It's the email inbox of ancient Rome.
01:29:40Yeah. And it's funny you should mention email. So, on the last night, Caesar is having dinner.
01:29:49As you know, he has a like formal dinner every night. There's like nine seats of the typical
01:29:54Roman feast. You circle around on couches around the central table and everybody kind of lies down.
01:30:00It's weird, but that's how they did it. Horrible for the digestion. It's horrible for the digestion,
01:30:06but one advantage is everybody has to have the same conversation because you're all pointed
01:30:11toward the center of the circle. Yeah. As opposed to an elongated table where this group over there
01:30:16is speaking like that and this group. Yeah. That's interesting. I remember, was it, who is it that
01:30:23suggested that the size of glasses of wine were getting too big around the table? Was it maybe
01:30:30Aristotle? And he made a special kind of cup. And if you overfilled the cup, the entire thing drained.
01:30:37Oh yeah. Basically his problem was that he wanted to have these really interesting conversations
01:30:42at dinner and people were just getting too drunk. This is before coffee came around. And there's
01:30:47this interesting story. Before Newtonic. Before Newtonic. I mean, they should have had the
01:30:50nootropic toothpicks. There's that big transition was in sort of the middle ages in the UK where
01:31:01Britain started to go from just having ale houses to having coffee shops as well. And this is a boon
01:31:08in innovation because people aren't just pissed all the time. They're just not drunk as much.
01:31:15They're stimulated and they're going and getting stuff done. Anyway, I think it's Aristotle that
01:31:18had this issue. And his problem was I want to go to dinner and have all of these interesting
01:31:23conversations, but everybody drinks their wine so fast that the conversation degenerates into
01:31:30nothingness. So his suggestion was to his host to make the cup smaller. He says people will
01:31:36drink the same number, but they'll not realize that they're having less. And it's supposed to be,
01:31:40I think it's like an Aristotelian cup. Jared, do a Chachupy tea search. What was the ancient cup
01:31:48that was made to ensure people didn't overfill it? Maybe Aristotle. And it's this interesting point
01:31:58that, okay, well, if we reduce it down, it means that the conversational quality will be a bit
01:32:01better. But I suppose if you're sat in a, you're probably thinking of the Pythagorean cup. Pythagoras.
01:32:06Yeah. Also called the cup of greed or greedy cup. It's a special drinking cup from ancient Greece
01:32:10design so that if you fill it past a certain level, it empties completely. Isn't that cool?
01:32:15That's brilliant. Oh, because it's a siphon. Yes. It's got a hidden siphon inside the central
01:32:19column. If you pour wine below the mark line, the cup works normally. If you pour above the line,
01:32:23the siphon activates and the entire cup drains out through the bottom of the stem. For someone who
01:32:27tries to take more than their fair share, they end up with nothing. Legend says Pythagoras used it to
01:32:33teach moderation and fairness among workers or students. And the lesson is greed causes you to
01:32:37lose everything. Isn't that fucking cool? That's so Greek. Isn't that sick? Moderation. Yeah.
01:32:43Wise man Pythagoras. Well, you know, it's funny because, I mean, in Plato's symposium that
01:32:49they decide to pour the wine, they pour water in the wine often for moderation so that
01:32:55you drink less. But they wanted to pour the wine really, really light that night because they
01:33:00all got smashed the night before and they want to have like a chill conversation that night. But Cato,
01:33:04Caesar's nemesis, was actually known to be a bit of a tippler. Like he would,
01:33:11he would often show up to the Senate kind of smelling of wine. Yep. And, but that would be
01:33:18because he liked to drink for a long time having philosophical conversations. And it was, it was
01:33:24this kind of conversation that, that was happening, Caesar's last night. So Caesar is at the house of
01:33:33Lepidus and he invites a number of people to be among the nine. Lepidus is a good, good trusted
01:33:42friend of his. And one of them is Decimus Brutus. This is not the Brutus that appears in Shakespeare's
01:33:49play Julius Caesar, you know, and you too Brutus. It's a different Brutus, but actually was a Brutus
01:33:54that was closer to Caesar in point of fact, historically, funny enough. So does Shakespeare
01:33:58get that confused, or does he amalgamate the two on purpose? Plutarch gets it confused. This is like
01:34:03one of the, one of the kind of flaws of Plutarch's biography of Caesar. He thinks that Marcus Brutus,
01:34:12who is actually not, I mean, close to Caesar, he is, because he's the son of Caesar's favorite
01:34:19girlfriend, Servilia. But Decimus Brutus was a lot closer to him because he was a lieutenant of his in
01:34:27Gaul. I mean, they're distantly related, these two Brutuses, but they're not close or anything. But
01:34:32Decimus was like naval commander against the Veneti. He's been brilliant in the civil war,
01:34:38crucial in the Battle of Marseilles. And in fact, Decimus Brutus was in his will as a second.
01:34:46Decimus is one of the men who stabbed him the very next day. He's sitting there with him at dinner the
01:34:52night before. And they're sitting there having their conversation as one does. As you know, a lot
01:35:02of final night scenes of, you know, great Romans and great Greeks are like these like philosophical
01:35:10conversations. And I think that's because they had them a lot, actually. It was very normal. And so-
01:35:16Like the last supper for Jesus, that's, I mean, there were maybe a few additions, but he was
01:35:20probably speaking like that mostly. Yeah, he was like, all right, here we go again.
01:35:24Just a Tuesday.
01:35:25So Caesar is sitting there as the conversation's going on. I find this really fascinating.
01:35:31He's doing his, clearing his inbox, actually. Because he's a busy guy, one has to. And his
01:35:41secretary is sitting there kind of feeding him letters that need to go out that he needs to sign.
01:35:46And so he's writing sincerely on them, you know, signing his name. But the way you do that in Latin,
01:35:51the custom is you write "vale," farewell. So all through the night, he's writing farewell,
01:35:59farewell, farewell on these letters. And that's what you would have done typically?
01:36:05That's what you would have done to say goodbye. But I mean, the fact that he's like filling out
01:36:09letters during dinner, I mean, this guy has got a shit ton of work to do. And he's just trying to
01:36:15get, it's brainless. He's just kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Yes. And go on, Cassius, yes.
01:36:20And I find that striking. But at some point in the night, he proposes a theme for the philosophical
01:36:30conversation that's going on. Decimus is sitting right there. What is the best kind of death?
01:36:35And the conversation goes this way and that way. Somebody brings up the example of Cyrus
01:36:44the Great, the great king of Persia who founded the Persian Empire. Xenophon says, doesn't he,
01:36:50that Cyrus made all these arrangements before his death that he wanted to be buried in this way and
01:36:56this should happen and so forth after he was gone. And of course, Caesar had read this book,
01:37:02Xenophon's "Cyropaedia." And Caesar's turn comes to him and he says, "That sounds horrible.
01:37:09I don't want a long, slow death. The best kind of death is one that comes sudden, swift, and
01:37:17unexpected." You know, what is Decimus thinking at that moment? But that's well attested. That's what
01:37:26the conversation was about at some point that night. Prophetic. Yeah, man. And then, you know,
01:37:31he goes home late and bad dreams is, you know, if you've heard the, read the Shakespeare play,
01:37:38there's all these omens. You know, his wife has this dream that she's, she gets him up in the
01:37:42middle of the night, that like wind blows open the shutters and, you know, he has to get up and
01:37:47shut them and calm down Calpurnia. And she had this dream that she was like holding the bloody Caesar
01:37:54and like looking at their house as it's like burning and collapsing. There's all these, you know,
01:37:59birds are acting weird. So the story goes, I mean, a lot of these omens typically happen around great
01:38:06events in the ancient sources, but, you know, who knows? I mean, I mean, the, the, the murder of a
01:38:11guy like Julius Caesar really is a kind of, like if ever a death is a rip in the fabric of reality,
01:38:17you know, like that, that comes pretty close. So that was how he spent his last night. Very
01:38:23unsettled night. And what about the next day? So it's, I think Caesar was, he has a reputation for
01:38:35dismissing omens. He did this when he was consul. You know, his enemies are trying to obstruct him
01:38:41in the, in the assemblies. And they're saying, oh, I saw a bird flying the wrong way. And I heard
01:38:50thunder. I heard thunder. It's a blue sky. And he's like, I didn't hear you though. Let's get on with
01:38:56business. You know, he's just ignores omens for most of his career. Sometimes the omens are bad.
01:39:00And he's like, let's fight the battle anyway. And he wins. But all these, you know, his wife is
01:39:07saying, I had a bad dream. I don't have a good feeling about this. And ancient omens, I think,
01:39:12are often kind of, it's a system that's in place. So before you, you go into a campaign,
01:39:21you, or before you go into battle, you sacrifice to the god, you know, you cut open a piglet or a
01:39:30whatever it is, and you read the entrails, or you get the sacred chickens out, and you see,
01:39:35or do the sacred chickens want to eat their, their, their feed? Or are they staying in their cage?
01:39:40You know, what does this mean? It's kind of like opening up a space for intuition.
01:39:44The generals often have to make decisions. Leaders often have to make decisions.
01:39:50That could be the right decision, but to have to explain why you're making that decision is,
01:40:01would, would, would undermine the project somehow. Like, you don't, you want to have a way of
01:40:05explaining intuition. That's, that's how a lot of anthropologists explain. I think that's really
01:40:09compelling. But, so I think his wife had a bad feeling. I think he had a bad feeling at some
01:40:15point. He was apparently kind of un-, like stomach issues. It's unspecified, but he felt like out of
01:40:24sorts that morning. And he was supposed to go to the Senate. There was some business, some important
01:40:30business at hand. They did a dispute between Mark Antony and Dola Bella, blah, blah, blah. And he's
01:40:38like, maybe I don't want to go to the Senate today. I'm feeling out of sorts. My wife is telling me to
01:40:42stay home. He goes, you know, down the street. He, he lives in the Forum, the Senate's meeting about
01:40:50a mile away. He goes down the street to a buddy's house and to say hi. And they, they do a little
01:40:56sacrifice. And that sacrifice contains bad omens. You don't know the details, but like he's,
01:41:02this is really striking. So he, he decides to just stay home that day. And who shows up at his door,
01:41:09but Decimus Brutus, the guy he was having dinner with last night. He says, Caesar, I heard that you
01:41:17are listening to the, the ravings of a woman. I mean, I've never heard Caesar to be
01:41:24bothered by omens in his career. Think of all the battles that we've won after bad omens. Like,
01:41:30come on, Caesar, let's, you know, the Senate's counting on you. They, they all cleared their
01:41:33schedules. They're busy men. And, you know, you're really trying to make them feel like
01:41:38Rome is the same Rome. This is a whole other issue that, you know, he is kind of becoming this
01:41:43monarchic figure in Rome. He's getting, getting accused of wanting to make himself king. He's
01:41:49getting accused of wanting to make himself a god, which is not entirely off base. We could get to
01:41:54that, but so, you know, Decimus makes some good arguments. Come on, soldier up. He's a fellow
01:42:02soldier. And so Caesar reluctantly at first, but you know, he kind of allows himself to be persuaded
01:42:09by Decimus. And it's funny, you know, I mean, whenever Caesar goes anywhere in Rome, the crowds,
01:42:14the throngs, people are saying Caesar, kiss my baby, or can you, you know, cancel my debt,
01:42:21blah, blah, blah. But, and this is again, well attested. This happens in Shakespeare's play,
01:42:27but you know, apparently he had a client, like a friend of his whose house he had stayed at in Asia
01:42:33once. And the young man, the son of the house was in Rome studying philosophy and probably was
01:42:44connected with the other Brutus, Marcus Brutus, who was one of the ringleaders of the assassination.
01:42:48And this kid, I forget what his name is, comes up to Caesar and like, Caesar knows him and he passes
01:42:57a letter to Caesar. He says, Caesar, you have to read this urgently. Caesar's probably being
01:43:02carried on a litter, but he gets the letter to Caesar. And apparently Caesar has this in his hand
01:43:07and plans to read it, but this would have been,
01:43:10basically the guy was trying to tell him about the plot. That was very much
01:43:16in action that day. Underway. That was underway that he was walking right into.
01:43:21So Brutus went to try and encourage Caesar to leave the home to sort of question his agency and
01:43:27sovereignty and belief in himself, to remind him of what he'd done in the past in an attempt to get
01:43:32him out of the house so that he could be carried through, so that he could arrive at the place for
01:43:37the assassination. Well put. Yeah. So that was the Senate meeting that they ended up doing the deed
01:43:45at, murdering him in the Senate. And the two Brutuses, the one that he was with dinner with the
01:43:53night before was the guy who got him to come. The guy that's in his will. Incredible. And so yeah,
01:44:03he gets to the Senate house. Once again, the omens are bad. You know, as you always sacrifice and do
01:44:10some whatever you do before going into the Senate to kind of inaugurate the meeting. Consuls usually
01:44:16do this. I think Caesar's consul that year. Omens are bad, but he goes in anyway. And he's in the
01:44:27Senate house. And it's his throne as dictator is right under the statue of Pompey the Great.
01:44:39Because the place that they're actually meeting is not the old Senate house, which burned down
01:44:45a couple of years earlier. It's this new complex that Pompey built with the spoils of his war in
01:44:51the East. And it's like a little basement, not basement, it's like a room off the complex that
01:44:58Pompey built for the Senate to meet in. In the forum? So it's outside the pomerium. It's in
01:45:03the Campus Martius now. So it's, I forget what that part of Rome is called. But basically,
01:45:11it was an area that wasn't very built up. So you could plant this massive stone complex with
01:45:16multiple buildings pretty easily in this unclaimed land. So he had to actually walk from the forum.
01:45:23It was probably a 20-minute walk. But that is where the Senate is now officially meeting.
01:45:30And of course, there was a statue of Pompey as conqueror in this prominent place in the
01:45:37Senate house. And it's in front of the statue of Pompey the Great that the petitioners come up,
01:45:42or that the assassins come up, pretending to have some urgent business. Please, my brother
01:45:49is in exile. Caesar, can you get him pardoned? No, this is not the time. Please, Caesar. And Brutus
01:45:55comes up, and Decimus comes up, the other Brutus and Cassius comes up. Caesar, this is a worthy
01:46:01friend of yours. We beg you, please, you must spare... And then that's when they have him
01:46:07distracted. They grab his robe. And at some point before he actually gets stabbed, they're grabbing
01:46:13him. He's like, what's going on here? This is violence. And that's, I think, when he realizes,
01:46:18at least when the first blow struck, every man that's surrounding him. It's 15 or 20 guys,
01:46:25probably. There were more people in on the plot, but some are holding the doors, keeping the
01:46:31perimeter to make sure. But yeah. And then they did the deed. And you know, after they kill him,
01:46:44after they stab him, there is that moment. That is in Plutarch, where he turns to Brutus,
01:46:52the more famous one. And this is, remember, he's the son of Caesar's top girlfriend.
01:47:01Servilia. And he had a relationship with this kid. He was looking out for his career.
01:47:07He was promoting him. The kid fought on Pompey's side in the Civil War for some family reasons,
01:47:12but he spared him. So many of these men, he's spared. And some of them are his trusted
01:47:19long-term loyalists. It's not just former enemies that were spared, that were resentful. It's former
01:47:26loyalists. And he says to Brutus, "You too, child. Kaisuteknon. Et tu, Brute?" as Shakespeare says.
01:47:37And then he bleeds out. Who knows how long it takes. But amazingly, the Senate clears out
01:47:47pandemonium. I mean, to kill Julius Caesar. This is a horrifying idea because it really
01:47:57threatens to plunge the Republic back into Civil War again. He's the lid holding it all down. This
01:48:02is why Cicero told him that he needs to have a bodyguard, because so much is at stake. If you
01:48:07get killed now, we're all screwed. That's what Cicero was saying 18 months earlier. And he was
01:48:14very much correct. But the Senate House clears out and he's just there alone on the floor. And nobody
01:48:24wants to approach him and draw close because they're afraid that one of the assassins will see them.
01:48:31Nobody knows what is the potential risk of me tending to Caesar's body. And so he just lies
01:48:39there for hours. And then eventually some of Caesar's slaves go in there. They can only find
01:48:47three men. It takes four men to hold a litter. They can only find three guys to carry Caesar's body
01:48:54back to his house. And it starts to rain on their way back. And the streets are lined. People see
01:49:01his arm hanging out. He's brought back to Calpurnia. So it still gets me. I think that
01:49:11you could say a lot about Caesar, but I do think that he managed to identify his own success,
01:49:24his own legacy with what he saw as the flourishing of Rome. It wasn't just about his own glory. Or it
01:49:33was, but to the extent that he felt like he was the man most responsible for whether the state
01:49:40survived and flourished. But that's not how his enemy saw it, was it?
01:49:49What convinced them that you needed to go?
01:49:53Well, they saw that after the Civil War, Caesar was unquestionably
01:50:03not just the first among equals, not just the first man in Rome, but like something was changing.
01:50:11Caesar had fought all of his career to end corruption and the stranglehold of the
01:50:20establishment oligarchy over offices. I mean, there was incredible wealth inequality.
01:50:25And there's this kind of like tight click of people that control everything. And they get to
01:50:32abuse the provincials at will. The typical way that you rise up in Rome is by winning elections
01:50:40and then going out and being governor. And usually it's very expensive to get elected.
01:50:47And then you have to go into debt and you recoup your money by robbing the Greeks or
01:50:53the Gauls or the Spaniards and taking bribes and stuff. It's a system that highly incentivizes
01:50:59corruption. And Caesar wanted to change that, among other things. And I think he eventually decided
01:51:11that this whole game that we've been playing at Rome for 450 years since the Republic was founded,
01:51:20since they drove out the kings. You've got to remember, the Romans have been inoculated
01:51:24against kings much in the same way we are as Americans. America was founded by us rejecting
01:51:29King George III. The Republic was founded by driving out Tarquin the Proud, who was this brutal,
01:51:38you know, corrupt tyrant in their eyes. And then it was a collective government. You have elections
01:51:44for office, you know, you have assemblies to vote on laws and all this stuff. That's what
01:51:49the Republic is to them. That's what Rome is to them. And this is also the game that people like
01:51:57Decimus Brutus, his friend Brutus, the other Brutus, Cassius, basically everybody in the
01:52:05Republic, everybody in the leadership classes had been playing, had been expecting to play for their
01:52:11whole lives. Which is, no, this is how you get honor. You get honor by service to the Republic,
01:52:17you get honor by winning elections, you get honor by winning wars. But now,
01:52:21Caesar is basically trying to kind of transition the political system into
01:52:31something resembling a monarchy. He doesn't want to call it a king, a kingship. He doesn't want
01:52:37to call himself king. But he's really deliberately taking all the authority into himself because I
01:52:44think he sees that his legacy depends on. If he releases power, he's kind of a control freak,
01:52:53you might say. If he lets go, then it's all going to kind of dissolve again. That people are going to
01:52:59undo his legislation and they're going to go back to revert to the way that things were. And this is
01:53:06one of the reasons why he just feels like he has to hold on to power. But what it puts him in this
01:53:12uncomfortable position for is every honor in the past used to be given by the Roman people.
01:53:26You used to have supreme responsibility as a consul. If you're going to command Rome's armies,
01:53:31you are the guy who wins the victory. If you win the consulship, it's because the people of Rome
01:53:38elected you consul, and so on and so on. Honor is granted by the state. And now it seems clear,
01:53:47Caesar's been handing out offices basically. He's been picking the consuls, he's been picking the
01:53:52praetors, he's been drafting the laws and getting the senate to rubber stamp them. All the honor
01:54:00flows from this one man. And how is that not slavery in the eyes of a proud Roman? The most
01:54:09Aristotle talked about, the most difficult thing that a politician has to do, their most important
01:54:15duty of a statesman is to correctly, wisely distribute honors. Because this is, for a guy
01:54:23like Caesar and for a guy like Decimus, for any of these super Chad Roman statesman aspirants,
01:54:33the prize that you're playing for is not wealth, at least it shouldn't be. It's not pleasure. It's
01:54:43not like fame as such, or status as such, it's honor. That's what Aristotle would say, that the
01:54:49highest form of the statesman, the great-souled man, is one who desires great things, considers
01:54:58himself worthy of them, and is correct in that judgment. And that means being worthy of great
01:55:08things. But what are the greatest things to desire? This is a question that's perplexed philosophers.
01:55:13- What is a good life? - What is a good life? What is worthy of desire?
01:55:17What does it mean to be worthy of something? And Aristotle says the highest thing that you
01:55:25can desire of external goods is honor. - The price that you would be paid for a ransom note.
01:55:32- Yeah, yeah, essentially. And you can desire virtue, you can desire inner peace, you can desire
01:55:40wholeness, you can desire wisdom, but those are all internal goods. But of the things that you can
01:55:47kind of strive for, it's honor. And so this is the highest prize that an ambitious man could like,
01:55:57you know, make a career on. Pursue virtue, you need to be virtuous to be really worthy of honor,
01:56:04et cetera. And you know, for a great-souled man, even honor is maybe a small prize because, like,
01:56:13honor can be corrupted, right? Corrupt people get voted honors all the time. So I don't think that's
01:56:21a problem Caesar had solved. He's a brilliant, brilliant statesman, legislator, politician,
01:56:25brilliant with people, but like to get a whole political class of ambitious young men. I mean,
01:56:34all the guys that kill them are like late 30s, early 40s. They're like in their prime
01:56:39and they still got a lot of gas left and they're seeing the whole game has been just screwed. Like
01:56:47I was raised to want honor and honor is what the people of Rome give you. And now I'm supposed to
01:56:56do all of this stuff that I was going to do, command armies, you know, pass laws. I'm going
01:57:04to all do it as Caesar's employee, right? Never a boss, never a patron, always a client. I think
01:57:13that was intolerable. It was like a meaning crisis for them. But the situation that they did put
01:57:17themselves into is that for the rest of time, they would be seen as an assassin. Yeah. I mean,
01:57:22I guess maybe it's preferable to be a powerful assassin than a peaceful subordinate maybe in
01:57:31Roman times, or at least in their version of this philosophy. Yeah. You know, it was an interesting
01:57:38blend to think that it would be better to be mutinous and a rebel against somebody that was
01:57:46a great leader, but may have pushed the power too far compared with being a part of an existing
01:57:56structure that had sort of raised Rome up to be a really great empire. Yeah. At the very least,
01:58:02they saw more meaning in that path than the other path at the time. There was more self-determination.
01:58:08Yeah. Which is super important. They had a lot more agency. I mean, it's very understandable.
01:58:13Dante still puts them in the ninth circle of hell, betraying a friend. Fuck. Yeah. Alex,
01:58:23you absolutely rule, dude. This has been so much fun. So great. And there's, you know,
01:58:29literally 2,000 years of history that we could go through. Before we close, I got you a little gift.
01:58:34Oh, thank you. You know, I don't know how much of a Roman empire fan you are, Chris, but I'm trying
01:58:41to make you one. Okay. So this is a coin that I got from Kinser Coins, which I recommend. It's
01:58:49Hadrian. You're a Northern Brit, right? Yep. I've been to Hadrian's Wall many a time. I figured.
01:58:56I figured. And you know, if you look at this, he's got a nice little beard. I mean, I see a little
01:59:02resemblance there as a matter of fact. It says on there Hadrianus Augustus, Hadrian Augustus.
01:59:11And, um. Dude, this is so cool. It says COS on the other side. That means console. So it was
01:59:17minted when he was a console. And is that, are those stars? I think they're stars. On the,
01:59:23what would be the bottom? The, yeah, this is a. What is on the back? That someone stood in a toga?
01:59:30Yeah. I think that this is Roma. Who's Roma? Like she's the, the goddess that embodies,
01:59:40like the divine tutelary goddess of Rome. I can't believe you got me there. Yeah. Dude,
01:59:44that is so fucking cool. Hadrian is, is the last, um, emperor that Plutarch lived under. He was,
01:59:51um, so he's kind of special to me. Not to be emulated in everything, you know, Hadrian had a,
01:59:57you know, he did, he did a lot of things Greek style, but he was a great, he was a great fan of
02:00:02the Greeks, the patron of the Greeks. So, um. This is so good. Thank you so much. This honestly is,
02:00:08I could have sat and listened to you for the rest of the month. Uh, where should people go?
02:00:13You've got so much stuff going on. Yeah. Cost of glory podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts,
02:00:19um, Spotify. I'm on YouTube too. We're trying to make more videos to the audio content and you can
02:00:25go to costofglory.com and I'm, I do other stuff beside the podcast. You have retreats and stuff,
02:00:30right? Yeah. Yeah. We run retreats, um, in Greece and Rome. Do men go and reenact? Is this lapping?
02:00:35Are they reenacting? We haven't, we haven't done a LARP battle yet. Uh, we've gotten some demand
02:00:41from that and we've got really tapping into the, uh, men think about the Roman empire once every
02:00:4530 minutes thing. Yeah. We're trying to crank that up. That's not enough. I want to get it up to every
02:00:4915. Never enough. Yeah. Can you ever forget it? Oh man. This is so good. Dude. Today's been unreal.
02:00:55I appreciate you. I can't wait to have you back on. Yeah. Anytime.