Part One: How The Roman Republic Became a Police State

Robert is joined by Andrew Ti to discuss The Roman Republic. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
What's uh warming my my globe. I'm Robert Evans. My
hair conditioning is not currently functioning, so I'm hiding in
my basement, which I think this is a historic moment
everybody marks the first time a human being has experienced
the consequences of climate change. That that's that's me right now.
Number one. It is seventy four degrees maybe in my

(00:26):
basement upwards of seventy three degrees. So yeah, suffering, suffering
here still, I mean that in a basement. Is that's
a pretty That's pretty warm, dog, It's pretty It's pretty
warm for the basement. It might be more like seventy degrees.
I don't know what temperatures are. And I'm drinking coffee.
Andrew T. How are you doing today? Hi? What's up?

(00:48):
How's it going? I'm I'm um. I'm This is the honestly,
probably the first or second week that me long time
shorts Denier is wearing short Wow, I'm not short. Yeah,
I'm not a short person. I wore I wore black
jeans to a Dodger game two years ago when it

(01:08):
was like a hundred and ten outside, and I did
almost pass out, but I was pretty committed and now
I'm now I'm wearing shorts. I have also purchased a
pair of shorts recently. I mean, just take this evidence
to any climate change and I are and be like Andrew,
two wear shorts. Now that's your that's the proof. Yeah,

(01:31):
climate change is a real problem. This is the first
evidence anyone has of it. Um, Andrew, it's good to
have you back. You are having Sophie and eyes one
of our very, very very favorite people to have on
the show. You have been doing a lot of Hollywood.
We call you Mr Hollywood with a private conversation. Such

(01:51):
a big Hollywood guy. But you know what other kind
of guy you are, Andrew. It's a very funny guy
who we like to have on every now and again
to talk about bits of history. You and I have
talked about King Leopold of Belgium. We've talked about the
Andaman Islands. We've had all sorts of history conversations. Andrew,
how do you How do you feel about the Roman Empire? Oh?

(02:15):
I probably as far as like contemporary Americans go, I
probably took more Latin than I think most people like.
That was my primary to Andrew corn quote unquote foreign language.
So I and ultimately all of three useless years propaganda. Yeah,

(02:41):
so yeah, I probably to the extent that I know anything,
I probably I'm like more aware of a sort of
sugarcoated version of whatever whatever the funk is happening here. Yeah,
we're we're today. We're going to tell the story about
how the Roman Republic became a police stay um which did,

(03:01):
which is quite a tale um I have. You know,
we've we'ven't. We haven't done a lot of ancient history
stuff on this podcast for good reasons, among other things,
it's kind of hard to like get good details about
people who died two thousand years ago that aren't just
like nonsense propaganda, right, because it's usually just like, yeah,
some like poem about some kings. History is written by

(03:23):
the winners, especially yeah, when it's like sucking epigrams like
leftover from the Roman But also I I feel like
they're they're the the The worry is the sliding scale
of bastardom through history is Yes, I would imagine the
trickiest part because it's like there's sort of like no

(03:45):
amount of fascism and or um, you know, brutality that
doesn't eventually get justified by everyone else was doing it. Yeah, yeah,
I mean that that's like it's are you gonna call
like Genghis Khan a bastard? Okay, well then like what
like sure, but but what is I It seems like

(04:07):
kind of pointless to be like and this guy was
a king who murdered people when it's like, well, yeah,
they all were, like why why is that? Like nobody's
like really going other than some people were better at it.
It's not that interesting to talk about them being like shitty,
that's not the One of the cool things about the
Roman Republic is number one, we have a lot of
detail on these guys and all that's bad, right, all

(04:28):
of our historians are propagandists, but at least there's more
than one of them. So you get like the this
dude rocked and like this dude was terrible story usually um.
And number two, they're basically exactly the same as modern
Americans um politically, so you get really modern like political
dick moves from from from from terrible people in a

(04:49):
way that's like very familiar. Um. And in fact, like
so we're talking about a lot of the things that
led up to the fall of the Roman Republic, and
like the end of of you the kind of democratic
experiment that had existed there for a few centuries. And
this is something that like people are talking about a
lot right now. So when when you get like history
nerds talking about how funked up politics are in America,

(05:12):
they're either going to go back to Weimar Germany, which
we've already done, or they're going to talk about the
fall of the Roman Republic, which is why there's like
three three books out right. It's like three or four
books that have come out in the last year that
are like, here's what the Fall of the Roman Republic
can teach us about the fall of American or like
what's happening in American democracy. Most of these books are stupid. Um.
There is one really good book by podcaster Mike Duncan

(05:34):
who does the Revolutions podcast, called The Storm Before the Storm.
That's the one I would recommend if you want to
read a book like that. We're not gonna mainly be
telling that story. Instead, we're gonna talk about how Rome
invented militarized policing and the first police state and kind
of the first fbi um, because that's not a history,
and I think most people know, and it's pretty cool. Um,

(05:55):
but first we're going to talk about well some guys, well,
we're gonna talk about a lot of ship. We're gonna
we're gonna have to cover quite a bit of ground today.
This is one of the reasons we don't do so
many ancient history ones, because it's like, all right, well,
if you want to tell this story, you have to
go through like a thousand years shit. Yeah. Well, also
because the audience is like, like me, probably is like

(06:18):
not just a thousand years of ship, but so much
backstory in context. Yeah, I don't envy you. You have
to explain a lot. But thankfully the Romans were pretty
entertaining sons of bitches, um, not if they were killing
or enslaving you, but like sometimes if they were enslaving you.
There were some Greeks who had fun with that. So
the city of Rome andrew founded on April one, seven

(06:42):
fifty three BC by two brothers who were nursed by
a wolf. If you believe the myths that a lot
of Romans didn't believe, right, like, these are like the
things that we we we tell about Lindon, this is
what the Romans thought, Like most of them are like
I don't. I've never seen a wolf nurse two babies,
Like I don't think statue of of the of like
to two infants sucking on a wolf's breasts is or

(07:07):
you're talking about the statue in my living room, right,
yeah you know I have that instead of a television. Yeah. Yeah,
I made it out of a macaroni. Yes, um, just
harrowing stuff if you think about it, like it's just
so gross. Yeah, bad for the wolf, bad for the babies,
for anyone. But yeah, this is Romulus and Remus, right,

(07:27):
like that's the that's the legend. There's a good line
in um. I think it's the movie Spartacus where Julius
Caesar and I believe it would have been Pompy are
like walking around and talking about like they're walking past
like a temple, and Caesar asked a question like don't
you venerate the gods and and Pompys Like well, publicly sure,
but privately I don't believe in any of them. And

(07:48):
that's probably how it was for a lot of Romans.
Like everyone's like, people aren't lockstep believing these silly as myths,
but this is the myth. April seventh through fifty three BC,
which is a slutely not when Rome was founded. Archaeologists
know that people have been living in that spot for
about fourteen thousand years um, because very rarely do just

(08:09):
there's just like a bunch of people suddenly arrive at
a chunk of land and be like and now it's
a city. That's not. Yeah, you just have like groups
of people farming. Like Rome has a bunch of hills,
so you could set up shop on a hill. It's
a good place to grow food. You can beat up
people if they try to like come onto your property
and stuff, because hills are easy to defend. You know.

(08:29):
It's just a good place for people to exist up
until the present day, where it's about to die because
there's no water. But for a while it was a
good place to be a person until we invented the car.
Yeah we're changing, we're changing the good places to be
a person. Yeah. Yeah, everybody's gonna have to go. Yeah,
there's not gonna be so many Italians in the future.

(08:50):
I was just I was just in Yeah, right, I
guess peninsula. Peninsula life is about to be Island life
is about to be Atlantis life. Yeah, I us just
in Minneapolis, and there was a real palpable sense of like,
we're going to be the new Miami Soude. Yeah, yeah,
Minneapolis is going to be dealing with those hundred and

(09:12):
ten degree days. Time to get your beach body on,
Midwesterners or whatever part of the country. Minneapolis is lakes
fucking lakes. So even ancient Romans had a lot of
competing stories about the founding of the city. Uh. Probably
most likely, like most of them, tended to think that
it had been basically like a Greek colonial offshoot. There. Later,

(09:33):
when Rome becomes an empire, there's this state propaganda line
that it had been founded by a bunch of Trojan
war refugees and a Trojan king named Aeneas. None of
that's true either, um, and it doesn't really matter what.
What we definitely know is that sometime around the seven
hundred spec uh, there's this city state called Rome that
kind of comes together, probably from a bunch of different

(09:55):
light communities in the area, gradually sort of you know, merging,
and it starts to gain power and influence in central Italy. Now,
like most places, it's ruled by kings, and over time,
the Latins, who were like a tribe, right the Latins
are a tribe in Italy, and it's because they speak
Latin that that's yeah, or or vice versa. But yeah, yeah, yeah,

(10:17):
these these at this point, they're just like primitive tribesmen
wandering around Italy. They don't even know that in a
couple of thousand years you and I will be learning
their language badly, uh Eca, Romani and whatnot, because we
because we got scared by French and didn't want to
have to the pressure of learning a real language. I

(10:38):
honestly I cannot get back into the mindset of the bozoh.
I wasn't made the decision in middle school to just
be like, you know what Latin. I think I was
intimidated by like, oh no, that I don't want to
have to because the thing they promised us is you
don't have to do like pronunciation tests because nobody knows
how a lot of Latin was spro spoken. I did

(10:59):
actually my senior year of high school, they let me
go to the university and take Italian, oh, which Latin,
bicy Latin did not help me out very much for
I have so my family is incredibly fucking like my
my dad is first generation like American, like that's how
Italian my family is. And we had some relatives when

(11:19):
I was a kid come over who spoke only Italian,
and because they were old Catholics, Latin and so when
they were in town, my dad, who was also an
old Catholic, had to like translate for them, so they
would speak in Latin and then my dad would translate
to the rest of the family. Damn. Yeah, um, which
I think makes this yet crazy. Well, that was your

(11:42):
your Romulus is air, that's what everybody says. I mean,
that was one of the benefits of the fact that,
like all church services in the Catholic Church took place
in Latin. Is that like you could have people from
like England and Spain and fucking Portugal all in the
same room and they might not speak each other's land
which is but they all know Latin, right because they
have to do the Jesus stuff. Um So anyway, uh so, yeah,

(12:08):
you get these Latins hanging around, and you know, these
are the people who are going to become the Romans,
but at the time they're just like some other group
of assholes in Italy. And these dudes called the Etruscans
are much more powerful and there's this Etruscan dynasty that
comes to be the Kings of Rome, known as the
Great House of Tarquin. But that's just kind of like
what more modern people call them. They were not a

(12:28):
great house. This is not game of throne ship. These
guys are like like petty petty chiefs. These are like
dudes with like sharpened sticks beating anybody who like the
tark Wins are the guys who have the most muscly
friends with sharpened sticks and are the best at stabbing
people who don't pay protection money. Right. Think of them
more as like street thugs than it's always it's always like, uh, yeah,

(12:54):
it's a it's organized crime until it's taxes, yeah, exactly.
And like the so they in the seven hundreds, they
kind of start to make the jump from organized crime
to taxes, but it's still more organized crime than anything.
So for a while Rome is like pretty much every
other city in the Mediterranean, um, and then in the

(13:14):
five hundreds ship changes. Um. The last king of Rome
is a guy named Lucius tarquinas Superbus, which is where
we get the words superb, although that's like anyway, that's
the nickname people gave him, and it's kind of Romans
have like a history of like this guy's an asshole.
Let's let's call him great or like superb or like
an awesome or something. Um. So, he's he gets to

(13:36):
power like five thirty four BC. He has a pretty
good reign for a while. He wins a bunch of
wars um, he signs the city's first treaty with Carthage.
He builds a big gas temple um and yeah, he
enslaves a bunch of people to make the first sewers
and drainage systems in Rome. Um. So he's he's definitely like,
you know, that's solid king stuff. He's he's he's made

(13:57):
a step beyond gang leader. When you're making sewage, you've
made a move, have passed past gang shit. Um. And then,
according to myth, his son rapes a Roman noble woman
named Lucretia um and this this becomes a problem for him.
Here's how the Getty summarizes what's said to have happened.
The tragedy of Lucretia began when Sextist, son of the
tyrannical Etruscan King of Rome and member of the Tarquin family,

(14:19):
raped her. For the ancient Romans, a woman who was raped,
was guilty of adultery, a crime punishable by death, even
though she had not given herself willingly. After she was raped,
Lucretia made her husband and father swear an oath of
vengeance against the Tarkwin's, and then killed herself in shame.
Enraged by her death, Junius Brutus led a victorious rebellion
against the Etruscan king. So a couple of things there.

(14:41):
A couple of things there. Number one looked, obviously you
should be angry at the guy who did the rape,
but also most of your anger might be at like
the social custom that says that she has to kill
herself after this, Like that might that might be the
thing to be angrier at. The people don't think that way.
I guess it really is like this, this like it's

(15:01):
it's spoken so a matter of factly, and this is
where like the context of it makes it so hard
to figure out what the what the approach of this
is because I mean, look, the entire misogynist society, like
every misogyst society, this one, you know, worse by modern standards,
but you know it's pretty normal behind the yeah, but yeah,

(15:23):
and then you're just like you know, you're the family
members watching this happen, enraged that this had to happen,
but not not because of the like the society. Like
it's sort of like this classic everyone is always mad
at the wrong thing it is. It's also, though, I

(15:43):
think if you get yourself in a different mind state,
you can really feel this because like this is a
stupid rule that's like cruel and evil and is it
makes like a bad situation even more horrifying, and like
we can look at that as like, oh, look at
these fund up people in their cocked up rules. But
also the story you get is that like all of

(16:03):
the Romans are pissed at this, and Lucretia is a
sympathetic figure in their history. And think about all of
the different times in recent past when like everyone in
America has been like, wait, that's the law, that's the
way it works. That's stupid as ship, why the hell
are we doing it this way? But then the stupid
thing happens. That's fucked up because like can't change the law, yeah,
or we're not going to yeah, I mean you can't

(16:26):
just change laws. And you get the feeling that's kind
of the attitude people have. It's like, well, this is
all like stupid and fucked up. But at the end
of the day, the only person we can really take
our anger out on is the Tarquin families. Let's get
them kings out of here um, which they do. And
it's also worth noting the guy who leads the rebellion,
Junius Brutus. That name Brutus should be familiar, right, that's

(16:46):
the guy who kills Well that the guy who kills
Caesar is this kid's descendant, you know, hundreds and hundreds
of years down the line. That's part of why he
kills Caesar's his family's got this reputation of like when
people try to do kings stuff, murder them anyway, to
be fair, pretty good family tradition. It's a cool family tradition.

(17:07):
It does. So Junius Brutus is one of like forty
guys that all have the same name. So one of
the cool things in Roman history, and by cool I
mean very frustrating, is that if there's ever a guy
who does anything worth noting, there will be three other
guys who are also really important with the exact same name,
because that's how the Romans did things. To be like, yes,
Scipio Africanus. Well, which one the one from like the

(17:28):
one sixties or the one from like the or like
the two d the one from the one fifties and like, um, yeah,
it's it's very frustrating, but that's if you're if you're
early on in Western civilization. How many names you can't
have that there's like seven names? Yeah, there's like seven names. Um.

(17:49):
So the details of obviously the Lucretia story are almost
certainly not exact, but there's a pretty decent chance that
it broadly is accurate as to what caused the insurrection
against Etruscan power. Um. Most people probably heard of the
right of prima nocta right which you see in Brave Heart.
You know this this right that like nobles supposedly had
to have sex with a woman the first night after

(18:12):
a marriage and stuff that. Like in Brave Heart, this
is depicted as like what sparks the Scottish. But it's
not a real thing. It never it was not a
thing in any medieval law. It didn't happen. It certainly
had nothing to do with fucking William Wallace. Um. There
were some similar rules in history. The Epic of Gilgamesh
references customs that are similar to that, as do Herodotus histories.

(18:33):
And we know that around this same period at least
one other Italian city revolted from Etruscan control because their
women were abused. You know, you often don't get a
lot of detail about this, just something notes that, like
they were angry about something the Etruscans had done to
their women, and so like there's a war and they win,
right right, yeah, right, and it is yeah, that's history.

(18:53):
I mean it's yeah, I mean often angry that they're
doing the thing because you were supposed to be doing
the thing. But yeah, well it's just like you know,
military occupations haven't changed, you can there's a long ugly
history of like when the US occupied Japan, you know,
raped by US service members and stuff that caused a
lot of problems. And that's it's the thing everywhere. It's
a thing in interrac it's the thing all throughout history. Um,

(19:17):
so whatever the excesses of Rome's last king, uh, they
kick out that last dude, Tarquin and a republic is
founded in five oh nine b c e UM. And
it was it was not a super different government in
a lot of ways from the ones that are quote
unquote founding fathers established UM, and what I mean by
that is that only the very wealthiest people could actually

(19:38):
hold office UM. Now, one thing that's interesting is that
like pretty much everyone could vote though, so they didn't
have that difference like when when the United States is established,
you have to be like a property owning white male
in order to vote UM, and it's not until later
that every guy gets the vote. Basically, every freeman has
a vote in the Roman Republic. But it also doesn't

(20:01):
really work that way because so the Romans have this
this system, the client system, where every rich guy just
over the course of their life picks up hundreds or
even thousands or tens of thousands of like clients. And
these are like dudes who he has to give them
money and or food or something on a pretty regular basis.
It's kind of like their social welfare program. Like this

(20:23):
rich guy has to take care of you a little bit,
but you have to do what he says when it's
time to vote, right, And this is kind of what
they have instead of political parties is these coalitions of
rich guys and their clients who are like, well, like
this is the guy that like my family, we all
go and he gives us bread every couple of weeks
and we vote for right. I guess it is just
the like local local gang leader. Yeah, it's a little

(20:46):
different from that yet at this point in that there's
not really violent coercion holding that together. At this point,
it's more like an extension of like the way familial
units and tribes and stuff would have worked in In In fact,
a lot of it kind of is based on tribal stuff.
You know, um, probably likely, well probably I make that

(21:09):
point because these are going to turn into street gangs.
This absolutely ends with street gangs of people murdering each other.
But it doesn't mean yeah it was. It's almost it's
like the same as the electoral college, or like you know,
it's exactly like the electoral college. Yeah, and we in
American need to get to the point where our electoral
college is just several hundred people beating each other to

(21:31):
death with SAPs in the street. We're getting closer every everything.
You know, I'm waiting for it. I gotta fucking baseball
bat with a nail through it. I'm I'm down. Let's
let's let's become electors. Do you do you put the
nail like a big nail through making. You got a
couple of options, so yeah, I mean, I think you
just One of the better ways is you just kind

(21:52):
of like hammer the nail in through the edges and stuff,
so you get a couple of different nails poking out.
Another thing you could do you can actually like get
long screws and just like screw with like a like
a drill through a couple of areas of the bat.
That'll that'll help you. Like that's a little bit easier. Um.
You know, a fun thing to do is you get

(22:13):
some like JB. Wild or a POxy or something. You
cut little runnels in the sides of the bat. You
jam razor blades in there, and yeah, you're kind of
making like a maquahedel. Anyway, I think I know what
that is, the stick with the It's like what the
Aztecs used. It's like the stick with all the obsidian,
but using dollar store razor blades on a baseball bat. Yeah,

(22:34):
right right, anyway, I get I'm just I'm not I'm
not as crafty, but I just got an electric drill,
So I'm like, you know, man, do this anywhere to
interrupt the spark in your eye when I asked you
how to make a spike bat a little a little much.
I knew one of these days, Yeah, one of these days.

(22:54):
That's that's what We'll get back to the roots of
Western democracy and I'll be able to have a street
fight with my home made razor bat. Um. So, yeah,
you got all these So the Roman Republic, yeah, five
o nine BC. And you know, we don't exactly know
what all of the rules were at the start of
the republic because they were unwritten. Um So their constitution

(23:18):
is like it's not put down anywhere. It exists only
in the memories of the oldest rich people. So it's
kind of like all of the rules are like whatever
the old people say they are. Um. So, again, very
similar to our current system in a lot of ways.
Um And yeah, what if Thomas Jefferson think, oh, now

(23:40):
the Senate parliamentary and is a thing that matters, Like
nobody thought about this before, but suddenly it's a huge problem.
Um So this caused problems over time, which I know
will surprise you because those patricians and patricians are like
they're basically nobility. At the start of the Roman Empire,
they're all of the rich people who's like, families have

(24:01):
been powerful for a long time. Um and yeah, they
are the ones who kind of get to tell everyone
what the constitution says effectively, and people say, yeah, it's
extremely American. These are the most American, but the Roman
Republic is the most American thing that ever existed. Um.

(24:25):
So the poor, the pleabs, the poor people, you know,
or at least you could call them the regular people
start to be like, well, this doesn't seem like a
very good system, Like if we're supposed to be a republic,
it kind of seems like this, this is a bad
way to do things. Um and yeah. It also over time,
as the republic goes on, it starts to change, like

(24:46):
the wealth situations. So the patricians are like noble because
of their birth, but they're not necessarily rich, um because
number one, they have all these obligations. So they have
all these clients that they have to like pay and feed,
and they have all these like when they get political office,
that often means they have to throw parties for everybody
in the city or like big religious festivals. So a

(25:06):
lot of them are fucking broke all of the time.
And this class of merchants rises up who aren't noble,
but they have a bunch of money. And they're like, well,
we're the ones paying for everything now, like one way
or the other. And we're like buying these patricians and
having them do stuff. Why don't we get to like
hold political office or have any kind of power. Um.
And part of like what's fucking these patricians over is

(25:26):
that the only way that they can acceptably make money
is like either going to war and conquering shit or
like agriculture. It's kind of considered gross for them to
be in business. So anyway, ship starts to change in
Rome and you get this like wealthy class of people
who are like plebeian but but have money. Um. And

(25:47):
over time, like the folks who are not patrician get
increasingly angry, and you know, you get your riots and
you get people threatening each other in the streets. And
then in four one BC they force the patricians to
commission a series to actually write out a constitution where
they're like, okay, we're gonna actually like lay out what
the rules are in a way that people can see
as opposed to us just being like oh yeah, I

(26:09):
remember the way. It's all it's supposed to be. I
remember how the law works. Um, So because it's the past,
they just like hammer a bunch of rules into big
bronze tablets, twelve of them, and stick them in the
center of town, so that if you want to know
what the law is, you just like walk up to
the bronze tablets and read them, um, which is a
flich is a fun way to do it. Now, Like

(26:30):
all democratic compromises, the new written Constitution codified extraordinary powers
for the wealthy. Most of it dealt with debts and debtors,
and noted that in the event that a debtor was
ruled to have failed to like pay a debt uh,
he would have to be basically on the after three
days or so, he would either be executed or sold
uh into slavery. So like, debt's a serious thing. And

(26:53):
this is on the separate point. Something that like a
Corey doctor and a couple of other people will make
a point of is that, like the Romans were the
first people would be like, debt is a thing that
exists forever for you and eventually like your family, as
opposed to like every twenty years we'd have a jubilee
and there's no more debt the Romans, because they have
this entrenched power structure that actually holds. You don't have

(27:15):
like a king who might be like, well, every twenty
years or so, I'm gonna do a jubilee because then
people get their debts cleared and they like the king more.
Now the people running it are like all of the
rich people, and they're like, well, no, we're never gonna
white people's debts. Where the funk would we do that? Ship,
And so that's where that whole process starts in history.
That's the source of our power right right as opposed. Yeah,

(27:36):
when it switched from large as to money, you know what,
making me miss kings Robert. Yeah, well it's not entirely
a good thing that they get rid of theirs, I
guess um. The Constitution also enshrined incredible powers for Roman men.
The pattern familius, or the head of each family was
essentially a little dictator. So we don't have a king,

(27:58):
but like if you're the dad, you you have the
absolute power of life and death. So number one, deformed
children have to be killed immediately. That's one of their
that's like there, that's like their first amendment in ancient
rome Um, which you know it's the past. Um. And
fathers have the power of life and death over their children,

(28:20):
UM and their wife. So you can, as the father,
execute your kids or other members of your family anytime
you want to. Um, the classic law of I brought
you into this world, I can take you out. Yeah,
which one is the most important societal bedrock? Look, if
that was the rule, I would have kids. I'd have
a buckload of kids, and they'd be they'd be doing

(28:42):
a lot of work for me. So. Um. There are
some like more sensible rules though, that kind of limits. So,
among other things, if you're a dad and you sell
your kid into slavery three times, um, then your son
no longer has to do what you say. I don't
know why three times is the rule, but like you
have to pick a number. I guess where. It's like
Genie ship, what is happening here? Uh, It's it's cool.

(29:09):
Um so yeah, it's it's good stuff. It's this weird
mix of like nightmare social laws and then like broadly
reasonable stuff like yeah, if a child's born within ten
months of the father's death, they get some of the inheritance,
you know, like stuff like that. It's like, well, that's
just like a pretty reasonable solution to a problem. Um. Now,
the Twelve Tables also note that women are always legally children.

(29:31):
They always have to have a guardian. This is because
of quote their levity of mind. Uh. And the only
exception to this are the vestal virgins, which are basically
older like O. G. Nuns um, but they're much cooler
than the nuns um and a lot more weird sex
stuff going on allegedly. And you know who else is
allegedly engaging in a lot of weird sex shit. Andrew

(29:54):
Yo hit me the products and services that support this podcast.
They never stop fucking, not not not once. And that
ship I was gonna say, is not in the Bible,
but it very much is in the Bible. What they're doing,
most of what they're doing is in the Bible. But
they go off the map every now and then. You

(30:14):
know it's gonna enter any situation. It goes into cock first,
and you don't know what's going to happen. Like they're
just they're just gonna they live to penetrate. That's actually
the corporate motto, we live to penetrate. I was going
to ask you which sponsor you were specifically referring to
and then I realized that you already had one in mind,

(30:35):
and that sorry, good luck with that. Bleep. I know
you love it. I would love I would love a
Bible that has like a just like a map of
you know, the Bible, parts of the parts of the
Bible story like like the like an edition of Lord
of the Rings or whatever, just like a little map
of the front page. Yeah, lit, they should do that.

(30:58):
They probably do. So there's this broad understanding that political
violence is undesirable, um, and there's actually not as far
as we can tell. It doesn't seem to have been
a thing that happened very often, um in in the
early Republic, right, like when people had political disputes, they

(31:21):
didn't murder each other generally, which is a big thing
right in this period of time, If you've like gotten
to that point in your society, that's pretty cool. Um.
We have trouble with that today. We don't. We don't
do that. Yeah. And one of the reasons for this,
so the Romans have this written constitution kind of thing. Now,
they also have this thing called the most mal um,

(31:41):
which is it just literally means way of the ancestors,
and it's it's another unwritten legal code kind of and
it's basically just a bunch of like, you don't murder
people who are elected leaders, you know, you don't like
bribe people in order to make them vote the way
you want. You don't do this, you don't do that, um.
And there's a couple of different things in there, including

(32:02):
there's a rule that you don't carry weapons inside the city. Now,
this band gets misinterpreted a lot of times. You might
think of it as the ancient equivalent of an assault
weapons ban, right, So they're not banning all weapons because spoilers,
everybody still has weapons, but they don't have military weapons,
so they're not support you're it's like you can get
executed and ship if you're caught carrying a sword or

(32:25):
like a dagger within the what's called the pomarium, which
is this like kind of sacred quasi ethereal boundary that
like is the supposed to be the actual like boundary
of rome Um. Now obviously, so again this just refers
to like military weapons. So when people do have fights
and stuff, they'll usually have like chair legs that they'll

(32:49):
stick sharp things into, or they'll they'll make SAPs or
brass knuckles are super popular. The Romans have their own
kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, they call it a cestis. Yeah,
it's basically brass knuckles or like punch daggers that like
really nasty fighting weapons, right, so you don't have swords
and stuff. So people are just like calling it and

(33:11):
beating the ship out of each other with like stuff
they make in their fucking garages. Um, which is pretty cool.
It's like the Warriors stuff, right, Like that's that's very
very Yeah, you spike bat is just too big? Yeah,
what's the what's the what's the fucking millwall thing where
you make it with just like a bunch of editions

(33:33):
of like the like the Daily Mirror or whatever. Yeah
yeah yeah, for some fucking it's basically the Jason Bourne
shop where he fights a dude with the magazine or whatever. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean the the coolest thing that the fucking Romans
had was this thing called a cestus or castis or whatever,
and it was basically it was like a boxing glove
that had was covered in iron balls, so that like

(33:57):
when you so it's like this combination box singlove slash,
brass knuckles and yeah you can eat. Yeah, they so
they had plenty of weapons, they just did not allow
military weapons. And you're not allowed to bring soldiers into
the city of Rome. Nobody can take an army into Rome.
They have to camp outside of the city if you've
got an army nearby, because again they recognize pretty early

(34:18):
on that, like, well, if we want to have a republic,
it's probably a bad idea to let people march their
army into the city. That could end badly, that might
not go well. Um, but most of this stuff is
just like it's not written law. It's everybody knows that
you're not supposed to do these things, right, right, A
wonderful way to run a government. Yes, a norm, right,

(34:38):
these are their norms. You know. The other thing, too,
is like the army thing is like I think it's
I mean obviously just because I'm a soft child of
the twentieth century, but it is like wild to kind
of remember how threatening a parade really should be. Yeah,
a parade. I mean historically, the Romans are kind of
one of the first groups of people to try to

(34:59):
stop a raid from being a threat because they have
this these things called triumphs, and so if you win
a military victory, that's big enough, the Senate will vote
you a triumph and you basically are king of the
city for a day and you get to take your
army and march them through the city with all your captives,
and everybody pretty much worships you. But the whole time

(35:20):
you're doing it, Number one, it's just for a day,
And the whole time you're doing it, there's a guy
whose only job is to like walk behind you and
be like, hey, bro, you're gonna die one of these days.
Hey bro, Like you're still fucked. Like everybody's fucked. Nobody
lives forever, Like you're not actually a king or a god.
You're gonna die, dude, like, which is kind of neat.
I think it's it's one of my favorite parts of
Roman history. Um yeah, so the best job, Yeah, civic life.

(35:48):
This These were the first. Like nowadays, anybody can like
go on Twitter and ratio a political leader, um, if
they're if they're good enough at trolling. This was. This
was that job in the ancient world, like the dude
who follows the imperatore around being like, hey bro, you
kind of suck. Actually, yeah exactly. My god, Rome would

(36:16):
have adopted Twitter immediately, like they basically they had like
like their Roman graffiti is a whole other story, but
like they had Twitter, they had their own Twitter. Um.
I think my favorite piece of Roman graffiti that was
like found in fucking POMPEII is this guy being like
all of the women in Rome or all of the
women in the Empire should weep because I'm just fucking
dudes now, Like I'm I'm so tired of fucking ladies.

(36:39):
I'm gonna i'm my dicks for nothing, but men. Now
that's pretty. That is peaked Twitter. It is incredibly peaked Twitter.
Amazing Twitter. How does it? What is it just like
paint and brush? I guess yeah, they're just like paint
and ship. Yeah, they've got paint, Like they're just like
painting stuff on walls and whatnot. I guess I was

(37:01):
just thinking, like the advent of spray paint for graffiti,
Like what again they would have taken to spray paint
Immediately you show like literally any Roman citizen spray paint
and they're like, oh fuck, I'm gonna be able to
yell at like my neighbor so much more efficiently. Um,
you'll probably make a primitive air brush Yeah. So the

(37:25):
Roman system is it's it's a little bit wacky, but
it works really well, and for most of like three
hundred years they get by without any massive internal political violence. Now,
a big part of this is that for these first
couple of hundred years, Romans nearly destroyed. Like every thirty
years or so, like every couple of decades, somebody will
invade Italy and almost wipe them out. And usually the

(37:47):
way it goes is the Romans. There's an invasion, the
Romans get together a massive army and they send it
to fight the invasion, and they all get wiped out
because some idiot makes a stupid mistake on the Roman side.
And then the Romans some how put together another army
and eventually win the war. Um. And this is like
how every war works out for Rome. They take these

(38:08):
like the thing that distinguishes Romans as a military power
is they're able to like lose all of their guys
and then win the war anyway, um, which is like
a mixed sort of reputation to have militarily UM. A
good example of this would be the Pyric War from
two eighty to two seventy b c. The gist of
it is that the Romans go to war with a
bunch of Greek cities in southern Italy, and those Greek

(38:31):
cities are like, hey, we need help, and they called
to this Greek king over in Greece called Pyrus, and
he invades Italy to like funk up the Romans. And
Pirus is a scary old son of a bit. She's
got a big army, a bunch of war elephants, and
he just shatters the Roman military. And this series of
horrible grinding thousands and thousands of people massacred, but also

(38:52):
every battle is so ugly that like he loses most
of his army fighting it, so kind of at the
end of this series of battles, the Romans can't continue
to prosecute the war um. But Pirrus doesn't really want
to keep fighting either, because he doesn't have much of
an army left. And this is where we get the
term pyric victory, right. Um. So he like goes to

(39:12):
Rome and he's like, hey, guys, you're you're y'all are fucked,
let's do a peace deal. Um. And he offers them
pretty good terms. And I'm gonna quote what comes next
from a rite up in the New York Times. When
the Senate convened to debate the offer, an old blind
senator named Appius Claudius was carried into the Senate house
by his sons. As the chamber fell silent, he stood
to chastise his colleagues. I have, he said, long thought

(39:33):
of the unfortunate state of my eyes as an affliction.
But now that I hear you debates shameful resolutions which
would diminish the glory of Rome, I wish that I
were not only blind, but also death. By giving in
to Pyrus, Claudius warned, the Roman Republic would only invite
more outside powers to mess with it. Low as the
odds of victory might be, Rome had no choice but
to keep fighting, and they actually somehow win. Um. Pyrus like, yeah,

(39:57):
it's it's it's the whole thing. Um. He tries to
to bribe a bunch of his way out of like
fighting the more, but it doesn't work. Um. And yeah,
this is like this is a somewhat idolized version of
events of how like Warm beats Rome beats pirates And
it's based on the writings of a guy named Edward J. Watts,
who is one of these historians who's written a book

(40:17):
about the Roman Republic to talk about the collapse of
the United States. Um. Yeah, But as kind of biased
as his take on things is, it is worth noting
that like what they build really works, like as flawed
as we're going to talk about all of the flaws
as it is, the Romans create this political structure that's
able to like repeatedly almost get wiped out in disastrous

(40:39):
military defeats and not lose wars um. And part of
it is because everybody's got skin in the game. The
entire ruling class is out there fighting whenever there's a war,
along with like all of the and and in fact,
most of the people fighting are people with like property.
The Roman army, you have to pay for your own weapons,
so poor people are not fighting. It's basically like the

(40:59):
middle class and the rich people who are actually like
going to war. And one of the downsides is that
all of their armies are led by the equivalent of
like Nancy Pelosi, which goes really badly sometimes, right because
you'll have like this eighty year old career politician trying
to like lead an army of seventy thousand guys and
he doesn't know what the funk he's doing? Um, probably

(41:20):
there there's some argument that that is sort of why
the first the first crack at our first draft. At
any given Roman army is sort of just the ship
that needs to be exactly They all it's the guys
who suck the most, and you get like Ted Cruz
out there, and you just need to get rid of him.
Anyone who survives that first one plus the fresh recruits

(41:41):
is probably the way to go. Yeah, we gotta burn
off an army before we can get anything done. Yeah,
it's like making it's like making pancakes. The first one's
just for the trash. If we had invaded Afghanistan by
sending all of Congress in first, I think the United
States and Afghanistan would be in a state of perfect
peace with each other and there would be no more

(42:02):
problems in the world. I mean truly, this, like you know,
are the that is the least American thing about this
is about this particular iteration of Rome is putting middle
class and nobles on the line at all. Yeah, um,
if only, if only, but all of these nobles they

(42:24):
have fucking so like one of the things pirates tries
to bribe a bunch of guys and he can't bribe
them because they're like, well, no, this is like my
whole family's fighting, Like this is what we do. We
have this like system and we're kind of all in
it together. And one of the reasons this works is
that there's not a massive like there's rich people and
there's poor people. But within all of the people who
the freemen who have property, there's not a massive disparity

(42:46):
in wealth. Right, the rich are not very rich, um,
because like it's Rome's just kind of this scrappy little
city in the middle of Italy. Right, it's not like
this super powerful force. Um. But as time goes on,
they keep winning these wars, and so they wind up
in control of more and more and more of Italy,
and they get all of this land, and all of
this money starts coming in, and that's when things start

(43:08):
to go awry. Right. So, after Rome beats Purists and
conquers most of southern Italy, they settle into what's what's
going to be two hundred straight years of unbroken victories
in foreign wars. Rome's military record here Basically they spend
the length of the time that the United States has
existed as a country winning every fight they get into, um,

(43:30):
which is like a pretty solid record. Now they lose
battles constantly, like with Devon in the First Punic War,
which starts in two sixty BC. This is with Carthage.
It lasts twenty years. Like to tell you how silly
some of their wars go. So this war starts with
Rome going to Sicily to fight Carthage and they win there.

(43:50):
They invade North Africa and they win what's probably what
might be the largest naval battle in all history still
to this day. Like if you listen to the historians,
then it's like three hundred thousand people are all fighting
in boats. Um. And again this is like twenty three
hundred years ago. Fucking wild, how like many people that
they could put together at this point. Um. But they
win this series of battles. They win these naval battles.

(44:12):
Carthage sues for peace and Rome refuses to like have peace,
So Carthage keeps fighting and then beats them and like
chatters a Roman army. So Rome has to send a
fleet to evacuate the remains of this army that's gotten
it's askect in Africa, and then the entire fleet and
a hundred thousand men all die in a storm like
heading back to Italy. That kind of ship happens constantly

(44:34):
to the Romans, and it just never stops them. Um.
Then you've got the Second Punic War, which starts into
eighteen BC. It also lasts like twenty fucking years. And
there's like we've talked about the Battle of kan I,
which is one of the most famous battles in history. Hannibal,
you know, the elephant guy encircles their army and kills
fifty thou Romans in a day. It's like ten percent

(44:57):
of the male population of the Republic he like wipes out,
including like eight senators, like a bunch of a significant
percentage of the Roman It's like if it's like if
the United States had like ten percent of its male
population and half of its political class wiped out in
a battle in fucking Afghanistan. Um, Like, it's pretty it's

(45:17):
it's a bad day for them, and they just do
the same thing they always do. They make more guys senators,
they make more guys soldiers, and they send them back
out to fight, right um Um, And it's it's fine. Um.
But while these wars are going on, and they win
these wars. They win the First Punic War, they win
the Second Punic War, they get control of Sicily, they
get a bunch of influence and power in northern uh

(45:38):
in Northern Africa. They take control of all of Spain
in the Second Punic War, like Rome is now running Iberia.
While all this is going on, a couple of other
things are happening. One is that a lot of Roman
soldiers are dying right like shipload because Nancy Pelosi is
very often the battlefield commander, and she's not very good
at that. Um And and since these guys these are

(46:01):
like the Roman middle class, right, most of them are
small independent farmers. They have enough money to buy their
own weapons and armor and stuff and sometimes even horses.
Um And so the system that they set up works
really well when war means you have to like walk
two days to like funk with this town across like
the river from you. Um. But when you're going to

(46:23):
war for twenty years and your army is all of
the guys who make your food, then it becomes a problem, right,
are you seeing like the flaw and the Roman social
system also, it's it's like I mean and this I
guess is the thing that's like distressing is like you
would hope what this would do is lead towards like

(46:44):
more measured wars and like you know, no, no, it's
simply the opposite, is we will I mean your well,
we're seeing it obviously in our time also, I was like,
we will simply let society crumble rather than and that's
what happens because here's the thing. If you were to
make have less wars, well, the only ways that the

(47:05):
nobility can make money is war or taking a bunch
of farming land, right, because they're not allowed to have businesses,
they're not allowed to be merchants. Uh. And if they
don't get to have more wars and massacre more generations
of Roman boys, then the merchants who aren't nobles will
have more money than them and nicer houses. Do you

(47:25):
see why this is a problem, right? I know it's
so just like but like instead of being like the
custom is weird, and we could just diversify our ruling
classes economy look at the same point. Nope, I'm the farmers.
I'm all for restricting our ruling classes economic sources of income.

(47:49):
It is interesting that if you look at the two
longest lived republics in history, which is the Roman Republic
and now US, and both of them, you have this group,
this hereditary nobility, who are like, well, if we're going
to stay rich, we're gonna have to kill the middle class.
We're gonna have to We're gonna have to get rid
of those people. Um. So yeah, you this is you

(48:14):
start to get these serious problems where like these farmers
soldiers are spending like five years at a time out
on campaigns, and like fucking Africa or Spain which is
quite a distance from Italy when you have to walk
it right, like they are far as funk away and
a lot of people listening probably are not farmers. I'll
let you in on a secret about farming. If you

(48:35):
don't do anything to your farm for five years, it
is no longer a farm. It's it's just the woods
like um, and that's that that that causes an issue.
These soldiers are spending like half a decade at a time,
you know, in addition to like whatever injuries and trauma
they suffer, they come home and their farms are ruined
and they can't afford to like put them back into shape.

(48:57):
So again, and as you noted a reasonable country might
go like, well, clearly, we need farmers and we need
people to become soldiers, so it's in our best interest
to like figure out a way to deal with this
um that is not and this is a volunteer army.
It wasn't right. Yeah, well, they do have conscriptions, like

(49:18):
especially during emergencies, they have conscriptions and stuff. So it's
more like it's kind of like a draft um a
lot of the time with these wars. So yeah, it's
generally sort of a you get called up, your number
gets called up effectively, and like it's time for you
to go serve. They do have a lot of like
there are volunteer anyway. Whatever. It's a whole thing that
we don't have the time to get into that today,

(49:39):
but it's worth noting that, like the money that they
are making by conquering everything around Rome is plenty of
money to take care of these farmers. And I want
to quote now from a Marxist account of Roman history
written by Alan Woods. Quote, after the Second Punic War
ended in two o two b c. The economy of
Italy and dured a massive up people. The legions that

(49:59):
conquered Spain Greece and North Africa returned home with riches
on an unprecedented scale. A proconsul that's like the mix
between the president and a general returned from campaign in
the East bearing a hundred and thirty seven thousand pounds
of raw silver, six hundred thousand silver pieces and a
hundred and forty thousand gold pieces. So like the nobles

(50:20):
are getting fucking rich in all of this money stays
in the hands of these the patricians and this new
class of people called the equities, who are like rich businessmen, right,
because the trade is a lot. The more you conquer,
the better trade gets for you if you're a fucking
Roman businessman, So they're making fucking bank um. Now, all
of the land that the Roman army captures during this

(50:42):
conquest of Italy they go over become state owned land,
which seems fair right. They call it the the ager
publicists popular Romani, which means the public land of the
Roman people. And over time the Senate votes to allow
people to own parcels of this public land and perpetuity
as long as they work it right. So that's how initially,
like soldiers get rewarded as you get some of this

(51:03):
public land and you can start a farm on it
and that will allow you to have like a degree
of economic independence. Um. But I'm gonna quote here from
a write up in the Anthropology Review. Quote the problem
was that if the land was left uncultivated, it could
be taken over by someone who could work it. So
soldiers who were out of the country fighting for the
glory of Rome came back to find themselves dispossessed. Vast

(51:23):
stretches of land were taken over by rich and powerful
Romans who used slaves who were not called for military service,
and thus we're always present to plow the fields and
tend to the crops and livestock. This meant that peasants
and returning soldiers had not only lost their land, but
also the possibility of finding decently paid work with which
to support their family, because it was impossible to compete
with slaves who had to work for free. So that's

(51:46):
that's a bad way to have the situation work, right,
So just like it is, Yeah, it's I guess it's
like like all things that's just cobbled together from like
tradition and like is what happened last time? Just like
the fact that well, I want to be rich. I
want to be rich. Nothing nothing really matters more to

(52:07):
me than personally being richer. So let's let's do whatever
gets me the most money in the short term. And
I will never back down. This system can't change because
it's absolutely can work for us. And again, people at
the time noted note that this is like bad. Like
there's like a decent number of people in the Roman
political structure who are like, hey, guys, this is gonna

(52:30):
be a problem as as as we have in the
United States who are consistently being like, this is not
a good way to do things, um, because they're noticing
that all of these formerly independent freemen, the veterans who
have like conquered the world for Rome, are winding up
as almost like homeless in the city of Rome itself,
Like they have no work, no way to make money,

(52:52):
and they just kind of swell the city because the
state will will give them food when they're in the city,
kind of like it's the only thing they can do
is kind of become clients to some fucking rich guy
or whatever, um, and you know, basically exist to provide
a vote for a rich man and live marginally on
the edges of society. Um so as you can imagine

(53:15):
the fact that like the only way for a lot
of these poor people to get any kind of support
at all is to like vote for whatever guy has
the most money and thus can give them food. It
makes this political system twist even more in favor of
the wealthy. Right, inequality becomes a serious problem in the
Roman Republic. Now again, a lot of people recognize this
as an issue, and in his wonderful book The Storm

(53:37):
Before the Storm, Mike Duncan writes quote as early as
one nine, Kato the Elder warned his colleagues, we have
crossed in degrease in Asia, places filled with all the
allurements of vice, and we are handling the treasures of kings.
I fear that these things will capture us rather than
we them. Every few years, the Senate would attempt to
rein in the ostentatious displays of wealth, but the resulting
limitations inevitably went unheeded and unenforced. By little coincidence, the

(54:00):
Roman people at the same moment both acquired a taste
for vice and obtained a license for gratifying it. Yeah,
it's that's that's the way it always goes, right, they're
no different from us. Oh god, yeah, they just we
just have phones. Yeah, and it's it's it's interesting Karl

(54:22):
Marx when he writes Capital is specifically looking at this
period in Roman history, he bases a lot of his
conclusions off of like what the history that he's like
reading about. Why, like what happens in the Roman Republic?
And he writes in Capital, quote it requires but a
slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman Republic to
be aware that it's secret history is the history of

(54:42):
its landed property, right that like and essentially what he's
saying is that, like you have this vision of what
the Roman Republic was that like dudes like our quote
unquote founding fathers have where they're just like masturbating over
these like austere figures, and then you have the reality,
which is that, yeah, this venal corrupt land holding class
is choking out the middle class and the poor in

(55:05):
order to make their already vast fortunes even larger. Yeah,
and destroying the entire state as they do it, because
they care about nothing but increasing the amount of wealth
that they have, like like parasites on every level. Yeah,
it's good stuff, you know, who else is a parasite
on every level. Andrew, I've got to find out the

(55:28):
sponsors of this podcast absolutely blood sucking ticks, just just
guzzling the life out of your your veins. So if
he is that a good wittily dads that gonna make
him happen, that's the only way you can lead into ads,
my friend. Excellent, excellent, Oh we're back. So this all

(55:54):
brings us to the story of a guy who, depending
on who you ask, is either the first socialist in
history or this sinister populist precursor to Donald Trump. You
there are think pieces that will say both things. They're
all pretty silly because he's his own person and this
is a long time ago, so stop stop it. But
this guy's name is Tiberius Sempronius gracchus Um, and he's

(56:17):
born in either one sixty three or one sixty two
b C. And he comes into into being as like
the bluest blood motherfucker. It is possible to be his
father had served as console, which is kind of like again,
it's like a mix between president in general, like if
the senators are also leading art right, Yeah, exactly, it

(56:38):
should be the same job. Get you get like voted
to get a military command effectively. Um so in his
dad like celebrates two triumphs for military victories, is like
a young man. His mother is like the daughter of
this great Roman war hero. Um. Now, everybody's main source
on Tiberius gracuss life is a guy named Plutarch, who

(57:01):
is a Greek historian who writes about him like a
hundred years after he died. And it's worth knowing what
Plutarch says because Plutarch's working from like sources that were
written by people at the time when Gracis was alive.
But like most Roman history, we still you're still just
like most of Plutarch's history is like, well a guy
told me this, Like I heard this from like a
dude who's like his grandpa was around, and like I

(57:25):
heard this, I heard the I a lot of It's
like I guess that's all history anyway, But yeah, like
after this, after what happens with this guy happens is
like brother writes a pamphlet that he hands out and
like a lot of Plutarch is based on like what
people remember from being in the pamphlet. But I don't
think we have the pamphlet still so it's like it's

(57:47):
like if somebody if lot's like if somebody wrote a
history of the of the George Floyd protests based on
like a conversation with someone who remembered some zines about
them right where it's like, yeah, like you're you're you're
probably not gonna get all of the facts, but yeah,
history is fucking crazy. Yeah it's good stuff. There's a

(58:09):
story that Plutarch tells that like when Tiberius's dad is
a kid, he goes to a soothsayer, you know, basically
a fucking you know, a fortune teller, and uh, she's
like you're gonna have to either. Uh like, I'll just
read the quote because it's kind of weird. We're told

(58:30):
moreover that he once caught a pair of serpents on
his bed, and that the soothsayers, after considering the prodigy,
forbade him to kill both serpents, or to let both go,
but to decide the fate of one or the other
of them, declaring that also the male serpent, if killed,
would bring death to Tiberius and the female to Cornelia.
That's his wife. Uh So Tiberius, accordingly, who loved his
wife and thought that she was still young and he

(58:52):
was older, and it was more fitting that he should
die killed the male serpent, but let the female go.
A short time afterwards, as the story goes, he died.
So that's what happens with this guy's dad. Like his
dad supposedly dies because he kills the snake that represents
him to let his wife live. Um, he leaves her
with twelve children, three of which survived to adulthoods just

(59:13):
like what a bonker's day at the the fortune teller's dates.
Check this out. I tell him if he kills them
fails snake, he's gonna die. Yeah at all. I'm gonna
tell him kill one snake only Yeah, only one snake,
let the other go. They had to just be I

(59:34):
assume the fortune teller colleagues are just all, you know,
fucking with you. Oh yeah, I mean they're fucking highest ship.
They are unbearably lit. So Cornelia takes charge of the
children in the estate. Uh she you know, she's good
enough at being a mom that like a solid of
her children lived to adulthood. Um. And two of those

(59:55):
kids are the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracus. Now both
of them are like a fancy boys. They hold a
bunch of public offices that young patrician kids are expected
to hold, uh as they climb up the political ladder. UM.
At age seventeen, Tiberius goes to Africa to fight, you know,
in the last big war against Carthage, and he's supposed
to be the first man over the walls of Carthage

(01:00:16):
during that final siege. Um. After that he goes to
another war. So by the time you know he comes
around in you know the one hundreds, like like ish BC,
Rome is kind of locked into this Afghanistan style situation
in Spain where they have conquered Spain, but like it's

(01:00:36):
kind of hard to hold onto Spain. Like if you're anyone,
there's a reason why Spain has mostly belonged to Spain
throughout history. Um, it's not all that it's not always
all that easy for Spain to be in charge of Spain. Um.
So they're fighting this like endless series of like brush
fire rebellions against and it is it's like Afghanistan that
you've got like this this Roman military that's very organized

(01:00:59):
and fairly modern and like it's it's command structure, and
then there's these guys who are just like throwing rocks
at them from the bushes and then running away. Um.
And it works pretty well for the fucking Spanish. So
Tiberius Gracis goes to go fight in northern Spain against
these the city called Normentia um. And the war does
not go very well, and the guy who's in charge

(01:01:21):
of the Roman army gets his ass kicked, and so
they have to negotiate a surrender. Um. Now the new
maintains new Tiberius because his dad had beaten them in
a war like twenty years ago, and he'd been cool
about it, right, Like he hadn't been a dick about
beating them in a war. So they were like, well,
we'll let we'll talk with this guy. Will negotiate with
this guy, because if he makes a peace treaty with us,
we feel like Rome will will stick to it. So

(01:01:42):
Tiberius works out a truce and a peace treaty and
he saves this Roman army. But when they get back
to Rome, all of these politicians, um, who had not
left the city and who wanted the war to keep
going because there was money in Spain, but didn't actually
want to figure out how to fight it or like
how dare you pull out of Spain with this army? Like,

(01:02:02):
how how dare you? It's a little bit familiar to
some things that have happened. It's like this bad situation
and the guys back home had like didn't have any
idea how to deal with it better than Tiberius did.
But they're still angry about it, because that's what you
do in politics. Probably, well, it's tell me more honest
to just have the military industrial complex openly advocating like

(01:02:25):
we need this war for money to continue, we need
this war for money to continue, and for pride um,
how fucking dare you? Uh So, Tiberius he takes a
beating from these guys, but they can't punish him because
he did just save the entire army's life and that
kind of makes you popular in a way that's dangerous
to funk with too much. But they do his commanding

(01:02:47):
officer who had lost the war, They like strip him
naked and chain him up and send him back to
the enemy and are like, you guys can have him,
like we don't want this guy anymore, like do whatever
you want to him, which again, if we've done that
with David Petre s would have I think been cool.
I think that's what we should have done with David.
A few more conuences for some of the people's fucking

(01:03:09):
strip Dick Cheney naked and just air drop him into
Bosra like like let and whatever happens happens. Right, we're
not saying what the penalty should be. It's up to
them to figure it out. Um. So the people vote
to clear Tiberius of all charges, YadA YadA. Things go
pretty good for him. Um. And and this is like

(01:03:30):
what you might call a pretty decent start in Roman
public life. Um. And as he's you know, there's a
story that later gets told that like while he's kind
of going back and forth between Spain and Rome, he's
like walking around the countryside and he notices quote um
or he notices basically that like there's nobody here. There's
no Romans here. It's all slaves. All of these farms

(01:03:52):
are worked by slaves. Um. All of the actual free
people are like desperately poor because they've all lost their lands.
They're just like huddled in these shanties at the edge
of town. Um And like, oh wow, it kind of
seems like we've done a terrible thing. And destroyed the
class of people who have made like our success possible.
This is probably a problem, right, So again basic observation. Um.

(01:04:16):
So he decides to set up this policy to reform
the public lands of Rome, to make it impossible for
individual rich guys to buy a huge tracts of land,
and to guarantee that small, freeholding farmers will continue to
be the core of Roman society. Now, the way the
popular story gets told, it's just Tiberius who like sees
these poor farmers who are dispossessed and has this idea

(01:04:38):
to fix everything. That's not really true. The reality is
that this block of senators had been working for years
to figure out a way to reform the land system
to fix this problem, and Tiberius is just kind of
like he's young and he's popular, and these senators are like,
you're the guy to be like the fucking frontman, right,
which I guess is how a lot of big political

(01:05:00):
form has to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's again
a fairly modern seeming story. So they come up with
this plan where they're going to limit the amount of
public land that any individual can have to three hundred
and thirty acres um. Now, this is like too harsh
for the rich people, and so they start howling. Um,
so they kind of like alter it in order to

(01:05:21):
allow like an additional like I don't know, a hundred
or so acres or a couple of hundred acres if
you like already hold the legs they put in like
some again, they immediately are like, all right, we'll look
like we'll work. We like, we understand like the rich people,
and you already have all this land, so we'll let
you have more than we think that you should should
be having, just to try to be friendly. Now, think

(01:05:43):
about modern politics. When you offer to let rich conservatives
like to compromise with them, do they a compromise or
be go ape ship and declare war on you? Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
it's like exactly so no, we like the lesson that
we I guess we'll never learn from, uh is like

(01:06:05):
don't negotiate with conservative terrorists. No, no, exactly, do not
do not talk with these guys. They're not you can't
they're not trustworthy. Yeah. Um, so you know, they they
start Tiberius Gratis and these other senators and stuff, start
putting together this legislation that they're going to introduce at

(01:06:25):
the forum. And while they're doing all of this, this
horrible war in Spain is raging on because the Senates
rejected the peace deal that Tiberius cooked up, which means
they have to raise another army and send it to Spain.
But at this point they're kind of having trouble finding soldiers,
right because nobody has enough money to like buy weapons,
and like, it doesn't matter even if you can script people,

(01:06:47):
they don't have the ability to like arm themselves. Um.
And so there's this rich politician who's very much against
land reform, Skipio Aemilianus, who figures out how to fix
this problem, and it's by using his vast personal wealth
to recruit and arm an army of his own. This
is the first time this happens in Roman history where
just a rich guy buys an army and takes it
to war. Um. This will not be the last time

(01:07:09):
this happens, and it will prove to be a serious problem.
He's kind of like, he's kind of like the Roman
Eric prince where he's like, well, what do I just
buy an army? Why don't we just do it that way?
And then I can take minerals and ship you know, um. So,
this guy Amilianis is again super against the land reform bill,
and he's one of the big people organizing against Tiberius

(01:07:31):
and his block. But once he leaves the city to
go funk with Spain, he can't like do anything politically,
Like there's no sending messages back effectively. So once he
leaves the city with this army he's bought, Tiberius and
his rivals take this law that they've built and they
put it on the docket and they like which literally
means that it go to the middle of the city
and they're like, hey, guys, we got a fucking law

(01:07:51):
to vote on. Everybody show up and let's vote our
asses off around gather around motherfucker's um. Now, since most
of the Senate is against land reform, Tiberius and his
allies decided to present the bill directly to the Assembly
to the voters without letting the Senate debate it. Now,
this was not illegal. You did not have to present
a law to the Senate first and let them debate it.

(01:08:13):
But the most majoram this like unwritten set of agreement,
says that you don't propose a law to the public
without letting the Senate debate it. Right, So this is
the first big break with like political tradition and decorum,
and it's from Tiberius a side. They're like, well, now
where fun the Senate, Like, we're just gonna take this
one straight to the people. Um. So the rich people

(01:08:34):
are like, okay, well, I guess fuck all of the
things that we used to do like now now now
there's no rules, right, so so we're just gonna fucking
do it. Um, you're went, you went nuclear, and yeah,
now we're going to do that too, right, And this
is he does go nuclear because when Tiberius light goes
up and he's like, hey, guys, I want to take
all of this land that only the rich people have,

(01:08:56):
that's supposed to be all of our land, and give
it to all of you. And this makes people very excited, right.
It's it's such a big deal that like because basically
he gets up and he announces this and says in
like a couple of weeks, we're gonna have a vote
on it. And so all of these poor citizens start
flooding out of the city and like finding their relatives
who are like living on the outskirts of town or
in other towns and bringing them in. And so suddenly

(01:09:17):
thousands and thousands of people start heading into Room Rome,
including Italians, people who are not Roman citizens but agree
with this like land reform bill because fuck the rich
people in Rome, UM who like show up and like
are protesting. Basically, they're showing placards, they're like announcing their
support for this thing. Obviously, Rome does not have mass
media the way we have it, but they do have

(01:09:38):
this forum, which is like Times Square mixed with c
Span and also a nineties era mall right, it's this
like big stage with shops around it, and it's not
it's not even that big a stage. And if you're
doing politics, you stand up there and you talk to
people about like what you're trying to get them to do. UM.
So every day Tiberius is up there while they're waiting
for because they're like saying, we're gonna have the vote

(01:09:59):
in you know, excenent of days, right, So, and that's
to give everyone time to get into the city because
you have to physically be there to vote. So while
all he's waiting for everyone to get in town, he's
like speaking every day. And I'm gonna quote again from
Plutarch here about like that's describing one of his speeches.
The wild beasts that roam over Italy, he would say,
have every one of them a cave or a layer
to lurkin. But the men who fight and die for

(01:10:21):
Italy enjoy the common air and light, indeed, but nothing else.
Houseless and homeless, they wander about with their wives and children.
It is with lying lips that their imperators exhort the
soldiers in their battles to defend some pokers and shrines
from the enemy. For not a man of them has
an hereditary altar, not one of these many Romans an
ancestral tomb. But they fight and die to support others

(01:10:42):
in wealth and luxury. And though they are styled masters
of the world, they have not a single clot of
earth that is their own. Pretty good speech, Yeah, it's
pretty speech. You put on you put on your speech
voice hard I was. I might have been doing a
little bit of Dan Carlin there. Um. So this goes

(01:11:03):
really well, And this is where the Trump comparisons get in, right.
He is the first like populist politician in Roman history.
He's tapping into decades of anger and resentment among the
lower classes. He's promising to take the fight to the elite,
which he is clearly a member of, right on their behalf. Um,
So you could you can make some Trump comparisons, but
you can also make direct comparisons to Lennon and Mao. Right.

(01:11:25):
Lennon and maw are both upper class, rich people who
become these socialist fire brands and ignite uprising again against
an entrenched in decade and elite. Right, you can see
comparisons to all these guys, right, you can see him
as like this first uh like um, like a grarian
populist sort of Trumpian figure. Or he could be like, well,
he's the first socialist, you know, I mean, I I

(01:11:48):
think I think though it's the like like contemporary illusion
of the word populist with just like a small band
of raceists. Yes, so that's where Trump fits in everyone
the other ones are more truly populist. Yeah, because he's
this is a real problem he's trying to solve. Is

(01:12:09):
supposed to like howling about again like and like calling
calling Trump like a populist is such like a New
York Times thing, because they the only population that matters
to them is like racists in Ohio. Well, and also like, yeah,
it is weird to call him a populist because he's
never literally not a popular vote, Like it's literally not
most people. Um, whereas most people are really on board

(01:12:33):
with what Tiberians is saying because most people are fucking
poor as shit, right, and they're like, yeah, this sounds great.
So the rich people they know they have to be
careful because he has this huge mob of people who
are like on his side, and it would be really
easy for them to just murder anybody who who tries
to stop him from passing this law. So they bribe
a tribune and tribunes are like, it's this political office

(01:12:55):
that the main thing the tribunes can do is they
can veto any law that anyone may right. The tribunes,
their primary power is that they can just say no
and nothing can be done. Right. It's just like there's
two guys who get that job, and that's like a
thing that they can do. Yeah, it is a little
bit supreme courty, although it's more of a it's more
of a populist position because one of the tribunes, the

(01:13:18):
tribune of the police, can only be a poor person, right,
or if they're not actually poor people, but likely be
a non noble um. So it's there is like there
is a cool thing in this which is that like, well,
the poor people should have a representative who can just
say no to everybody, right, But in this case, the
tribune gets bribed, um, and so he says, hey, you

(01:13:40):
can't vote on this bill, period. So now Tiberius has
to take action. So Tiberius is like, because Tiberius is
also a tribune, right, so you've got one tribune who's like,
I'm not going to let anyone vote on this fucking
land reform bills. So Tiberius is like, all right, well
then I won't let anyone vote on fucking anything, and
I won't let anyone spend the state's money. And he
locks the treasury, like he physically locks the Roman treasury

(01:14:02):
and says, like, the government just he does a government shutdown, right,
Like that's what happens, Like no one can do anything now. Um.
So while all this is happening, this is becoming like
a show, so like people are flooding into the forum
to watch. Most a lot of the people who are
like in the streets arguing and debating and like watching
this political drama unfold are like veterans. They're like former

(01:14:24):
farmers and sons of farmers and all this ship, and
they start talking about violence, and Tiberia starts stoking this
talk of violence by telling everyone. He gets up on
stage and he says, hey, I have evidence that my
enemies are planning to assassinate me. And he starts carrying
a dagger under his cloak, which is technically illegal, but
he'll like pull it out during speeches and be like
so serious that I gotta keep a knife on me,

(01:14:44):
you know, I gotta be ready to cut a bit.
He's exactly like fifty cent um. So the Tribune, who
had been bribed this guy Octavia's, decides at this point
to let the people vote about He's not gonna let
them vote on the land bill, but will be like,
all right, look, if you guys are so unhappy with
what I'm doing, you can vote about whether or not
to strip me of like my office. Um so, this

(01:15:07):
had never happened before, and this starts to scare Tiberius
because he's like, ship, we're now kind of like way
off the beaten path of like what politics is supposed
to be. And I'm kind of worried that the wheels
that there's no breaks on this thing, um, because it
gets scary to everyone when all of the social and
political mores stop start crumbling at once. Um. But this
vote happens, Octavius gets stripped out of his office. He

(01:15:30):
only survives the mob like murdering him because his friends
like push their way through a crowd to get him away. Um.
And Tiberius gets to have a vote on his law
and it passes resoundingly passes. Now, when the law passes,
they have to set up a state commission to like
redistribute this public land. And so his enemies, these rich people,
are like, well, we won't vote to actually pay any

(01:15:51):
funds for the commission to redistribute public lands, so you
can't afford to do anything with this new law. And
right as this happens is they're like fuck you. Type Arius,
A rich king dies. And this king, for completely separate reasons,
wants to funk over his dumbship kids, so he leaves
all of his money to the Roman people. Right, So
Tiberius is like, all right, you're not gonna fund me. Well,

(01:16:13):
this guy left his money to the Roman people, so
I'm just gonna use his money to fund this Land
Reform Commission. And this is a problem for a bunch
of reasons, but basically, the rich people are number one
angry that they're not going to get that gold. And
number two, they're like, well, you're not supposed to have
the power to decide how state money gets spent. So
now you've number one year deciding what what can get

(01:16:33):
voted on. You've stripped this other tribune of his power.
You're now like exercising power of the purse and like
what the state can be spent on. Like you're getting
kind of close to becoming a king, right, which is
not entirely like wrong. Like they're like, wow, this, you
are exercising more power than a single person is supposed
to have in our system. So they get really they
decide like some ship needs to get done. And I'm

(01:16:54):
gonna quote from Anthropology Review here. At the time, tribunes
were considered inviolable, so Siberius was encouraged to run for
a third term to retain the protection that the position bestowed.
To bolster his popularity with the citizens and increase his
chances of being elected, he proposed several new populist measures
that further enraged his enemies. These included proposals to reduce
the mandatory term of military service as well has changed

(01:17:16):
the balance of power in the Senate by increasing the
number of equities to match that of the senators. Uh
the night before the vote, Tiberius implored the citizens to
vote for him because he feared for his life and
the life of his family. His plea was so compelling
that many people guarded his house all night to make
sure he was safe. The next day, Tiberius went to
the capital, where he was surrounded by a crowd of
people who wanted to protect him. Plutarch says that one

(01:17:38):
of the senators, Flavius Flaccus, warned Tiberius that the wealthy
Romans had resolved to assassinate him. Tiberius pointed at his
head to indicate to his supporters that his life was
in danger. This was interpreted by the spy sent from
the Senate as a request for a crown, a claim
they raced to relate to the senators, who immediately sent
a mob of armed slaves and supporters to attack Tiberius
and his followers. So what follows is a fucking massacre. Um.

(01:18:03):
You have this group of political this political group who
have come together to like reform the political system of
the entire government in order to make it fairer for
poor people and the rich. Send an army into the
city of slaves primarily and massacre them. They killed the
ship out of Tiberius and like two or three hundred

(01:18:24):
of his followers. Like it's just this bloody nightmare. They're
like throwing people's corpses in the river, like all sorts
of fucked up ship. Um. Now, after they massacre all
these people, they pass most of the reforms that he
had suggested, which is another thing that happens repeatedly in
Roman history, Like they'll have like they'll have a civil war,
and they'll massacre the other side, and then they'll do

(01:18:45):
what they asked for anyway, because it's a good idea. Um.
So a lot of his reforms happen. But by killing
him and all of his followers in the middle of town,
a seal has been broken, right, and the republic is
never the same after this. I'm gonna quote from a
write up in the New York Times here. Over the
next years, it quickly became normal for populist politicians to

(01:19:07):
set aside longstanding norms to accomplish their goals, for military
commanders to bind the Senate to their will by threatening
to occupy Rome, and for rival generals to wage war
on one another. Within a generation of the first political
assassination in Rome, politicians had begun to arm their supporters
and use the threat of violence to influence the votes
of assemblies and the election of magistrates. Within two generations,

(01:19:28):
Rome fell into civil war. So that's good, and yeah,
that's I mean, don't especially want to think about I
guess that. I mean that is also just the American
thing of like, look, if not that the artificial like

(01:19:49):
armed services are not just basically malicious for the powerful,
but codifying it that way, it feels like, hey, you
you learned where this is going because in part two.
Part one is about how the Romans, how Roman politics
turned from this like cordial thing where violence was not
common too, we will murder anybody who tries to funk

(01:20:11):
with the money, um and part two is about how
they create the FBI. Yeah, cat fucking wait, grim as
fucking usual things. Andrew, you got anything to plug before
we roll out of here? Yes? Actually, this Saturday, um
my podcast yoss Racist is doing a show in Austin, Texas.

(01:20:36):
So if you're in Austin, please come out. Um, but yeah,
find me RSS racist. I'm Andrew t Uh. Well, you
know it's funny because because you your podcast is eos
this racist. But we're talking about the Romans, and racism
didn't exist yet. They didn't have they did like they
literally hadn't figured out how to be racist yet. That
hadn't been invented because we also had not invented British people, right,

(01:20:58):
and they also had a lot of a lot of
other ship to fight about. Apparently they shared it. They
shared it. Um yeah, but but but not racist woke kings,
the Roman woke woke Uh I here no woke proconsoles.
Yeah yeah, all right, Well until next time up yours

(01:21:21):
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