Speaker 1: Oh America. Alright, I started the episode, so they I
Speaker 1: mean you could have done worse. Yeah, yeah, I America.
Speaker 1: I've heard you start. We all love America and so
Speaker 1: let's celebrate it. Andrew, of all of all of all
Speaker 1: of the countries that are America, which one is your favorite?
Speaker 1: And why is it ancient Rome? Wait? I I there
Speaker 1: was a bubble, just a tidy bubble in your audio,
Speaker 1: so i' I missed the middle of it. Wait what
Speaker 1: is he said? All the countries that are America? Which
Speaker 1: is my favorite? Yeah? Yeah, exactly, I think it's I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: so far it's got to be. Um just the sword
Speaker 1: control bills, and I do I do love the sword
Speaker 1: control bills. Uh, yeah it is. It is very funny.
Speaker 1: I guess it is a little tricky too, because living
Speaker 1: at a time if you go back to part one,
Speaker 1: when it's like weapons of war are banned, but weapons
Speaker 1: of war includes things like horses. Yeah, well yeah, a
Speaker 1: weapon of war is like a sharp piece of metal
Speaker 1: in this period of time and not really much deadlier
Speaker 1: than like a big heavy stick, right, like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it is different. Like again, these are You
Speaker 1: can also find fun articles about people talking about ancient
Speaker 1: Roman like weapons limitation laws and people trying to make
Speaker 1: comparisons to assault weapons, and it's like, well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really work very among other things. Number One, people support
Speaker 1: assault weapons bands in the United States generally because of
Speaker 1: like massacres of schools and malls and stuff. And the
Speaker 1: Romans supported a ban on the carrying of weapons within
Speaker 1: the pamarium because they were trying to stop armed mobs
Speaker 1: from taking political It's not about stop Roman. Ancient Romans
Speaker 1: did literally nothing to stop murders. There were not police.
Speaker 1: You did not like if you committed a murder, there
Speaker 1: was like unless you killed a famous rich person, there
Speaker 1: was nobody to like do like they didn't give a ship.
Speaker 1: Um again, people died constantly, right like you we just
Speaker 1: talked about that lady had twelve kids and three of
Speaker 1: them made it to adulthood, like they didn't. They would
Speaker 1: not have banned us. They would not have banned assault
Speaker 1: weapons if the worry were that civilians were getting murdered.
Speaker 1: They scarrying because they didn't want people to take over
Speaker 1: the government. Um sort of. Yeah, the almost exact opposite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's literally like the opposite reasoning. It was not
Speaker 1: to protect life. That was absolutely no one's concerned Rome.
Speaker 1: So after the assassination of Tiberius Gracis, things got worse
Speaker 1: very quickly for our Roman friends. Now, Tiberius was not
Speaker 1: yet thirty when he died. I think he might have
Speaker 1: been in the twenty. He might have been like Cobain,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, um, Kurt Cobain in Tiberius Gracchus to
Speaker 1: socialist kings. By the time, by the time you're in
Speaker 1: your thirties, you should have been assassinated, assassinated, yeah, um, yes, um.
Speaker 1: Now Tiberius, yes, So he's he's young, and he's got
Speaker 1: this younger brother who we talked about a little bit
Speaker 1: in the first episode, Gaius, who's like just starting to
Speaker 1: be an adult when his older brother gets murdered. Now,
Speaker 1: you can find a bunch of writing from historians at
Speaker 1: the time about Gaius, and it's all the same sort
Speaker 1: of like Haggia graphic shit about how cool he was
Speaker 1: and how like he loved his soldiers. When he becomes
Speaker 1: a trip, he becomes like a the equivalent of like
Speaker 1: a lieutenant or something when he's like seventeen, like all
Speaker 1: of these people do, and he's he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: good at that, and eventually he winds up getting elected
Speaker 1: tribune like his brother had been. Um, he has to
Speaker 1: break his law to get elected. The break the law
Speaker 1: to get elected. He has to like actually desert the army,
Speaker 1: but he talks his way out of getting in trouble
Speaker 1: for it, because again, a lot of Roman law is
Speaker 1: just like, well, we're pretty sure our ancestors wouldn't have
Speaker 1: liked it if this happened. But he cocks his way
Speaker 1: out of it. Um. So, his brother's reforms had been
Speaker 1: passed after he was murdered, but they've been kind of
Speaker 1: kneecapped by patricians. So they pass a land reform bill,
Speaker 1: and then they spend the next couple of years like
Speaker 1: taking back everything that they've given to poor people pretty much.
Speaker 1: So Guias starts pushing for a bunch of like really
Speaker 1: pretty radical reforms at the time. He wants to give
Speaker 1: more public land to the poor. He wants to hand
Speaker 1: out free grain. He wants to set up a state
Speaker 1: dole so that the poor aren't reliant upon like rich
Speaker 1: people as clients who can then tell them who to
Speaker 1: vote in order to like survive. Um. He wants to
Speaker 1: provide public funding for military equipment so that poor people
Speaker 1: can be in the army. Um. He wants to raise
Speaker 1: the draft age, and he wants to make everyone in
Speaker 1: Italy a Roman citizen, which really pisss off the rich
Speaker 1: and powerful people in Rome. Um and he's he's politically
Speaker 1: successful in a lot of this. He actually gets the
Speaker 1: Senate to send money back to conquered nations because he
Speaker 1: thinks that like Romes being unfair to the places they conquer,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a wild thing to succeed at
Speaker 1: getting the Senate to do so. This makes him as
Speaker 1: popular among the people who had murdered his brother as
Speaker 1: you might expect now. Plutarch describes the changes Gaius is
Speaker 1: trying to push in the Roman government as changing it
Speaker 1: from aristocratical to democratical. And perhaps he would have succeeded
Speaker 1: given time, But he made the mistake of leaving Rome
Speaker 1: to found a colony in Libya, which gives his enemies
Speaker 1: the opportunity to slander him devoters. And when he returns,
Speaker 1: he gets attacked in the street by a mob and
Speaker 1: the majority of people fail to come to his aid,
Speaker 1: like nobody comes to protect him. When this group of
Speaker 1: like hired thugs comes to murder him, and he gets
Speaker 1: beaten to death and his head is stuck on a
Speaker 1: spear and brought to the Senate. They throw his corpse
Speaker 1: into a river. They love throwing corpses and rivers the
Speaker 1: romans Um, which is a bad idea, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're going to kill, if you're gonna if your
Speaker 1: political movement is going to massacre a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: don't throw their bodies in the river. You need that water, especially,
Speaker 1: you know in pre pre water treatment plant times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you wanna my my famous favorite meme, the one
Speaker 1: from Predator with the two the black guy in the
Speaker 1: and the white guy like clasping hands, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: like ancient Rome, the Aztecs throwing all of their corpses
Speaker 1: in the river um. So, whether or not you want
Speaker 1: to see the Brothers gracky as they've become known to
Speaker 1: the ages as the first socialists or is precursors to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, this brief period of time in the spotlight
Speaker 1: they have makes one thing very clear. The ruling class
Speaker 1: in Rome is willing to break any rule and violate
Speaker 1: any norm to keep the money flowing and maintain their
Speaker 1: shocking rate of wealth accumulation. From this point on in
Speaker 1: the Republic's history, the rich only get richer and the
Speaker 1: poor tend to get poorer. But once it becomes clear
Speaker 1: that it's okay to murder political rabble rousers and their
Speaker 1: supporters to keep them from redistributing land, it becomes increasingly
Speaker 1: hard to argue that there aren't a lot of other politics,
Speaker 1: cool things that are worth doing a murder over, And
Speaker 1: so people start murdering over everything. Um and while Roman
Speaker 1: politics is getting a lot more murdery. And one BC
Speaker 1: this huge migration of barbarians. They're generally called Germans, but
Speaker 1: like they're not actually Germans, but whatever they're they're they
Speaker 1: sweep down from central central Ish Europe and they start
Speaker 1: invading Italy. Now the Romans do what they always do,
Speaker 1: which is they put together this this army twenty men,
Speaker 1: and they march out to stop them. And you know,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's in charge again. So the army gets wiped out,
Speaker 1: just just absolutely massacred. So the Roman state, which had
Speaker 1: never meaningfully reformed public lands or fixed the problems that
Speaker 1: Gracky had railed against, can't really replace the lost men.
Speaker 1: But thankfully they have a guy on hand, a military leader,
Speaker 1: a dude named Gaius Marius who he's been elected consul
Speaker 1: a couple of times at this point, and he's co
Speaker 1: leading a military campaign elsewhere in the empire, and it
Speaker 1: just so happens. This guy Marius is like like top
Speaker 1: ten military minds and like all of history, like if
Speaker 1: you're if you're ranking like all of the like, he's
Speaker 1: up there with like Subatie and ship like. He's he's
Speaker 1: very very good at being a military leader. And he's
Speaker 1: going to be the guy who reforms the Roman military.
Speaker 1: So the Roman army that you've seen in any movie
Speaker 1: with like Romans where they all have segmented armor and
Speaker 1: like you know, you've got the lesions of the big
Speaker 1: shields and the swords and the hat. He invents that
Speaker 1: before him. It's a very different looking army. They have
Speaker 1: like different classes that they've got the guy's spirit. It's
Speaker 1: it's very different military. I mean it's it's like everyone
Speaker 1: because everyone bought their own ship. So it's right exactly exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: So he reforms the military, and he also he basically
Speaker 1: succeeds in making the state pay for it. So for
Speaker 1: the first time, Um, you've got regular people. They're called
Speaker 1: the proletarii proletari yeah, proletaria something like that. Um, the
Speaker 1: poorest people are in the military, and he started it's
Speaker 1: very controversial what he's doing, but there's a di aster
Speaker 1: happening at the time. They're getting their asses kicked by
Speaker 1: these these barbarians. So he's like, look, we have to
Speaker 1: we have to recruit from poor people and arm them
Speaker 1: at the state's expense. UM. And this works out really
Speaker 1: really well. UM. And Marius is as as he's a
Speaker 1: brilliant military leader, he's also a really good politician. He's
Speaker 1: good at winning elections and and exercising power and building coalitions.
Speaker 1: But he's also he's not really a patrician. He's he's
Speaker 1: a rich guy, but he's kind of a rich country guy.
Speaker 1: So everyone could all of the patricians. He's a redneck, right.
Speaker 1: He doesn't speak Greek, right, he can't even speak Greek.
Speaker 1: So they're like they hate his ass. Like there's a
Speaker 1: little bit, actually a little bit of their reaction to
Speaker 1: him that is kind of trumpy, and that like you've
Speaker 1: got this like entrenched political class who just doesn't like
Speaker 1: the way he talks. But I think it's kind of gross.
Speaker 1: But also he's super popular among regular people because number one,
Speaker 1: he's like massively improving their lives because along with letting
Speaker 1: them be in the army, he makes it so that
Speaker 1: if you're in the army, you get a bunch of
Speaker 1: land after you retire, right Like, you get this land
Speaker 1: that we're conquering, we're going to give it to soldiers.
Speaker 1: So instead of coming home to a farm that has
Speaker 1: been taken from you, you come home and you get
Speaker 1: given a farm by the farm, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: like a pretty cool deal um for the time. So,
Speaker 1: to make a long story short, he he wins this
Speaker 1: war um, and he becomes such a hero that he
Speaker 1: has styled the third Founder of Rome um. Like to
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about the degree to which
Speaker 1: he wins this war against these barbarians, if I'm remembering properly,
Speaker 1: they basically create a new god of death that's made
Speaker 1: in him his image because of how many of them
Speaker 1: he kills. It's that it's he's like that, it's like
Speaker 1: that kind of war um. So he becomes like known
Speaker 1: as the third Founder of Rome, which is you know,
Speaker 1: most like he's he's a big part of who's like
Speaker 1: pushing that title for himself, right, because he's yeah, it's good,
Speaker 1: good branding, um. And he's absolutely a populist, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he draws a movement towards to him, who become known
Speaker 1: as the popular as Um, which is I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious what that means. And they're they're as is
Speaker 1: by the optimates, who are like the rich people who
Speaker 1: want to reduce the political power of the police Um. Eventually,
Speaker 1: all of this leads to a nasty civil war between
Speaker 1: Marius and his old lieutenant, a patrician politician named Sola.
Speaker 1: Now Slah is like the number one, it has to
Speaker 1: be said. He is like the queerest dude in ancient
Speaker 1: rome Um and very open about it. He's a fun
Speaker 1: fucking guy, like real it was like Sola is a
Speaker 1: is a neat character um and he he is just
Speaker 1: like this, like very like some people will say, sadistic,
Speaker 1: definitely mass murderer, very very good general. And he and
Speaker 1: fucking Marius have this like series of horrific battles. They
Speaker 1: have this massive civil war and just bleed it wipes
Speaker 1: out like a generation of Italian because they're both really good.
Speaker 1: Neither of them are Pelosi types. They're both actually good
Speaker 1: at having armies. Um, so they just massacre each other. Now,
Speaker 1: Marius loses at first, and he asked to flee to Africa,
Speaker 1: but then he reinvades Italy and he conquers Rome and
Speaker 1: he massacres all of Sola's followers in the city. But
Speaker 1: then he dies because he's like Joe biden Age. And
Speaker 1: so Sola comes back and he kills all of marius
Speaker 1: Is followers, including like there's like eight thousand Italians members
Speaker 1: of this tribe elsewhere in Italy who Marius was trying
Speaker 1: to give political rights to because there's this big fight
Speaker 1: over whether or not Italian should be Roman citizens, and
Speaker 1: he just genocides Sola just does a genocide on this.
Speaker 1: He stabs eight thousand people to death, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of people to stab to death when you think
Speaker 1: about it, um, very rarely do that many people get
Speaker 1: stabbed to death in the short period. It really is that,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's so I know that obviously our
Speaker 1: brains are numbed to like the numbers of war and
Speaker 1: like what what like automatic weapons and like you know,
Speaker 1: modern bombs can do. And it is really like swords,
Speaker 1: This is swords. This is sorts. It is. It is
Speaker 1: swords and sharpened sticks and like arrows which are basically
Speaker 1: sharpened sticks. Um. So Sola just kills fucking everybody he
Speaker 1: get his hands on, um who are his enemy. And
Speaker 1: then he's dictator. He makes himself dictator, which is a
Speaker 1: political position in Rome, right. Dictator previously is like it's
Speaker 1: a you have, it's a job you have for like
Speaker 1: six months a year. He makes himself dictator for however
Speaker 1: long he wants to be. But after a while he
Speaker 1: gives up the job and he retires to his mansion
Speaker 1: to funk a bunch of hot dudes. So that's a
Speaker 1: pretty fun character. I mean as far as like I'm
Speaker 1: the dictator, but you know what I'm like from dictator
Speaker 1: is like a pretty amazing that's like no one does that.
Speaker 1: Like he's a monster. These guys are all monsters, but
Speaker 1: he's a pretty entertaining monster. So there's a number of
Speaker 1: cool side effects to Solo massacring all of Marius's guys.
Speaker 1: Number one, all of the people who were like popularites,
Speaker 1: who are like populists, Plebeian supporting like folks who are
Speaker 1: on Marius side. They either get murdered or they have
Speaker 1: to flee the city. And one of these people who
Speaker 1: has to flee Rome and like hide somewhere else is
Speaker 1: a dude you might have heard of named Julius Caesar, right,
Speaker 1: he's one of Marius his butts. So another thing that
Speaker 1: happens is that under Solo, the plebs are stripped of
Speaker 1: all political power that like position tribune of the pleas
Speaker 1: that have caused so much trouble with the they that
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist anymore for a while. It comes back.
Speaker 1: They regain the power pretty a lot of the power
Speaker 1: they've had in like the decades after Solo leaves, um,
Speaker 1: but they lose basically all political power for a while. UM.
Speaker 1: And the last thing that happens is that all of
Speaker 1: the people's sullen murders have there and he's like he's
Speaker 1: he's like a Stalin type figure with his murdering. He
Speaker 1: makes a list, like there's like a list, and you
Speaker 1: get a bounty if you like kill or bring in
Speaker 1: somebody who's like on his list. You get like a
Speaker 1: chunk of their stuff. Um. And so some people get
Speaker 1: really good at murdering or tracking down or are hiring
Speaker 1: people to murder folks on that list. And so they
Speaker 1: get a bunch of their stuff. Um, and he's like,
Speaker 1: so again, if you help him kill his political enemies,
Speaker 1: he'll give you their ship. And by hooker by crypt,
Speaker 1: a lot of the property of people who had been
Speaker 1: supporters of Marius winds up in the hands of a
Speaker 1: guy named Marcus Licinius Crassis, who is the Elon Musk
Speaker 1: of ancient Rome, the wealthiest man in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's also not He's like Musk, not just because
Speaker 1: he's the richest guy in the world, but he's also
Speaker 1: a some would say a trailblazing innovator. Right now, Musk's
Speaker 1: great innovations are PayPal, which is banking but slightly less regulated,
Speaker 1: and uh in that car company. Crosses. His innovation is
Speaker 1: he starts the first firefighting brigade in Roman history. Right.
Speaker 1: People have been obviously fighting fires for forever because it's
Speaker 1: a horrible problem, right, like a terrible, terrible problem in
Speaker 1: ancient Rome. Um. But he's the first guy who builds
Speaker 1: like an actual professional fire brigade. Now, these guys are
Speaker 1: all slaves, um, and the fire brigade is a for
Speaker 1: profit endeavor. So what happens is when your house is
Speaker 1: on fire, Crosses his guys will show up and be
Speaker 1: like that seems like a real problem. You got sell
Speaker 1: us your house for like basically nothing and we'll put
Speaker 1: the fire out. Um. So he gets real rich doing this, right,
Speaker 1: he makes so much fucking money. Um, it is hard
Speaker 1: to convert old Roman currency to modern dollars. But he's
Speaker 1: like a billionaire, right, He's a multibillionaire for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes. He's got like Elon Musk money. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: He is so rich that a few decades later he's
Speaker 1: going to buy an army of forty men to invade Iran. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work out for him. Uh, it's really badly,
Speaker 1: but he's part of this like tradition of like now
Speaker 1: rich guys can buy an army if they were Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they basically what they're doing, like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: donate this money to the state in order to buy
Speaker 1: this army because I think we need to be a
Speaker 1: war with these people. Um and crasses his case, they
Speaker 1: get their asses kicked very badly, and he gets killed
Speaker 1: by having molten gold throat poured out his throat, which
Speaker 1: is yeah, no, it's a dope. It's a dope punishment
Speaker 1: because the Parthians who are like basically Iranian Um are like, uh, hey,
Speaker 1: you're the richest man in the world. You know, it
Speaker 1: would be a fun way to murder you is to
Speaker 1: make you drown in your own moulten gold. We're gonna
Speaker 1: like melt down your money and kill you with it,
Speaker 1: which is rad and should be done more often in
Speaker 1: history like today for example. Um now, it's just pooring
Speaker 1: n f t s down there, That's right. They do
Speaker 1: not have the same panash so crass. This is one
Speaker 1: of these Roman politicians that most people have probably heard about.
Speaker 1: He's famously he's part of this triumvirate that runs things
Speaker 1: for a while at the tail end of the republic.
Speaker 1: The other two guys in the transvirate are Julius Caesar,
Speaker 1: who everybody knows, and the Nias Pompeius Magnus or or
Speaker 1: simply Pompy the Great. Um now, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: First off, I should note he's called Pompy the Great
Speaker 1: because that is the nickname he gives himself. He basically
Speaker 1: he's like Pompy's whole strategy was he would go Rome
Speaker 1: would be at a war somewhere, and some political guy
Speaker 1: who was good at fighting the war would almost win it,
Speaker 1: and then Pompy, because he was good at politics and rich,
Speaker 1: would like buy his way into taking over the army,
Speaker 1: and then he'd finish the war and then he'd be like,
Speaker 1: look at this big victory. I want to guess I
Speaker 1: get another big fancy day marching through the city. And um.
Speaker 1: So like he gets that, he gets voted the name
Speaker 1: Pompy the Great effectively because like the other senators are
Speaker 1: making fun of him because they're like like like like
Speaker 1: it's like it's a it's a it's like kind of
Speaker 1: a mocking nickname to most people because you all know
Speaker 1: you're kind of full of ship. He's like an executive
Speaker 1: producer exactly exactly. He's he's an ep um. He he
Speaker 1: actually kind of is like I mean, in a number
Speaker 1: of ways, he's like that, he's like the the Weinstein
Speaker 1: of history. Right, Um yeah, um, Julius Caesar has been affleck.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to explain it, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to like rehash all of this period in Roman history,
Speaker 1: save to say that like the fact that three guys
Speaker 1: wind up basically in charge of all government policy is
Speaker 1: not a good step and towards like a more republican
Speaker 1: form of government, right, So doesn't talk and get talked
Speaker 1: about enough, because this is the thing everybody talks about,
Speaker 1: is like the Triumvirate and Pompey and Caesar and Crassis
Speaker 1: and stuff. This is like most of what people know
Speaker 1: about the Roman Republic is this tail end period. What
Speaker 1: doesn't get talked about enough is how sh it actually
Speaker 1: got done on the ground. Because in the eighty or
Speaker 1: so years since the Brothers Gracky, Roman politics had turned
Speaker 1: into a constant, low level gang war. And again you've
Speaker 1: got these big mobs of clients. So like after it
Speaker 1: becomes common to kill people for political purposes, senators and
Speaker 1: elected officials won't travel through town without like a bunch
Speaker 1: of their guys with them, right. That so part of
Speaker 1: your job as clients, like at least you know the
Speaker 1: chunk of clients you have were like veterans who are
Speaker 1: like big tough guys. You get your vets and your
Speaker 1: boxers and stuff. And anytime you go through town to
Speaker 1: take care of business, you have like fifty or a
Speaker 1: hundred guys with weapons like your guys following. You like
Speaker 1: to watch your back, right, because now people get murdered
Speaker 1: all the time because they propose bills. Um. And one
Speaker 1: of the things this means is that pretty regularly you'll
Speaker 1: get these groups of like senators and elected officials and
Speaker 1: like their goons, and they'll just murder each other in
Speaker 1: the street. There will be these gang wars between like
Speaker 1: members of Congress. It is. It's literally like if fucking
Speaker 1: like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and like bands of
Speaker 1: men with like sharpened sticks wailing in each other in
Speaker 1: like Washington, um, which would be a better system than
Speaker 1: we have now. Don't get me wrong. Now it's like
Speaker 1: a cold war ver yeah yeah, yeah, so like and
Speaker 1: a lot of one of the actually the most popular
Speaker 1: weapons is like ceiling tiles. Like that's if you really
Speaker 1: want to kill somebody, you get some dudes up on
Speaker 1: a roof to just start hooking ceiling tiles down on them.
Speaker 1: That will kill the motherfucker fast. Um yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's how it's a good way to kill people. Um.
Speaker 1: So the most successful of these gangsters. Because another thing
Speaker 1: that happens is that like, yes, senator, you've got like
Speaker 1: your mobs of clients, but like a guy who's professionally
Speaker 1: building a mob of armed people to get into street fights.
Speaker 1: It is always going to be better than some politician
Speaker 1: who has his like his like Toady's following him. So
Speaker 1: you get these professional gangsters who build political mobs to
Speaker 1: street fight on behalf of different sides of the big
Speaker 1: Roman political divide, right, and the most successful of these
Speaker 1: gangsters is a guy named Claudius. Now, Claudius is another
Speaker 1: rich kid. His family had sided with Sola during the
Speaker 1: last civil war, which is like, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: aristocracy side, But Claudius didn't follow in the footsteps of
Speaker 1: his father, who had been elected consul. Instead, he starts
Speaker 1: to develop a reputation is the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: can get things done in a dark alley. And sixty
Speaker 1: three b C. A senator named Cataline tries to overthrow
Speaker 1: the government and massacre all of the elected leaders of
Speaker 1: Rome and assumed control in a coup kind of tries
Speaker 1: to make himself dictator again like Selah had. And while
Speaker 1: this is all going on, this is a complicated story.
Speaker 1: But while there's this like coup attempt, Claudius, because he's
Speaker 1: kind of a young, strapping dude, he volunteers to act
Speaker 1: as bodyguard for the consoles for the elected leaders Catalan
Speaker 1: is trying to kill and when all the dust is settled,
Speaker 1: he's become one of the guys you go to in
Speaker 1: Rome when you need a gang of thugs to protect
Speaker 1: you or somebody else. Right, he kind of like he's
Speaker 1: kind of like building a private security firm. Like that's literally,
Speaker 1: like really what this is is like you can hire
Speaker 1: Claudius and he's got like fucking goons who will watch
Speaker 1: your fucking back and they're good at it. Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now there's a lot of ground to cover here. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give Claudius his due because he's
Speaker 1: a fascinating guy, but I would be doing everyone a
Speaker 1: disservice if I didn't read you this one excerpt from
Speaker 1: his back story, and I'm gonna this is coming from
Speaker 1: a write up and headstuff dot org quote. The cult
Speaker 1: of Bonadea, the Good Goddess, is somewhat of an anomaly
Speaker 1: in classical Rome. Rather than the standard gods with the
Speaker 1: priesthood and open worship, the Good Goddess was worshiped in
Speaker 1: a less formal fashion, similar to the Greek mystery colts.
Speaker 1: The celebrations of Bonaday were not of the city's normal
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical rights, and in fact they predated the earliest recorded
Speaker 1: history of the city. Even her name was a secret,
Speaker 1: known only to women and never recorded. She to have
Speaker 1: a temple where only women were permitted entry, and every
Speaker 1: year on the first day of May they would hold
Speaker 1: a sacred celebration in this temple. This was one of
Speaker 1: two such celebrations held throughout the year, but the second
Speaker 1: in December was not held in the temple, instead was
Speaker 1: hosted by the wife of the chief magistrate, with the
Speaker 1: aid of Rome's sacred vestal virgins. The year, the chief
Speaker 1: magistrate was Rome's high priest Caius Julius Caesar. Quite why
Speaker 1: Claudius decided to infiltrate the Bonnadea festivities in sixty two
Speaker 1: BCS a mystery. The main rumor at the time was
Speaker 1: that he did it in an attempt to seduce the hostess,
Speaker 1: Caesar's wife, Pompeia. The more likely reason is that he
Speaker 1: did it in an attempt to win some credit with
Speaker 1: Rome's bohemian set and set himself up as an iconoclast.
Speaker 1: Whoever it was, he disguised himself as a woman and
Speaker 1: slipped into the house. Unfortunately for him, Caesar's mother, Aurelia,
Speaker 1: was there determined to make sure that things went smoothly,
Speaker 1: and she immediately noticed this unusually tall and heavily cloaked women.
Speaker 1: The right of Bonnadea was such a rare opportunity for
Speaker 1: Roman women to throw off the chackles of propriety, and
Speaker 1: as such, masking your identity like that was very unusual. Really,
Speaker 1: had a servant girl follow Claudius, and she immediately noticed
Speaker 1: when he let his voice slip. She called him out
Speaker 1: on it, and he fled the scene. Though he was
Speaker 1: not definitively identified, everyone knew it was Claudius. A public
Speaker 1: outrage in his conduct, stoked by his brother in law,
Speaker 1: led him to be formally charged with the sacrilege the
Speaker 1: following year. The punishment for a man who witnessed the
Speaker 1: mysteries of the Good Goddess was to be blinded. Just
Speaker 1: cloud show ship and it's as a fun note, Caesar
Speaker 1: divorces his wife after this, not because she'd done anything,
Speaker 1: but because the fact that this guy was maybe trying
Speaker 1: to fuck her means that people might suspect she'd done something,
Speaker 1: and Caesar's wife has to be above suspicion. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: he just wanted a divorce. Like these guys are all Again,
Speaker 1: the cool thing about ancient Romans is like you could
Speaker 1: among number one, you can make an incredible fucking like
Speaker 1: uh like soap opera show that's just about the lives
Speaker 1: of all these people they are like, uh, the just
Speaker 1: just all very every one of these fucking people that
Speaker 1: we've talked about would have had a reality show if TV.
Speaker 1: Like Caesar. Caesar almost basically did kind of have the
Speaker 1: equivalent of the reality show. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that he's doing, he and he kind of comes to
Speaker 1: power later in life. He doesn't have a lot of money, um,
Speaker 1: so he has to work with crosses and stuff. But
Speaker 1: when he gets his military command of gall number one,
Speaker 1: it's kind of because he's so old and hasn't really
Speaker 1: distinguished himself politically. It's kind of like if Pete Boudagedge
Speaker 1: suddenly got elected Supreme Commander of the of the U.
Speaker 1: S Military and then and then conquered the entire Middle
Speaker 1: East in five years, right like if like that, it's
Speaker 1: kind of because that's what Caesar does, is he like
Speaker 1: he's kind of a joke. He's this like silly asshole
Speaker 1: that everybody's like laughing at and then he conquers all
Speaker 1: of Western Europe like it is he's got not to
Speaker 1: compare them, because Pete Boudage is useless and Julius Caesar
Speaker 1: is very smart. But one of the things Caesar does
Speaker 1: while he is conquer again all the fucking Europe, like
Speaker 1: he like he's his in his minnor. He forces are
Speaker 1: regularly outnumbered four and five to one by some accounts,
Speaker 1: even more than that, Like he's an incredibly competent military leader.
Speaker 1: While he's doing this, he's writing every day about what
Speaker 1: he's doing and then sending his diary back to Rome
Speaker 1: to be published and read out to people in the city.
Speaker 1: So he's turning his life into the equivalent at the
Speaker 1: time of a reality show to build a legend around
Speaker 1: himself and to make himself into a popular figure. Like
Speaker 1: he's kind of doing the Trump thing too, where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got this, I've got the most popular show in town.
Speaker 1: Everybody shows up to listen to the latest pages of
Speaker 1: Caesar's diary being read. I mean, how he's got to
Speaker 1: do both, I guess, but yeah, he's very very Yeah
Speaker 1: military victory. So Claudius goes to trial as to whether
Speaker 1: or not he's gonna get blinded for like sneaking into
Speaker 1: these these women's rights. Um. And he he doesn't get blinded, um,
Speaker 1: but only because Caesar and Crasses back him and they
Speaker 1: bribe the jury to acquit him. Prior to this, he'd
Speaker 1: kind of been on the optimate side of things politically,
Speaker 1: but he's now like a popular because Caesar and Crassis,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And this is kind of the start
Speaker 1: of his his life as a creature of Caesar and
Speaker 1: Crassus uh. Inft b C. He runs for election as
Speaker 1: tribune of the police. Now, as we've talked about, this
Speaker 1: is the veto job and it's very important. But also
Speaker 1: it's a tribune of the police. You can't have this
Speaker 1: job if you're a patrician, which Claudius is. So he
Speaker 1: pays a guy who is four years younger than him
Speaker 1: to adopt him as his son, like he pays a
Speaker 1: poor man who's younger than him to adopt him as
Speaker 1: his son and make him a plebeian. And then he
Speaker 1: changes his name from c l a U d i
Speaker 1: U S to c l O d i U S.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's slightly different in Latin, but like he
Speaker 1: basically changes it to a different spelling of Claudius to
Speaker 1: symbolize that, like now I'm a commoner. Um. But the
Speaker 1: been the main benefit. Number One, he can veto ship,
Speaker 1: which since the grack eye, that's become like the thing
Speaker 1: you do if you get a tribune on your side,
Speaker 1: you can just stonewall everything. It's like the filibuster, right,
Speaker 1: like you can stop anything from happening. You can just yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's ultimate he makes. He makes himself into the Joe Mansion.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is that, like, because all of
Speaker 1: Roman politics is determined via street fights, if you kill
Speaker 1: the tribune of the Polabs any like tribunes are sacra
Speaker 1: sank their sacred when they're holding office, so if you
Speaker 1: kill one, you are immediately put to death. So he
Speaker 1: basically gains like a force field for himself in the
Speaker 1: street So he's like Joe Mansion that he can shut
Speaker 1: down politics. But also now he's got like that if
Speaker 1: you touch me in a street fight, you get murdered,
Speaker 1: Like it's a force field. Um. Again, they it's a
Speaker 1: better system than we have, I think. So eventually the
Speaker 1: Optimates get their own street fighter, UM, who is even
Speaker 1: better than Claudius at building a gang of violent people
Speaker 1: to murder folks for political purposes. And this is this
Speaker 1: gangster named Milo, who is also pretty fucking rad. Um.
Speaker 1: Milo is a is a hoot. So these two send
Speaker 1: their goons to beat and murder people organizing for the
Speaker 1: other sides. Assassinations and street fights grow to become like
Speaker 1: a daily occurrence. There's basically a low level gang war
Speaker 1: at all times all throughout the city of Rome, and
Speaker 1: you never know if you're gonna get caught up in
Speaker 1: between these mobs of like armed young thugs just like
Speaker 1: murdering people in the streets. Um. Now, these two street
Speaker 1: gangs each kind of like represent a different political block,
Speaker 1: but they also represent there's two angry young dudes who
Speaker 1: hate each other in charge of them. So it's it's
Speaker 1: very much both like a political proxy fight and also
Speaker 1: just a street fight between two games that hate each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all comes to a head in fifty two BC
Speaker 1: when Milo murders Claudius after beating him in a street fight.
Speaker 1: And this is a real problem. Um Now, I bet
Speaker 1: some people are wondering at this point as we talk
Speaker 1: about all of this going on, where the funk are
Speaker 1: the police in the right, because at this point in
Speaker 1: Roman history there's like a million. There's close to a
Speaker 1: million people in the city of Rome. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: hit a million until I guess the first century a d.
Speaker 1: But there's like probably six seven thousand or more people
Speaker 1: living in the city at this point, which is there
Speaker 1: will be no city in Eurasia with a population that's
Speaker 1: similar in size until the eighteen hundreds, right, And this
Speaker 1: is like fifty BC, you know. Um, So Rome is
Speaker 1: able to get that big because it's very modern in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. There's sewers, a lot of homes
Speaker 1: have central heating, um, they have running water, um. But
Speaker 1: one hallmark of modern life that roam lacked was anything
Speaker 1: that vaguely resembled law enforcement. And I want to quote
Speaker 1: from a writeup from Dr Linda Ellis here. Though the
Speaker 1: government could usually cope with major disorders, personal violence plagued
Speaker 1: the city under the Republic. The police powers of the
Speaker 1: government were rudimentary, with few officials and limited staff trying
Speaker 1: to maintain some semblance of order. So if you committed
Speaker 1: a crime in Rome, like treason or fucking in the
Speaker 1: money with the money that was serious, you would get
Speaker 1: punished right, some high up elected official would like send
Speaker 1: guys after you, right. Usually these were like guys known
Speaker 1: as lictors, who are like basically, if you have political
Speaker 1: office that comes with any kind of power, you get
Speaker 1: these dudes who hang around you and they carry these
Speaker 1: things called fascis, which are like a bundle of sticks
Speaker 1: with an axe side to them, which is where we
Speaker 1: get the word fascism, and you can send them to
Speaker 1: do things and they basically have can speak with like
Speaker 1: the power that you have. It's it's a way of
Speaker 1: being like, well, you know, if I'm actually running this empire,
Speaker 1: I might need to be making things happen in more
Speaker 1: than one place. Service was a little more proactive kind
Speaker 1: of but instead of like protecting you, their job is
Speaker 1: mainly to go and like tell people to do things
Speaker 1: on your behalf. So you can if like somebody does
Speaker 1: some serious treason, there's the ability to kind of enforce
Speaker 1: the law against them, but there's not cops. And so
Speaker 1: like if if a popular or a wealthy guy like
Speaker 1: murders somebody, they're not going to get punished in less
Speaker 1: like the person they murder has more money than them.
Speaker 1: And like friends who like range a mob to like
Speaker 1: go and fight his supporters. UM and property crime is
Speaker 1: not really a crime, it's a civil matter. As Dr
Speaker 1: Linda Ellis writes, quote, when the average citizen of Rome
Speaker 1: became a victim of crime, he had to rely on
Speaker 1: his neighbors and relatives for help. Roman nobility could also
Speaker 1: call up a mob of clients to do battle for them.
Speaker 1: In rural areas of Italy, the situation was worse, and
Speaker 1: landowners hired armed bands to protect themselves and intimidate their enemies.
Speaker 1: There were even a few private armies of thugs at Rome.
Speaker 1: Self help was always the main way to deal with
Speaker 1: criminals in ancient Rome, and there was no concept of
Speaker 1: public prosecution, so victims of crime or their families had
Speaker 1: to organize and manage the prosecution themselves. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of everybody doing the gang ship at this point, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll talk about how it works, because in
Speaker 1: some ways it works better than what's gonna come next,
Speaker 1: in some ways it doesn't. But this again, it is
Speaker 1: worth noting that like this is the system that like
Speaker 1: a million people live under in the densest city in
Speaker 1: the modern world. UM, and they mostly figure their ship
Speaker 1: out now as we know in forty nine BC, the
Speaker 1: tensions between the optimates and the popularities that have been
Speaker 1: settled in the streets turned into open war. Right, you
Speaker 1: get you get your Caesar. He crosses the Rubicon, which
Speaker 1: is a river. He fights this big war with his
Speaker 1: old friend Pompey, and Caesar wins, right, uh, And then
Speaker 1: he gets the ship stabbed out of him. And then
Speaker 1: there's another horrible civil war between the people who had
Speaker 1: killed Caesar and this kid who's related to him, who
Speaker 1: he kind of like makes his inheritor named Augustus, and
Speaker 1: Augustus wins this civil war and he winds up as
Speaker 1: the emperor. Right, this is the history everybody knows. This
Speaker 1: is like the most famous period of all of Roman history.
Speaker 1: Cleopatra's in the mix for a while, then she's not, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the characters I've heard of, Yes, yeah, we're we're
Speaker 1: now at the point in history everyone knows about it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about what Augustus does to deal with
Speaker 1: the fact that, like when he takes power, everyone has
Speaker 1: just gone through like a hundred and fifty straight years
Speaker 1: of constant assassinations and like street fights and three different
Speaker 1: civil wars that had all killed significant fractions of the
Speaker 1: male populace of the Roman empire. Um, and they're kind
Speaker 1: of tired of it. People like are not happy with
Speaker 1: the status quo. Like, you know what, we're okay not
Speaker 1: having any political power if you can stop everyone from
Speaker 1: murdering everyone all the time. So that's that's what what
Speaker 1: Augustus comes to power with, right. Um. And speaking of
Speaker 1: murdering everyone, you know who's gonna murder you the podcast,
Speaker 1: the sponsors of our podcast, they'll kill your ass. They will, Sophie,
Speaker 1: They'll kill your ass. That's their promise that I know.
Speaker 1: I don't. I didn't see that in ad copy or
Speaker 1: the promo codes. Okay, well promo code A man is
Speaker 1: coming to attack you in the night with a knife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that sounds like a difference of opinion. Uh, we're back.
Speaker 1: I wanna I wanna note one thing real quick here.
Speaker 1: So we're we're recording this like the day after the
Speaker 1: FBI rated Trump's house, which is a very funny moment.
Speaker 1: Everybody's still enjoying it. You will be listening to this
Speaker 1: in the future when um, the entirety yeah next yeah,
Speaker 1: gettysburg to and three have already happened by the time
Speaker 1: you've heard this. Yes, there are no people left in Virginia. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a nightmare. But anyway, so that the like
Speaker 1: right after that happened, you get all these right wing
Speaker 1: like media leaders and thought leaders started like saying ship
Speaker 1: about like now the war is on, like get ready
Speaker 1: to fight, fucking Stephen Crowder being like tomorrow we go
Speaker 1: to war. My favorite quote that one of these ship
Speaker 1: heads came put out is this guy Jesse Kelly, who is,
Speaker 1: according to his Twitter, host of the nationally syndicated Jesse
Speaker 1: Kelly Show, host of I'm Right, Um, and yeah, he's
Speaker 1: some sort of anti communist piece of ship. He's got
Speaker 1: like half a million followers on Twitters. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think he's a Fox News guy. Yeah, that seems right.
Speaker 1: So his post when everybody's like fed posting on Maine
Speaker 1: after Trump gets rated is do not quote laws to
Speaker 1: men with swords attributed to Pompey Magnus. Now he likes
Speaker 1: this because number one, they all fetishized weapons as doing
Speaker 1: things that weapons don't, which is provide on their own
Speaker 1: some sort of autonomy. Weapons are useless without organization, as
Speaker 1: anything but like tools of either personal violence or u bullshittery.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that he's doing is like this
Speaker 1: is like that you can't govern us because we have
Speaker 1: we have we're armed, right, Like that's the thing that
Speaker 1: he's saying here. The funny thing about this number one
Speaker 1: Pompey Magnus, as we've just covered, was a gigantic fraud
Speaker 1: like literally like bullshit his way into like repeated military
Speaker 1: commands and stuff. He's the same as like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: those Republicans that get up on stage to do a
Speaker 1: bunch of push ups to show that they're big with
Speaker 1: a gun or whatever. Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: that sort of bullshit. Um. But the other thing that's
Speaker 1: funny about this is that during the Civil War with Caesar,
Speaker 1: Pompey gets his as kicked because against Caesar is really
Speaker 1: good at fighting wars and Pompey is a gigantic fraud um.
Speaker 1: And he gets captured by Ptolemy, who's the leader of
Speaker 1: Egypt at the time, who's like um allied with Caesar.
Speaker 1: And while he's being sent as a prisoner to Caesar,
Speaker 1: Ptolemy has by some accounts, a fifteen year old boy
Speaker 1: stab him to death and cut his head off and
Speaker 1: then they stick it on a spear and parade it
Speaker 1: through town. So, Jesse Kelly, that may not be the
Speaker 1: guy at a hark to as like your your hero
Speaker 1: of like kind of appropriate right wing Yeah, like politician, Yeah,
Speaker 1: giant fraud who starts a fight and then gets murdered. Um,
Speaker 1: very funny. So Augustus is the emperor, right, um, and
Speaker 1: everyone is very tired of political violence because it has
Speaker 1: just and on way too fucking long. Right. And this
Speaker 1: is again, actually it's not entirely wrong to kind of
Speaker 1: think about the political power that has kind of been gained,
Speaker 1: not that these are too similar, but like the the
Speaker 1: political power that has accrued, especially in the last few
Speaker 1: years around gun control, as a result of like exhaustion
Speaker 1: at the constant spread of massacres. It's not entirely different.
Speaker 1: Because all these people in Rome, they've had a lot,
Speaker 1: most of them have lost family in these fucking fights.
Speaker 1: It's this constant drumbeat of violence and these constant series
Speaker 1: of civil wars, and they're just like fucking exhausted. And
Speaker 1: so the one of the reasons Augustus is able to
Speaker 1: take and hold power is that he promises and delivers.
Speaker 1: I'm going to put a stop to that ship. Right,
Speaker 1: We're not gonna have to deal with this anymore. And
Speaker 1: that is a pretty enticing thing for people at this
Speaker 1: point in Roman history. Um. Now, different leaders had attempted
Speaker 1: to deal with Roman mob violence prior to Augustus. When
Speaker 1: Pompey took over the city during the Civil War, he
Speaker 1: had brought his armed soldiers into Rome, crossing the Pomarium
Speaker 1: illegal in order to restore order and put an end
Speaker 1: to lawlessness. And while Pompey had let his soldiers violate
Speaker 1: sacred law by taking weapons into the city, he had
Speaker 1: banned the private ownership of weaponry within the city, which
Speaker 1: happens several times in Roman history and never actually happens.
Speaker 1: Right again, it's it's pretty you could just like take
Speaker 1: a chair leg right like it's it's not like what
Speaker 1: the weapons we're talking about. You can't really ban because
Speaker 1: people are just like making like sure, yeah, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: And people are gonna have roof tiles that you can
Speaker 1: hocket folks. You know, um, slings are not hard to
Speaker 1: make a leather glove glove with like metal anyway, it's
Speaker 1: not hard. So when Augustus takes power, though, he expands
Speaker 1: the ban on private ownership of weaponry. He bans the
Speaker 1: carrying of arms during assemblies or judicial proceedings. Um. And
Speaker 1: eventually he passes a law known as the Lex Julia
Speaker 1: de v Um, which makes it illegal to carry weapons
Speaker 1: for any reason in the Empire outside of hunting or
Speaker 1: personal protection when you're traveling between in cities. Right. Um. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to this, he establishes the first police force,
Speaker 1: the first police force of any kind anywhere in the
Speaker 1: Western world. Now, different regimes had all had ways of
Speaker 1: like dealing with descent or cracking down on stuff. There
Speaker 1: had been stuff that was kind of policy. The Spartans
Speaker 1: half essentially their version of like a fugitive slave patrol
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um. But what Augustus builds is very different.
Speaker 1: Among other things, it is a permanent armed force in
Speaker 1: the city of Rome itself, which had never happened before, right,
Speaker 1: And so this is part of one of the things
Speaker 1: that makes Rome has always kind of been ungovernable. And
Speaker 1: so this is as ugly as it gets. It's also
Speaker 1: a check to the power of the aristocracy because they
Speaker 1: can never hold too much power, because at any moment
Speaker 1: the Bob could get angry and just murder everyone because
Speaker 1: there's way too many of them and there's no army
Speaker 1: in Rome to stop them. Right, So it's just like,
Speaker 1: how big are your gangs? Are they bigger than everyone
Speaker 1: else in the city? You know they're not, So you
Speaker 1: can't do certain things now. He because the police force
Speaker 1: he built, their primary job is not stopping crime or
Speaker 1: investigating murders. They're riot cops, right, that's what he puts
Speaker 1: into the city. He calls them urban cohorts because like
Speaker 1: cohort is a military unit, right, kind of broadly equivalent
Speaker 1: to like, I don't know, battalion almost um. In modern
Speaker 1: military terms, these urban cohorts are military units commanded and
Speaker 1: organized similarly to the regular military legions, which operate under
Speaker 1: the military chain of command. They are militarized police, and
Speaker 1: their job is to put down riots, to corral the
Speaker 1: power of the mob, and to make street combat and
Speaker 1: coup's basically impossible. Um. Again, they don't handle petty crime.
Speaker 1: They don't do anything if your home is invaded or
Speaker 1: if like your kids murdered or whatever. So they're they're
Speaker 1: the same as cops today. Actually, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of similarities between them and they're heavily. Again, these are
Speaker 1: militarized police. Now this is like the urban cohorts are
Speaker 1: like the daytime cops, and then there's nighttime law and
Speaker 1: part of what they're doing is law and forcement. Um.
Speaker 1: They're called card the Vigils, which is where we get
Speaker 1: the word vigilante, even though they're not really vigilantes um.
Speaker 1: And the Vigils are initially just a fire brigade. They're
Speaker 1: made up of freedmen who knew how to fight fires,
Speaker 1: and their job is to like be distributed through the
Speaker 1: cities that when a fire starts, you can get a
Speaker 1: team of guys there to try to stop it, right
Speaker 1: because again, the biggest thing that Romans have to worry
Speaker 1: with on a day to day basis is fire. Um.
Speaker 1: So because like while you're I'm actually just gonna quote
Speaker 1: from Dr Linda Ellis here to talk about like how
Speaker 1: what these guys do evolves over time. At first, the
Speaker 1: Vigils functioned primarily as a firefighting force, since the main
Speaker 1: threat to cities then and now was destructioned by uncontrolled fire.
Speaker 1: They were equipped with water pumps, buckets, and axes for
Speaker 1: breaking down the doors of houses on fire or suspected
Speaker 1: of being a fire risk. Artillery was used to shoot
Speaker 1: dampening materials onto fires and to create the fire breaks
Speaker 1: by leveling buildings. The vigils patrolled the city at night
Speaker 1: and had the right of entry into private homes, which
Speaker 1: put them in the position of witnessing crime and taking
Speaker 1: on the role of policemen, from capturing thieves, returning runaway
Speaker 1: slaves to maintaining public order. So they have the right
Speaker 1: to go into your home because we have to be
Speaker 1: able to make sure you're not starting a fire that
Speaker 1: you can't keep more that like a fire is and started,
Speaker 1: that you haven't fallen asleep or whatever, and like your
Speaker 1: your house is burning down. But because of this, now
Speaker 1: we're allowed to do no knock raids on your house
Speaker 1: if we think it might be a fire. What if
Speaker 1: we see a crime, we have to have the ability
Speaker 1: to like prosecute a crime too, And so they kind
Speaker 1: of become cops because they have the ability to bust
Speaker 1: into anybody's house for any reason. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: so it's so interesting that that like that characteristic begets
Speaker 1: the job and not the other way around. It is
Speaker 1: really interesting, right because it's very because our policy It's
Speaker 1: not how I would have assumed that, but it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's like that power creates the become police. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because like in in our system, our police, who
Speaker 1: are thugs came out of fugitive slave patrols, which were
Speaker 1: just a worse kind of thug. In this case, the
Speaker 1: polace come out of an absolutely necessary job. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have a fucking million people in a city in zero
Speaker 1: a SBC, you need professional firefighter's right underwise it's just suicide.
Speaker 1: But kind of you get how this like evolves and
Speaker 1: then they become cops because like, well, like this guy's
Speaker 1: breaking the low? What am I supposed to Are we
Speaker 1: supposed to just let this happen? Um? You know, it's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is really different though from what you would expect. Um.
Speaker 1: So the birth of this and this is this is
Speaker 1: a fairly advanced law enforcement force. Right, Like, if you're
Speaker 1: thinking about what's around at the time, you've got these
Speaker 1: are that like at any given time, thousands upon thousands
Speaker 1: of heavily armed men, like the Vigils have artillery. They
Speaker 1: have catapults and ship which they used to fight fires,
Speaker 1: but which can also be turned to like fight riots. Which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I would have loved to watch these
Speaker 1: guys fight a fire because I want to see people
Speaker 1: like stop a fire with a fucking catapult. Um, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Ship. But so, one of the things that
Speaker 1: this does is you've got this advance law enforcement force.
Speaker 1: You've disarmed the city. The only people with weapons are
Speaker 1: these cops. One of the things that this makes a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot easier is the state can enforce
Speaker 1: on popular laws. Now you think back to Lucretia, right,
Speaker 1: Romans get rid of their first or their last king
Speaker 1: because like there's this stupid ass law and he does,
Speaker 1: like his son does a horrible thing rape somebody in
Speaker 1: the stupid ass law leaves in the even worst situation,
Speaker 1: and everybody's really angry about it. And because the mob
Speaker 1: is the mob, they are able to like kick the
Speaker 1: king out, and that's how the republic starts. That's not
Speaker 1: gonna be possible. Nothing like that is anymore, um, because
Speaker 1: now you have riot cops in the city. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's really easy for the state to force people to
Speaker 1: accept laws that are unpopular. A good example of this
Speaker 1: during the reign of Nero, the mayor basically of Rome
Speaker 1: is murdered by one of his slaves. Now they can't
Speaker 1: figure out who did it, right, they don't know which
Speaker 1: slave there's no is one of the people he owns
Speaker 1: in his household, but he's got hunt ruds. I think
Speaker 1: this might might have had like like a thousand or more,
Speaker 1: like a shipload of slaves, like a fucking small town
Speaker 1: worth of slaves. Now, under Roman law, if you can't
Speaker 1: figure out which specific slave did it, you have to
Speaker 1: execute the entire household, every man, woman and child in
Speaker 1: a lot of these slaves or kids who lives with
Speaker 1: this guy. Um. Now, everyone in Rome when this happens
Speaker 1: is fucking horrified by this, And in fact, stuff like
Speaker 1: this had happened in the past, and it had provoked
Speaker 1: riots which had often stopped this sort of justice from
Speaker 1: being carried out in full right because people Romans, they
Speaker 1: don't think slaves are like less human right, they have
Speaker 1: less rights due to what they believe is a pretty
Speaker 1: natural political condition. But they're still horrified at the thought
Speaker 1: if you're gonna kill like five people because like one
Speaker 1: of them is a murderer, and like you're gonna murder
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids, Like that's fucked up My dad
Speaker 1: was a slave by Grandpa was a slave. Like. I
Speaker 1: don't think this is right. And in the past Romans
Speaker 1: attempting to like Roman leaders attempting to carry out these
Speaker 1: laws in order to maintain the status quo, would have
Speaker 1: had to like funk up a bunch of people to
Speaker 1: do it, um, and would have been put at risk
Speaker 1: by doing it. That doesn't happen anymore. Um. By the
Speaker 1: time Nero was empowered, the vigils on the oven urban
Speaker 1: cohorts are professionalized. They're very good at stopping descent, and
Speaker 1: so a huge show of force is sent out by
Speaker 1: the police state as the Romans move in to execute
Speaker 1: these slaves. As English historian P. KB. Reynolds wrote in
Speaker 1: his nineteen paper on Ancient Roman policing quote, the law
Speaker 1: was upheld, however on this occasion, but elaborate police precautions
Speaker 1: were necessary when the sentence was to be carried out.
Speaker 1: So because they have this powerful police force, the mob
Speaker 1: cannot act to stop an injustice, right because they just
Speaker 1: get the ship murdered out of them by the cops. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, Reynolds, this is a very fascinating paper.
Speaker 1: I recommend reading it if you're interested. In ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: right after talking about how the birth of policing made
Speaker 1: it possible to massacre all of these kids. Uh, he
Speaker 1: goes on to write that quote, it is not really
Speaker 1: going too far to say that in the medal of
Speaker 1: matter of police services, it was not until the beginning
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century that the cities of Europe regained
Speaker 1: the standards of civilization which had existed in the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire years before. It took us two thousand years almost
Speaker 1: to get back to having cops who can make this
Speaker 1: kind of thing possible. What an achievement. Yeah, that's the pinnacle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, yeah, so right, it's like like the
Speaker 1: mob rule or the not mob rule, but like the
Speaker 1: ability of mobs to enact like some sort of or
Speaker 1: like put it to you know, to act as a
Speaker 1: check against like state power and the power of the rich. Ideally, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's jury nullification now. But yeah, and again everybody, especially
Speaker 1: when you because I I made the probable mistake of
Speaker 1: like bringing up you know, guns and assault weapons and
Speaker 1: and and that debate in this whenever we want to
Speaker 1: like talk about ancient ship and like apply it to
Speaker 1: modern terms, there's a desire to have like a simple answer,
Speaker 1: and there just isn't because like, yeah, constant mob warfare
Speaker 1: was really bad. The establishment of a police state was
Speaker 1: also really bad. Yeah, and I think it is. I
Speaker 1: think there are things to learn about this, about like
Speaker 1: the dangers and whatnot of different political things that you
Speaker 1: can do. But I think it is fundamentally silly to
Speaker 1: like try to run to direct aligned. This is two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. But it is like it is worth
Speaker 1: noting that, like, okay, you give up the ability of
Speaker 1: the people to check the state's power and then so
Speaker 1: the state can enforce much less and that is something
Speaker 1: that is worth noting. Yeah, and that that's constant gang
Speaker 1: warfare is good either. Yeah, I mean it is like
Speaker 1: like this is how apartheid states like the ones we
Speaker 1: currently live in. Yet like you know, we are currently
Speaker 1: ruled by a racist, white nationalist minority and they are
Speaker 1: able to do but you know, yeah, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know if the alternative is better. Yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's just worth talking about this history without trying to
Speaker 1: like and so this is why you should vote this
Speaker 1: way on this lot two thousand years later, let's just
Speaker 1: talk about Yeah, um again, I am not try ang
Speaker 1: to Like, I'm really not trying to just make like
Speaker 1: a coy political point. I just think it's actually worth
Speaker 1: studying this if you want to think about the problems
Speaker 1: inherent to uh society. Like it's just good to know
Speaker 1: this stuff. So, of course, you're not just gonna stop
Speaker 1: people from objecting to tyranny because you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of armed thugs who can crack heads in the street.
Speaker 1: You're going to also need a secret police force, right
Speaker 1: obviously you know Um and Augustus actually established two secret
Speaker 1: police forces. Now, one is kind of informal basically, because
Speaker 1: you have this pretty big empire and you have all
Speaker 1: these military units spread around, you have like a supply service, right,
Speaker 1: who needs to like take messages from like oh, these
Speaker 1: guys up in fucking France or these guys all the
Speaker 1: way down in Jerusalem have like you know, they need
Speaker 1: more of spears, they need more shields, and like, I've
Speaker 1: got to take that information. I gotta get it to
Speaker 1: this guy. I gotta get You have like supply runners,
Speaker 1: and they're literally like riding horses and like physically moving
Speaker 1: around cities to carry messages. And so naturally he turns
Speaker 1: these guys who are called frumentary I into a secret
Speaker 1: service right into like his his spies because they're traveling
Speaker 1: everywhere and nobody pays much attention to them. Um, so
Speaker 1: they're a pretty good pick to act as like your Hey,
Speaker 1: you can keep an eye on things. Tell me if
Speaker 1: like unrest is boiling up, you can be a spy
Speaker 1: basically because you have the ability to go anywhere you
Speaker 1: know um Reynolds rights quote. The Emperor Hadrian, we are told,
Speaker 1: knew all secrets through the frumentary I. And as the
Speaker 1: Empire became more despotic, so the activities of the frumentary
Speaker 1: I multiplied, and the persecutions of the Christians. It was
Speaker 1: the frumentary I who searched men out and who affected arrests.
Speaker 1: Probably to the soldier who guarded St. Paul was a frumentarius.
Speaker 1: And if the Emperor desired the speedy removal of a
Speaker 1: prominent noble against whom it might be dangerous to proceed openly,
Speaker 1: the frumentari I were employed to carry out the deed.
Speaker 1: In fact, they performed all the dirty work that has
Speaker 1: always fallen to a lot of the secret police and
Speaker 1: an absolute despotism. There were so efficient in their work
Speaker 1: that they incurred universal hatred, and historian of the third
Speaker 1: century complains that they trannize over us, and later writer
Speaker 1: bitterly calls them a pestilent crew and in another passage
Speaker 1: the plague of the Roman world. In response to this
Speaker 1: general odium, the Emperor Diocletian disbanded them at the end
Speaker 1: of the third century, but their duties were far too
Speaker 1: important for the emperors to be able to dispense with
Speaker 1: their services, and a new core was soon enrolled, especially
Speaker 1: designed as a secret police. This new force blue aboard
Speaker 1: the curious title of Agents for Affairs, which was sufficiently
Speaker 1: vague to cover their manifold activities. But the agents were
Speaker 1: soon no better than their predecessors, and as early as
Speaker 1: the middle of the fourth century the Emperor Julian had
Speaker 1: had to reprove their corruption, and soon they had just
Speaker 1: as bad a name as the frumentary. I so that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That's a pretty cool bit of history right there.
Speaker 1: There's just no way, right, I guess. The lesson, of course,
Speaker 1: is like that kind of power necessarily creates, Yeah, these
Speaker 1: fucking evil people. Yeah, only bad people want that job,
Speaker 1: and they do bad ms when they get it. It's
Speaker 1: also worth like again, go back to the Gracchi. When
Speaker 1: some rich people want to kill a guy, they just
Speaker 1: have to fucking hire up and murder him in the street,
Speaker 1: and everybody knows what's happened, right, It's real fucking clear
Speaker 1: what goes down. And because of how much they've pissed
Speaker 1: people off, they have to like give people a bunch
Speaker 1: of what they had asked for and the stuff, even
Speaker 1: though they murdered the guy. Now you just have one
Speaker 1: of these fucking spooks kill him, right, Like, now you've
Speaker 1: got like the the Emperor's fucking spooks. You can kill
Speaker 1: him and nobody's allowed to talk about it or ask
Speaker 1: about it. It's not obvious what's happened, you know. Um
Speaker 1: so the last and most powerful police agency in ancient
Speaker 1: Rome where the Praetorian Guard. In some way, these guys
Speaker 1: are the evolution of mobs of armed supporters who tried
Speaker 1: to protect to protect Tiberius, Gracchus and the gangs run
Speaker 1: by Milo and Claudius. You know, during the civil wars,
Speaker 1: all of these guys who are fighting each other had
Speaker 1: like units of bodyguards that are like the toughest soldiers
Speaker 1: they've got, and Augustus had formed his into an elite
Speaker 1: military unit which started like five thousand men and eventually
Speaker 1: becomes like nine thousand guys. And these were during the
Speaker 1: Civil Wars, just like his shock troops, right, but they
Speaker 1: become his like elite riot force, right because the urban
Speaker 1: cohorts are just three thousand men um and the legions
Speaker 1: are rarely in Italy, so the Praetorians are always the
Speaker 1: strongest armed force near the center of power. So Augustus
Speaker 1: keeps like two thirds of them in the city of Rome,
Speaker 1: ready to crack heads when heads need cracking, and he
Speaker 1: sends a third of them elsewhere in the Italian peninsula
Speaker 1: to like garrison different hotspots. Uh. And they basically act
Speaker 1: as like secret police, referring back to him, making sure
Speaker 1: no one in the Some of them take up jobs
Speaker 1: in the in the military and stuff in order to
Speaker 1: like be able to report back on what's going on. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the words of historian guide de Bellier quote
Speaker 1: minimize the impression that he depended on them. Instead, the
Speaker 1: guard depended on Augustus no emperor meant no jobs and
Speaker 1: no special status. Because these guys get a shipload of
Speaker 1: extra money for doing what they're doing, right, They're paid
Speaker 1: very very well in order to keep the emperor in power.
Speaker 1: So guard officers also occupied roles in the urban cohort.
Speaker 1: It's uh and undercover praetorians could pop up anywhere, so
Speaker 1: they're like the mixed between the FBI and the Secret Service.
Speaker 1: It could also be used to assassinate political rivals, but
Speaker 1: as Guy points out quote, this state of affairs was
Speaker 1: reliant upon the emperor having enough prestige and power to
Speaker 1: contain the guard. Augustus had created potentially the most dangerous
Speaker 1: institution the Roman world had ever seen, and his monumental
Speaker 1: the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon
Speaker 1: described this brilliantly. By thus introducing the praetorian guards, as
Speaker 1: it were, into the palace and the Senate. The emperors
Speaker 1: taught them to perceive their own strength and the weakness
Speaker 1: of the civil government, to view the vices of their
Speaker 1: masters with familiar contempt, and to lay aside that reverential
Speaker 1: awe which distance only and mystery can preserve, towards an
Speaker 1: imaginary power, and this luxurious idleness of an opulent city.
Speaker 1: Their pride was nourished by the sense of their irresistible weight,
Speaker 1: nor was it possible to conceal from them that the
Speaker 1: person of the sovereign, the authority of the Senate, the
Speaker 1: public treasure, and the seat of empire were all in
Speaker 1: their hands. So eventually these guys start to start to
Speaker 1: come out as I serve at the like I'm here
Speaker 1: to protect the Emperor. I only have a position because
Speaker 1: at him. They realize eventually like, well, a lot of
Speaker 1: these emperors are incompetent. The sentence much of corrupt, rich,
Speaker 1: lazy assholes. We have the only weapons, right, we have
Speaker 1: the capital and the only weapons. Why don't we just
Speaker 1: run things right? Um? Yeah, So, as time goes on,
Speaker 1: all the different law enforcement arms of Roman society kind
Speaker 1: of realized that their powers have made them unstoppable bandits,
Speaker 1: and that's what they become. As Dr Ellis writes, quote,
Speaker 1: the Roman police and military forces often to abuse their
Speaker 1: power and status, such as property seizure without compensation and
Speaker 1: physical violence to civilians. The axes used by the Vigils
Speaker 1: and other troops were used to break down doors and
Speaker 1: abuse people both in the street and in their own houses.
Speaker 1: The Roman offered juvenal provided a dark picture of police
Speaker 1: soldier civilian relations in Rome. If a civilian was beaten
Speaker 1: up by the soldiers slash police. He was better off
Speaker 1: forgetting about it, because if he complained, there would be
Speaker 1: a trial under recent Churian and in front of a
Speaker 1: jury of soldiers. No witnesses would dare come forward, otherwise
Speaker 1: they would have other soldiers exact retribution. Epichectus, a Greek
Speaker 1: philosopher at the time, advised that if a soldier wanted
Speaker 1: a mule, it was best to give it to him,
Speaker 1: because if not given, the person would have lost it
Speaker 1: anyway and would have been beaten up in the process.
Speaker 1: Now we could talk about civil asset forfeit, cherry and true.
Speaker 1: We can talk about how often cops, particularly take cars
Speaker 1: from people. We're back, We're back to America. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did it first, baby. No, it is like truly shocking
Speaker 1: how many things that are horrible that we are absolutely
Speaker 1: no better than they. It's all it's all the same ship, right,
Speaker 1: And it's all the same ship because when you say
Speaker 1: we are building a separate class of people who will
Speaker 1: be able to live very comfortably in order to as
Speaker 1: long as they stopped the poor from fucking with the rich.
Speaker 1: And also they're the only people who have the right
Speaker 1: to to use force in our society, they always turn
Speaker 1: out to be assholes, right, because only assholes want that job,
Speaker 1: you know. Um okay, uh speaking of things, only assholes
Speaker 1: want products and services that support our podcast. Fact. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. Ye a bunch of pricks. What's up our listeners? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's up pricks? That's right, they deserve it. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about like the Roman police state here,
Speaker 1: which I don't think most people realize. Everyone knows, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Rome that it became an empire, Like you assume that,
Speaker 1: like it's a brutal, autocratic dictatorship, but like it is
Speaker 1: a modern police state, and I want to talk about
Speaker 1: how pervasive it truly was. Dr Ellis gives a really
Speaker 1: good job of like laying out the how heavily policed
Speaker 1: the city of Rome was. So she points out that
Speaker 1: Chicago today and her data is two thousand eighteen, is
Speaker 1: the third most populous city in the United States, with
Speaker 1: two point seven million people and five hundred cops. Ish, right,
Speaker 1: that's Chicago more or less today. Rome, at the height
Speaker 1: of the empire, is a million people. They have a
Speaker 1: police force of seven thousand vigils, three thousand urban cohorts,
Speaker 1: cavalry attached to the urban cohorts, and roughly six thousand
Speaker 1: Praetorian guards in the city. So that's about three times
Speaker 1: as many police per capita as a heavily policed city
Speaker 1: in the United States today. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it's a little bit mitigated by you know, they
Speaker 1: don't have nearly the kind of technological centralized their per
Speaker 1: views and is wide you know it is it is
Speaker 1: worth noting how heavily the city is. They have gone
Speaker 1: from at the start of this a city where nobody
Speaker 1: gets to have a weapon, a military weapon in town,
Speaker 1: to a city that is like garrisoned by a heavy
Speaker 1: military guard at all times. Now, the first member of
Speaker 1: the Praetorian Guard to attempt to take total power for
Speaker 1: himself was say Hannus, head of the Guard under Tiberius,
Speaker 1: who ruled from a d. Fourteen to thirty seven. Now
Speaker 1: say Hannus was caught before he could carry out his
Speaker 1: plans and execute it along with his family, and Tiberius
Speaker 1: actually lets the people of Rome riot and murder his
Speaker 1: family and supporters. Um, just like give him some fun, uh.
Speaker 1: And the Praetorian Guard. Yeah, this time, the Guard stay
Speaker 1: out of it like they don't defend their old leader
Speaker 1: because they're like, this isn't gonna go well for us.
Speaker 1: The emperor is still too powerful. Still, that's gonna change
Speaker 1: in a d forty one when Caligula gets murdered by
Speaker 1: officers of the Praetorian Guard for being a funked up
Speaker 1: little weirdo. Now, when Caligula gets murdered by the Praetorian Guard,
Speaker 1: there's this it's not very old like the empire, and
Speaker 1: so there's still strong memories of the republic, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, maybe we should go back
Speaker 1: to having a republic emperor. Seemed like a bad idea,
Speaker 1: But the Praetorian Guard is like, well, you don't need
Speaker 1: a praetorian guard if you've got no emperor. So how
Speaker 1: about we just force you to accept an emperor of
Speaker 1: that we've picked um, and they pick a guy named Claudius,
Speaker 1: who is a pretty interesting character himself. Um. I would
Speaker 1: like to talk more about him, but we just don't
Speaker 1: have the time, so instead I'm in a quote from
Speaker 1: Guy de la Bellier who writes Claudius was declared emperor
Speaker 1: by the praetorians and no one including the Senate was
Speaker 1: in any position to argue the praetorians jobs were secure.
Speaker 1: Claudius was reluctant emperor and turned out to be a
Speaker 1: good deal more competent than his family thought him capable of.
Speaker 1: It's even possible that Claudius had been in on the
Speaker 1: plans all along. Gold and silver coins were issued welcoming
Speaker 1: the new emperor and he them or showing the guard
Speaker 1: welcoming the new emperor, and he them um and he
Speaker 1: like pays them a bunch of money. It's it's unclear
Speaker 1: exactly what has happened. He's a relatively good emperor, but
Speaker 1: over time they stopped backing because again, you don't want
Speaker 1: the emperor to be any good. You want him to
Speaker 1: be a figurehead for you. And this all kind of
Speaker 1: comes to a head in one a d after the
Speaker 1: murder of Marcus Aurelius, his son Commodus, who is the
Speaker 1: bad guy in the movie Gladiator. Um yes, so after
Speaker 1: after Russell Crowe kills him, he's actually killed by the
Speaker 1: Praetorian Guard um so in in in previous into regnums,
Speaker 1: like the death of Nero, the guard had generally kind
Speaker 1: of like gone with whoever has those power and money
Speaker 1: to be the next emperor after Commodist dies, they like
Speaker 1: go to all the rich people in Rome and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: how much money you will pay to the emperor. Like
Speaker 1: they literally auction off the throne of the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: to the highest bidder, who winds up being some rich
Speaker 1: asshole who gets murdered. Two months later. He gets replaced
Speaker 1: by another guy, Septimus Severus, who this guy, uh, this
Speaker 1: fucking guy. UM fires the republican or the Praetorian Guard finally,
Speaker 1: and he makes a new Praetorian Guard that he hopes
Speaker 1: to be less corrupt, and they immediately grow corrupt and
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Um. Over the course of the empire,
Speaker 1: thirteen emperors are assassinated by the Praetorian guards. It's really
Speaker 1: like you let that you let that tiger into your house.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, and you know the stuff that was
Speaker 1: in your house prior to letting the tiger and wasn't
Speaker 1: pleasant either, Whether or not do you think this was progress?
Speaker 1: I did. I'm glad you brought up a gladiator, because
Speaker 1: I did. I did want to pitch the idea of
Speaker 1: um a double feature of the Ridley Scott Italian screaming
Speaker 1: in each other. Uh double feature of Gladiator and House
Speaker 1: of Gucci. Yeah, just Italians yelling. Italians never change, and
Speaker 1: that is that is the message of the show. Italians
Speaker 1: and police the same two thousand years ago as they
Speaker 1: are today. Um. Anyway, that's the story of how the
Speaker 1: Romans became a police state. And God, that is fucking
Speaker 1: genuinely very depressing. It's it's pretty fucked up. Um, you
Speaker 1: know we're condensing a lot of history here, but that's
Speaker 1: the god sweep of it. But yeah, an angle I
Speaker 1: had never really considered. But yeah, that tons of science
Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, you know, you've got this
Speaker 1: this situation of like political violence that makes everybody be
Speaker 1: like will do anything to stop it? And then the
Speaker 1: thing that stops it is the establishment of a militarized
Speaker 1: police force who then take power and spend centuries doing
Speaker 1: violence to people. But it also works for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it works for a long time. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: never like clear enough like how bad this ship is.
Speaker 1: And again it's too late for this because it would
Speaker 1: be easy to either be like, well, this is why
Speaker 1: no one should ever have cops, because they inherently funk
Speaker 1: everything up or this is why people shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to have weapons, because you know that what happens in
Speaker 1: the Mormon Republic happens right, right, But if you're trying
Speaker 1: to find though either of those easy answers, either this
Speaker 1: is why everyone should be armed, is why everyone should
Speaker 1: be disarmed. This is why we should have cops. Is
Speaker 1: what we shouldn't have cops. Well, both of these systems
Speaker 1: lasted like five years and conquered the entire world. It's
Speaker 1: like there we just there's not enough data and it's
Speaker 1: it's just like it's you know, there's stuff to take
Speaker 1: out of this for the future, but don't try not
Speaker 1: to take too much because again, both of these as
Speaker 1: as silly and funked up as everything is, both of
Speaker 1: these systems on a historic level work really fucking well, right,
Speaker 1: Like that is kind of the conquered the world. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean probably the main thing is that just sort
Speaker 1: of tells you it's just that part of it is irrelevant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's other stuff going on, military things, and what I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe not entirely, because like I guess partly like the
Speaker 1: fact that Roman politics is in the Republican period is
Speaker 1: so like cutthroat means that a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who wind up in charge after a certain point are
Speaker 1: like pretty canny sons of bitches, but also some really
Speaker 1: dumb sons of bitches wind up in power and they
Speaker 1: funk everything up and like destroy the Roman middle class.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know. There's actually not as many
Speaker 1: clear lessons from history as you want there to be.
Speaker 1: When you look at the history up list, each one's
Speaker 1: only been done once. That's the whole point of history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, exactly. Anyway, that's that's the story of how
Speaker 1: Rome became a police state. So Andrew, you have any
Speaker 1: plugables for us at the end here? Uh, yeah, let's see, Um,
Speaker 1: I guess mostly. Um. Yeah, I'm doing two shows with
Speaker 1: my podcast as this Racist. I'm going to be in
Speaker 1: a place called Austin on August and then Brooklyn on
Speaker 1: September ten. So yeah, I would love to see folks.
Speaker 1: If you've if you've enjoyed listening to me be horrified
Speaker 1: as Robert tells me stuff, then I will be a
Speaker 1: little more proactive on stage. But I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: not that much more proactive. Excellent, Alright, go find Andrew
Speaker 1: in Austin, and go find Jesus in your hearts, and
Speaker 1: by Jesus, I mean the Jesus Christ podcast. Yeah, period
Speaker 1: in your ears, that's right. Sophie hates it when I
Speaker 1: compare myself to you Gonna be you Gonna be crucified suit,
Speaker 1: I really hate it by the FRUMENTARII yeah, not my
Speaker 1: favorite thing anyways, See you next week. Bye bye. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.