WEBVTT - The History of Right Wingers Lying About Rome Ft. Mike Duncan 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:11.240 Also media. Ah, welcome back to it could happen here, 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:16.439 a podcast that is now happening here. I could have 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.520 done something with ear, but we'll do that next time. 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.840 Just forget that I said that, and welcome Mia to 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.040 the program. Mia, how are you doing today? 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:26.439 Not bad? 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:26.880 Not bad? 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:28.040 I'm excited to be here. 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.200 Yeah. Yeah. We're going to be talking about a subject 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.199 that's near and dear to all of our hearts, by 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.879 which I mean the Roman Empire with a guest who 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.080 is near and dear to our hearts, Mike Duncan. Mike, 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:41.320 how are you doing? 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:43.919 Hello? Thank you for having me. 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:45.879 It is wonderful to have you. 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:47.160 Mike. 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:50.839 You're a podcaster. You are kind of like the history 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.680 podcaster as far as a lot of folks are concerned, 0:00:53.720 --> 0:01:01.080 including me and you. Also, you've had some intro interactions 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.360 online with people as regards the Roman Empire recently. 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.120 Yeah. Well, anytime the Roman Empire shows up on the 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:13.200 cultural radar, I am tagged into it by roughly ten 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:15.520 thousand people, yea. And then I come in and I 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.199 do my bits or if you know, if something comes through, 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:21.640 you know, it gets shared at me, you know, not 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:23.920 shared with me, but shared it at me and then 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:25.560 and then I take a look at it, and I 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:28.600 get aggravated, and then, you know, fire off a few 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.959 salvos and retreat back out of the social media ecosystem, 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:35.959 which is kind of the strategy these days. Yeah. 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.120 Yeah, we all have to like fight like an insurgent 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:41.720 when it comes to that sort of thing, because the 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.399 alternative is to just get constantly stuck in this escalating 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:49.040 world of beats with strangers on the internet who are 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:50.440 making money off of the beef. 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:53.920 Yeah if but yeah, but there are certain things that 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:55.840 will get me to come out of my little hibernation, 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.400 which I think we're about to talk about. Yeah, yeah, me. 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:00.840 Do you want to you want to take it away? 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.280 Yeah. So one of the things that's been happening recently 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.600 is that so on October twenty fifth, the Republicans finally, 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:13.040 after an enormous amount of time, finally managed to electric Speaker. 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:13.120 Of the House. 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:18.320 And they picked this fairly unknown ret named Mike Johnson. 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:20.880 Who's this guy from Louisiana. And they picked him effectively 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.000 because nobody knew who he was. Yeah, and so they 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:27.200 picked this guy and they're like okay, and Mike Johnson 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.600 gets elected and Immediately everyone starts trying to figure out 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:32.600 who this guy is, and they very quickly realize this 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:39.239 guy is just a absolute incredible Christian fundamentalist weirdo. He 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:44.320 doesn't have a bank account, which is like wild. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.320 That's classic fundamentalism too, that's some of that old school stuff. 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:51.080 Yeah, to see it, it's really soty. 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:53.240 I mean, he's really sort of like he's like, he's 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:55.600 really a blast in the past of the Christian fundamentalist. 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.919 I mean he he he was a lawyer that represented 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:02.720 like a bunch of Young earthationist museums. He's really going 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:04.880 into that old school stuff. And one of the other 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:09.800 things that some people dug up is a podcast interview 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.520 where he is talking about how gay people cause the 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.960 fall of Rome. So, Mike Duncan, I want to ask 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:18.040 you the question that I think all of our listeners 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:22.359 are wondering. Can we, as queer people take responsibility? Can 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.799 we take any credit for the fall of Rome? Or 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.680 are we stealing visigof valor? If we do that, you're 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:33.600 stealing valor here. But but I do I do agree 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:35.800 that several of the gays in my life are like, 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.240 don't take this from us. It's one of our proudest accomplishments. 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.760 We brought down the Roman Empire. And I was like, 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.840 but unfortunately, it's just it's not the case. It's not 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.240 even close to the case. It's you know, you could 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.960 you could draw random words out of a hat and 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.360 produce a sentence that was literally nonsensical, and that would 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:56.840 be a better read of the end of the Roman 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:01.320 Empire than saying gay people or homosexual like, because it's 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.120 all wrapped up in this sort of like it was 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.000 decadence that caused the fall of the Roman Empire. They 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:08.400 were too like, you know, they were just too. 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.400 Licentious, and they just throw up some vocabulary words and 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.080 it just it just doesn't land at all. It doesn't 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.120 land on the specifics, it doesn't land on the general 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.760 it doesn't land chronologically, it doesn't land in any way, 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:24.440 shape or form. It's just something they've decided is true 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.120 and repeat to each other. And that's the whole. That's 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:29.120 the long and short of it. Yeah. 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:32.280 Yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff there too, of 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.800 like the stuff people talk about when they when they 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.680 like I remember I was reading someone like writing about 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:39.760 this and they started talking about Nero and I was like, 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:44.000 do you know, like in what century the Roman Empire 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:47.760 like collapse, Like, why are you talking about Nero? I 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:51.320 don't know, it seems like there's this real I don't know, 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:54.599 it seems like, you know, the the fall of Rome 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:56.479 is one of these things that's become central to a 0:04:56.480 --> 0:04:58.680 lot of very weird writing politics. I remember, like a 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:00.400 few years ago, the big thing was so like the 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.960 Rome was caught, the fall of Rome was caused by immigration, yeah, 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.800 which and that's also current as well. Yeah yeah, And 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.440 so I don't know, what is it about like Rome 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:12.040 with these people, the fall of Rome. These people are 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.080 like so drawn to in a way that causes them 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:17.200 not to think about what actually happened at all. 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.080 I mean, well, I mean, just to go back a second, 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:25.760 It's like Rome in general, in their heads, is not 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:31.400 a sort of temporarily dependent series of events that unfolded 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:33.320 over a thousand years. It's just this kind of like 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:38.400 one eternal place that's like a pastiche in their minds. 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:43.000 So like Nero can exist alongside Attila, can exist alongside 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.440 you know, Scipio Africanus, and all of these people and 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.919 events like just sort of are near each other in 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.279 time the same way that they believe that, like you know, 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.880 dinosaurs and humans cohabitated the earth, like it's that kind 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:57.719 of same thing. And so if they think about somebody 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:03.120 like Caligula or Nero running this, like running these courts 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:05.719 of decadence, like, it doesn't click to them that this 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:08.800 is like in the first century, and that the Roman 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.279 Empire doesn't fall for four hundred years, five hundred years, 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:13.880 and then the East keeps going for another thousand years. 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.200 That's a huge part of it. 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:18.279 It is interesting to me you kind of made the 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.480 statement there about in these guys' heads Rome being this 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:26.400 kind of eternal, like continuing thing, And that's interesting to 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.640 me because that conception of Rome goes back so far, 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:34.880 I mean very famously, Like when Russia became like an 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.919 organized political entity, there was this widespread attitude that it 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.239 was the Third Rome, right, Like that still plays into 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.120 a lot of Russian imperial politics to this day. So 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:46.840 it is it is kind of fascinating how far that 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:52.280 idea goes back, Like it says something about the success 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.839 of Roman propaganda that it still has this place in 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:57.120 so many people's minds. 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.400 Yeah, and I mean it has a place in my mind. 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.880 I don't I don't think of that. Yeah, so do 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:08.600 I so to many of us. And I don't think 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:12.240 that the crime here is thinking about the fall of 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:16.200 the Roman Empire or the trand or as you know, 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.120 we would more properly call it the transition from late 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:21.960 Antiquity to the eartal Medieval period, which is, you know, 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.239 unfolded and that didn't have a cataclysm, and you shouldn't 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.560 necessarily be thought of as as an inherently negative thing, 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:34.080 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But organizing your worldview 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:40.720 around utterly historically illiterate version of the Roman Empire that 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.880 is really just a vehicle for your own special bigotry. 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:50.240 That's where they're really running a foul of me and 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:50.840 my temper. 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.080 Yeah, and there's there's a lot that's really interesting about 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.680 how they sort of choose to interpret like the causes 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:04.400 of the fall. I think probably the least, the least 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.480 sensible argument they have is this idea that it had 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.440 something to do with like degeneracy. But yeah, it's like 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.400 you can find Romans in like the the Middle Republic 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.520 period saying the same thing that like we've become too degenerate, 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.680 too lazy, because of like all of the you know, 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.720 slaves automating, you know, the ruling classes, tasks people have. 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:28.840 You know, Romans are not like the Romans of our 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.680 forefathers and stuff anymore. And like you know, the empire 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.560 continue or the republic and then the empire still had 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:37.120 centuries in the tank at that. 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:41.640 Yeah, very very famously, the Romans started complaining about how 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.960 it's not like the good old days round about the 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:49.120 second century b c. Which is like three hundred years 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.200 before they hit what we all acknowledged to be the 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.319 peak of Roman civilization. And this is like, this is 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:57.520 when Cato the Elder gets into it and the big 0:08:57.520 --> 0:08:59.120 thing that those guys were griping about at the time, 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.440 and there are there are little, you know, little connections 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.040 here just doesn't none of it shapes up. Is that 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:06.600 what Cato the Elder and people like him were complaining 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:08.719 about way back in the second century was this is 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:11.360 when the Romans come in contact with the Greeks, and 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:14.720 there was there was a kind of like a split 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:22.480 between traditional Latin romanness and then this like new Eastern greaceness, 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.360 which like they've got new ideas and like they sounds 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:27.960 like they have sex with each other all the time. 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:29.920 You know, they don't care if they're men or women, 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:34.320 and so that's what they were pushing back against, and 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:37.200 so that kind of language does. This is where it 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.240 kind of distills over the centuries and then over the 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.520 millennia into this idea that the Roman Empire collapsed and 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:48.120 was ruined by this kind of degeneracy without being able 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:51.040 to really define what degeneracy means or how it could 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.760 possibly impact the long term health of a of a 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:59.800 large empire, you know, or the fact that, very bluntly, 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.040 right when you're saying this in one eighty six BC, 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.360 you can't say that contact with Greek ideas brought the 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:10.640 Roman Empire down. You just can't, because it just didn't 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:14.679 get crushed by this, It didn't fall apart. Yeah. 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:17.720 I mean, if I have to make an argument as 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.080 to like, what thing that I can connect to modernity 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:22.880 killed the modern Empire, I tend to claim that it's 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.640 the concept of a reboot, right, because no sooner than 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:30.600 did Augustus have Virgil reboot the story of the Trojan War, 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.280 than the inevitable path to the collapse of the Roman 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:33.959 Empire began. 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:34.280 Right. 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.640 The real sign that we're heading towards collapse is all 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:38.679 these movie reboots. 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:46.040 Okay, great, Well the rule is, whatever your modern preoccupation is, 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.920 that's what you use to explain the fall of the 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.040 Roman Empire. So of course I have my preoccupations, and 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.280 that's what I say caused the fall of the Roman Empire, 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.000 which is that the Roman Empire in fact never fell, 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:03.000 and we're all living in a hologram and we and 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:04.800 we know this because if a woman visits me and 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.240 brings me and brings me groceries and she's wearing a 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.880 Jesus fish necklace, it can pop into my brain and 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:11.520 I can know that we're living in. 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:13.760 We're still We're still in the Roman Empire. Yeah, the 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:18.120 empire never ended, folks. Yeah, yeah, every politician is still cato. 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:20.679 Yeah. 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.400 I mean, look, they you can also tell this because 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:25.600 you know, it's like, in the same way that everything 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.480 tastes like chicken. They haven't invented a new moral panic 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.839 in two thousand years, so pretty clearly we're just we're 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:34.520 just we're just recycling through exactly the same content over 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:35.200 and over again. 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:39.880 It does all of the the kind of similarities you 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.559 can find, or at least seeming similarities you can find 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.960 between stuff that different Roman politicians were complaining about, you know, 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:51.200 two thousand years ago and stuff that's in our media today. 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:55.280 I think does suggest part of why it's almost impossible 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.760 to not keep bringing Rome up, which is that like 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:01.760 there are and I think that it's a mix of 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.240 like there are some legitimate similarities between our cultures, and 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.520 also our concept of Rome, which is often a historical 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:13.600 but is based on generations of misconceptions, makes it seem 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:14.600 even closer. 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.920 Yeah, and we are a post Roman society and they 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.080 are our forebears, whether we like it or not. Like 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:28.160 any civilization that exists today that went through the Mediterranean world, 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.480 you know, it had a Roman period, and the Romans 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:34.880 made a strong imprint on all of us in terms 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:37.160 of like our laws and how we think about money, 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.960 and how we think about family relationships, like all of 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.360 these things are you know, we're living in a post 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:46.439 Roman world, and that's why it's important to study the 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:49.600 Roman Empire as an entity, but do it with some 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:53.040 degree of rigor rather than just using it as a 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:58.160 prop in the culture wars. Yeah, that was a great 0:12:58.200 --> 0:12:59.520 That was a great point I just made, and so 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.719 it absolutely brought the conversation to a complete stance. So 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:07.280 as everybody said, just chewed on this nugget wisdom that 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:08.520 I have brought to the table. 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:23.360 I do kind of think it behooves people. Part of 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.040 why it's valuable to do things like listen to the 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:31.880 Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan is that you're this Rome 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:34.400 isn't going to stop being brought up by these people 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:38.560 and increasingly unhinged and inaccurate ways. And it's it's just like, 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.800 it's helpful to have an actual understanding of who the 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:43.160 Spartans were and what they did and did not do 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:45.719 for the sake of these arguments. It's helpful to have 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:49.000 a meaningful understanding of the Roman Empire. And I'm kind 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:53.079 of wondering, like when you when you come into misconceptions 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:56.240 about Rome, what are some of the top ones on 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.520 your list that uh that that your brain just forces 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:00.719 you to co and incorrect. 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.160 Well, I mean this is a big one, because this one, 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:09.400 I feel like is deeply homophobic and principally used to 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:15.320 attack the queer community rather than anything else is And 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.000 just to give your listeners like some specifics here, it's like, 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.320 you know, sexuality in the Roman world was very different 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.400 than it was today, and there weren't even you know, 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.720 the kind of binary conceptions of gender sexual relations that 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:29.480 we have today. A lot of these things are very 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:31.600 modern inventions. I'm sure a lot of people know this. 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:37.040 But we can also point very specifically to like, you know, Hadrian, 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.160 who is broadly considered and cited to be one of 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.200 the greatest of the emperors who lived at the height 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.640 of the Golden Age, was gay. Like that's like, that's 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.680 a full stop thing, and so it's just like there's 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:56.880 no compatibility between these two ideas or really anyway, if 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.080 you ask them to take this argument more than twenty 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:01.600 five words d they're not going to have a way 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.800 to explain how it is that somebody engaged in gay 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:07.880 sex in the four hundreds could have possibly been the 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.720 reason why the Goths won a certain battle, or why 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:12.440 Attila the Hunt was able to do what he did. 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:17.000 All of it is just complete, an utter ahistorical nonsense, 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:19.520 and so I consider it I consider it my duty 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.200 as some kind of voice of authority on Roman history 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:26.440 to not let people get away with this. The last 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:28.360 the last time I saw this pop up was actually 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:31.520 uh Ben Carson, which is a little bit of a 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:35.760 blast from the past at this point. But he he 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:37.480 he wrote a book at one point where he dropped 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.040 this stuff in there, and the way they always couch 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:41.720 it to is like, as we all know, you know, 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:44.520 it was homosexuality that really led to the generacy of 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:49.080 the like I'm so sick of you people. But the other, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:51.760 the other big one that really grinds my gears that 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.360 really emerged. This this was not a preconception that I 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:57.480 had going into doing the history of realme, but something 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.080 that I came away from after doing it and studying, 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:03.240 you know, the year by year history of the Empire, 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.640 is that this notion that like sort of the Romans 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:12.280 were this like like a like a like a nationality 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.440 that then went forth and conquered the Mediterranean, that Romans 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:20.480 were Romans as like an ethnic stock thing, and that 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.160 it was when these other ethnicities started sort of pressing 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.320 at the empire's borders, or as we said a little 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.160 bit earlier, that it was immigration right that destroys the 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:31.560 Roman Empire, that there was this kind of like pure 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:36.200 noble Roman thing. This is essentially functioning as the white 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.840 person in the ancient world, Like this is how we're 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:40.840 connecting these things. The British did this, the French did this, 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:43.480 Americans now do this today. That like the Romans are 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.360 our stand in as sort of the white people, and 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:48.680 the white people are civilized, and all of these other 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.440 like mongrel races are are uncivilized. And they were raither 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:54.400 civilized by the Remans, that they were killed by the 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.200 Romans or enslaved by the Romans. But this is all 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:59.360 for the good, because the Romans themselves were were like 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:04.920 this this superior stock of DNA somehow. And really, when 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:09.160 you go through the empire, the history of the Roman Empire, 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.240 you find that there is that kind of conservative strain 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:15.679 inside of like the patrician class and inside of the 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:17.720 senatorial class, that they're like, we want this to be 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.199 a closely held thing. Like the original republic was a 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:23.520 closely held oligarchy of Latin families who lived on the 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.399 Palatine Hill, and that's what they wanted for themselves. And 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:29.080 so when other people tried to push into the republic, 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:31.800 they tried to resist it. And so that is a 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:37.000 running conflict that happens in Roman history. But any time 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:42.359 that that tendency is overcome and a second prevailing force 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.240 that says like, actually, Romanness is just an idea. Romanness 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.240 is just a set of beliefs and practices and sort 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.359 of daily habits of life and ideology that can really 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.399 be held by anybody at any time. And if we 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.120 let in say non Roman Italians, which is the first 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.000 people who were considered non Roman who then came into 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:02.840 the Empire, which then we look back and we're like, 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.840 there was a time that Romans didn't think that people 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.359 from what is today like Florence or Milan were not 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.680 Italian or not Roman. Yeah, yeah, they were not considered 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.439 Roman until you know, the very late stages of the Republic. 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:17.080 I mean, I wrote a book about the later stage 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.320 of the Republican. The Social War is when this gets 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:23.439 wrapped up after hundreds of years of being treated as 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.399 second class citizens. There was a civil war that nearly 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:29.399 destroyed the Republic before Caesar even came along. That was 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.080 resolved by giving citizenship to the Italians, making them full 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.679 members of the polity, and then having that just be 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.560 a boon to Rome's fortunes. This happens in Gaul, this 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:41.240 happens in Spain, This happens in Illyria. This happens in 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:45.879 the far East that these people who the Romans encounter 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:48.920 and yes, do conquer, because it's a very violent world 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:54.800 of conquest and mutual conquest. That Romans in Gaul were 0:18:54.840 --> 0:19:00.159 as much Romans as Romans in Rome. And anytime I 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:04.600 find Roman leaders resisting that idea, I find the empire 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:09.280 starting to falter and commit missteps. And anytime they're like, nah, 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:11.560 let's just throw it open. You know, if you're good, 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.240 if you're dedicated, if you're loyal, you can be a 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.480 part of this project that we have. Then I find 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.800 the Romans doing very very well. And I'm about to 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:21.960 start not to just monologue here, but I'm about to 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:25.280 start working on another book that is about the Crisis 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.360 of the third century. And by this time, we have 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:31.680 emperors who are coming from North Africa. We have emperors 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:36.040 who are tagged as being Arabian. We have the set 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.359 of emperors who really help Rome emerge from this thing 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.320 that is called the Crisis of the third century when 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.200 the empire very nearly collapsed in the mid two hundreds. 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:46.919 Is a bunch of guys from Alyria, which is today 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:48.760 the Balkans. I mean, we're talking about guys who are 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:52.840 coming from like Serbia and Croatia, or the emperors who 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.920 are continuing the Roman legacy and keeping the empire intact. 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:00.320 So this notion that like the Roman a wasn't a 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.520 multicultural empire, or that the arrival of new peoples was 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:08.000 somehow bad for them is just disproven over and over 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:09.960 and over again by the realities of Roman history. So 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.360 that's the other one, is this immigration caused the fall 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:14.840 of the Roman Empire is just flat out and correct. 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:15.960 Yeah. 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.080 One of the arguments that I've heard sort of against that, 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.600 and I want to ask how true this is. But 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:23.000 one of the things that I hear people sort of 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.080 responding to this with is this argument that like, part 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.720 of what causes like the sack of Rome is that 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.040 the Romans get into one of these nphobic streaks and 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:35.359 they don't want to sort of try to observe the Visigoths. Okay, 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:39.840 so that that is that's a that's essentially my position. 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:40.320 Yeah. 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.640 I was just going to bring up a guy who 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.320 a historian who has to come up anytime you talk 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.000 about the way the right likes to use the image 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:55.880 of Rome, particularly the collapse of Rome, Victor Davis Hansen. Yeah, yeah, 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:57.439 he is. He is a guy you're going, I mean 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.639 he was. He's my dad's favorite historian from a very 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.359 conservative family. And he wrote a book not all that 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:07.440 long ago. No, actually it was twenty ten. Sorry, that's 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:09.520 still like five years ago to me. But it's not 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.440 five years ago. It's much further away, called Why did 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.080 Rome Fall? And Why does It Matter Now? And there's 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:19.240 a quote I found from a little article he wrote 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.239 plugging it that I want to bring up here so 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:25.520 we can chew over in short, what ruined Rome in 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.520 the West. Lots of things, but clearly the pernicious effects 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.280 of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created a 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.399 culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues or 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:39.800 the creation of actual commensurate wealth, and the resulting debits, inflation, 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.800