0:07

Matt,

0:07

do you remember episode 97, the one we

0:09

did about folk drinks where Dalon taught

0:12

us about all these different regional sodas?

0:14

If you had just said episode 97, I would

0:17

have had to have admitted that I don't

0:19

know any of these episodes by number.

0:22

Wait, do I? No, I don't think I know any by number.

0:24

You know 77. Do you remember it now that you mentioned

0:27

Dalon and the drink? What happened in 77? 77 is

0:29

the new listener's start here, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

0:32

Yeah. Okay, that was pretty good. 15 is

0:34

the sleep paralysis one. I'm

0:37

going to- That might be all

0:38

I got, man. I'm going to open one of the drinks from that episode

0:41

and see if you can figure out what it is. You

0:43

ready?

0:44

Okay. Here we go.

0:46

Yeah.

0:47

That was it. You know what I'm drinking?

0:50

You're drinking a Bunderbeer? Bunderbeer? Bunderberg,

0:53

yeah. A birch beer. Bunderberg, there

0:55

it is. Yeah, and the- I can't quite

0:57

pull it. The

0:59

reason I'm doing that

1:01

is because I know I'm not going to do a lot of talking on this

1:03

episode by design because

1:05

I have a question for you that I prepped

1:07

you on and I would like to ask it now. Okay,

1:10

splendid. I think I'm ready-ish.

1:13

I saw a picture the other day during

1:15

the Ides of March, the 15th of March, of

1:18

some people like circled around

1:21

Julius Caesar stabbing him.

1:23

I was like, oh yeah, that's right. Julius

1:25

Caesar got stabbed and

1:28

that's the whole beware of the Ides of March thing.

1:31

Then I realized that's exactly where my knowledge

1:33

of that stops. I

1:37

want to know- That's pretty good. You've

1:40

dug deep into history

1:43

and you know a lot about Rome, a whole

1:45

lot about Rome and the history of Rome, probably

1:48

more than anybody that I know. I

1:50

would like to know what's up with

1:53

Julius Caesar's death? How

1:55

was he killed? I have

1:57

a lot of questions about this. Where

2:00

would you like to start? Wow. Yeah,

2:02

one second, let me take my second. It's a dangerous

2:04

question. Okay, get it in. Okay, I'm ready,

2:07

let's go. It's a dangerous question

2:09

because Rome, from

2:12

the beginning of Rome until the assassination

2:14

of Julius Caesar

2:16

is like the full length of the

2:18

history of the United States three times.

2:21

Really? But it all factors in to what happened

2:23

to Julius Caesar. So I can give

2:26

you like the lightning version of that and then we

2:28

can kind of pinch zoom in once we get closer,

2:31

if you want. Yeah, okay.

2:33

No, that was a long pause. Well,

2:36

I was sitting there thinking, you said three times the,

2:39

so you're talking about

2:40

from the moment the Roman Empire

2:43

started to when Julius Caesar

2:45

was shanked. I like that. We're

2:47

talking like six, 700 years, is that what you're

2:49

saying?

2:50

700 and change. Yeah.

2:53

Okay. But there's

2:56

something we need to clarify right from the get go. The

2:58

Roman Empire did not exist

3:01

at the time that Julius Caesar got, as

3:03

you put it, and I really liked that, shanked.

3:05

The Roman Empire came into existence

3:09

as part of the fallout from the shanking

3:11

of Julius Caesar. Okay.

3:15

Take me to school, man. Before that, it was a Republic. Okay,

3:17

cool, let's do this thing. Yeah. Nobody

3:21

knows when Rome was founded. There's a fun

3:23

myth that it was founded by a couple of brothers.

3:25

Do you remember their names?

3:26

Romulus and

3:31

Cromulus. I think you just combined

3:33

Romulus with Oliver Cromwell.

3:40

I really like that. Oh, give me a holly. That's great.

3:43

Oh, God. I've

3:46

disturbed myself. Okay,

3:48

yes. Does that hurt in your sinuses? The

3:51

Bundaberg's working. So, okay,

3:53

it was Romulus and Remus or something like that.

3:56

Yeah, there you go. Very good, very good. Is it Remus?

3:59

Romulus and Remus.

4:00

Yeah, that's right. Really? Okay. And

4:02

so like the famous image of Rome

4:05

is that she-wolf, not the way we depict

4:07

wolves now, like way weasily are looking, that

4:10

she-wolf who has clearly given

4:12

birth to pups recently and the

4:14

two little naked baby cherub

4:16

Roman boys are underneath like, let me suckle

4:19

at the she-wolf.

4:20

That image is

4:22

a depiction of the founding

4:25

myth, the founding legend of Rome.

4:28

And I think it's meant to kind of tell the story. Wait,

4:30

what do you think it's meant to tell the story of? Why

4:33

would you latch onto that for your founding myth? Latch

4:36

onto that, I see what you did there. So- Ha

4:38

ha, and I didn't mean to do that. Um,

4:41

I don't know. I mean, the

4:44

picture of two human babies suckling

4:47

at the teats of a wolf kind

4:49

of indicates we were born

4:52

or we were formed out of the

4:54

wild. Like we, we were

4:57

barbarians and then we, we kind

5:00

of became civilized or, or

5:02

were really tough. I don't know.

5:05

What does- I don't

5:07

know either. Yeah, that's weird. But

5:09

I've always theorized that it was meant

5:12

to convey that this

5:14

was ordained. The gods

5:17

ordained it, nature ordained it. There

5:19

was no stopping Rome. We were

5:21

what earth wanted.

5:23

I kind of read it that way. This was inevitable

5:26

to quote Thanos. Huh.

5:28

Kind of like Mexico on

5:30

the flag, they have an eagle taking down a

5:33

serpent and that

5:35

was supposed to mean, oh look, obviously

5:37

this was meant to be because of Tenochtitlion,

5:40

right?

5:41

Oh, I didn't know that. I've never

5:44

thought about that. Is that real? Is that-

5:46

Oh, I thought that's what it meant. Maybe that is

5:48

what it meant. I don't, I didn't

5:50

know that. See we're having fun already.

5:52

Yeah, we are. Okay, but what are we getting

5:54

here? You know, in Rome you've got

5:57

a founding myth. These two brothers and

5:59

the one brother. kills the other brother

6:02

or gets rid of the other brother somehow to

6:04

make this city and raised by

6:07

wolves. Maybe there's a founding myth

6:09

there for Mexico. They're founding

6:11

myths associated with the United States.

6:13

Back up, did one of the brothers kill the other brother?

6:16

Did Romulus kill Cromulus? Well, that's one version

6:18

of the story. You killed Cromulus. Yes.

6:21

Yeah, you can always remember which one won

6:24

in that version of the story because that's Rome

6:26

writing the kid's name. Huh, okay.

6:28

Makes it easier to remember. That kind of sounds

6:30

like Cain and Abel a little bit. It

6:33

does sound a little bit like that, yeah.

6:36

Okay. The first appearances of the

6:38

Romulus and Remus story looked like

6:40

they're quite a bit after the Cain

6:42

and Abel story but I'm always really fascinated by

6:44

how these ancient world origin

6:47

stories seem to overlap a little bit.

6:50

I'm working on Persia right now, or

6:52

working on the book of Esther for my

6:55

daily podcast. And right now I'm working

6:57

on the origin myth there. And

7:00

whatever origin myth kind of sticks

7:02

with a people group,

7:04

it sets a trajectory in motion

7:06

in terms of how things

7:08

work. And so the Roman origin

7:11

myth creates this impression

7:13

of law and order.

7:16

We are built out of order. This was supposed

7:18

to happen. This was ordained. And

7:21

so it's like the idea is that the laws

7:23

of the Romans are

7:25

noble. They were always supposed to

7:27

occur and they have held up very well

7:30

to their credit. I mean, our law is based

7:32

on Roman law.

7:34

And in each of the different incarnations

7:37

of Rome, this idea of

7:39

certain sensibilities, things

7:42

that you do

7:43

and things that are simply not done,

7:47

that exists in each of the different incarnations

7:49

of Rome over the centuries. And so you ask

7:52

the question, what went down

7:54

that caused Julius Caesar? Did he get assassinated?

7:57

Well, it was a violation.

8:00

in the minds of the people who stabbed him of

8:03

very deeply embedded norms

8:06

that should not have been violated. It

8:08

was almost like a violation of nature,

8:11

the natural order of things that they believed

8:13

Caesar was participating in

8:15

and that in part informs

8:18

it. So in a way, to use Dalin's

8:20

language,

8:21

Caesar was transgressing

8:23

the myth.

8:25

He was

8:26

transgressing this 700 year history

8:29

of how things ought to be

8:31

that go all the way back to the opening images

8:34

and murky, mysterious mythic

8:36

stories at the beginning of Rome.

8:38

Is that like what you're appetite a little bit? A

8:41

little bit, a little bit. It also intimidates

8:43

me a little bit because you went back and forth. You

8:46

were just going back and forth 700 years, like,

8:48

oh, this is where it started and this is how he got shanked

8:50

and I didn't quite get it, but

8:53

let's keep going.

8:54

Okay, fair enough. Yeah. The

8:56

first incarnation of Rome is a simple monarchy.

8:59

We're not gonna talk much about the Roman kingdom other

9:02

than how it ended. These kings

9:05

worked with some

9:07

citizen governing bodies like a primitive

9:11

constitutional monarchy, very

9:13

primitive, heavy on the monarchy, light on the constitutional,

9:16

but there were slight elements of representation

9:19

in the early era of the kings. The

9:22

last of those kings was a guy named

9:24

Tarkanis.

9:25

He had a son who ran a foul

9:27

of the law according to the stories

9:30

and committed a grievous, grievous

9:32

offense. He took advantage of a lovely

9:35

woman of the city and

9:38

Tarkanis,

9:39

according to the legend, didn't uphold

9:41

the law. He granted special

9:43

favor above the law

9:45

and overlooked this violation

9:47

of nature and how things ought to be. Some

9:50

people rose up and one in particular, a guy

9:52

named Lucius Junius Brutus

9:55

in 509 BC. I

9:59

believe. Wow. He

10:01

took out that king. Some people say that

10:03

king ended up in exile, some people say that king

10:06

got shanked himself,

10:08

but Lucius Junius Brutus

10:10

is the guy who stepped up and

10:13

took leadership. In 500 BC? 509.

10:17

Okay, hold on, I need it. I

10:19

need a second. So there's

10:21

one quote I remember from the shanking of

10:24

Caesar. It's Ettu Brutus, or

10:26

Ettu Brutae, like YouTube Brutus,

10:28

because... Yeah, yeah. That's Shakespeare,

10:31

right?

10:32

Predate Shakespeare by 1400

10:34

years. Oh, does it really?

10:37

Okay, didn't know that. So when

10:39

was Julius Caesar in relation

10:42

to Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth?

10:45

Jesus was born almost exactly 40 years

10:48

after Caesar died.

10:50

Okay. Caesar dies March 15th, 44

10:53

BC.

10:54

Jesus was probably born somewhere

10:56

between 6 and 4 BC.

10:59

So this Brutus that killed

11:01

the other king, this happened hundreds

11:04

of years before Julius Caesar.

11:07

Yeah, you're making the connection and

11:09

you're catching why I wanted to make sure to stress

11:11

his name to you. Lucius

11:14

Junius Brutus

11:15

predates the Julius Caesar situation

11:18

by as much as

11:21

Christopher Columbus predates you.

11:24

Got it? Okay. Okay,

11:27

so forever Z's ago. We're in the distant,

11:29

distant murky past in 509

11:33

BC.

11:34

Darius the Great is

11:36

the great king of Persia and nobody

11:40

in the larger world of Persia and Greece

11:42

and all of that is even thinking about Rome. Rome is

11:44

a nothing, nobody little

11:46

tribe way out on the Western frontier

11:48

that nobody cares about. Does that make sense? Are we talking about,

11:51

are we talking about Darius the Great, the cheater

11:53

who put his fingers in a vulva

11:56

of a horse to make his horse

11:59

whiny and

11:59

At dawn, that

12:02

Darius the Great? Hey! Yeah,

12:07

that is Darius the first, the great

12:10

cheater.

12:11

Just making sure I understood the

12:13

right one. That's the dynasty. No, that's really

12:15

good. Yeah, I mean, you're confusing me a

12:17

little bit though, because you're like jumping from Rome to

12:19

Persia, but I'm still with you.

12:22

This is what, I mean, it's dangerous to equip you with knowledge

12:24

because then you remember all the things. And so

12:26

I've got to be selective here. Good catch.

12:29

The Roman kingdom, this

12:32

monarchy era, it ends in 509 BC, and

12:34

that is regarded as the beginning of the Roman

12:37

Republic. Okay, question. The Roman

12:39

Republic, yes. Are we literally in

12:41

the city of Rome

12:43

on the boot of Italy? Yeah. That's

12:45

where we're at. Okay, cool.

12:47

Yes, halfway up the boot, we're on the shin of

12:49

Italy. That's where Rome sits, midway into

12:51

the shin.

12:52

On the east or west side of the boot?

12:55

It is on the shin of the boot, so it's on the toe

12:57

side, that's the west. Okay, got

12:59

it. Thank you. Yep. Roman

13:01

Republic starts in 509.

13:04

What is the difference between a monarchy and

13:06

a republic?

13:07

A monarchy is ruled by one person,

13:10

and a republic has representatives. Yeah,

13:12

what's the difference between a republic and a democracy? A

13:15

democracy, everybody gets a vote, and

13:17

a republic, a lot of people

13:20

elect their representative, and the representative

13:22

goes to the

13:24

Senate or whatever.

13:25

Okay, we're getting somewhere here that really matters, so let

13:27

me ask another question.

13:29

What do you think is the best way to describe

13:31

what we are in the United States?

13:34

So it's not like in Star Wars where Anakin's

13:37

like, no,

13:40

it was actually Obi-Wan that says a democracy,

13:42

right? So that's not- Oh yeah,

13:44

that's a pretty good Obi-Wan impersonation. That's

13:47

not us, because that

13:49

means everybody would have a pure

13:51

vote, and it would just be majority rule kind of thing.

13:53

No, it's a,

13:55

we've got a constitution,

13:56

and we've got the republican thing going

13:59

on, the- So a constitutional

14:01

republic not Republican, but you know what

14:03

I mean?

14:04

It's a constitutional republic.

14:06

I think that's a good take This is not as simple

14:08

an answer as you might think there are people who would argue

14:11

that now This is a little bit better way to describe

14:14

What the United States system of government is but I think

14:16

constitutional republic gives you a pretty

14:18

good sense of what's going on We don't

14:20

do most of our voting with direct democracy We

14:23

elect representatives We have different levels

14:26

of government local and all

14:28

the way up to the great big federal stuff

14:31

but we

14:32

have laws that are pretty

14:35

set in place and that are pretty tough to move

14:38

and

14:39

You don't transgress those laws.

14:41

So let me throw out a scenario here

14:44

What do you think would have happened if

14:46

George W Bush

14:48

who was president of the United States in the? 2000s

14:51

or Barack Obama who was president

14:53

of the United States from the late 2000s

14:56

into the mid late 20 teens What

14:58

do you think would have happened if either of them after serving

15:01

two terms as president had decided

15:03

to run for a third term?

15:06

It wouldn't have happened Well,

15:08

what do you mean?

15:09

well There who

15:12

was it? F. What did FDR do so

15:14

we had term limits put in place after FDR.

15:17

Is that correct?

15:18

FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was president

15:21

of the United States during World

15:23

War two. That's what he's best known for right

15:26

He served more than two terms. He

15:28

did so

15:30

Yeah, he was also during World War two,

15:32

which was kind of a weird time I

15:36

forget how many did he serve was it three four?

15:38

What did he do into his fourth? Okay.

15:42

Yeah, and then he died and then okay.

15:44

I know we have term limits to two now We

15:47

do correct. Yeah. Yeah, and

15:49

that happened after FDR, correct? Yeah,

15:53

man, these are those are hard questions for an

15:55

engineer That's okay. How

15:57

you doing? Great. What would happen though? Like, how

15:59

do you think people?

15:59

would have responded

16:01

if Republicans were like, George W. Bush is just

16:04

a great, great president.

16:06

And I know we've had these expectations in the past,

16:08

but everybody wants to keep him around. We're

16:11

gonna run Bush for a third

16:13

term, even though that isn't really

16:16

done. And we're just gonna go with

16:18

it. Sometimes you just go with it. We just need to go with

16:20

it. He's the right guy. How do you think Democrats

16:23

would have responded?

16:24

They would not have responded

16:26

well. They would have said, hey, let's

16:28

look back at the, let's go to the documents

16:31

and see what the documents say and be like, this is

16:33

illegal. You can't do that.

16:35

And would they have a point? Absolutely.

16:38

I think so too, right? Those are the ground rules that

16:40

everybody agreed to.

16:42

And those ground rules are in place

16:45

from experience.

16:46

There are things that happened in our past that

16:48

caused us to say, it

16:52

doesn't really work well in our system to have

16:54

politicians be around for that long.

16:57

Now we were able to generate enough

16:59

momentum from

17:01

Congress and the Senate to

17:03

make term limits happen for the presidency.

17:06

But for some weird reason, we haven't got Congress

17:10

or the Senate to pass term limits on themselves.

17:12

I don't know. I don't understand why that, yes,

17:15

don't get it. Yeah. That's

17:17

so strange. So they can govern for 80 years

17:20

and just stagger about making

17:23

laws willy-nilly until whenever

17:25

I guess they're tired of it or die. But

17:27

the point is, whoever's like you,

17:30

me, the third chair,

17:31

everybody everywhere can think of something

17:34

that is bigger than just a raw vote in

17:36

their country. Something that just

17:38

isn't done. Something that really

17:41

becomes part of the identity politically

17:44

of who you are as a people. And

17:47

if somebody transgresses that, it's a big

17:49

deal. Maybe even violently

17:52

a big deal. There are certain things from

17:54

the outside looking in,

17:56

might not seem like that big a thing, but from the

17:58

inside looking in, if somebody does that,

17:59

they're declaring war on the

18:02

rest of their country. They just crossed a line,

18:04

right? Yeah, it's revolt time. Yeah. Yeah.

18:07

The Roman Republic sets up

18:09

that scenario by giving us 500, just

18:11

shy of 500 years of expectations

18:14

and norms.

18:20

Things that you always do and things

18:22

that you just don't do.

18:24

So the Roman Republic, they decide after

18:27

the deposition of the evil king

18:29

Tarkanis, we got to have

18:31

rule by law.

18:33

And so they lean into old

18:35

laws they had and craft

18:37

new laws. The 12 tables

18:40

is kind of their constitution. It's

18:42

the founding laws of Rome and

18:44

a lot of American law comes straight

18:46

from the 12 tables, like how you

18:48

do lawsuits and how a jury

18:51

works. It's all in the 12 tables, property

18:54

laws in the 12 tables. But

18:56

also they realize we have to be nimble.

18:59

We need to be able to make decisions and

19:01

respond to things. A king

19:03

is at least good for that. It's a very nimble

19:05

governing body. So we

19:07

need this.

19:08

But the only way we're going to be able to pull this off

19:10

is to have representation of

19:12

the different social classes that

19:15

we have within the Roman Republic. So

19:17

it evolves over these 500 years.

19:20

Sometimes the different assemblies, the legislative

19:22

assemblies that govern Rome, change

19:25

in their name or their exact composition.

19:28

But functionally,

19:29

there's always representation for

19:32

the plebeian class. These are the people who

19:34

aren't aristocracy. These are your

19:36

normals, your working types. And

19:38

then you've got some kind of assembly

19:40

that is exclusively for your patrician

19:43

class. These are your fancy types,

19:45

your landed nobility types.

19:48

Dude, you're taking me so deep. Go ahead,

19:50

keep going. I'm sitting here reading from the 12 tables. And

19:53

I was just going to pick one to read as a joke

19:56

and I was like, wow, couldn't do

19:58

that today. You can't read that

19:59

part. particular one you just can't say that into a microphone?

20:02

Well I can but like the

20:04

things that they found at Rome on would not

20:07

fly today is my point. Why

20:09

not? Okay let's read from

20:13

Matt let's uh you

20:15

know what I just happen to have a tape

20:17

right here let me look at this oh

20:21

it's a tape look at this it's marked

20:24

Barnacles and Testicles read

20:26

from the 12 tables of the founding

20:28

of Rome. Is it intact

20:30

can you play it? Yeah look let me just

20:33

take it out right here just put

20:35

it right into the little tape recorder here let's let's

20:38

see yeah let's do that right now. Hold

20:40

it up to the microphone.

20:50

Hark,

20:50

fair Testicles. Greetings

20:52

Barnacles. What carriest

20:55

thou in thy hands? It

20:57

is the 12 tables the foundational

21:00

documents of our Republic. The

21:03

finest tables if there were a 13th

21:05

I would just throw it in the trash because there only

21:07

needs to be 12. Oh yes

21:12

fair Barnacles would you like for me to read

21:15

from the tables for you?

21:17

Is Jupiter high God over all

21:19

creation of course. By

21:23

Romulus's nipple sucklage

21:25

I will now read table 5

21:29

inheritance and guardianship.

21:33

Women even though they are a

21:35

full age because of their

21:37

levity of mind shall

21:39

be under guardianship except

21:42

Vestal virgins who

21:43

shall be free from guardianship.

21:47

What does that even mean? As well it should

21:49

be for Vestal virgins a fine

21:51

law from a fine table read

21:54

by a fine friend.

21:55

Barnacles I would loveth

21:58

if thou would read from the table.

21:59

from table six for me. It

22:03

would be my great delight if

22:05

only I had table six on my person.

22:08

However, since I am only carrying table

22:10

eight, I shall have to read from it.

22:13

Table eight, law four.

22:16

If one commits an outrage

22:19

against another, the penalty

22:21

shall be 25 asses.

22:25

It actually says that. Don't

22:28

say this. What? What?

22:34

What? Yes,

22:41

the number shall be 25, not 24 or 26. 26 would

22:47

be far too many asses. It

22:49

would be, that would create an outrage.

22:52

What thinkest thou about a penalty

22:54

of 24 asses? Not

22:57

enough.

22:58

Not enough. Clearly

23:01

one ass too few. Fair

23:04

testicles, wouldest thou read

23:06

to me from table 10?

23:08

I would love to do that. Table 10,

23:10

the sacred law. What?

23:13

A dead person

23:15

shall not be buried or burned in

23:17

the city. There

23:20

are 10 laws within table 10. And

23:24

furthermore, I think we can both agree that

23:26

after such a dead person is not

23:28

buried or burned in the city, that that

23:30

dead person's bones shall not be collected

23:33

that one may make a second funeral.

23:35

Unless of course, an exception is for

23:37

death and battle on foreign soil. Naturally.

23:47

Dude, there's so

23:49

much here. Yeah,

23:52

there shall be no intermarriage between plebeians

23:54

and patricians.

23:56

What is a patrician? You can't marry

23:58

up. Patricians, that's a higher class.

24:00

Oh, so it's a caste system. And the plebeians. Yep,

24:03

there's a caste system in place. Like straight up

24:05

foundational law for that caste

24:07

system too. Golly, man,

24:09

there's a lot here. Okay, so

24:12

the 12 tables, got it. Yeah,

24:14

but we just need to read the very last one

24:16

because this is very, very interesting. But

24:19

before I do, what is the last of

24:21

the Bill of Rights? How many Bill of Rights

24:23

are there in our country? Do you remember?

24:25

Yeah, what is the 10th?

24:27

I don't know. I don't know what the 10th is. Look

24:30

it up real quick. Yeah. 10th Amendment. 10th

24:32

Amendment, just Google that sucker. I'm supposed to know that.

24:36

It's okay, this is one that people forget exists.

24:39

It's not as incurring as the other ones. Oh, it's states

24:42

rights. The powers not delegated to the United

24:44

States by the Constitution nor prohibited by

24:46

it

24:46

to the states are reserved to the

24:49

states respectively or to the people. Yeah,

24:52

here's the very last of the 12 tables,

24:54

ready? Ready. Whatever the people

24:56

ordain last shall be legally valid.

24:59

We ripped off their idea.

25:01

Whatever the people ordain last

25:04

shall be legally valid. What

25:06

does that mean? It means that these

25:09

rules are here,

25:10

but if by any legal process the people ordain

25:12

a different rule,

25:14

that's the new rule. Whatever they ordain,

25:17

that's the new rule.

25:18

Last, whatever they, oh, last, like temporarily,

25:20

okay.

25:22

Yeah. Got it. Okay, man,

25:24

that's interesting. So you

25:26

can see there's some built-in immovable

25:29

expectations like the class system,

25:32

but there's also some

25:35

flexibility here to say, well, your times are gonna change.

25:37

You're gonna need to make different rules or whatnot.

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28:26

What happens

28:28

from 509 BC to

28:30

getting to around 100 BC

28:33

is that the Republic does really well. They just

28:35

keep winning every single

28:37

fight. It's like

28:39

when a football team plays

28:42

some bad teams on the schedule, but they

28:44

also have some good teams on the schedule, but they

28:46

just win the games that are in front of them, right? You

28:49

can only beat who's on the field with you.

28:50

Well, Rome just keeps beating

28:53

people and their big,

28:55

big wins are very expensive

28:58

wins, but they come against

29:00

Carthage and against

29:03

effectively the Greeks in the

29:05

200s and 100s BC.

29:09

The Carthaginians have a super, super famous

29:12

general. Do you remember his name? Attila the Hun.

29:14

No, it is not, although he did visit Rome as well

29:17

just a few centuries later. Hannibal coming

29:19

across the mountains with the

29:21

elephants, right?

29:23

Exactly. Hannibal Barco

29:25

is the great general of

29:27

the Carthaginians and that's the closest to

29:29

the Roman Republic

29:31

ever came to losing and embarrassing

29:34

itself. The leaders of Rome

29:36

wrote a letter to the leaders of Carthage to

29:38

be like, we need you to bench Hannibal. It's

29:40

not fair. It's

29:41

just not fair. Really? You can

29:43

send any other generals, but not him. It's not fair. Isn't

29:46

that cute? Did they bench him? No!

29:49

Would you? No. So he was just,

29:52

just tactically he was really good. I mean granted,

29:54

he took freaking elephants across

29:57

the mountains. That's amazing. Yeah.

29:59

Yeah, kind of. Yeah,

30:02

I think he's just awesome. War elephants.

30:04

Can you imagine in like,

30:06

they had archers at this point in time, but can

30:08

you imagine in the age of poking each other with

30:11

sticks, dude rolls across

30:13

the mountains with war elephants.

30:16

Dude, what? Elephants

30:18

are big, man. Yeah,

30:20

that's the rumor.

30:21

Yeah. Elephantine even. Yeah. They're just,

30:23

it's mind boggling that that was a part of warfare,

30:26

but I cannot imagine what it would be like to

30:28

line up against that. And I got my spear and my little

30:30

shield. What am I supposed

30:32

to do with that? Yeah, man,

30:35

you have to go, you have to go ballistic. You have to

30:38

use slings or arrows. That's your only

30:40

option. Be clever. I see what you mean. Go

30:42

ballistic. I was like, so yeah, like savage, like

30:44

Wolverine or something, you got to scratch it up and just go

30:47

nuts. Oh, no, like literally ballistic,

30:49

like,

30:49

you know, dynamics and kinematics. Yeah.

30:52

Yeah, it took me a minute. I'm with, you know,

30:55

so

30:56

they win though. I mean, Rome eventually does

30:58

beat Carthage. They end up with a great

31:01

general of their own who just studies and rips

31:03

off all the tactics

31:04

of Hannibal and over

31:07

a series of three very expensive wars, Rome

31:11

beats their regional rival

31:14

and becomes the super power of the Mediterranean

31:16

world,

31:17

or at least the Western Mediterranean.

31:19

And then they're like, you know what? All those Greeks

31:22

over there who sided with Carthage, we

31:24

need to go punish them and they do

31:27

and they succeed. And so by

31:29

the late 100s BC, so

31:32

now we're like 70 ish years

31:34

before the assassination of Julius

31:37

Caesar. Maybe. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, time out, time

31:39

out, time out.

31:40

I'm sorry, stop. Well, yeah, yeah. My

31:43

pastor tells me I shouldn't be Googling stuff when

31:45

he's preaching. Sometimes I do it. I

31:47

just Googled Hannibal's war

31:49

tactics because you said the Roman general

31:52

like just totally stole

31:54

stuff out of Hannibal's playbook. One

31:56

of the things Hannibal did is he

31:59

used snake. filled jars

32:01

to defeat the Roman Navy. So

32:04

he did. I didn't know that. I didn't know that

32:06

either, but that's, I mean, like, this

32:09

is news to me. What? Put snakes

32:11

in jars and throw them at a boat. That's

32:13

amazing. I would have never,

32:17

like, the jar

32:19

breaks, the venomous

32:21

snake is like now on your boat,

32:23

man.

32:24

And then people are scared of snakes. And so people

32:26

start jumping in the water and you don't have as many roars.

32:29

That's because of how they bite. That's like when, who

32:31

was it? Was it Persia that showed up

32:34

with cats on their shields? Who

32:36

was that? Yeah. Did we talk about that? No,

32:39

that we didn't. Yeah. Uh, Cambyses,

32:42

the first, the son of Cyrus the Great in

32:44

his attempt to, well, in his success, Darius's

32:46

dad. Uh, no, Darius

32:48

is not the son of Cambyses. He kind of

32:51

maybe nefariously stole the throne. Fun

32:53

stories the other day. Yeah. That involves

32:56

shape shifters. People

32:58

posing as kings is awesome. Yeah.

33:00

But no, Cambyses, the first, he's the guy who

33:02

maybe he's rumored to have lost 50,000

33:05

troops in a sandstorm out in the desert

33:07

in Egypt and nobody knows where they went.

33:10

But yeah, I think it was, it was

33:12

Cambyses or the Persians who strapped cats

33:15

to their shields to mess with the Egyptians. Cause

33:17

Egyptians like cats. Snakes and jars.

33:19

Keep going. The snakes and jars thing

33:21

is awesome. I didn't know that was, I didn't know

33:23

that was a deal. I don't know how Rome ever beat that, but they

33:25

did.

33:27

And now by the time we're getting toward 100 BC,

33:29

so the Republic has been a thing with

33:32

a pretty stable set of laws and in principle

33:35

stable governmental structure for 400

33:38

years,

33:39

they've been doing things a certain way. And now they've eliminated

33:41

all of their rivals

33:43

and they're the big dogs.

33:45

They're the big kingdom now, finally,

33:48

but it

33:49

came at a big price. You can't

33:51

conduct war

33:53

for two or three straight

33:55

generations. Away from

33:57

home and not have that come

33:59

home to rest. at some point. So what Rome

34:01

had done is a mixture

34:04

of volunteer and compulsory military

34:06

service

34:07

over those years and the

34:09

the length of campaign, the length

34:11

of time you had to be in the field as a

34:13

soldier kept getting longer and

34:16

longer and longer

34:18

and so what started to happen

34:20

was these soldiers would go away to fight

34:22

kind of like what happened to Maximus Meridius

34:24

Decimus Niner,

34:26

you know the guy from Gladiator, yeah

34:29

he you know when he came back

34:31

his place was burned and his wife wasn't there anymore.

34:34

Well a lot of these veterans they went and fought not

34:36

for a year or two they were on campaign for a decade

34:39

or two and

34:40

they finally get home and

34:43

their land has been bought up it's gone.

34:46

Rich people who didn't have to fight worked

34:49

the system and worked political connections

34:51

to dispossess soldiers of

34:53

their land and oftentimes their wives

34:56

and their kids. I'll remind

34:58

you that those are people that's been fighting for ten

35:01

years and so they're good at fighting. Yeah

35:03

see Destin? Yeah.

35:06

The whole course of history would be different if you

35:09

were in charge of Rome with my brain.

35:11

Just did that right then, right then. Just

35:13

figured that out. Right then, just with your brain you didn't even look at

35:15

a how to govern strategy book you

35:17

just thought that to yourself right? Yeah

35:19

I know right That's crazy. Unbelievable.

35:24

The leaders in Rome had become so

35:26

fat and so rich off

35:28

of the work

35:30

of their soldiers overseas

35:32

that they had lost total touch with reality.

35:34

Did they have term limits? One they did not appreciate.

35:37

Yes for the highest

35:39

positions you could only be

35:42

a sensor or a console

35:44

those were the two really big leadership positions

35:47

for one year one term that was it.

35:49

Okay so yes

35:52

that was an age-old norm that was

35:54

a line you do not cross

35:57

but then people started messing with it.

35:59

brothers who were really popular

36:02

a little bit before 100 BC who argued that

36:06

what was needed was a redistribution

36:09

of land. Not like the communists

36:11

wanted to do it in China, like kill the landlords

36:14

and insane stuff like that. Their

36:16

argument was this land was all acquired illegally.

36:18

This still belongs to the soldiers and

36:20

now they're living in this ghetto

36:23

on the Aventine Hill and we can't

36:25

control it. This hill is adjacent

36:28

to the Capitoline Hill or however you say

36:30

it. It's next to where we do

36:32

government and it's completely run

36:35

by gangs. We send police officers

36:37

in there. They can't do anything. I mean

36:39

what are you gonna do? Go take out a legion?

36:42

We can't control it. This is effectively, these

36:44

gangs are

36:45

starting to run Rome and the only

36:48

way to solve it

36:49

is to give them back their property so they'll go home

36:51

and make families again. The

36:54

higher-ups aren't here in that at all

36:57

but these leaders, these two brothers

36:59

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus

37:02

from the lower house, the Plebeian

37:04

House of Government, they're the ones arguing

37:07

for this land redistribution and changing

37:09

a lot of things about how

37:11

Rome has worked and about how money

37:14

works

37:15

and they both get assassinated

37:18

for it and this sort of Tiberius

37:20

did? It's another one of those crossings of lines.

37:22

Tiberius and Gaius both got

37:24

assassinated for it

37:26

and if I recall correctly. This isn't the

37:28

same Tiberius that's gonna be Caesar later right?

37:31

No that's about a hundred and fifty years later.

37:33

Tiberius is Caesar

37:37

when Jesus of Nazareth gets executed

37:40

so that's a lot later. Okay, okay

37:42

30ish AD. So

37:45

these two brothers, they are reviled

37:47

by the ruling class. They'll stop at nothing to make these

37:49

guys go away but still political assassination

37:52

was pretty abnormal. That's one of the lines you

37:55

don't cross. It's a violation of the natural

37:57

order. It's a violation of the natural

37:59

order of

37:59

the people having elected them. And

38:02

so it's kind of a crisis of trust that

38:04

comes out of it. And the next big

38:06

politician who comes down the road,

38:09

just on either side of the 100 BC

38:11

mark is a guy named Gaius Marius.

38:15

And Marius picks up where the

38:17

Gracchi, Tiberius and Gaius

38:19

Gracchus left off. And he's like, we're not even going

38:21

to have a Rome anymore if we don't make

38:23

some really meaningful changes.

38:26

And he becomes rivals

38:29

with another general and powerful

38:31

leader named Cornelius Sulla.

38:34

And they end up squabbling and fighting

38:36

with each other. Sulla outlives Marius

38:40

and gets control of the

38:42

very late Roman Republic. And

38:44

it's like, all right, I'm changing everything back to how it used to

38:46

be before all these wars and all these

38:48

stupid reforms. I'm going to fix

38:50

Rome and then I'm just going to quit.

38:53

Then he does. He quits. And he's like, I'm going to walk around

38:55

Rome for a week or whatever. If anybody has any questions or

38:57

gripes, they can come talk to me. I won't

38:59

even be armed. And he does. He walks

39:02

around Rome. People probably did have gripes. And

39:04

then he retires and lives out his days and

39:07

dies as an old man in his villa somewhere.

39:11

When that generation

39:13

passes on the Marius and Sulla

39:15

generation who thought about

39:17

whether the best way forward for Rome

39:20

was to go back to how it was working in the

39:22

past or to go forward to

39:24

a new, for a new way of doing things. Once their fight

39:26

was over,

39:27

a new group of very powerful leaders

39:30

emerge where they left off, especially

39:32

two guys, a dude named

39:34

Pompeii or Pompeii, you'll hear it pronounced

39:36

both ways, and a dude

39:39

named Julius Caesar,

39:41

their pals, their families

39:44

inter-Mary, they go off to

39:46

different parts of the world and conquer

39:48

things on behalf of the,

39:51

basically the Senate of Rome, the

39:54

governing legislative bodies of Rome

39:56

in the 20, 30 years leading up to. Caesar's

40:01

assassination. But they have

40:03

a falling out

40:04

Pompey or Pompey. People

40:07

are often saying Pompey now. That seems to

40:09

be in vogue in the preferred way. You'd

40:11

hear it said Pompey a lot in the 20th

40:14

century, so I'm trying to make that change. But

40:16

Pompey and Caesar, they

40:18

find themselves on the opposite side

40:21

of some fights as Pompey becomes

40:23

a Roman politician. Really entrenched

40:25

in Rome. He's everybody's favorite

40:28

politician. They got parades and

40:30

stuff to celebrate him. He's the dude

40:33

who in what was that 64 BC gets

40:35

called in to

40:37

clean up the political mess in Jerusalem

40:40

and ends up just being like, yeah the best way to clean up the mess

40:42

here would be to just dissolve your kingdom and make

40:44

you be part of Rome from here on out. That was Pompey

40:47

who did that. So they love

40:48

him in Rome, but Caesar is awesome.

40:51

He is so good

40:53

at everything,

40:55

dude.

40:56

He has the loyalty of his soldiers.

41:00

He wins in battle. He's merciful

41:02

when it makes sense to be merciful. He's cruel

41:05

when it makes sense to be cruel. He's

41:07

taking huge swathes

41:10

of land on behalf of the Roman Republic

41:12

in Gaul, in Britannia.

41:15

He's writing books about his experiences.

41:18

He's a military genius.

41:20

He's a pretty good author. You can still read the stuff

41:22

that he wrote. Those books are still in print. Really?

41:25

You can still read what he wrote?

41:26

Yeah, yeah. You can still read his own

41:29

accounts of these campaigns that made

41:31

him hyper famous and

41:33

probably people back in Rome could read it too.

41:36

Well in Rome, people are getting really excited

41:39

about it. I mean they're getting all this news about victory

41:41

after victory and Caesar's

41:43

troops, they're taken care of. He

41:45

learned lessons that

41:48

the generals had not learned coming

41:50

out of the Greek Wars and coming

41:52

out of the Punic Wars. That's what you call the wars against

41:54

the Carthaginians, but

41:57

Caesar, he figured out how to make sure that he

41:59

took all the plunder.

41:59

from these victories and really take

42:02

care of these soldiers. So they were loyal

42:04

to him, but also they knew that when they went home,

42:06

they were going to go have property and families

42:09

and a life after the military.

42:11

He really drew on the lessons

42:13

of the past

42:15

and the political legacy of Marius

42:17

and even to an extent Sulla.

42:19

And there was just no stopping him. He was a political

42:22

force. Do you remember the summer of Barack Obama,

42:24

the summer of 2008? Yeah. When

42:26

it was just clear, whether you agree with this guy

42:29

or not politically, he's

42:30

going to win. He has to win. It's

42:33

just got to be him. He's the guy. He's on fire

42:35

right now.

42:36

Yeah, I do. I remember when he gave

42:38

the speech

42:39

at the, what was it, the Democratic

42:42

National Convention,

42:44

he gave the speech like before,

42:48

but he was announcing whoever it was

42:50

before him

42:51

and everybody's like, oh snap, we

42:54

should have elected him. I remember that moment.

42:57

Oh yeah. And everybody was like- When

42:59

he introduced John Kerry? Yes, absolutely.

43:02

That's right. In the summer of 2004,

43:04

August of 2004, he gave that speech. And

43:06

this was the moment where he exploded onto the stage

43:09

and it was like, okay, yeah, okay, I don't know

43:11

who that guy is, but he's coming back. And

43:14

then he did. Yeah.

43:16

Yeah, he's just very compelling and

43:19

charismatic. Let me ask you a question

43:21

real quick though. Before we go wherever

43:23

you're about to take me. Caesar's awesome,

43:25

writing books, soldiers love him. Just

43:28

so I understand, I know in America,

43:31

we elect our leaders every so often.

43:34

At this point in Rome, how were

43:36

leaders

43:37

determined? With your permission,

43:39

I would like to take a pass on that

43:41

question because it's not

43:43

simple

43:44

by comparison to our government.

43:47

There are a ton of layers and it's

43:49

not,

43:50

they didn't do it one way for the whole era

43:52

of the Republic. The simple version is

43:54

this, there were three councils, an

43:57

upper class council, a middle class council and

43:59

a lower class council.

43:59

and in very complicated

44:02

ways, they would produce a couple of very

44:04

significant leaders who usually could only

44:07

rule for one year, but even

44:09

that was very supervised by all of these councils.

44:11

So it's just a complicated- Did that okay just go that far with it? Yeah,

44:14

that works. But it's not like everybody got together and voted.

44:17

No, it's trickier than that.

44:19

Okay, smoke-filled rooms, that kind of thing, got it.

44:21

Okay, all right, so we got Caesar, he's awesome.

44:24

Yeah, but everybody's seeing Caesar kind

44:26

of on the horizon, they're like, something's about to happen, he's

44:28

awesome. But we

44:31

still got Pompey that is

44:33

in Rome and people are liking Pompey.

44:36

Okay, I'm with you. But Loyalties

44:38

are starting to shift to Caesar. He's the

44:40

backup quarterback, right? Who's the most popular

44:42

player on a bad football team? It's a backup quarterback.

44:45

Well, in this case, it's a pretty good football team there

44:47

in Rome, but it's the guy they don't see

44:50

who is the object of mystery

44:52

and affection and fascination and

44:54

he's a provider for all

44:57

of these soldiers and they love him.

45:00

And so gradually Pompey and

45:02

his associates can feel

45:05

the

45:06

threat of Caesar's popularity.

45:08

Now to understand why this is a big deal, you

45:11

gotta go outside of Rome and consider

45:14

also Greek history. The

45:16

Greeks were governed by tyrants and it wasn't

45:19

a bad word back then in Athens

45:21

or Sparta. I mean, these kings, well, Sparta

45:23

didn't have as much tyrants but Athens

45:25

and all the other Greek city-states, they would have

45:27

a tyrant. And this was somebody who was a very prominent,

45:30

very wealthy, very significant citizen

45:32

whose word would kind of go and who did have connections

45:35

in the smoke-filled room and they had tons

45:37

of power,

45:38

but

45:39

they could only hold it for a very brief

45:41

time. And like in Athens,

45:44

every year they could just ostracize

45:46

somebody. So you didn't wanna get too powerful or

45:48

you would just get voted into exile for whatever

45:50

it was, seven years or a dozen years or

45:53

whatever. So

45:54

this idea of a very

45:56

charismatic, powerful leader coming to

45:59

power for a year. wasn't

46:01

that scary. People were used to

46:03

that kind of rule. What was freaking

46:05

out Pompey and his associates

46:08

was that that idea that you can only

46:10

serve in those powerful roles for one year

46:12

had been blown up a generation earlier

46:15

by Gaius Marius. He kept getting elected

46:18

and kept being like, I guess I'll be first citizen

46:20

again then if nobody else is gonna...

46:23

okay.

46:24

And so Pompey is afraid

46:26

that Caesar will

46:27

not just get two or three terms

46:29

at the top of the political pecking order. He's

46:32

afraid Caesar's gonna come back with the full force

46:34

of the army and nobody else having an army

46:36

in tow

46:37

and he's just gonna become king and it'll be the end of

46:39

the entire Republic. He's too good.

46:41

Is that fair or not? He's too

46:43

good. Yeah. Wow. That's

46:46

the concern. Okay. So

46:48

let me ask you this buddy. Let's say

46:50

you love your country

46:53

and let's say your country is Rome and

46:55

let's say you believe in the 500-year legacy

46:58

of the Republic but you've seen it wobbling

47:01

for your whole lifetime. It's this

47:03

great idea rooted in these great

47:06

ancient enshrined

47:08

laws. The 12 tables. Yeah. Golly.

47:11

Yes. I mean we heard all of those. You can't

47:13

bury somebody or burn them inside the city.

47:16

That's a great rule. You can't do that. You

47:18

can't put gold on a

47:19

body and bury it. You can't do that.

47:22

You can't collect those bones and have a second funeral.

47:24

Dude, this is why we can have nice things. You

47:26

cannot pour spiced drinks

47:29

on a dead body at a funeral. You can't do that.

47:32

It's

47:32

in the 12 tables. Right? Yes. Thank you. Yes.

47:35

And that's all because of the 12 tables. If those go away

47:37

you don't have rules like that anymore. That's right.

47:40

But in all seriousness. All the other

47:42

stuff. You love Rome and you really think it's

47:44

a great idea. Okay, we haven't had our best

47:46

run for the last few decades. It's been a little

47:48

rough since we did what we had to do

47:50

and defeated the Carthaginians and defeated

47:53

the Greeks and yeah, okay, we haven't treated

47:55

our veterans. Dude, my grandfather took down

47:57

a war elephant man.

47:59

You know how He took down a war

48:01

elephant. Yes, I'm right there with

48:03

you. We bled for this country.

48:06

I believe in Rome. Yeah, got it. And

48:08

now let's say there's a guy who you know well

48:10

and like your kids have even intermarried,

48:13

but you can tell he's

48:15

starting to lose himself.

48:17

You can tell the fame is getting to him

48:20

and you haven't seen him face to face for a while,

48:22

but this is who you are. And

48:25

you are convinced

48:26

Caesar's ongoing run of success

48:29

is a threat to the whole thing. Now

48:32

you've got sway over the entire

48:34

legislative apparatus of

48:36

Rome. Pompey does. What do you do

48:38

with that power? Yes.

48:40

So Pompey, what do you do

48:42

with that power in that situation? Okay,

48:44

so I'm gonna answer your question and then I have a question

48:47

for you after that. If that's where you're

48:49

at and you truly have power with

48:52

all these representative people

48:55

and you do perceive a threat

48:57

from this Julius Caesar

48:59

guy who's awesome, you even

49:01

know he's awesome, you start

49:04

to slowly weasel

49:06

your way around other people and try

49:08

to like whisper in their ears, you know Caesar's

49:10

cool and all, but like he wasn't like us man.

49:14

His grandfather didn't take down a war elephant.

49:17

I mean, yeah, granted he's good

49:19

against the barbarians up there in Britannia, but man,

49:22

down here, I

49:24

don't know. I don't think during the Punic

49:26

Wars he understands, even

49:29

knows what those were about. You know,

49:31

you just kind of start weaseling your way around and

49:33

trying to sway everybody around you to,

49:36

I mean, that's how politics works, isn't it? Mm-hmm.

49:40

Yeah. Yeah,

49:42

you, what did you call it before when we were talking about social

49:44

media corruption? It's the nudge. Yeah,

49:47

yeah. It's the nudge. That's

49:50

interesting, but he would probably

49:52

do that for his own political gain as well.

49:54

Okay, so I have a question for you. Got it. Pompey's

49:56

irritated against Caesar

49:59

and he's probably about.

49:59

start using his power and influence

50:02

locally in Rome against this Julius

50:04

Caesar guy. Keep a pin in that.

50:06

Yep, yeah. Pins in that. Question,

50:08

how do we know what Pompey was thinking? Like

50:11

how do we know, I mean, this is 2,000 years ago.

50:13

How do we know this is kind

50:15

of what they're thinking? Is there a document? Did

50:18

Josephus write something about this? Where

50:20

do we have this information?

50:22

Yeah, I don't think we generally go to Josephus for

50:25

Rome stuff that far back, but he

50:27

does talk about Rome a lot in the first century AD.

50:30

There are some pretty significant

50:33

historians who speak to it, Plutarch,

50:36

Pliny, Livy, Cassius

50:39

Dio. But

50:41

it's written now? Suetonius is

50:44

the guy, Suetonius is the guy who

50:47

muses in his history of Julius

50:49

Caesar about this rumor he'd heard that

50:51

Caesar's last words were etu, brutee,

50:54

you also, Brutus. That's where we get

50:56

that from, not, you know, so Shakespeare

50:58

wasn't making that up out of thin air. That's from

51:00

Suetonius. Oh, wow. So we've got all

51:03

of that stuff sitting around and more that I

51:05

can't think of off the top of my head.

51:08

That's quite a bit of data that you can triangulate

51:11

what Pompey might've been thinking.

51:13

I mean, you also gotta understand that even though this is 2,000 years ago, this

51:16

is the center of planet earth. This is

51:19

the most important thing

51:21

that was gonna happen for another, well,

51:23

I mean, the Jesus thing, I think that's the most important thing that

51:25

ever happened ever, but apart from that,

51:28

politically, this is the most important thing

51:30

that's gonna happen in hundreds of years in

51:32

either direction. So everybody

51:34

would have had the magnifying glass out looking at this

51:36

moment. Okay, I'm satisfied with that answer.

51:38

I would like to go back to the pin now, and the pin

51:40

is in the fact that Pompey is going around

51:43

and he's gonna start whispering and

51:45

doing the Bayless thing.

51:46

Yeah, so let me ask you a follow-up

51:48

question.

51:49

If you were in his shoes and you had his lack of character,

51:51

what would you be whispering to try to get everybody to do?

51:54

What outcome do you want?

51:56

I want his soldiers to turn

51:58

against him because if his...

51:59

soldiers are If

52:02

they're the ones that like really love him. I

52:04

want I don't know I just I

52:06

I think I think Pompey probably wanted him to

52:09

just screw up real big somehow Like

52:11

he wanted to just fail at something

52:13

that was seemingly important

52:16

to everyone in Rome

52:17

So Caesar just cannot

52:20

be allowed to continue to wield this power. He's

52:22

got to be taken down a peg. Is that what I'm

52:25

hearing?

52:26

Well, I'm assuming that's what Pompey is thinking.

52:28

He is he

52:29

Okay, like I don't he probably

52:31

didn't jump straight to murder him

52:34

But no, he never did. Okay.

52:37

No, no these guys were

52:39

like brothers for a time and I

52:42

mean, they're they're related by marriage.

52:45

I mean these guys liked each other But

52:48

you know the absence and lack

52:50

of communication can cause mistrust and

52:53

it does here ultimately Pompey

52:56

and we'll call them the Senate. That's kind

52:58

of what they are at this point. They

53:00

say

53:01

Hey Julius Caesar great job

53:04

on your campaign. We're gonna have to cut it a little short

53:06

You need to renounce your titles and

53:09

control of your legions You need to hand them over

53:11

to someone else and you need to come

53:13

back to Rome unarmed for no

53:15

reason

53:16

God doesn't go over so well. That

53:19

sounds like That Happened

53:22

many times and didn't that happen? What's

53:24

the German general that was? So

53:27

good in battle that Caesar killed

53:30

him Searching our Rommel

53:33

Rommel. Yeah in North Africa

53:35

didn't Hitler do that to Rommel. Oh

53:37

I don't remember. Maybe I knew that once

53:39

but

53:40

I don't recall. I'll have to defer to you on that

53:42

Yeah, I think he did. I think he was He

53:46

Just got too powerful and Hitler brought him back

53:48

and then he made him drink poison I think

53:51

is what happened Anyway, go

53:53

ahead. Go. Yeah, that's mean stuff.

53:55

Okay. Got it. So they call they call

53:58

calling back to Rome What does

54:00

he say?

54:01

What do you do if you're Julius Caesar now? Now role

54:03

play that. You get that note.

54:05

Your governing body that sent you out there

54:07

and who you are fighting on behalf of

54:10

just gave you an order. This is law. You

54:12

have to do it. What do you do?

54:14

Is this

54:17

the famous thing in history the dais cast?

54:19

Is that what this is? Good

54:22

job Destin Sandlin. Is that what it is?

54:24

In this whole conversation, I keep talking about crossing

54:26

lines. And they cross this line

54:29

and they transgressed this and they transgressed

54:31

this.

54:32

Yeah, it's all coming toward maybe the most

54:35

famous crossing of lines ever. Yeah.

54:38

What do you remember about that? The Rubicon. Yeah,

54:40

good. So Caesar crossed the Rubicon

54:43

and he said the dais cast. But

54:46

how does he say that in Latin? It's a famous saying.

54:48

I should know. I don't know. My

54:51

kids are better at Latin. Let me Google it. Let me Google

54:53

it. A-L-E-A-I-A-C-T-E. I

54:58

don't know Latin. A-L-E-A-I-A-C-T-E-S-T.

55:01

That means the dais cast.

55:04

Yeah, who knows if he actually ever said that or

55:06

not?

55:06

But the deal is this. The Rubicon River

55:08

doesn't matter very much. It's not like

55:10

a significant body of water

55:13

or anything. But after the

55:15

affair with Sulla

55:18

and Marius where Sulla attacked

55:20

Rome with Roman legions

55:22

and then Marius had to defend it against

55:25

Roman legions using freed slaves. I

55:27

mean, it's a crazy situation that happened

55:30

there. Well, Rome made a rule

55:32

that said, you can't generals, you can't come

55:34

in here with legions. You have to leave them on the other

55:36

side of the Rubicon. If you cross

55:38

the Rubicon with legions in tow, we

55:41

know that means business and we will respond

55:43

accordingly.

55:45

So when Caesar crosses the Rubicon

55:47

with legions, it's not like, oh, that might

55:49

be a little too close. It might bother them.

55:51

Now the Rubicon was a barrier that

55:54

legally meant I'm

55:56

here to fight you. If I come with legions, I'm

55:58

here to fight.

55:59

Caesar does. He knows he's done for.

56:02

He's doomed one way or another. If he goes back

56:04

without those legions,

56:05

that is his bargaining chip. That

56:08

is his power. He won't have time

56:10

to get politically established in Rome, which he

56:13

could do with a few weeks or

56:15

a few months. He will be politically

56:17

assassinated or physically assassinated

56:20

within moments of his return. You

56:22

just can't come back empty-handed if you're Julius

56:25

Caesar. You've been too successful

56:27

and the Senate cannot afford

56:30

to have you out and about running around. So

56:32

he comes back with- So he interpreted that- Comes back with

56:34

the legion. That command to come back to

56:36

Rome. He interpreted that as

56:38

like, you have been politically assassinated

56:41

inside Rome. That's how

56:43

he interpreted that.

56:45

Yeah. And I think he was reading it right. And

56:47

the historians who write about him think Caesar

56:49

was reading it right as well. Because

56:51

he was smart. Uh-huh. Interesting.

56:54

Now, this is an interesting thing

56:56

about all this you're teaching me because

56:59

I don't know, for some reason in my

57:01

brain, the drawer that Caesar

57:04

is in is the same drawer that Nero

57:06

is in and it's an idiot, right? And

57:09

so I have this- Oh, interesting. I have

57:11

this imaginary person in my head as like,

57:13

oh, well Caesar is just this selfish

57:16

ruler that's super rich

57:19

and can tell people what to do. Because

57:22

I think about the Caesar in the Gladiator

57:24

movie. I think about Nero. It's never

57:27

just a rock star, but what

57:29

you're telling me is Julius Caesar was a rock

57:32

star and he got put in a very difficult

57:34

situation. And this is how-

57:36

Because of his success. Because, yeah.

57:39

So the high nail gets hit.

57:41

Okay.

57:42

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Okay.

57:44

Yeah. Nero was a boob. The

57:48

Commodus, who is the Caesar

57:51

in Gladiator, he is the son of Marcus

57:53

Aurelius, who was a good emperor. But Commodus,

57:56

the second century

57:58

emperor, he was an idiot as well.

57:59

But no, Caesar's not like that at all. He belongs

58:02

in a different drawer. This guy belongs in the drawer

58:04

in your brain that is labeled

58:07

smartest, most competent generals

58:09

and politicians ever.

58:11

Wow. Okay.

58:14

Now, when you say Caesar, you mean Julius

58:16

Caesar. You don't mean Caesar Augustus. You mean Julius

58:18

Caesar.

58:19

Right. Okay. So

58:21

Caesar doesn't become a title until after

58:23

Julius Caesar. That's how significant his

58:26

name is,

58:27

is that successive leaders want to be

58:29

associated with his lineage

58:31

of leadership.

58:32

And so his name becomes a title.

58:35

And even today, if you talk about

58:37

the Russian leaders of the 19th

58:39

century, they're czars. That's Caesar.

58:42

It's just the rucification of the term Caesar. If

58:44

you talk about a drug czar from the

58:47

1980s who's going to stop the drug trade and win the

58:49

drug war, that's an homage to Julius

58:51

Caesar. Really?

58:53

That's their title. Yeah. Dude, this is

58:55

wildly helpful for me. This is helpful. Thank

58:58

you.

58:59

Okay. Cool, man. I'm starting

59:01

to understand. Okay. So Caesar,

59:03

the dude, he says the die is

59:05

cast. Now, what is the symbology

59:08

of that metaphor, the die is cast,

59:10

whether or not he said it? What does that mean?

59:12

January 10th, 49 BC

59:15

is going to be the day that decides Julius

59:17

Caesar's fate. He's either going to go

59:19

back and be

59:22

a person of great prominence in Rome

59:24

politically for the rest of his career, or

59:27

he's going to die. But January

59:29

10th, 49 BC is also the day

59:31

the die is cast for the entire future

59:34

of Rome. If Julius Caesar just

59:37

hands in

59:38

his Eagle standard,

59:40

his command of his Legion and

59:42

walks in empty-handed,

59:44

almost metaphorically

59:46

riding in on a donkey, knowing that he's going

59:48

to die. Well,

59:50

maybe the Republic lives

59:52

on for years and years more. Is

59:55

Julius Caesar the guy who burned

59:58

down what was left of the Republic?

1:00:00

Or was the Republic already burning down

1:00:02

and Julius Caesar was just the guy whose mere

1:00:05

competence pointed out that it was already

1:00:07

over And that the fire that burned it down

1:00:09

was overdue I

1:00:10

don't know the answer to that

1:00:12

but when he says the die is cast and

1:00:14

again We don't know if he actually said that it's the same

1:00:16

historian Suetonius

1:00:18

about a hundred years later hundred years and change

1:00:21

Attributes that quote to him. But

1:00:23

when he says that if he did

1:00:26

It's for his life It's for the life

1:00:28

of his Legion

1:00:29

and it's for the fate of the Roman Republic He

1:00:31

knew it was consequential and that everything

1:00:33

would change as a result of that action

1:00:51

Golly

1:00:52

dude, it's amazing that you know, I'm

1:00:54

on the Wikipedia page Alleah Iacta

1:00:57

est and it's sitting here telling me that this

1:00:59

was said two different times Plutarch

1:01:01

said Caesar said let

1:01:03

a die be cast

1:01:05

But Suetonius blue Turk. No,

1:01:07

no, no, you're right. Suetonius also said the

1:01:09

die has been cast. I'm

1:01:11

wildly impressed

1:01:13

with your knowledge of this your ability to just

1:01:16

Seamlessly go back and forth

1:01:18

between all these different people. You're like, oh Suetonius

1:01:20

not Plutarch Dude, this is very

1:01:23

impressive command of the material very

1:01:25

impressed here.

1:01:26

Take me past the Rubicon man well

1:01:29

crossing the Rubicon

1:01:31

Causes the folks

1:01:34

in Rome to have to make a decision. Are we gonna ride

1:01:36

out and meet Julius Caesar the

1:01:39

Julius Caesar and Beat

1:01:42

him in battle if we don't get to keep

1:01:44

legions in Rome. We got the Rubicon

1:01:47

rules We I mean, it's not like there's

1:01:49

an army sitting there. What do we even do?

1:01:52

He called our bluff

1:01:53

and so all these fancy old upper-class

1:01:55

senators and their family start grabbing

1:01:58

all of their junk and fleeing

1:01:59

the city. I think they went south down

1:02:02

the Italian coast and they rendezvoused

1:02:04

up with some legions later on and

1:02:07

there ends up being a

1:02:09

whole pursuit on

1:02:11

the part of Caesar who is viewed as

1:02:14

kind of a casual liberator when he comes into

1:02:16

Rome with his legion. I mean people

1:02:18

weren't panicked about it. They liked Caesar. It's nice

1:02:20

to see ya. Those stingy,

1:02:23

dopey, old, out-of-touch senators.

1:02:25

Yeah, they left and so

1:02:27

Caesar goes chasing after them and

1:02:31

ultimately wins. He defeats

1:02:33

the forces of

1:02:35

the Senate. I'm using the Senate as a blanket term

1:02:37

here for this era. Yeah.

1:02:39

And Pompeii, their great

1:02:42

general, or Pompeii, their great general, flees

1:02:44

to Egypt, a longtime

1:02:48

ally or even client

1:02:50

kingdom of Rome, but

1:02:52

somebody has got wind

1:02:54

of how things have shaken out and their loyalties

1:02:57

are firmly in Julius

1:02:59

Caesar's camp.

1:03:01

And so Pompeii doesn't even make it to shore.

1:03:03

He loses his head a few

1:03:05

feet from dry land on

1:03:07

the coast of Egypt and

1:03:10

then somebody brings the head of Pompeii back

1:03:12

to Caesar who is not impressed.

1:03:15

He thought he could still work things out with

1:03:17

his old friend, his old brother, and

1:03:19

it's gonna be hard to now because of how he's, you

1:03:21

know, dead and headless and whatnot. And

1:03:25

after that we've got roughly

1:03:27

five years

1:03:29

of Caesar being the man

1:03:32

politically in Rome.

1:03:35

He dominates Roman politics.

1:03:37

Hold on, back up real quick.

1:03:40

So

1:03:41

is this domination and politics

1:03:43

happening at the same time as he's created

1:03:45

the Civil War? No, the

1:03:47

Civil War is over and it doesn't

1:03:49

take that long. And

1:03:52

now Caesar is unopposed.

1:03:55

He's the man in

1:03:57

Rome and he's physically

1:03:59

in Rome.

1:03:59

Rome, he's not out in the field campaigning

1:04:02

and

1:04:02

finishing things off with Pompey. He's just

1:04:05

there and he's wearing fancy outfits

1:04:08

and he's

1:04:09

presiding over the

1:04:12

Senate

1:04:12

and his functioning is the

1:04:15

first citizen of Rome. That

1:04:17

is when a crazy psychological

1:04:20

phenomenon starts to happen politically.

1:04:22

Let me ask you a question. In

1:04:24

your lifetime, can you think

1:04:27

of one or two things,

1:04:29

just ideas,

1:04:32

issues of the day that just got really,

1:04:34

really hot and

1:04:36

there was only one right opinion

1:04:38

about it and the thing to do in those

1:04:40

moments politically or socially was just

1:04:42

a signal to everyone

1:04:44

how completely on board

1:04:48

with this popular thing you

1:04:50

were wasn't a question of are you on board

1:04:52

or not it's are you a hundred

1:04:54

on board or two hundred on

1:04:56

board have you ever seen that phenomenon happen? Absolutely,

1:04:59

yeah I see it happening

1:05:01

more and more frequently. Yeah I

1:05:03

don't know well let me let me back up on that. The answer

1:05:06

is yes I've seen this often

1:05:08

and the one that immediately

1:05:10

comes to mind was immediately after 9-11

1:05:14

and you know a lot of bad

1:05:16

things happened then we did the Patriot Act

1:05:18

we lost a lot of privacy

1:05:22

and freedom then I mean it's interesting

1:05:24

but yeah I can remember that I can remember other

1:05:26

times too.

1:05:27

Yeah like crazies

1:05:31

like just a moment where everybody kind of loses their mind

1:05:33

maybe McCarthyism you know

1:05:35

I'm really not a fan of communism

1:05:38

but that got crazy and very

1:05:41

persecuting for a little window of

1:05:43

time and whatever that was 1953-54 whenever

1:05:46

those hearings were yeah they're

1:05:48

the Salem witch trials

1:05:50

like who's the most against witches

1:05:52

well I'm a hundred against witches I'm a hundred

1:05:55

and twenty against witches yeah that

1:05:58

thing that psychological phenomena,

1:06:01

that mass hysteria

1:06:03

happened in the last year

1:06:05

of Caesar's life and it became very

1:06:07

fashionable

1:06:09

to heap praises and titles

1:06:12

on him to suggest that he should

1:06:14

get to wear fancier outfits, maybe even

1:06:16

kind of like the kings of old used to wear,

1:06:19

and very few people stand in opposition

1:06:22

to this.

1:06:23

The way to signal to everyone that you

1:06:25

hold the right opinion of the day

1:06:28

is to think of new ways to honor Caesar

1:06:31

and new titles and opportunities and

1:06:33

authority

1:06:34

to heap upon him.

1:06:36

And well, this isn't a very hard question,

1:06:39

but

1:06:39

who in this political equation isn't

1:06:42

going to like that very much?

1:06:44

Yeah, the opposition to Caesar,

1:06:47

but but let me ask you a question.

1:06:49

Are they sincere or is this like

1:06:51

a sarcastic type thing?

1:06:53

Or did they sincerely like, oh Caesar

1:06:56

is so amazing, kind

1:06:58

of like, I

1:06:59

don't know, I mean you've seen dictators

1:07:02

throughout history that...

1:07:04

Right. I mean it's happening right now

1:07:06

all across the world in different places where

1:07:08

one leader

1:07:09

is basically worshipped. Is

1:07:11

that happening at this point in time

1:07:14

in Rome?

1:07:15

That's a great question. I don't think

1:07:17

it's like that. I don't think it's a place

1:07:19

where people have already accepted

1:07:21

dictatorship

1:07:23

and now they recognize this guy is gonna be the

1:07:25

new dictator, so I'm

1:07:27

gonna position myself well.

1:07:30

This was different. This was somebody who

1:07:32

was a political

1:07:33

phenomenon in a way that

1:07:36

Rome hadn't seen in a long time,

1:07:38

and I don't think anybody knew where it was going

1:07:41

or what even could happen with it. I think people,

1:07:45

I think there's plenty of evidence to say everybody

1:07:47

was wondering if Caesar was going

1:07:49

to try to crown himself

1:07:51

the king,

1:07:52

end the Republic, and initiate

1:07:54

a new Roman monarchy.

1:07:56

But he never said he was gonna,

1:07:59

and he...

1:07:59

publicly declined to do so in front

1:08:02

of gigantic crowds on more than one

1:08:04

occasion. So

1:08:06

I understand why people were worried about it

1:08:08

and maybe we're trying to be

1:08:10

sycophantic, to kiss up to

1:08:12

him and

1:08:13

and curry favor with him ahead of

1:08:15

him becoming maybe a king for the

1:08:18

first time in 500 years.

1:08:20

But it looks to me

1:08:22

like a lot of the affection was genuine.

1:08:24

The troops love him. The people love

1:08:27

him. We could have unity for once. We

1:08:29

could rally behind this guy and

1:08:31

people from all different political stripes,

1:08:34

people from all different classes or fans

1:08:36

of him. Let's just lean into the Caesar

1:08:39

thing and maybe take a rest from all

1:08:41

of the division and hostility.

1:08:45

I think there were many people including people

1:08:47

in high positions of political authority

1:08:50

who thought that way about him. I think

1:08:52

there were other people who no doubt faked it

1:08:54

because they wanted to be around power for their own benefit.

1:08:57

Does that speak to what you were asking? Yeah,

1:08:59

absolutely. So people people meant it

1:09:01

like by the same time they were,

1:09:04

you know, I can imagine you've had

1:09:06

this thing for so long, 500 years

1:09:09

and it's looking like we're gonna have a king. That's gonna

1:09:11

change things. People aren't gonna like that.

1:09:14

Yeah, particularly a

1:09:16

certain group of senators

1:09:18

aren't gonna like that very much. Now

1:09:21

a few of these historians point to the same

1:09:23

list of three incidents

1:09:26

that led up to this event and this is

1:09:28

interesting. Historians

1:09:30

around this window of time for about 200

1:09:33

years, they all seem to think in

1:09:35

these terms. Josephus does this a lot.

1:09:38

The historians we've been talking about do this

1:09:40

a lot and who are, you know, biographers

1:09:42

of Julius Caesar. This idea that

1:09:44

there were three incidents that

1:09:47

led up to a gigantic

1:09:49

significant event. We

1:09:51

see that a lot and for Caesar here,

1:09:54

the three incidents are as follows.

1:09:56

Number one,

1:09:58

Caesar was in a room in a bunch of

1:09:59

senators came in. Now the idea is

1:10:02

that the first citizen, the consul,

1:10:04

the censor, whatever we're calling the

1:10:06

leader of Rome at any given time in the Republic,

1:10:09

they're supposed to be subservient to the

1:10:11

Senate and they're supposed to show regard

1:10:14

and deference to the Senate and that

1:10:16

includes a certain series of gestures. What

1:10:18

do you do when a judge walks into a room in

1:10:20

our country? You stand up.

1:10:22

You stand up. If you don't, what

1:10:24

happens? I don't know. Are

1:10:26

you in contempt of court? I don't know if you can, I

1:10:29

don't know, maybe. I

1:10:30

mean they say all rise. You're supposed

1:10:33

to stand up

1:10:34

as a way of saying we submit to the authority

1:10:36

of this court. It means something

1:10:39

to stand for the judge.

1:10:41

If you were in Caesar's shoes, you were supposed

1:10:43

to stand for the Senate. Well, all the senators come

1:10:46

in and he doesn't stand up

1:10:48

and well how would you read that gesture?

1:10:51

I

1:10:51

mean I guess that means he thinks

1:10:53

he's above us. If he's not

1:10:55

honoring the time-honored

1:10:57

tradition of standing when the

1:11:00

Senate walks in, then he's

1:11:02

breaking tradition. So hmm, that's

1:11:05

a problem.

1:11:06

Right? I mean that's how I would read it. That's how I would

1:11:08

feel like oh

1:11:09

well look who wins a little

1:11:11

Civil War and suddenly thinks that

1:11:14

he

1:11:14

is above everything. It comes

1:11:17

back to that theme we've been talking about through this whole

1:11:19

story back to the very beginning my friend

1:11:21

of transgressing a thing. There's

1:11:23

a norm, it's there for a reason,

1:11:26

stuff means stuff and

1:11:29

you Mr. Caesar, you are dishonoring

1:11:31

that. Your disregard of the norm is

1:11:33

a problem.

1:11:35

So

1:11:35

on its surface somebody walks into

1:11:37

a room and you don't stand up. Come on, who cares? Settle

1:11:40

down everybody relax. But stuff means stuff

1:11:42

and it comes off badly. Well,

1:11:44

certain biographers of Caesar and I don't

1:11:47

remember which ones. This is something we can go Google

1:11:49

and look up for fun later if we want to. Suggested

1:11:52

that Caesar had this long-term

1:11:55

stomach ailment that had been plaguing him since

1:11:57

he was up in Northern Europe fighting.

1:11:59

years and years earlier, and

1:12:02

that from time to time he would have incontinence.

1:12:05

And the suspicion is that

1:12:08

it would not have been politically savvy

1:12:10

for Caesar to remain seated there, and

1:12:13

that it would take something really significant for

1:12:15

him to make such a gaffe at that moment.

1:12:17

He didn't have the

1:12:19

favor or the standing to try and pull

1:12:21

a stunt like that. He knew what it meant. The

1:12:23

thinking is that either he was one

1:12:26

trying to just flaunt the authority

1:12:28

of the Senate, that seems unlikely though, or

1:12:30

two, he was having another flare up of whatever

1:12:33

this illness was, and he

1:12:35

decided it would be more shameful and cause

1:12:37

more of a problem

1:12:38

if maybe he like crapped himself when

1:12:41

he stood up in that toga, which I think is kind

1:12:43

of just open to the ground and

1:12:45

he had probably imagined that would be humiliating.

1:12:48

Wow. So we don't know what happened there for sure, but

1:12:51

it was an offense. It was a faux pas.

1:12:54

Well then the second of the three incidents

1:12:57

is that there's a statue of

1:12:59

Julius Caesar that is placed,

1:13:02

what do they call it? Is

1:13:03

that the... Oh dude,

1:13:05

I'm going to think of the word, the rostrum? The

1:13:09

rostra maybe? Which one is the nose

1:13:11

of like a bottlenose dolphin? Is that a rostrum?

1:13:13

I have no idea. I can never keep them straight. No,

1:13:15

I don't know. Okay, there's a thing, and the name sounds something

1:13:17

like that. It's a platform

1:13:19

that is just right outside one of the

1:13:21

meeting halls for one of these assemblies and

1:13:24

it would be right in the middle of the Roman

1:13:26

Forum if you were to go there now. So

1:13:28

like right in the middle of everything, downtown,

1:13:31

fancy part of Rome. There's a place in

1:13:34

ancient Corinth they called this, the equivalent

1:13:36

of this place, Abima. It's a place where you go and you

1:13:38

stand in front of people and you can speak. And

1:13:41

on that

1:13:42

is a lovely full body

1:13:44

sculpture of Julius Caesar

1:13:46

and somewhere maybe under cover of

1:13:48

darkness. Some scoundrels

1:13:51

went and they put a diadem, they

1:13:53

put a crown

1:13:54

on the sculpture of Julius Caesar.

1:13:58

Now you would think, who cares?

1:13:59

It's a sculpture and

1:14:02

some rascals were just up to goofing around

1:14:04

to maybe prod or jab

1:14:07

or rib people But stuff means

1:14:09

stuff

1:14:10

and you don't joke around about crowning

1:14:13

people kings Do you guys remember

1:14:15

what happened the last time we had a king? Do

1:14:17

you remember what his son did to the

1:14:19

lovely noblewoman Lucretia and

1:14:22

the pain we had to go through to remove

1:14:24

him from power? First of all mess with

1:14:26

kings. What was there was there a statue of Caesar

1:14:29

while he was alive?

1:14:30

Yes. Yeah, that's interesting.

1:14:32

Yes. I mean there was a statue of Pompeii while

1:14:34

he was alive Yeah, there's a statue

1:14:37

of Nick Saban at the University of Alabama

1:14:39

at the

1:14:40

Walk of Champions and I've always

1:14:43

thought that's got to be so weird for him because

1:14:45

they they make a statue of every

1:14:47

coach That's won a national championship And

1:14:50

I've always thought man, that's gotta be strange. How many coaches is that?

1:14:53

I don't know. I lost count I don't

1:14:55

have that many fingers. I don't know. I know how

1:14:57

many it is for the University of Colorado It's

1:15:00

probably keep track. It's probably

1:15:01

four at Alabama's

1:15:04

have won Championships,

1:15:07

let's see. I don't know. I don't

1:15:09

know the answer Gene

1:15:11

Stallings I just Nick Saban

1:15:13

just think it's comical that it's more

1:15:16

than immediately come to mind Good

1:15:18

heavens. Yeah, I don't know

1:15:20

Anyway,

1:15:21

go ahead Nick Saban Gene Stallings Bear Bryant

1:15:23

Frank Thomas

1:15:25

and Wallace Wade one two three four five

1:15:28

Wow. Yeah Wow That's

1:15:31

epic and you know what? I bet nobody

1:15:33

on that campus would get terribly offended if you made

1:15:35

like a little gold crown and put it on

1:15:38

Nick Saban Sculptures head

1:15:39

no, I'd probably take it off eventually, but

1:15:42

nobody would get stabbed over it. It's interesting

1:15:44

that you say that

1:15:46

Because Nick Saban's, you know of a

1:15:49

football coach At the University of Alabama

1:15:51

and the jokes that people tell or like

1:15:53

hey Did you hear Nick Saban got hurt down

1:15:55

in the Black Warrior River last weekend?

1:15:58

Like yeah. Yeah, you got hit by a jet ski really?

1:16:00

Yeah

1:16:01

he was walking on water and the Jesky

1:16:03

just came down just nailed

1:16:06

him. You know and

1:16:07

people tell jokes like that and that's interesting,

1:16:10

that's interesting and so

1:16:12

my point is I understand what it's like

1:16:14

for a person's

1:16:17

reputation

1:16:18

to be even bigger than they're comfortable

1:16:20

with you know. And I suppose I've never

1:16:23

had to deal with that but I suppose

1:16:25

if you were successful enough and

1:16:28

beloved enough that people from all walks

1:16:31

of life and all different opinions just

1:16:33

thought you were great. Like

1:16:36

I don't even know who that would be in

1:16:38

our culture. The Rock, everybody likes The

1:16:40

Rock. I can't

1:16:44

even think of anybody. Everybody does like The Rock. Everybody's

1:16:46

polarizing.

1:16:48

Yeah. Everybody's polarizing. Tom

1:16:50

Hanks? No not anymore. The Lusters

1:16:52

come off of him a little bit. I have no idea dude.

1:16:55

No one's good enough for our society

1:16:57

anymore. We don't have heroes anymore. We're done with

1:16:59

that to our detriment I think.

1:17:02

But this crown, everybody

1:17:05

wakes up one morning and there it is on the sculpture

1:17:07

Caesar's head. Caesar didn't walk out there and put it

1:17:09

there. You know somebody did but then you

1:17:11

know shortly after that Caesar's

1:17:14

walking around town and some kids

1:17:16

start calling him the

1:17:18

king, Hale Rex, Hale Caesar and

1:17:22

Caesar doesn't go along with it but then

1:17:24

some overly eager members of

1:17:26

the ruling council are like hey all of

1:17:29

you who are doing that that's sedition you're under

1:17:31

arrest and Caesar's like what no that's an overreaction

1:17:33

don't do that and he corrects

1:17:35

these

1:17:36

legislators who punished

1:17:38

the people who called him king. Oh interesting

1:17:41

interesting.

1:17:43

What do you what do you it's

1:17:45

tricky I mean it sounds ridiculous

1:17:48

this far away in time but how

1:17:51

many little ridiculous tests

1:17:53

for cultural orthodoxy have

1:17:55

we seen just in the last 20 years? Yeah

1:17:57

they don't last very long but while they're there they

1:17:59

They mean stuff and if you don't pass

1:18:02

the test, that didn't signal to everybody

1:18:04

that you're on the right team on this particular

1:18:06

issue. It is a real thing

1:18:09

even though it sounds crazy and

1:18:11

our things will look crazy and ridiculous

1:18:14

50 years from now, 1000 years from now as well.

1:18:17

Well the third

1:18:17

issue

1:18:20

that adds up to the assassination

1:18:23

of Julius Caesar is there's

1:18:25

some kind of public event that has like

1:18:27

a fun run or a wrestling thing. I don't remember

1:18:29

some kind of athletic event because everybody's

1:18:32

like pretty much naked and oiled up and

1:18:34

everything because that's how they used to do that back then. And

1:18:37

Caesar is there taking it in and his right hand

1:18:39

man, Mark Antony, the famous

1:18:41

lover of Cleopatra, he comes running

1:18:44

up and he tries to put a crown

1:18:47

on Caesar's head in

1:18:48

front of like all of Rome. Everybody

1:18:50

who matters is gathered there. The

1:18:53

biographers give us great detail

1:18:56

about blow by blow how the crowd

1:18:58

responded. Mark Antony runs over

1:19:01

and he reaches up to put the crown

1:19:03

on Caesar's head and Caesar doesn't initially

1:19:06

respond and there's some applause

1:19:09

but mostly the crowd is silent and Caesar

1:19:11

nobly holds out his hand to say

1:19:14

no,

1:19:14

don't put that crown on my head.

1:19:17

And the crowd applauds.

1:19:19

And then Antony is like, but maybe we

1:19:21

should put this crown on your head. And he goes to do

1:19:23

it again. And there's some cheering

1:19:26

but mostly nervous silence

1:19:29

and Caesar nobly again extends his hand.

1:19:32

No, no, no, there'll be no crowning. And then Caesar

1:19:34

takes that crown and I

1:19:36

don't remember for sure. It seems

1:19:38

like he throws it in like a sacrificial

1:19:41

fire to Jupiter or something and

1:19:43

then maybe make some statement about how you only

1:19:45

Jupiter is king of the Romans. I could be getting

1:19:48

that all wrong but that sticks in my head. And

1:19:51

so now people are just super uneasy.

1:19:53

They're like, that was a trial balloon. You

1:19:56

know what a trial balloon is, right? You've heard that term before?

1:19:58

No, I haven't.

1:19:59

It's not as common anymore in

1:20:02

the 80s and 90s. You'd hear it a lot. It's

1:20:04

it's when a politician

1:20:06

Floats an idea or leaks

1:20:09

an idea

1:20:10

like the White House says it's going to use facial

1:20:12

scanning for all financial Transactions and

1:20:15

everybody goes crazy as they should yeah

1:20:17

over such a proposal And then the White

1:20:19

House is like we have no idea where they came from

1:20:21

that is a horrible idea

1:20:23

Obviously, we're not gonna do facial

1:20:26

scans For people to

1:20:28

do trends and it's a violation of all of your rights.

1:20:30

That's ridiculous But if everybody had

1:20:32

been like yes, please do facial scanning

1:20:35

for all of our transactions like China Then

1:20:37

the president looks great when

1:20:39

they say well, yeah, that was my

1:20:42

idea. We're gonna do it Glad you all like it so much

1:20:44

got it not that anybody is proposing

1:20:46

that but that's a hypothetical ridiculous

1:20:48

example

1:20:50

So

1:20:51

so this is viewed by a lot of his contemporaries

1:20:53

as a trial balloon in front of everybody

1:20:55

He waited till that moment they accuse

1:20:58

To find out

1:20:59

if they would accept just publicly

1:21:02

spontaneously in one crazy

1:21:04

moment If there would be a de facto

1:21:07

vote to end the Republic and create

1:21:09

a new monarchy with Caesar as King That's how

1:21:11

his enemies view

1:21:12

the stunt that happened there between him

1:21:15

and Mark Anthony So Mark Anthony was of it Mark

1:21:17

Anthony was close enough to him to do that to participate Yeah,

1:21:20

Mark Anthony was like

1:21:23

his most

1:21:23

trusted general they were

1:21:26

they were good pals got it

1:21:28

interesting, I mean never would have

1:21:30

thought about that but

1:21:32

Yeah, that's what it sounds like I mean, why

1:21:34

would you do that in front of everybody because

1:21:36

that would discredit Mark Anthony if everybody

1:21:39

was against it

1:21:40

So he was willing to commit political

1:21:42

suicide in

1:21:44

an attempt to get

1:21:45

all the upside of being the right-hand man to

1:21:48

the the one in power

1:21:50

Strange. Yeah, if it would be but

1:21:52

I think they knew there was enough support that it would be like

1:21:54

Well, I could see why he'd ask. I

1:21:57

mean listen to the room. There's

1:21:59

a reason questionable question, we just don't want to do

1:22:01

that. If it was a trial balloon, I think

1:22:04

that was the play. And it's

1:22:06

really fun for me to, just as an aside, to think

1:22:08

about that strategy,

1:22:10

because where else would you go

1:22:13

that you could have a spontaneous decision

1:22:15

like that, or where you could broadcast

1:22:17

to all the decision makers? You got no

1:22:20

news, you got no Twitter,

1:22:21

you don't really have newspapers or opinion

1:22:24

pieces in the way that we do now,

1:22:26

you're kind of looking for public spectacle,

1:22:29

and you're trying to sense the

1:22:31

mood of the room.

1:22:33

But instead of doing that over weeks of research

1:22:36

and demographic study, and looking at

1:22:38

the data and the likes and the dislikes,

1:22:41

you're doing that all in real

1:22:43

time, where

1:22:44

the decisions you make, and the dance

1:22:46

steps and nonverbal communication you have

1:22:49

with the guy holding the crown up to you,

1:22:52

is going to decide the fate of an

1:22:54

empire, of a republic. It's

1:22:56

just wild the stakes that

1:22:58

were in play there. And if those two guys orchestrated

1:23:00

it,

1:23:01

what crazy confidence they had that they

1:23:03

could stay focused

1:23:05

and just execute that together. I think it's

1:23:07

amazing. It's like

1:23:09

the thing that happened in China recently where

1:23:12

they had a politician removed from a

1:23:14

room in front of everyone.

1:23:17

Did you see that?

1:23:19

You sent it to me. I did. It

1:23:21

was nuts. It was terrifying. Yeah,

1:23:24

the guy's sitting down

1:23:26

right next to

1:23:28

G or

1:23:29

whoever, and all of a sudden they

1:23:31

come up and they're like, excuse me, sir, you

1:23:34

can't be here. And he's like, what do you mean?

1:23:36

I

1:23:37

was like the emperor

1:23:39

not long ago. What do you mean I can't be here? Not

1:23:41

emperor, you know what I'm trying to say, president.

1:23:43

And they're like, no, no, you got to go. And he's protesting.

1:23:46

He's like, what do you mean?

1:23:47

I can sit here and everybody just

1:23:50

sits there and watches it happen and

1:23:53

nobody says anything. And you can tell

1:23:55

it's a political assassination. It's

1:23:58

unbelievable. Yes.

1:23:59

understand the culture but I could tell that oh yeah

1:24:02

they're taking that dude out.

1:24:03

Wow.

1:24:04

Yeah we won't be seeing much from him anymore.

1:24:07

No exactly.

1:24:08

Okay so got it everybody's mad

1:24:10

at Caesar at this point so we

1:24:13

were all with him

1:24:14

then everything kind of shifted

1:24:17

and now we don't like him so

1:24:19

who doesn't like him? The people who don't like

1:24:22

him are a certain group of senators

1:24:24

who imagine themselves to be very loyal

1:24:27

to the republic

1:24:28

and there is

1:24:30

some sentiment

1:24:32

toward the nobility of

1:24:35

these conspirators

1:24:36

amongst the historians and biographers.

1:24:39

These guys, some of them

1:24:42

had been men of the people

1:24:45

they had been fair-minded in the past

1:24:48

but they were

1:24:49

very principled in their commitment

1:24:51

to old ways.

1:24:53

I mean if Caesar wanted to be king I guess you could say he

1:24:55

was committed to old ways as well just even older

1:24:57

ways

1:24:59

and so it's not necessarily that these guys have a reputation

1:25:01

for being scoundrels.

1:25:03

The guy who's in charge of the conspiracy

1:25:05

Marcus Junius Brutus is

1:25:08

a long-time family friend

1:25:10

of Caesar's it looks like maybe

1:25:13

even Marcus Junius Brutus' mom

1:25:16

and Julius Caesar maybe kind of had a thing

1:25:19

there for a while but that doesn't sound

1:25:21

as it wasn't as bad back

1:25:23

then as it would sound now it's not necessarily

1:25:25

like a playground taunt back

1:25:27

then so even if it's

1:25:29

weird

1:25:30

their families were intertwined and had

1:25:32

been for generations but

1:25:35

yet it is this Marcus Junius Brutus

1:25:37

who comes to feel like

1:25:39

this is what my family does.

1:25:41

I gotta uphold the reputation of great great

1:25:44

grandpa that's a lot more greats than that

1:25:46

who did what it took to get rid of the tyrant

1:25:48

Tarkanis Superbus at the end of

1:25:50

the era of the kings in 509 BC now

1:25:54

it falls to me his descendant bearer

1:25:56

of the Brutus name to do something

1:25:59

about a new tyrant.

1:25:59

who would rear his ugly head

1:26:02

and subjugate Rome.

1:26:04

And Brutus goes around and rallies

1:26:07

people. There had been

1:26:09

some chatter about maybe assassinating

1:26:11

Caesar a year earlier, but it didn't

1:26:14

get any traction. But this

1:26:16

got traction.

1:26:17

And it looks like there

1:26:19

are 12 active participants in

1:26:22

the assassination of Julius Caesar,

1:26:24

but maybe as many as 60 conspirators,

1:26:28

all from inside the

1:26:30

Senate, the governing bodies of Rome.

1:26:32

Wow. That's a lot of people

1:26:35

who are willing to do physical violence

1:26:38

within the hallowed halls of

1:26:40

decision-making in Rome. When

1:26:42

is the last time you can think

1:26:45

of a sitting US senator

1:26:47

physically attacking another

1:26:50

US senator in the Senate?

1:26:52

I don't know. Yeah, I think you have to go

1:26:54

back to pre-Civil War. Somebody

1:26:57

beat somebody with a cane, yeah. Yeah,

1:26:59

Charles Sumner maybe was the guy.

1:27:02

Yeah, somebody beat somebody with a cane. And

1:27:05

that's about as far as that ever got.

1:27:07

I mean, in a whole

1:27:08

series of transgressions

1:27:11

of violating the norm,

1:27:13

this would be the grandest violation

1:27:15

we've seen yet. The first citizen

1:27:17

of Rome

1:27:19

is, and

1:27:20

you're gonna kill him. In the halls

1:27:22

where you make these decisions, that is

1:27:24

so loaded with meaning. I mean, the Gracchi

1:27:26

brothers, Tiberius and Gaius

1:27:28

from 80 years earlier, I mean,

1:27:30

they both got killed somewhere else,

1:27:33

not where we actually do government

1:27:36

in front of everybody. And we did it the

1:27:38

classy way. We hired a hit man or

1:27:40

a wrestler to just choke him to

1:27:42

death or something when he didn't see it coming.

1:27:45

But here, the conspiracy plan

1:27:47

is such that they're gonna have Caesar

1:27:49

come into one of the assembly halls

1:27:52

of decision-making and they're all

1:27:54

going to stab him once so that

1:27:57

everyone is equally responsible

1:27:59

for it.

1:28:00

and the conspirators have decided,

1:28:02

if we're going to hold this out, not as something for our

1:28:04

own political gain, but for the safety

1:28:06

and preservation of the republic, we

1:28:08

all have to have blood on our knives.

1:28:11

And so

1:28:12

that's the plan. Everybody conceal a blade

1:28:14

under your cloak. And on the Ides

1:28:17

of March 44 BC, we're going

1:28:19

to invite Caesar to come to a meeting.

1:28:21

The meeting is going to be at the theater

1:28:24

of Pompeii.

1:28:26

For the longest time, I thought that this

1:28:28

fateful day happened in the Roman

1:28:31

Forum, the one that you can go to still.

1:28:33

And that is really near the

1:28:36

Colosseum,

1:28:37

but it's not there. This happened

1:28:40

further north and west as

1:28:42

you're getting toward

1:28:44

the modern day Vatican City and

1:28:46

near, if anybody's been to Rome, near Plaza

1:28:48

Navona. So I think

1:28:51

the ruins of the place where Caesar was

1:28:53

stabbed to death are long gone. But

1:28:55

there was a brand new really fancy theater

1:28:58

there

1:28:59

called the theater of Pompeii. I

1:29:01

said Pompeii, but Pompeii.

1:29:03

And so Caesar, the night before his assassination,

1:29:06

he invites people over. Apparently,

1:29:09

they even talk about how they'd want

1:29:11

to die, like

1:29:12

in a moment of shock or no one

1:29:14

it's coming for a real long time. And according

1:29:17

to the story, Caesar's like, I would just I wouldn't

1:29:19

want to see it coming. I want to just

1:29:21

get stabbed. And then his

1:29:23

wife, Calpurnia, is rumored

1:29:25

to have had visions and dreams and

1:29:28

to have warned him, don't

1:29:29

do that. Just don't go. Cancel

1:29:31

everything for tomorrow.

1:29:33

The omens are bad.

1:29:34

And Caesar gets up the next morning.

1:29:37

He's not feeling great. Maybe it's that ailment I was

1:29:39

talking about earlier that's getting him again. Maybe drank

1:29:41

too much. And there's some

1:29:43

early morning rituals, maybe sacrifices

1:29:46

or something that he does. It's part of his

1:29:48

job. And he doesn't like

1:29:50

the way it looks. The omens don't look

1:29:52

good. He sees a couple of omens,

1:29:54

maybe like a bird or something. I don't remember what

1:29:57

they all are, but it's enough that

1:29:59

his guard is actually.

1:29:59

up and he decides,

1:30:02

no, I'm tapping out. I'm walking away

1:30:04

from all of this. Cancel my meetings. I'm

1:30:06

not going to meet with those senators. And

1:30:09

he heads for home.

1:30:10

Well, right around this time, there's

1:30:13

this crazy race against

1:30:15

the clock that happens as one

1:30:17

of the conspirators becomes aware that

1:30:20

Caesar is tapping out for the day

1:30:22

and is sent to persuade Caesar to just

1:30:24

please come look at this one thing. Just for

1:30:26

a minute, please. But two other

1:30:28

people who like Caesar have become aware

1:30:30

that

1:30:31

he's going to get killed. And so they're all

1:30:33

trying to find Caesar at his house or

1:30:36

between his house and the theater of Pompey.

1:30:39

And the guy who is with the conspirators

1:30:41

wins. The other two guys miss

1:30:44

him by a block or an alley here

1:30:46

or there and just are not

1:30:48

quite able to deliver the message.

1:30:51

Well,

1:30:52

Caesar makes it to this meeting room

1:30:54

that's attached to the theater of Pompey.

1:30:57

And

1:30:59

he's sitting right next to the

1:31:01

statue for whom

1:31:03

the theater is named Pompey himself and

1:31:06

the conspirators all come in.

1:31:08

And the meeting is awkward

1:31:11

from the beginning.

1:31:12

One conspirator walks up close

1:31:15

to Caesar while he's seated and is supposed to

1:31:17

be looking at this thing. I don't think he ever opened

1:31:19

it up. He walks up and he pulls

1:31:21

Caesar's toga, the part that goes

1:31:23

over his shoulder. He

1:31:25

pulls it off his shoulder and that was

1:31:27

the signal. It was like the Judas kiss.

1:31:29

Like, all right guys, now start the stabbing.

1:31:32

One of Caesar's old buddies is like that.

1:31:34

So the signal and he walks up but these senators,

1:31:36

they're awful at war and they're trying to stab Julius

1:31:39

Caesar, man.

1:31:40

How many senators do you think it would actually take to

1:31:42

beat someone who's that experienced in combat?

1:31:45

I don't... three? I don't know.

1:31:48

Well,

1:31:49

it turns out that it

1:31:51

maybe took all of them. Only one of

1:31:53

the wounds he ever receives

1:31:55

was regarded as being fatal

1:31:58

after his body was abandoned.

1:31:59

evaluated. Did he have a sword?

1:32:03

He didn't have anything. That's my understanding. Okay.

1:32:06

He got it.

1:32:07

Unarmed. And so he

1:32:09

gets cut in

1:32:11

the shoulder and somewhere

1:32:14

in there he gets stabbed in the side underneath

1:32:17

the ribs and

1:32:18

I think that's the wound that was deemed

1:32:21

to be fatal. He gets stabbed

1:32:23

in the groin, sliced

1:32:26

and cut. I think it's estimated

1:32:29

it's either six or twelve.

1:32:31

I think it's six. Conspirators

1:32:34

stabbed him, were determined to have stabbed him while

1:32:37

he was alive

1:32:39

with the last of them being Brutus.

1:32:42

And whether or not Caesar then says, as he's

1:32:44

fallen to the floor at this point, whether he looks

1:32:46

up and sees Brutus and says, you too Brutus

1:32:50

or not, you know, who knows

1:32:53

whether that tradition bears out. But

1:32:55

all of the biographers and historians seem to agree

1:32:57

that he just

1:32:58

sort of pulled that cloak up over

1:33:00

his face

1:33:01

so he wouldn't see the rest of it happening

1:33:04

and he just concedes to death.

1:33:06

And

1:33:06

at that point everybody comes in like a vulture

1:33:09

and

1:33:10

the belief is nobody took two

1:33:12

stabs

1:33:13

and everybody took one with the vast

1:33:15

majority of the stabs

1:33:17

happening after Caesar was already

1:33:19

dead

1:33:20

so that all of the senators could emerge

1:33:23

with the United Front with blood on their knives

1:33:25

and say we have rid Rome

1:33:28

of the tyrant,

1:33:29

long live Rome.

1:33:31

So I don't know that's a pretty dramatic

1:33:33

moment. What do you make of it?

1:33:35

That's crazy. Okay so murder is

1:33:39

against the laws. I don't know if that I don't

1:33:42

know if murders against the 12 tables

1:33:44

or whatever. I'm assuming it is. It's

1:33:46

in there.

1:33:47

So what happens now to these people? They've

1:33:49

murdered Caesar who was awesome

1:33:52

but you know the political winds blew

1:33:54

against him.

1:33:55

Did these people get killed? Like

1:33:58

did they get justice? so

1:34:00

to speak, what's their punishment? I

1:34:02

don't even want to hypothesize. It

1:34:04

just feels like it's almost dangerous to hypothesize

1:34:07

about that right now.

1:34:08

So let's imagine an earlier

1:34:11

president. Let's go with

1:34:13

Gerald Ford. He's already passed away.

1:34:16

What do you think would have happened if people

1:34:18

who were really opposed to Ford had

1:34:21

just stabbed him to death, a bunch of senators,

1:34:23

and then they emerged and they were like, we promise

1:34:26

Ford was a dangerous tyrant and

1:34:28

we have saved America.

1:34:30

How do you think the United States as just

1:34:32

a people would have responded

1:34:34

to that in the first hour of

1:34:36

getting that news? They'd have blown them up.

1:34:39

Like they would have destroyed them.

1:34:41

They probably would not have made it to trial,

1:34:44

in my estimation. I think you may be right. Yeah.

1:34:48

I think that was the political climate at that time.

1:34:51

I don't think America would have stood for that. Again,

1:34:54

I hesitate to even speculate about

1:34:56

things like that in this day and age. No,

1:34:58

you shouldn't. I

1:35:00

don't know.

1:35:01

My question is what happened in Rome? What

1:35:03

happened to these guys? That's why I brought

1:35:06

up the example with the hypothetical

1:35:08

with Gerald Ford is

1:35:11

you can learn a lot about a population with

1:35:13

how they respond to a big bold

1:35:15

move like that.

1:35:17

And it seems like there isn't clarity

1:35:20

on what ought to be done next, but

1:35:22

that moment of impasse is broken by

1:35:24

Caesar's right-hand man, Mark Antony,

1:35:27

who was originally supposed to get killed

1:35:29

as part of this conspiracy.

1:35:31

But then the senators decided that was just a little

1:35:34

too far.

1:35:35

And so Mark Antony lives.

1:35:37

And Caesar gets a funeral and

1:35:40

sympathy for Caesar grows

1:35:42

in between his assassination and

1:35:44

whatever it is a couple of days later, whenever they do the funeral,

1:35:47

it's pretty quick. And Mark Antony

1:35:49

gets up and gives a famous speech. Do

1:35:51

you remember the legendary

1:35:53

opening words of that famous speech?

1:35:56

From Shakespeare, friends,

1:35:58

Romans, countrymen. So,

1:36:00

lend me your ears. I come to

1:36:02

Barry Caesar not to celebrate him,

1:36:08

not to something him.

1:36:10

Okay, well, that was pretty good. Is that close? I'm

1:36:13

impressed. You got further into that than most people would.

1:36:15

That's like what you did there is the equivalent of

1:36:17

knowing like the first six digits

1:36:19

of pie. That was really strong.

1:36:21

No. Is that, that's close,

1:36:24

right?

1:36:24

Yeah, here, let me just,

1:36:27

I'll read the

1:36:28

Shakespeare version. Friends, Romans,

1:36:30

countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to Barry

1:36:32

Caesar not to praise him. Praise him. The

1:36:35

evil that men do lives after them. Good

1:36:37

is often- Interred with men's bones. Yeah,

1:36:39

okay, there it is. Nice job, dude.

1:36:42

The fact that you have any of that is

1:36:44

so good. And what you get

1:36:46

over the course of this is Shakespeare

1:36:49

imagining that Mark Antony read

1:36:52

the room and that he had to be very

1:36:54

shrewd

1:36:55

with this speech. And so he calls Brutus

1:36:59

noble, and my

1:37:01

heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and

1:37:04

I must pause till it come back to me. This

1:37:06

is how he wraps it up. Brutus says

1:37:08

Caesar was ambitious, and

1:37:11

sure, he's an honorable man.

1:37:14

I don't speak to disprove

1:37:16

what Brutus spoke, but here

1:37:18

I am to speak what I do know.

1:37:20

You all did love him once and not

1:37:22

without cause. What cause

1:37:24

withholds you then to mourn for him? Oh,

1:37:27

judgment, thou art fled to Brutus

1:37:29

beasts and men have lost their reason, bear with

1:37:31

me.

1:37:32

And then he says, my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar

1:37:34

and I must pause till it come back to me. I

1:37:36

mean, it's very clever the way

1:37:39

Shakespeare interprets

1:37:41

the unfolding of events

1:37:43

in giving us a very clever Mark

1:37:45

Antony

1:37:46

playing on the emotions of

1:37:48

things. And he knew he couldn't come out and just condemn

1:37:51

the assassins. But

1:37:54

he reminds people of what they liked about

1:37:57

Caesar and their affection for him.

1:37:59

flowers into another civil war.

1:38:02

Long story short. So

1:38:04

let me ask you this. Did Shakespeare, if

1:38:06

I were to

1:38:08

watch the play, Julius Caesar,

1:38:11

by William Shakespeare, would I get everything

1:38:13

you just taught me? Like the fact that Caesar

1:38:16

was awesome and he came back and then

1:38:18

there was this war with Pompey and then

1:38:20

like, would I understand all that?

1:38:23