Alex Petkus
Appearances
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
But from the Greek political theorists perspective, like Polybius, this Greek writing in the heyday of the Republic, just got conquered and makes friends with some Romans. And his analysis of Rome is, well, it's a mixed constitution. It's all of the above and none of the above. Rome has this strong monarchic element in that consuls are supreme kind of monarchic powers out on the battlefield.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
They have power of life and death. There's usually only one consul in charge in any given campaign out in the field. But it's oligarchic in a lot of ways. For one thing, there's two consuls that balance out each other every year. There's term limits on high officials, one-year term limits.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
And they have the Senate that has a lot of auctoritas, informal power, a lot of clout, not a whole lot of formal power, but they are the ruling men of the city. But you also have this democratic element in the Roman Constitution, which is... The citizen assemblies have the power to make laws, especially with the Tribune of the Plebs behind them. The candidates for high office have to get votes.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
I mean, the highest offices, the consul and the praetor, those are these very uh stacked votes that incredibly are weighted toward the the richer classes uh but for the lower offices they're not they're just kind of you know one vote one point sort of scenarios um so so rome kind of combines all of these elements into their to the republic
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
And I think that this is one of the things the founders really admired about Rome is that they, you probably know as much about this as I do, but they looked at this mixed constitution that seems to ideally have the best of all elements and have a really robust structure. set of checks and balances between the various tendencies of the state.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
My sense is that in the 18th century, republicanism kind of means anything that isn't a monarchy. And so to that extent, we seem to still have a republic. But do we really have a mixed constitution where the power of the people and the power of the few and then the power of the executive all balance each other out? That's kind of a longer discussion.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Yeah, and this is also a theme in Gladiator 1. I haven't yet subjected myself to Gladiator 2, though I intend to at some point. It's not a sense of duty, but yeah. Well, yeah, and this idea of bringing back the Republic in the reign of Marcus Aurelius is very unhistorical. Let's brush that aside. The principle you outline is really interesting because it relates to Augustus.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
When Augustus rises to power, and similarly with Julius Caesar, the so-called tyrannical monarchs from the perspective of Republicans like Cato, The way that they rise to power is through championing the interests of the people where the Senate is sort of failing to.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
So there is a much tighter link between the demos, between the populace and the emperor in the Roman consciousness than there is between the Senate and either of them. Like, if there's an element of discontent during the realm of the reign of Nero, it's really the Senate doesn't like Nero. And often with the so-called bad emperors like Domitian, it's the Senate that hates the guy.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
And they're actually kind of popular with the people because Augustus is empowered with the tribunicia potesta, the power of the tribunes. That's part of his bundle of authorities that he makes himself just the first man in Rome, not the... Not the Monarch, the, you know, the print caps.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
with these powers of, essentially, you can call tribunary assemblies and get whatever laws he wants passed voted in. He has the power of veto. He's sacrosanct. These things that are really associated with the champions of the people. The emperor is the champion of the people par excellence throughout the Roman Empire.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Even if you feel oppressed by the tax collector or the local barons, the local... governors, some military officer. You have this, like, metaphysical hope that if you pray hard enough and if you have, like, a good stroke of luck, you can somehow find a way to the emperor's ear. And the emperor has the power to root out corruption. If only he could cast his benevolent gaze toward you.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
I mean, this is why they have the imperial cult all throughout the empire. It's like... So, yeah, I think we are really confused about what the monarchy means for the Romans in the empire. But, um... The Senate is really the out group there.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Well, you know, until the last election, people were sort of wondering if the power of the people still mattered, right? Like if... if elections could still go either way. I think that we have this strong oligarchic element, and if a Roman observer spent enough time in the US, they wouldn't see the oligarchy as stopping at the door of the Capitol, at the Senate.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
It also extends to the media and the intelligentsia. One thing that we have that was not so prominent in Rome is they have a merchant class. They have a kind of business class, the equestrians, who are the guys doing government contracts, supplying soldiers, supplying ship gear for naval warfare, mining concessions and state-owned lands, all this stuff. They're making money kind of professionally.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
But they were always seen as like second class citizens. The entrepreneurs aren't honored as such. I mean, as somebody who makes a lot of money, you can convert that accomplishment
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
into real honor and respect in the roman state by running for office or commanding an army or something but the highest honor is always reserved for people who do something more than just business like even crassus the richest man in rome he's not amassing a fortune just so he can be rich he's amassing a fortune so that he can be the puppet master and manipulate everything at rome and can control everything and get himself elected consul and leading armies and so
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
I think that we don't have that same sense that entrepreneurship isn't the highest honor. But in America, the kind of the rich do seem to be much more synonymous with the oligarchy of this country, whether they're the media elite or the finance or the business, the entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. So I think that's an interesting difference.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
But, you know, we I think it really remains to be seen whether the executive really has the kind of powers that a Roman would like to see in a kind of strong console, you know, the monarchic authority to really change things. We'll see that the next four years will probably determine a lot of our opinion on that.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Yeah, there's something really wise about that, right? Like, I mean, in the end, Julius Caesar appoints himself dictator for life. But there were
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
hundreds of years before the office of dictator really became a problem because like you said it was a temporary sort of state of emergency usually for military emergencies like hannibals in your backyard and um business can't continue as usual we have state of emergency decrees but not like we're going to empower a dictator for six months or six years or or with any term limit i don't know they're there we might get to that point i don't know
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Yeah, I think it's important to emphasize that's not like looking back to their own past in a way. They're like trying to make a conscious break with Britain, right? They're reinventing themselves for a glorious future by looking really deep and incorporating elements of that. They don't want the US to look like 18th century Britain or 16th century Britain.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
They're not bringing in these Tudor elements. It's not about tradition and the kind of vague sense of old-fashioned values. These values were not old-fashioned at the time. They were gone and dead, and they were kind of resurrecting them, I think.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Yeah, I think that the late Republic is the most interesting comparison for me. And it is worth saying one of the first commonalities is the Romans are always kind of on edge about, you know, threats to the Republic. Like there's a guy in the fourth century BC who's accused of trying to take over the constitution as a tyrant. He's like a war hero and he gets really popular and
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
You know, he tries some funny business and they execute him. I think it's capitalized anyway. And these figures come up, you know, so you got part of being in a republic is being vigilant to to prevent it from turning one way or the other. But I think that the most interesting comparison for Rome is this era where you start to see
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
The shift from a local city-state dominating most of Italy to an empire with a lowercase e, to rule over others. The Romans conquer a lot of territory across the Mediterranean, and this just puts different pressures on the state that you can see kind of the result of in the life of Cato the Elder.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Cato the Elder is the great-grandfather of Cato the Younger, who's a great hero for the founding fathers we talked about in an earlier episode. But... He's always railing against the luxury and the effeminacy of the ruling classes. They're starting to get soft. They're enriching themselves with foreign contracts. They're bringing in exotic art.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
And they're kind of becoming less and less Roman and more and more cosmopolitan as... The empire is bigger and there's there's money to be made far off a field. And I think that you start to see this. I mean, this could be kind of compared to America in the early 20th century when we won one world war than a second. And our influence is just skyrocketed.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
We still think of ourselves as salt of the earth, country folk. in the, you know, the heartland, that contrast between the cosmopolitan wealthy elites versus who we used to be, like the salt of the earth that represents our best qualities, you definitely see that happening already in the mid-second century BC, like the 160s, 170s BC.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
This is like a good hundred years before the heyday of Julius Caesar is like...
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
the the pressure starting to build on the republican system all this money coming in and the problems of elites becoming disconnected from the activities that are proper to the political class like military leadership this is something momson talks about the great roman historian like the equestrians and the senators were they had all these opportunities to go speculate on land and uh
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
you know, hunt out great lucrative government contracts and they're telling themselves, oh, I can use this money to run my political campaign. But maybe they just go and they make a lot of money. They spend the rest of their life doing that and they don't ever get around to the campaign for consulship or the commanding of armies. And so you start to get this
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
branching of talent and they get very disconnected from the concerns and lives of regular Romans and the kind of tastes and culture of regular Romans. So I think empire in the sense of not being a monarchy, but in the sense of having this great overseas
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
influence puts new stresses on a state that is part of what we're dealing with in america in the 20th and the 21st century you know foreign wars who gets who pays the bill who who who reaps the profits is this really expanding our influence in the way that we think it is is making us more powerful in the world or just more hated etc etc so the romans are dealing with a lot of similar questions
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Yeah, great question. Well, if it starts in the 150s, 140s, it gets worse for a long time before you have this tipping point. The Gracchi are the 130s BC, and the Gracchi are basically these two brothers who
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
are aristocrats themselves, but they see this great wealth inequality dividing the Roman state and profiteering on the part of senatorial and equestrian landholders, hoarding land and wealth for themselves. They're trying to redistribute public lands and reward the soldiers better for their service. And, you know, the senators, let's just say that the rich
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
are bringing in a lot of foreign slaves to work their lands as, you know, because they're basically doing agriculture for profit. And I think that this dynamic is really what makes the Gracchi kind of similar to, say, the populists on the right today, even though they would have been seen as left-wing populists. You know, there is a real sense of, like,
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
The elite is not only fabulously rich and abusing their power, they're also kind of incompetent. You really see this in the generation of Gaius Marius after that, that they're not as good as they say they are or they think they are. They don't deserve this authority. That's definitely a narrative that starts to crop up in the early or the later years of the second century, 110, 115 BC.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
So I think that... Within another 20 years after that, in the 80s BC, they're fighting a proper civil war, which isn't really about principles so much as the American Civil War was, but was kind of like factions within the oligarchy, populists and the... the aristocrats warring against each other.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
But, you know, all that to say is if we're there, we've got a lot more troubles ahead and a chance to really turn things around. I don't think it was necessarily determined that the Romans would have to have all of those civil wars and a, you know, a monarchy eventually capping it off.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Um, and maybe there's some solutions that, that we can come up with, but, um, I think that we can learn from the, you know, the, the problems that they had for sure. Uh, and coming up with our own until next time.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Yeah. So there's two definitions of republic that I think we should talk about. First is what the Romans thought of it and then what the U.S. founders thought of it. But let's start with the Romans. So the Romans had this word, res publica, which as you talk about in your Augustus series, I mean, it really means common property. Commonwealth is another way to translate it.
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
Literally, race is this term that can mean a million things. It means thing, or it means your family farm, the public affair. So the race publica is essentially the Roman constitution. They call it the race publica. So race publica can also mean the constitution, the way things are in our state. But what is that?
How to Take Over the World
Augustus Endnotes and Gladiator II Review
So basically, you have this from Greek political theory divides constitutions into three categories. You got monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, rule of the one rule of a minority oligarchy, a few guys rule of monarchy. the masses, the demos. Aristocracy is kind of a version of oligarchy.