Barry Strauss

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592 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 18 Jul

Barry Strauss’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Daily Stoic · The Fall Of The Roman Republic Was A Warning | Barry Strauss · 18 Jul 2026 podcast

They were also afraid, the old guard was afraid that as a result of this, that the Gracchi brothers would have unassailable political popularity.

So Rome's in a dither about what to do, or in a tizzy about what to do.

And ultimately, when they face a challenge from Celtic invaders at the end of the second century, or they also have a crisis in the war in North Africa, what they're forced to do, they constantly have to lower the property qualification, accepting poorer and poorer men into the military.

And finally, they say, no more property qualification.

Any citizen can become a Roman soldier.

And so you have these poor people who go in the military and their commanders say, you know, fight for me, fight for Rome.

And they're saying, well, why?

And they're saying, because at the end of the rainbow, there will be a pot of gold and the pot of gold will be that I will get you land.

Yeah.

But not quite yet.

In this period, they're settling them in Italy, which means they have to get land for them, which often means they have to take land away from somebody else.

Right.

So they're sowing the seeds for civil war.

And what's happening is now ordinary Romans, instead of being loyal to SPQR, instead of being loyal to Senatus Populisque Romanus, the Senate and the Roman people, they're now loyal to their commander.

I'm Marius' guy.

I'm Sulla's guy.

So they're not really loyal to the Republic per se anymore, but to the guy who represents the Republic to them.

So citizenship has really changed its meaning, and Rome is in danger of becoming a military dictatorship.

So as you know, there's a long and complicated civil war, a set of civil wars between Marius and Sulla, and when Marius dies, between his partisans, Sulla wins.

Very brutal war.

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