Dr Simon Elliott

So it's a layer cake.

So at the point when Rome is founded, however it's founded, whenever it's founded, it's one of a number of...

quite powerful growing towns and cities sort of in the Tiber area, which we call Latium.

Okay.

No, got no way of knowing.

Neighbours.

Absolutely.

And the interesting thing there then is how the Romans came to dominate the rest of the towns in Latium.

Yeah.

Because they're the same people speaking the same language.

So there's something different about the Romans from early on.

And then if you go back to their origin stories, which they believed...

There is a grittiness, there's almost a darkness there, actually, the willingness to do whatever it takes to win.

And this later plays into the psyche of the Roman Republic later, and then the Roman Empire preoccupated dominate phase, where I say the Romans had two things which gave them advantage over every other people we're going to talk about today.

They had true grit.

They always came back and they never accepted a peace agreement unless it was on their own terms.

And that's a big deal, actually.

When we talk about the Hellenistic kingdoms, they just didn't understand that at all.

They just completely were wrong-footed.

And the other one, Dan, is that they were great at nicking other people's ideas.