Dwarkesh Patel

Well, how were they raised?

Can we raise our leaders the same way?

Can we make libraries filled with what young Cicero read and what young Brutus read?

What did they read?

Well, they read Plato and they read Homer.

So we need these things.

Can we recreate the educational environment that produced them?

And Petrarch suggests this.

His students and successors embrace this idea and pour money into traveling across the Alps to look for manuscripts, traveling to Constantinople to purchase manuscripts from the wealthier east where books are common.

and bringing them back to assemble these libraries and then raise tutors like Marsilio Ficino, who can know Greek and Latin and surround the young princes and princesses of Europe with these values in the hopes that they will act like Brutus and not like Cicero.

This is based on an assumption that education is very much like osmosis, that if you're exposed to something, you'll imitate it.

And the uptake of this is strong because Italy is also full of upstart rulers who just seized power five minutes ago by having a coup.

in their state and have no legitimacy and no right to be ruling what they're ruling and are resented by their people but they can dress up like a roman emperor and they can have a parade with allegorical figures of the virtues next to them and they can invest in an impressive palace that has a pediment on the front and looks like a roman building to the to the eyes of the period and um

cover themselves with the trappings of antiquity.

And then people might look at them and say, oh, this guy is different from what we've had.

This guy is like the Caesars.

The days of the Caesars were pretty good.

Maybe we want this guy.

Maybe he's not going to be a tyrant.

Maybe he's going to be a good prince and he's going to make a golden age.