Steele Brand

So they have a political culture that has taught boys not only how to die for their republic, but far more important, how to kill for their republic.

And they've got this enormous manpower base that no one figures out how to beat.

So you will beat—and people do this over and over again—

Like the Veientines, they beat the Romans over and over again.

The Samnites, they beat the Romans over and over again.

The Carthaginians, Pyrrhus, they beat the Romans over and over again.

You can win battles against Romans.

You cannot win wars because their federation is too appealing

to others who want to make treaties with them or start working their way up to citizenship.

And you cannot beat Roman citizen soldiers who are just going to keep killing and dying for their republic because it's their republic.

They've got a stake in it, and that's what determines whether they're honorable and whether they get to protect things like the farm that they have.

Yeah, I mean, if he's able to take Rome, but I think he's going to have to get through so many armies to get to that point that he's besieging Rome.

That's going to be tough.

And what we find is Pyrrhus approaches Rome, we're told.

Hannibal approaches Rome.

neither of them take seriously the idea of besieging Rome.

It does have a good defensive system with its walls, but it's the Roman armies and the allied armies, because by this point in time, every Roman army has an equal number of allies.

So they're coming from Latium, they're coming from Etruria, coming from other places.

Yeah, I mean, the question is, and this would be the advice that...

that someone should probably give Alexander is you've got to win every battle.