Steele Brand

And that's revolutionary in terms of their regime.

And then the third thing that happens, the last thing I should say that happens, because I've lost count, but the last thing is that they're in the middle of the struggle of the orders, which is Rome's internal struggle.

So the Roman Federation solves that external question, and they've got the military reforms that have been going on in the 4th century as well.

But internally, they've had a group of nobles that have traditionally had most of the power, but over the last, like, 100 years, another group, the plebs, basically everyone else, is gaining more and more power.

And by the time we get to 287...

At the very end of this process, but you've got some major changes in the 320s.

You have the plebeians attaining almost all the priesthoods, almost all the offices.

So Rome has a Republican structure that we'll get into a little bit later.

So they have a Senate, they have two consuls who are kind of like two presidents for a year, and then they have different kinds of assemblies.

And this struggle of the orders is winding down.

When Alexander, if he had invaded, the struggle of the orders is almost nearly resolved.

And the most important thing that has just happened is in 326, Rome has come up with an ingenious military idea.

We have consuls, two guys who go out and they fight and they lead our armies.

Well, now we have bigger armies for reasons I'll go into later.

But we need to have pro-consuls.

And we need to have people who used to be consuls or used to be praetors, used to be magistrates leading army.

So they're just going to stay in their position and they'll be able to maintain a siege or stay in the field.

And they'll be able to lead the armies because the Roman armies are growing too.

So we don't just have two consuls who are always leading Roman armies in the field.

We also now, from both plebeians and patricians, we have pro-consuls.