Tom Holland

speaker

53,948 appearances 205 recordings 9 series first heard Sep 2024 last heard 2d ago

Tom Holland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 96 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 11.

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The Rest Is History · 708. The Terror: The Reign of Robespierre (Part 2) · 23 Sep 2026 podcast

And I think that matched

Everything that happens in the 18th century would have confirmed him in that view. matched

So Robespierre, like Charlotte Corday and like so many other stars of the revolution, is obsessed by classical history. matched

He becomes a huge admirer of the virtues of the Greeks and the Romans, their love of country and matched

their determination not to allow their fellow citizens to succumb to conspiracies by evil aristocrats. matched

The archetype of this is Cicero, provincial upstart who comes to Rome and saves his country from Catiline, who is the archetype of a seedy aristocratic conspirator. matched

And he is obsessed by this in a way that so many people are. matched

He takes it very seriously and he clearly identifies with Cicero very strongly. matched

But the person he really loves, again, a very familiar name throughout this entire series, is Rousseau. matched

the favorite philosopher of an entire generation of revolutionaries. matched

Robespierre claimed that he had gone to visit Rousseau in 1778. matched

He wrote, I saw you in your last days and this memory is a source of proud joy for me. matched

Scholars matched

are unclear whether this is actually true or not. matched

Rousseau is about to die. matched

So the only way that Robespierre could have gone to see him, he's only 19, he would have had to skip school to go and see him. matched

So there are lots of biographers of Robespierre who think this is unlikely, but it's not impossible. matched

And even if he made it up, I mean, it's kind of tribute to how passionately devoted to Rousseau Robespierre is. matched

And the reason that he loves Rousseau is that Rousseau matched

defines for Robespierre the core principles that will underlie his politics throughout his entire life. matched

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