The Daily Stoic - Author Phillip Barlag on Roman History’s Lessons for Modern Life | This is Where Your Temper Will Take You

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

Ryan reads today’s meditation and talks to author Phillip Barlag about the life and reign of the Roman Emperor Nero, the lessons that we can learn from Roman history, why Marcus Aurelius was selected by the emperor Hadrian, and more. Phillip Barlag is the author of The Leadership Genius of Julius Caesar, a book exploring the modern lessons of the life & career of Julius Caesar. His writing has been published in Fast Company, MIT Sloan Management Review, and a number of influential business blogs. He lives in the Atlanta, GA area with his wife and three children.The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.Streak is a fully embedded workflow and productivity software in Gmail that lets you manage all your work right in your inbox. Sign up for Streak today at Streak.com/stoic and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan.Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookFollow Phillip Barlag: Homepage, Instagram, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. This is where your temper will take you. Aside from the fact that it was fighting for quite possibly the worst cause in human history, the Confederacy was destroyed by its incompetent thin skin generals.

It should not surprise us that people who thought they deserved to own other people would be egotistical, entitled, and impossible to command. But they were. It started from the top. There is a scene from earlier in President Jefferson Davis's life when he was the Secretary of War for the United States. Davis belligerently pestered the beloved general Winfield Scott repeatedly about some trivial matter. He grew angrier and angrier, more and more out of line. Scott ignored it until finally forced to address him. He wrote that he pitted Davis.

Compassion is always due, he said, to the enraged invasal who lays about him in blows which hurt only himself. It shouldn't surprise us that Jefferson meddled with his generals during the Civil War, nursed petty grudges and was often impossible to work for. His generals followed his example. General Braxton Bragg, who lost the Battle of Chikamaga,

was famously so disagreeable that the following quip followed him everywhere. My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself. The point is anger is a dangerous emotion. A volatile temper is one of the worst traits a leader can have. In his essay of anger, Seneca provides example after example of the waste and destruction that anger causes. How it ultimately wounds us more than the person we are upset with. And is this not true in your own life? How many TV remotes have you broken? Who feels

it more the wall or your fist? Do you think that yelling at your subordinate makes them care more about their work or less? Your temper will not take you to a better place, only an ugly one. Even if you do get what you want, you will not enjoy it because you will be better and worked up when you get there. We must conquer our anger, we must master ourselves, if we want to do great things, we must be able to appreciate them when we do. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

I remain as ever fascinated with ancient history, with Rome. I think it's, I think, like look, what's happening in the world right now is insane and you turn on the news and it's depressing or worrying or alarming. Everything seems like it's burning very hot. People are crazy. People are doing and saying awful things.

I have a daily stoke email about this, but Churchill talked about at the eve of the Second World War that he was retreating a thousand years into the past. He was finding clarity and perspective by studying the past. And I think that's really the idea of daily stoke. It is like how do we learn from timeless examples that also happen to be relatively timely as well. And I'm always interested in reading about people who lived a long time ago to get a better understanding of what's happening.

Now, it's usually less bias involved, usually less incendiary. Usually, you can see things more clearly because it doesn't feel as urgent. And I think that's what Rome has served as a metaphor for a canvas for for so many years, it's why we keep turning back to them over and over and over again. I think if Robert Greens book the 48 laws of power was all about things happening right now, people would be have trouble getting the value out of it because it's about Machia Valley and Sunsu, and Julius Caesar, and even people you've never heard of, you're able to get the lessons,

there's not as much judgment involved. And that's what led me to today's guest. I don't take a lot of suggestions for guests, but when my friend Niels Parker suggested that I have Philip Barleg on, because he had a new book called Evil Roman Emperors, The Shocking History of Ancient Rome's Most Wicked Roolers from Colligula to Nero and more. I said, yes, sign me up. That sounds exactly like the kind of person in book that I want to talk to.

Philip is more than just a writer. He's also the executive director at World 50, a company owned by Morgan Stanley, which facilitates the most interesting and influential business conversations in the world. He's written a number of books, The History of Rome in 12 Buildings, The Leadership Genius of Julius Caesar. He's been published in Fast Company, the MIT Management Review, Change This.com. He lives in Atlanta. We talked today's episode.

He ran into some technical difficulties. He was driving up the Eastern Seaboard. He got stuck. He was trying to borrow an office from someone to record quietly. That didn't work. He ended up outside a Starbucks with some air pods on. The audio actually I think came out quite good, but you can hear the occasional siren or people shattering in the background. But, as he said, when we were getting ready, but a couple of stills shouldn't be stopped by some minor inconvenience like this. I think he's right. So, I hope it doesn't turn any of you off. I actually really enjoyed this conversation. We got way into what made someone like Nero Tick. Why was Marcus Aurelius selected by the Emperor Hadrian?

Who were some of the more forgettable Roman emperors, but also what lessons can they teach us? And also what about all the hidden figures who were involved in making a certain emperor great or complicit in the evil of a different emperor? So I think we both nerded out God into some great stuff. I think it's very relevant to where we are in the world today. So I'm excited to bring you this conversation

with Philip Barleg. You can check out his new book, Evil Roman Emperors, The Shocking History of Ancient Rome's Most Wicked Rulers, and also his book, The Leadership Genius of Julius Caesar, and A History of Rome in 12 Buildings. We talk also, I would say, about the boy who would be king, wish if you haven't checked out.

I think is a great example of how, is a great insight into how Marcus Aurelius turned out to be good, as opposed to bad. Talk about my book, Lives of the Stoics. Of course, and we talk about previous podcast, Mike Duncan, who's booked the store and before the store, was one of our most popular titles at the painted porch bookshop I have here in Bastrop. Listen to my episode with Mike Duncan if

you haven't. And here we go. I'll talk to you soon. So as someone who is fascinated with Roman history and and and the lessons it can teach us, I thought we'd start with, perhaps the most pressing lesson, or I think the thing that we look to these emperors and rulers to find out about this kind of eternal question is, does power corrupt or does power reveal? Like, was it becoming emperor that turned good people bad? Or was it the temptations

and the access that power provided that revealed the rotten core that was there all the time? Well, gosh, that's such a great question. And I suspect no matter what answer I come up with, there is gonna be great and compelling arguments to the contrary. So go lightly on me here, but I suspect it reveals the the base nature of who people really are tends to be manifest when there are fewer

and fewer inhibitions and checks on their character and the power that the Roman emperors enjoyed eliminated a lot of those boundaries and without boundaries to push up against the constraints on behavior are eliminated, and they go further and further and further, and in some cases, like those featured in this book, revealed themselves to be pretty utterly contemptible. It was said of Vespasian, the Roman Emperor.

He was the only man who improved upon gaining access to the office, most other noteworthy figures from the Roman Empire in particular, seems to have been degraded by the office, but I suspect it's more because there were fewer social checks on their behavior than it was that the power itself was the corrupting nature. Although that's hardly an endorsement of Vespassian because he wasn't a particularly good emperor, even if it did somehow improve. I suppose, I mean, he's an interesting guy. He came to power at the end of what's called the year of the Four Emperors. He inherited an empire that armies were fighting against each other.

Factionalism was rife. Contenders and pretenders were knocking each other off and murdering one another. And when he seized power, he didn't embark on a massively bloody purge as many of his successors and predecessors had done and would do in the future. So by certain respects, he was more restrained, at least in terms of his treatment of his fellow Romans, certainly the provinces where he was out of campaigning and putting down revolts and suppressing local populations,

the residual memory of his behavior there would probably argue that he is not a nice guy, but it raises a question one that I'd be interested to get your thoughts on. Do you judge someone by the standards of the day or do you judge someone by the standards where you are now, right? This patient lived in rural 2000 years ago. A lot of his deeds were quite horrific and terrible, but judged by the standards of his days perfectly and keeping with the conventions. So, it's just the question, what do you think?

Are we judging people by today or by yesterday? It is difficult to figure out how you judge historical characters, is it within the assumptions and context of their own time. And then even specifically, the emperors, we sort of judge them on a sliding scale of like, neuro and colligula, and even some of the more forgettable emperors who so massively failed the test that it makes some of these people who,

even if they were evil, they were just half competent. It almost makes them look good by comparison. Yeah, I lose track and I suspect that there's lots of ways to argue different numbers here, but the actual number of people who were recognized as emperors of the Western Roman Empire, 96, 98, something along those lines. I'm a big fan of Roman history.

Obviously, as I do my best to read and write about it, I couldn't name two-thirds of them. if I had to sit down with pen and paper and write the list right now. There's just so many different people to keep track of and so many of the sources for those people are suspect, questionable, etc. So it's kind of, it's hard to get a real grasp on the nature of imperial rule without over-indexing on some of the more for lack of the better word, famous names, the neuros, the colligulas, et cetera.

But I do find the pursuit of trying to unpack the personalities of some of the lesser known emperors. Interesting, if not occasionally frustrating. So that's what I'm trying to spend a little time getting to know elegabalists and Valentinian III right alongside the big names that I think is rewarding. There are a lot of different. I love that you point out how forgettable or sort of lost

to history most of them are because this is one of my favorite passages in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, is he goes, how many people even remember the name best-passion? Like he says, it's already unfamiliar. And he talks about, and there were obviously fewer emperors by Marcus Aurelius' time, because there was all the ones that come after him. He's talking about how, you know,

these are the most famous powerful people in the world who commanded enormous armies, were the most famous powerful people in the world who commanded enormous armies were the most famous person in their time and yet how quickly they're forgettable. So it's funny, we talk about good emperors and then in your book, here you're talking about the really bad emperors, but for the vast majority of emperors, they don't even warrant a historical footnote and there's something I think kind of humbling

and centering about that here in today's time. Without a doubt, and one of the benefits of studying history, and especially in a review like this that spans a thousand years, is it's a great reminder to me to just get over myself, right? My problems, whatever they may be, are no bigger or smaller than anyone else's and the universe will forget and move on. And, you know, people come, people go, life moves on.

And I sincerely doubt that a thousand years from now, anyone's gonna be writing a book that will, you know, my name will be lost in the ether of time. And that's okay. And actually, this, looking at a book of time and that's okay and actually this Looking at a book like this and looking at the characters in this and looking at the apex of power and how just truly Affembral it is for me is a great reminder just to calm down get over myself and get on with my life But there's also something there's also something a little bit inspiring when you're like oh

I'm in your case like you're doing the same thing that Sutonius was doing and Dio Cassius was doing and Tacitus was doing, that I also love the idea that as forgettable as we all will be, you're also part of this long tradition of observing power and trying to do lessons from power and trying to pass on insights about power that sort of, you know, all these guys were kind of amateur professional historians. They also had day jobs, you know, sometimes they vaguely knew the people they were writing about, sometimes they, sometimes they earned themselves, you know,

displeasure of the emperor by saying certain things. Sometimes they had to hide what they were saying because it wasn't politically correct. There's also just something kind of cool about the fact that we're still talking about all of this all this time later. Yeah, I mean, the study of human nature is both rewarding and frustrating, right? Because ultimately, you know, even one person can be contradictory. That is also an invitation to keep asking more questions, keep digging, keep learning, who was this person, what was their essence, what did it mean? And you see those meaning shift time and time again as waves of historical scholarship

looks into people and changes their assessment. I mean look at a just here in the US best presidents in history, worst presidents in history list and how did it compare with 20 years ago and how will it compare 20 years hence as any one of them wrong or do cultural value shift over time and therefore your interpretation people shift over time. So hopefully 50 years from now, 100 years from now, someone writes a very similar book and draws completely different conclusions and says that guy was an idiot. He had no idea what he was talking about and that's actually a great thing. history or the sort of, uh, hanging back and forth between the extremes, I want to talk about Nero because I think the Smithsonian has an exhibit and I know there was a piece in the New Yorker about this and I know you talk about it in your book,

uh, Nero. As bad as they say, uh, better than they say, uh, misunderstood or complete monster. Where do you come down on Nero? I mean, is it possible to have E all of the above? I mean, he really was in that respect, right? Because he had redeeming features. And I think you'd sort of ways in on the not as bad as people say, simply because there were certain attributes of him that speak a little bit in his favor that kind of get lost in the broad arc of all the terrible things that he didn't set over time.

So he had this incredible and someone almost say nostalgic romanticism or chivalry associated with women, despite how he treated some of the women in his very direct lives, he felt a measure of paternalistic protection toward women and sought to take good care of some of the people and some of the like Seneca's wife. Seneca ordered his wife to commit suicide

or as so is alleged alongside of him. And Nero said, I have no quarrel with her and demands the intervention and has her saved. That would argue slightly in favor of a slightly improved character assessment of Nero, but he really was also a megalomaniac. He really was also a delusion about his talent.

He really was insistent that people pay attention to him under pain of death or exile and appreciate his genius that existed inside of his mind. He really did bankrupt the empire. He sparked the worst revolt with the the the Boudica revolt and put through his policies and actions. I mean, he's sort of what makes him so much fun is he's yes, he's all of these things, he's underrated, he's overrated, he's not that bad, he's terrible, he's calm and rational, he's dramatic and flamboyant. I mean, you kind of, I don't know that you can find anyone from Roman history who has more contradictory personality traits embodied in one person and you can argue any side of that coin and it would all be perfectly valuable and valid.

He's endlessly fun, actually. I kind of, at least, kind of guy, he's going to like to hang out and pick his brain and see how he sees the world. So I know I'm sort of avoiding the answer by saying yes and, but you know, he's like a... No, I get it. Yeah. I think in a way, also Nero is, makes that question we started with more ambiguous of,

of does power corrupt or power reveal? Because, you know, the first several years of Nero's regime are not terrible. And I think there's even a Latin expression for like, Quinium, Nero-Nium or something. The first five years are kind of a, they refer to as almost a golden age. And you know, is that because, you know, he was guided by Seneca and Buris, was this because he is descending into madness, is it because he was good and then you know events outside of his control in Chirvine, it's really hard to get a clear picture on Nero and then you know you're also looking at it's like you can almost feel like with some of these people as a kernel of truth comes out about their character, it snowballs through centuries of telling and retelling,

and it's hard to know what's true or not. As you say, it's sort of the beginning of the book. He didn't fiddle while Rome burned literally, but at the same time also figuratively kind of did. So it's really tricky to get to the essence of who these people are or work. You know the question of Nero and he's worth spending this time on because he is interesting is what what's worse. From the grants from the standpoint of Roman history who's a who's a worse ruler. Someone who was spectacularly bad but flamed out very quickly,

or someone who was just kind of bad and lasted and lasted and lasted. In the grand sweep of Roman history, Nero has an above average reign in terms of how long he ruled. And he wasn't so spectacularly awful in his time that he required a immediate elimination from the scene. It was more of a steady grind, a steady descent, a gradual diminution of his abilities, his

engagement, his effectiveness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, a slow slide towards autocracy, a slow slide towards Megalemonia over a long period of time. What's worse is that or is it a Caligula who, you know, in about just under four years went crazy and did some insane things and murdered a lot of people. Like, how do you, how do you weigh those two things up against one another? I found that

to be an interesting challenge in dilemma to try to solve for when getting to my little exercise or trying to rank who was the rank who was the very worst. Well, maybe that does go to the idea that power corrupts, that part of the sort of genius of the founders. The American Revolution was this idea of term limits because perhaps no one should hold power for an extended period of time because it does warp and effecture. Marcus Realis and Meditations talks about not wanting to be cesarified.

He says to not be stained purple. And maybe five, six years was all, maybe someone could of Neuros ability or constitution. Maybe that was all he had in him. And then because there was no exit strategy, no end of term, it was inevitable that it would go that way. In a sense that almost makes an Antoninus Pius or a Marcus Aurelis who have these sort of longer reigns of 20 years, it almost makes an antininus pious or a Marcus Aurelis who have these sort of longer reigns of 20 years.

It almost makes it more of an impressive accomplishment that it doesn't descend into the same anarchy that it did for some of these other people. Yeah, and again, there's a point of comparison between Nero and say, comedists. In Nero's case, in early in his reign, he was surrounded by great people. You mentioned Morris. You mentioned Seneca. Certainly, his mother was competent. She is her own fascinating character, probably subject to endless revisionist histories

in her own right. But then you put comedists who, Marcus Arilius always gets, doesn't always frequently gets dinged by people for breaking with the recent tradition of adopting success. He was also the only one that had a biological son. Nerva didn't. Trayjan didn't. Adrien didn't. Antoninus did not.

Marcus did. It would have been more aberrant for Roman society if he had issued his own son at the festival dilemma for a parent. Without a doubt. And so what was Marcus' solution? I mean, I think you can, it seems reasonable that he drew the inference that the commentists did not have his same constitution, right?

He was not a driven, self-sacrificing servant later philosopher King. He was allowed, and it was pretty easy to tell, to see. The solution was surround him with really good people and trust that Commodus' lack of ambition would allow for him to yield to those of competence, those of merit, those that that Marcus put around him. So Marcus are really, he adopted the administration, if not the successor. And as those people fell off through purges and

paranoia and retirement and death and all the natural ways, you see, commentists descend, I would argue much further down the Nero did. So you have two emperors who are bold for roughly the same period of time, who both inherited good people, who both lost kind of their core of their retainers for various reasons over time. And there's actually a pretty broad basis of comparison between how two of them ended up. So I think that maybe skews back towards the whole power, you know, the nurture side of the argument, which is that it's cultivated through lack of boundaries,

revealed as a word you use. Over time, Commodus' base character revealed himself as did heroes and Commodus. I think I judge him to have been a worse emperor, but that's why it's funded debate. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

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to fight for Britney. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. Yeah, I mean, it's from my understanding, Nero was a Megalomaniac who wanted people to listen to his poetry and watch him race horses and Commodus wanted to make people watch him slaughter lions and ostriches and bears and the Colosseum.

So, one, they were both psychopaths, but one of them seems to be much more violent than the other. Are we are we pointing the term benign psychopath? Yeah. I think we can get ourselves into trouble with that, but it's a good point. Well, I think, so I did this kid's book earlier this year called The Boy Who Would Be King, that's sort of a fable about Marcus Aurelius' ascension to the throne, because it is so fascinating for people who don't know. Marcus is not only not the son of a king, he's sort of no royal blood, but it's actually a two-step adoption where the Emperor Hadrian

Doesn't have an heir so he adopts Antoninus Pius who he thinks will maybe rule for a few years and then In exchange for Antoninus Pius adopting Marcus Aurelius of the ideas is that Antoninus Pius is sort of keeping the throne warm for a few years, and then Marcus really takes over as a young man. But then Antoninus Pius lives for like two decades, and rules for two decades. But remarkably, they have this incredible relationship where Marcus seems to adore his adopted stepfather actually wants the on the job training and ends up doing a good job.

But what I'm so fascinated by with Marcus, and then we can get back to commoners, is that Marcus has, there's also a spare in this plan that Lucius Varis is set there in case something happens to Marcus, or I'm not quite sure, Hadrian doesn't tell us, but Marcus has as an adopted step brother also. And he declines not only to eliminate this rival, but names him co emperor. I, I sort of from my understanding that perhaps that was also the plan with commoners that that commoners would-rule with another one of Marcus's sons, and it seems like that just wasn't able to happen, or even one of Lucius Veris's sons. So I feel like part of the story with commoners is just

everything that could possibly go wrong, going wrong, and setting up a completely unprepared, unfit person to rule totally by themselves is what happens to comedists. Yeah, and I would say that if that, I hadn't heard that before, by the way, that fear in it's brilliant and a lot of fun to think about. I mean, that's the what if factor for Roman history is always just so endlessly interesting and what would have happened if there had been better checks around communist's behavior, what had happened if even if Lucius survived would Marcus have eventually nudge him aside would he continue

to honor him as a co-emperor and a brother? Am I mistaken? My history was not Lucius's father was the first person that Hadrian had adopted. And then he died prematurely. And so he adopted Antoninus and Lucius's, or you know, his first adopted sons whose name I forget, probably also Varus from that mistake. And his son Ann Marcus Marcus, is sort of a package deal. Yeah, the premature death of young princes is a great subject of Roman history.

You see it with Germanicus. You see it with Gaia, Gaia, and Lucius, and all the foiled plans of Augustus's succession. There was a lot of people died real young that could have altered the fate of Roman history. But alas, we got primitists. It's pretty remarkable, yeah. So how little connection, for this one little pocket

of Roman history, how little connection was actually binding these people together who found a way to collaborate and share power with each other. So yes, Hadrian doesn't have a son. He adopts a guy who dies prematurely, but that guy had a son. So does that son now? Is he entitled to anything? Hadrian sort of can't figure it out. Then Hadrian seems to discover Marcus Aurelius, who's way too young. And then so Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, who was not just some random guy. He was one of the most powerful senators.

He's like your Joe Biden type, who's just been there, not the main guy, but a guy for his whole life who is sort of waiting for his turn. a guy for like his whole life who was sort of waiting for his turn. So, so, Hadrian adopts him in exchange for him adopting Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Varis, and then it turns out that, you know, Antoninus Pius, considering Hadrian dies minutes later, you know, basically could have, could have easily gotten rid of these two people he had no relation to. Just as Marcus could have gotten rid of Lucius Varis, who he had no affinity to. So it is pretty incredible that these characters managed to work out not just a true, but like a sharing of burdens between all of them that works for, you know, more than a generation.

And then you can trust that to, yeah, Nero can't even let like his 15th cousin walk the earth for fear that he might someday replace him. Right. Right, and just the liquidation of talent as it means to protect against potential conspiracy is such a heartbreaking theme in Roman history. You know, Nero's most talented general, Corbuleau, who was the Emperor Demetian's father-in-law, brilliant general likely had no imperial pretensions whatsoever. His talent ends up costing him his life. During the the purges of the various prescriptions, I remember someone

one of the quotes of the senators that I've been condemned to death by my villa. You know, the the pretense for killing people was often quite shallow and to modest readers seems really questionable. There's just, honestly, it's one of the challenges of writing a book like this is, how do you find new and novel ways to describe what is a common theme, which is, and then, X-person killed wide number of people.

And then see, like, fortunately for us, there's enough variance in the ways that all of these people are crazy, that it left for enough interesting stories. But at the same time, you don't want to, like, unduly, wallow in blood. But we also have to realize that the power that these people wielded, often was used to extremely awful means, and led to

a lot of death and suffering that really you shocked the modern sensibilities, even if they were not as aberrant for their times as they were. It wasn't as unusual in the ancient world to condemn someone to die as perhaps it might today. Yeah, in my book Lives of the Stokes, I talk about Guyus, rebellious plautists, who was like, yeah, Nero's like cousin twice removed or something, who basically like a star across the sky.

And somebody told Nero that this was an omen that his cousin had designs on the throne. And he kills that what seemed like an otherwise sort of sweet and very disciplined person who had no interest in being emperor and in fact sort of turns down a ready made sort of coup attempt. He's killed.

And I think at some point, Senika has to tell Nero, he goes, you know it's impossible to kill every one of your successors, meaning like eventually someone will come after you, because you will die and someone will come after you. And there did seem to be, I guess you probably see this in the corporate world, how these things continue.

There does seem to be this sense amongst a lot of powerful people where they just cannot conceive of ever being replaced. And so they eliminate rival after rival, and it ultimately leaves the business, or the empire, or the nation, very unprepared because there isn't anyone to come after them. That may, Steve Jobs' most impressive accomplishment may be Tim Cook, right? For such a nirgetistful person to have actually set up a worthy successor is pretty rare. It is. And someone who also offered a very

different stylistic approach, right, to the way that he led and managed. And I think the idea, I have this little pet theory that Rome is always judged by its collapse because of the just ubiquity of Gibbons that decline and fall the Roman Empire, that decline or fall go hand in hand with Roman Empire in the collective consciousness. And that's sort of unfair to the Romans, because not only did the Eastern Roman Empire live on for another thousand years, but as an institution, Rome wielded incredible power for, probably, about 1,200 years or so. I mean, you know better than I do that the mythical date of the city's

founding goes entirely that mythical. But nevertheless, a millennia at the center of power is a pretty impressive accomplishment. So we shouldn't judge Rome by failing. We should judge it for how long it lasted. And the question is, how did it avoid collapse time and time again? How could it endure so many truly dreadful people's terrible leaders, awful events, cataclysmic upheavals, purges of the nobility, etc. And I think there's a couple of things that are lessons to be learned from it. The power of its institutions was extraordinary

that Rome built tremendous institutions that by and large govern the day-to-day aspects of society in a way that mattered what the crazy dude in Rome was up to less. It made that matter less. The second is that when given the opportunity, people of talent can rise to the challenge. There's an American historian Joseph Ellis who wrote a book American creation in the preface. He talks about how is it possible that a population, the size of what is today Little Rock Arkansas, which was the United States and the colonial revolutionary era, give us in Adams, a Jefferson, a Madison, a Washington, a Hamilton, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And part of the lesson is simply that they were thrust

into that moment. And one of the weird paradoxes of all of these purges that each of these emperors goes through, and they do all purge talent and nobility, is that it created space for other people to rise to the occasion. And sometimes those people rose and stabilized things. And sometimes they didn't. And they got off, and the cycle continued.

And if it went on for a long time, it fell to pieces and if it was corrected quickly, Rome restored. The ability of the next person in line to rise to the challenge is one of the greatest or I should say most overlooked aspects of Roman history and one that has some pretty important lessons for us today is leaders about give people their shot because they'll do interesting things once they're there, whether you think they're ready or not. Yeah, it's like, are we Rome?

It's like we should be so lucky, you know? Right. That means we've got like 600 years left of coasting to a collapse. And so I think, yeah, the one thing you get when you read Tacitus or you read Gibbon or you read Thucydides is this sense that these events that seem very, very enormous in the present moment sort of get reduced on average when you look at a larger scope of history.

And I think, you know, we just have so much more real-time information about these scandals and events and leaders than the Romans would have. So I think we get more work up about them. But yeah, when you read about these periods of history, it has the effect for me of turning down the volume a little bit on the histrionics of what's happening right now because you're like, the institutions, although weakened, are still relatively strong,

and it takes a lot to fully undermine that. It doesn't mean you can't be going in a wrong direction, but we often think that sort of collapse and dysfunction and chaos is like two seconds away. And in fact, it's usually more stable than you think. And if Rome could endure Nero or Caligula or whomever, you know, it can probably endure even the worst president for four years or even eight years. And we've had pretty bad

presidents too. Yeah, I think we've had our fair share. We're earlier in our national history and you know our institutions are reasonably strong now so who knows where things will be for a long time. But I suspect that those that predict America's doom are probably not entirely accurate. And those that are using Rome as the allegory to predict Rome's doom are sort of forgetting the broader lessons of Rome. Sorry, using Rome's allegory to protect and protect American doom, probably missing some forgetting the broader lessons of Rome, uh, sorry, using Rome's allegory to protect,

to protect American doom, probably missing some of the broader lessons of Roman history. But I guess who knows, you know, one of the things that I find really interesting, you're, you're kind enough to point out that this is not my profession, uh, that I read and write about history in a amateur status. Um, I'm seeking to do something about that, right? So I am in a Nights and Weekends Master's a history program. I'm enjoying it immensely.

I'm learning a great deal. And I, you know, in the process of studying history in a more professionalized and systematic way, I'm learning about events that happened of great importance with which I had no familiarity. And it's interesting to me to look back, even in recent American history, at some of the things that happened,

that there's almost no national consciousness of, despite them being huge events, even within a lifetime of either me or perhaps my parents, the US sending tens of thousands of troops from military intervention in the Dominican Republic. It was before I was born, I asked my father about it and he had no recollection of that whatsoever.

Here's a massive deployment of military assets to a foreign nation. And no one remembers it. So for many years, right? They were there for quite a long time. For quite a long time. And it was a pretty rough involvement and complicated and fraught. And yet, there is almost zero

collective knowledge. So again, to your broader point of, we have more access to information and we get ourselves worked up quickly. I'd argue that the tendency to forget or to narrow field division or to think short term is probably pretty consistent over human history. And we're no more likely to remember grand events now than they were to remember grand events then. And sometimes historical narratives over people like, let's just say, Karakala are going

to connect the dots and short order over events that were actually drawn out over a really long period of time even a short rule was years and years and years and so there's more collective ability to forget or diminish or to rationalize When those events are drawn out over a long period of time in other words It's a lot easier for us to judge because we can look at the ups and peaks and valleys of a chart and pick out the data points and smash them all together into one succinct time frame. But these people may not have seemed as bad in their own time.

I really, I have no idea what public perception of Karakala was in the 220s. Like, maybe that's a good academic paper to write. But the idea of collective memory and collective forgetfulness are interesting and important to consider when looking back over judging someone, you know, over the distance of two millennia. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here

and then we'll get right back to the show, stay tuned. and then we'll get right back to the show, Stay Tune. Yeah, I had Mike Duncan on the podcast who wrote the storm before the storm, which is one of my favorite more recent books about Roman history. You know, he says, we kind of look at a Julius Caesar and we think that this just happened, that it was just sort of one man deciding to overthrow,

you know, a republic. But in fact, he's like actually the hundred years of history prior to this moment tell us how this was possible. And so I think often we don't measure these things on a long enough time span. And we don't see how things are related to each other. I think, even now, as we look at some of the social justice stuff, we're like, oh, wait, this is a continuation of a movement that sort of peaked in the 1960s, which itself was a movement that picked up and peaked from a movement a hundred years

previous reconstruction, and that it's sort of like things kind of ebb and flow, and only with the distant view of history, do we see how these events are related to each other? And so yeah, it's interesting when you study Roman history to see how these figures are related to each other. And so and so is actually this person's great grandson and they're continuing the work of their grandfather. Like, I think only with distance, can you see how the things are related to each other? Yes, the getting back to a point

you made a little bit earlier, though, part of the challenge associated with that is that some people on the periphery of a narrative get lost to the sands of time. And so, yeah, Caesar was a continuation of a trend, but he also had a lot of people around him that were his supporters, his advocates, his enablers, his enemies, his opposition, etc. Some of whom have not risen to the level of being in the historical record, who were massively important people in their own day that we do not know ever lived and existed. So because they tend to fall away, we are left with the residual image of a smaller band of people than those that were actually

involved so it makes that judicious evaluation from the distance. It's a complicating factor for it all. Can I share with you one reason? I have great affection for Mike Duncan though he has no idea who I am. Yes, of course. Yeah, okay. So I love the History of Room podcast series. Absolutely great. In fact, I loved it for a lot of reasons. One, because it was very fun, two, because I learned a lot in three, because my wife enjoyed it,

and it got her a little bit involved and interested in learning about this alongside me, which is just great fun. But at the end of his series, he asked for suggestions. What should I do next? And I wrote a long note. It said said one thing

I've always been intrigued by is the place-based architecture of the city. What's the story of the Colosseum? Why does it exist? What was there before it? You know, why did the Pantheon survive when everything else got you know pulled down? I think of a podcast series on the buildings of Rome would be interesting. Sure, and I'm sure mine was among series on the buildings of Rome would be interesting. Sure. And I'm sure mine was among hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of emails that he got in the course of his podcast series. And he didn't reply as I wouldn't really expect him to would.

And there's no, I'm not mad at him for it. But I decided, you know, I got kind of intrigued by the idea. And actually, it's what became my prior book, which was the History of Romans 12 buildings, which is to try to tell the story of the city through its own, for architecture. So Mike, if you're listening, I love you, great respect, and thank you for ignoring my email

because I decided to just do it myself and it was a lot of fun. I love that. Well, let's go back to Nero, because the other thing, go back to Nero for a reason I wanted to talk about him and and something you actually just brought up, which is the idea that we tend to reduce Roman history down to a singular individual as opposed to all the individuals who agreed with that individual who were

working for that individual and the movement behind them. So when you look at someone like Nero, you go, oh, this guy was horrible, but he was emperor. But of course, Rome did often sort of overthrow and get rid of emperors that it didn't like or that were not competent, of which eventually happens to Nero. As someone who's written about and fascinated with Seneca, I go back to him over and over again because it's like

Was I maybe I'd be curious to get your your view on this was Nero a single other awful person who Seneca helped contain or Was Nero an awful person who Seneca enabled for his own game, right? As you look at Nira, where do you come down on Sennaka? So on balance, I'm a fan of Sennaka. You know him better than I do. I think sometimes Sennaka's a little bit in the,

do what I say, not what I do. Category of things, right? Is that he had genuine beliefs that he didn't always necessarily manifest in his own life and dealings with, but I think he was a good and wise and judicious counselor to Nero. I think he also could recognize some of Nero's darker personality traits and tried to steer him away from some of those elements. I think that Seneca also had a good partnership with the other key figures in Nero's life. He was a pragmatist and working with people like Agrippinah, and of course they had their own relationship history, but that he, I think he was generally and genuinely good,

both in general and for Nero and for Rome at that point in time, sort of mitigating and tamping down some of the darker sides of Nero's behavior and personality tendencies. So, and I'm not just cow-towing to the audience here. I like him, I think he, you know, I'd give him, I don't know, maybe a B plus, considering I give Nero like a D minus, or a name A minus,

I don't know, I'm not really good at grading. That's why I'm in school is to let other people judge me, not judge other people, but I think probably more than more optimistic side of that lens. I can understand why the argument's made that perhaps he wasn't all he professed to be. He was at a very privileged position in a society that rewarded rank, privilege, and prestige. He shouldn't be judged by his indulgence in that periodically. He should probably be commended for his relative lack

of indulgence in it over time. His position could have allowed him to be much more extractive on society than he ultimately ended up being. So I'm sympathetic to him. I like him. I probably need to know a little bit more about him. Well, it is complicated because as I was trying to understand where Sennaka was coming from, Sennaka, you know, worships Kato,

he sort of seems to be worried about the power that the emperor can have, doesn't seem to personally indulged in the kind of, you know, excesses of Nero. But then you look at his life and you're like, this guy had lived through five emperors in a very short time, right? And so I think it's fascinating how quickly a new normal establishes itself in Rome, right? So there's the Civil War, Caesar becomes dictator, he dies, there's a second Civil War,

and then there's basically like no question from that point forward, even amongst the Stoics, about whether one guy should be in charge or if it should go back to being a republic, right? And I feel like Senaqa is in some ways a product of that and is thinking about it in the way that, you know, someone in the 1600s would have thought about it, which is like, the king is appointed by God, and my job is just to help the king not be horrible. The idea that an individual had any real agency

over what kind of, what form of government their country had that just doesn't seem to have really occurred to the Romans after the turn of the millennium. No, it didn't. And I think you see in the Tacitus and the Spatonius these occasional laments over why didn't the Senate try to assert itself a little bit more directly and take some of that power back that Caesar and then Augustus had consolidated. But I don't think that's really fair to the Senate at that time. For a couple of reasons, one is that every senator that really tried to lead a crusade against an emperor

suffered a common fate, which was death. And the second is that the institutions had changed. And there's a thing, even within some of the ancient historians, this romantic longing for the days that power was shared amongst the oligarchy and the Senate was in control. But I think folks like Seneca were more pragmatic about it. Understanding Rome has changed.

The world has changed. And our role is more narrowly defined, and my specific role is to help wield the instrument of power, not try to take it back for a group of people of similar rank and prestige. So, Rome changed a lot, and there's a reason that we identify a monarchy, a republic, an empire, a dominant. There's a reason that you look at those cycles because the institutions did evolve over time. And I think the bigger question is, did they evolve to match the needs of those times? Or was there a way in which the prior institutions could have governed under different circumstances? I don't know.

Did Rome need a gustist or or did Augustus need the Empire? That's probably unknowable, but it's definitely intriguing to think about. Yeah, it was clearly a system that wasn't working before, and then when you have two horrendous and awful civil wars, you almost have to be equally crazy to say, well, let's try to go back to what it was before. And I'm willing to, you know, spend the blood of another generation to try without, you know, an assured, any assurances either way to get there. I think Senico is basically thinking mitigating

or hemming in Nero is actually a more just solution than risking the chaos of trying to get rid of him. Yeah, and I agree. And even if there is a more cynical interpretation of that, which is what's going to give him more personally more power, to seize control through the institution of the Senate and distribute it among a group of people, or to have a privileged access to the person

that is the instrument of power. Either way, it's the same result, which is to carefully modify Rome towards a better version of itself. And we shouldn't forget, yes, I mean, Neurodise, you have a brief civil war, the fact that that civil war only lasted roughly a year and survived the assassination of four consecutive emperors, and then was kind of back on solid footing for some time to come. That period of Roman history still covered

under what's called the Pax Romana, right? The Roman piece, the 200 years of peace and prosperity, that lead us to Gibbons' famous assertion that the period under the five-grid emperors is the highest achievement of human happiness and all of human history. It speaks to the fact that the institutions have changed, and it would have been sent into his approach

of modify power from within as opposed to try to take control under a different institution, was probably the correct course of action. Yeah, although, and I've talked to people about this in the show before, when we try to apply that in a modern context, what's so tricky about it is like, you never actually have to hold yourself accountable, right? Sena, Sena, Sena, can say, I'm the only one that can, I can be the adult in the room, I'm the only one that can reign neuro-in if I leave someone worse, will replace me.

It, that may in fact be true, but, you know, when your charge or the person you're in charge of executes their own mother and it puts you in a position where you are in effect condoning. It's like this quiet escalation that you can't get out of. Now that you've said, if I leave someone worse, will replace me, it's almost as if someone like Nero senses that Seneca believes this and understands that his ego traps him in Nero's service. Seneca can't leave because to do so

would be to abandon his duty, which means that Nero can do whatever he wants and Senaica will help him provided Senaica can rationalize this as the lesser of two evils. Right. Now here's the question that as you know Senaica way better than I do do did he have any aspirations to regnal rule in I you know, I could you have been the philosopher king? Yes, so like in in James Ram's book dying every day, which is a great book and James Ram is a profoundly gifted historian and writer

He sort of alludes to maybe Santa could was starting to get some ideas about here's the way that I could be in charge. Do you buy into that at all? Or do you think that that's just so much more projecting modern ambition on to an ancient figure? No, I think it's tied up in there, right? Because it is inherently ecotistical. You're like, I think it's tied up in there, right? Because it is inherently ecotistical. You're like, I'm the adult in the room. So I'm steering them. And this is like the, you know, anonymous or the resistance inside the Trump administration. You're like, oh, he's

terrible. I don't agree with him. But this is my chance to steer the ship of state or or wheeled the levers of power and you can you're actually doing something Very self-interested, but you're cloaking it in this selflessness and it puts you in this position where you never have to go when am I complicit when am I When am I complicit, when am I enabling this? When do I have to walk away? I had HR McMaster on the podcast. And I was trying to try to get in the mind of a Senica-like figure, where you have someone

who clearly knows better, who doesn't share many of the views or viewpoints with the person they're advising. But why do they stay? And why do they stay for so long? You know, there is this. I'm sure it's 50% sacrifice and service, and probably 50% this is my chance to do my agenda or what I think needs to be done. So all the politicians that I've talked to, many of whom in private will express all sorts of disagreement and disgust with Trump,

there's usually like some pet issue, like they're a China hawk, or they wanna reform education, or they're worried about the courts, or this or that, there's always some issue that they think is more important than the presidency in this or that, there's always some issue that they think is more important than the presidency in this moment, and so by collaborating with that president, they can enact it.

And I've got to imagine, even if Sennaka doesn't have designs on the throne itself, he was consul, I think twice, maybe three times. So, you know, even people have to understand, even in the Roman system of government with an emperor, there was still other positions of power or influence that one could wield. And you could argue that perhaps Seneca, you know, is indulging Nero so he can be console or, you know,

maybe someone wanted to be governor of some province. They're sort of, it's a short term, it's beneficial to them at the expense of their larger belief. So I suspect there probably was something like that at place. Seneca wanted to be involved, wanted to contribute, wanted to probably had policies or reforms or changes that he felt needed to be made. And although it couldn't be certain that he could accomplish them through Nero, it was almost certain that if Nero was gotten rid of, Seneca would be tainted and thrown out with the bathwater. Right. tainted and thrown out with the bathwater.

Right. I sometimes wonder in the examples that you cite both contemporary and ancient, if there isn't a little bit of a fallacy of logic here, which is a belief that a megalomaniac can be collaborated with altered, manipulated, steered, right? And that seems to be a common pattern and that there's consequences to believing, let's take Seneca, he was smarter than Nero. I have no problem saying that, I know I can't know it, but I believe it, right? And in his head, you can almost hear him saying,

look, I'm smarter than this guy, I'm gonna use logic to move him toward a certain position. But the fallacy is that logic doesn't apply to Megalomania. You can't apply logic where none exists. And perhaps that's a consistent theme in these patterns as well if someone's a China policy expert or in the contemporary world still can't move Megalomania outside of itself, no matter how rational, logical,

intelligent, gifted, diplomatic, any person might be. Well, don't you see this in the corporate world? Like, when I was at American Apparel, I saw this time and time again, hedge funds, whether it was George Soros or Ron Berkold, these big companies would come in. They'd meet with the CEO, who every other billionaire, investor, advisor, consultant had been unable to reform or change or direct, even though they were smarter,

even though they had a better plan. They couldn't do anything, but they all fooled themselves into thinking it will be different with me because I'm smarter. And I suspect that was a big part of Neuro and Seneca. I think it was a big part of Trump. And I think it was a big, I mean, talk about sort of institutions being challenged, et cetera.

Why did the Republicans continue to indulge Trump after he lost the election, after he was attempting basically a slow-moving coup. It was because they told themselves he would help them win the two Georgia Senate races just as they're telling themselves, now he controls the base of the party, we can't turn on him, but it's that same timeless lie, which is, I can use this person to accomplish what I want to accomplish and there are very few examples of that ever happening. Right, you can't.

Megalomania is heading in one direction and it's unalterable. It is it's timeless and you we can look at. We could expand the lens and find lots of other examples as well and it And it is unchangeable. It is what it is. Narcissism and self-absorption and God complexes are not going to be manipulated. They might periodically head in the same direction you want to head and therefore become expedient and practical, but they're not going to change. And so the moment your agenda changes from theirs

is the moment that everything is all a skew. So I tell you something that I get kind of tickled by when I think about someone like Santa Cun, you and Santa Cun, your relationship with him. If you think about who he was in his own time, he's a titan of Roman society, right? Just every living Roman knew him, understood who he was, understood the power that he wielded,

the office that he had, the informal and formal office that he had. There were so many layers between the average rank and file Roman citizen. Now, someone that went to the bass once a week, and went to the bass once a week and you know went to the games and cheered in the crowds and was a fan of the Greens, there's so many layers between that person in Seneca that history knocks down. And in a weird way, you probably have a closer

relationship with Seneca than one of his contemporaries in ancient Rome would have. And I love the thought of it. Because I can actually read his writing. Right. And you can get to know him and study him in a way that was not afforded to a contemporary. And in a way, he's more familiar to you than he would have been to a contemporary in Roman. And isn't that just a wonderful thing about history? Isn't that so much fun to think about? No, I do. And we're to think about Marcus, right?

But you have access to the private diary of the most powerful man in the world that he would have been mortified where it ever published. And you basically have access inside this dude's brain. Right, it's so great that the whole, I don't know about you, and I read about people's papers being burned on their death, like almost weep, right? Yeah.

I, you know, we talk about judging presidents. I'm fascinated by Chester A. Arthur, just fascinated by the guy who was up until that point of his career. He could be the Vespasian, the only man who was grouped, right? He was not supposed to be president. He was given the vice presidency because it was a token to the power brokers who lost out in the presidential nomination.

His president is shot and killed. He becomes president and all the people that he's been grafting for for all the years think, okay, it's our time. And he goes on, embarked on a pretty robust anti-corruption initiative. He puts it down.

You know, right? And then he dies, like shortly after leaving office and all his papers are gone. God, that would have been interesting. Wouldn't have been so great to find out what, the letter that Roscoe Concling wrote to Chester A. Arthur about you son of a bitch, I made you, and now you just buried it in an iPhone in my back.

I mean, it's conjecture obviously. And so, you know, for us to have Marcus's diary, the, the, the, all of the steps that had to go historically for that to survive to millennia, to end up in your hands in a, you either Latin or English translation, it's, it's almost too good to be true. You know, it's like we're so lucky to have that. We're so fortunate to have that. How many other such things have been lost both from the ancient world in the modern? And I love that you're pointing this out

because it is true. It's luck upon luck upon luck. And something hit me somewhat recently, I think it's when I was writing Lives of the Stokes is realizing that um, Neuro and Seneca or sorry, Seneca and Epic Titus were both members of Neuro's court. Epic Titus is right. Epic Titus is a slave owned by one of Nero's secretaries. So these two guys would have passed each other in the hall. They're both practitioners of the same philosophy. But as you said, existed on utterly different planets. Epictetus is a slave, his leg is broken by a slave master in just a perverse form of torture. And then Seneca, the guy who works with his boss's boss,

owns his own slaves. And owns, has so much money that basically he owns the colony of Britain. Like, just, you're right, how stratified and disconnected

the different levels of Roman society were. It's almost incomprehensible. And that is something I try to remember when I look at this history, is that not only was that the case, but any sense of personal agency to affect change or to move from one level to another was also essentially incomprehensible.

And we can't necessarily fault these people for not believing that they had much control over it because they actually didn't. Right. Yeah, the Roman society was so stratified in a way that it's kind of hard to comprehend. You generally ended up where you were born and there were very, very, very few exceptions. And it, you know, American society, the pick them up by the bootstraps, mystique is becoming increasingly mythologized.

Our society is incredibly segmented, but even then, as ridges as it is now, it's nothing by comparison to how it was then. And it's all the more impressive for someone like Epicthedus who can still appreciate the value of so-it philosophy and what it applies to him and to, for where he was in his station in life to still, you know, spend that much time and contemplation when you, you know, it would be forgiven to say the world is going to give me nothing and I'm owed nothing, right?

I shouldn't expect anything. There's still, there's almost a, a shadow optimism in investing that much in writing and thinking and philosophy, for where he was in Roman society at the time that he was there. It makes his accomplishments all the more admirable. I think that's right. The last thing I was gonna say to you, I talked about this quote with Shaddy Bars, who just translated the NIAD and has written some books about Seneca. But although the Romans did have very little agency,

they did have, it wasn't as if Seneca could not, could have not worked for, Seneca could have not worked for Nero, right? Thracias, there were Stoics who said, you know, I'm not gonna be a part of this Nero thing. I'm gonna resist, right? And they didn't always survive, but you did have a choice. And I love this quote.

These are apparently pompies last words. He's quoting Sophocles. He says, whoever makes his journey to a tyrant's court becomes his slave, although he went there a free man. So I think what's interesting when you look at these bad emperors is, you know, perhaps the emperor was a tortured, broken person from birth, they were a psychopath, whatever. I think the most alarming part about them is the people that they managed to corrupt and bribe and bring along with them and make complicit in what they did. And to me, that's the most

along with them and make complicit in what they did. And to me, that's the most cautionary part of their whole story. It's like how bad people manage to corrupt good people or people who are otherwise on the fence. I mean, I think it was DeGal said of Hitler that his rise was dependent on the cowardice of others. And I think there is an element in all these horrible emperors of just people who let it happen. Yeah, and who could grab a tiny little bit of that power and use it for their own game power by proxy or by trying to control access to these terrible people, or who could manipulate those terrible people and take actions, or manipulate somewhat weak-willed people to take evil actions because of the motivation of the manipulator.

And there are so many lessons to be learned in terms of the nature of power and its judicious use. And, you know, the marcuses of the world who really were mission driven and compare that just with the one generation later, who really used it for entirely self-serving purposes no matter who was around him. I do have this theory that the transition from Marcus to Commodus is the single biggest gap in talent and competence of any two leaders of any organization of any institution of any company anywhere ever. Like you can't do much better than Marcus. You can't do much worse than Commodus and you can't find their matched pair and direct succession just about anywhere else.

So, uh, no, I, I am fascinated with that, right? Like why, why did that, I guess, before I let you go, I, I, I, because I, it's a question. I asked constantly, and if I could ever find myself in front of Marcus, I feel like I'd ask him that is like, you know, is, is it that, uh, comedists was a psychopath or broken from birth and there was nothing that could be done or is it actually the ultimate indictment of stoicism or of Marcus's ability to be, you know, a great leader, a great philosopher, a great writer,

but actually a terrible father. I don't know, I am horrified and fascinated by how it could go so wrong. One of the things that's so great about Antoninus Pius and what he represented was it was respect for the nobility that put him in that office, right? It was Hadrian's signal that the emperor shouldn't go it alone and he should have a core, a very talented people around him to help bring the empire forward, to administer Jocelyn, et cetera. And Marcus carried forward that tradition and was very could Marcus was he even capable, even if he recognized what Commodus was and had a full sense of what he would be become. What would the right thing have been to do for a stoic philosopher? Should he have had Commodus smothered?

Right? You know, should he have had him killed? Should he have had communist smothered, right? You know, should he have had him killed? Should he have shed a tear and killed his own son? Or should he have tried to do what he did, which is put talented people around him? You know, looking back, can we fault him for being a parent and for wanting to see the best in his kid and hoping that he could put the conditions

around him that would have led to better outcomes. Can we get mad at him for it? I don't know that we can. I'm not sure that we can blame a parent for wanting to see the best in their own kid. I don't know. It's an endlessly fascinating thing to debate. What could the wisest philosopher king that Rome produced have done to prevent his own son from having power?

Yes, although that is the dilemma, but you might go back further and go, could he have just been, was it actually his failures as a father that created a situation where he couldn't, he was struggling to trust his son with power, right? Like if we say, oh, he was like this from birth, then sure, Marcus is in an impossible situation

and probably does the only human thing you could do. If we say that no, this was not a nature problem but a nurture problem, then it calls into question everything we think about Marcus, because what good is, I'm reading a book right now about church-hose relationship with his son, and how does such a great man have such a dud of an offspring? Probably because he was so busy being such a great man, right? And so I think that's the other lesson we can take from this

is what good are all the accomplishments if the consequences of that fall on your own family. One of the things I love about the Greeks is their love of their prior generation, right? Just the, I think if I remember you to one of the only characters from Greek mythology who claim superiority over their own father and who is lionized as better than by their father as a kille,

is otherwise, you know otherwise think of every character, it gives their name and then son of, right? And the passing, the torch, if you follow that humility to its conclusion, and we took it at say, face value, every generation of Greeks would have been worse than the one before it, which is an impossibility because then you'd have no people of talent whatsoever because by definition someone would have been inferior than someone who came previously. Is it fair to expect that the prior generation was automatically superior? is it fair for someone like Marcus to expect

a difference from the future generation? Is it fair for someone to assume that they were necessarily less than those that came before them? I mean, these are, it's probably a bit of a non-sequitur. It makes a lot of sense in my head. I don't know if it's making a lot of sense as I say it now, but that nature of the transition of power from one to the other and the relationship between a father and a son and the deference that a son is supposed to play. And fairness to Marcus, kind of like Nero, things didn't get off to the worst start with comedists. It just fell apart more quickly and more violently. Marcus's plan of putting decent people around comedists might have worked if someone hadn't tried to kill

comedists and then he went off the deep end into, you know, deep, deep paranoia. So I don't know, I think, I think we can give Marcus, I don't know if it passes the right word. I just think that comedists was so historically bad that it didn't matter how he was raised. I don't think he was created. I don't think you can take the most wise and judicious, philosophically gifted ruler of Rome and expect that some of that wasn't, that he didn't try to get some of that through.

I think it's more about the thickness of Commodus' skull than it was about Marcus' lack of ability to apply his own philosophy to the next generation. His stoicism didn't just get caught up in himself. He just, it just didn't get through. But I want to give the guy a pass because it's a lot more fun if he was really that great and Commodus was that bad too because it makes for a better story and hopefully for better reading. I love it. I'm so glad we talked, enjoy the rest of your family trip

and can't wait for the next book. All right, thank you so much. Thanks for the chance and really appreciate it. I hope you have a lovely day. Thanks for listening. We just crossed more than 50 million downloads with the Daily Stoke podcast. Thanks to you.

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