The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Athens not Rome had the bigger impact on Western civilization

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

“All roads lead to Rome,” goes the saying, and many historians agree. They argue that ancient Roman civilization, which grew into a colossal super state lasting two thousand years, is the historical period that has the greatest influence on modern day society. Roman civilization's impact is vast: a sophisticated approach to law that informs our modern legal system, the Western alphabet, the Romance languages spoken by 800 million people, Christianity as the spiritual home to over 1.2 billion followers today, and systems of governance that guide the constitutional foundation of many countries, including the United States. Critics of this sweeping view of Rome's influence respond, “We are all Greeks,” quoting the poet Percy Shelley. They argue that a small city state just a couple thousand square kilometres wide and with a fraction of the Roman empire's revenues determined the Western world's destiny. When Athenians came to the conclusion that a random collection of equal citizens makes better decisions than kings and tyrants, a radical new form of self-rule was born, one that inspires and guides much of Western civilization to this day. Perhaps even more importantly Athens bequeathed a framework of scientific inquiry that continues to nurture the creativity and innovation that is a hallmark of Western societies and the source of their enduring strength all these centuries later. Arguing for the motion is Ian Morris, an archeologist, the Willard Professor of Classics at Stanford University and a best-selling author. His most recent book is the award-winning Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History and What they Reveal. Arguing against the motion is Barry Strauss, who holds an Endowed Chair at Cornell University where he is the Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies. He has written numerous best-selling books about Rome including most recently Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Christina Campbell Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Athens, not Rome, had the bigger impact on Western civilization. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. We all know that saying, all roads lead to Rome, and many historians agree. They argue that ancient Rome Roman civilization, which grew into a colossal super state lasting 2,000 years, is the historical period that has had the greatest influence on modern-day society. Roman civilization's impact is vast, a sophisticated approach to law that informs our modern legal system, the Western alphabet, romance languages, Christianity as a spiritual home to over 1.2 billion people, and systems of government that continue to guide the constitutional foundations of many countries,

including the United States. Critics of this sweeping view of Rome's influence respond, We are all Greeks, quoting the famous poet Percy Shelley. They argue that a small city state, just a couple of thousand square kilometers in area, with a fraction of Rome's wealth, determined the destiny of the modern world. Athenians came to that remarkable conclusion, one that influences so much of our society today, that a random collection of equal citizens makes better decisions than kings and tyrants. With this insight, a new radical form of self-rule was born, democracy,

one that continues to inspire and guide much of Western civilization to this day. Equally important, Athens bequeathed to the modern world. world, a methodology of scientific inquiry that continues to nurture the creativity and innovation of our societies and remains an enduring strength millennia later. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. Athens, not Rome, had the bigger impact on Western civilization. Arguing for the motion is Ian Morris. He's an archaeologist. the Willard Professor of Classics at Stanford University,

and a best-selling author of such books as Why the West Rules for Now, the Patterns of History and What They Reveal. Arguing against the motion is Barry Strauss. Barry holds an endowed chair at Cornell University, where he's the Beaumar Professor in Humanistic Studies. He, too, has written numerous best-selling books, this time about Rome, including most recently

10 Caesars, Roman emperors from Augustus, to Constantine. Barry, Ian, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you, Roger. Great to be here. Yeah, thank you. We're all looking forward to this debate today. It's an opportunity to kind of step back from, frankly, a lot of what we do at the Monk debates, which is kind of geopolitics and contemporary kind of issues, to instead, you know, think some big thoughts about Western civilization, about ancient history, about the origins of many of the ideas and institutions that we inhabit today, and maybe we don't fully understand. and appreciate just how deeply rooted they are in a shared culture and a shared history.

So to have the opportunity to connect with both of you, people who've done the hard work, spent the time, done the writing to reflect on these two great cultures, ancient Rome and ancient Greece. It's just a privilege for our monk debate audience. So thank you for agreeing to take part in this debate. Our resolution today is, be it resolved, Athens, not Rome. has had the bigger impact on Western civilization. Ian Morris, you're going to be arguing in favor of today's motion.

So why don't you get us underway with your opening statement? Well, I think it's hard not to start out a discussion like this without thinking about Monty Python's Life of Brian, one of the obvious classics of Western civilization. And I'm sure some of you will have guessed where I'm going with this, the famous scene in the movie where John Cleese, who is playing the chairman of the People's Front of Judea, sits down with his followers,

trying to whip them up in this anti-Roman rage. And he asks them this famous question, what have the Romans ever done for us? And the followers sort of think about this a minute. And one says, well, sanitation. Another one said, you know, medicine. Another one says, wine, they all like the wine a lot. Fresh water, peace.

And at this point, John Cleese just kind of blows his top and just tells them all to shut up. Just shut up. I don't want to hear any more of this. Now, the problem John Cleese had, of course, what did his followers were right. And the Romans did do a lot. But not the least of the things they did was transmitting Greek cultural achievements to modern Europe. And in the end, I would say that that was Rome's greatest claim to shaping Western civilization, was transmitting what the Greeks had

done. And this was a long, complicated process that kind of snowballed across the centuries. Because for a long time, people in Europe, back in what we used to call the Dark Ages, historians tell us we're not allowed to call them the Dark Ages anymore, because it's kind of kind of patronizing, but in the centuries right after the fall of the Roman Empire, which seemed pretty dark to me, I got to say, people just weren't that interested in the Greek cultural achievement. It's not till really like the 11th century that Western Europeans feel the need for more rigorous ways to make their arguments, to be able to appeal to logic. And in the 11th century, they rediscover the writings of Aristotle. Peter Abelard rediscovers the writings of Aristotle

revolutionizes the way Western Europeans debate and have discussions. 400 years after that, early 16th century, when Copernicus is thinking about how the universe works, it's Ptolemy, the ancient Greek astronomer, is the guy that he argues with. Ptolemy famously laid out this system explaining how the sun and everything else rotates around the earth, and Copernicus engages with that, which was actually kind of weird, because plenty of Greek astronomers knew perfectly well that the earth went around the sun, not the other way around.

They knew how big the earth was, that it was round, how far away the sun was. But anyway, it's the Greeks that Copernicus engages with. In the 17th century, the scientific revolution is all about debate with Aristotle and Ptole. In the 18th century, the Enlightenment in Europe is this full frontal engagement with Plato and Aristotle. And I think this raises this fascinating question. Would Europe have had a scientific revolution and an enlightenment without the great? Greek legacy. And for me, I would say that is what we should think about when we talk about Western civilization, a society based on a scientific revolution and an enlightenment. That's

what makes European history a bit distinctive. Now, ultimately, we can never know whether Europeans would have figured it all out for themselves if they'd not had Greek writings to engage with. But I think we can be pretty confident that without the Greek legacy, any scientific revolution and enlightenment that Europe had, would have been very different from the one it actually got. And my Stanford colleague, Walter Shidel, recently published a book called Escape from Rome, where he argued that the best thing the Roman Empire ever did for us was to fall and not come back. That was the great gift of the Roman Empire. It went away. Now, I think that goes too far. I want to close my introductory statement

by doing something that I realize is kind of annoying when somebody who's supposed to be, here taking part in a debate does this. But suggesting there's something of a compromise here, that without Rome to pass on its achievements, Athens wouldn't have contributed very much to Western civilization. But on the other hand, without Athens's achievements to pass on, Rome wouldn't have contributed very much either. Fascinating, Ian. Thank you so much for that opening statement, setting out the pro-argument in this debate, be it resolved Athens, not Rome, had the bigger impact on Western Civil civilization. Barry Strauss, you're up next, your opening statement. You're arguing against our motion

in favor of Rome's influence over Athens on who we are as peoples today. Let's have your contribution to this debate. Well, thank you, Roger, and thank you, Ian, for setting things up so well with the life of Brian. I'm tempted to quote another great text, my big, fat Greek wedding, that everything is said to be Greek in origin. Well, no, not everything was Greek in origin, although many, many things were. And as you say, in some sense, we have to go for a compromise and to swing both ways with Greece and Rome. But let me make the case for the Romans and their influence on the West, because I think it was tremendous.

The Romans certainly did pass on the legacy of Greek civilization and attempted to to say about the Romans, Roman Empire, if you like the Greeks, you can keep the Greeks, because after all, the Romans did that first. But the Romans had great ideas of their own. As they themselves knew, they were tremendous builders and they were tremendous pragmatists. They were absolutely brilliant at alliance management. And they went from alliance management to another great idea, and that is sharing the citizenship. The fact that the Romans were willing to turn around and take people who they had conquered and slowly at first, and then in a great wave involving all free people, to make them all citizens, to make them all Romans.

Well, that's a stunningly important idea. And I don't think we'd be who we were today, who we are today without that idea. The other thing about the Romans is that they were tremendous survivors. They're absolutely ruthless in adaptation. I've talked about the way that they absorbed immigrants, and they didn't only make them citizens, but ultimately they opened their elite to immigrants and to foreigners to people who they'd conquered, and those people ended up ruling Rome. In the end, you get emperors like Constantine, who spent very little time in his life, actually,

in the city of Rome, or Justinian, who never set foot in Rome, but who nonetheless consider themselves Romans. but the Romans were always really good at adaptive hypocrisy. Even Augustus, one of the greatest of the Romans, well, that's a phony name, as even Caesar was questionable in the case of the man born as Gaius Octavius. We know how many things in the West come from the Romans. The Roman Forum is in some sense the most important public space in Western history. It's the place where the Romans created a republic. that was particularly effective in blending the elites with the people through the medium of election,

something that's so important to us today. It's the place where the Latin language reads some of its heights in oratory. And Latin is, of course, the basis of the romance languages spoken by almost a billion people today and had a great impact on English for that matter. It's a place where Roman law was hammered out, which has been so immensely influential as well. And it's the place from which the Romans sent out their legions, one of the most effective military organizations in history. The legions, of course, conquered the empire. And to go back to the life of Brian, the Romans wouldn't be the Romans without their empire.

Size matters. The fact that the Romans conquered an empire that stretched from Edinburgh to the Red Sea, approximately across 3,000 miles, governing 50 to 70 million people, and did so with such a small army of about 300,000 people. An extraordinary achievement, to be sure, as also from the life of Brian. It wasn't such always a great idea to be at the receiving end of this gift from Rome. But the Romans are influential not because they were nice, but because they were effective. and it's not an accident that they've had such remarkable effect on the history of Europe. Thank you, Barry Stras, masterful opening following Ian's equally compelling talk.

I am deeply confused at this moment, which is, I'm sure, how much of our listening audience is feeling, too. Is it Rome? Is it Athens? You're both equally compelling. So let's get a chance to dig in a bit deeper here by having a round of rebuttal. So, Ian, another couple of minutes on the clock, your opportunity to, react to Barry's arguments, and then I'll give Barry the same opportunity to come back at you. Well, thank you. Yeah. A fascinating argument from Barry there. And all kinds of interesting things in there. But there's one point that you came back to a number of times, because, I mean, how could you not when you're talking about the ancient Romans, which is their empire?

And that, as you say, remarkable achievement to build an empire of that scale. I mean, is roughly half the size of the continental U.S., which is an enormous thing to do 2,000 years. ago and the fastest moving object is a guy on the back of a horse. Extraordinary thing to hold together. But that in a way, I would say that is what makes the Romans less of an important contribution than what the Greeks were doing. By conquering a huge empire like this, the Romans made Europe, the Mediterranean basin, made it more like the other parts of the world stretching out from the Mediterranean all the way to China, all of which were governed by highly centralized, top-down empires that controlled what people were thinking and sort of forced everything into similar

sorts of imperialist exploitative modes. The Athenians didn't do that, not because they didn't want to. They clearly did want to. They tried very hard. And for some of the reasons you laid out, they weren't very good at doing that kind of thing. The empire, I think, while in some ways, as you say, it's what we should focus on is the great achievement of the Romans. To me, that seems like the one big thing that makes the Romans a bit like all the other ancient civilizations, whereas the Greek city-state civilization seems to me distinctively different and to have created ideas and ways of doing things that have just mattered a lot more for Europe and have been much more important in setting Europe apart from other regions of the world.

Thank you, Ian. Barry, your opportunity now to react to either Ian's opening statement or what you've just heard. Thank you. Marvelous rebuttal. So let me say a few things in reply. First of all, yes, the Romans had an empire and there were many other empires in the ancient world and in world history. But the Romans are so original in coming up with this citizenship, this mass citizenship. It's something that really sets them apart, and that is tremendously important to us in modern times. That's one of the things that makes them so remarkable. So I'd also say that in setting up any sort of institution, be it a political institution or a corporation, it's one thing to found it. It's another thing to make it continue, to make it work. And that's what the Romans were just so great at. Indeed, they did take many ideas from the Greeks, but they put them in their own terms. And they made them more pragmatic and practical so that there could be a Europe.

civilization. And that I think we probably both agree. Thank you, Barry. My opportunity now to join the debate and kind of think through some of the questions that are on the minds of our listeners who want to kind of go deeper with you into our resolution today, which is that ancient Athens, not Rome, is that the biggest impact on Western civilization. And Ian, to come to you first, I'd like to hear a little bit more about this idea of yours of Rome as really a conveyor belt for the kind of intellectual patrimony of ancient Greece through to the modern era. I think a lot of people would understand that and see the influence and effect. But Barry brought up some very powerful examples of how Rome was more than just physical, an impressive piece of physical geography. It also had a

series of ideas. I mean, just look at the U.S. Senate or how we, you know, how we, you know, think about whole aspects of our legal systems and the administration of justice. Give us a sense, again, of why you think the onus, the weight of philosophical and intellectual contribution to Western civilization lies with Athens and not Rome. Well, yeah, I must say I like that image used Rome as a conveyor belt, bringing us the Greek ideas. That's a good way to put it. This was a complicated thing. I mean, in my opening statements, I made

it sound like, oh, yeah, the Romans just listened to what the Greeks are saying and pass it on. And of course, that's not what happened at all. The Romans were very, very divided over the issue of Greekness and Greek ways of doing things, especially in the second century BCE, when the Romans were

engaged in starting to conquer the Greek world. Greek ideas were ferociously divisive in Roman society. A lot of kind of more conservative guys, like Cato the elders, the most famous of these, more conservative guys who said, you know, we Romans are conquering the Greeks, not the other way around. We are the ones who know how to do things properly. The Greeks are all effete and decadent and weak and over-sophisticated.

We should have nothing to do with their ideas. And if Cato had had his way, then Rome certainly would not have been the conveyor belt for Greek ideas. But other Romans push back on this. And they say, you know, there's just all this great stuff going on in Greek culture that we think is going to be very helpful to Rome, but particularly what they're saying, is stuff that's going to be very helpful to us in person. It's one of the things Cato particularly disliked about contemporary Greek civilization of the 2nd century BC,

not the classical period of the 5th and 4th centuries. But in contemporary Greek civilization, you get kings who believe they're set so far above everybody else, that they should actually be worshipped as gods, and that they are all over the Middle East. Greek kings are worshipped as gods. And some Roman generals look at this and say, wow, I like the look of that. I would really like to be a god. And so they're saying, yeah, we should embrace Greek culture, love the Greeks, because, hey, then I can be a god.

So you get this fierce sort of debate going on that ends up with really a very peculiar compromise. So what we'll do will say, if you're a really good general, you can't be a god, but you can't be a god for a day. You get to have a triumph, this ritualized procession through the city of Rome, where you come in a chariot to draw on by white horses, just like the gods are in our representations, and you go through, you're being treated and honoured like a god. But there's a slave standing behind you right through the procession, and the slave keeps whispering in your ear, remember, you are immortal. So they go through this ferocious debate over this. In the end, the Romans kind of tame Greek ideas and find channels where you can express Greekness

and be at one with the Greeks without really challenging more traditional ways. Roman ways of doing things. So, yeah, it is a conveyor belt, but it's a very complicated conveyor belt. So, Barry, I'd like you to react to what Ian said, but if you could introduce into it some explanation for our audience about Christianity and the role that Rome plays as a conveyor belt, to go back to that metaphor analogy, for Christianity and these Christian ideas that then subsequently have an absolutely formative impact on the Western civilization of, the medieval period and beyond. Well, first of all, let me just say, I don't want to be on the conveyor belt.

I think the Romans have a lot more to contribute than just being a conveyor belt. And every civilization borrows from previous civilizations. I mean, I don't think there are any exceptions to that. The Romans borrowed from the Etruscans too. But Christianity, so Christianity is a fantastic combination of originally Jewish and then Greek, and then Roman by way of Egypt, because it's enormously influenced by Egyptian culture as well. And Alexandria is one of the real crucibles of Christianity. Christianity becomes the Roman religion.

It begins in opposition to the Romans, and it becomes the Roman religion adopted by the Romans. I think it's just a sign of how ruthless the Romans are and with themselves that they can say, you know what? Our traditional religion isn't working. We have lost the peace with the gods. So we need to find a new religion. And if it means throwing out half of the things that we've believed in for centuries, absolutely no problem. Well, maybe not absolutely no problem. There was controversy over it. I think it also reflects the fact that Roman society, the demography of Roman society, the Roman elite, had completely changed. Constantine is the emperor who is the first one to adopt Christianity, to tolerate Christianity,

and at least in the East, to suppress paganism and to move Rome towards becoming a Christian society. His father comes from what is now Serbia and his mother comes from what is now Turkey. These are outsiders to Rome, looking at Rome from a different lens and from a different point of view. So I think the fact that Rome could adapt so well, I think that's just a sign of the way which the Romans were open to innovation and were willing to do whatever it would take in order to survive. I mean, contrary to Gibbon, who thought that Christianity brought the empire down, I would say that Christianity was dynamic and he gave the empire a new lease on life.

So again, it's a sign of what the Romans can do. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world. and you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.w.com.

I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. So, Ian, one of the many hats you wear is an archaeologist who goes into the field and dig things up. So let me try another argument out on you, which is, as someone who's read a lot of Greek and Roman, albeit not in the original, there is an ability to connect with the Romans, just the way they write, the way they think, how they confront problems. It just, it all seems somehow much closer to who we are now. At times, in contrast, and maybe you'll argue against me, but at times, you know, Plato, Aristotle, it almost seems alien.

It seems like there's a cultural, an additional cultural gulf that the reader has to go beyond to somehow try to feel out what is this Greek mindset? How do they actually reason about things? Am I wrong about that, that the Romans are somehow epistemologically closer to us? Yeah, I guess I would say sort of yes and no in response to that. one of the fascinating things about Greek and Roman history is looking at which has been most popular with whom at what times, because they do sort of go up and down. And so for a very long time in Europe, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, European elites felt a really strong kinship with the rulers of the Roman Empire. And largely, in fact, because of the Christianity that Barry

was just talking about, that Rome is the place that gave us a Christian empire. And for a lot of people in the middle ages, the goal was to return to having a proper Christian empire. And so when they read Roman authors, they often felt this real connection. And they read Athenian, Greek authors. And they would say, what are these guys talking about? It's all about democracy. And democracy just as like mob rule. I mean, these are stupid people doing stupid things, the Athenians, stupid people. We don't want to be anything like them. They're actually kind of scary. But then that changes around very dramatically in the 18th century when Europeans, and European colonists in North America, start saying, well, wait a minute, all this stuff that

the Romans have, like God-given rulers and sort of established hierarchical churches and slavery. And we don't like that. We don't want anything to do with that in our own society. We want to be free and spontaneous and democratic, just like the Greeks, in fact. And starting in the 18th century, you get this huge backlash in Western Europe. And this idea that the Greeks are, you know, the big fact Greek wedding idea, the Greeks are the origin of everything. That is when this suddenly explodes. And so, you know, for a long time elite education in Europe, North America, all these boys would be out there learning their Greek. And that's the highest form of wisdom to be able to turn bits of Shakespeare into bits of Sophoclean poetry. And that's very much gone out of fashion recently.

And I think one of the big reasons for that is that the Romans have once again begun to, you know, to seem like they have, in some ways, more connections with our modern world. The Romans are running kind of large-scale imperial ventures. They are engaged with the civilizations, the Middle East, all kinds of ways in which Roman begins to seem a bit more relevant. But one thing I've found, though, is it different people will respond to what you just said, Rudyard, in different ways. And I certainly, I've met a lot of people who say that Greek literature is kind of the only

non-modern Western literature that immediately speaks in. They read a debate in Thucydides, like say the debates over whether the Athenian should execute all the people of Mitalini, who have rebelled against. And they read these debates, and they just say, oh, my God, that is so real. It speaks to me in a way that really no other ancient civilization does. So I suspect this is probably a little bit subjective sort of debate. Right. The eye of the beholder.

Barry, what's your view on that? I mean, you've written a series of best-selling books for popular audiences. on ancient Rome, do you feel that people find it easier to connect with that period in history because of, you know, we're living in Pax Americana and either in declension or, you know, in some state? I think in some sense, yes. You know, the American founders saw themselves as Romans and were very much opposed to Athenian democracy. There was, of course, the Greek revival in U.S. architecture in the 19th century. But I think Americans have always seen themselves as closer to Rome.

I don't mean to be so Americana-centric. I have my credentials. I taught at Dalhousie in Canada and married to a Canadian, so forgive me. But I do think that that certainly is a part of it. And, of course, many modern Europeans have thought of themselves as Romans. as well, and what could be more, I think the Canadian notion of peace order and good government seems very Roman, too, if you ask me. But there's something about Greek literature. It is very foreign, and yet Homer has a way of getting to us in our hearts. I think that Roman literature,

on the whole, with a few exceptions, is more difficult to approach, actually, than Greek literature, because it is so Roman literature is just so lapidary. It's so monumental. It's so public. Whereas Greek literature speaks to us in private. So, yes, it's hard to approach the Greeks in some ways. In other ways, it's easier. As we start to move towards closing statements,

I'd be fascinated to know what you both think, the respective lesson today of ancient Rome versus ancient Athens is for the world as we have received it now. And maybe Ian, I could start with you. Obviously, there's a message about democracy, but there's other important messages that come out of that period in of ancient history of ancient Greece that I'm sure you think are very relevant and that we should try to keep alive in our minds as we ponder the challenges of 21st century life.

Yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot of things that we could look at. But I think the democracy one that you mention is one that really leaps out at me. The Athenians and some of the other Greek city states, of course, famous for inventing these male democracies where all men who are freeborn, regardless of wealth or education or anything else, have technically an equal vote in the decision-making process. And some of them are very, very passionately committed to the ideals of democracy. An extraordinary level of energy goes into this. one of the really striking things about it is how abruptly and how quickly it goes away. Down to about 400 BC, it was sort of unthinkable that anybody in the city-state of Athens could claim that they were somehow greater than anyone else around there.

They stood above the rest of the community. By the late 4th century BC, that has just gone away. And I think Philip and Alexander of Macedon largely to have a lot to do with why this happens. By conquering the Persian Empire, Alexander is able to persuade a lot of people that what he's done is so superhuman, that viewing him as a god is the only plausible interpretation. When he publicly says this, a lot of Greeks laugh at him, actually. But within 15 years of his dying, Athenians are actually starting to honor military men as gods. This is one guy, Dmitrius the besieger. If there's a prize for the most colorful ancient Greek, I think Dmitrius might actually win that one.

But he goes to Athens, he takes over the city of Athens, and people start honoring him like a god. They name months after him. They say we no longer need to go to Delphi to consult the Oracle, because we can just ask Demetrius. He knows what the gods want. And within another 15, 20 years of that, people are actually starting to worship kings as gods on a regular basis. And this, to me, suggests a big lesson, that things that we take for granted as the bedrock of life can change very, very abruptly. And democracy rests on the idea that, no one person knows so much that we should entrust all the important decisions to that one person. And everybody knows enough that they should contribute to this discussion.

That idea goes out of the window in the space of 30 years in ancient Greece, when a few men like Alexander do things that seemed impossible before. And that is something to think about. Excellent. And similar question for you, Barry. What is the lesson, either proactive or cautionary that Rome, presents to us today? Well, in terms of cautionary lessons, I mean, that's easy. The Romans, like the Greeks, before them, committed genocide. So that is certainly one area in which we do not

want to follow the Romans. But the thing about the Romans that I find so useful in thinking about is how do you adapt to change? Because change comes. There's no way to prevent change from coming. And it seems to me that part of the mark of a success of a civilization, that it's willing to bring in the new without tossing out what is valuable about the old. And the Romans were just so brilliant about that, you know, changing Roman civilization, changing their religion, changing the seat of government. Rome itself no longer became the center of government. and yet maintaining Roman literature, maintaining Roman law, maintaining Roman military customs, and bringing new people in and still calling themselves Romans,

even though there was virtually no one from the old citizenry of Rome or the Roman nobility who is running Rome any longer, running the Roman Empire any longer, that I think is a real lesson for us and something that we can take to heart today, that we can absorb today and learn from today. You know, you've studied a lot of the history of global civilizations and their Evan Fall, you know, as we find ourselves in a moment right now of a kind of multi-civilizational planets, a moment of increasing competition, geopolitical competition between the United States and China. And China itself, I'll suppose this, you can contradict me, but, you know, completely in a sense severed culturally in terms of, of its institutions and thinking from the Greco-Roman tradition.

What is your advice? Or how do we think about these traditions, and specifically ancient Greece, in the context of how we might relate with China in the 21st century? Yeah, that's an interesting question. And one of the themes it has been coming up is the grounding of East and West in ancient traditions. that, as I'm sure you know, for a long time, under Chairman Mao and after him, for a long time, Confucianism was an absolute no-no in China.

During the Cultural Revolution in the early 60s, one of the things that got condemned is what they called the four olds, old ways of thinking, old traditions, old habits, the four, no that old as well. But these were all condemned, and temples of Confucius were smashed up, and ancient graves were dug up, and people who were discovered, people like Barry and myself, in fact, discovered how books are about, antiquity in their homes. They were dragged out and beaten and publicly humiliated. So this is all completely a bad thing. But now in the age of Xi Jinping, the Chinese are officially rediscovering the Confucian past and saying that this more than communism, this is what is special about us, is ancient Confucian traditions. And of course, in the West, we have a much longer history of saying, you know, what's special about us is the Greco-Roman traditions that we've inherited from the distant past that have made us just think about the world in a completely

different way from people in East Asia. And I think this is the first time in, suddenly in 250 years when the major great power conflicts going on in the world have not been between societies that are entirely Western themselves, drawing on the same kind of tradition. So, World War II, the Germans and British Americans, all look back to a lot of the same founding fathers. Even Soviet Union looks back to a lot of stuff from antiquity. This is the first time in a very, very long time that that hasn't been the case. And I can't say that I know how it's going to play out, but it's going to be really interesting to see what happens to the ways we think about antiquity.

And, Barry, what would ancient Rome's lesson for modern-day America be in terms of the rise of of China. As you say, ancient Rome was so adept at adaptation, at assimilation. How would, I don't know, Augustus look at the challenge facing America today, this challenge across the board, technological, military, soft power that China is beginning to marshal against the United States? Great question. I think that Augustus would say there are things you can change and things you can. and you need to know when to confront powers abroad and when to put your own house in order. So Augustus famously decided not to pursue the war with the Parthians, a later version of the Persian Empire, centered in what is today Iran.

Unlike Julius Caesar or Mark Anthony, he decided that actually he wanted to declare peace with them and find a way to a compromise solution. He knew that it would be a very, very difficult war to win, and he'd seen how Antony had failed there. Caesar never even got to the war zone. Instead, he wanted to work on rebuilding Rome and healing Rome after a long period of civil war. It is true that Augustus foolishly tried to conquer Germany,

and that did not work out too well for him. So I think that the older Augustus would have even been more focused on saying, okay, well, there's some foreign powers that you can confirm. front, but you have to do so in a wise manner in a way of recognizing what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. But very, very important to know who you are and to build up your own society and to where necessary to reform your own society and strengthen your own society before you can even think of a confrontation abroad. So I think that would be what Augustus would say. An important lesson. And Ian, just finally, you know, this is a moment in academic

where certain parts of the humanities, and particularly the humanities as they relate to ancient Greece and Rome, are coming under some concerted attack in terms of their perceived relevancy, to the extent that they are by some critics characterized as the pillars or foundations of a series of embedded beliefs in Western culture that are responsible for the subjugation. of minorities for the creation of, you know, systemic structures of power that suppress and dispossess other groups. What is your feeling about the future of our engagement with this kind of collective wisdom of these chapters in our past? Are you optimistic that they're going to endure through this kind of current intellectual and kind of academic storm? that is rocking many of our institutions of higher learning.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, a lot of Greeks believed a lot of really nasty things. Barry has already mentioned Greeks like Romans committed genocide. Greeks like Romans practice very large-scale slavery. The slavery wasn't based on race. They didn't seem to have particularly strong feelings about race. But they still practice slavery on a massive scale. Now, the main reason, though, I think that Greeks and Romanians, moments, sort of so much in disapproval in many quarters of academia at the moment.

It's largely because of the success that humanists had in the 19th century, with promoting the Greeks and Romans as the foundation for everything important and good about Western civilization. And what they tended to focus on in the 19th century were, of course, things that appealed and seemed important to white men in the 19th century. And having set up this sort of academic structures organized around these 19th century white male ideas. It was very hard for classicists to shake that stuff off and move with the times, basically, engage with what people are interested in now. And there's nothing particularly racist or oppressive or sexist or anything else about the Greeks or the Romans. In most ways, they are kind of like all pre-modern civilizations

in their having attitudes that we don't approve of, because they're not us. So of course they're have attitudes we don't approve of. I think it's more a question of that when people outside the profession think about the way ancient Greece and Rome is taught, what they tend to think about is these sort of 19th century ideas. So I'm actually pretty optimistic. I think the sort of dislike that shrouds the field at the moment, this is going to go away in the fullness of time. This is going to go away. And the Greeks and the Romans, they've been like they're good to think with. There are a place you can go to think through the issues that are important in your own world and see how they played out in an entirely different cultural setting.

And that, I think, is just going to go on and on. Thank you, Ian. Barry, would you like to comment on that? I just want to echo what Ian was saying. I agree with him. And let me take an example from China, which we mentioned earlier. As Ian said, Chairman Mao launched a campaign against the Chinese. classics. But as you know, he himself had a library of Chinese classics. And he was particularly

a student of Sunza. And Sunza's art of war had a great influence on Mao's own writings about war, and particularly his classic on guerrilla warfare. The point is, I think that people need classics. I think people need roots. And the Greeks and Romans were so brilliant and so important, have so much to offer. I don't think people are going to give them up. I think they'll look at them in different ways than they did in the 19th century, and that's just great that they're going to do that. Excellent, Barry. Ian, if you could indulge me, I'd like to ask you to go first with your closing statement. Our debate to be a, you've been arguing in favor of the motion that ancient Greece, not Rome, is more relevant to understanding Western civilization today in the 21st century.

Could I have your closing remarks? First of all, let me just say, again, what fun this has been. And thank you again. for inviting me here today. To close, what I want to do is go back to something Barry was saying earlier, which I'm sure extremely skillfully, nobody noticed this, I'm sure, but I avoided responding to earlier

because I hadn't thought of what I was going to say to it. But now I have. And that was the point he made a number of times about the Roman's ability to adapt and adopt, Christianity, opening up their citizenship, extraordinarily impressive things, which the classical Athenians of the 5th and 4th century were frankly terrible.

at doing this. They absolutely refuse to open up their citizenship to other people with disastrous results for them. It went really, really badly. But, and this is a way now in which I think we can say about the Greeks rather like, some of the things that Barry was saying about the Romans, they

then, in the third century BC, proved themselves to be remarkably able to look around them and start adapting things from other places and the Romans in particular and saying, look, we see what they're doing, it really works. And so at the end of the third century BC, we've got a couple of remarkable inscriptions from the King Philip V of Macedon,

written orders given to a Greek city. He's trying to take over the city. And he says to the people in the city, you know, look at those clever Romans. Why don't you do like the Romans? Why don't you open up your citizenship and start admitting other Greeks to be citizens of the city of Larissa? And they don't want to do that. They kind of ignore him. But already by that point, like a decade earlier, the Athenians have started selling off their citizenship, opening up their citizenship to other people because they see their citizen numbers dwindling and dwindling, and they want to be more like the Romans.

They're able to change things, they're able to adopt, I think, just as effectively as the Romans. Now, the problem is, of course, we don't know whether, in the fullness of time, the Athenians might have adapted and adopted all kinds of Roman techniques and had this great Athenian revival in the last few centuries BC. We don't know whether that would have happened because, of course, the Romans come in and conquer them.

And so that stops that, whole thing dead, because that is ultimately, that's what Romans do. They conquer people. And there's this great line, which I'm sure everybody is very familiar with, from the poet Horace. He says, when the Romans come in and conquer the Greeks, captured Greece, then captured her savage conqueror.

The Romans conquer people, And that's what leads to the Greeks having the impact that they ultimately do on Western civilization. Well said, Ian. Okay, Barry, we're going to give you the last word in our debate today, be it resolved. Athens, not Rome, has had the bigger impact on Western civilization. You're arguing against the motion. Wrap this debate up for us. First, I too want to thank you very much, Roger, for this opportunity to discuss such important issues and such fascinating company.

I'll end with two thoughts. The first is that one of the things about the Romans that we often forget about is concrete. It may seem very humble and very mundane, but in the hands of the Romans, it was architectural pixie dust. It gave us domes as symbols of power, symbols of glory, and even symbol of the divine that I think says so much about what the Romans reached and where they went to. Let me also end with the people who we call the Byzantines. These were the Greeks of what we call the Byzantine Empire, but they never call themselves the Byzantines. They call themselves the Romans to their dying day. And when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453,

the conqueror Mechmidt, the conqueror called himself the Sultan of Rome. I think that the Greek-speaking Byzantines recognized the Roman legacy and recognized, as Ian said, that they could learn from the Romans, they could adapt from the Romans. These great adapters, the Romans, they were something that even the Greeks could learn from. So I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you. Thank you, Barry. And thank you, Ian. This has just been such a lovely repose break from the 24-hour media news cycle that we're all living through.

through in this pandemic and for reasons other than COVID-19. But the opportunity to spend this period of time with you to think big thoughts about ancient civilizations, Rome, Athens, their influence and effects on us today. And possibly their advice, the wisdom that they're passing down to us has just been a privilege indeed. So thank you so much on behalf of the Monk Debates community for coming on and having this debate with each other. You're welcome.

Yeah, thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Ian and Barry. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion, to geopolitics, to the future of human progress,

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