TRIGGERnometry - The Great Leaders of Antiquity Explained in 60 Minutes - Barry Strauss

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Barry Strauss is an American historian and an expert on ancient military history. He has written or edited numerous books which have been translated into nineteen languages. In this interview Konstantin and Francis discuss the themes of his book, ‘Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership’ - available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439164495/ Barry's latest book, The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium: https://www.amazon.com//dp/B08LDXYWYF/ Barry’s other books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0045ANWJM/allbooks/ SPONSOR: Try Factor today and get 50% off by using code: TRIGGER50 at https://factormeals.com SPONSORED BY: Manscaped. Get 20% off and free shipping when you use the code TRIGGER20 at https://www.manscaped.com/ Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexander wanted to and succeeded in conquering the Persian Empire, the greatest empire that the West had known to date. Hannibal wanted to defeat Rome, which he saw as a threat to his own country of Carthage. He failed, but in doing so, he had some very glorious moments. And finally there was Julius Caesar, who first conquered Gaul and became the leading man in the Roman Empire. No one had ever had as much power as he did for one brief moment before it all came crashing down. One of the things that occurs to me is these great historical... I mean, these people are maniacs. Barris Strauss, such a pleasure to have you on the show.

We sat down at a table next to each other at Hero Arc. I said, what do you do? You said, I'm a historian of ancient civilizations and military historian. And I was like, we have to get you on the show right now. Come on over. We dragged you in here. That's why we're here. We cannot wait.

One of your books particularly really piqued our interest, which is about the great leaders of antiquity. Yeah. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hannibal, etc. Let's get into it. Sure. What were the themes that sort of bound those people together? Was there common threads that run through their histories, their lives, and why are they such significant people in the history of the world?

Yeah. I mean, they were, all three of them were immensely ambitious and wanted nothing less than to be great conquerors. They belonged to what Abraham Lincoln would later call a tribe of the eagle. And the tribe of the eagle is, like Eagles, they're immensely impressive and powerful, but they're not always nice. And nobody would accuse these three guys of being nice. They waited through seas of blood in their attempt to conquer. Alexander wanted to, and succeeded in conquering the Persian Empire, the greatest empire that the West had known to date. Hannibal wanted to defeat Rome, which he saw as a threat to his own country of Carthage.

He failed. But in doing so, he had some very glorious moments. And finally, there was Julius Caesar, who first conquered Gaul and changed the face of history, and then saw himself pitted in a war against the Roman Senate and defeated all of them as well and became the leading man in the Roman Empire. No one had ever had as much power as he did for one brief moment before. all came crashing down. That's right. And was it really just about these guys' egos or were the economic and other pro-CCs that made them, you know, want to be conquerors, made them want to expand their empires? Or was it really just a big, dig-waving competition? Well, ego was a very big part of it, but it wasn't just about the ego in all three cases. So Alexander could have seen

Persia as a threat to Greek civilization, and he saw himself as the avatar of the Greek, somebody who was going to spread this civilization and create a new empire. So there was that. He had been a student of no less a person than Aristotle, so he had a sense of grandeur and a sense of mission. Hannibal saw himself as on a defensive mission to protect this country from Rome, but also, and most important for him was revenge. His father had been defeated by Rome, or rather his father had been the last Carthaginian general standing who had not been defeated by Roman in an earlier war. And now Hannibal wanted to avenge his father who had since died and put the Romans in their place, protect Carthage forever. Caesar, like any ambitious Roman wanted to add to the empire,

so there was that for his country. He might have seen Gaul as a threat, although it really hadn't been much for threat for several generations. The Gaulsat is, he also was, by the standards of Roman politics, a populist, and he wanted to use his wealth for the good of the Roman people. But make no mistake about it, all three of these men had huge egos, and that was always a part of what they did. Do you think a lot of them believed in their own sense of the divine destiny, that they were destined to be rulers of the world? Was that partly what drove them as well? Yes, absolutely in the case of Alexander. You know, Alexander's mother was a woman named Olympius, who told him that his father,

his alleged father, Philip II, wasn't his real father. He had been the product of a union with a snake, who was Zeus. And later on, he believed that he was the son of Zeus, that he was nothing less than divine in his inspiration. And many people believe that as well, because how else could he possibly have conquered this great empire? Hannibal did not believe he was divine. but he thought that he had the gods on his side. Before setting off on his expedition against Rome, he left from southern Spain. He went to the temple of Hercules, who the Carthaginians called Melchart, which is in what is now the city of Cadiz on Spain.

It's on the Atlantic Ocean. And the thought was that only Hercules could have dealt with someplace so terrifying is the Atlantic, because these were Mediterranean folks. And then when he invaded Italy, he made a big show of the fact that he had to be a lot of the fact that he had. Hercules on his side. And the Romans felt they had to do something with the Hercules gap. They had to create altars to Hercules to counter Hannibal. Caesar of the three was, I think, the most skeptical. He was a philosopher. I don't think he had the gods on his side so much. But the Roman Senate, either to flatter him or to insult him, give him a difficult political position, voted to name him a god to make him one of the gods of Rome. And I can only imagine Caesar having somewhat amused attitude about that.

I was in Rome a few years ago, and I went to Caesar's grave in Rome. Yes. And there is an eternal flame that still burns for Caesar. And it just blew me away. This man who lived thousands of years ago, there is still an eternal flame, and people still laid flowers at his grave. Amazing. I know.

there's an Italian scholar who wrote a book about Caesar called Julius Caesar, Caesar the Democratic dictator. And so there is this notion that Caesar is a man of people, he wasn't a man of people, but that he represented the people, that he was a populist. There are those who see him that way and think that he sincerely believed in the cause of the Roman people. There are others who, let's say, well, maybe, but he believed in himself above all. And he didn't shrink from starting a civil war to defend himself in his position. And I don't know about Alexander the Great, but the other two met pretty grisly ends. And it seems that when you talk about these type of great leaders, it's like tragic characters

in the great plays, if you think about, in Greek tragedy. Yeah. So what were their flaws? What did they have that eventually led to their own demise? Well, I think all three of them shared an inability to know when to stop. And that's certainly true in the case of Alexander, who after having conquered the Persian Empire, said, I'm bored with governing. This is not what I want to do. And he was preparing to start a new war against Arabia when he died in June of the year 323 BCE.

How did he die? Well, that is the interesting question. So the ancient sources say that he died of a fever, but they also say, maybe. It's also possible that he was poisoned by those around him. Because many people had come to the conclusion that Alexander was mad, that he had gone insane, that only a lunatic would want to keep fighting this way. He said that after Arabia, next was Carthage. And after Carthage, he was going to go after Rome.

The guy seemed as if there was no offbutt. He just wanted to keep fighting. Whereas most of his soldiers said, we're rich now. We want to kick back and enjoy life. So there is a minority opinion in the ancient sources. It's not a modern theory that's a, well, you know, you might have been poisoned. And I think there's a real possibility. That's very interesting.

Barry, one thing that strikes me is we haven't actually told anyone listening or watching this what these men did. Sure. So then that is entirely our fault, not yours. So could we maybe get a kind of couple of minutes about each of them, what they did, who they were? where they started because not all of these men started with great power and privilege at the beginning of their lives. So Alexander comes first chronologically. He was born in the year 356 BCE and died in 323. He was born to privilege. His father was the king of Macedon, Philip II, who was the most consequential king this country had ever had. He did nothing less than create a modern state, a modern, innovative army, revolutionary army, and then conquered all the Greek city states and began,

what he thought would be his life's work to conquer the Persian Empire. He'd started the invasion, sent an advance force when Philip is assassinated, and young Alexander at the age of 20 is now the king of Macedon. His enemies both at home and abroad thought he'd be a pushover, but they didn't understand the guy was a military and political genius and that he was made of iron. Can I just interrupt that? How does a man at 20 become a military genius?

That is a really good question. First of all, he had been trained by his father, who was absolutely a brilliant, brilliant military commander. Secondly, he'd been trained by Aristotle, who was his tutor. Third, the guy really just was very, very intelligent. Fourth, his mother had convinced him that he was a god, and so he thought he had this destiny. In fact, there's a theory that his mother's behind the assassination of his father, Philip, because Philip had moved on to many other wives, and he had a wife who had just given birth to a son, who many thought would be the real heir.

But the other thing is actually, and your question is really good one, one of the reasons Alexander did so well is that he was humble enough and smart enough to realize he didn't know everything. And so he kept around some of his father's advisors, some of his father's top generals, and he knew when to listen to them when it's absolutely necessary. After finally conquering most of the Persian Empire, he has them assassinate. He gets rid of them. But he knows he needs them for a while, so he keeps them around.

Why did he assassinate them? Because he thought they had sons who were plotting against him. And that's what he, that was his, that's the reason he gave. He might have been right. They may have been plotting against him. Because the Macedonian nobility, the Borgias have nothing on these people. They were assassinating each other again and again again. That was their national sport.

So it's not surprising. Okay. So how old was Alexander when he dies? How old is he when he dies? He just before he turns 33. I'm sort of feeling a bit inferior Okay, so that's him. Then Julius Caesar or Hannibal?

Hannibal is next. So Hannibal's born in 247, so about a century later, and he dies around 183. This is all BC, BCE. Hannibal's also the son of a great general. His father's name is Hamilcar Barka, which is Hamilcar, the lightning bolt. It's terrific general. He's commanding the Carthaginian forces in Sicily. And Rome and Carthage is fighting this about 25-year-long war for control of Sicily.

Carthage, Hamilcarus never defeated on land, but the Roman Navy defeats the Carthaginian Navy at sea. Carthage has to surrender, give up Sicily. And then the Romans are not very helpful when Carthage's mercenaries revolt. And Hamilcar is in the fight of his life to save his country from the mercenaries. He defeats them. Then he gets the idea to go and start a new empire in. southern Spain, which is rich in mineral resources and warriors who can fight for Carthage. And he is fighting there when he is killed in a skirmish. He brings with him his young sons.

Hannibal is the oldest. Allegedly when Hannibal is eight, the father makes him swear on an altar, eternal vengeance against Rome. So Hannibal grows up and he eventually becomes the leader of the Carthaginian army in Spain. The Romans are getting wind of the fact. that Hannibal is expanding. Hannibal attacks a Roman ally, sort of an ally, a semi-ally, and the Romans send an ultimatum to Hannibal and the Carthaginian saying, stop it, you know, admit that we are superior and we'll call the shots. And Hannibal says, no way, we want war.

Because he is truly, of all three of them, no one is better at war than Hannibal. The overused term military genius applies to few people in the way that it does to Hannibal. And how does he become a genius? Because he's young as well when he becomes. He's not as young as Alexander, you know, but his father was the greatest general of his age. And his father raised him to fight. When his father dies, he doesn't immediately take over. I think it's his brother-in-law. Some other member of the extended family takes over and then he's assassinated. So Haddable has a number of years to learn the art of war. But as with, you know, all things, it's part learning and it's part intuition. And it's part natural talent and ambition. So he's got. all of those. Also, Carthage was a place where the Greek experts in the art of war, and Greece had was really where the fancy dancers of war came from. They had taught the Carthaginians how to fight. The Romans were more sloggers than maneuver warfare, but Hannibal was an expert at maneuver warfare.

That's his thing. So he goes on this long march, this 900-mile-long march from southern Spain all the way across the Pyrenees, across the Rhone River, across the Alps into northern Italy, with his 37 Elements, one of the great epics of history, how Anable pulls us off, and then he immediately starts wiping the floor with the Romans, because he knows this new way of war that the Romans have never seen before. You know, the Romans are like an American football team that only has one play, which is to take the ball and run up the middle. And Hannibal is executing all these fancy plays. And he destroys Roman army after Roman army after Roman army. He has a strategy. His strategy is to get the allies of Italy to defect from Rome and to join him. How did she do that?

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. He is a very fast talker. When he defeats the Romans and Roman armies would consist of Roman citizens and allies, the Roman citizens become prisoners and some of them are sold to slaves, some are killed. The Allies, Hannibal says, you guys go home, you're Italians. We're here to free Italy.

Italy for the Italians. We're here to free you from the Romans. Remember, the Romans are only a small part of Italy. Most of Italy is made up of other peoples. Hannibal is very successful in the north of Italy and in the south of Italy, getting people to rebel against Rome. But he's not successful in the central part of Italy. That's the nut he doesn't know how to crack.

And so although he hands the Romans one of the two greatest defeats they would ever have, the defeat at the Battle of Can I, in August of 216, the Romans refused to surrender. And one of the reasons they refuse to surrender is they still have these allies in central Italy. And they provide the manpower pool that allows the Romans to fight and fight and fight. And Hannibal has a problem. He's figured out how to win battles, but he's not figured out how to win a war. What if you do, if the enemy you keep defeating, he says, we're not surrendering.

We're going to go on fighting. It's a little bit like Hitler's problem with Britain in World War II. When Hitler says, okay, beat you, time to surrender. And they say, no, we're not going to surrender. But Britain had territorial separation. Britain's an island, whereas Central Italy isn't. No, it's not an island, but these are fortified cities. They all have walls.

He can't sack them. He can't because Hannibal has a big problem. His problem is he doesn't like sieges. He's not good at them. They're boring to him. And in a siege in Spain, he's wounded in his leg by an enemy arrow. I think he never forgets this. He never puts in the effort to laying siege to these cities.

And that's a real problem. Wow. See, he literally lost a war because he didn't want to do sieges because he had a bad experience. I don't know if that's true. I wouldn't go that far. That's my five and dime second. But he never does these sieges. He never pulls them off. And, you know, after he wins the Battle of Cannae, one of his general says to him, we've won Hannibal. Let's march to Rome. The cavalry can be there in a few days, and the army will fall afterwards. And the Romans are terrified now. We've killed 50,000 Romans out of about 80,000 who fought. They're going to surrender. We're going to win. Some trader will open the gates. And Hannibal says, we can't do that, you know. Our army is too exhausted. We took casualties as well. By the time we get there, the Romans will be prepared for us. And the guy looks at him and says,

Hannibal, you know how to win a victory, but you don't know what to do with it. And we're told that years later, Hannibal said, he was right. If only I had figured out then to go against Rome. And what happens from there? So what happens from there is that Hannibal, you know, he now gets Rome's most important allies city called Capua to defect against Rome. You may never have heard of Capio, and there's a good reason for it, because when this war's over, the Romans make sure that you'll never hear of Capio. But Hannibal has southern Italy and northern Italy. He doesn't have central Italy. And the Romans have finally figured out that the way to fight Hannibal is not to fight Hannibal. They adopt, they appointed dictator named Fabius Maximus. And Fabius, it comes up with what we now

call the Fabian strategy. That is to say, a scorched earth strategy, her Rast the enemy, deny him food, because Hannibal didn't bring food with him, but don't actually fight him. So they're cutting around the edges of Hannibal. But Hannibal, they can't get him out of Italy. They understand that they're not going to win this war in Italy. They think they originally wanted to invade Carthage, but they couldn't do that because Hannibal was so disastrous to them in Italy. So instead, they invade Spain, where Carthage has this really important colony. That's the heart of its empire, aside from the North African parts. But the Carthaginian armies are too sophisticated and too good for the Romans. Unfortunately for Hannibal, one of the reasons

the Romans are so successful is they're really flexible, they're really adaptable. They're not like the Greeks who would say, you know, we have our philosophy, we have our way of doing things and we're not going to change. The Romans say, we're Romans, you know, we're pragmatists, we're going to do what works. So they violate their own constitution and they appoint a young man before the age of 35 to become their general. And he retrains the Roman army to fight like Hannibal. And he brings the Roman army to Spain. His name is Scipio, eventually Scipio Africanus because he defeats Carthage. And the first thing he does in a shock move is he takes the Carthaginian capital in Spain. It's called New Carthage, nowadays Cartagena in Spain.

And he takes it by surprising the defenders at a place they considered the wall, that no one could climb the wall because there was water there when the tide came in. I think it's probably not a tide. But there's some meteorological effect. He uses the right moment to attack, they're not prepared for him. And he takes the Carthaginian capital in Spain. He then proceeds to defeat the Carthaginian armies in battle because Hannibal's brothers, although they're very good. they're not up to Hannibal's standard. And so young Scipio has conquered Spain.

Hannibal's still in Italy. He had two brothers. One of them's killed. One of them survives. And the surviving brother comes to Italy, bringing an army. He may have had three brothers. Sorry, I don't quite remember. Anya, one of the brothers brings an army to Italy.

And he's there to relieve Hannibal. But unfortunately for him, the Romans have gotten better and better. And they have a lucky break. They capture his plan. A courier is carrying his plans. They capture his plans. And they manage to surprise him and they destroy the army of Hannibal's brother at the Battle of Mataras. They kill him. They behead him. And a fast rider goes to southern Italy where Hannibal was and tosses the brother's head over the wall of Hannibal's stockade. And Hannibal realizes this is not going to end well. So now the Romans, this, Skipio convinces the Roman Senate that what we need to do is invade North Africa. They really don't want to do it. They think it's too risky.

But talk about a member of the tribe of the eagle. Skipio really is that. So he does invade North Africa. And he forces Hannibal to leave Italy. Nothing the Romans have done up to then would have forced Hannibal to leave Italy. He could have stayed there for good. but this forces him back home. To make a long story short, Skipio is one good general, but he's also a very good diplomat. And the Carthaginians also dependent on allies, as the Romans did. Their most important ally was the Numidians, roughly today's Algerians. And what they brought to the table was they were the best light-armed horsemen in the world. They were tremendously good, fast cavalrymen. A staunch ally of Carthage, but Skipio manages to talk them out of it. It's a long, fascinating story involving a woman.

It's a great story, but we could spend the rest of the time talking about it. In any case, Scipio, you know, sets this up for a final battle against Hannibal. And believe it or not, before the battle, the two men meet, Hannibal goes to a meeting with Scipio. And it's one of the great dramatic moments in history. To have been a fly on the wall of that tent would have just been amazing to hear the two of them talk. It's one of my favorite moments. Would have been a hell of a podcast. Right.

Yeah, I would have been a hell of a podcast. And do we know what happened in that meeting at all? Well, we know that Scipio, Scipio was playing a double game. He was waiting for his Numidian allies to show up. And so he was stalling for time. And Hannibal played for it. Except, Hannibal fell for it, rather.

Except I think Hannibal, I think is really, really intelligent. I think Hannibal understands that his chances of losing this battle are pretty great. And Hannibal is already thinking to the day after, Okay, I lose the battle, then what? Do I want the Romans to come and ask for my head, which they might do? Or do I want the leading Roman general to think we're buddies? And that he can do business with me afterwards. So I think that's why Hannibal agreed to this meeting, even though he knew he was probably not going to get anything out of it. So they have the meeting. They start the battle. Hannibal is doing brilliant stuff with what he's got left. He doesn't have the great army he had before. And he's quite successful.

but the Numidian cavalry show up and they destroy the Carthaginian army and Hannibal has to flee. So that is the end of his attempt to conquer Rome, but Hannibal has, if we have time, is a little really interesting afterlife. So his friendship with Skipho really pays off. Scipio convinces the Senate to let Hannibal live and to let Hannibal be essentially the quasi-dictator of Carthage. Carthage is still a very prosperous city, and Hannibal puts Carthage back on its feet to pay the reparations the other Romans, but he puts it back on its feet too much. The Romans are afraid Carthage is going to come back again, so they drive him out. Hannibal and exile now goes to what is nowadays Turkey to become a military advisor to the king there, a man named Antiochus. and Hannibal is the strategist of his war against Rome.

He fails in the end, and ultimately the Romans corner poor Hannibal, and he commits suicide. He has poison in his ring. He takes the poison. It's outside of Istanbul today, and you can actually go to the place where Hannibal committed suicide, but you probably won't because almost nobody knows where it is. I know this seems like a very specific question. How quickly does this poison work? Is it instant?

Do we know? I don't know. No, we might know, but I don't know. I'm just curious because it's like you take the, if you've been cornered, they better work quick. Otherwise, you're just going to suffer for a long. That's a really good point. Yeah. Well, you know, the ancients were experts in pharmacology.

I'm sure Hannibal had access to an expert. We'll look it up. We'll look it up. All right. Barry, I was going to ask you something, which is you've described these three men as geniuses. Yes. Of course, that seems entirely accurate. Why haven't you described Skipio as a genius?

Oh, I could describe Skipio as a genius as well, but I believe in trinities. So I do folks with three. Barry's Catholic then. So, and that is amazing. And now let's move on to Caesar. Yes. So Caesar, what was his story? So Caesar, unlike any of these other three, isn't raised by a famous father.

He comes from the Roman nobility, but as a family. that's a bit down on its luck. He's raised in Rome. His mother, O'Reilly Akata, was always a very big influence on his life, and she lives until he's well advanced in years. His father dies. We think of a stroke when he's fairly young. But Caesar is immensely ambitious, and like any ambitious young Roman noble, he goes into the military. That was what they're expected to do. And already at the age of 18, he's a military hero. He saves a Roman soldier's life in the Cesar. of the city of Middolini in on a Greek island. And he is given a crown. He's given a wreath of glory. And he's so important now that Roman senators have to stand up and when he enters the room,

which could go to the head of an 18-year-old and kind of pisses off a bunch of Roman senators who think, who is this kid. Caesar's the guy who's, when you meet him, he's always looking over your shoulder to see who can help him further. He is. ambition defined, white-hot ambition. And he wants nothing but to restore his family's glory and to rise to the top of the Roman world. His uncle by marriage was Marius, as in Marius and Sulla. Marius was a popularis, which I would translate as populace, but some of my fellow scholars think, they weren't populace, but they kind of were a populace, even though they themselves were not men of the people. They were very, very wealthy, but we can see even nowadays we have

populace are not men of the people. And Caesar, in a period in which Roman politics was always divided between the men of the people and the men of the few, the oligarchs and the populace, he was always on the side of the populace. He wanted to rise to the highest political office in Rome to become the consul and then to have a military command which will allow him to win glory. supposedly when he's in his 30s he has a relatively minor command in Spain and he sees a statute of Alexander the Great and supposedly he starts crying. Alexander was dead when he was at my age and he'd already conquered the world. What have I done? So Caesar has it all. He's a great general. He's a great speaker. He is a great political manipulator. And he's also a great writer. I mean, he writes great literature, the Gallic Wars and the Civil Wars. They're hard to translate, so it's hard to get it in English. But they really are quite something. He wrote other works as well, which no longer survive. And as a behind the scenes manipulator, he creates a conspiracy with two other leading politicians, more prominent than him. Crassus, who's the richest man in Rome, and Pompey, who's the most successful general to date. They're going to do a deal. Caesar's the guy who can make it happen. He's the dealmaker. They each get something. Caesar gets to be consul.

Pompey gets his the steps that he's taken in the East, he gets them approved by the Senate, and he gets his men settled on land in Italy, his veterans, and Krasis gets a command to fight of war against Aparthia, Iran, basically,

in the East. Krasis fails, and he's killed in battle. Pompi gets what he wants, but he is Caesar's son-in-law. He's married to Caesar's one and only legitimate child, his daughter, but she dies in childbirth

and Crassus is increasingly jealous of Caesar excuse me Pompey's increasingly jealous of Caesar Sorry, I'm confused She dies in childbirth As in, but she's not the child Sorry, I was like, he was married to a baby? No, Pompey's older, a few years older than Caesar Sorry, I was being stupid.

No, no at all. He marries Caesar's daughter So he is technically Caesar's son-in-law The Romans like the mafia Did these kind of marriages all the time To seal political deals Right And in the meantime, Caesar gets what he really wanted, command of Gaul, to start a war in Gaul and conquer all of Gaul,

which is basically France and Belgium. And just for good measure, he crosses the Rhine and invades Germany. And then he crosses the Channel and invades England, which to the Romans, was the equivalent of going to Mars or the moon. Wow, the Atlantic Ocean. The English Channel is so scary, but he does it. Pompy's getting more and more jealous at this guy. You know, I thought I was the greatest general in Rome. Who's this guy? He thinks is the greatest general. So when Julia, Caesar's daughter dies in childbirth, and Caesar says, don't worry, I got a niece. I'll marry to my niece. Pompey says, I don't think so. And Pompey now moves to the other side and the other faction. After Caesar conquers Gaul, he wants to come back to Rome and have a second slot as

consul, be respected as the leading man in Rome, pass some laws that will help his the poor people of Rome and settle his veterans. But he has made huge enemies, very powerful enemies. Anyone in Rome who considers himself a conservative of any sort at this point thinks that Caesar is a threat to their way of life. Why? That is a good question. There's two theories of scholars. One is that they were died in the wall per blind fools who didn't understand that Rome needed to change. They thought they could turn the hourglass back and keep Rome the way it had always been. Rome had acquired an empire of 50 million people at a minimum, but it was governed by a few families in the city of Rome. This was crazy. They had to bring in the outsiders. Both Pompey and Caesar

knew that, but the old-fashioned senators didn't. There is a second theory, and also the old-fashioned senators hated the Roman people, and they didn't want to see them get more power. But there's a second theory that says, well, that's all well and good, but the truth is that Caesar was an egomaniac who wanted to dominate Rome as no one had ever done before. I actually think both theories are right. I think that these senators really didn't understand that Rome needed to change. They didn't like the Roman people, but Caesar was no pussycat. Caesar wanted to enjoy a kind of the Romans made a distinction between power and authority. Power's legal powers written in stone. authority is the informal power.

They called it octaritas. And there's no doubt in my mind that Caesar wanted to have the kind of octaritas that would make him the greatest mafia dawn of all time. After all, he settles for nothing less than Cleopatra as his woman. And she bears his son, almost certainly bears his son. They see this. He's not with Cleopatra yet, but they see him as a threat to their way of life. And so they demand, they fire him. and say, step down, come back to Rome, stand trial for your crimes.

And Caesar says, I don't think so. I think I'm going to invade Italy instead and start a civil war. And he says, I'm doing this for two reasons. One is to defend the Roman people because the tribunes of the plebs, who are in technically defends the Roman people in the Constitution, they have been dissed by the Senate, which was true. They had been dissed by the Senate. But the second reason, he says, and to me this is vintage Caesar,

it's because my rank and standing is greater to me than my life itself. In Latin, my dignitas is greater to me, is dearer to me than life itself. And dignitas doesn't just mean dignity. It means my rank, my standing, my reputation. So for this he starts a civil war. It's a civil war that rages for four years. It ends up seeing his opponents, Pompey being murdered, Kato committing suicide, the other generals being killed in battle,

and Caesar winning it all, including Cleo. He is now the dictator for life, dictator in perpetuity. There's never been anyone like this in Rome before. And it's that when a conspiracy of senators decides, no moss. We've got to stop this guy. And do they say that because he's essentially usurped all the power that there was? And they're like, this guy's out of control. Yes.

By now he is really out of control. And even some of his former supporters say, wait a minute, we didn't sign up for this. You know, we didn't sign up for this guy behaving like a Mafia Don and giving the choices jobs to his family members. We didn't sign up for this guy basically abolishing elections. He didn't technically abolish them, but de facto abolish them. And the Romans really cared about elections. So, and they didn't like the idea that he was dictator in perpetuity. What does this mean?

No Romans never had. Dictators supposed to be for six months only. And they didn't like the idea that the Senate had declared him to be a god. So for all, and they didn't like the idea that his, he had a Roman wife, but his mistress, who by the way, he kept in a palace across the tiber. Caesar's palace, we'll call it. Now, Caesar's villa really was. That's where Cleopatra was the time of his assassination, hanging out in Rome. And she was probably pregnant with his second child, but she has a miscarriage. So there are just a lot of people in Rome who've had it with this guy. That makes sense. And Barry, it's so interesting to me because I've never, we've never interviewed a historian about these individuals in this way. I'm just, this is a brilliant conversation. I was so happy to have you on. It's fantastic. One of the things that occurs to me is these great stories, I mean, these people are maniacs.

In a way, yeah. I mean, if you had a guy now who came along and was like, look, I want to be great, therefore let's go and invade France. I mean, France is, yeah, invade France. I've got no problem in France. But invade some other country, kill loads of people so that I can raise my status in the hierarchy of my society. We'd say that guy's a lunatic. Lock him up. But it's not only that, but it is that. But look at some other modern examples. Look at Abraham Lincoln. He has a choice. He can make peace with the South and say, well, at least nobody died. Or he can fight the war however it takes. And by the time the war is over, 600,000 people are, 600,000 Americans of both sides are dead. The South is in ruins.

And finally, the last casualty is Lincoln himself. Some people might say, that's crazy. Or Churchill. You know, Britain could have made peace. Thank God they didn't. But Churchill basically said, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, you know. And if Britain's going to be in ruins and a lot of British people die, that's what we have to do to save our way of life. But that's different, isn't it? That's different because both Lincoln and Churchill, they're also fighting for an idea.

Well, whereas here it seems much more about personal ego, power. Maybe because I've made it that way. But no, you're right. There is a difference because, but it's also from our point of view, Caesar would have said, I am fighting for the Roman Empire. We Romans believe that we are destined to govern the world. As his successor, Augusta says, Empire Without End. That comes from Breastor. Virgil's the Aeneid. And that's what Romans thought. And Caesar would also have said, the Gauls have threatened Italy's security in the past, and that will never happen again. They hadn't threatened Italy's security for 60 years, but never mind. And also Caesar believed, and I'm the only one who stands up for the common person in Rome. So there's that, too. But you're absolutely right. In all three of these cases, there's ego. Hannibal thinks he's defending his country and getting revenge. Alexander thinks he's defeating the Persian threat, making Greece and Macedon the greatest power in the world and changing history and spreading civilization,

which in fact he did do. So, you know, it's not... Let me rephrase what I mean. If we found out that Rishi Sunak, or Joe Biden, are sitting in their offices in the Oval Office and the number 10 down in street. Yes. And they're saying, well, you know, my mother told me that I am born of a snake that is God and therefore I am entitled to conquer the world. Yes.

We'd get the mental hospital out there urgently to deal with them. I can imagine Trump's saying that. It is possible, which I think it's fair to say some people have criticized them for, to put it mildly. Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, is it fair to say that not only is it that these men are different, but the culture in which they operate is so different. that we would probably struggle to relate to it at this point. Yes and no. Yes and no. I mean, we have politicians today who might say, I really think I'm here for a reason. God put me here for a reason. And my reason is to help the people.

The reason is to defend my country. We could imagine a politician saying that. So, I mean, these countries with different religions. Well, I mean, Vladimir Putin almost certainly thinks in this world. Sure. And I mean, there were other Greeks at the time who couldn't stand what Alexander said. Alexander later in his life passes decree saying, I need to be worshipped as a god. I insist that everyone worships me as a god. And the various Greek city states, you know,

couldn't agree fast enough to do this except Sparta. Sparta says, if Alexander wants to be worship as a god, let them. I mean, the Spartans were, they were pretty badass, weren't they? They were pretty badass, yeah. Yeah, you've got to have a really strong sense of identity to stand up to Alexander the Great. No, they were happy in this instance. They went along with it, right?

No. No. No, no, no, sorry. I mean, you know, the idea was, if that's what he wants, go ahead. More like, go ahead and make my day. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. They basically gave him the finger. Oh, I see, I misunderstood.

They were giving him the finger. Thank you. You put it so well. So, and we'll move back to season in a second. So what actually happened with the Spartans when they gave him the metaphorical finger? Nothing. Nothing happened. I mean, for one thing, Alexander was far away, he was in Iraq.

For another thing, nobody really cared about Sparta that much anymore. And besides which, it would have been bad for business for the Macedonians to have destroyed Sparta, just as it was bad for business for them to destroy Athens. Athens rebelled twice. They didn't destroy it. They did destroy Thieves, which they could get away with because all of thieves's neighbors hated Thieves and wanted to see it destroyed. At this point, Sparta was no longer a great power. It was on the decline, and yet it had a lot of prestige for what it had done for the Greek world.

So they got away with him. And then Alexander died and his successor said other things to do, like fighting each other. So they didn't hear that much about Sparta. So moving back to Caesar then. So we're talking about essentially the end of Caesar's life. Yes. How did the conspiracy arise? How did the plotters get together and how did they execute it?

So the conspirators, there were three main conspirators, two who we know from Shakespeare, Brutus and Cassius. And there's a third one who Shakespeare just kind of disses really. His name is Decimus Brutus. He's a distant cousin of Brutus and Cassius. Brutus and Cassius had both fought against Caesar in the Civil War. And then after being defeated, had asked for a pardon for Caesar and he gave it to them. Decimus Brutus is different. He'd always fought for Caesar and with Caesar, both in Gaul.

and then in the Civil War. But he changes his mind, possibly because of his wife, who comes from an anti-Cesar family, and partly possibly because he sees that Caesar is moving on to new favorites. Caesar is planning to invade Iran. That is going to be his life's, cap his life's work, invade the Parthian Empire. But he's leaving Decimus Brutus at home. And so Decimus is pissed off about this. Brutus and cash.

Brutus is a philosopher. He is married to the daughter of Cato the Elder, who is Caesar's most vehement enemy. And Brutus really believes in the principles of the Roman Republic. Caches is more of a military man, less of a philosopher, but they both don't like the way that Caesar has gained power. And Decimus decides to go over to their side. So they gather together a group of, depending on who you believe, either 35 or 30, or 60-some-od senators, or 60-some-odd senators, let's say, to join this conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar. And they want to do it in a way. They want to do it themselves, first of all. They could have hired thugs to do it. They want to do it themselves to show that this is not just a garden-variety murder, but it's something for the sake of Rome. And they want to do it in a meeting of the Roman Senate, again, to make the point, we're not killing him out of peak or an ambition. We're doing it out of

idealism for the Roman Senate. They managed to keep it secret because Caesar doesn't really believe it. It's not as if he doesn't get rumors of conspiracies against him. The problem is what they call noise. He's getting rumors every single day of conspiracies against him. And so Caesar also thinks whatever. The other thing is Caesar's very arrogant. We've seen this a lot in history. Caesar thinks, who would be crazy enough to kill me? Rome has just gone through a four-year civil war and it was disastrous, huge casualties, huge destruction. If you kill me, Civil War II, the sequel is going to break out. Who would do that? I'm untouchable. And we see the result. It brings up an interesting question, branching out beyond these three figures, specifically,

Barry. You mentioned, and from the way you tell the stories, it seems certainly true that these guys really didn't know when to stop. They didn't know what to stop. They absolutely didn't know when to stop. Are there leaders of their magnitude and history who did? Yes. I'll give you a couple of examples. One is William the Conqueror. After conquering England, he says, that's nice. I think I'm going to administer this place. He didn't go on. So I suppose the difference there is he conquered a kingdom that he didn't have. He wasn't a king before, right? But he could have gone and tried to conquer more kingdoms. That's true. That's true. But yes, Alexander conquers the kingdom he didn't have before.

But wasn't he king of a kingdom already? Yes. Right, that's the difference. But William was the Duke of Normandy, which is no mean place. Yeah, it's a big, it's sure, it's a big place, but he's no king. So that's one, and he stays and governs. Anymore? Ataturk?

Yes. At a Turk, you know, Turkey's associated power. He said, that's enough. We're not going to do this anymore. Don't need any more. I mean, he wasn't a nice guy, but he does know when to stop. In a sense, George Washington, sorry, my British friends, but Washington could have become a king and he said no and he could have been president for more than two terms and he said no that's

that's enough so is it is it is it partly because these figures come later on in history therefore they don't have this idea that they have been ordained or by god or representing god or even being literally god um i don't know napoleon is later than than uh it's pretty late in history but he doesn't know when to stop yeah you can say that again Hitler's pretty recent, and he didn't know when to stop. You know, I think another person who knows when to stop is Franco. You know, also not a nice guy. But, you know, Hitler's saying, hey, come on, come on,

don't you want to join me in Mussolini in the war? And he says, I don't think so. No, no, no. We have a lot of problems in Spain. No, I think we'll be neutral. Imagine if Mussolini had stayed neutral in World War II. He would have survived, you know? And Italy would have been spared a lot of ruin.

So there are people. who know when to stop. They really are. And going back to the question of fatal flaws, was that their fatal flaw of these three great men, which is the inability to stop? Or was there something else as well? Oh, something else.

I mean, it's less true of Hannibal, though you can make a case for it, than it is of Caesar and Alexander. But they're so arrogant. They're just so arrogant. The idea that it's related to knowing when to stop, But the idea that we'd keep on going after what they had done or that Caesar thought that he was untouchable. Or if Alexander really was poisoned that he didn't see that coming either.

Alexander had actually murdered one of his leading generals in a fit of rage earlier on in his life. And that certainly impressed some of his generals were thinking the life expectancy in this job is not very great. So, I mean, they made enemies that they didn't need to make. for Caesar to think that he was untouchable. Before we wrap up, we've only got 10 more minutes or so before we go to questions from our locals. You're a military historian as well. And one of the things I was fascinated about when you were talking about how the Greeks, while the Romans were these kind of sloggers, perhaps not very skill tactically,

the Greeks came up with new ways of fighting. Yes. What was it? Was it technologically based? Was it intellectually based? Did they come up with tactics that were powerful? What was it? So, I mean, the Greeks, and it's really the Macedonian Greeks who come up with this, they create a combined arms military that uses the infantry and the cavalry working together.

And that is a very, very potent combination when you can do that. The Romans are really not good at that. The Macedonians, so Greek armies were pikemen, the armies of the city states. Shield and spear. Shield and spear. But they didn't, not a javelin, but a pike. You know, they come up to get the enemy and just hit and hit and hit. It was pretty simple.

But the Macedonians come up with a new system whereby, so the pike of the Greek hoplites was infantryman. It was nine feet long. The Macedonians come up with a new pike that's about 15 feet long. Wow. A nine foot long pike you can hold in one hand while you have a big body shield and you hold through a thong with your left hand. You can't hold a 15 foot spear in your hand. It's too heavy. You need both hands.

So the solution, and you can't have, you don't have a hand to hold, a body shield. If you put the body shield and thong around your neck, it's going to choke you. So the solution is to have a little shield. How do you do that? Well, the Macedonians are the hardest drinkers in Greece, so they go into battle having had Dutch courage, as it were, and a lot of Dutch courage. The other thing is that the Greeks in the city-states are citizens. If the generals that told them, you can't have so much protection anymore. they would have fired the generals.

Macedonians are subjects in a kingdom. The king has more power. And frankly, they're kind of hillbillies. And they're willing to take chances because they want to get rich in a way that Greek citizens weren't. They trained year-round. These were professional armies.

And the Roman armies weren't professional armies in the beginning either. That gave them an advantage and it allowed them to maneuver. To do things, for instance, like feigning a retreat, a very hard thing to do. And when you draw the enemy in, Fain and retreat with half your army, draw the enemy in, and then turn around and hit the enemy on two sides.

That's the kind of thing that these Greek armies could do. And then use the cavalry to disperse the enemy and then use the infantry as the hammer. That's the sort of thing. It's difficult to do. Hannibal could do that brilliantly. The Romans couldn't until they learned to beat him at his own game. And why couldn't they do that? Does it take some kind of signaling or command or training?

all it's culture i mean culture is in many ways the most important factor for any uh any military um you know um why do army national armies fight in the way they do it's the culture of the country i mean why do the russians think you should just send in men like cannon fodder and slog and slog and because that's the Russian way of war i mean it's just that's just the way that they do it uh why are some countries very good at cunning and special operations and others not. It's everything to do with culture. And just touching the culture that's always really interested me is a culture of the Spartans. Yes. I just, I remember as he's watched 300. Yeah, I've watched 300. And I've read the comic. But as a child, I was obsessed with ancient Greece and I was particularly obsessed with

Sparta. I remember people going, it was a bit weird, but he just sits and reads books about Sparta. But what made them such incredible warriors, Spartans? They were professionals. You know, they were professionals. They were the only professional military in Greece before the Macedonian before Philippine Alexander. Sparta was a society, was a pyramid. At the bottom were the helots. These were the serfs. At the middle were the neighbors. They could lead relatively ordinary lives, but they had to serve as Spartan Alexander. were needed. And at the top was a small group of full Spartan warriors, the so-called peers, 9,000 of them at the population height. All they did was trained for war. And they had a bizarre educational system.

They were taken from their parents at the age of seven, and they went to live in age-graded barracks, where their primary group was boys of the same age. And there they were taught how to fight. And they were also taught how to be tough, to live out in the wild, to steal, to kill, to do what you needed to do to survive. So they had the most professional and toughest soldiers in Greece. So that is one of the reason they're so strong. Also, their entire society is set up on a military basis. It's an austerity society. Ain't no, none of this culture stuff. The only songs they sing are military songs. The other thing is the role of the Spartan woman, which is a very big. part of it. Women in Sparta were meant to be wise mothers breeders and their job was to tell the men

to buck up the famous staying of the Spartan mother to her son when he goes off to battle with it or on it. Come back with your shield. Don't throw it away like a coward or come back dead on your shield. I'd rather have you dead than to have you alive without your shield. Spartan girls were the only The only girls in Greece to have a public education. They were trained to run the household when the men were away. But they were also trained in gymnastics. And they were trained in the nude. Greek boys were trained in the nude.

Nothing unusual about that. But only in Sparta were girls trained in the nude as well. And boys and girls would see each other in the nude in public. The idea was to get everybody really horny. So they would go off and make future Spartans. So it's a whole society. that's set up for war. It's really quite remarkable and horrible.

It sounds like the comic movie or whatever it is is actually not that inaccurate in terms of how they were trained. No, it's not that inaccurate. It's not that inaccurate, yeah. And it's very interesting as well, particularly brutal, the way they treated boys who weren't going to make it, or they didn't think what?

Well, so, I mean, the Spartans had this system that when a baby is born, a baby has to be inspected by a public inspector. And if they think the kid is sickly, you're not going to make it. They expose the child on a mountainside, where the baby will either die or somebody might take him and enslave the child. The Spartan was the only Greek state that did this by government initiative. But the other Greek states, a father had the authority to do this to his own child.

But it would be much more difficult for a father to sacrifice his own child. child, and it would for an impersonal state to do it. And why did they never, because if you look at them militarily and the fighters that they produced, they're still famous now, Spartan warriors. Even people may understand very little about the culture. That still resonates. Why is it they never went on to conquer the world? Because you don't win, it's a great question, but you don't win wars just by having good

soldiers. For one thing, the most important thing you need to have to be successful at war is money. and Spartan didn't have any money. Spartans abolished money. They had a barter system and they had ungainly iron spits because they thought money was corrupting. And that's the other side of the Spartans.

They really didn't want to conquer the world. They wanted to be pure. They wanted to be great, pure warriors. So they conquered the Peloponnesus, the southern peninsula of Greece and part of central Greece. They didn't want to go any further. The other problem is that reason is they have a security problem. All Greek city states have enslaved labor.

unfree labor. But Sparta is one of the only ones in which the unfree laborers are Greeks. In Athens, the unfree laborers are all kidnapped, enslaved, brought in from abroad, and then they're bred, enslaved. In Sparta, most of the people they've enslaved are their neighbors to the West, the Messenian Greeks, and the Spartans make the mistake of letting these people to continue to live in their national homeland. They want their country back, and they rebel against the Spartans whenever they can. The Spartans, young Spartan boys, as their initiation in the military, have to spend two years living in the countryside where the Hellots are and making their lives miserable. They have the right to kill them. Every year on New Year's Day, Sparta declares

war on the Helots and says, we can kill these people if necessary. So they have this security problem. But they have this notion of purity, which is not really what you want. If you want to conquer the world, you need to be a pragmatist. The Spartans are anything but pragmatic. Barry, I mean, I hope we get a chance to have you back about 50 times because we can talk about the Romans as an empire, the Greeks. There's so many other things we can talk about. And Carthage is one thing. Carth is amazing. We don't know about it because the Romans kind of make sure we don't know about it.

So if you have time at some point, we would love to have you back on the show. For now, we're going to head over to locals where we ask you questions from our audience. It's been an absolute pleasure. of the leaders you have written about or researched who would be perfect to lead the west out of the current situation and whom should today's leaders emulate