American Constitution knew that. And when they wrote it, they were reading the history of ancient Rome. There was a Roman Republic and it fell when it was taken over by Julius Caesar. So, they all knew that story. They were readingabout the Greek democracies, Athens, which also fell. And when they wrote the US Constitution, they were thinking, how
These big transitions usually take place over long periods of time. They're not, like, very sudden. So that's the big picture. Kings, republic, imperial monarchy. - The Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic , the Roman Empire. - Yes. - And then the West and East Roman Empire.
So here's a bit of a paradox. What we call the Roman Republic was the most imperialistic phase of Roman history. Like this is when the Romans did most of their conquering. What we call the empire is much less imperialistic in this way.
Like, what was the evolution of these ideas of honor and battle? I mean, maybe it's being overly romantic, but you can imagine the ideals of battle from the Roman Empire, from the Roman Republic and the early imperial period coming up north to Scandinavia. And we just know very little traces about that.
His look is certainly not youthful and happy. I think that Caesar in particular understood that the Roman Republic was simply incapable of dealing with the Roman Empire.
have actually been around for centuries. And the first one you get is actually in the late Roman Republic in the first century BC. So in order to have a social media environment, I think you need to have two things.
because civil war is such a slippery political and ideological concept. The sedimented history of-- conceptual history of civil war going back to the Roman Republic , layered over since then with these languages of law and social science, has given rise to complexity in our own current understanding of civil war, which I'd like to illustrate
But you also need the cost of copying them and delivering them to be sufficiently low. And I think this situation where that combination first arose was in the late Roman Republic . Copying and delivering information was cheap then.
conversation about what do you want us to do about it. And they'd say, "Well, we have photos." And they'd say, "Well, what are the photos of? Well, we've got a photo of his black eye." And I'd say, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who already know, I apologize, but this is the Roman Republic tit-for-tat retribution cycle that led to the death spiral there. Over several generations,
- And we'll talk about it, but let's just do this whirlwind, and hopefully there'll be automagical images somewhere overlaid, but- - Okay. - So in 753 BC, Rome, a small city state, is founded, and in 509 BC, the kings are overthrown, and the Roman Republic is born. 390 BC, the Gauls sack Rome, and this, I believe, among other events throughout its history, is a formative trauma that hardens Rome's security obsession.
huddled around this linear oasis of the Nile flowing through the desert, and Carthage, which appeared up here where there is a natural harbor, and came to challenge even the might of the Romans before they lost and were literally obliterated and wiped off the face of the map by the Roman Republic . But other than those two exceptions, the southern Mediterranean coastline has been quiet and empty.
Yet, though it would turn out to be an enduring and disturbing strain of Roman history that suggested a tight relationship between civil war and civilization itself. Civil wars, the Romans began to argue, came back so often across the history of the Roman Republic and into the early decades of the Roman Empire that they appeared to be woven into the fabric of Roman public life.