In this episode Jeremy Ryan Slate discusses the influence of Roman history on modern politics and society. The conversation delves into Jeremy’s background, including his successful podcast and book ventures. Marcus and Jeremy explore the parallels between the Roman Empire’s challenges, such as political instability and economic inflation, and current issues facing modern nations like the United States. Jeremy also shares insights on the importance of understanding history to avoid repeating its mistakes, and the role of media in shaping public perception.
Episode Highlights:
02:40 The Roman Empire and Modern Parallels
04:56 Political Corruption and Power Dynamics
28:14 JFK and Cato the Younger: Political Parallels
28:46 Caesar’s Political Struggles and the First Triumvirate
31:49 Trump and Modern Political Class Struggles
37:33 Misconceptions About the Fall of the Roman Empire
44:35 The Importance of Controlling Your Narrative
Jeremy Slate is the founder of the Create Your Own Life Podcast, which helps entrepreneurs live the lives they know they were meant to. He studied literature at Oxford University, Specializes in using Online social networking to build an offline relationship and was ranked #1 in iTunes New and Noteworthy and #26 in the business category. After his success in podcasting, Jeremy Slate and his wife, Brielle Slate, found Command Your Brand to help entrepreneurs get their message out by appearing as guests on podcasts.
Connect with him here: jeremyryanslate.com
Episode Transcript:
00:45
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words. Instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson. And my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Jeremy Ryan Slate is the host of the Jeremy Ryan Slate Show, which studies the highest performers in the world. He’s also the CEO of Commander Brand. He holds a degree from Seton Hall University in Catholic theology and world religions with a concentration in Judaism.
01:14
He studied Catholic literature at Oxford University, as well as holding a master’s in Roman Empire workshop from Seton Hall University. His podcast was named the number one podcast to listen to by Inc Magazine, as well as the top 40 under 40 by Podcast Magazine. He’s the author of the bestselling book, Unremarkable to Extraordinary, Ignite Your Passion to Go From Passive Observer to Creator of Your Own Life. In addition to his new book, Command Your Brand,
01:42
Grow Your Impact, Income, and Influence in the New Media Landscape. And I highly recommend everybody get both of those books. He and his wife, Brielle, co-founded Command Your Brand, a new media public relations agency designed to help entrepreneurs share their message by appearing as podcast guests. And if there’s anybody that knows this material and knows this space, it is absolutely Jeremy. He resides in Stillwater, New Jersey, where he raises chickens and is a former competitive power lifter. And if you saw him in the screen the way I do, which he will be soon.
02:12
He absolutely embodies that ethos. Man, we shared the stage in 2019. I met you in 2018. It’s incredible to see you from afar and see each other kind of going, building these empires and creating this legacy together. And I appreciate you being back on the show. Hey, thanks for having me back, man. It’s been a long time too. I know we’ve been kind of engaging on Instagram and everything else, but I haven’t talked to you in forever, man. So it’s great to just reconnect. Yeah. And you’ve been…
02:41
on Infowars, you’ve been on some incredible shows talking about the Roman Empire. So I already knew a lot about you from knowing you a little bit, but then I had no idea there was all this other like deep tapestry of this knowledge. What made you want to start talking about this stuff so much because as we know history, we see it everywhere, but many other people are sort of oblivious to it. Well, I’ll be honest with you, man. A little bit of it is some opportunism. You know, like, as I said, I went to school for this. I have a master’s degree in this.
03:11
in private between this and speeches of Ron Paul, this is about all I talk about. So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of when it hit the, the whole world on, um, on Tik TOK. My, I’m not really like, I have a Tik TOK account, but I don’t really use Tik TOK. My wife’s like, you know, people are talking about men thinking about the Roman empire. I’m like, well, that’s, that’s really interesting. And she’s like, I think this is your opportunity. So I ended up reaching out actually to, to James Altucher. I was like, James, I’ve got an idea. Cause you know, like, I feel like he’s that, that host that’s got a big enough audience, but like.
03:41
I know him well enough and he’s kind of crazy enough that we could do something fun. I’m like, I’ve got an idea. And I kind of pitched this whole idea of talking about Rome’s third century crisis and how it compares to today. And since then, man, it’s been a rocket ride. You know, we had, uh, Tim pool then picked it up and we went into the info wars. We did a whole bunch of stuff since then. So it’s, it’s been really, from one aspect has been really fun because of this head, it’s rewarding that what you went to school for, you’re finally using, but the other side of it as well. Is there’s a lot of.
04:12
deep-seated problems that that Rome had that you think at this point in time we would have realized that we don’t want to repeat in a lot of ways we’re repeating those things and I think when you look at history a lot of times people will say you know those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it and I don’t think that that’s a hundred percent true I don’t think it’s like that map at the mall where she show up and it’s like for people that so remember malls that map of the mall and it says you are here it’s not like that but I think history does rhyme in a lot of ways where you’ll see a lot of the
04:41
patterns and things like that repeat themselves rather than kind of like step-by-step events Yeah, and it’s the rhythm and cadence is similar because human beings have not changed. We have wanted the same things for centuries We’ve wanted power. We’ve wanted more of what we have we wanted freedom and I think that that’s why especially right now in today’s day and age There are so many parallels and people that think that this is and we’re also short We have very short memories as human beings as cultures frankly. Well, and also the people that are attracted to power
05:11
aren’t typically the best of us, right? Because those of us that we’re producing things, we’re doing things, we have big missions, we don’t typically wanna go into politics, right? But the people that are attracted to that and that wanna do that many times are not the best of us. And I think you see that throughout history. Yeah, and if anybody’s done anything, early in my life when I was going to chiropractic school, I was trying to help a community. So I was a part of just very small, like on a very, very small scale.
05:40
even semi-political ideals, trying to change a community in a positive way. And even at that community level, there was so much bullshit and red tape and rhetoric and cronyism back and forth. It was just impossible even on that level to create change. So I cannot even imagine how much goes on behind the scenes, how people have to essentially sell their souls to get to a position where they have any sort of power or authority. And we see it in politics now.
06:06
A politician now doesn’t make as much as you and I make in a year, but yet somehow they’re exiting with $80 million. If you and I did that, there would be a poorly. This isn’t any different than the late Republic. So Rome essentially, it’s a kingdom first, then it’s a republic, and then it’s an empire. An empire is kind of like the longest and final stage. But there’s kind of this trope that during the empire, a politician would need his first year in office to get out of debt.
06:35
his second year in office to build wealth, and his third year in office to hopefully avoid per prosecution after the fact. And it’s, you look at it and the patterns are very, very similar because a lot of these guys come in and they just, you know, you look at somebody like, you know, Mitch McConnell, as much legislating as he’s doing, and his wife owns one of the largest shipping companies in the world. So to me, it’s like you have one hand washing the other, or in Florida, number of years ago, this is, this is,
07:05
gosh, probably like 15 years ago at this point, but you had Rick Scott when he was governor, he had this great idea of if you wanna be on welfare, like if you’re on welfare, you should have to do random drug testing. I’m like, well, that’s a great idea, right? Like you don’t want people spending that money on drugs. Well, it turns out his wife owns the company that did the drug testing. So like that’s, the problem is, the corruption is deep seeded and it’s as old as time when you see it throughout politics, now people function. Yeah, and I think that that’s the scary part about is,
07:35
The right hand and the left hand are often attached to the same monster and people are not aware of that. And it’s, it’s divisive by, by design in many ways. The people that are empowered to not want us to have these kinds of conversations do not want us to reach across the aisles and not want to have empathy for one another. They want us to kind of dehumanize one another to make it easy to keep us divided. But I believe that especially with what you’re doing now, I’m with podcasting old media.
08:03
Right? This idea of this dinosaur media is going away. I saw something recently where they were saying that you can almost tell the political ideology of somebody based on how much of the old school media they believe. That’s an interesting point. Right? I could definitely see that being the case. That’s a very interesting point, because if you look at kind of people that maybe we don’t agree on everything, that if you’re looking for people that are searching for something or looking for something, they’re not typically sitting down to watch your legacy mainstream media and be told what to believe.
08:33
Often they’re looking for deep conversations on topics. I listened to an episode, my wife pulled out an episode of Joe Rogan, apparently I found it was like 50 episodes ago, but we were listening to this the other night where we were cleaning, and had a guy on that talked about faking the moon landing. Now I don’t think the moon landing was fake, but I think it was a very interesting conversation. And I think that very often you get people that are willing to look at something and think differently on it, even if they don’t 100% agree with it. Yeah, and it’s about that capacity to be
09:03
It’s about the ability to say, I could be wrong. What is some information that I could have? But I see so much confirmation and cognitive bias now where you can be showing somebody like undeniable data, and yet even now the word data in and of itself is being misconstrued, is being shaped to serve somebody’s agenda in the capacity of science and research and drugs and medications and things of that nature. So it’s a very precarious time if we’re not educated enough to be intelligent about
09:33
we’re making our decisions based on. I think that’s the huge problem too, because if you look at it, you know, whether it’s in politics or whether it’s in anything else, a lot of the drug companies, a lot of the major corporations in America are actually the ones pushing a lot of what’s happening in our political environment. We don’t realize how much of our experience is created for us so that we come to certain conclusions. And I think when you can start to pull yourself out of that and look at…
10:00
you know, whether it be current events in a different way, but even history. And I think when you get into what has happened before, oftentimes, because we don’t study history, we often make the same mistakes and we take for granted. If you, the biggest surprise to me, Marcus, about the last year I’ve spent talking to people about, um, the Roman empire is frankly, the people don’t know anything about it. That has been the most surprising thing to me. And if you look at it,
10:27
once you dig deeper into the subject, it’s not surprising because our education system during the Industrial Revolution changed dramatically because the type of person that the system wanted to create, a factory worker or a soldier, is not someone that would be studying these things. Yeah, it wasn’t in their best interest for them to question or to try to problem solve or try to find other options, especially when it comes to something that they wanted to be very cut and dried right in front of you. Be a drone, be a worker bee, go out and do what you’re told.
10:57
stop asking questions, bread and circus, et cetera. Well, and even bread and circus, I think, is somewhat of a misnomer as well, because I think the idea comes from, whenever things weren’t going well, they had the games or things like that in Rome. But I think oftentimes, people’s lives were so consuming during this time period of just surviving.
11:21
that even bread and circus wasn’t enough of a distraction because just the idea of having to provide for yourself and live was different. There would be people that would go their entire lives without even seeing an emperor, right? So I think to understand just the daily struggle of life and how you actually can run a country or an empire, it’s hard to be considering the bigger picture when what your big picture is, is just surviving. And for a lot of people, that’s what it is. Yeah.
11:50
And speaking of emperors, you and I have gonna have a beef about this guy named Marcus Aurelius. You’ve been kicking his ass all over the social webs. And no, I love that you’re talking about like that because many people will glorify somebody because of their name or because of certain aspects of what they’ve done. But we’re all human. I give them a hard time, but I think like, okay, so here’s what you have to consider. So Marcus Aurelius is the last of what are called the five good emperors.
12:18
Um, starts with Nerva, then Trajan, then Hadrian, uh, then, um, oh gosh, the one that’s actually the father of, uh, Aurelius, um, Antony, was it Antonis Pius? Antonis Pius. Yeah, I was going to say. And then, um, okay, cool. And then we have, um, the adopted brother of Aurelius whose name is suddenly escaping me as well. Um, anyway.
12:47
So he’s the last of these five good emperors. And they had a different process than before them. And you kind of see, you see a test case early on of like how this is gonna go. So the five good emperors, what’s different? Cause there’s a lot of different storylines I’m working here with once. So let me take one and then I’ll compare a few other ones. So the five good emperors, what actually happens is Nerva is the shortest ruling of those. He rules for about two years. And what they do that’s different is they find the closest person
13:17
to them that’s qualified, maybe through military experience or through whatever it might be to actually be the next emperor. So this is very different because you’re looking at the actual experience of somebody. And Pliny the Elder actually writes a letter to Trajan about this, you know. And so we don’t know if it’s real or it’s fake, but Pliny the Elder writes to Trajan about this idea of like finding the person that is going to basically rule all of the people, you know, must have experience of working with the people. And…
13:45
in the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which is the first dynasty of Roman. Typically, it was supposed to be passed on from father to son, but the problem is they’re either killing each other, or a lot of them are dying. So yes, they’re being adopted, but they’re being adopted by whoever’s left. This is different because they’re adopting the closest qualified person. So you get a very stable empire during this period, and actually in 117 AD under Trajan, you get it for this extent. Now, you see some foreshadowing before we get to Nerva.
14:14
Um, you have Vespasian who was the emperor that actually builds, um, the, um, Flavian amphitheater, which we think of as the Coliseum. Um, he conquers Israel when he’s the, um, the general of, of Nero. And he actually uses that money to build what’s the Flavian amphitheater, the Coliseum. So he’s going to be the emperor in the seventies AD. And then after he dies, he’s going to name his son.
14:42
Titus, who only rules for about two years. And then after Titus, his other son Domitian, who’s absolutely nuts, rules after that. He would actually sit in his room and pull the wings off of flies. And they would often, the idea would be, who’s in the room with the emperor? Oh, no one, not even a fly, would be the joke because he’s in his room pulling the wings off flies. So he’s a very disturbed individual. And you get a lot of upheaval during this time period. So you get kind of this like test case of what it’s gonna be like giving your child control of the empire.
15:12
So Aurelius changes this whole thing by naming his actual son, Commodus. And I guess the thing you have to consider when you put this into modern standpoint, you consider somebody who’s really rich or wealthy, right? They want the best for their kid. They feel like they’ve raised their kid great. They feel like their kid is gonna take after them, take up their mantle. It’s gonna be different. They’re gonna do this thing. And that isn’t what happens with Commodus. Commodus is very interested in being a gladiator.
15:40
and he’s very interested in fighting in the gladiatorial games. He would often kill animals in the Colosseum, but he would do it from a platform because he didn’t want to actually have his life threatened. And he’s actually killed by the Praetorian garden, 192. And he’s one of only two emperors to have his body drug through the streets of Rome because he’s hated so much. So now I say this because I’ve been giving Aurelius a hard time, but I think the thing you have to consider his entire career, he spends very little of his career in Rome.
16:10
He spends most of it outside of Rome fighting a tribe called the Macromani, um, to basically keep their, they were a Gallic tribe, basically keep them out of the empire. So he has that side of it going. And they also, as a father, probably wants the, thinks he’s raised the son to be the best person he could be to be the ruler of the empire, but he ends up being a fatal flaw and even Gibbon talks about Edward Gibbon being the most famous, uh, writer of the decline and fall of the Roman empire.
16:39
He talks about comoduses rule being the point when things shift and change. And when you start to see this decline that leads to a fall, now it takes 200 years to get there, but this is really what happens. So I apologize for that verbose long explanation, but I, I, from some standpoints understand where Aurelius is coming from, but at the same time, he does change how things function and function very well for almost a hundred years. Yeah. He created that inflection point, not by intention. And also remember, as you and I know.
17:09
He had many like offspring prior to that. So he had been pouring into them, into them, into them. And then as things happen throughout history, especially in that time, these offspring are passing away, they’re dying. So he, communist was sort of what was left. Maybe not that we were at the bottom of the barrel in many ways, but again, stability at that point was the primary thing. It’s like, listen, do we put it in this crazy person’s hands or do we keep the entire empire from burning itself and going
17:37
crazy with some sort of civil outrage. Well, and then that’s the problem too, as people talk about whether it could have been a civil war, because there’s something similar to this when Vespasian names Titus to be his successor, that there’s this kind of competition between Titus and Domitian. And there’s even thoughts that Domitian actually might have had Titus killed. We don’t actually know that he’d Titus died under strange circumstances.
18:07
adopt someone who’s qualified. Well, he has offspring. So that is a little bit strange. A lot of the five good emperors didn’t have living offspring. And even Hadrian may or may not even have been straight. He has a very well known male lover that he actually names a god after the man dies. So it is convenient for those five good emperors that they don’t have natural born children living to create a problem because you’re correct.
18:35
Okay, let’s say Aurelius names somebody who’s qualified. Well, Commodus could then get the Praetorian guard or a military unit to stand behind him. And that’s actually gonna be one of the biggest things you do see happening. As I mentioned, Commodus dies in 192, so at the end of the second century. The third century, that is the actual thing you see happening is military units stand up their general.
19:00
to be the one to say my general’s in charge, and that’s actually what the third century crisis ends up being. So it is a very difficult position for a man to be put in. And we also see in times of power, and it’s easy for us to go back and Monday morning quarterback literally centuries after the fact because we’re safe, we’re in an environment where we have that capacity to have hindsight. But even with Mimo to Musashi, people will say things like, oh, this person’s a sociopath. Well, you weren’t there in the 1500s. You didn’t have…
19:29
every part of your being where you live by this word and die by this word, literally based upon that. So if you’re not in that position, of course, where it’s easy for us to feel qualified to have an unqualified position or opinion about something and imagine all the other, like we, we’re seeing now politically what’s happening with people, people in power. So of all the things that are going on, there’s all kinds of minutiae, there’s all kinds of like idiosyncratic things. It’s like of the biggest, you know, priorities at that time.
19:59
Again, his releases relationship with his wife, allowing certain people to even revolt against him and then still giving them grace and allowing them to live. There are a lot of questions you can go back and say, man, you may have been stoic, but that seemed a little bit kind of amateurish. And that’s the and that’s the problem I have because I know even the name of the show is Acta non verba. So you know, you know, actions over words, right? And I think if you look at a really us, he has a lot of
20:27
very important words he says. But if you look at his actions, they don’t always agree with that. And I think to me, that’s the major disagreement I have with Aurelius is that he’s got a lot of wonderful words, but he doesn’t always have the actions that match up with them. Though if you look, comparison of other emperors, he’s a very good man in terms of how he rules. But I think to think someone has to be…
20:53
100% infallible in many ways. It’s just not possible. We’re human. So I think that is also the struggle as well. Lucius Vernus, by the way, is the brother of Aurelius. I suddenly remembered the name. Yeah. The other part is.
21:10
We see this repeating in many aspects in the United States where we are at this point. Even the assassination attempt of Trump recently.
21:21
Can you tell us about those similarities, where these areas are dovetailing, and then how that boats for us as a country? Well, I think that the one thing to consider as well, and this just goes to say one more thing about Aurelius as well, is you have to consider, oftentimes, freedom is only one generation away, right? Or, you know, something, a job well done, oftentimes, is only a generation away. Because many times, like someone like Commodus, well,
21:50
His father kept that empire running by blood, sweat, and tears in military force. Right. If it’s, if you look at it, like much of his life is a campaigns against the Macromani, um, Commodus didn’t really like, he has some military experience, but he didn’t really earn that. Like his father earned that. And I think you see this with, um, you know, presidential families, like the Bushes or, or many other people like that, that the offspring many times aren’t as good.
22:16
as those that have come before them because they haven’t earned that thing. Now it’s not to say I like George H.W. Bush, but the point being, the sequel is never usually as good as the original. And I think that’s what ends up happening. But if you look at where we are, I think here’s the struggle for me, Marcus is. As I mentioned, Rome is three different things. It’s a kingdom first when it’s founded in, in 753 BC. Um, it becomes a Republic in 509 BC, which is going to last until.
22:43
People kind of argue about the date, but I like to say it’s 31 BC when it becomes an empire, but you could pull it out as far as 23 BC to where it becomes an empire. But when you look at kind of how Rome’s Republic fell and how Rome’s empire fell, they fell in very different ways. And the interesting thing about America is we’re showing symptoms of both things. And I think that’s what’s really interesting because I think America functionally hasn’t been a republic since
23:11
the progressive era. So like we’re talking like somewhere between, you know, 1898 and 1913 is really one, in my opinion, when we really cease to be a functional republic. Because you have a 1913 three, three specific things happen. The first being the 17th amendment, which means that state legislatures no longer voted for the Senate. So the state legislatures no longer have representation. You also have the income tax amendment, which passes.
23:38
And then you also have the Federal Reserve, which passes over the Christmas holiday and we’ll go into law in 1914. So to me, if you look at it, so much of our sovereignty was gone in 1913. We really ceased to be a functional Republic. And if you even look at how the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire, it wasn’t one day that Augustus Caesar, who’s the first emperor, just said, all right, guys, the sham’s over. I’m the emperor now. It’s a gradual process of how you get there. You know, he, he calls himself the restorer of the Republic. Like he’s the guy that.
24:08
tell those people he’s bringing this thing back. And before that, the Roman Revolution, it had been about a hundred years of civil war. And when I say revolution, it’s not, I think people often have the idea of like Marxist revolution of rich versus poor, or this group versus that group. It really was just the rich and powerful using the poor people to fight against each other. That’s really what happens. And so it had been upheaval for a long period of time and there’s no stability. So Augustus creates stability.
24:37
And the thing he actually threatens to do, I think in 23 BC, is he threatens to retire. And I think it’s because he’s an excellent tactician, because he says, I don’t want to retire. I want ultimate power, but let me threaten to retire and see what happens. And he gets the title of princaps or first citizen. That word princaps actually comes from the Roman Senate. The speaker of the house type of character would be this guy that would be called a
25:06
So he takes that word print caps or prints to refer to himself. So now you have the Senate still functioning as it would function. You still have the offices every year like they would function. But now there’s this new character in front of it called the print caps. So you have this situation that doesn’t quite make sense. The title of emperor wouldn’t have been something that would have been received early on. It comes from the supreme military general, which would have been called an imperator, is where the word emperor comes from. So.
25:34
Augustus doesn’t pick that up till much later in his life, you know until he’s in his 40s So it doesn’t it’s not just one day that the thing is over, right? And I think that’s the thing we have to look at when I look at America where we are now I don’t think we’ve been a functional Republic for a very long time. And I think we’re actually showing symptoms of The Empire collapse which I think are the major major issues and that the two major things you look at that in the third century you know
26:01
As I mentioned, it gets kind of crazy leading into the early third century, but it gets really bad in the three thirties through like the three eighties is when things are really bad. And you have like during this time period, I think it’s somewhere around 50 different guys claimed to be emperor during this time period. So there’s a, it’s, there’s a lot of different change, but there’s two major problems. In addition to political instability, which we really have right now, we’re so polarized. You have, though I will say there’s not congressmen raising armies and attacking each other, that’s not really happening.
26:31
You have political instability. You have immigration gone wild, which is a problem that they’re really dealing with in the third century. And you have inflation. It’s 15,000% by 284. So if you look at that, like to me, those are the major problems we have. Now, I guess if you want to put the Trump assassination into assassination attempt into, into, to feature, um, that’s a lot of fall of their public stuff, which I think is very interesting.
26:59
You know, like how Rome’s Republic fell is very different. It’s through kind of the life of Julius Caesar, who’s, believe it or not, not as bad of a guy that people want you to believe he is, though he did kill upwards of a million people in Gaul. Um, it’s actually his enemies that caused the fall of the Republic because it’s, it’s much of how today, like how we have to end democracy in order to save it. That’s what they were doing. They were causing the end of the Republic because they were trying to save the Republic.
27:28
And then you open yourself up to someone like Augusta. So that’s the issue I see is. To me, the political class is playing out this fall of the Republic, but I think the Republic fell a long time ago, but you also see these empire things, which are really important. I apologize for the long-windedness to this, but once again, a lot of this stuff, there’s a lot to it to explain it. There is, and it’s just like any business, right? I’ll ask a business, Hey, it’s two years from now and the business failed. What happened? It’s the same thing with the empire. We see these gaps, these inefficiencies, these, these problems.
27:57
but it takes sometimes years before it actually comes to fruition or materializes. Correct. And, and even like you were saying in 1914, our country went through a huge shift, even though it was a very silent coup in many ways and almost like Kato the younger, we had a person that tried to pull the country back on track. His name was JFK, but yet we saw what happened whenever he started pushing back against the military industrial, you know, complex and all these other aspects. And I know that Kato the younger was fighting. Not.
28:27
You have a different view of Cato the Younger than I do. Yeah, yeah. No, no, that’s what I’m saying. Not exactly the same, but yet some of these different overlaps. You understand where I’m trying to go, right? No, I do. And I think the thing that’s interesting is if you look at somebody like Cato the Younger, I actually think the fall of the Republic, so much of the blame for that falls on his shoulders. Yeah. Because if you look at Julius Caesar, he’s consul in 59 BC.
28:57
know what a consul is. It’s kind of like being president, but there’ll be two of them in the same year. His colleague is a guy named Marcus Biblius, the other consul. But Marcus Biblius is kind of just propped up by Cato the younger. And he’s kind of just doing whatever the heck Cato wants. And what ends up happening during that year is Caesar wants to give land to veterans. Cato doesn’t want to do that because Cato is he’s an optimante. He’s somebody that only cares about the richest. Whereas Caesar, though he’s a patrician by birth and should be an optimante,
29:26
He functions more as a popularity or a populist. So he wants to do things for people. And so he tries to do all these reforms and Cato just keeps blocking them. And it seems like it’s less about agreeing, disagreeing on principle with it, but literally just because it’s Caesar. It’s because like, I can’t let Caesar be successful. So this kind of political battle between the two of them goes on for this entire year and Biblius gets chased into his home because Caesar actually takes the vote to the people.
29:54
Um, which was something called the tribunation power that they could do. And because of that Caesar, um, with his private agreement between Pompey the great and Crassus called the first triumvirate basically rules by himself for the entire year. And then goes and spends his nine years in Gaul. And then here’s to the grapevine. Okay. You’re coming back to from, from Gaul being a general. Cato’s got these crimes that you’ve committed and
30:19
You know, we’ve brought back the corruption courts, Cato’s decided it was a really good idea and we’re gonna bring you up on corruption charges. So it’s kinda, you push Caesar into this box, as I mentioned, like, I don’t think he’s the hero of history, but I also don’t think he’s quite the villain either. He gets pushed into this box of, okay, now don’t react because if you react, you’re the bad guy. So what does he do? He calls Cato’s bluff. And that’s the whole idea of crossing the Rubicon. As Caesar crosses the Rubicon with…
30:47
with one legion because he knows if he goes back in Rome, they’re going to charge him with crimes. He may or may not have been committed or things that weren’t even crimes when he did them. Right. Because if you read, if you get a chance, read about Rome’s corruption courts, it’s it’s very, very interesting. They would it’s yeah. But um, and then Cato flees the city and he’s later going to commit suicide by disemboweling himself, by the way. So it’s kind of like kind of a terrible way to go. So I think it’s really interesting because in his efforts to
31:17
I guess, save the thing. I think he’s the major reason it ends. Right. And as you were saying before, some people, if they’re not in power, they are more than happy to burn everything down as their way of kind of taking the ball and going home is like, if I can’t have it, nobody can have it. And they’d rather see everything in tatters than actually be in that position where they don’t have the authority. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think it’s also scary to see the corruption courts. I mean, these things we were saying, we see a similarity.
31:46
today. We see a lot of these things happening today. And again, Trump is the target of all these things, it feels like in many of these ways where they’re trying to find any way to keep him out. Why are they so afraid of him? And who are they, by the way? So I guess once again, it’s, I don’t think history repeats, but I think it does rhyme in a lot of ways. So a lot of these patterns are similar. And I think the issue is, if you look at Trump, I think the problem with him is they see him, and this is the same issue with RFK, by the way.
32:16
They see them to be class traitors. Meaning they should be optimates, but they’re trying to be populares. What is this? To the powerful of government, they don’t really like it because they’re doing things that are going to hurt their power. And if you look at a lot of what happens during the Roman Civil War, that’s the issue you see is a lot of these motions are just taken by the political class or the optimates because it’s just things that are gonna hurt their power. They don’t care if they’re good or bad, they just don’t wanna lose power.
32:45
And I think if you look at it, Trump is a threat to power. Number one, because he’s been in office once before, so he knows what things don’t work and what things do and who do you trust and why don’t you trust John Bolton and things like that. And so that he knows a lot of what’s broken in the system. And I think they’ve, you’ve kind of seen the media unite. You’ve seen government unite. You’ve seen individuals unite to go against this guy. So to me.
33:12
It kind of shows you that like he’s probably whether you like him or not, he’s probably the guy you want in there because he’s going to be ending their game and, and hopefully putting things back the way they should be. Right. Though, you know, once again, if you look at Rome, there’s also, there’s been guys that claim to restore it and don’t restore much, right? Like Sullivan claims he’s going to restore the Republic. Um, so he kills hundreds of people. Um, Augustus claims he’s going to restore it, but it said he built an empire. So I think we would have to hope that at this point in time, the person that says he’s going to restore it actually does.
33:42
I think also if we remove the emotive language from what’s going on and just say, listen, if you talk about what’s happening, like you said, in the country with the border crisis and inflation and what’s going on economically and the corruption that we see where people are in the pockets of other countries, if we would just talk about those things specifically, all this other stuff is just merely semantics and they’re splitting their hairs to try to get somebody on their side. I think that that’s what we have to look at. But again, politics is very much about trying to…
34:12
get people pissed off trying to get them riled up to get them in that place. We’ve talked about some significant people in Roman history. If you could have dinner with three Romans throughout history and the language barrier was not a factor, who would you love to speak with? Oh geez, man. Um, I think Hadrian would be a cool one. Um, cause Hadrian, um, he’s emperor during what’s called the Hellenization of Rome or kind of like the bringing in of Greek culture to Roman culture.
34:41
Right. Because it always been like somewhat of a thing, but initially Romans are somewhat opposed to Greek culture because they consider it to be feminine. Right. But Hadrian brings in a lot of Greek culture, whether it’s, you know, through statues or through poetry. And it’s actually something that Marcus de Gryppa, who’s the top general of Augustus, will actually like really further. He’s actually one of the ones that starts it. But
35:08
You’re going to see Hadrian really pick up on this and start bringing a lot of great culture. And I think to me, the bringing in of culture is very interesting because there’s so much history in Greece. There’s so much, you know, you can see in Greece. Um, and so much of our stories and legends, and even the Romans consider themselves to come from the Trojans. You know, that’s why you have the, the Aeneid. So I think to just see that come in is cool. And he’s a very interesting individual who I had to pick three. Is that what you said?
35:35
pick whoever you’d like. I think Hadrian is a great one because he played a lot of, he played both sides many times. Yeah, and he was one of the first to have a beard. All representations of emperors after Hadrian had a beard, by the way. Right. Just like all representations of Jesus after Pope Alexander VI typically looked like Cesare Borgia. But anyway. But that’s a coincidence. I’m sure there’s no correlation there, right? Yeah. And Cesare is essentially Caesar if we look at the pronunciation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
36:05
Very interesting. And who else would I pick? Definitely Hadrian. I, you know, I think probably Sulla. The guy’s kind of nuts, but if you hear about like, he’s supposed to be this like really charismatic guy that like did all these drinking parties and stuff like that. So I imagine like, it would probably be like hanging out with some like grizzled military veteran having a good time. Though a lot of his actions aren’t typically great. I think it just might be a fun guy to hang out with.
36:35
I’ll pick one more and make sure it’s your three as you said. It doesn’t have to be a triumvirate. And if you don’t want, I’m going to keep it to a does it have to be an emperor? It can be whomever from that, that period, that period. It could be a poly it could be Diogenes. I mean, whoever you’d like, you know, it’s funny. Diogenes was who’s in my head. Alexander the great meets Diogenes. And he said, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
37:00
Let’s go with that. He’s the cynic. There we go. That’s very funny because that is exactly what was in my head when I said This is have to be an emperor Well when you were just when you were describing the previous one I was like he’s gonna describe the out and there’s like no But that’s the rock star you’re right. Like he’s out there pissing on everything being Yeah, that does not carry gives you real fucks about it, but his opinion Supposedly had one testicle by the way. Yeah, so whatever the influence that had on him if
37:30
What is the biggest misconception about the Roman Empire, do you believe? Because as we see, history is written by the victors. And so there’s a lot of stuff that’s lost or we at least don’t see all of the facts. I think the classical one that most people would say is when it fell, because there’s so many disagreements on this. You could kind of look at the 410 sack of Rome and say, hey, it fell there, because it ceases to really kind of function as an empire. And the last kind of…
37:58
60-ish years of emperors are just propped up by barbarian generals. But, you know, the traditional date people say it fell is 476. But even that date, you know, Rome doesn’t really fall in that date. It kind of fades away, fades away from the perspective. It goes from being a Roman Empire to a barbarian kingdom, which is going to become these different barbarian kingdoms. A lot of times the idea of a fall comes from Eastern Roman Empire.
38:26
historians Eastern Roman Empire lasted until about 1453 under the Ottomans. Justinian has this idea of wanting to be the guy to reunite Rome and bring the east and the west back together. And with his general Belisarius, he’s gonna go in and actually destroy Rome in order to save it under the Ostrogothic king Theodoric who’s in charge at that point in time. So there’s also that standpoint and there’s others that say well, you know, the Catholic Church carries on as the Roman Empire or there’s others that say, you know, hey, the Germans picked it up or others say that hey, the Americans picked it up.
38:54
I think if you look at it, the most misunderstood thing about the Roman empires is when and how it fell. And I think I don’t think there’s any real consensus on what it is. Yeah. And and seeing the symptomatology that we see in our country now, what do we need to do to pull us out of this tailspin? Well, I think if you want to look at kind of how to do it right, Constantine is a really good guy to look at and not from the perspective of Christianity. I think that’s what a lot of people look at him for.
39:23
But if you would have asked someone that lived during Constantine’s time period, what were they most grateful for? They would talk about the money because what Constantine actually does, and I think it’s in 313 or 314, somewhere around there. It’s after the battle of Milvian bridge, which is 312. He mints a few coins in a city in Germany called Trier. And these are 24 karat gold, pure gold coins, less than a hundred. Then what he’ll do is.
39:50
His entire reign as emperor, he reigns until the 330s. He’ll mint a few more gold coins every year, a few hundred and a few thousand. By the time he dies, the Eastern Empire is on a gold standard. And one of the major issues that the West has is money was inflated because they kept adding other currencies, other metals to it. So the currency becomes inflated because it loses value. By 270, the silver coin,
40:19
is bronze, it has no silver under the time of Aurelian. So this is a real issue and one of the things that’s gonna lead to the fall of the West, it’s pushed even harder by people coming in from the provinces to the empire, whether through invasion or whether through immigration. But I think if you can handle currency, that is a major thing you can do to fix an empire or a country and if you look at kind of where we’re at, we are so far over our skis with currency.
40:47
If we don’t fix that, we’re going to be in trouble. And, and Constantine’s gold standard lasted until the year 1000, without being inflated, without losing value. And I think if you could take a look at that to do it all at once would destroy a country, but the thing Constantine did, whether by intention or whether it was just because like literally this is just how much gold I have right now, he pushed it gradually to a gold standard, which can be done. So I think we have to fix currency.
41:14
Obviously, we have to fix borders. But if you don’t fix currency, you don’t have a country. Yeah. And I think that people think a land mass invasion in the United States is not exactly what we have to be concerned about, per se. It’s more about the currency. It’s all about technology. It’s all about electricity. It’s all about all these other things that can really completely silo us at one time. We’ve seen what happens if a power grid goes out or when communications go out. And these are the areas where we have these huge gaps in our armor. But yet, a lot of people are either
41:44
afraid to talk about it or they just want to kick the can down the road because we’ll, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it kind of mentality. Well, I think that’s the problem is, is, is if you look at even Ron Paul talks about this, like nobody wants to be the guy that ends the party, right? Because if you’re the guy that ends the party, you know, you’re Herbert Hoover, right? Like you’re the person that gets stuck with it, but history could look better upon you because you set things up. But the one who does it is the party pooper. Nobody wants to be that party pooper.
42:12
Yeah. Everybody wants to continue to just enjoy the buffet while it’s, while it’s going on. So I think that’s also the big fear. You made this, you have this talking point about from Augustus to the Kardashians, there’s influence there. But I, I’m hoping that the American people or the world is starting to open up to how they’re being openly propagandized towards, and they’re being oppressed by it in many ways and to ask questions and to do your own research.
42:39
Well, I think that’s the interesting thing is the cracks are kind of breaking in the simulation in a lot of ways. And if you look at, you know, the reason I mentioned that about the Kardashians, because if you look at it, Augustus was somebody through his entire career that manages to deify himself. You know, it’s not quite during his lifetime, but it’s pretty close. And after death, he is deified and emperors will start to pick that up where it’s going to be Caligula will actually have himself named to God, which is kind of the thing. Like, all right, we got to kill this guy. This is going to be too much. But like, if you if you look at the Kardashians,
43:09
they’re unreachable, right? They have separation from humans. And that’s what the emperor starts to create is the separation between themselves and others. And you can’t approach this thing. You can’t be with this thing. If you get close to this thing, you’re like, oh my gosh, the Kardashians, I’m in the same room with them. So it ends up, we’ve created this idea of not celebrity, but divinity. You know what I mean? Like it’s almost like we created these idols for ourselves. And I think for a lot of people that that simulation is starting to break.
43:39
And I think the pandemic was a big piece of this because people looked at what their celebrities were supporting or what they were doing. Or like, I think of Colbert with the dancing syringes on his night show and people are like, this is ridiculous, you’re kidding me. So I think that that, it’s because the pandemic was a terrible thing that happened, but I think it actually is a gift in a lot of ways, because it’s kind of opened up whether we’re looking at what’s happening in our schools. We’re looking at like,
44:08
Do celebrities really matter anymore? So I think in actuality, something that should have been the nail in the coffin, I think is actually the resurrection of the country in a lot of ways. So we have kind of this, this opening to kind of see behind the curtain and we see that the wizard of Oz is behind there, you know? Yeah, there’s it’s almost like adversity is a gift or something. It’s crazy. Yeah. I personally wrote a book about that. Nah, that guy, I don’t know. I don’t know about that guy. There’s a, I don’t know.
44:35
I think that people need to understand the importance of their own voice. You’ve literally built your empire on your voice. Why is it so important for us to get out and speak about these things? Because I mean, people have an opinion of us one way or another. And if we’re not the one that actually control that narrative, then it’s going to be dictated to us by someone else who may not have our best interests in mind. I think the thing you have to consider is for most of us, the media isn’t going to talk about us unless we do something highly illegal. Right. You know what I mean? Or perceived to be.
45:04
And I think you have to understand that you have to continually get your message out there because the only thing people are going to talk about typically is the negative, unless you have the people close to you that really support you. So you have to get your voice out there and you have to get your narrative out there because at some point in time, if you’re playing a big game, something negative is going to happen at some point, whether it’s somebody that says, Hey, I gave this guy money and he didn’t deliver for me. When you get the backstory and you find it, Oh wow, they actually even refunded him because that was a total dick. Um, so like oftentimes you have to get your story out there and be the one controlling the narrative.
45:34
Because that’s, that’s not what sells. Negativity is what sells. And that’s why you have to be the one to get your story out there. And that, and we see often now, especially if people are trying to do great things, if they’re trying to push themselves, if they’re trying to get out of their normal gravitational pull, they’re worldly people that will push back against them. And it’s sort of in, in human nature in many ways, because we have this idea of schadenfreude where it’s like people take pleasure, right. And people forget that that’s literally that German translation meaning.
46:04
They love to see somebody that’s successful fail, but reverse shot and for it is just as powerful, which is it pains people to see somebody else succeed in many of these ways. And if we’re not the ones that are controlling our own destiny, then we’ll be victimized by it as well. Well, I was a dog sitting for my father-in-law this week and, uh, his dog and I don’t get along really well because like you try to walk around the house and like, she always manages to position herself directly in front of you. So I’ve fallen on the floor about five times. Um,
46:31
And it got to a certain point where she was just like following me around so much and we really weren’t getting along. And I’m like, dog, do you have Stockholm syndrome? Have you like fallen in love with your captors? Is that where we’re at now? Anyway, no speaking. Yeah. I mean, that’s exactly what, what I see so often happening right now. So tell us a little bit about what you do and how you can help people. And because you, of all the people that are out there doing this sort of work, you’re one of the people that I actually believe in and trust. And I’ve known for a long time. So
47:00
There are many people that are claiming to do what you do, but tell us what you do. So at Command Your Brand, we really are like the PR firm for the podcast industry. We help people to get their message out there in the right way. But at the same time, we’re about supporting messages that need to get out there despite the fact that they’re told they can’t. So we support a lot of pro-American causes. We support a lot of pro-freedom causes, pro-free speech causes. And we are just trying to help people get their message out because I think if you look at it,
47:29
When the Roman Empire fell, people didn’t realize what was happening. There really wasn’t much they could do about it. Right now we have this free and open type of communication, despite what they want to tell you, like, you know, there are places you can’t speak right now, but on places like podcasts and on places like X, you can have the conversations like we’re having right now. And I think these are things that start to, um, you know, shift the Overton window in the right directions. We can kind of write the ship in a lot of ways. And, and, you know, we really want to be a big part of that at Command Your Brand.
47:59
Yeah. And I think that, I mean, at this point, if you’re quiet, you’re complicit. You’re, your silence is literally, it’s, you’re just putting your, you’re agreeing with what they’re doing. You’re just as ghost sees everybody else around. So that, that silence is treason if you’re not aware of it. Yeah. A hundred percent. So where can we go to learn more about you, get your books, your podcast, everything?
48:26
I put together a free resource for your audience called Command Your Empire, because the Roman Empire declined and fell, but your empire doesn’t have to decline and fall, it can grow. And that’s through the power of podcasts and new media. So this resource is going to tell you everything you need to know to go out there and start creating motion and action and do that right now and today, whether you pay me for anything or whether you don’t, this resource is going to help you get some movement. So if you go over to comm you can grab that for free today. So that’s comm and you’ll find all the ways to contact us over there as well.
48:57
Outstanding. Thank you so much for taking the time. It’s great to connect with you. I look forward to not having as big of a gap between a connection, whether it be in person or on whatever it is, but, uh, you’re doing some great stuff. You’ve had some people on, you’ve gotten people on some big podcasts and obviously you’ve been on big podcasts on your own. So I appreciate the work that you’re doing and, uh, making yourself available for the audience. Well, thank you, man. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
