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The Great Houses series is a private discussion on the enduring structures of elite families, their strategies for generational continuity, and the practicalities of building a lasting legacy. Led by Gregory Treat, the series explores concepts like illegibility, patronage, feudal instincts, and the mechanisms by which great houses have persisted throughout history.
Gregory Treat: All right.
Hello everybody and welcome to episode 13 of The Great Houses Forum.
Today we are going to be starting a new series that I've been looking forward to.
I'm quite excited about it.
And it's called The Ancient City Series.
So this is part one, is what we're gonna go through today, and then we'll be, um, we'll be walking through that for, for the next, the next series of episodes
because, you know, I'm constantly, people are constantly asking me, well, what are, what are examples of, uh, of, of these, these principles in these great houses?
And so I want to, to take some time to, uh.
To walk through, to walk through these.
Um, you know, one of the, the interesting things about me, some of those, those of you who are listening may not know this, but I, I grew up on a multi-generational dairy farm.
I've talked about that on several podcasts, most notably Joshua Sheets.
Um, there's a, there's a great episode that we did, uh, almost a year ago now, um, where I talk about my story, but I, I grew up with a, uh, uh, my great-grandmother's library.
My great-grandmother was, was the one that my great-grandfather dragged across from the East coast to the wilds of California to to buy some land and, and start a ranch and build a, a multi-generational business that endured until my day.
Um, and she had all these books in her library, and, and so I read.
You know, Plutarch's lives and Aristotle and Xenophon.
Like, I, I read those as a child.
I don't, I I tho those are books that I read before.
I, I, you know, really have good memories.
So I kind of, I kind of grew up always knowing these stories.
These were the stories that, uh, that, um, you know, created me.
And, and so it's, it's always, I always have to remember that, that these, these histories aren't as well known by many people in our culture.
And so it's a, it's a delight of mine to, to share them.
So essentially the, the, the question that we're gonna be asking for the next little bit is why did Rome, and not just Rome, but we'll get onto,
uh, some of the other, the other notable families and other notable ancient cities, uh, why did Rome's greatest families produce so many great men?
And, and I'm gonna start with kind of a, a very interesting point is, uh, surprisingly Rome did not think that the answer was bloodline.
Right.
That, that, that was not Rome's secret sauce.
They didn't, they didn't think, oh, well, you know, these people were, they were just born of, of a particular bloodline.
And this bloodline was always gonna produce, uh, these people by, by some process of osmosis.
Um, it was character or, or as the Romans would put it, virtue and the Roman conviction that your character could be inherited and, and passed down.
Right.
Uh, in fact, I think one of the, one of the reasons why we use terms like character is because the Romans believed that you, uh, you learned some of these things by studying people as though you were gonna act them out.
Right.
You, you, you learned the character of your, your ancestor, which is you learned how to act like your ancestor on stage.
And, um, you know, I, I, I think about that sometimes when, when people in our movement are, um, accused of LARPing, right?
And it's like, well, are, are, are we LARPing?
Well, maybe, but LARPing is kind of the first step.
Uh, that's, that's.
That's the, the, the lesson that I learned from, from the, the, the concept of, of character, studying character.
So the scene that we'll start with is Rome in 168 bc which is the day that the iron wolf slew the silver leopard.
That's a biblical reference.
If, if, and of you aren't familiar with it.
There's, uh, some wonderful things in Daniel, uh, that, uh, that foretold the history of the, uh, of the Mediterranean, you know, hundreds of of years in advance.
So.
The world, uh, before the, the, the initial scene that we're gonna be talking about, uh, was the world, uh, post the collapse of, of Alexander the great's empire.
Right.
So Alexander the Great is this young genius.
He is the prince of Macedonia.
He conquers Greece and he then conquers Persia.
He then conquers actually a decent chunk of India, uh, before, uh, his, you know, getting, getting killed, getting a, a, a disastrous final wound from which he would never recover.
And then literally as soon as he dies, his empire splinters, I think his his infant son is, is, is murdered.
And, um, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a terrible thing, right?
This is, this is the opposite of the great house, right?
The, this you have, and, and, and we're gonna see more men like Alexander, right?
I think in our own time, there's an incredible amount of super high capacity.
Super.
Uh, high character in, in terms of their, their personal ability to do stuff, guys.
But if you don't reproduce, if you don't raise your children to know their ancestors, you're gonna wind up like Alexander and, and Alexander's empire was basically carved up by several of his top generals.
Um.
So the first one was, uh, pet Egypt Petie.
And the pets, uh, gen descended from General Petie.
They, they hung around for, you know, a very long time.
Uh, you know, they, they're, they're still more or less relevant in, uh, when, when the, when the Republic Falls and the Empire begins.
Uh, that's, you know, that's Cleopatra and all of that stuff.
That's the pets.
They're, they're, they, they endure for a really long time.
But the Mies are limited to Egypt.
They've got a lot of wealth.
They've got a lot of grain, but they never really figured out how to build ships.
They never really figured out how to project power into the Mediterranean.
I, you know, there's a couple points of time where they threatened to do so, but it's just wasn't their thing.
Um, they, they had a lot of river going ships that might be able to go out, you know, uh, maybe for a day or so out into the Mediterranean.
So you, if you got close to Egypt, you were gonna get hurt.
But, uh, but they were not a true seafaring kind of a, a civilization that, that's not what Pet Meac Egypt was like.
Then you had, uh, the sids and the sids, uh, you know, remain, uh, around they, they, and their, their successors remain relevant.
And, and even the, the, the people that take over the Persian empire, um, the, um, who are the Parthians, I think, um.
They, they remain Rome's big geopolitical enemy for the whole, the whole period.
One of the funny things about, about, uh, studying ancient history and or maybe not studying ancient history, but the way that a lot of of modern reflections on Rome are is they, they leave out Persia,
they leave out the cel acids, and they leave out the, the Parthians and, and, and, and they leave out the, the whole, the whole of the Persian empire, which is around for this whole period of time.
And, and they're the big geopolitical enemy.
They're, you know, the what, what it, what China and and Russia are probably more like what Soviet Russia was to us, um, back in the Cold War days.
And so all of this stuff that happens in Rome, there's this, there's this kind of backdrop of, well, you know, I might not like being ruled by Caesar, but I'd much rather be ruled by Caesar than I would be rather ruled by those Persian guys.
Right?
So that's who, um.
That's who the S are.
And they, they inherit basically all of the pieces that, that Alexander, uh, conquered throughout Persia.
And then you have, uh, antied Macedonia, right?
So, um, this, this was the, the ones that, that kind of preserve the, the core of the military structure that, that Alexander the Great set up and, and that kind of conquered a lot of things.
This was his, his Greek center.
It was commanded by, uh, started by, uh, anti, who was, uh, a one-eyed, one-eyed guy.
He was the defender of, of Alexander the greats Vanguard.
So he was the guy that was so tough and was able to command people that were so tough that Alexander put him in charge of defending the logistics train and kind of defending their retreat.
It was basically, uh, Alexander, he might not have been the kind of guy that you, you send out to conquer things, but if you got up close and personal with anti thickness, you were gonna get hurt.
That was, that was Alexander's opinion.
That's why, that's why he put that guy in the position that he was in.
Um.
And, you know, it's important to think about these things.
Uh, you know, as, as, as you all know, I'm a, I'm a, a soft, uh, a soft technological determinist.
I think that, that there's a relationship between the, the technologies that people use interpreted broadly and the way that their society is organized.
And so I present to you what was once the great democratic technology of, uh, the ancient Near East, which is the phalanx.
Right, the phalanx.
So the phalanx was, was a 16, uh, deep wall of locked shields.
And they, they, you get a pretty good idea of what it was like from the, uh, from the movie 300, right?
You have the, the, the, the shields and you can thrust and you can stab and you can, you know, use spears and shields and all of these things.
And if, if you're kind of two armies and you're, you're running up to each other and you're gonna punch each other in the mouth, as my football coach used to
say, then the, the phalanx is, is just the, the, the awesome, the, the most, most impressive heavy punch that anybody had come up with, uh, prior to its time.
So if you met a phalanx in the open field and you didn't have, um, you know, a really, really powerful defense, you were gonna get hurt.
Um, that was, that was the phalanx reputation.
And, uh, and it was, it was largely a true reputation, right?
They, they, they, they call it heavy infantry, right?
Heavy infantry, armored, infantry, um, and.
You know when, when Alexander the Great takes over, uh, the the Conquers Greece.
He kind of inserts himself at, at the top of the phalanx, he's this charismatic figure.
And the Greeks had always had this, this sense of, well, we're gonna have a commander.
That's fine.
Um, but they, they were, they, they were actually not very good at having middle officers, right?
Middle management types.
They, the, the, they, they wanted to all be directly serving the top guy who was a genius and blessed by the gods and all of these things.
And they didn't really like, uh, having people in between them and, and the commander.
Um, the other thing is that if you, if as a practical matter, uh, if you made a decision, if you're on the field and you make a decision, you kind of decide, okay, well we're gonna go over here.
You break ranks.
If anything goes bad, you know that you're gonna get potentially, you know, executed by your city.
The, the, the, the democratic structure will literally sit in judgment over you and say, you didn't have the right to do that.
Right?
You didn't have the, you weren't authorized to do that.
We bless the one guy.
Right with, with the appropriate, you know, Greek rituals to, to lead us.
And, and he's the one that had the blessing of the gods.
And you, who are you?
You don't have any position or rank.
You're no better than the next guy.
Okay.
And.
This is, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm laying the scenes here, obviously, 'cause, uh, and, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pushing, I suppose.
Uh, but I, I really do believe that you can, you can make an argument and, and look at this and say, wow, the, the phalanx was this reflection of, of Greek society and Greek values.
And, and even, you know, after, after, you know, centuries of monarchy, there's still a lot of that character in the Phx.
So, you know, the flaw was that, that, that you didn't have to have, you didn't have a good mechanism for appointing and having, uh, kind of on field leadership by anybody but the top general, right?
So the phalanx did one thing, it did one thing very well.
You sort of marched up to another group of people and you, you punched each other as hard as you could, and whichever phalanx was, was better tended to win.
Okay.
So, um, I. I want to, I wanna set the scene for, for where Rome is at this time, right?
This is 168 BC and, and we're leading up to a particular battle, right?
Um, the Republic is in its fourth century.
It's, it's powerful.
Um, it's, uh, it's not yet mastered the Mediterranean.
And, uh, and it has a, a, a great, um, a great and growing, um, enemy right in the, in, in Carthage.
So Macedonia, which is the last major Hellenistic kingdom, um, it's ruled by Perseus, the Sun son of Phil, the four, the Philip the fifth, and Perseus obviously, you know, they're, they're, they're invoking their Greek history.
They're invoking this, this mythical, Hey, they're, this is, this is a guy who's like these old myths, he's gonna lead us to victory.
Um, and Rome has been fighting these guys for a couple of years at this point, and they, they, they.
Turned to Lucius Em, Milius Paul, right.
Who had all, he'd been console twice and he was very well trusted by the Roman leadership.
And he goes in and he basically cleans house.
He reorganizes the empire or the, the, the army from the ground up.
And he, uh, he restores discipline.
He, he finds a a and, and then, and then he goes, and he's like, I know how to beat a phalanx, right?
I think we can, we can find the right ground.
He's like, phalanx is a very, uh, people, people revered the failings at the time, right?
Um, but he was like, if the phalanx is on broken ground, I can beat them.
So, um.
Yeah.
And, and, and again, one of the things that, that, that is important here is this is part of the consolidation, right?
The, the, unlike the, the, I told you the pet maze earlier, they didn't really have a good seafaring presence.
This is not true of the Greeks.
The Greeks were great ship builders, had always been great ship ship builders.
They, you know, dominated the Mediterranean.
And, and Rome was actually not as good at, at, um, at building ships as they were so in, in kind of naval combat.
Rome.
Rome couldn't do what it was doing, sort of like a, like a French versus the British, uh, empire kind of a deal, right?
Where the French, the French could build ships and they, and they had a lot of money, um, but they were never quite as good as at, at shipbuilding as the, as the British.
So, and, and it's in interesting to think about, you know, again, the, the, the manifold is the, the Roman, um, the Roman organizational structure, which, which is a reflection of their society, right?
They had small, independent, tactical units.
And what did, what did this require?
It required leadership, right?
So each manifold could wheel, could advance, could hold independently while the, the battle moved around them.
Um, and they, and they had different battle lines.
They had hasti, right?
They had the principe, they had the tri.
These, these different levels were, were different levels of experience, right?
They were the, the kind of the newbies.
They were the experienced, uh, veteran or the experienced guys that, that were kind of in the middle and then true veterans who you could commit.
So, so what had they done there?
They, they, they had created these different groups that needed leadership that was capable of making a decision on their own.
All right.
And that had a sense of their status, this, that, that were actual battlefield commanders.
They weren't just people.
You know, famously Aristotle tells Alexander, well, the way you command a Greek army is you, you put a guy and you say, don't break before the man on your left.
And then you put another guy to his left.
You put another guy to his left.
You tell each of them, don't break before the man on your left.
And he says, and Alexander says, well, what do you, what do you do at the end of that?
He says, well, you stand at the end of the line and you be better than them.
And, and this was the Greek concept, right?
We're all kind of in a line, and I'm not gonna break before the guy on my left, so we're gonna keep going.
Um, this is not how Rome thought about the battlefield.
In, in, in the battlefield.
There were clear ranks.
There were people that were to have bluntly, expendable, very expendable.
You understood that you were expendable, you understood that until you survived a couple of battles and got promoted, right?
That, that you, you weren't gonna.
That, that was your lot in life.
Pray hard to your household gods and they'll deliver you if you're, if you're worthy and, and your gods are powerful enough.
And in the meantime, don't, don't whine about the fact that, uh, that you're not, you're, you're, you're not in a different rank than you are.
This is where, this is where fate, this is where fortune has placed you.
Okay?
And each of those little groups, right?
If they can wheel and they can advance and they can hold, they've gotta have a person there who's making that decision.
And so if you looked at, if you think about it, people will often say it looked like a checker board, right?
So you had kind of gaps where people could come in and each little group, uh, each little manipu could, could move independently.
Okay?
And, and, um, so this was, the centurion was Rome's key institutional innovation, right?
Which it's not, you know.
Many, many people will, will, will note that that, that, uh, the Bible has, has had invented this earlier, you know, there was, uh, commanders of 10 and Commanders of 50 and Commanders of
a hundred, but Rome really got into the, like, the, the, they, they developed the centurion to be a centurion in the Roman Empire or in the Roman Republic was to be a person of rank, right?
It was, it meant, hey, you, you are better than most people.
And that didn't, it wasn't like that was contained to the battlefield.
If you were a Roman centurion, you had achieved a certain le social status that would follow you and your heirs for the rest of your life.
Okay?
And, and this is what allowed for people to trust each other, right?
So every soldier had a centurion above him that he trusted, and every centurion had a tribute above him.
You know, the, the joke being that, that he didn't trust at all.
Um, but, but the centurions kind of carried things through.
And, and, you know, later on when, uh, Julius Caesar and the Augusta Caesar reorganizing the, the, into an empire, they use that same kind of structure in designing the imperial bureaucracy.
Uh, one of the fun things about bureaucracy, there's only two.
Uh, bureaucracies in the world.
Uh, there's the Chinese bureaucracy and then there's the Roman bureaucracy.
And all other bureaucracies are derived by, you know, by some, some process of kind of grabbing a bunch of people who are already trained as
bureaucrats and moving them to a new area where they kind of clone themselves and spread their disease of, of, of organizational management.
Uh, but, but almost no one has, has started a bureaucracy.
There's only, only a couple people.
We don't really know that much about how the Chinese started their bureaucracy, but we know who started the Roman bureaucracy.
Um, and it's, it, it was based on this kind of thing.
You, you achieve a certain rank, you are in charge that rank matters.
And so you'll defend it and you will make decisions.
You will say, Hey, because I need to preserve my rank.
I'm going to, to make decisions.
And, and then again, the final piece there where, where this is a better circumstance is that it wasn't the sa it wasn't a religious rank, the centurion.
Now everything the Romans did was religious.
They were, they were a deeply, um.
Deeply spiritual people, right?
In the sense that they, they believed that spirits were all around them.
They believed in household gods, they believed in lo genius, Loki, they believed.
So, so they, they certainly would not have thought that you could become a centurion without, as I said, your being worthy and your household, gods being strong, right?
But it wasn't a, it wasn't a, a ritual position.
The way that the, the Greek general ships, or even the Tribunes was, uh, a lot of times it was, you know, institutional.
It was a structural, and that meant that, that you could, you could develop people of a certain quality and transfer them to it, right?
So if you have someone who's of Centurion rank, he's a good centurion.
You can move a good centurion between units.
Um, ironically this, the, the, the Romans didn't call their, their, um, their a hundred man.
It wasn't really, it actually, number one, it wasn't actually a hundred man group, it was an 80 man group.
And they didn't call it a century for very long.
I can't remember if they were still calling it a century, uh, in, in this battle.
But.
Enough of that.
Um, so we come to the battle pinna.
Um, palace found the rough ground.
He needed the Macedonian phalanx, the most feared formation in the ancient world.
Again, heavy infantry, right?
Uh, which, which, you know, most, most people would think of as a contradiction in terms, uh, they broke apart on the battle side, on the hillside.
In less than an hour, the battle was over and Perseus fled.
He was, he was then captured and became kind of this great, uh, this great, uh, captive, uh, the Antied dynasty, which had, you know, was kind
of, in many ways it saw itself as the legitimate, though, you know, all of the saw themselves as the legitimate era of Alexander the Great.
But they, they were probably the, the legitimate, they were the most, like Alexander.
They, it was the military Corps.
It was the same, you know, Greek culture.
It was, it was a lot of the similar, um, organizational structures, you know, by, after a hundred years, the, the, the SIDS had totally reorganized Persia, the Mies, you know.
Inserted themselves into the Egyptian scene.
And there was a lot of non-Greek non things that Alexander the Great, well, who knows me, Alexander the Great, might've liked it, but it was very different from how he ruled.
And that all ends in, in a, in a single afternoon.
Okay.
And, and again, I don't want to, I don't want to overstate this, but I, I really do believe that part of what was going on in this battle was the triumph of hierarchy, right?
That, that the Romans had the patron client system.
The patron client system was not just the way that they organized their economy or the way that, that they did politics.
It was the holistic operating logic of the city.
Every man had somebody above him.
Every man had somebody below him.
An obligation flowed in both directions, and as we'll see.
For the greatest of the Romans, this was true.
They, they, they, even when they were kind of above all other men, they still saw themselves as being under obligation and not, not not being outside of these, these, uh, these rules of reciprocal obligation, right?
So
Rome, um, one of the things that, that people don't, don't really appreciate was that this hierarchy was not, it wasn't like the, the, the, the, the great houses and the, and the patrons of Rome went out and said, well, now, now you're gonna be my client.
Right now you're gonna be in submission.
To me, that was not the way that it worked.
Um.
These were, these relationships were coveted.
People worked really hard to become a client of a good family or of, and, and especially of a great house.
We're gonna go through, you know, the list of the, the, the key, the, they call 'em the genis mare, the Great Houses of Rome, the great clans of Rome.
And people would go through in intense fights to, to become one of the, the, the folks that, that would, uh, qualify to be a client of, of a Genis Majoris.
And, and so the in, in that sense, the hierarchy wasn't imposed from above.
It, it was, it was foundational to the Roman character.
This is, they, they wanted to organize themselves into these ranks, into these units.
And yes, they wanted to climb as high as they might, some of them.
Um, but many of them just really liked that structure.
And this was very different.
Uh, from, from Greece, Greece built an army of equals Rome built a chain of trusted authority from the general down to every single soldier.
And so in a lot of ways, Apolis was doing was he was going in and making sure that those arrangements were meritocratic, right?
When, when Romans talked about, well, uh, an army needs to be reconstituted, right?
They, they would go in and they would evaluate the centurions, they would evaluate the officer corps, these guys that were making tactical decisions.
And if they weren't enough to stop, they would, you know, sometimes execute them.
If they were corruption charges, sometimes they would exile them or send them back to Rome and shame.
Uh, but they, they, they would rebuild that trust structure and that chain of trust.
That's why Rome won.
So, lemme give you the numbers for pinna.
Uh, it was a massive victory.
Uh, up to that point.
It's, it, it's unclear.
Um, a lot of scholars would say that there really hadn't been a victory of this scale in Roman history.
Um, 'cause you're talking about the, the, the wealth of, uh, of, of Alexander's empire, right?
So Alexander the Great had, had taken treasure from all over the world and the piece of the army that was responsible for guarding the treasure, that was the army that found the anti ticketed dynasty.
That's, that's who these guys were.
They had the treasure, they had lots of stuff from Persia.
They had a, a fair bit of stuff from India.
Um, and so the triumph, which is the Roman word, when, when the Romans had a big victory, they would hold a triumph, which was a religious ritual where people would come in and they would kind of show off all the stuff that they'd got when they were out there.
The triumph took three days, um, and, and.
I think before this point in time, this is significant because before this point in time, they, they didn't really have multi-day triumphs.
A lot of the emperors would do multi-day triumphs.
Um, and you know, 'cause once, once you do one three-day triumph, well then the next guy's gotta do four days and the next guy's gotta do five days.
That's kind of how, how political groups go.
But this genuinely was like, it just takes three days for all the stuff to get into the city.
Um, gold art, they, they, uh, they, they captured perseus.
It took three days to have the full procession of stuff go through the city.
Um, it was an estimated 300 talents of gold.
Um, so a talent was a weight, it was a, a, a measure of silver.
Uh, mo most talents were silver talents.
Like when, when, when the Bible talks about, uh, you know, so and so gave in parables a, a talent, right.
Um.
A talent was of silver, was about, uh, three and a half years wages.
Um, talent of silver is actually, it's really interesting 'cause there's this, there's this fascinating story of where does the talent weight measurement come from?
And it might actually come from China, uh, because a talent was the amount of grain you would need to feed a person to go from Rome through the Silk Road and back right from China with silks and spices and whatever else you got on the Silk Road at the time.
Okay?
300 talents of gold is a hundred times that, right?
So it is 300 years wages.
Okay?
Something, something akin, you know, to, to, uh, you know, a hundred million dollars.
Some, somewhere in that, in that range.
Okay.
It was so much wealth that Roman citizens were permanently relieved of direct taxation forever.
Like they, they never, they never, uh, directly taxed them throughout the, the, the Republican period.
The emperors of course taxed 'em.
But, uh, but to be a Roman citizen at this, this was the point at which that became, you know, really good.
'cause you were, you were free from taxation.
And then the really interesting thing that happens, and this is the thing that, that that starts the, the story of, uh, of, of, of what we're talking about.
'cause it was Paul's Amelia, right, of the Amelia family of the Amelia House.
He was the commander, right?
He freed Rome from, he brought home so much wealth that they declared that no citizen would ever have to pay taxes again.
And he didn't take any money, he didn't take a personal share.
Um, he barely provided for his wife.
And not only that, two of his sons died during the week of the triumph.
And here is what he said.
Um, I have as amongst, such as We Divine always had a dread of fortune as faithless, and in constant, I still expected some change and reflexive things, and which is after the victory.
I feared sorely that, that f-for would change at my return.
Nor could my mind free itself from this fear until this great misfortune befall me in my own house.
Until in the midst of those days set apart for triumph, I carried two most noble sons.
My only destined successors one after the other to their graves.
Now every Roman commander was entitled to a share of the spoils, right?
Um, you know, for a victory of that size, it would've been one of the greatest private fortunes in Rome.
This, this, one of the interesting things is like this was part of the problems that the, that the Greek city states had is when they had a big victory.
If they had had a, a victory of this size, then.
The, whoever won that victory taking, you know, the, the king's tie, which is a double tie, 20%, um, he would now be the, the richest person in the city by a long bit.
He, he would then have enough wealth to potentially corrupt the political process and, and even potentially make himself king.
Right.
He would've all, and not just the wealth, but, you know, slaves, artwork, you know, again, all of the, the, the Royal Treasury of Macedonia was emptied, uh, which
hadn't happened since, since the days of Alexander the Great, um, he would've had there, there that would've included, uh, land grants and client relationships.
'cause as he traveled across, uh, Greece, you know, the, the 'cause Greece and Macedonia are, are, are, are next to each other.
The, the Greeks came out and this was typical of, of how things worked in ancient armies.
And they would grant to the conqueror.
Some amount of spoils, right?
So, okay, you, you conquered, you beat this, this army, you're now in charge.
When you come by our city, you're marching by our city.
We find out that you are now the ruler of this area.
And so I, I'm going to give you a, a, a piece of land.
I'm going to give you an interest in a business.
I'm going give you this, I'm going to give you that, okay?
Um, and, and, and, and, and included in that, in that land grant is, uh, uh, an expectation of a client relationship, which you would use to build your personal power base, right?
They're wanting to be, to be close, uh, to the, to the general who wins.
But poll doesn't do that.
He doesn't take anything from the treasury, he doesn't take anything from the royal household.
And his estate at death was barely enough to repay his widow's dowry.
Right?
Uh, 'cause he'd been, he'd received the dowry when he married her, and he was, his household was obligated to pay it back when she left the household at his death.
Um, and Plutarch says, it is however worthy of admiration in Amelia.
Note the family name.
He calls him by the family name, that although he had subdued so great a kingdom, he did not add one drma to his substance, nor would he touch or even look upon the conquered treasure.
And the question that we'll be asking, um, for the next several weeks, or as, as long as I'm, I'm, I'm doing this series, we'll probably intersperse this with other, other things that I'll, that I'll wanna talk about.
The question is, what kind of family does this?
How do you get somebody that wins a great, that, that steps into a, a, a rough situation?
Uh, straightens out the army shows incredible judgment.
I mean, this is kind of like an Elon Musk going through Twitter level of reorganization that, uh, that Paula Amelia does and, and then
shows incredible tactical brilliance wins a victory, brings the greatest fortune that Rome has ever had in one lump sum back to the city.
And he doesn't take any personal power from it.
He acts as though he is under obligation.
He actually acts as though he is a client and his patron is Rome, right?
The city that raised him and the family that does this is a family that learned hundreds of years ago that power belongs to Rome itself and not to the people.
Uh, that, that stewarded, that, that power.
Right.
So the, the founder, the, the, the person that's kind of seen as the founder of the Amelia lineage, the Amelia Jens, uh, though, though they existed before then, and in some sense,
I think, uh, they're, they're, they're actually descended from the kings of Rome, uh, from people, from a group of people that were kings, uh, in Rome at a certain point in time.
In 4 34 bc the dictator maus Amelia Mamina used his supreme authority to curtail the censor's own power and then quietly accepted their devastating personal retaliation.
So, what was happening?
In, in, in, you know, Mount Marina's day.
Was that, that the, the sensors were, were getting involved in everything.
They had five year terms.
It was, it was, um, they, they were making a, a bunch of bad decisions.
They were enriching themselves at the state's expense and, and kind of Rome was in danger of collapsing.
Okay.
And so, um, this, this Amelias, he, they appoint him dictator, he has unlimited power.
He can change any law, right.
And what he does is he says, Hey, the sensors, you don't get to have a five year term anymore.
You get an 18 month term, which is then later, I think, uh, extended to 24 months, um, for a full two year term.
You don't get to, um, you don't get to have these long five year terms.
And he, he stripped away a bunch of their, their privileges, which we'll, we'll look at in more detail next week 'cause it's, it's, or the next, the next time I do this series.
Uh, because it's important to think about structurally like what that did for Rome.
'cause it's kind of the, it's, this is, this is the Roman constitutional moment.
Um, and, and.
He decides they made him dictator and everybody kind of expected that he was gonna enrich himself.
And he does this instead.
He, he structurally changes.
Um, he structurally changes the Constitution of Rome to benefit Rome, not to benefit himself and not to benefit the censors.
And in response, the, the censors, I think they assess his family with like eight, uh, eight times taxation, um, personal taxation to, to support the state because of what he'd done.
Uh, and he just pays it, right?
Doesn't object.
He just pays it.
And, and this, uh, this is the, the thing that, that one emelia, there's, there's kind of a, there's kind of a very interesting, um.
Uh, echo going on there when, when, uh, Paul Amelias comes back and with this great victory and they ban taxation for all Roman citizens because, uh, and, and, and I couldn't find a source for this.
I remember it from my childhood.
It's probably in some, some book, this is some secondary source.
I, I'm not saying that they said this, but, uh, but in my childhood, in my great-grandmother's library, you know, sitting there reading this stuff, um,
part of the thing associated with this story was that it was better to be ahead of a household, a citizen of Rome, than to be a king anywhere else.
That was the Roman mindset and the Roman, and, and that, that mindset was directly tied to the story of the Amelia Jens, to the story of that family that they believed, they
believed that principle and they believed it so hard that they stopped being the kings and, and decided to be, you know, one of, one of the great houses of, of a republic.
Which is a, I mean, that's just a crazy thing.
That's an amazing thing that, that actually happened in history.
You know, we, we, we look at, you know, history and one of, one of the things about politics is, you know, politics is kind of, kind of like business in the sense, uh, there's a friend of
mine, uh, um, who, who, who says that, um, you know, in, in politics you always gotta make sure that any act you take, uh, results in more political power than you had at the beginning, right?
Uh, in the same sort of way that in business, if you wanna keep staying in business, you have to cash flow.
And what that means is that every.
Bit of money that you spend eventually comes back to you plus a little something, right?
At least to keep up with inflation and, and political power is the same way.
When you spend political power, then you have to have, you have to believe that it's gonna come back to you in some way.
And these actions, it's very difficult.
It's certainly, it's certainly not the case that that political power comes back to you, uh, in your, in your generation when you do something like what Amelia does, right?
And so one of the, one of the great challenges that we're having in the world right now and um, is especially on, on the conservative side, is we're, we're trying to teach people how to,
uh, to use money to achieve political power and, and not engage in corruption, which is if you use political power to, to make money, then you, then you probably violated a bunch of laws.
What you need to do is use money, get political power, and then do political stuff, right?
Actually be able to, to level up from mere monetary transactions to political transactions.
What's interesting about this is they, they mastered that in Rome.
They were really good at politics.
What they did was they actually, they actually went to a level higher than that.
They went from politics to greatness.
Right?
So this act did not benefit the Amelia family in their day.
The, the, the, the restrictions of the sensors.
Okay.
Um, it didn't benefit them, but it established a certain character in their family that banked that reputation.
I, I would say to you, poll's ability to reorganize the, the army and fire all the bad centurions and, and, and kind of clean house,
hi.
The confidence that people had in him to allow him to do that was not unrelated to what his ancestor had done, you know, years and, and centuries before.
Okay.
These, these, these are, these are connected things.
This, this lineage was a through line where because of the character of the ancestor, that's what allowed the, uh, the descendant to, to do what he did and, and, and be offered the trust by people who, who associated him with hiss.
Now, his, the descendants did a number of things we'll get into, to kinda keep the story alive, as did all the families of Rome.
But, but at the end of it all, after having built a house, after having, you know, wielded a lot of political power, this guy decided that it was more important to
him to preserve Rome, to kind of take all of his political capital and spend it in one big, you know, one big transaction that wouldn't pay off, uh, for generations.
And then that's how you get polls, right?
Uh, who again, PLU tar calls him Amelia.
Amelia, because.
That's the name that matters, right?
The family name.
And, and he, he is in, in some sense indicating that this is, this is him as a true Amelias, this is him validating, living out the, um, the heritage of his ancestor.
Okay.
He, he made it his ambition, Paulis did to have his life be a demonstration of the same unmistakable virtues.
'cause these virtues are like, they're like a fingerprint.
Okay.
And, and, um, yeah.
So that, that, that's, that's what I, I wanna, I wanna take everybody through.
I want, I want us to start thinking about things in terms of lineages and thinking about things in terms of how do we, how do we start lineages?
Um.
You have to start lineages in some sense by having a a, a big act, right?
A big act of sacrifice by having somebody who is maybe not, you know, financially talented, right?
It'd be great if you do it with finances.
That's kinda the modern way.
There's people that are incredibly physically talented, right?
Sports guys that found a dynasty through sports.
But the real dynasties that endure, I'd argue, and, and I'm, I'm not coming up with this argument.
This is the argument of, of of the classical tradition in, in Western civilization and, and the Chinese tradition on their side as well.
Um, the way that you really found a dynasty is by being a moral genius, by being somebody who has a level of personal virtue that echoes throughout history.
And that, that, that gives, creates kind of an archetypal presence in your city, not just in your family, but in the wider community, in the political environment.
That you live in.
And this, this is why you can't be a great house if you just kinda wanna step aside and never, never be involved and, you know, and, and never, um, never accumulate anything for yourself.
And, and, and I'm not saying, you know, fame is obviously very dangerous.
There's people that are worried about having too much money.
There's people that are worried about having too much fame.
There's people that are worried about having too much power.
And all of those things are dangerous.
I'm not saying they're not dangerous.
Nuclear, you know, fusion is dangerous.
Nuclear fission is dangerous.
A nuclear power plant is, is is a very dangerous thing.
Um, you know, fiat currency is a very dangerous thing.
You can hurt a lot of people with these tools, but at the end of the day, somebody's gotta prove worthy to use them.
Otherwise, our society will collapse.
Right?
At the end of the day, you have to have people that love their country, that love their city, that love the, the, the civilization that produced them enough to sacrifice for them.
And, and, um, it's amazing how much you can sacrifice and still come back from.
One of the, one of the, one of the families, the Fabians come back at one point from one member, they get knocked down to one boy
and they, and they make it back to being one of the great families of Rome.
So just some, some historical backgrounds.
'cause, 'cause you know, every time that I talk about this, people ask me, tell, tell me you didn't gimme enough background knowledge.
Okay.
So Rome um, starts off as, as a kingdom, right?
There's 246 years of, of, of the kingship.
There's roughly seven kings depending on how you count it.
Um.
Then you have the Republican phase 482 years from, uh, starting notably in, in 5 0 9 bc. Um, you have the Senate, you have the councils.
They're, they're, they're not, they're not a monarchy anymore.
Um, and this is, this is when they start to grow.
This is when they become the Rome when, when they're a kingship, they're, when they're a kingdom.
The, the Rome isn't really that remarkable.
There's some cool things that happen, but, uh, but nothing that you would, nothing that would, would, would create the kinds of legends the way that we think about Rome today.
Okay.
And then obviously starting in 27 BC they, they, they became an empire.
Um, and moved, moved forward.
Um, so we're focused in this talk.
We're not talking about the Imperial period.
We'll, we'll talk a little bit about, 'cause most of these families eventually failed in the, in the Imperial period, but we're mainly focused on the Republican phase.
Um, and, and you know, I've, I've said on a couple of podcasts, uh, that one of the reasons why I'm doing this is because I've said on a couple of podcasts and some other forum that, you know.
Our constitutional republic, right?
The United States can handle a much more hierarchical society than we currently have, right?
We, we currently have one of the most egalitarian societies in the history of the world.
Um, you know, and people think that if we, if we back away in, in any degree from all of the implications and all of the, the modern things that we have done, uh, to, to just make, flatten everything as much as we possibly can.
We, people think if we back away from that at, at, at any bit, if we deny the, the, the, the, the gods of liberal exceptionalism and, and make
the neoliberals cry in any way, well then we just have to abandon the Constitution and it's worthless and meaningless and all of these things.
And it's like, no, man, our constitution, a a Republican constitution can handle a, a, a wide variety of, of I said on Will Tanner's podcast the other day that, um.
One of the problems that we have is we've wedded our society to a very specific, you know, financial, technological, sociological structure.
And these, these ideas are so wedded, so tightly that we, uh, when one of them stops working, it feels like everything's gonna collapse.
So I want us to study this, this, this ancient republic, right?
The Roman Republic, which really did a lot of the things, you know, you know, Socrates and, and, uh, Aristotle talk about, they think about, um, about republic, they think about politics, they think about these things.
Basically, none of the, of the Greek city states even really tried to have a, a true republic in the sense of combining the monarchical element, the aristocratic element, and the democratic element.
They didn't really do that, right?
Rome actually does it.
Rome actually puts into practice these principles and we're gonna go through them.
And, and now in order to have a a a, a true a Republic, you need great houses and.
And maybe someday, we'll, we'll get to the point where I can start talking about, about the, the, the great houses that, that are currently, uh, our, our current republic hangs upon and, and why we need a, a new group of them.
Um, but that's what we're, that's what we're talking about.
That's what we're doing.
So again, it's, it's, it's not a marky and it's also not a democracy, right?
There are consoles, which is, which was the president.
They, they eventually went to one year only.
Um, there was, there was, there was election, but it was by classes, right?
So different classes voted for different things.
And you did have, you, so you had the, the, the consoles, you had the Tribunes, you had the Senate, you had the assemblies and you, and, but, but,
but between all these things, you had these families that were competing for all these offices, and that was rather than party, rather than faction.
What, what allowed Rome to function was the, the character of these families and the way that they were, that they were trusted.
Okay?
So, um, another thing is, is that the Senate was not a parliament, all right?
It was, it was a place for, uh, you know, aristocratic people to demonstrate their worth and their wealth and, and, and to kind of fight things out, right?
So there it had 300 members, um, and it had life tenure.
Um, it was, they, they were appointed, not elected unless you were removed by the censors.
And it, it controlled declarations of war.
Um, it appointed the generals, the Senate was the, the main legislative body, the, even though they had, you know, these, these other, these other assemblies.
It had the power of the purse.
Um, and then the, the, there was, there was a position called the Prince Sonatas, the, the prince of the Senate.
Um, and it was a prestige title, right?
And, uh, you know, Marcus Amelia Leus, who's another Amilus, uh, right in between the, the, the two that we were, we've been discussing, held that position for over two decades in the second century bc Another interesting thing about the Senate was, again.
The hierarchy of Rome was just constant, right?
In Athens, people would file in, they, they, they, it was the idea of their, their assemblies or their ecclesias was, well, we want, we want to erase distinctions between the people in the room.
In Rome, your seating was assigned and it was explicitly intended to be a demonstration of, Hey, you sit there and you sit there because, uh, you're better than you.
Yeah.
Th this guy is higher ranked, and so he has to sit closer.
He has to sit at a better seat.
And, and they, they, they viewed that as the censors.
One of the interesting things is they viewed that as their duty.
Now, obviously there were corrupt sensors and they did bad things, and, and, and that's part of the, the tragedy and glory of Rome was, was when the system didn't work as well as it could have, but in the main.
One of the interesting things about it is how seriously, a lot of those guys took that, like, they believed that it was their duty.
That that having the right ranks in the Senate was actually part of their obligation to their family, to their gods, to their city, um, to the thing that held everything together.
And, and they did a pretty decent job, right?
There were, there were clear rules, uh, at least, uh, on that, on that front.
And then the other thing was the, the consul ship right there, there was two elected every year.
Um, and they, they eventually, you know, they knocked it down to one year only.
It was the highest civil and military authority in the Republic.
Um, they would command armies.
They presided over the Senate.
They administered justice.
One of the interesting things is that they, uh, they, they, they were the, their reign was how you marked years.
So if you got yourself appointed console, then in the, in the Annals of Rome and in the annals of most of the people that were dating things, um.
It was in the year of console and console such and such.
Right.
Which was, which is, which is just, it's just a very interesting thing how they, uh, how they worked that.
And I think that's, again, it's these sorts of things when you, when you look at them individually, it's like, oh, does that really matter?
Well, does that really matter?
You know?
But when you add 'em all up, when you add up stuff like, we're gonna name the year we're, we're gonna, we're gonna make sure that the Senate is in, is in accurate ranks, right?
We're gonna make sure that, that the people that are Centurion deserve to be there.
It, it, it, there's a consistency between these things that produces this national character.
Um, it's not just that they were lucky.
It's not just that they, you know, had greatness to, you know, decreed by the gods, et cetera, et cetera.
These were, these were people that valued merit.
They valued worth, right?
They valued rank, and they wanted rank to, to, to matter to people.
Um.
So, um, and then behind all of this, behind the senate and, and the consul ship, and then the other, you know, positions the Tribunes and such, behind everything was the gens, right?
So, a gens, um, is a, a number of things.
First, it's a bloodline.
So all male members would share what was called the Nomen, right?
A family name like Cornelius, Claudius, Fabius, or Amelia, right?
Descent traces through the mail line.
And Patricia membership meant access to the highest offices and to the gods of the state.
And, and, and indeed, there's, there's certain people that would argue, and I, that I'm not taking a position on any of the scholarship, but that basically
there's some suggestion that, that the core pantheon of Rome is related to the household gods of, uh, of, of these great houses that we're gonna go through.
Okay?
Um, and, and one of, one of the interesting things was, uh, and, and this is drawn from a, a book called the, the Ancient City.
Um, there was a ritual aspect to the gens.
So Gen A gens, um, you know, this is the word for which we derive, you know, genus in, in modern scientific terms.
But a gens was all, all of the male members of bloodline through, um,
it didn't include people that were related by the female blood.
So when we think about, um, when we think about a family, right, we, we will trace lineages on both sides, right?
And, and you'll have your, your mother's cousin, you know, your, your, your, your mother's side of the family and your father's side of the family.
And we don't really make a big distinction of that, uh, that that's kind of very Anglo-Saxon of us.
The Romans made a huge distinction about that because at the center of every family was a hearth.
And that hearth was not just the place that you cooked your food.
Uh, it was a ritual center.
It was the, the place where you interacted with the spirit of the house.
Okay.
And you were only allowed to enter that room to be in the household.
If you were in some way ritually associated with the, uh, with the, the household and, and were bound to the master of the house, such that you were, you, your, your presence wouldn't defile the, uh, the, the flame.
Uh, one of the, one of the interesting side effects was that for a while there, Rome like, sort of forgot how to make exceptions for wives marrying in.
So they would literally do like a slave ritual.
The wife would be ritually enslaved and then sold to her husband's family and then immediately monument it up and, and married to the, to the, to the guy that she was marrying.
Um.
Fascinating, fascinating thing.
They, they, they did figure out ways eventually of, of, of avoiding that, that sort of thing.
But for a while there, that was, it was so important to them not to have any people that were not connected to the flame, which connected to the, to the ritual head of the household, which was the Pata Famis.
That they, they would actually do that even with their wives.
Okay.
And this is the origin, you know, this is true for both Rome and, and Greece.
Um, this is the origin of the concept of, of private property, of a, of a sacred space.
That, that, that you have the right to, the Romans actually believe that, that the household gods had like extra power within a certain radius of, of the hearth fire.
And so if you an outsider went in there, then they might curse you.
You know, you're, you're, you, you might, you might get attacked by a hungry ghost, as the Chinese would say.
And there's, there's a lot of evidence that somewhere between the, the Chinese household and the Roman household, that there's some common.
Common ancestor there, that, that, that gives rise to what we think of as civilization itself.
Um, and this is, these are some of the core tenets of, of that civilization.
So the household was, uh, uh, uh, that gens was a legal unit.
It had shared property rights, burial grounds, and religious obligations.
Membership determined your citizenship class.
The gens could admit outsiders through adoption, and the Roman Empire, you know, later would run on strategic adoptions.
But 1, 1, 1 of the points that I wanna make is you could have separate buildings, right?
But the gens was all of the people that you could get together and they could come in and out of each other's houses without needing some kind of ritual, um, purification, right?
I mean, we think about, many of us are familiar with the New Testament and the fact that, you know, Jews wouldn't enter Gentiles houses.
Uh, 'cause the, the, the, the impurity there that the Jews saw and.
For a while there in the, in, in the early days of the Republic, they, they even kind of had that with each other, right?
They even kind of had this sense of, you know, we're not exactly on the same.
Now we can be out in public together.
Right.
We can be in the, the joint forum and we can be in all these places.
But, uh, but in terms of coming into one another's homes, only family, only family and people that are pledged to the bloodline in some intimate ritual sense are allowed into these places.
So.
Okay.
And then finally, uh, a gens had a reputation that which is in some sense is the most important element.
So a gens would accumulate its character across generations.
The military records, the cons, ships, the scandals, the heroes.
This reputation was the most valuable thing that you inherited by a long bet, like your name, your ability to say, and, and they would actually have like lawsuits over who was allowed to use particular names and talk about different things.
You know, last week we talked about, um, in the, in the British Gentry area, right, that, uh, that the Spencers at a certain point petition the Queen to allow themselves
to, to add the Churchill name back to them, back to they could style themselves, the Spencer Churchills, which they do for, you know, another couple centuries.
And this is important, right?
When you're building this kind of system, what name you get to call yourself by is, is a thing worth petitioning the king or petitioning the queen, or, or filing a lawsuit over.
It's, it's that important.
Okay?
So, um.
You know, there there's six members, uh, six Gentes mares, um, which are.
Amelia, the Valeria, the Claudia, the fia, the mania, and the Cornelia.
And, uh, you know, we'll, we'll we'll go through there, but they each kind of have their own founding moment.
They each have a, a, a, a a, a specific virtue that was unique to them, that people would've associated specifically with them and their character.
And, uh, so that's what we're gonna be going through, uh, for the, for, for this series.
And, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm really excited to get to talk about these things and, and think about these things because these are the kinds of stories, being able to tell this through line.
It, it, it gives you, it gives you a continuity, it gives you something that, that, that allows you to think about why history was connected
in the way it was, because the people that were living through it genuinely saw themselves as connected to these, uh, these historical things.
So, um, I think that'll, that'll conclude what I'm gonna, what I'm gonna do on the, uh, the public version of the podcast today.
Thank you so much everybody who's listening to me on the, on the free version.
Um, feel free to invite your friends to Great Houses Forum and, um, if you are interested in, in the q and a and the things that we're going to be doing next, please, uh, please get the, get behind the paywall.
Thank you so much.