The Roman Revolution

So there's...

One of my favorite books, um, is called The Roman Revolution.

It's by Dr. Ronald Syme.

And, 'cause I think very oftentimes when people think of civil wars, they think of revolutions, they think of either, you know, the poor rising up or, you know, one party fighting another party.

People are going hungry.

And so grain was a huge piece of, you know, what actually fed people, and that's why the grain dole, which is this idea that people were entitled to a certain amount of sustenance from the Roman government, uh, was such a por- important and vital thing to actually running this empire.

Um, early on in kind of the second century BC, it starts as just a discount grain, but as you get into the, the Roman Revolution period in the first century BC, it becomes free grain because that's how you can buy votes.

Wow.

Well, you could say that.

So there's a book, it was written in 1939 by Dr. Ronald Syme called The Roman Revolution.

And I think if you look at that kind of last hundred years in Rome, any one of those guys could have been Caesar.

It's just kind of like Caesar's able to happen because there's kind of nothing left, no laws left to break at that point in time.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So basically, we're finishing this Republic arc, which is going to take us sometime through the end of the year.

And then something I've never seen done, which I'm excited to do it, is actually do a series on the Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme.

So we're gonna spend through March on that.