Why Rome Collapsed? War Bloodshed Revolt, JD Vance, 3rd Rome,Netanyahu

conquering an empire, trying to be too big a burden for one small city, state, and central Italy to govern. Also all this money pouring in, huge numbers of slaves pouring in, competing with free people, free labor which can't compete with it. Huge turmoil. The army goes from being a citizen militia to a professional army, and the soldiers go from being middle class farmers to being poor people. The Roman word for poor people is breeders, they're mere breeders. Latin for that is proletarian. That's where you get the word proletarians from. Ultimately these proletarians follow the strongest generals, as you get people like Marius and Sulla, and of course Caesar. And there's a series of civil wars, and when the smoke clears, Roman becomes an empire, a monarchy. It's no longer a republic. There's still a senate, there's still citizens, there's still a sense of loyalty to the center, low to the emperors even when they're a bit wacky. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Take off the audio here, give me a second. Everybody retreat this space, thank you, thank you. Send out your invites, I'm just sending out some invites, as we, just commercial, okay? Roman faces more and more pressure from an invaders from abroad, from both sides of the empire. In the west, various dramatic tribes, in the east, various Iranian regimes, first the Parthians, one dynasty, and then the Sasanians, another dynasty. The pressure grows greater and greater, and the Roman Empire should have died in the year 260. That's the year that the Roman Emperor is captured in battle by the Sasanian king. And the Sasanian king, to humiliate the emperor, uses him as a footstool to climb on his horse, and it carved his big stone relief, which you can still see in Western Iran, the humiliation of the Roman Empire. Empire is a terrible trouble. There were plagues, there was inflation, there were assassinations, there were revolving door emperors, but a series of soldier emperors, strong men, rose to the occasion. They saved the empire by making it more authoritarian, by raising taxes, by taking away freedoms, by ultimately abolishing the power of the Senate, making it more centralized. And finally, the one thing they did was they felt that the gods were no longer with them. The Romans were pagans, of course, like the Greeks, and they felt that gods were no longer with us. We either have to return to the old gods, bring back the old time religion, or try something new. And so they had a variety of things. It's the first Christian emperor, and although he doesn't require that everyone become Christian, he and his successors make it pretty clear that the way to success in the Roman Empire has to become a Christian, and people will convert either out of sincere religious belief, or because they think the god of the Christians must be right, because after all, look how successful it's been. So the Roman Empire is revamped, retooled into the 300s AD, where there's new dynasties, but thin, trouble arises. The Germanic peoples in the West and in the North organize themselves. They group themselves into what one historian is called super groups, instead of being 50 different Germanic tribes, they're now really only four different Germanic tribes. They learn the art of war from the Romans. They covet the Roman lands. They're raiding the Roman lands. That might have been the end of the problem. The Romans might have been able to handle that, except for a couple of things. One, the Huns arrive on the scene. A till of a hun, and his warriors from the steps arrive on the scene, and they are attacking the Germans in the various lands in which they live, and driving them into the Roman Empire. And they find themselves forced to fight the Romans, and they're very successful at defeating the Romans. The Romans still have strong armies, and they still have terrific generals, who might have recouped, but there are two other problems. We get a series of incompetent emperors. In fact, for 50 years in the fifth century, we're now in the 400s AD, Romans govern by these two incompetent emperors, two child emperors when they start out boy emperors, and this rot at the top. One problem is that once these barbarians come and settle in the empire, and Romans forced to let them settle in the empire, that they take away the tax base. If you don't have the tax base, people aren't paying taxes to Rome. If they're paying taxes to the barbarian chieftains, instead, you can't have the professional army. So now we turn to the old Roman way of doing things. We turn to the Roman citizens, but there aren't any Roman citizens anymore. The citizenship, of course, technically there are Roman citizens, but the bond between the citizen and the state is gone. The loyalty of the citizens to the state is gone. When rumors rising, Roman then all Italy supplied soldiers to conquer this empire. By the time we get to the 400s AD, and well before that, there are no soldiers in Italy anymore. The Italians are becoming the Italians. They're enjoying the good life. They're not fighting. They use people from the outskirts of the empire and often Germans to do the fighting over them. So this is a ship that's very hard to turn around. In fact, it turns out to be impossible to turn around. That's a big picture. Well, that's so interesting. And it's a breakdown, but we want to delve into it a little bit. One of the interesting things for me is, am I right that the Romans had, even in the Republic period, that you could, at times of war, appoint people who were temperate or were dictated as a fact, is that right? Yes. So the word, the dictator is a temporary office. It's a six-month office. And when a dictator is appointed, it means that a normal Republican government stops and the dictator has supreme power for the period of war only. So it's an office the Romans use. Something like this in Britain and World War I, when the dissensuality well-macked, was passed. And there was a sense that ordinary things, all the days, when President Lincoln suspended hebeous corpus and people say, you can't do that. You have no constitutional right to do that. And his answer was, I want the Republic to survive, so I'm going to have to. And how did the transition happen in terms of, what was the culture and the history and the events that led up to the fact that this society, which was a republic, became a morning care, whatever you want to call it? Yeah. Well, I think, in part, as I said, it's the problem that success oiled the Romans. They bring in so much wealth that you have people who now feel if I'm so wealthy, and I've conquered King is abroad, why don't I get to be a king? You have a series of generals like that. You also have the problem of the poor, because another thing that the Romans get is they get slaves. Mass as numbers of slaves. And Roman Italy becomes one of the most egregious slave societies in history. This is a problem if you were a poor free farmer, but you shouldn't compete with this slave labor anymore. And there are some very unscrupulous wealthy people who are snatching up the common land that's needed for poor people to pass through their sheep and cattle and goats on. That disappears as well. And in some cases, they confiscate the farms of the ordinary people on the poor. So you have huge extremes of wealth, very, very wealthy people who have ambitions beyond those of their fathers and grandfathers. You have very poor people who are looking for some way to make a living. You have all these slaves as well who are skewing the economy. So these are the preconditions for a series of civil wars that they're waged on and off for nearly a century until the end of the Republic come back. And a lot of people listening to what you just listed might be thinking that sounds a little bit familiar. I mean, we have in our society's extreme wealth and equality, you might say we have a slave class which is illegal or for an immigrant or a immigrant who are being paid in a way that means the local population can't compete. We're far and wealthy. You've got these billionaires who are wealthy beyond our operations of human history etc. And non-histories like to draw comparisons. You don't mean what they see in the West today on the Roman Empire. Is that legitimate? Absolutely. I mean, I think one of them. I was kind of hoping you'd say no. I'm sorry. I have to agree with you. One of the lessons of the Roman Empire is that societies with strong citizenship can weather the storm. And once that bond goes, they are in deep, deep trouble. So earlier on in the third century BC when Hannibal invaded Roman Italy and inflicted some of the worst defeats in the war that the Romans had ever had, the Romans are able to bounce back because they have this strong citizenry. And they also have a series of alliances with people in Italy, especially in central Italy. The Romans are very good at making deals and saying one hand washes the other, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And they're quite good at making ties with these citizens. The Romans, excuse me, with these allies, they're good at making ties with these allies. One of the things that the Romans do. So the Romans come in and they conquer you. And they say who are the wealthy people in town? Who are the important and wealthy influential people in town? They say, look, you didn't want to lose the war, but you lost. And we're going to confiscate 10% of your land. But I'll tell you what, if you behave, we'll let your sons marry Roman women and their children can become Roman citizens. And we'll let you and people like you in your country, we'll let you do business with Rome without paying any extra taxes. We'll give you privileges. The Romans are very clever at this. They're very clever at co-opting people. So they build these bonds of loyalty that hold the empire together. But citizenship is the core of it. And isn't the problem, though, is that you keep guaranteeing more and more people's citizenship, you dilute the meaning of citizens. Yes, they do. And that's very insightful. So in the beginning of the third century, I think the year is 212, the Roman Empire Emperor decides. And we've been giving citizenship and going out a little bit more over the years. Let's cut to the chase and make everybody Roman citizens, and they're all going to have to pay taxes now. But it's diluted. Now that everyone's a Roman citizen, it loses its meaning. And in fact, the Romans come up with a new distinction, because they want to have the distinction between the... Is that just Jasmine? We're not. And that's... And that's places in a way distinction between citizens and non-citizens. So greater people and less people, hold on. And so the distinction between a citizen and non-citizen is what you get is a citizen, what you get is a non-citizen. Because all of the problem comes, Barry, is that I imagine if there is no power for a non-citizen to become a citizen, the problem is that you're going to get resentment, anger, frustration, social instability. You do. You do, but the Romans are rather elitist people. And they can't imagine how you can have a society where everybody shares in the privileges. They think that it makes society more effective if you do a lot of the privileges little by little. And that's how you get people to buy into the system and to work for you. But an example of an answer to your question, what do you get? So St. Paul is in Judea. He gets in trouble with the authorities. They're putting him on trial. And he says, he leaves Romano soon. I am a Roman citizen, which he was. And that entitles him to a trial in Rome. So he goes to Rome. So it means you're going to be treated better than someone who is not a Roman citizen. If you're punished, you can't be whipped. You can't be crucified if you're a Roman citizen. You have to get better treatment. Then you have certain tax privileges as well. And when we're talking about the fall of the Roman Empire, and we talked about many things, what about corruption? Because corruption seems to me, as I've seen, as society fall in Venezuela, corruption was the main reason why it fell. No, society corruption is not... I mean, you're right. There was corruption in the Roman Empire, but corruption was endemic to ancient governments. It was probably endemic to all governments. There's no reason to think there was more corruption in the 400s 80s than there had been earlier. So I don't think corruption was the reason for the fall of the Empire. I would say much more the loosening of the social bomb, the loosening of the notion of citizenship and citizenship and responsibility. Because there's people who frequently talk about the collapse of the Roman Empire, and we're talking about corruption, this is a point where the foamy mouth conservative smashes the table. They're having too much sex with the wrong people. That's why all went wrong. Yeah, but they've been doing that for hundreds of years, and they had their empire. So I don't think we can say that. Oh, really? Because there's also other people who go, well, you know, it's all about once the society starts playing with gender. That's the sign that it's in terminal decline. Is that another conservative fantasy? Yeah, it is. I mean, the Romans will only talk about...