Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling

Podcast Archives | The Art of Manliness

The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their name, and lasting until around the fall of the Western Empire in 476 AD. The caesars transitioned the Roman Republic to autocratic rule, consolidating vast territories under centralized authority and shaping Western governance, law, and culture. Their reign marked one of history’s most influential periods, laying the groundwork for modern empires and enduring legacies in political and architectural innovation.

They also left behind some instructive leadership lessons, in both what and what not to do.

Here to unpack some of the Roman Empire’s most significant caesars as both histories and leadership case studies is Barry Strauss, who is a classicist, professor, military historian, fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the author of numerous books, including Ten Caesars. Today on the show, Barry shares how Augustus consolidated power by initially cleaning house, a redeeming quality of the otherwise infamous Nero, the strategies Vespasian and Severus used to gain legitimacy as outsiders, why Marcus Aurelius was an insightful philosopher but struggled as an emperor, the emperor under whose rule the empire began its decline, what Constantine understood about the idea that if you want things to stay the same, everything must change, and much more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Barry’s previous appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #487 — Leadership Lessons From the 3 Greatest Ancient Commanders
• Barry’s forthcoming book: Jews vs. Rome — Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire
• AoM Podcast #346: The Fall of the Roman Republic
• AoM Podcast #969: The Making of a Stoic Emperor

Connect With Barry Strauss

• Barry’s website
• Barry’s faculty page
• Barry on LinkedIn

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. The Roman Caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent Caesars took their name, and lasting until around the fall of the Western Empire in 476 AD. The Caesars transitioned the Roman Republic to autocratic rule, consolidating vast territories under centralized authority, and shaping Western governance, law, and culture. Their reign marked one of history’s most influential periods, laying the groundwork for modern empires and enduring legacies in political and architectural innovation. They also left behind some instructive leadership lessons in both what and what not to do. Here to unpack some of the Roman Empire’s most significant Caesars as both histories and leadership case studies is Barry Strauss, who is a classicist, professor, military historian, fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the author of numerous books, including ‘Ten Caesars’.

Today on the show, Barry shares how Augustus consolidated power by initially cleaning house, redeeming quality of the otherwise infamous Nero, the strategies Vespasian and Severus used to gain legitimacy as outsiders, why Marcus Aurelius was an insightful philosopher but struggled as an emperor, the emperor under whose rule the empire began its decline, what Constantine understood about the idea that if you want things to stay the same, everything must change, and much more. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/caesars. All right. Barry Strauss, welcome back to the show.

Barry Strauss: Thank you, Brad. It’s great to be back.

Brett McKay: So we had you on last time, this is in 2019, to talk about your book, ‘Masters of Command’. And it’s about leadership lessons from some of ancient history’s greatest commanders, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Caesar. You had a book out that came out a while back ago called Ten Caesars, where you look at the age of Caesars and you highlight 10 significant ones in that history. What made the particular emperors you focus on in your book stand out as the most influential or instructive for modern readers?

Barry Strauss: A great question. So on the one hand, I wanted to focus on change agents and emperors who were consequential, who were, to use modern terminology, not just transactional leaders, but transformational leaders. And then to a certain extent, just basic showmanship, I wanted to choose emperors that were interesting to write about and that would be fun to read about. And I decided to set chronological limits. I began with Augustus, who we typically call the first of the Roman emperors. And I ended with Constantine, who’s the first Christian emperor. And who establishes the city that was destined to outstrip Rome and become the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople. I could have started earlier with Julius Caesar, as Suetonius does, and I could have gone on later at least to 476, the last of the Roman emperors in the West. I do have a coda about that in the book, or even to the Byzantine Empire to 1453, as Gibbon does, but I decided that it would make a nicer and more compact and coherent story if I went from Augustus to Constantine.

Brett McKay: And going back to that idea, you’re looking for transformative figures. This is one of the things I love about your books. They’re kind of Plutarchian in a sense.

Barry Strauss: Oh, thank you.

Brett McKay: You show the history, but then you subtly extract lessons that even someone who lives in the 21st century and they’re not an emperor, you can learn something about character and how to lead or how to deal with change or how to deal with setbacks. And you do this in this book. And I hope we can flesh out some of those ideas you talk about in the book. But let’s talk about you mentioned you started with Augustus. He’s considered the first emperor. But you mentioned Julius Caesar. All the other emperors that followed him took their name from this guy. He never was officially an emperor, yet he laid the groundwork for the Roman Empire. So let’s talk about him a little bit. How did his actions and innovations set the stage for the age of Caesars?

Barry Strauss: It’s a great question. Caesar didn’t see himself as an emperor. He saw himself as a Republican Roman politician, the first man in Rome, the greatest of the Romans in his day. And from his point of view, as a result of the opposition, the unfair opposition he faced in his quest to hold the consulship for a second time, he was forced into a civil war in which he was such a successful commander that he defeated all his enemies and ended up being the supreme power in Rome, the dictator eventually the dictator in perpetuity. So Julius Caesar, I’d see him rather as the last of the Roman Republicans than the first of the emperors. After he had won the civil war and defeated all his enemies, he was at a loss as to what to do and how he would govern in Rome. How would he work with what was left of the Republican institutions? And it’s clear that he toyed with different possibilities. He famously toyed with the idea of being known as a king, as a rex, and he explicitly denied that he wanted that title.

And in some sense, it’s a sign of his uncertainty of what to do that he decided to leave Rome and go off on a grand expedition to the east to conquer Dacia, what’s now Romania, and then to make war on the Parthian Empire and perhaps conquer a part or all of it. But, of course, he was assassinated on March 15th, the Ides of March, 44 BC, before he could ever go off on this expedition and before it could become clear how he was going to rule in Rome, how he was going to govern within the framework of the Roman Republic or whether he was gonna change that framework. There were many things up for grabs. And that was the situation after his death that in not too long time, in short order, led to another civil war. And when the smoke finally cleared about 15 years later, it left Octavian, his adopted son, his great nephew, his grand nephew, his sister’s son, it left Octavian as the last man standing as the supreme leader in Rome. And he had to figure out now what? Now how are we gonna put the pieces together again?

Brett McKay: Okay. Let’s talk about Octavian. So he’s now known as Augustus.

Barry Strauss: Yes.

Brett McKay: He’s basically the guy, he transformed Rome from a republic to an empire.

Barry Strauss: That’s right.

Brett McKay: What did he do to make that transformation?

Barry Strauss: Well, the first thing he did was to deny that it was even happening. He said that Rome remained a republic and he issued coins and other propaganda, the slogan of which was “res publica restituta”, which can either mean the republic has been restored or the republic has been renovated. He learned his lesson from Caesar, who had offended some of the old guard by his flirtation with being a king, and he denied that he was a king. He insisted that he was nothing more than the first citizen. This is a title that had not really existed before, but he called himself the first citizen. And he ruled through holding a series of republican offices. Now, these offices were not designed to be held in perpetuity much less to be combined in the purview of any one man. But Octavian did this. He had the power of a Roman tribune. He had the power of a Roman consul, the power of imperium, of command, as it was called. But he also ruled informally. And he was able to do this because he had a very bloody rise to power.

In these years of civil wars between 44 and 30 BC, he’s responsible for a number of battles and for the execution of about 100 Roman senators. The Roman elite suffers greatly in these civil wars, and Roman masses do as well. But one of the reasons for Octavian’s success, is that he’s killed off a lot of his enemies. And there’s a lesson here. It’s a lesson that Machiavelli would write about a long time afterwards in ‘The Prince’. And that is, if you wanna be a successful ruler, start hard. Start by coming down on your rivals and enemies hard. God forbid you have to kill them, as Octavian did, but make it clear who’s boss and make it clear what you will and won’t tolerate. And then after that, become generous and become more gentle. So Octavian, once he achieves supreme power, he has himself given a new name, a new title by the Senate, and that is the reverend or the revered one. And in Latin, that’s Augustus.

That’s a title that had never existed before in Rome, just as princeps, first, from which we get our word prince, and it only existed within the Senate. There was an unofficial prestigious person called the princeps senatus, the first of the Senate. But Octavian is experimenting. He’s working out a new constitution that can rule Rome while trying to create the legal fiction, maintain the fiction that Rome is still a republic, and it’s not a monarchy at all. This is a way to win friends and influence people, as we might say. And it’s quite successful. A scholar famously called it legal revolution, legal revolution. It’s a revolution that looks to the past. It claims to be merely preserving or renovating the past rather than innovating. And it works quite well.

Brett McKay: And he also dramatically expanded the reach of the empire as well.

Barry Strauss: Yes. He added new territories to the empire. Now, a successful Roman politician was expected to be a military commander as well as a figure in the forum, a speaker, a negotiator in Roman politics. Augustus himself was not a great general, but he had great generals working for him. And he was able to add Egypt to the empire, a very wealthy, prosperous and important place. He was also able to extend Roman rule in Europe. He conquered northwestern Spain, and he also added roughly Switzerland to the Roman Empire as well. He attempted to add Germany, Western and Central Germany to the empire. And that’s a famous failure. His armies are defeated in a brilliant ambush, probably the most successful act of resistance by those the Romans attempted to colonize, the most successful act of all time, or one of the one or two most successful ones.

And in the year 9 AD, the Roman legions are defeated at the Teutoburg Woods by a man named Arminius. Three legions are decimated. That’s about 1/10 of the legionary manpower that Rome had. So very significant loss. And Augustus is reduced to crying, give me back my legions. So yes, he expands the empire, but it’s not as successful as he had hoped.

Brett McKay: Why did he take on the name Caesar?

Barry Strauss: Well, he took on the name Caesar for a variety of reasons. Now, Caesar was an aristocratic name. It was the name from a Roman patrician family. It was as Roman as Roman could be. Octavian himself, his father was not a member of the Roman nobility. Instead, he was a member of the provincial elite. He came from a town that was about 25 miles south of Rome. And through his mother’s side, Octavian was part of the family of the Caesars. But from his father’s side, he was not all that noble and important. And the Romans were a very elitist society, extremely conscious, acutely conscious of social status. And they would have looked at Gaius Octavius as this man was born. Augustus was born with the title of Gaius Octavius. He’s coming from a second-rate background, not really one of us, as the Roman nobility would have said. So he is adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar. When Caesar’s will is opened, it says that he offers adoption to his grand nephew, Gaius Octavius completely illegal by Roman law, by the way.

There’s no such thing as posthumous adoption. But this is a time of civil war when people are willing to bend the rules and end some. Taking on the name of Caesar gives him nobility. It makes him a member of the inner circle of the Roman elite. So he’s very eager to have this title. And then he marries up. He ends up marrying a woman who comes from the absolutely bluest of blue blood, Livia Drusilla. That’s his prize. He has made it now. Little Gaius Octavius from the second-rate nobility of Italy is now as blue-blooded as any Roman could be. At least that’s the legal fiction.

Brett McKay: Okay. So I get the takeaway there from sort of like if you wanna be a change agent in an organization. So this is a philosophy of go hard in the beginning, be brutal in the beginning, and then be generous. So like, if you come in as a new boss, right away, maybe you have to just like, here are the rules that we’re gonna do. Here’s how we’re gonna do it my way. And if you’re not on my way, then you’re out of here. Get out of here. And then afterward, you can be a little bit more generous.

Barry Strauss: Yes. You have to be more generous afterwards. But you have to start out tough. You can’t start out nice.

Brett McKay: And then also, I think the takeaway from him is you have to think about PR, public relations. You have to say, hey, he was saying, we’re still gonna be a republic, but really you’re actually making an empire.

Barry Strauss: Absolutely. It’s legal revolution, its change with a friendly face. Augustus was a master of that, and the Romans were extremely good at propaganda. The other thing about it is that even when Augustus was generous, it was always the iron fist beneath the velvet glove. There was a velvet glove, but he was always willing to use force when necessary. He just tried to use it very, very sparingly so he wouldn’t make enemies unnecessarily.

Brett McKay: The Caesar that followed him was a guy named Tiberius. How did Tiberius differ from Augustus?

Barry Strauss: Well, Tiberius, like Augustus, was a man of vision and a man of immense talent. But unlike Augustus, he didn’t have the gentle touch. He wasn’t great at propaganda. It may be significant that unlike Augustus, he does not come from the Italian nobility. He also is an utterly blue-blooded member of the Roman nobility. And he faces life with a certain amount of arrogance, my way or the highway. He doesn’t start his reign by cleaning house the way Augustus had done. He tries to be a kinder, gentler emperor. And it doesn’t work. He meets resistance from the Senate. After all, there are still many people in the Senate who at least remember the name of the republic, if not the reality of the republic. They’re too young for that. And they were hoping that after Augustus things would go back to the way they had been in the late republic, that they wouldn’t have a monarch. But they were rudely disappointed. They had a rude awakening under Tiberius. And Tiberius finds himself forced to engage in treason trials. He expands and abuses the Roman law of treason to get rid of his enemies in the Senate.

Brett McKay: So yeah, he started out loved, but he ended his reign hated, basically.

Barry Strauss: Yes, hated. He also has a hatchet man named Sejanus. And Sejanus, not a member of the nobility, but Sejanus has very high hopes of becoming a member of the nobility and even becoming emperor. And he turns on Tiberius. He’s plotting against Tiberius. And it’s only through the help of members of his extended family that Tiberius is awakened to the danger at the 11th hour. And he has Sejanus purged. So he maintains his power. But he is hated, as you say. He’s a bitter old man. He’s no longer living in Rome. He lives on the island of Capri. We call it Capri and he’s ruling from a distance, he’s ruling a long distance. So it’s not very successful. It’s a pity because like Augustus, he’s a man of vision. And Tiberius’ vision is, to put it in contemporary terms, if I might, to end endless wars. So he pulls back from Germany and he makes it clear that under his rule, Rome is a satiated power. Rome is no longer going to expand.

And that was probably good advice for Rome at the time. The Romans needed to pull back. They needed to have peace on the frontier. And they also couldn’t afford to have the political challenge of having generals going out winning victories, and then marching on Rome and wanting themselves to be emperor. It was a recipe for instability, as they had seen under Caesar, Sulla, Marius, and Pompey. So it’s a pity that Tiberius with his vision for how Rome should rule abroad, fell afoul of the Senate and fell afoul of domestic politics. So in a sense, it’s a lesson in what not to do.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So Nero was one of the emperors that followed Tiberius. He’s one of the most infamous Roman emperors.

Barry Strauss: Yes.

Brett McKay: What’s the actual story behind that old adage, Nero fiddled while Rome burned? I think everyone’s heard that. Did it actually happen?

Barry Strauss: Not technically. Nero did not fiddle. The fiddle hadn’t been invented yet. There were rumors that during the great fire of Rome in the summer of 64 AD, that Nero stood on the terrace of his palace overlooking the fire, and he took out his lyre, this instrument, this harp-like instrument that he played, and sang about the fall of Troy. Nobody knows if this rumor is true or not. It certainly is true that when the fire began, Nero was at a seaside villa outside of the city, and he was in no particular rush to come back to Rome and oversee the relief efforts and the effort of putting out the blaze. It was also rumored that Nero had actually set the blaze because he wanted to engage in a massive urban renewal project. We don’t know if this rumor is true or not, but there are certain scholars, some of my colleagues believe it is true. We just don’t know. When he came back to Rome after this infamous fiddling episode, he did throw himself into the relief efforts, making sure the fire brigades did their job, making sure that Romans were fed and cared for and those that lost their houses had a place to live. And then he engages in this amazing building boom, remaking the heart of Rome. A large part of it becomes this enormous palace. We call it today Nero’s Golden House. It’s not what it was called in antiquity.

It’s a huge palace or set of palaces. It’s a campus really, with parks that were open to the public, an artificial lake, so on and so forth. It was very grand, but there were many people who were suspicious that Nero had either set the blaze or winked at it in order to have the excuse to rebuild the city.

Brett McKay: So it sounds like he did make some positive contributions to the Roman Empire, the rebuilding process. You could say that was a good thing.

Barry Strauss: It was a good thing. Also, like Tiberius, he was opposed to starting new wars. Rome had perennial rivalry in the east with the other great empire of the ancient world in this period, the Parthian Empire. It is a new version of the older Persian Empire and early Iranian Empire. And the Romans and the Parthians had fought. They’d fought several wars already. And Nero, through strength, through a show of force in the east, without actually going to war, he is able to reach an agreement with the Parthians, a satisfactory agreement that saves face on both sides and keeps the peace. So to that extent, Nero is a good emperor. On the other hand, he is squeezing the provinces and the provincial misbehavior by governors, who he encouraged to abuse the provincials and squeeze money out of them. That leads to a great revolt in Judea. It becomes known as the Jewish war, the great revolt that ultimately ends up with Nero being forced from office, having to commit suicide, and it’s only settled… The war’s only settled in a later reign. So in many ways, Nero is a failure. His personal life is scandalous. The worst part of it is that he arranges for the murder of his own mother. So he is a matricide, a truly terrible man in many ways.

Brett McKay: And you also talk about the way that Nero differed from some of the previous emperors like Augustus or Tiberius. He didn’t really have like a bigger vision for the empire itself. It seems like he was more interested in like just the personal celebrity of being the emperor. And he did some kind of weird things to promote his own celebrity.

Barry Strauss: Yes. He was supremely egotistical and he was very vain about his singing ability and also about his ability to race chariots. And so unlike some emperors who would travel around the empire, in Tiberius’ case, when he was a younger man, to fight for Rome, and Tiberius was a great general. In Augustus’ case, both to fight, but also to tour around the empire to make sure that he showed the flag, to examine provincial conditions, Nero instead goes on this grand tour of Greece. He was a philhellene, he loved Greek culture. And the Greeks had these famous Panhellenic games. Every year there was a different one, but they were festivals of athletics and of poetry and singing. And Nero forced the poor Greeks to have all the games in the same year. He competed in every event or in many events. And guess what? He won every event in which he competed. It is a supreme act of irresponsibility and egotism that he does this instead of governing the empire.

Brett McKay: It reminded me of some business owners or startup founders who, yeah, they’re working on the business, but I think they enjoy just the celebrity of being a founder more than actually working on the business. That’s what it reminded me of.

Barry Strauss: Absolutely. Yeah, no, I agree. That’s how he comes off.

Brett McKay: We’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. An overlooked emperor is, make sure I get his name right, Vespasian?

Barry Strauss: Vespasian, yes.

Brett McKay: Vespasian, he’s overlooked often, but you argue he was one of Rome’s best emperors. So let’s talk about that. What did he do during his reign?

Barry Strauss: I’m not sure I’d say he’s one of Rome’s best, but he’s certainly one of Rome’s most consequential. So he comes to power in a civil war. He is a military man who, like Augustus, did not come from a noble family. In fact, unlike Augustus, he had no connection to a Roman family. He’s the first completely non-noble person to become emperor and he starts a new dynasty. So he’s sent by Nero to put down the revolt in Judea and he’s relatively successful when in the middle of it, Nero is forced out in a coup. He commits suicide. There’s a new emperor and Vespasian decides to cease military operations until the smoke clears. Then that new emperor is forced out in a coup and then there’s another coup. There are three different emperors while Vespasian is still in the east, biding his time, seeing what’s going to happen. And then he decides that if they can be emperor, so can he. And so he has the troops declare him emperor and he sends armies off to Italy to fight in this civil war, to fight his way to the throne.

And ultimately they’re successful. And he goes back to Italy and he becomes the emperor, the first emperor who does not come from the dynasty, the family of Augustus’ family. So he has a real tough job. How can he have legitimacy in the eyes of the Romans and in the eyes of the Roman elite? And part of the importance of the Roman elite, the Senate above all, but also the equestrians or the knights as they’re called, these are the people who have the talent, the ability, the education, the experience to actually run the empire. You need them on your team. You can’t throw them all out. And so Vespasian wants to show to them, as well as to the Roman people, that he is worthy of being emperor. And like Augustus, he started hard. He started in a bloody civil war, fighting his way to the throne. But now he wants to show that he is soft and that he will give the Romans good government.

So he does what Augustus had done. He becomes a great builder. He builds all sorts of things in the city of Rome to brand the city of Rome, to rebrand it as a monument to his dynasty. One of the reasons he becomes emperor is that he conveniently has two sons. That means that although he himself is not a young man, it means he will be succeeded by competent men who will replace him and ensure that there is a period of stability. His most famous building is the most famous building from ancient Rome, the Colosseum was built under Vespasian to be this grand arena for gladiatorial games and for the beasts, as the Romans called them, for the killing of animals for sport and for executions. Grim sorts of stuff that the Romans did, immensely popular, but it’s also built as a victory monument. It’s a victory monument to his success in Judea. Vespasian and his son Titus put down the revolt.

They destroy the rebels, they destroy the rebel capital of Jerusalem, they destroy the Jewish temple, and they bring loot, an enormous amount of loot back to Rome, and the Colosseum dedicated as a victory monument to this. Originally, above the entrance, there is a sculpted relief of Vespasian in his chariot that he rode in the triumph that he celebrated in Rome after his success. So there are many other things that they build in the city, but this iconic Roman monument, as I said, probably the most famous monument from Roman antiquity.

Brett McKay: What do you attribute his effectiveness to?

Barry Strauss: Well, again, he starts out tough. He had gotten rid of all his enemies and made it clear, don’t mess with me. FAFO, as they say nowadays. And then he brought a period of peace and stability and prosperity. He was actually a good manager and he had very talented people on his team working for him. He knew that he was building a dynasty. He also was in many ways a humble man. He didn’t suffer from the problems that Tiberius or Nero did. He was not a member of the nobility. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon, far from it. He had to prove himself to the Roman people and he understood what it was to be relatively humble. There’s a famous story that Vespasian levies attacks on public latrines and his younger son, the future emperor Domitian says to him, “Father, this is beneath our dignity to raise money from public toilets.” And Vespasian is said to have replied, Son, money has no smell.” I think it’s a sign of the kind of down to earth person that he was and his ability to be pragmatic and do what was necessary to be a successful ruler.

Brett McKay: Well, speaking of that tax on the urinals, there’s a bit of trivia and you mentioned this in the book, urinals today with the romance languages, like Italian or French, they call them Vespasianos in Italy. They’re named after him.

Barry Strauss: Yes. It’s called the Vespasianos in Italy and Vespasien in French. So yeah, it’s ironic the poor guy is remembered in connection with public toilets. Maybe not what he had in mind.

Brett McKay: Let’s talk about Marcus Aurelius. I know our listeners are familiar with Marcus Aurelius, thanks to his stoic meditations that he wrote. But what was he like as an emperor?

Barry Strauss: Well, he’s a great philosopher and not such a great emperor. He comes to the throne with a disability and that is that his predecessor Antoninus Pius basically confined him to quarters. He had grown up and become a mature man with virtually no experience outside of Italy and virtually no military experience. He reminds me a little bit of George W Bush. He comes into office saying, “I want to be a domestic emperor. I want to use my term to give Rome good government and to dispense justice in a philosophical and equitable manner.” Instead, the poor guy is stuck with a series of crises, external crises. Rome has two great enemies. As I mentioned, in the east, there’s the rival Parthian Empire and in the west, there’s the series of Germanic peoples who had kicked Rome out of most of Germany in the year nine at Teutoburg Woods. And since then, they had become more organized.

They had consolidated some of the tribes into smaller ones. Marcus Aurelius’ reign begins with the enemies on both of the frontiers kicking Rome in you know what? And putting Rome in a very difficult situation. On top of that, there is a tremendous epidemic that strikes the empire. It comes from the east and it is devastating. It’s quite devastating. So Marcus Aurelius has to deal with these two wars and he has to deal with the plague, people call it. It’s not plague. It’s some kind of virus. We’re not entirely sure what, but devastating results. And Marcus Aurelius has to deal with all of this, restore order on the frontiers, which he’s able to do, but this is not his wheelhouse. It’s a tremendous strain for him to do this and he’s not able to become the domestic emperor that he had wished.

I think that a more experienced general would have been able to handle these crises much better than Marcus Aurelius did and more rapidly than he did. He’s also faced with a rebellion in the east. One of his generals rises up in rebellion against him, a very competent man. Luckily for Marcus, the general is assassinated by one of his subordinates relatively early in the day. Otherwise, he might have been in great trouble. He was in such trouble that his wife did business with the rebel general and supposedly she wrote compromising letters to the rebel general saying as long as you promise that my son can one day succeed his father, I will not stand in the way of you becoming emperor. So Marcus Aurelius had a lot on his plate. He has to spend a certain amount of his reign on the northern frontier, much of it in what is today Budapest, a charming city nowadays, but in the second century AD, not such a great place.

Kind of the back of beyond, miserable climate from the Roman point of view and it’s there on the frontier that he writes what becomes known as the Meditations, where he writes his thoughts about life. A man who was devoted to his duty, he had hoped to annex two new provinces in what is nowadays the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, but he fails. He dies on the frontier, perhaps a victim of the epidemic himself. It keeps coming back and he is unfortunately replaced by his son, who turns out to be one of Rome’s worst emperors.

Brett McKay: Yeah. We’ll talk about his son here in a bit. I think it’s interesting that he wrote the Meditations while he’s out on the frontier in these wars. And if you read the Meditations, it’s just a lot of him… He wasn’t writing this for the public. It was like personal diaries, but it’s him struggling with the burden of power. You can tell this guy really didn’t like being emperor.

Barry Strauss: No. He was a man of philosophical bent, but he also was a Roman who had a strong sense of duty. It’s interesting from that point of view that he doesn’t write the Meditations in Latin. He writes them in Greek. Now, Greek was the philosophical language of antiquity par excellence, but there had been Roman philosophy in Latin. There’d been Cicero and Seneca and the very philosophical poem of Lucretius on the nature of things, ‘De Rerum Natura’. But Marcus Aurelius writes it in Greek, partly because the Greek language was very much in fashion in his day and perhaps partly because, as you say, he wasn’t entirely happy as emperor, he wanted to draw a line between his rule as emperor and his thought as a philosopher. So this very famous book of a Roman emperor, the Meditations, is ironically written in Greek.

Brett McKay: What would you say is the takeaway lesson for Marcus Aurelius if you look at his career as an emperor?

Barry Strauss: The takeaway lesson is, first of all, it is not a good idea to hand the reins of power over to someone who has no experience ruling. I think this is one of the problems with the Roman system, that many emperors are jealous of prospective successors and they do not train them. I think another lesson, to put it the same thing in a different way, is you have to prepare for the succession. You really do. There have been many rulers in history who have been very, very successful, but they are afraid of what their successors might be. They kill off all potential successors. Nero is one of them. He killed off anyone in his extended family who might possibly be competent to replace him because he was afraid of being killed in a coup d’etat. And Marcus Aurelius’ predecessor, perhaps not so much out of fear of being killed as out of rank jealousy, he does not prepare Marcus Aurelius for the reins of power.

I think it is also a bad idea to think that you get to choose whether you are going to be a domestic leader or a foreign leader. Events, as a British Prime Minister once said, events get in the way. And Marcus Aurelius is a prime example of how events get in the way. You’ve got to be prepared on all fronts and for all things.

Brett McKay: So after Marcus Aurelius, isn’t he considered the last of the good emperors?

Barry Strauss: Yes.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So the empire begins to decline. Do you think he played a role in that decline or would that have happened even if there was another good emperor in his place?

Barry Strauss: Well, the empire was going to be faced with these frontier problems on the east and the west. The Roman Empire was a balancing act. It was a huge empire about the size of the continental United States. Very complicated with the Mediterranean Sea in the middle and various different terrains and people speaking different languages. And it had these two great rivals in the east and the west. So it had a huge military burden. That meant high taxes, but it also meant the danger of political instability. And the only way you could pay for all of this was inflation. So there was constant inflation in the Roman Empire. And then there were these series of epidemics that would come through.

One of the worst ones under Marcus Aurelius, but certainly not the only one. So it’s really tough to keep the empire going. Marcus Aurelius’ mistake was that he was too devoted a father and he gave the reins of power to his son Commodus. Commodus is the first man in Roman history, after 200 years of the empire, who was born to the purple. He was born to be emperor. His father was already the heir to the throne when Commodus was born. So there was never any doubt about it. His mother was the daughter of the previous emperor Antoninus Pius. And as you might expect, Commodus grows up, what is the word, arrogant, entitled, irresponsible. He is not someone who’s learned in the school of hard knocks. So unlike Octavian Augustus, unlike Vespasian, he doesn’t know what you need to do to rule.

He expects he’s going to have it all his way. And so he becomes a very irresponsible emperor. The first thing he does is he gives up the war. War is boring, not interested in war. War is hard. He makes peace on the German frontier. He gives up his father’s dream of annexing two new provinces and he goes back to Italy. He’s popular because he spends a lot of money on bread and circuses, as a Roman poet once called it, on popular entertainment. But he’s a tyrant. He kills a lot of senators. He is violent. He is undignified from the Roman point of view. He competes as a gladiator. He portrays himself as the second coming of Hercules and it drives the Roman elite crazy. They’re also afraid for their own necks with this tyrant in power. And ultimately they depose him. They have him killed as a plot in which he is executed by an insider. And then civil war breaks out again. This is not a year of four emperors, but it is several years of five emperors.

A series of pretenders to the throne, war east and west and all over the empire. And in one particularly humiliating incident, one claimant to the throne is forced to auction it off before the Praetorian guards. There were actually two claimants who are auctioning off the nod from the Praetorian guard. These armed troops on the edge of the city of Rome who protect the emperor and the Praetorian guard gives the nod. He’s not the one who gets the throne in the end. In the end, it’s a lawyer turned general from Roman North Africa who gains the throne and starts a new dynasty. A man named Septimius Severus.

Brett McKay: Let’s talk about this guy because he’s interesting. He’s an outsider. So he’s from North Africa. He married a Syrian woman.

Barry Strauss: That’s correct.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So he was not from Italy, not from Rome, but he’s able to assert himself. So how was an outsider like him able to rise to Rome’s highest position?

Barry Strauss: Well, he’s very much an outsider. He comes from North Africa, from what is today Libya. He is partly descended from Italian colonists. He may also be partly of African descent. It’s unclear. The sources are unclear about this. Certainly the Romans called him an African, but they also called anyone from North Africa an African. There’s other reasons to suspect he may be partly of African descent. As you say, he marries a Syrian and their children are part Syrian, part North African. Wow, this is wild. How does he do it? Well, partly like Augustus or like Vespasian, he does it in a civil war. He’s as nasty as you can get. He kills off a lot of people, and he makes it clear who’s the boss. But once he comes… And also he kills off a lot of senators. He’s not a friend of the Senate. He rules with an iron fist, but he pays a lot of attention to the military. He’s one of Rome’s most military leaders. And under him and his successors, Rome is well on the way to becoming a military dictatorship. Even less of a republic that had been under the earlier emperors, with the Senate having even less power and respect than it had previously.

That being said, Septimius Severus was also a builder, as was his son Caracalla. Unlike Tiberius, he is one of these emperors who wants to be a conqueror, and he does so both in the east and the west. In the east, he conquers what is now more or less Iraqi Kurdistan. So northern Iraq and part of Turkey and part of Syria, and he adds it to the Roman Empire as a new province in the east. This is a real feather in the Roman cap. It’s a very wealthy place, very important on the trade routes, the Silk Road from the east, and also very prestigious to have a… Win a victory against the Parthians who had formerly controlled this area. And it would go back and forth in later years. In the west, he’s not as successful. He attempts to conquer Scotland and he fails. He dies in Northern England in what is now the city of York. And he is said to tell his sons on his deathbed, “Be good to each other and always pay the soldiers. Above all, pay the soldiers.” And that is partly the secret of his success. He’s a military man and he uses the military to stay in power.

He and his successors create a garrison south of the city of Rome on the Appian Way. They create a legionary garrison. They establish a legion outside of Rome. And this is sending a message to the Roman political elite. We will not hesitate to use the legion to crush any opposition. So it’s turning the empire into a more brutal… It’s turning Roman government into a more brutal, more military form of government than the Romans had known before. And Gibbon, I think it’s Gibbon who said this is the beginning of the decline and fall of Rome, this real step away from a combination of military and civilian government to a purely military government.

Brett McKay: Something that stood out to me about Septimius was his wife played a pretty big role in his reign. You talk about this throughout the book. Women, while they didn’t have official positions in the empire, behind the scenes, they were pulling levers. Nero’s mother was a perfect example of that. But this guy’s wife, she actually played a pretty influential role. And it was obvious to people that, okay, this lady, she’s kind of in charge too.

Barry Strauss: Yes. And especially after his death, when the empire passed to his son, the rule passed to his son, Caracalla, she held an official position. She was basically in charge of his correspondence. So enormously powerful. And this would not have sit well with a lot of Romans. They were male chauvinists, let’s face it, though not as much so as some ancient empires or some ancient civilizations. But there had been very powerful women before, but they tended to sugarcoat it. And in her case, her name was Julia Domna, which is a name redolent of power. She didn’t even sugarcoat it.

Brett McKay: All right. Let’s talk about the last emperor you discussed, Constantine. And it’s funny, you mentioned this in the book that… I do this a lot. I always forget that Constantine was an ancient Roman emperor. I always think of Constantine as like a medieval. But he wasn’t. So Constantine, he converted to Christianity famously. How did his embrace of Christianity change Roman society?

Barry Strauss: Well, it changed it enormously. So we have to understand Constantine as a response to the 50 years of crisis that bedevil Rome in the mid third century AD. This is between about 235 and 285. Series of invasions, epidemics, inflation, urban collapse, things go really badly and a series of revolving door emperors and assassinations, instability. And these emperors are mostly soldier emperors. They come from the military ranks. They are not civilians by and large. The day is saved by a series of military reformers and economic and political reformers as well. And the basic conclusion that they reach is that for the empire to survive, it’s got to change. It’s got to fundamentally change. It’s got to become more military. It’s got to become more rigid. People’s status has to be fixed in a way that it hadn’t been before. It’s got to collect more taxes because the military is going to be more expensive, the new military. And it’s got to be more tyrannical, more dictatorial in the way that it rules. The emperor is truly going to have to become a dominus, a master who’s recognized in ways that previous emperors hadn’t been.

Now, the Romans were very religious people. They really were. They were pagans, but they believed that to have a successful country, you had to have what they called “pax deorum”, the peace of the gods. You had to have the gods on your side. And they were convinced that the reason the gods were not on their side, the reason Rome had this years of crisis was the gods were no longer on their side. So what are you going to do? Ceres the Empress had different solutions. One of them, a man named Aurelian thought the solution is to get a new god, the sun god. We’ve got to worship the sun. And Constantine’s father and young Constantine himself were initiated into that religion. It was the religion of their commander, the emperor. His successor, a man named Diocletian, said, no, it’s not the sun god. We’ve got to do two things. First, we’ve got to reinstate the Olympian gods, Jupiter and Juno and all the traditional Roman gods. We’ve got to double down on our worship of them. And secondly, we’ve got to get rid of the atheists who are getting us in trouble with the gods. And they considered the chief atheists to be the Christians because the Christians denied that the Olympian gods even existed. They only recognized one god.

And so Diocletian starts the great persecution, the great persecution of the Christians. It’s infamous and it’s a flop. It doesn’t succeed. He is not successful in wiping out Christianity. If anything, the staunchness of Christian resistance on the part of some and the creation of martyrs makes the church stronger than ever. Enter Constantine, who comes to the conclusion that Diocletian had it backwards. He was right. You needed a new religion. You needed to reestablish peace with the gods. But the way to do it is to become Christian and to encourage all Romans to become Christian. So he wins power in a civil war, actually, in a series of civil wars. And he’s the first Christian emperor. And under him begins the process of Christianizing the empire. It takes about a century till most of the empire is Christian because Christianity is a minority religion and some pagans hold on to their own old faith for a long time. But ultimately Constantine is successful in doing this.

Brett McKay: How did he do make that transition? Because, okay, he’s a pagan and pagans, violence was part of their worldview. It was like kind of might makes right. But with Christianity it’s like, well, nonviolence. You are supposed to turn the other cheek. And he was a guy who understood the power of violence and force and he would use it. So how did he kind of fuse his Christian beliefs with the realities of the…

Barry Strauss: Constantine, as you know, is a saint of the Orthodox church. So one wants to approach him with a certain amount of respect and dignity. And I think in a way he compartmentalized. On the one hand, he is an old Roman pagan who’s all about conquest and violence and force and using the levers of power. One of the ways that he spreads Christianity is in the western part of the empire, he has issued the Edict of Milan, this edict of toleration of all religions. But he never issues that in the eastern part of the empire. And what he does is he starves the temples. There’s no longer government support for the pagan temples. So they can’t put on their festivals. They can’t have all their expensive sacrifices. If you want to have a religious experience, you now have to go to a church, which he is now richly endowing. He’s using imperial resources to support the church. I think that from the Christian point of view, Constantine is a good Christian, A, because he’s a believer, and B, because he spreads the religion. He is a great advocate of the church and plays absolutely the key role in Christianizing the empire.

Constantinople, the new eastern capital, is going to be a largely Christian city. And even Rome, Constantine realizes that he cannot rebrand downtown Rome as a Christian city. It’s simply too pagan. So instead, he rebrands the suburbs of Rome as a Christian city. And he builds, for example, great churches on the site of martyrdoms, where there were martyr shrines. And the two great ones that he builds are the Lateran Church, which is the metropolitan church of Rome on one side of the city and on the other side of the city, St. Peter’s in the Vatican. And by design, they’re not built downtown because that’s pagan land. They’re built on the outskirts of the city to have a new Christian Rome. Constantinople is different. You can make it Christian in the center.

Brett McKay: How did his reign set the stage for the medieval era?

Barry Strauss: Well, that’s a good question. In the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History, it ends With this image of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, this general church council that he establishes to try to settle some disputes about Christian doctrine. And the Cambridge Ancient History ends with saying, “With the scene of Constantine at the council surrounded by his bishops, the Middle Ages begins.” It’s wonderful drama. I think it’s exaggeration. But with Constantine, we have this image that the state is now going to establish itself with a different ideology, a non-pagan ideology. It’s still gonna be Roman, but it’s gonna be Christian. And this is a revolution. It’s one of the major revolutions in human affairs, it’s an enormous historical revolution. It was a long time coming. Christianity had been around for 300 years about when this happens. But Constantine is one of these visionaries, one of these decisive visionaries who says, in effect, and here I’m quoting one of my favorite lines from the novel, The Leopard, “If we want things to stay the same, everything has to change.” And Constantine understands that, that in a way underlines his philosophy. If you want things to stay the same, everything has to change.

So we have to have a new religion. We’ll still be Roman, but we won’t worship the gods in the same way. We’ll have radical change in the way that we worship the gods. And this ends up creating radical changes in Roman society as well, changes that in some ways do represent the Middle Ages. Now, the Middle Ages are a lot more complicated than that. But this is a very crucial change that undergirds so much of what happens in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. And the idea that an empire needs to have an imperial religion, that’s not new. The Romans had an imperial religion. It’s called the cult of the Caesars, the worship of the emperor. And there are other attempts at imperial religions. But with Christianity and with the creation of this new infrastructure with the bishoprics, and I guess I’ll use the word infrastructure again, this elaborate and immensely effective infrastructure of churches and bishops and charitable institutions and educational institutions. Wow. It’s just an immense, immense change.

Brett McKay: So the Western Roman Empire lasted about 500 years, give or take. And that’s like one of the longest running empires ever in human history. What do you attribute its longevity to? And are there any lessons there for would-be institution builders and maintainers?

Barry Strauss: Yeah. It lasts even longer, really, if we say that it was established under the Republic. And it’s certainly in place by the year 200 BC. You gotta give it more like 700 years. So there are a number of lessons. First of all, Roman culture is extremely pragmatic. And if you wanna be a successful empire, you can’t afford to be hidebound and ideological. You need to be pragmatic. You need to embrace change. By the same token, you need to have a set of doctrines that you live by. And these doctrines have to be portable, but also non-negotiable. So there are core Roman values, but there’s also the willingness to make change and to learn from other people, to learn from the people you conquer. Christianity is not invented by the Latin-speaking elite of the city of Rome. Christianity begins in Judea, a rebellious province, and it spreads in the Greek East before it ever comes to the west. And I think the adoption of it is just a sign of Roman pragmatism. But there’s so many other signs of Roman pragmatism over the years. Another reason for the Roman success is they’re great engineers. They are great road builders. They’re great city builders. They’re great bridge builders. And they are very disciplined.

And they’re also tremendously good at militarism. They are one of the most successful examples of a military in human history. And that is no small part of their success. Let me also give a nod to Roman openness. The longevity of the Roman Empire would have been inconceivable without the willingness of the Romans to open the doors and bring new people into the elite. Sometimes it’s only done kicking and screaming, and it takes centuries for it to happen. But the elite that Rome starts out with is nothing like the elite that it ends up with. Julius Caesar is a member of an old Roman patrician family that goes back centuries. Constantine has a father who came from what is now Serbia and a mother who now came from what is now Western Turkey. And supposedly she was a barmaid in her father’s hotel when Constantine’s father met her.

We don’t know if that’s true, but that’s a story that’s told. It’s only a society that’s very self-confident and willing to open the door to outsiders, to newcomers that will succeed. But by the same token, a society that doesn’t say, hey, anything goes, anything is okay. No. They have Roman values. And if you wanna be a successful newcomer, you have to adopt some of those values. You have to assimilate to certain Roman norms.

Brett McKay: Well, Barry, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Barry Strauss: So I have a website, barrystrauss.com. They can find out about me and my work there. You’re reminding me that I have to update it. And let me say that I have a new book coming out. It’s gonna be coming out in August. It’s called ‘Jews versus Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire.’ And it tells the story of these two centuries of revolt, Jewish revolt against Rome that are tremendously exciting and bloody and awful, but also very productive because these are the centuries in which Christianity and rabbinic Judaism are both born. So out of these revolts come enormously consequential changes for human history. They also show a long-term role of Iran and Iranian civilization in what we now think of as the Mediterranean world. So I’m very excited about this book, and I hope my readers will be as well.

Brett McKay: All right. Well, Barry Strauss, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Barry Strauss: My pleasure. Thank you, Brett.

Brett McKay: My guest today is Barry Strauss. He’s the author of the book, ‘Ten Caesars’. It’s available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website, barrystrauss.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is/caesars where you can find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives. And while you’re there, sign up for our newsletter. We’ve got a daily option and a weekly option. They’re both free. It’s the best way to stay on top of what’s going on at AoM. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you’d take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay. Reminding you to not only listen to AoM Podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

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