DDH - By Your Command

On September 17, 1978, millions of Americans sat down to watch a brand-new science fiction series called Battlestar Galactica. They expected spaceships, laser battles, strange planets, and chrome-plated robots marching under the chilling phrase, “By your command.” What they probably did not expect was that buried beneath the music, helmets, and Vipers was one of the oldest political warnings in human history. This episode of Dave Does History follows a thread stretching from the Acropolis of ancient Athens to the Roman Senate, from the writings of Plato and Aristotle to the grievances listed in the United States Declaration of Independence. Long before the Cylons appeared on television screens, the Greeks and Romans had already spent centuries wrestling with a terrifying question: how does a free society lose itself to tyranny? The story begins with Cylon of Athens, an ambitious Olympic champion who attempted to seize power in 632 BCE. It moves through the rise and fall of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the Roman hatred of kings, and the Founding Fathers’ belief that King George III had become a tyrant in the ancient sense of the word. Because the American Revolution was never simply about taxes. It was about a fear as old as civilization itself: that free people, if careless enough, eventually wake up one morning and realize they are no longer free.