Tacitus' Argicola | The New Thinkery Ep. 39

Welcome back to the New Thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always. My good friend Alex Priow. How are you?

I'm doing well, David. How are you? A little fatigue. I drove eight hours today tired and we just wrapped up recording our last episode on Epic Tetus and boy, what a rousing, a loose philosopher he is.

And how are you, Greg? I'm gearing up, I'm ready to go. Yeah, you're always you have more energy than my five year old son filled with words. Is it the human growth hormone you take?

It's the warm milk, and it's a matlock. Who promotes that milk? Who provides that milk? Well, if you're playing your cards, right?

Grandpa has a special select on past your eyes. Half gallon bootlego, you got to ask for a special. We get it from the bowls. That's right.

One. That eight meal? What are we doing today, fellas? We are doing Tassidus because, you know, Jake the cannon producer, he sent me a text message and he said it took us 18 minutes to get to the subject in our last episode.

So we probably, he's. Yeah, no, that was an interview. We talked about the person's background. I wasn't going to out who it was.

I'm just saying that we maybe listeners would like for heroes to get right to know with the interviews we have to do the background. But sure, let's get to business today. Let's get down to business. Tassidus, a Greek, I don't know.

What do you want to say about a Roman historian writer? He wrote the animals. He wrote the Germania. He wrote the, I don't know, a Greek, and I'm missing one more.

Do you want to get through this bio? Do you have a bio ready? No, Greg. I mean, he's one of the go to primary sources for Rome.

While we're talking about Rome, we have our friend. I've never met him, but he seems like a wonderful man. I've read his scholarship. Wayne Ambler.

Can you talk a little bit about like he has a new podcast on Rome? Yeah, we should do this. Well, what's the title of it? What's the title?

I want to get this right. Let's get ready for Rome. Let's get ready for Rome. It's basically like it's meant for when you're traveling, but it's not just like, oh, here's where to get a good pizza and all that sort of stuff.

It's actually giving you insights into the meaning of the architecture, the arts, putting it in history and stuff like that. You're getting a wonderful philosopher leading you through Rome, and it's an extraordinary gift. He spent many years living in Rome and teaching in Rome. And he, for instance, I just listened to one of the first episodes on Giordano Bruno on a statue.

It's facing the Vatican who hadn't put to death. And it's really striking to see how behind the very structure of the city as we experience it today are built into this history and which is in a way a reflection of our own history, right? It's pagan, Christian, and then it becomes secular and enlightenment, Italy. So anyway, we're going to have him.

We're going to have him. Yeah, we won't say who's who, but I'll ask you to judge by Greg's beard. But he's going to be a guest. He's going to be a guest.

We're going to talk about Plutarch's life of Numa, probably. Sorry. I'm going to release his podcast. It's really awesome.

It's like they're about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes. Maybe we could do one Alex Rome after dark. But they're like many lectures and they're really thoughtful and these are great teacher. Tasses.

Yeah, let's give it a pass. Tasses, Jake's blasting us. Sure. He's blasting us with his cannon.

I heard you. I agree, what's it about? It got the father-in-law. Should we do this for all of our father-in-laws?

I mean, really woo them with a text. Yeah, you should start. I'm going to say what translation we're using. No, no, no, they're all poor, aren't they?

I wasn't happy with this translation. I should confess. I don't actually read Latin. So, I grew up in my judge.

But I just noticed that when I looked up some words, there were, there was a lot of inconsistencies. That's all I'll say. I guess after that rousing recommendation, we were using the Oxford world-class translation by Anthony R. Burley.

I also consulted a translation by Alfred J. Church, which is open sourced. You could read this in a couple of hours. It's only 30 pages for what it's worth.

And it's so readable. It's very readable. It's very good. I'll just say a few things for what it's worth about the title and then I'll turn it out.

Maybe you can tell us why we're doing this Tacitus, the gricola business of all. The title of the work is commonly just called the Gricola, but there are currently two manuscripts. One is on the life of Julius Gricola and the other is on the life and morals of Julius Gricola. Both of those are strange titles for this work because the work is almost entirely, the bulk of the work is devoted to a gricola's governorship of Great Britain, his military adventures there and his successful conquest of Great Britain.

It's a strange title for a work that's not really about all of a gricola's life. And if it's about his morals, it's not so in an obvious way. Or maybe it is, but maybe I just don't see it. So, Alex, why Tacitus and why a gricola?

Tell us about his bio. We need something of a bio other than he's a Roman historian. I don't know anything else. Give me some dates.

When was he alive? That's a little forward, Mr. Barr. Good heavens.

It'd be nice if David prepared something. You know, we could be like a standing thing to do. This is published in 98 that I do know and good year. It's a it's his first.

Oh, actually, I actually don't have a prelude from our resident classist expert, the in-house friend. I bought a bank. Otherwise known as doctors, Hoffman. Here's what he has to say.

It's his first work published around 98 AD. It's important to know something about Domitian, the emperor who died in 96, to contextualize the comments about being free at last to write his thoughts. Stylistically, it's very different from his histories. That's the other book you were looking for, David.

And the annals, the latter exhibiting most fully the taciti and manner of writing. I don't know what else. Yeah, go ahead, Alex. If you've got anything biographical on Tacitus, go ahead.

I don't have anything. I mean, I was just going to jump to why I like this work. So the reason I got interested in this work, I was doing a review of this collection of essays on Sefanar Dadi edited by my teacher, Robert Berger, and Patrick Gooden. And there's an essay in there by a classist who knew better than her.

I think there were colleagues at NYU, she now teaches at the College of New Jersey, you need to holly Ains. And she, I recommend this essay if anybody wants it, I can send them a PDF. It's called Empire as Wasteland. And it is about the way in which Empire affects literature and affects individuals.

But she quoted this really interesting line from a speech by the British leader, Calgakis, where he says, they call stealing, butchering, and replying imperium by false names and peers, peace, where they make a wasteland. And this just struck me as a powerful statement on the nature of Empire. And so I thought, I thought this is a really interesting work and it's short. And to me, it is one of the most subtle but powerful critiques of how Empire affects virtue.

So when you mentioned the thing about morals, you reminded me of this quote, and it reminded me also of what I think to be one of the themes that runs through this work, which is that a gricula aims to avoid the problems his father ran into. His father was virtuous, stood for freedom, and he died, right? It caused him his life. He's far more aware of how the Empire is illiberal at its core and how it's therefore against human virtue, which is cultivated in freedom.

And he does his best to kind of integrate himself quietly and inconspicuously, but still decisively helping the regime, right? And I take this book to be, on the one hand, it's a praise of a gricula for his cunning, his virtues and everything. But it's also a subtle account, I think, of how Empire distorts human excellence. And a gricula being the primary example, who's about as good a man as you can get, I would say, in this context, in the end, right?

Yeah. I'll just, a couple of small points, and then I want to move back to Alex. Not one of us is an expert on Roman history, is that fair to say? So our interest in this is really political philosophical, that we're just, we think that this short text has something to teach us about Empire and about moral virtue, I think that that's right.

And for what it's worth, I'll amplify this again in a few moments, but we think that there's a lot of work that could be done in Roman political thought, tasks, I think, in particular. This is a very short work. I actually got a few pages of commentary on it. And I really heard a lot of that goes to Zenith in here for what it's worth myself.

Yeah, it must be that Cambridge one. That's exactly right. I think the fifth footnote actually, Alex, if you have that, mentions the parallels to Zenith in any event. Maybe Alex, you've got some stuffs to do here.

You want to talk about how, I guess, Tacitus compares Great Britain to, or just Britain, excuse me, to Rome. Yeah, I think there's one of the things, so there's one of the things that's going on here between the British and the Romans is a kind of, we could call it like comparative political theory or something like that. It's comparing to different regimes. The British, he says, are highly decentralized.

It's not a very nice place for his account to be in. In fact, I think that's very helpful because then you start to wonder, well, if this place really is not so hospitable, why are they even trying to conquer it? And that question, I think, reveals an interesting feature of the Romans where they feel this desire to extend their empire toward the very end of the Earth. We see two examples of leadership.

Calgaxus' leadership of the British, we get two speeches by the British, and the most famous portion of this is Calgaxus' very stirring speech and I think remarkably sharp critique of the Romans. And then we get a griculus encouragement of the Romans. And I think one of the questions that comes out of this is, well, who does Tacitus agree with? In his narrative of events, who's the account of the Romans does it come closer to?

I think on the final analysis, it comes close to both of them, really. I think a gricula understands the Romans. He's well aware of what empire does, and he knows how to stir his troops in light of that. In light of that.

But I think Calgaxus is far more open, and he really just calls it out. And that line is especially his one. Yeah, great. I just want to back up and I'm sorry.

Sometimes I think we're so eager, and this one, I had a lot of fun prepping this, so I got a way ahead of myself here. This is a short piece, Tacitus' first published piece, and as David sort of made a joke about, this is a praise. It seems to be a sort of eulogy for his father-in-law, his deceased father-in-law. And as I mentioned in my very quick overview, it doesn't seem to cover his entire life, although it does in some ways.

It focuses above all on his father-in-law's conquest of Britain under the Romans. And so it's Alice, I like how you're contrasting this. It's the Romans coming to Great Britain and conquering them. And you're right, you're very much right about this being the ends of the earth, because I think that's it.

At one point, there were some implications that it pretty clearly didn't think anything was outside of Britain, all of these strange things, Spain, instead of West. I was wondering, as we turn to this Britain versus Rome thing, what struck me as Tacitus' account of the Britons almost sounded like how one might have described the early Romans, if that makes sense. And so there's sort of mere images in the right word, but... You think he's doing what like a xenophon would do?

What do you mean? Like, doesn't he have an implicit critique of Athens in the people, the meats, or is that off? Oh, it sounds persuasive to me. Yeah, I mean, Alice already alluded to it.

You have the main, I think the highlight of this text is a speech given by Calgacus and the speech given by Grigula. And I mean, Calgacus' speech is so much more impressive than a Grigula's speech. I mean, it's we're free, we're fighting on our own lands, we know the hills, we have nowhere to go, we're fighting for our lives and for our friends and each other. And a Grigula's speech is sort of like, well, we're outnumbered and we're here because we're home.

And it's just not very impressive to me. The Britain's, by the way, it's not Britain's in this case. Calgacus is from, I forget the Scotland basically. It's like these northern Scotsmen.

And it reminds me of, I was in Israel a few years ago and I visited Masada where there was this famous siege where the Romans, actually, funny enough, the Romans attacked this mountain fortress that the Jewish people had. And they held out sort of allerously and they ultimately lost and the Romans conquered them. But at the very end, the Jewish people killed themselves and they killed other kids and wives and like that. And there's this account of the Scots doing the same thing that they better to be dead and to become the slaves of the Romans or something like this, which is sort of hard not to admire in a strange way.

Yes. The British are motivated by the sort of love of freedom and they're willing to die for it. I want to point out two parallel passages. In section 26, early on, the Romans get into a fight with the British.

This is before the decisive battle and they're sort of sieged in the night. And noticing this, Grigula sends a second sort of legioner, whatever, to come up behind the British. And he says the following, now that the British are cornered, he says, the Britons were terrified at being caught between two fires. Well, the men of the ninth, the person people who were initially attacked, we gained their spheres and now that their lives were safe began to fight for glory.

So the operative thing there is safety, safety first, right? To jump forward all the way to Grigula's speech to encourage the Romans to attack, he argues that, look, we've marched all the way here. If we go back through the woods, they're going to kill us. They know this area.

So basically, safety is the operating thing. And here he has, I think this is one of the most revealing things he does. What section? This is section 33 at the very end.

Okay. Okay. Hence, while an honorable death is preferable to a life of dishonor, safety and honor go together. Well, isn't that convenient?

Right. So they'll fight for glory as long as it means also safety. Safety and dishonor, a Roman might go for it. I think because they prefer safety by all.

And then he says right after they says, and it would not be in glorious to die at the very place where the world and nature end. So it has really to conquer the whole of nature out of a desire for security. And this is somehow, it would not be in glorious, right? As if it's the only glory, because it is safety, is to conquer the whole world.

Otherwise, you somehow have fallen completely short, right? It's somehow, you know, not even just very high glory, but just not in glorious, right? And I think this is very revealing, therefore, of the Roman mindset. And a lot of what I'm teasing out here, I mean, Calgac just says it directly, right?

A test that is going to be a bit more overt, I think, in his mouth. So I take this to be, maybe this is a go-x-x point. Though he is a historian, this is, I think, can be read as a work of political theory put into this sort of historical narrative, right? That you can tease out lessons about the nature of empire, the love of freedom, the political psychology of both regimes and so on.

So if you're right, if we're sort of to be impressed by these Brits, what is it? Calcidonian is out there call? If we're to be more impressed by them, they seem to be more interested in freedom than the Romans, the Romans are to security. What is the, I mean, what does the test, what does test this teaching us about empire?

Are we getting a, are we getting a sort of praise of empire? It's clear that the Romans haven't impaired this point, and they're all the way out at the edge of the earth, right? What is, I mean, is it obvious, maybe I don't know what scholars have to say about this, is it obvious that test this is for taking empire? It sure seems obvious to me.

Yeah, can I point out a passage that I like from the end of 12, that may be how sure? Yeah, yeah. This is when he's talking about the nature of Britain, its lands and everything, and he talks about, this is so strange because it's a short work, he devotes about half a paragraph to the oysters. He says, the ocean also produces pearls, but they are dusky and modeled.

Some attribute this to the divers lack of skill, for in the Red Sea, the oysters are torn from the rocks alive and breathing, in Britain, they are collected as and when the sea casts them up. So there's a question here. Why are these models? Is it because they're not skilled or is it because they're naturally away?

He says, this is how he sells it. For myself, I would find it easier to believe that the pearls are lacking in quality than that we are lacking in greed, meaning people will go through any kind of efforts. They'll go to the bottom of the ocean in a dark, horrible place in Britain to get crappy pearls, much like the Romans will go to the ends of the earth, even though they have no business or no real safety interest in that, because that's the nature of human beings is to have this greed. So I think that point, for instance, to be a very subtle critique, it's an examination of human nature, nature explicitly, but pursued in a very benign way.

So it's not to be too much of a costume, much of a front. That's good. I think the same could be said of his critiques of Demetian, right? He focuses all of his critiques of empire really just on who is who is Demetian, Demetian, who is Demetian, Demetian is the emperor at the time of a curricular.

Okay. No, no, no, no, it's just died. Yeah, which is why tasks feel so comfortable. Yes, that's why you can now write.

Yeah, it has to this at the time of a griculite. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I mean, it's the writing of a biculite.

No, no, no. Now that he's dead, he can be more overt. But it's the griculite's name of the book and the guy. Do you see why we're confused?

Yes, yes. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. So I take even his attacks on Demetian to be a version of this, where he can focus in on one particularly bad emperor, not just not trying to level all emperors, as a way of, of, well, one, he praises the contemporary rulers, but on the other hand, he's also able to advance a critique of empire through a particular, right?

Yeah, he praises Trajan explicitly to the beginning of chapter three. So, Demetian is dead, section three. Now, alas, spirits are reviving at the first dawning of his most fortunate age. Nervous Caesar at once combined principles, formerly incompatible, monarchy and freedom.

I'll say two things. So first you're right. Now that Trajan is emperor, now we're free again. We can write.

We can say what we want. But he's raised an issue or question, by the way. Is monarchy compatible with freedom? He's answered it.

Yes. At least formally. Now. Yeah.

Thank God. Long last. And all the history of man, nobody's ever been able, but now the rulers, the present rulers, have overcome this apparently ironclad political truth. Lucky, lucky me, right?

How do we know? I mean, to me, this is, and this gets to a sort of deeper point, I think, is how do we know he's not just doing what a gricla did, right? Paying lip service, trying to just be friendly to whoever's in power, while not causing too much trouble, yet still being able to live something of a virtuous life, right, as best as possible. Which is how I think the gricla to be living.

But. Really? So you think the gricla himself does the same thing? Oh, yeah.

He seems at a number of points, I think, Tassidus points out that he was doing his best not to cause trouble. I mean, his father was killed for this and his mother was really upset, right? Right. I think it's still to him with that.

And so he, I think throughout life was very cautious. And the hard thing about it is that, well, his success and his humility gave him fame despite his attempts to avoid anything conspicuous. So one way. Perhaps he wasn't cautious enough then.

Well, if he wanted to be conscious, maybe he should not have been virtuous. I think he said that not to be a gun to battle, right? No, I think that's right. I mean, I think, well, we'll talk about this in a moment.

But I suspect that this short book is contrasting two alternative accounts of virtue. The virtue of a gricola on one hand and the virtue of Tassidus on the other. Yeah. And one way maybe the thing about it is a series of dichotomies.

There's a gricla versus Tassidus, a gricla versus Kogakus and a gricola versus Domingtean, a gricla versus his father. And I think you're asked to make all of these comparisons. So in section 40, just on this point about him being very, very deliberate, he says, when a gricola's returning to Rome after he's been recalled by Domingtean and he's coming back, he says, so that his entry would not attract attention by crowds flocking to welcome him. He avoided the friends who wanted to pay their respects and came into the city by night.

By night also, just as he had been instructed to the palace, he was greeted with a perfunctory kiss and then dismissed without a word into the crowd of courtiers. He knows that Domingtean is going to be jealous. Domingtean had just suffered a horrible defeat in Germany, right? And to pass it off as a victory, he dressed up some slaves like Germans, but nobody believed they were actually Germans.

It's one of my favorite points in this. But later, Hosenom. And this is, I think, one of the difficulties of Emparch. Domingtean's at the center, the generals are at the periphery, the generals win the victory.

They thereby prove they should be emperor. So their success makes them a threat. And so they have to undercut the very people who help the Emparch. And this is just the most destructive thing, a virtue, this most destructive institution.

Yeah, Alex, as a, I mean, since Dassett is so well known as one of the great historians of Rome, do you see anywhere in his critique of empire echoes of Herodotus' critique of empire? Were you working on something? Yeah, I think there's some parallels with that person. Maybe this is something, yeah, I mean, one thing is the Persian theology is a natural theology.

They think the sun is the gods and everything. So that their empire extends beyond their borders, right? That it extends over the whole map. I think that connection between empire and somehow a desire to encompass the world, become universal, I think, is there.

But maybe Gregus had thoughts on this in Thucydides or something. Nope. I will pick up the one where we left off alone to go about the praise for Trajan. I know if I'm saying his name right, but so I too took this praise of Trajan to be somewhat tongue in cheek.

I'll just say, you know, initially asked why did we turn, choose this text? Why would choose this author? A few years ago, I saw a series of people we had some job candidates come in and lecture on this. And all three sort of took this praise of Trajan at face value.

And I just thought, you know, maybe I'm just naturally a cynic here. I just first, I just thought what man is right mind would write a praise of his father in law. That just strikes me as incredible. I don't believe that.

I'm already my hackles are already up. But the praise of Trajan takes place in the first three chapters. In what our editor is called a preface. And then I suppose I was just, I was asking myself, what's the preface about?

And the preface ostensibly is about it's now okay to write openly again. That's the argument. But the problem is, as you sort of try to peel back the layers of the onion, it seems to me that it doesn't actually hold up. Let me just read a few examples for you.

So the very beginning says it used to be the custom that we could write these awesome things about men who are good. This is still the first chapter yet in former generations, the paths and memorable achievements was less uphill and more open. And then he gives this example of two men who wrote and who were trusted. No one disbelieved them.

No one criticized them. Different translations. No one doubted the honesty or questioned their motives. These two men, Rutilius and Scarus, they wrote and no one disbelieved them.

No one criticized them. But a quick Wikipedia search showed me that those two guys actually criticized one another and did not trust the other. And in fact, formally accused one another in court of having committed crimes. And so immediately you're like, huh, I don't know what's going on.

So you become possibly thinking to yourself that maybe it's not as free now as a task as this is leading us to believe. And so you begin to wonder if his praise of his father in law is actually not just a critique of at least I wonder. I do think it's a critique of Rome. I think it's a critique of empire.

I think it's a critique of his father in law for reasons that I'll try and lay out as far as I can. I think that taskless himself shows that he's writing a decade time. And so how do you write when times are decadent? Beginning of chapter two.

I'm sure I'm gonna put you the name. I'll rule in our Relianists rustic us. He wrote a UOG of somebody and was put to death, in fact, because he was an opponent of Nero. And so I guess here in chapter two, taskless is telling us that he's aware that he could be put to death for writing the kind of book that he's writing.

And so there'd be, I mean, this is a telltale sign that you know how to write sort of carefully. If you're saying as explicitly as he can, that he's engaged in an activity that he knows has led to other people being executed. And for what it's worth furthermore, Domitian has executed philosophers for what it's worth. So this guy, this guy that I just mentioned rustic us was executed for this for what it's worth.

All of these guys are involved in these really bad things. And so again, I just I'm just not entirely convinced that things are better under treas. And he also at the end of three to support this, he says, my work will be commended or at least excused as a tribute of dutiful affection. Yeah.

Or piety actually. Excuse me, guys, it's father-in-law. Yeah. So I can avoid any scrutiny because it's a family affair, right?

And I'm only pointing finger at one emperor, but it allows him to advance through a particular a general critique, you know, in a very, I think, striking way. I mean, I agree completely with everything you're saying Greg, because I do think that I mean, it's not so dissimilar. This praise of nervous Caesar, right? And never try on him.

It's not so hard to believe. I mean, look at the beginning of Machiavelli's Prince. Look at Bacon's great instillation, right? The praise of these monarchs that subtly indicating their deficiencies, right?

It's an acknowledgement of the power that's above you and trying to cope with the power and advance the cause, whatever it is that you're trying to do, in a manner that is possible, right? And not going to be immediately burned and things like that, the way that some of these works were. Right. And Arlene is the guy that's executed in chapter two.

His execution seems to be associated with the banishment of philosophers from Rome, the Domitian place. Now, Domitian twice vanished philosophers in Rome, once from the city and once from the entire all of Italy or something like this. And so I don't want to press this too far, although we might hear when we move on, but philosophy has a very bad name in Rome at this point and has come to be viewed with the great deal of suspicion by the emperors. And so if one were wanting to engage in philosophy, one would be, if one were prudent, one would not do so openly.

And so a few other things to me, this is obvious. Roman Empire is unjust. It was unjust of the Romans to conquer Great Britain. His father-in-law, insofar as his father-in-law, was an instrument of this unjust regime, even though he was doing his sort of, I can't think of the right word, but his duties, let's say, he's a questionable justice.

And I can go through that in just a moment, too, but one. But- Okay, go on. Well, okay. So you mentioned in the run a show doing a Grickler versus Tassus, so the author versus his father-in-law.

As I mentioned, the title has a Grickler's morals in it, potentially at least one of the manuscripts. So that led me to ask myself, well, what morals or what specific virtues does a Grickler have? What virtues does Tassus explicitly say his father-in-law has? As a reader as a Zenithin, I realize this isn't exactly foolproof methodology, but if I was Zenithin, one thing he does is he'll list the virtues of someone, and then you infer from things that are not listed sort of traits about the person.

So very simply, Tassus describes it as moderate in chapter seven, and in chapter eight, in chapter 44, seems to be the chapters where he specifically focuses on the virtues and morals of a Grickler. I was struck by, at the end of the first paragraph of chapter eight, I think it is the chief virtues that Tassus attributes to his father-in-law are obedience and shame. If you've read Protagoras, or if you've read other thinkers in Plato's Protagoras, obedience and shame are sham virtues there for suckers, just for his worth. But on the other hand, Tassus does say Grickler has prudence or good sense.

He says he's strict, but merciful. He doesn't quite say that a Grickler was incorruptible and self-restrained. He would just say, he says something along the lines of, well, we don't even have to say that. Okay.

He says a Grickler didn't seek fame. He might say he's courageous, in chapter 18, the Latin is animus, so maybe he's courageous. He mentions in 44 that he might be superstitious or pious, that he pays great attention to the Auguries and to prayer. In 46, he specifically calls in pious, the Latin is Pius, so what's missing there, justice, wisdom, these kinds of things.

But a Grickler strikes me as perhaps the embodiment of prudence or something like this. And I think that one of the things being teased out in this short piece is the difference between prudence on one hand and philosophy on the other. Yeah. Or prudence and also virtue, because I think he's prudent as a matter, I think a Grickler understands what he's up against, but he still has when we're talking about the empire.

I think he gets that there's this guy looming out there given what happened to his father. And I think he is, I think if we had a mistake or forget a prayer, our mistake is that he never less tries to do splendid things, right? And does do something quite incredible, conquering Britain, as it had never been conquered before. No, no, no, no, no.

Sorry. The problem, however, is that he does this in service to the empire. He crushes a free people. And he also himself ends up being unfree in his core, I believe.

I just had one more point. I mean, Tassus also implies that he was executed or assassinated, perhaps a better one. So it didn't even work. I mean, that's the really have proven so if he was assassinated, right?

Yeah, I think that's the tension is on the one hand. But I mean, this is built. I brought this point up before when we can reemphasize it here. On the one hand, the empire needs great conquerors, people like a Grickler who can conquer indomitable people, right?

And it doesn't encourage that as we can hear from the list of other people who have governed and Britain, I think it's meant to be a comparative in that way. On the other hand, as it encourages it in him, it necessarily makes him an enemy of whoever's emperor, because the emperor cannot have somebody who looks greater than he or else they immediately serve as a kind of challenge. And that's what ends up happening. He comes back and people start chattering, maybe a grickler should be emperor, maybe a grickler should be emperor.

And that's ends of undermining him. And so there's a tension in a grickler between one, this prudence, I don't want to get killed, but two, I want to do something impressive. Well, you can't be impressive and inconspicuous. And he is much as he tries.

And that's, I think you're right, his prudence fails ultimately at that point. I mean, he is poisoned or put to death. I mean, Tassus is pretty overt about Yeah, the other thing I'll say though on that point is that he does stress, Tassus does stress, has obedience, which is an attribute he also, excuse me, quality attributes also to the British. The Brits are also obedient.

And so there's, I mean, it seems to me that the implication is that his father-in-law and the Brits have both been subjugated to the emperor or the empire as the case may be. Another interesting thought is just being when Calgacus encourages the British before the final battle, he talks about their wives and children. And then he talks about the Roman soldiers don't have their wives and children around. And then at the end, what happens to a grickler?

Well, a grickler loses a son, I think early is a baby or something like that. But then he gets stationed in Africa. And Tassus complains, we didn't get to see him. We lost him actually, I think it was 10 years before, however long it was before, we lost him years earlier.

And so, you know, the guy is trying to, he doesn't want to fall into what his father did dying so young and leaving behind his son. I mean, ends up being about the same. You know, Tassus complains like what he did for the empire ultimately meant breaking apart our family and creating misery. And I think that's, that's in a way, another point here to this critique of empire is that it's really not in service of a happy life among families and individuals.

It is all about this weird identification of glory with safety, right? With universal safety. Yeah, I didn't pick up on that. You know, I mean, you're not saying it's not there.

You're right. I'm happy to have a point out. But I missed all the emphasis on safety, which means, which is interesting because that means the empire, this is through city, the actual, the empire seems to be motivated in large part out of fear, right? We're going to conquer the entire ends of the earth because otherwise, the only way we can ever be safe.

That's very good. Yeah, I think it's present both in that battle, just to reiterate, it's present both in that initial battle when they corner the British and also in the way that a grickler argues to retreat is to die. I mean, there's no reason that the Roman Empire at its seat all the way down in Italy is not going to be safe because they haven't conquered this one last land. But it might be unsafe for them to retreat back there.

And so it's basically it's it puts them between like, like before, it puts them between a rock and a rock and a rock and a rock and a rock and a rock and a place. And so they have to fight, they have no choice. One thing we didn't, I would like to touch on what we did was at the very beginning of the preface again, when Tacist is talking about the philosophers who were persecuted. They were all stoic opponents of the empire emperors, right?

So there was this huge anti-neuro faction that was comprised principally of stoic philosophers. We just did that episode on Epictetus. That's all I would bring out. There's a specific school of philosophy that was very much opposed to the rule of the emperors.

So I wonder if I just wonder aloud if Tacist himself is, he seems to me to be clearly sympathetic to the philosophers, insipidetic to the stoic, since of ours they were persecuted. But does that imply that he was also himself there for a stoic? And I don't think so because when we did have a Citi, that's not maybe the answer is yes. But when we did have a Citi, that seemed to me that stoic philosophy wasn't very political, it was retreating into the self.

Whereas Tacist seems to me to be much more interested in politics and understanding politics and having a political teaching. There seems to be a lot more political theory political philosophy here than Epictetus. It strikes me. There's no one's none in Epictetus.

Now that people aren't listening to that episode, let's say how we really feel. Which is funny though, if that's what we're right about the stoic's being not very political, if there was this big circle of stoic philosophers who were opposed to the empire and who were being persecuted for their opposition. Just interesting. Yeah, let me ask you this.

Do you think a gricula, we could call it gricula stoic in some way? Yeah, that's a great question. He is playing his role as best he can, right? And if he's not a stoic, if he's not a literal follower of stoicism, he seems stoic as an adjective.

Like he's very cautious. He seems to resign himself to his fate. He plays as part as well as he can. His role is to be a general.

He does it as well as he positive. Even his speech, I mean, I sort of detect a little fatalism in his speech. I really want to win, of course, we'll do our best. But if we lose, we lose, I mean, he doesn't explicitly say that in a sort of the tone.

Yeah. And one thing I'll say is we've been pushing for more, kind of to esoteric reading of what's going on here. But one thing I'll say is to maybe make it a bit more relatable and less like decoding the text is, I think he sympathizes with his father in law. I think I think Tacitus sees himself in a similar situation, right?

How do I know? Now, I think he would take issue with the life that a gricula chose to lead. Perhaps he should have stuck with his liberal studies, but also been more cautious. And he could have been somebody like Tacitus.

Instead, he pursued his political life, not realizing that there's really no way to win at this game, right? I mean, it's just, there's the emperor and then there's subjects, right? So here's where I take his main criticism of his father. Sorry, you can go on.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. So I just want to say that I do think when he says this is down out of dutiful affection, there is a great truth here.

I sympathize with a play of a great man trying to be great amidst everything and not able to be crushing the freedom of other people, losing his family and all that sort of stuff. I do think there's a real sympathy there, but it's a sympathy that's duly moderated by criticism of a lack of foresight about how things we're going to end up. Sorry. I just, I think it's philosophic sympathy.

I think it's a recognition that a gricula, all right. Here's the height of esoteric reading of this, of this short piece. I can beat you. Well, let's see.

I think Tacitus is telling us that he's a philosopher between lines. And then I think that he's criticizing his, the criticism of his father-in-law. I think he's sympathetic to his father-in-law. His father-in-law thinks that philosophy is something that you do when you're young, and that it's not appropriate for a man to do, especially not a Roman man or a sender.

And here, a gricula sounds a lot like calicles in the gorgias, right? So if philosophy is in liberal arts or something fine for kids, but once you're grown up, you got to put childish things away and become a man. That's the gricula's view. I don't think that's Tacitus's view of philosophy.

I actually think Tacitus himself has a high estimation of philosophy. Coupling this with a persecution that we know we talked about in chapters one through three. I mean, philosophers, like all philosophers were banished, some were executed. I wonder if, and David and I have talked about this a lot, maybe Dave wants to jump in because we talked about this in other, with respect to other thinkers, I wonder if there isn't a rejection of the term philosopher, but still doing philosophy.

Let me try this in a way. I wonder if under the Roman Empire, philosophers, some people who were philosophers, started to call themselves historians. Just like, potentially, Socrates didn't like people who called themselves wise and so started to call himself a lover of wisdom, a philosopher. Just like Rousseau, despised the phyllis of the French phyllis of the French, perhaps being one.

So I just wonder if this human type, this lover of wisdom, doesn't go by different names in different historical contexts based on a number of factors, including persecution for its worth. Even today, the term philosopher is in much disrepute. So you might want to go around as a lover of cheese. I do love cheese.

Yeah. One, maybe another esoteric point. There's a lot of talk about between military conquest. Before you bring it, yeah.

Just, we're gonna lose the thread. Sorry. There's only one mention of philosophy in the entire book. And it's in chapter four, and it's precisely this quote of his father-in-law.

And here's what Agricola says. Or here's what Tassa says. I remember the key, Agricola, used to tell how in his early youth he would have imbibed the study of philosophy more deeply than as permitted for a Roman in the center, had not as mother sensibly restrained his burning enthusiasm. So Agricola thinks his mother had good sense in restraining him.

That's the only mention. All the other references are to something called cipientia, which I'm not sure what the best translation is. Maybe it's wisdom, maybe it's prudence. But I think that Agricola led his life not with a view to philosophy, but with a view to whatever he was translate to other things as practical wisdom or something like this.

All right. So I haven't said a lot of this episode because I'm not fatigued and they'll prepare it. But I do have one question. Since political theorists seem to set Rome aside as unworthy of substantive, I don't know, philosophic, like it's empty of true philosophic content.

This is like I said, so little, I've been able to listen to this whole episode. You guys have unpacked a lot in this short work. I wonder, you suspect the rest of Tacitus is like this? I mean, in the rest of Roman thought.

And if that's the case, how have people missed all of this for so long? I mean, it's a way it would be a real indictment, I think, on our approach to political philosophy that so few of our peers have picked up on, I don't know, the depth of Rome. Or am I being unfair? Because I know Ben or Daddy's down it, but he's a rare bird.

So there's this chapter again, I recommend it to people I'm happy to share it. It's really an overview of how empire, it's on imperial literature, but how empire impacts the writing of Tacitus, the writing of Virgil. This is Holly, this is Holly Hans, Holly Hans is, yeah, she has a book on Tacitus, which I'm not bad, but I'm sure we're reading on it. Yeah, it has a section on Horace on Petronius.

It's, I mean, it's really, it's a good introduction to what this literature looks like. And one of the things that I got out of it is that even in a time of what it looks like, as David pointed out, sort of philosophic, just a wasteland, right, an intellectual wasteland, and it's merely committed to acquisition of, of, you know, neighboring peoples, that's still a profound situation. That's where the meditation and there is a way in which one can instantiate or live a philosophic life, even despite that. Now, what comes out of that, the kind of ratings that come out of that are not inspiring beautiful writings, like, you know, Plato's dialogues or something like that.

But there are no less, I think, meditation on the nature of politics, right, and how it influences philosophical. So I don't know, we should do more tests, I really enjoy this. We do as Giovanni next. Yeah.

And what was your point earlier about farming, Alex? Okay, so there's a lot of discussion of, of empire and in relationship to the natural world about plowing through the woods and things like that and going to the extent of the earth out of its desire for safety. And a gricola's name literally means farmers. So I just wonder whether there's a little bit of play there, I can't support this.

But I just whenever I read, for instance, if the oyster thing is a kind of farming, right, I do think that there's, there's something, and that's a reflection on human greed, it might be that this high man ends up being the model of just sort of your average farmer. That's, that's the spirit of it. Oh, that's good. But that's, that's, I would not stand by that.

It's just a system. This is actually shaping up, actually, read and fear steal all these ideas, somebody's going to take them. This would be a good little paper, actually, it would be great. What you the two of you have unfolded is very nice.

I, I, I was when I was when I was when you said a moment ago, I, I, I think that there is a gold mine of gold mine that's well put for people here to, to really work. Yeah, I mean, Ben or daddy saw it. Yeah, that's about it. I mean, a few other people, I think, Khan's Lord did some stuff with this.

There's a wonderful line here that it's only preserved because she wrote this essay. There are two particular memories I have when I reflect on these conversations with Ben or daddy. The first is of his revelation to me that he had read Ronald Simon's Tacitus. He had written to Simon announcing.

Now I understand that Tacitus is the truth of Virgil. That's typically cryptic. The second one is your farming thing though. Yeah, I think he's referring to the idiot of a maybe, maybe the second is a recollection by a colleague after Ben or daddy's death that he had once been completely mystified by an offhand reference Ben or daddy had once made to the zero at the center of the anneid who my hands takes to be a nius himself that there's this kind of empty figure and that I mean the nius just it's not Homer, you know, it's not doesn't have the same gripping quality anyways.

That's a good good note. I think we should end with is that it I mean, that's like the third time in a row each other. That was a great episode guys. I really enjoyed this.

Thanks to T something what's coming up with people here after we but Charles Butterworth. Well, after this, we're gonna have we'll have a resource first discourse. We're gonna have our first episode on Strauss. We have also some special guests.

We have Butterworth coming back. I think we already mentioned Wayne Ambler at the outset. So and much more and some some good juicy stuff on the line. Cool.

Thanks guys. It's been a pleasure.