hi, i’m john green; this is crash courseworld history and today we’re going to learn about the roman empire, which of course beganwhen two totally nonfictional twins, romulus and remus, who’d been raised by wolves,founded a city on seven hills. mr green, mr green, what… what does spqrstand for? it means shut pie hole quickly, rapscallion.no, it means senätus populusque råmänus, one of the mottos of the roman republic. so today we’re going to do some old schoolgreat man history and focus on julius caesar while trying to answer a question: when, ifever, is it ok to stab someone 23 times? [theme music]
shakespeare answers that question by sayingthat roman senators killed caesar because he was going to destroy the roman republic, buteven if that’s true, we still have to answer whether: a. the roman republic was worth preserving,and b. whether caesar actually destroyed it. one of the things that made the roman republicendure, both in reality and in imagination was its balance. according to the greek historianpolybius, "the three kinds of government, monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, wereall found united in rome. and… it was no easy thing to determine with assurance, whether the entirestate was an aristocracy, a democracy, or a monarchy.†at the heart of this blended system was thesenate, a body of legislators chosen from
a group of elite families. (rome was dividedinto two broad classes: the patricians – the small group of aristocratic families and theplebeians, basically everybody else. the senators were drawn from the patricians.) the senatewas a sort of a mixture of legislature and giant advisory council. their main job wasto set the policy for the consuls. each year the senate would choose from amongits ranks 2 co-consuls to serve as sort of the chief executives of rome. there neededto be two so they could check each other’s ambition, and also so that one could, youknow, take care of rome domestically, while the other was off fighting wars, and conqueringnew territory. there were two additional checks on power:first, the one-year term. i mean, how much
trouble could you really do in a year, right?unless you’re the ceo of netflix, i mean he destroyed that company in like two weeks. and secondly, once a senator had served asconsul, he was forbidden to serve as consul again for at least 10 years. although thatwent a little bit like you say you’re only going to eat one chipotle burrito per week,and then there are a few exceptions, and then all of a sudden you’re there every day, and yes,i know guacamole is more, just give it to me! but right, we were talking about the romans.the romans also had a position of dictator, a person who would who’d take over in theevent the republic was in imminent danger. the paradigm for this selfless roman rulerwas cincinnatus, a general who came out of
comfortable retirement at his plantation,took command of an army, defeated whatever enemy he was battling, and then laid downhis command and returned to his farm, safe in the knowledge that one day the second largestcity in ohio would be named for him. if that model of leadership sounds familiarto americans by the way, it’s because george washington was heavily influenced by cincinnatuswhen he invented the idea of a two term president. so along comes caesar. gaius ju- gay-us? noit’s gaius, i know from battlestar galactica. gaius julius caesar was born around 100 bceto one of rome’s leading families. his birth was somewhat miraculous, requiring a surgicalprocedure that we know as caesarian section. coming as he did from the senatorial class,it was natural that caesar would serve in
both the army and the senate, which he did.he rose through the ranks, and after some top-notch generalling, and a gig as the governorof spain, he decided to run for consul. in order to win, caesar needed financial help,which he got from crassus, one of rome’s richest men. crassus ran a private fire companywhose business model was essentially, “hey, i notice your house is on fire. give me somemoney and i’ll help you out with that.†caesar succeeded in becoming consul in 59bce and thereafter sought to dominate roman politics by allying himself with crassus andalso with rome’s other most powerful man, the general pompey. you’ll no doubt rememberpompey from his fascination with alexander the great. pompey, crassus, and caesar werethe so-called first triumvirate, and the alliance
worked out super well, for caesar. not sowell for the other two. let’s go to the thought bubble. after a year as consul that included gettingthe senate to pass laws largely because of intimidation by pompey’s troops, caesarlanded the governorship of gaul, at least the southern part of gaul that rome controlled.he quickly conquered the rest of gaul and his four loyal armies — or legions, as theromans called them — became his source of power. caesar continued his conquests, invading britainand waging another successful war against the gauls. while he was away, crassus died in battlewith the parthians and pompey, who had become caesar’s rival and enemy, was elected consul.pompey and the senate decided to try to strip caesar of his command and recall him to rome.if he returned to rome without an army, caesar
would have been prosecuted for corrupt consulingand also probably exceeding his authority as governor, so instead he returned with the13th legion. he crossed the rubicon river, famously saying,“the die is cast†or possibly, “let the die be cast.†sorry, thought bubble,sources disagree. basically, caesar was invading his own hometown. pompey was in charge ofrome’s army but like a boss fled the city, and by 48 bce caesar was in total commandof all of rome’s holdings, having been named both dictator and consul. caesar set out to egypt to track down pompeyonly to learn that he’d already been assassinated by agents of the pharaoh ptolemy. egypt hadits own civil war at the time, between the
pharaoh and his sister/wife cleopatra. ptolemywas trying to curry favor with caesar by killing his enemy, but caesar was mad in that the-only-person-who-gets-to-tease-my-little-brother-is-mekind of way, except with murder instead of teasing. so caesar sided with — and skoodilypoopedwith — cleopatra. thank you, thought bubble. cleopatra went on to become the last pharaohof ancient egypt and bet on marc “i am the wrong horse†antony instead of emperor “thereis a baby attached to my leg†augustus. but before all that, caesar made his way backfrom egypt to rome, stopping off to defeat a few kings in the east, and was declareddictator again. that position that was later extended for ten years, and then for life. he was elected consul in 46 bce and then againin 45 bce, this last time without a co-consul.
by 45 bce caesar was the undisputed masterof rome and he pursued reforms that strengthened his own power. he provided land pensions forhis soldiers, restructured the debts of a huge percentage of rome’s debtors, and alsochanged the calendar to make it look more like the one we use today. but by 44 bce, many senators had decided thatcaesar controlled too much of the power in rome, and so they stabbed him 23 times onthe floor of the roman senate. caesar was duly surprised about this and everything,but he never said, “et tu, brute†when he realized brutus was one of the co-conspirators.that was an invention of shakespeare. the conspirators thought that the death ofcaesar would bring about the restoration of
the republic, and they were wrong. for onething, caesar’s reforms were really popular with the rome’s people, who were quick tohail his adopted son octavian, as well as his second-in-command mark “i am the wronghorse†antony and a dude named lepidus, as a second triumvirate. this triumvirate was an awesome failure, degeneratinginto a second civil war. octavian and antony fought it out. antony, being the wrong horse,lost. octavian won, changed his name to caesar augustus, became sole ruler of rome, attacheda baby to his leg, adopted the title emperor, and started printing coins identifying himselfas divini filius: the son of god. more on that next week. although augustus tried to pretend that theforms of the roman republic were still intact,
the truth was that he made the laws and thesenate had become nothing more than a rubber stamp. which reminds me, it’s time for theopen letter. movie magic! an open letter to the roman senate.oh, but first, let’s see what’s in the secret compartment. ah, it’s a harmonica!stan, do you want me to play some old, roman folk songs? very well. stan, i just want to thankyou for doing such a good job of overdubbing there. dear roman senate, whether you were rubberstamping the laws of emperor augustus, or stabbing caesar on the floor of your sacredhall, you were always doing something! i don’t want to sound nostalgic for a time when peoplelived to be 30, a tiny minority of adults could vote, and the best fashion choice wasbed-sheets, but oh my god, at least you did something!
your senate was chosen from among the patricianclass. our senate here in the united states is chosen from among the obstructionist class.but don’t get me wrong, roman senate, you were terrible. best wishes, john green. so did caesar destroy the republic? well,he started a series of civil wars, he seized power for himself, he subverted the ideasof the republic, he changed the constitution, but he’s only really to blame if he wasthe first one to do that. and he wasn’t. take the general marius, for instance, whorose to power on the strength of his generalship and on his willingness to open up the armyto the poor, who were loyal to him personally, and not to rome, and whom he promised landin exchange for their good service in the
army. this of course required the romans tokeep conquering new land so they could keep giving it to new legionnaires. marius alsowas consul 5 times in a row, 60 years before caesar. or look at the general sulla who, like marius,ensured that his armies would be more loyal to him personally than to rome, but who marchedagainst rome itself, and then became its dictator, executing thousands of people in 81 bce, 30years before caesar entered the scene. there is another way of looking at this questionaltogether if we dispense with great man history. maybe rome became an empire before it hadan emperor. like, remember the persian empire? you’ll recall that empire had some characteristicsthat made it, imperial. like a unified system of government, continual military expansion,and a diversity of subject peoples.
the roman empire had all three of those characteristicslong before it became the roman empire. like rome started out as a city, and then it becamea city state, then a kingdom, and then a republic, but that entire time, it was basically comprisedof the area around rome. by the 4th century bce, rome started to incorporateits neighbors like the latins and the etruscans, and pretty soon they had all of italy undertheir control, but that’s not really diversity of subject peoples. i mean, nothing personal,italians, but you have a lot of things in common, like the constant gesticulations. if you want to talk about real expansion anddiversity, you’ve got to talk about the punic wars. these were the wars that i remember,primarily because they involved hannibal crossing the
alps with freaking war-elephants, which was probablythe last time that the elephants could have risen up, and formed their awesome secret elephantsociety with elephant planes and elephant cars. in the first punic war, rome wanted sicily,which was controlled by the carthaginians. rome won, which made carthage cranky, so theystarted the second punic war. in 219 bce, hannibal attacked a roman town and then ledan army across spain, and then crossed the freaking alps with elephants. hannibal and his elephant army almost won,but alas, they didn’t, and as a result the romans got spain. people in spain are definitelynot romans (despite russell crowe’s character in gladiator), which means that by 201 bcerome was definitely an empire.
the third punic war was a formality – romefound some excuse to attack carthage and then destroyed it so completely that these daysyou can’t even find it on a map. eventually this whole area, and a lot more, would beincorporated into a system of provinces and millions of people would be ruled by the romanempire. and it’s ridiculous to say that rome wasa republic until augustus became rome’s first official emperor, because by the timehe did that, rome had been an empire for almost 200 years. there's a reason i'm arguing thatthe death of the republic came long before caesar and probably around the time that romebecame an empire. if anything destroyed the idea of republicanrome, it was the concentration of power into
the hands of one man. and this man was alwaysa general. i mean, you can’t march on rome without an army, after all. why were theresuch powerful generals? because rome had decided to become an empire, and empires need to expandmilitarily. particularly, the roman empire needed to expand militarily because it alwaysneeded new land to give its retired legionnaires. that expansion created the all-powerful generaland the incorporation of diverse peoples made it easier for them to be loyal to him, ratherthan to some abstract idea of the republic. julius caesar didn’t create emperors: empirecreated them. next week we’ll be discussing christianity,so that shouldn’t be controversial. until then, thanks for watching.
crash course is produced and directed by stanmuller, our script supervisor is danica johnson. the show is written by my high school historyteacher raoul meyer and myself and our graphics team is thought bubble. last week's phrase of the week was "pre-distresseddesigner jeans" if you want to guess at this week’s phrase of the week or suggest futureones, you can do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s videowhich our team of historians will endeavor to answer. thanks for watching crash course, and as wesay in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome. whoah… geez! yikes! everything is fine!
![Tres Hombres [Expanded & Remastered]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61-1qlDwu4L._SL1426_.jpg "Tres Hombres [Expanded & Remastered]")
