Alex Petkas Returns - Julius Caesar: Model Of Masculinity?
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All right, Alex, welcome back by popular demand to the Man Talk Show. Great to be here, Connor. Yeah, man, I loved our last conversation. I think people are really into it. And so I'm looking forward to our conversation today. We're gonna be talking a lot about Julius Caesar, which...

I'm not really a historian or a history buff, but I know a little bit about him and he's a fascinating character. So with that, what would you say that the life or the character of Julius Caesar have to teach modern men about masculinity today? I think Caesar is really fascinating.

because, well, for a lot of reasons. I mean, so he's this common conception of Caesar is he's a dictator. Maybe he's a tyrant. There was a recent BBC documentary on Caesar that's like, oh, drawing these kind of modern comparisons to the rise of strongmen. And he kind of comes off as this Mussolini figure. But actually, Caesar was a really popular, massively beloved

peacemaker of a man, with the exception of the great civil war that he kicked off, which we could get into. But he kind of breaks the mold in a way. He's this amazing general and statesman. He's a soldier's soldier, but he's also a very charming man. He writes poetry. He's very good with women.

And, uh, and he has, I think Caesar kind of embodies this like full spectrum of masculinity that he, he kind of masters the softer skills and the kind of more feminine side of, of, uh, of manly virtue, if you could call it that. And he's also a man of the people. And in so many ways, he's a politically, he's most well known for championing policies that

try to help out the Roman poor, try to help out the common man. He promotes talented outsiders. It's a very ossified political system where it's hard for outsiders to get in and make their way in Rome. There's this very, very entrenched establishment and he promotes outsiders. So there's a lot to admire about the man as just a political figure, but as a model of masculinity, I think he's just got

got so many aspects to his character. And I've, so I've been doing this biography series on him recently and really diving deep in and a lot of it's quite surprising, you know, for example, he's, he kind of starts out his life as an underdog, uh, which I always find inspiring. So yeah, a lot to dig into.

How, I mean, politics back then seemed to be a little bit different. There's no social media, there's no TV, there's no radio. How does somebody like Julius Caesar even rise to fame or power? Is it really through narrative and story? Is it just about actions and accolades? Talk to me a little bit about that because I think when men in today's world think about success, the pathway I think can sometimes be colored by

the days of old, that some of the principles of how men rose to prominence and maybe gained status within the world, even 2000 years ago or 1000 years ago are still applicable to today. So I'm very curious about that. Totally. Julius Caesar is one of history's great storytellers, and that was his superpower politically, even militarily, because it's about motivating your troops.

And he's one of his most famous accomplishments is writing this book that ends up being a world classic. It's his commentaries on the Gallic War. It's like one of the great military history, military strategy books that was read by Victorian officer corps. And I mean, George Washington kept a copy with him and countless examples of Caesar's Gallic War commentaries being popular, partly because they're militarily useful.

And he really explains what's going on with this strategy and his dealing with logistics and traders. But also because it's just really fun writing. He paints vivid stories about the enemies, about himself, about all of his soldiers. And you can tell in that commentary that this is one of the ways that he was able to build constituencies

telling stories that appeal to a lot of people, promoting his supporters by really praising them when they did well, portraying his enemies as crazy kooks and bad people. He's very good at that also. It's clear that he practiced this also. This is something that he really worked at too.

famously wrote poems when he was a boy that were later suppressed. It's not that he was trying to be a professional poet, but it was kind of about sharpening his skill.

So it really paid off for him. So when he talked to me a little bit about his rise into prominence, because I think it seems like he had a very interesting past, right? He was the author, sort of historian. He had something to do with reforming the calendar as well, if I'm not mistaking, which sort of introduced the 365-day calendar with a leap year every

every four years. It just seems like he was kind of a renaissance man, like a man of many different talents and passions. What really got him into politics? Yeah. No. And the month of July, which is the month that he was born, is named after him, Julius July, right? And it used to be called Quintilis. So the calendar reform was after he became the dictator after he won the Civil War. But

But his rise is really interesting. So when he's a teenager, Julius Caesar suffers this tragedy. His father suddenly dies. He's like,

tying his shoes one day and Caesar's 15 or something. And his dad just drops dead. And his dad's a prominent politician. He's kind of up and coming. He never made it to really high office, but he was, you know, respectably, he was like a preter, which is the second highest office in Rome. And there are a bunch of people get there.

But he almost doesn't make it out of childhood or out of adolescence because, so kind of backstory here is at Rome, there are two main political factions. There are the optimates who are the conservatives, and then there are the populists, the populares, who are the kind of radicals looking to push through policies like land reform, land redistribution. They really like

to raise the penalties on corruption of the oligarchs. And the conservatives are usually pushing back against things like wealth redistribution and egalitarianism. And so Caesar has the fortune

When he's a boy, his, well, actually before he's born, his aunt, his dad's sister, marries one of the greatest men in Rome, this guy, Gaius Marius, who is a populist general, like one of the greatest generals of all time in Rome. He sort of saves Rome from these invading Gauls from France, these wild barbarian tribes who were trying to conquer Italy. He

He also wins a war in Africa. Gaius Marius becomes the most outstanding politician in Rome, even though he's a populist, he's an outsider, but he works his way up through merit. Marries well into Julius Caesar's family. The Caesar family is a very old name in Rome.

They're not necessarily the most glorious of families, but they have a good reputation. So, Marius marries well, marries respectively. And so Caesar grows up with this guy as his uncle, seeing them on family holidays. But Marius, right around the time Caesar's, he's probably 12,

Gaius Marius inadvertently kicks off this civil war by picking a fight with one of the greatest, well, the leading figure of the conservative party, this guy Sulla. And there's a couple of coups and counter coups at Rome that are not all that bloody, but very scary. And then Gaius Marius dies. And then the populists are in charge at Rome. And the guy who succeeds Gaius Marius is another thing that's amazing about Caesar. The guy who succeeds Marius is

gentleman Sina, becomes the first man in Rome himself. He's a populist. And he picks the teenage Julius Caesar to marry his daughter. So Caesar marries the daughter of one of the most prominent men in Rome. He's got all these prospects. Okay, his dad might have died, but he's connected with some really powerful people.

But then Gaius Marius's old enemy and Cinna's enemy, the conservative, optimist Sulla, comes back from a great war in the East and he just brings vengeance and this massive

incredibly bloody civil war, like the Civil War proper begins, Caesar's 17 maybe. And Sulla kills, I mean, like we're talking hundreds of thousands of people dying all across Italy. And then when Sulla gets back, it's very interesting for Caesar's story, like the what if. So Sulla wins the war and he blames the populists for the war. Of course, that's what you're going to do. And so he makes a list of all of the remaining populists

populists that he blames for the war. And he basically puts a bounty on their head. It's called proscription. He proscribes them, puts their names up in the forum, and the heads start literally rolling. They come into Sulla for people bringing in heads to this guy in the forum. They get a bounty.

And the men that were on that list, their properties confiscated. And very importantly, their sons and their sons' sons are barred from politics for life. So Sulla wants to make sure that none of his enemies can ever kind of rise up and topple the regime that he's establishing. So if Caesar's dad was alive, he would have been on that list if he hadn't died already.

And Caesar would have either probably been banned from politics for life if that had happened. So in a way, his dad dying early sort of spared Caesar from some of the worst excesses of this regime. And I think that he kind of leaves childhood for that reason with the sense of having been spared by fortune. I think this gives him this really powerful sense of purpose. There's another incident where he... So Sulla is

in charge and he sees this boy married to the daughter of Cinna, who he blames for the Cinna's dead now. And he orders Julius Caesar, "All right, you should divorce your wife. We want to get rid of the name of Cornelius Cinna in Rome." And Caesar says, "No, screw you. I love this girl." And then he flees town.

And Sulla puts a bounty on his head, but Caesar manages to buy off the centurion and some relatives negotiate for him. So he almost lost his political career from his dad being proscribed, but that didn't happen. And then he almost lost his life from standing up to Sulla. He's like a bold guy. So I think he kind of leaves childhood with the sense of like,

his whole life is borrowed time. I think that that was part of his motivation for getting into politics. He came from a political family, of course, and this is an important thing for most Roman aristocrats. But this sense of everybody, I mean, a lot of those people that were murdered after the Civil War were the people that Caesar was hoping to make a career with. All of his political network were all dead or exiled. And so he ends up

you know, bereft of all support as a teenager, but at least he's alive. And so that kind of becomes his mission in life to kind of undo the kind of conservative crackdown on Roman politics. And he ends up siding with the populace for the rest of his career. So wild, man. I mean, I feel like if

anybody had gone through that in our modern times. Psychologists and therapists would be like, oh my gosh, the trauma, the trauma. But here's this individual. This poor patient, yeah. Yes, this poor patient, yeah. It's so interesting because that's just sort of the time that they were in. I mean, it's really interesting because when I read about the lives of people like Julius Caesar, it seems so far from our reality in a lot of ways.

In some ways, not. I mean, there's still a ton of war. I mean, see what's happening in different parts of the world. I mean, there's still a ton of war and there's still people that are dying every single day from that. But it's a very different type of war. And I think what's interesting about what you're talking about is that politics and generals are intertwined. They're sort of one in the same.

back in the day and that politicians were sort of great warriors simultaneously, which is a very different form of politics than we have today. You're not going to battle and slaughtering people and then returning back to sort of make decisions about policy for your country. I mean, maybe there's some examples of that for sure, but I think it's more few and far between.

Does Julius Caesar talk about, in his work, and I'm curious about this, does he talk about losing his father and the impact that that had on him? It's really interesting. He doesn't. He does talk. There's a speech that we have a little fragment of that survives where he's kind of made his way in Rome to some extent. He's in his 30s and he's holding a kind of minor office and his aunt dies.

And his aunt, Julia was her name, was this is the wife of Gaius Marius, the kind of person who aligned his family with the populace in the first place, perhaps. And he stages a huge public funeral for his aunt.

And and he gives a speech in praise of her and praising her virtues. And it's kind of an occasion for him to praise his own family line, which actually goes back to Venus is what the legend has like that.

I don't know if this is kind of Roman mythology, but the goddess Venus rescues this Trojan Aeneas from the flames of Troy when the Greeks sacked it and he takes the ship and he makes his way to Italy. So Caesar kind of claims descent to this goddess Venus, who is the god of love, but also the god of like charm and persuasion. So that's important to him. It doesn't talk directly about his father's death and anything that we have. He does stage a big, big funeral game celebration

20 years after his father dies. So he's, again, I think a minor office holder. But he's kind of building his career. And so he borrows a lot of money to have a humongous party in Rome, funeral games in honor of his dad. And there's gladiatorial competitions. He gets like 600 gladiators. I mean, he's got some serious financial backing at this point. He goes into massive debt to celebrate his father's honor. So it's clearly really important to him. It's all

It's also an excuse to throw a big party that's going to make everybody remember your name for the upcoming election. So, you know, Caesar never does anything kind of on accident politically. But it's noteworthy, you know, his daughter dies when he's at war in Gaul, and he writes this year by year commentary. And that year, you know,

you know, nothing, no mention of his daughter dying, even though, you know, it was his only child. It must have crushed him. And she was so beloved by the Roman people and she was important for his political alliance. But I don't know. He kind of kept a stiff upper lip at times when we, when we see him have the opportunity to do something like that. Yeah. Some of, some of his life like just seems mythical, you know, like it's just like some of his life really sounds like something out of the Odyssey or the Iliad

And I don't know if this is 100% true or if this is rumor, but I read somewhere that when he was young, he was kidnapped by pirates. Yes. And that they demanded a certain ransom for his release. And he's rumored to have joked about

saying he was worth more than what they were asking. Yeah. You know, it's like they were asking for, I don't know, like the version of like, we'll just say like 20 bucks. And he was like, I'm worth at least 50. Like, what's wrong with you? And then threatens to basically, if he's released, threatens to basically like raise an army or like a, not an army, like a naval force and like come back and kill them or like crucify them. Yeah. Does he end up doing that? Or like, how does that...

Yes, he does exactly that. That's all true. That's insane. And the story is, as one ancient writer puts it, he's like a captive on the boats, you know, and he's their prisoner and he composes poetry and recites it to them.

And when they don't applaud, he calls them illiterate barbarians. And he's sort of insulting them as though they're his servants and not his captors. And he jokes with them, yeah, I'm going to have you all crucified when I get free. And they're like, oh, boy. Yeah, good one, Julius. And he does. Yeah. So...

He had a sense of humor. He's able to have fun even with people that he intends to do away with someday. What a guy. Where does the philosophy in the poetry fit in? Because I think one of the things that's been strip mined out of modern manhood and masculinity is this more softer skills or the more feminine oriented things that

men historically have always done dancing, poetry, music, those types of things. I think we've gone through an era where those things were almost looked down upon. I think now they're a little bit more acceptable, you know? But it seems to me as though

People like Julius Caesar and back in his day, those things were not only acceptable, but they were a sign of something for men. And I'm wondering if you can speak about some of that. Yeah, this is a great question. And it's a great, there's a great tradition in ancient thought that poetry is really, it's really important to power.

The Greek mythology of this is the Muses, who are the goddesses of the arts, dancing, history, poetry, also astronomy. But especially the goddesses of celebratory culture, let's say. They are the daughters of Zeus and memory. Memory, this is clearly a prehistoric

pre-literate culture where everything that's important you have to remember. You can't write anything down before you have widespread literacy. But the daughters of Zeus are the daughters of the god of order in the cosmos. And so they dance. This Hesiod, this Greek poet portrays it. They dance in front of Zeus and they charm all the gods. And the muses sit beside the throne of the king. They give charm to his words.

Because the king isn't just about being the toughest chimp, right? It's the chimp that can peacemake and build alliances. And storytelling is a big part of that. Getting people, like the muses or poetry, it has this rhythmic quality that's really important for...

battle, you know, lines of Spartans and Athenians would get together and they chant these songs and hammer their shields on the ground all in rhythm. And it can be very intimidating. So there's something like very important about poetry and both storytelling and kind of rhythm for power in the Greek mind. And the Romans took this up too. And by Caesar's day,

It was common practice to have your sons educated in Greek poetry. There's also a kind of recent tradition of Roman poetry developing by his day. It's only about 100 years old, even though the Greeks kind of go back 800 years at that point.

And I think you see this in a lot of great historical figures too, who aspire to, and maybe they're inspired by Caesar, but Alexander Hamilton composes a lot of poetry. Some of it not very good, but survives. When he's a young man, he's kind of sharpening his wit. Napoleon writes some terrible novels when he's a teenager.

It's not that they're trying to be novelists or entertainers, but they realize that there's this power of language that studying poetry and maybe trying to try your hand at it a little bit too gives you this sense of the power of words and choosing your words really precisely.

and bringing out the full meaning of a situation. If you recite the right poem at a feast, that can put everybody in tears and people will remember you for that reason. There's a great Athenian statesman from a lot earlier than Julius Caesar, but he was famous in Caesar's days, Solon of Athens, who used poetry as part of his political propaganda. Because if you can get people

chanting your rhymes, then they'll remember you and they might remember your policies. You can kind of shape their consciousness in a way. So I think the Romans took this stuff very seriously as a kind of art of not just of pleasure, but of power too. So interesting. Yeah. I mean, that connection between power and poetry is interesting. I've never heard it put that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. And I mean, sometimes at the men's weekends or

even in the alliance, the men's community that we have, I'll read poetry off and other men will read poetry off sometimes. And I think that there's a resurgence of that, even in the mythopoetic men's movement of the '80s and the '90s. And it was huge. Robert Bly. Yeah, Robert Bly, all those guys. They really brought poetry back into the fold of self-understanding.

And it seems very interesting that there's kind of this unspoken knowledge and knowing that in order to know thyself as a man, you have to be willing to venture into these softer areas of oration and poetry and music and dance and that you have to have some type of tether to that.

or some type of pursuit to that. But I've never really put the link there between poetry and power. I think that's a very interesting one. What about Julius, what about Caesar's ability to storytell? Because that seems to be something that he was extremely known for. How, first off, maybe just shape a little bit of where did storytelling fit into his life? And secondly, how do you think or why do you think that modern men

could benefit from being better storytellers? Because I do think that it's something that has really dropped off within our modern interactions and relationships. Yeah, it's so important. So one good example of Caesar's storytelling is from the Gallic War commentaries. We were talking a little bit before we started recording about HBO's Rome series. And if anybody's heard of that, there's two characters in HBO Rome. There's

Titus Pullo and Lucius Varenus, or Varenus. And they are these soldiers in Caesar's army that kind of become comic relief and also like a window into the plebeian life at Rome. Well, these are actually real characters that Caesar portrayed in his Gallic War commentaries that were fighting under him in this incredible war in Gaul. And I pulled up the quote here. So

One of Caesar's lieutenants is being ferociously attacked. He's in winter quarters in Gaul.

And the Gauls attack his fort. He's greatly outnumbered. And so they're fighting for their lives. And if it's all right, I could read this little passage that actually inspired HBO Rome. And this is Caesar's words, Caesar's storytelling, translated from the Latin. And so he says, in that legion, there were two most gallant centurions, now not far from the first class of their rank, Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus. They had continual quarrels together as to which one was to stand first.

And every year they struggled in fierce rivalry for the chief posts. So they're kind of frenemies. One of them, Polo, when the fight was fiercest by the entrenchments said, why do you hesitate, Vorenus? Or what chance of proving your bravery do you wait for? This day shall decide our quarrels. So saying, he stepped outside the entrenchments and dashed upon the section of the enemy, which seemed to be in closest array. Nor did Vorenus keep apart within the rampart, but

but in fear of what all men would think, he followed hard." One of them goes into battle and the other's so ashamed that he goes in too, just recklessly charging the enemies. "Then at short range, Polo sent his pike at the enemy and pierced one man as he ran forward from the host.

When the Gaul was struck senseless, the enemy sought to cover him with their shields and discharge their spears in a volley at Pulo, giving him no chance of retreating. Pulo's shield was penetrated and a dart lodged in his belt. I think that actually they portray that in the Rome series. This accident threw his scabbard out of place and delayed his right hand as he tried to draw his sword. And while he was in difficulty, the enemy surrounded him. His rival Varinus ran up to him and helped him in his distress.

Upon him at once, all the host turned and left pullo posing him to be slain by the dart.

And so basically, they fight their way back to the lines, each saving the other in turn, even though they'd been great rivals. And at the end, Caesar says, "It was impossible to decide which should be considered the better man in valor." So Caesar's saying, "And the rivalry is going to continue after this story." So Caesar loves to... I mean, that's great storytelling. He's got direct quote, right?

He's got the conflict. There's this intense time pressure because you don't know when you're reading this if the Legion's going to survive. There's a kind of tension built into the story. Caesar's just manipulating all that masterfully. But I think this illustrates Caesar not just having fun and entertaining you, but he's promoting his men. He's showing what kind of men...

fight for him and showing what kind of men he wants fighting for him. And so the Gallic War Commentaries for context, these are his, these are kind of tidied up versions of his war reports that he would send back to the Senate and the people of Rome to be read in Rome while he's way off in Gaul. And so in a way, he's kind of doing soft recruiting. Like he's always looking for volunteers and talented men. And they're going to see, hey, if I fight for Caesar and I show myself on

honorable, I might get a nod from the big man in one of his Gallic War commentaries. He's always praising his men and naming them now and then. That's an exceptional honor. And it shows that these guys are just willing to die for him on occasion after occasion. They love Rome. They're dying for Rome, but they're also really dying for Caesar too. That

that comes through in other sources as well. They're passionately loyal to him. So storytelling is a great way to give to other people. That's something I think I really take inspiration from Caesar on. I've come back to this a couple of times, but I remember reading, I think it was in Homo Deus

where he talked about how the wars of the future will be fought in intersubjective reality, like the reality of narrative. And it's very interesting to see the evolution of how story has been a part of our species. As you're talking about Caesar using it for recruitment and talking about the glories of battle and sort of positioning the glory of what things looked like and how things were going.

And today, I think that's very different, which is that the narrative has accrued a lot more power, I think. Yeah. Like what the story is in a cultural, societal perspective is, I mean, it holds a lot, a lot of weight. And I think one of the challenges that I see a lot of men facing today is that they don't exactly know

They're just a part of the story versus a contributing force to the narrative that's playing out.

And I always think about this of like, how can we as men be more integrated into the cultural or societal conversation and narrative that's happening, a bigger contributing factor to the story that's being told about what's happening right now. And I do think that part of that is how you tell the story of your own life and how you tell the stories of your life, the memories of the past, what's been happening in the present,

I think all of that is incredibly relevant and it's a skill set that I think in many ways we've forgotten, but it's something that's so incredibly powerful, not just from like a business perspective or in your job or whatever, but like I even think about raising kids.

My son's become obsessed with Sword in the Stone. I basically only let him watch old school Disney movies like Sword in the Stone, Peter Pan, Jungle Book. Those are the three movies that if he's going to watch any TV, which he's only allowed to watch on Saturdays basically, that's what he's allowed to watch. He's become obsessed with Merlin and Arthur and Archimedes. It's so much so that every morning and every night, he's wanting me to tell him stories about

you know, these sort of three characters that and not just adventures from the movie, but just adventures that I like create.

and make up. And it's really forced me to have to hone in my storytelling skills. I'm thinking on the fly. I'm sort of using my imagination. These big, grandiose things are happening. I'm having to create a story arc and all those types of things. And it really got me thinking of, in my youth, some of my greatest memories of my grandfather, as an example, was the stories that he would tell me.

and he would make up these elaborate stories of animals interacting or from the war because he had fought in World War II. I mean, some of the stories were just, I'd be so enthralled by them. And I think that, again, tying this back into modern men, I think that we've lost the thread in a lot of ways of the remembrance of how potent stories actually are.

And that your ability to tell some type of a narrative or contribute to a story in some capacity carries enormous weight.

And I think that we as men need to pick up that torch again. So that's just my little soapbox there for a moment. But I think it's incredibly important. Absolutely. You and I both run retreats. And this is something that we really focus on in our retreats is getting guys telling stories to each other, whether it's a historical character or just a personal anecdote, how

We had a guy on my last retreat talk about how his grandparents met the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and his grandfather was like conceived that night out of wedlock. Amazing. It was a story about like, you know, people, people today, I think they have to wait until everything is secure to have babies. And but, you know, I think

In the context of a family, I've gotten to this point where I sit down at the dinner table. It's like every single night, my daughter's like, "Dad, can you tell a story? Tired from work."

All right. And but it really and they pick up on patterns really, really quickly. And they they I think that's a good skill to kind of model for your kids. The the Arthurian legends are really powerful. Speaking of stories in this, I think this is relevant. So forgive me if I talk about this last time. I tell this story a lot. So I visited Cornwall.

Last summer with the family, we had some friends invite us over there and had the opportunity to go in southwest England. And there's a lot of Arthurian legends around all of these places. And one is Tintagel,

castle dramatically placed on this kind of jutting out outcropping uh into the sea it's supposed to be where king arthur was conceived out of wedlock um and there's this thing there's this place there that a lot of people don't go so the castle is very dramatic it's a tourist location but in the town there is i think it's called king arthur's halls or the

the Knights of the Round Table Halls, King Arthur's Great Hall in Tintagel. You'll find it if you Google this. But this British

business magnate, he was like a sugar baron or something in the early 20th century, built this beautiful cathedral style building with his own funds. And he decorated it with amazing stained glass windows and beautiful pre-Raphaelite paintings that just tell the story of the Holy Grail and Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

And I'm so used to going to museums and everything being demystified, but the way that this was all laid out, it was just like, this is a kind of shrine and it's a consecrated church, actually. You can get married in it. But the whole story of the place is this is a shrine to these heroes. And they didn't raise the question of whether they were historical or not. He was just like,

This is the story. This is what Sir Galahad did. This is why Sir Lancelot laid his life down. And going through this, for my work, I tell these stories of ancient heroes and try to revive memory of them. And I was just walking through looking at these paintings and this reverence that was evident in the way that they were trying to keep the flame alive.

And I just like I was weeping the whole time. I'm not a big crier, but like it was really, really moving because these are tales that have been really, really important to generations in the past. And I think that they've kind of become pushed aside in modern culture, taken out of schools there. I don't know. It's like everything.

all these great stories of heroic manliness and chivalry are problematic or they're not, you know, in keeping with the times. And uh, so, you know, if you have kids, those stories have a lot of power. I mean, I have daughters and, and they love the Arthurian tales. There's plenty of ladies and waiting in those and you know, girls love nights too, obviously. So, so yeah, no, it is very powerful. That's great, man. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. I mean, I think

It is interesting that I was talking about this in a mini episode that I did the other day, that we've been going through this period of informing men of how to be men by telling them everything that they shouldn't do. Yeah. That's like, here's how you should be a man. Don't do all these things. And it's like, okay, but that doesn't actually inform what we should be moving towards. That's not an aim. That's actually just things to be avoided.

And I think that that vacancy is very detrimental for most men. We need things to move towards. We need things to look at. I mean, one of the, like Marcus Aurelius for me, it's just been his life and his stories and his reflections. And the book Meditations is just so potent.

And I think when we don't have those things or we look at them and say, you know, oh, that person was bad because, you know, they did something that we don't agree on today, but it was totally socially acceptable 2000 years ago. Like, well, that doesn't mean that you should discredit everything that they thought and everything that they produced. You know, I mean, that's just, that's kind of insanity. But I think that we, you know, Terrence McKenna talked about this notion of like the archaic revival that they,

The faster things go technologically within our society, the more there's a kind of pull towards old ancient information and wisdom that still holds true within today's world and that will almost always hold true.

And I think that a lot of men are sort of feeling that pull of like, well, if there's no men that I'm quote unquote allowed to look to as a role model in today's world or in today's society, then where can I look? Well, I can look to the past. And love him or hate him, Julius Caesar seems like a pretty phenomenal character, man. I mean, like what a wild, what a wild dude. Let's return back to circumstances.

Sir Julius, what would you say are some of the psychological strategies or principles that he learned and deployed that kind of made him who he was? Well, Caesar is...

There's some debate about this among scholars, but I think it's pretty clear. Caesar is, if not a kind of doctrinaire devotee, at least very interested in Epicurean philosophy. And so there are several schools of philosophy in the ancient world and the Stoics are one of them. Marcus Aurelius is a follower of the Stoics, the Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Cynics. But the Epicureans were followers of this guy Epicurus who lived in the

early third century BC, so hundreds of years before Caesar. Caesar born 100 BC and dies 44 BC. Epicurus taught and he had followers in Rome.

Epicurus taught, well, a lot of things, but one of the key doctrines psychologically that he taught was that the best way to live is to pursue a state of tranquility, ataraxia is what he called it, a lack of disturbance is what that name means. And for the Epicureans, the way to do that, or one of the ways, is to live a very impulse-controlled life. Caesar is...

Okay, we can bracket the fact that he's kind of a ladies' man. There's an interesting story to tell there. I want to get to that. But he's notably famously very abstemious when it comes to drink. His great enemy, Cato the Younger, said, Caesar is the only man who tried to overthrow the state sober.

Maybe that was Cicero. But anyway, that was kind of like the reputation. He's just kind of cold. Not cold, but he doesn't eat a lot. He's satisfied with very simple food. He's out on campaign with his soldiers. He eats just crappy bread with stale, rancid olive oil. And when people complain about it, he just says, pass me some more. And he eats more of it. And that is about not...

attaching yourself to physical comforts and physical pleasure so as to enjoy the simple things. This is what the Epicureans were really insistent on. And the attachment to those things can make you fear that you'll lose them and to value them too much. And one of the things that you can value too much in the eyes of the Epicureans is your life itself.

They taught that life is the most precious thing, but when you die, there is no afterlife. They're kind of materialists. They think the world is composed of atoms. It's interesting that Epicureans were very avant-garde and ahead of their time on atoms. Obviously, they didn't have microscopes, but this is a kind of postulate of theirs. And then when you die, your body just reverts into some other form.

group of atoms. You can take comfort from that. Now, I personally don't ascribe to that no afterlife thing, no eternal soul. But the whole point of it is to teach you there's no punishments after death. There's no sensation of your absence. It's just you're gone and there's no pain and then there's no pleasure. It's actually like ataraxia in a lot of ways. There's nothing to fear about death. They really, really focused on

training you to not fear death.

And I think Caesar kind of had that in a way already from when he was a kid. There's famous stories of him when he's, I think one of the first military campaigns that he fights on, he's in his early 20s. He wins the civic crown. This is the Roman equivalent of the Medal of Honor, which you only get by saving a fellow Roman at great risk to your own life. So there was a siege of a city and he saved, like dragged a guy to safety amid the spears, that kind of thing.

So Caesar, he was a very brave guy, but he was very calm in under pressure. And I think you can see that as something that he trained because he was sympathetic with this Epicurean philosophy. He's always living in an abstained life for the most part. And another thing that his philosophy emphasized, the Epicureans were, you know,

They thought that all material goods are kind of not to be overly emphasized or not to attach yourself to too intensely, except friendship.

Friends, friends are the best thing in life for the Epicureans. And this is just so clear in Julius Caesar's life. He is such careful cultivator of friends, always reaching across the aisle when he can. He doesn't hold grudges. He's always, um, you know, writing to see if he can come visit. He's stopping by people's houses to catch up in person. He's very charming and he, he goes out of his way to do favors for his friends.

And I think that he and the Epicureans realized this really important truth. Friends give you a lot of emotional stability. Having relationships that people that believe in you, people that you believe in, that you can take joy in their joys and the pain that you feel when your friend suffers is not the same pain that you feel when you suffer.

And, uh, and just having people rooting for you, that that's incredibly powerful. And Caesar had that in spades. And I think it gave him a lot of confidence because he, because he, he can really tell that he put a lot of effort into it. Um, so I take a lot of inspiration from that and it's hard today because I mean, so often you make your friends on the internet, it's men's spaces have been kind of extracted from society or, you know, infiltrated by this kind of mixed gender attitude. Everything should be mixed gender. And we sort of lost, you know, the bowling alleys, the elk clubs, you

and what have you. And it's one of the reasons I think these in-person retreats can be really powerful, but he really cultivated that. And so we could do. Yeah. I think there should absolutely be spaces just for men and spaces just for women, like a hundred percent. And it's interesting that I think in some states in the US, it's actually illegal

It's illegal to have a men's only space or a women's only space. And I remember my wife was telling me about this membership thing in New York, in Manhattan, that was like a women's only space.

And I don't know if they got shut down, but they were sued because they're a woman's only space. And I was like, this is ludicrous. I've actually thought about from the trajectory of where I want man talks to go, I think it'd be incredible at some point to have a man's only space that would have coffee, workout space, meeting room. It's just like, this is for you as a man to come and make

you know, connections and network with other guys and meet like-minded men. I think we, like, we really do need those places and spaces. And we've, I mean, we've lost those. I think probably like, yeah, I mean, they're just gone, you know, even Boy Scouts, it's not just boys, you know? And I think that that's, I think that's brutal in some ways. I mean, I, I love those.

So outside of sports, maybe, I think that those spaces are largely gone. I do want to come to Julius Caesar and women because there's a... I mean, we could do a whole episode on that, which I relate to personally. But talk to me a little bit about Julius Caesar and women because obviously there's the very famous...

affair that he had with Cleopatra. But maybe just set some context for that and what we can sort of take away or learn from this very interesting man and his relationship to women. Yeah, yeah. Personally, I can certainly relate to having a love affair with an Egyptian queen. Not that part. Well, so no, it's really interesting because... So Caesar has this reputation of being kind of a rake and a ladies' man. And on the one hand, that

That's true. He is. I mean, what's the saying? There was an accusation that he had an affair with a king, actually. He always denied this in life, but Caesar is every man's wife and every wife's husband. I don't know.

There was all kinds of nasty things his enemies would say. He was like the original fuckboy is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. Right. And his soldiers would sing songs about him like, lock up your daughters and here comes Caesar. So there is that. And we've talked about how charming he is, descendant of Venus,

But I think from the story that we told the beginning, the other side of this is he really does invest in serious long-term relationships with women. It's not that frowned on for a man to have other side projects.

It's a very double standard in Roman society, as in probably all traditional societies. The men can go off and screw around and the women definitely can't. But look at this story that we told with the daughter of Cinna. Sulla demands that he divorce his wife and he's like, "No, I love her." She's all he has of this world that had just been mass murdered and he keeps her.

And this is the wife that he keeps for at least 15 years until she passes away. So he's loyal to her to the end. And she is the mother of his only daughter, Julia. And as far as we can tell, he loved her. I mean, that didn't stop him from going off and doing his thing. Then he's got, I mean, he's sleeping with the wives of famous senators. So that's going on.

He has another wife and she ends up cheating on him. And so he divorces her immediately. He says, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. There's a scandal. And it's not clear that she was cheating on him because the guy who did it was a potential political ally of Caesar. So he didn't want to throw the guy under the bus. And he said, I don't know if she did, but Caesar's wife has to be above suspicion. Really great way of kind of threading the needle.

And he remarries actually a daughter of a famous Epicurean patron.

The guy who owned, I don't know if anybody's been following the news on this. There's this villa in Italy that was buried by Mount Vesuvius in Herculaneum. There's this great philosophical library that they've been excavating and they've been able to read these carbonized papyrus scrolls from this villa. We have a chance of uncovering a lot of ancient texts. It's called the Vesuvius Challenge. Really fascinating, worth Googling. And I know some of the people involved, but that villa

is the villa of Caesar's second father-in-law. So amazing connection. And there's all these Epicurean texts there, a great rabbit hole to go down. But that second wife, Calpurnia, she's the one that he stayed married to for 15 years. And it was common among the Roman aristocrats to just wife swap, not like

swing your wife. Divorce your wife for a better political connection. But Caesar really remained loyal to the women. He had these long-term happy relationships with women. Another very interesting one

is his relationship with his number one girl that he could never marry, whose name is Servilia. She was married to another man, which didn't stop Caesar, and he probably would have married her, except she was the half-sister of his greatest political enemy. So it was a forbidden relationship.

Makes it even better. It made it even spicier. And he, you know, he liked to dig, dig the fact that he was sleeping with the sister into Kato, the younger side. But I think it's because he, he really values having that friendship relationship with women. Now,

I could ask you about this. To me, it seems clear all of the women that he was friends with, he was also romantically involved with. So he didn't have this kind of like platonic friendship with women thing. He just had multiple romantic partners that he really seriously respected, probably intellectually. Servilia was supposed to be brilliant. I mean, her brother's one of the top politicians in Rome. So I think that relationships with smart women

You can often, I think today in the kind of red pillow sphere, there's this anxiety about being a simp and being too close to your significant other, bros before hoes. And I don't know that there's a kind of antagonism that seems present today, at least in how you're supposed to relate to a woman, even if you're romantically involved with her.

But I mean, Caesar was really close with these ladies. And I think it kind of goes to this point you were talking about earlier. It's about self-knowledge. And a woman can really help you understand yourself and make you feel like a man in so many ways. And they can also, if they're the right kind, give you a lot of insight into social situations that you're struggling with, navigating political waters. They have these sensibilities that often you don't have. I think Caesar really perceived that, and he drew a lot of strength from it.

Yeah, there's like an honoring of, I mean, this is, we're going to frame this as like, maybe this might not seem like honoring it today, but there's a, back then, there was like an honoring of Caesar to women and the feminine that he saw that there was something

very important about the role of women, what they brought to the table, what they could contribute. And I mean, what's interesting is that back then, as you're talking about marriage and relationships were very political.

you know, they're very politically charged. And so you could really, you could love somebody and care about them, but there was also this kind of element of, is this the right political move for me? And I think that was part of, if I'm not mistaken, I think that was part of the relationship with Cleopatra was that there was a big political element to it, that it was just sort of like the right thing to do from that perspective. Just in the effort of time,

Talk to me a little bit about Caesar's famous demise. What are some of the maybe misconceptions? How did it come about? And what, if anything, can we take away from it? Because he seemed very adept at trying to live his life in such a way where he didn't create sort of like really long-term enemies. That he was trying, he almost seemed like this very

social, charismatic, even though he was a dictator. He was called the dictator, right? Dictator, what was it called? It's an office, a special office in Rome. Yeah, it's a special office. It's not like the dictator that we think about today. It's not like he was this ruling authority. I mean, a little bit. But it seems like he was very much...

this charismatic guy that was constantly trying to build relationships. And even though there were sort of adversaries, he really seemed to try not to have these sort of like longstanding grudges and whatnot. So I'm curious about your take on his sort of ending. Yeah, it's a very sad story. So he ends up trying to come back from Gaul and his enemies are threatening to prosecute him.

And this is kind of political crisis that's kind of complicated, but essentially his great political enemies turn a former friend against him. This guy, Pompey the Great, who's the most powerful man left in Rome.

And Pompey just won't allow Caesar to come back except under arms. And Caesar says, tries everything to try to deescalate the situation. But he's prepared to fight if that's what they want. And so he comes back and invades Italy, trying to get in the war quickly and come to terms. He's constantly offering peace terms like, please, let's not fight this civil war. But if you want to fight it, I'm not going to back down. And this ends up

dragging on for many, several years. And a lot of people die and it's tragic. So he wins the civil war in short. Pompey's dead. Cato's dead. Most of his enemies are dead now. Cicero is still alive. But for about a year, Caesar is the dictator in Rome.

It's an official office that was resurrected by the guy that we mentioned earlier, Sulla. It gives you a kind of martial law authority and also the ability to rewrite the laws and the constitution. So it's kind of a reformer position from the perspective of Caesar. There's a lot of political changes that need to happen to make sure we don't have another civil war again, to make Rome more equitable, blah, blah, blah.

But Caesar, one of the ways that he won the Civil War was winning the propaganda war, was getting people to want to join his side instead of the other side. His enemies were very retaliatory. When they captured Caesar's soldiers, they would execute them and taunt them. Caesar would always spare his enemy soldiers and even enemy political figures. He would grant them mercy and allow them

not just to have their lives if they decided to fight for Caesar, but often he would allow them to go and fight for the other side. I'll keep your soldiers, but you can have your life. I pray that you would go and convince the other team to lay down their arms and know that this is what Caesar will do if you lay down arms. We're not going to have a bloody purge. And they would always go back and say, God, it's a Caesar. So it usually didn't work or it often didn't work, but it

Eventually, that really played in his favor because people wanted peace. He ended up forgiving some people. I think, I don't know, this is a really tough lesson. Machiavelli talks about this. Sometimes when you forgive people, they start to resent you more. It ended up being some of the men who

he Caesar had spared that ended up leading the conspiracy against him to assassinate him. Um, he was preparing to do another military campaign. He was sort of getting uncomfortable in Rome. He didn't like, I think he didn't like, um, being this monarchic figure.

Imagine if we had a monarch all of a sudden in America, there would be a lot of people that would kind of smile and kind of go along, but secretly be really pissed off and looking for things to change. And so Cesar kind of senses this and he's trying to get out of town and go fight a war in the East against the Parthians. But before he leaves, yeah, they launched this conspiracy. And it's really poignant because

People were apparently warning him. Hey, we hear rumblings of something going on Caesar You should double your bodyguard or you should at least have a bodyguard and Caesar just didn't he decided I don't want to live in a room in which I have to have a bodyguard hmm, you know and I think there's a sense in which I don't know I wonder if he really meant that you know I'd rather them assassinate me than me lord over them as a tyrant. That's not what I ever wanted and

And so that is indeed what happens. Ides of March, 44 BC, they caught him in the Senate House and famously, they were meeting in this building that Pompey the Great, his rival in the Civil War, his former friend who had married his daughter actually before she passed away. He built this building and there was a statue of him in the theater of Pompey where the Senate was meeting. And he apparently

was killed and like fell down right in front of the statue at the feet of Pompey the Great, his old friend. It's like...

Just the crazy omens that these stories contain in them. I don't know what the lesson is there other than forgiveness is really important. It was absolutely essential to Caesar's success, clemency, but there are even limits to that, especially when you get to the very top. Maybe you don't have to murder him, but at least exile these resentful guys. Sometimes you're just not going to win people over, and you should admit that to yourself.

Yeah, I mean it's interesting because it seems like there's almost like a fine line between forgiveness and naive ignorance that some people are just unwilling to shift and not be vengeful and not seek revenge and not seek violence.

I do think that that's part of, I think we're still grappling with that in today's world. This kind of naivete that shows up in the social conversation of,

wanting things to be a certain way in the ignorance of what actually is. I've started to write this piece called The Death of Objective Reality, and it's kind of this commentary on how there's sort of this movement towards the obliteration of any type of objective truth or reality altogether. And I think that that's part of what plays into it, right? It's just like how

this subjective experience can be so intoxicating. And I think that we oftentimes want to ignore the fact that there are some people that are so drunk on their own subjective experiencing

and their own hatred or vengeance or resentment or animosity or jealousy or envy towards you that they cannot see straight. They literally cannot see straight. And so maybe that is a part of it. That's something that I'll have to sit with because I think for me, forgiveness has played a very important part of my life of really forgiving people, forgiving myself,

But maybe forgiveness just comes along with different actions than I forgive you and you can still be around me at all times in my innermost circle. When it's like that person definitely wants to literally stab you in the back. That's probably not the best life choice. So maybe there's a good lesson in there of not being asleep at the wheel of forgiveness.

And there are a lot of ancient quotes on this. There's one state founder of Sparta, I think it was Kylon, said, somebody said, oh, you know, Kylon, I don't have any enemies. And he said, do you have any friends then? It's like, if you have serious relationships with people, you're going to have enemies is the idea. And you should face that reality. And especially if you're

a person of principle, you're going to encounter people that either don't share your principles or their principles are or their interests are just like

irredeemably opposed to yours and it's just not going to change. It's one of the tragedies of human existence, but ignoring that, you do it your own peril. Yeah, so true. So true, man. Well, thank you so much for joining me, man. The two conversations that we've had, I've thoroughly enjoyed them. And so we will have to have you back on and jam again for round three.

For people that are wanting to learn a little bit more about you, your work, what you do in the world, where should they go? Costofglory.com is my website. And you can find the Cost of Glory podcast on any of the podcast apps or on YouTube as well.

Awesome. That's been a great pleasure, Connor, as always. Let's do it again. Awesome, brother. Well, thanks so much for everybody that tunes in. We'll have the links to those in the show notes. Don't forget to man it forward. Probably somebody in your life that would really love this podcast episode. So definitely share it with them. And as always, until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.

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