Great Houses

Gregory Treat: All right, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining us for the Great Houses Forum.

Uh, the Great Houses Forum is for people that are trying to build multi-generational property owning, family-focused, uh, institutions and, and lineages.

And so today we're, we're continuing on our series of the Ancient City Series, uh, which is talking about the six gentes maiores, which were the six great houses of, of ancient Rome.

So, uh, thank you so much for being here, and we're, we're, gonna... This is gonna be a good time.

So last week we left off with the question of, of what, what kind of family does this?

We talked about Lucius Aemilius Paullus, right?

And he, uh, had a great victory.

The, the, the, the greatest victory in the history of Rome in terms of wealth.

Probably their-- the, the victory of, uh, uh, over Carthage was, was probably more politically significant.

But in terms of actual money carried back into Rome's coffers, uh, they were able to loot Alexander the Great's treasury, uh, the, the, the treasury that, that had been passed down to the, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedonia.

And, um, so Aemilius, a, a scion of the, the Aemilius family, gets back to Rome.

He's got all of this stuff.

Two of his sons die the week of the triumph, and he buries them, and he refuses the general's share, uh, which would have, you know, effectively made him the richest, most powerful man in Rome.

And instead, he asks for all Roman citizens to be freed from taxes, especially from the, the, the personal taxes.

Um, so the... How, how, how does this happen?

Why, why would someone do that?

Um, I think, um, uh, the, the, the histories of Rome record that when he died, he barely had enough to pay back his wife's diary, uh, uh, dowry to her
family, uh, which was kind of the, the... her, her retirement, her inheritance, the thing that was gonna take care of her for the rest of her life.

How did... Why, why did he do that?

And the reason he did that was because, um, his family, their focus was not on personal success, it was on vindicating their ancestors' vision and glory, and we talked a, a little bit about that.

And so I, I think there's a, there's a deeper question there, which is wh- The-- whe-when you have a founding of a family, we're gonna talk a little bit
about the founding of these six families, and then kind of their, their greatest glories, their greatest successes in, in their, in their descendants.

Did they know?

Did they know what they were doing?

Um, did they know that their sacrifice, their restraint, their severity would set the character of their house for centuries?

And, and I'm gonna go ahead and say unambiguously, yes, they did know.

Um, and, and a lot of that comes back to, to the word maiores.

So, so we-- I've used gentes maiores, that's the great houses.

Then there's, uh, mos maiores, the ways of the ancestors, the ancestral teachings.

Um, you know, a lot of people would, would think of there, there's, there's quite a lot of thought that people have put into about the Chinese concept.

There's a Chinese concept that's translated into English as ancestral teachings, which is a good translation.

I'm not, I'm not criticizing it.

Um, but we forget that, that, that in the West, we also have, um, a concept of ancestral teachings, the mos maiores.

And, and, and the question is: What does maiores mean?

Well, maiores means the great ones, which parenthetically is to mean-- is to say the ancestors.

So gentes maiores means the clan or lineage of the great ancestors.

Mos maiores means the way or the manners of the great ancestors, and that's the name that, that, that they gave to themselves, that they claimed for themselves, that they thought of themselves as.

So yeah, they, they knew exactly what they were doing, um, in my opinion.

So we're gonna talk a little bit today about the mechanisms, the way that Rome transmitted character between generations.

And, and again, character is the right word, um, because one of the key ways that they, they transmit was, was by something called the imagines, which is the death masks of the ancestors.

So they would have wax death masks that were made, uh, from, from a man's face at death.

They, they'll also-- they would have death masks or, uh, imagines, images, right, uh, from earlier in his life.

So a lot of times when you ascended to a certain rank, uh, you would get a, a wax death mask made that your family would keep for your eventual funeral.

Um, so only families who had held a curule magistracy, uh, which is the, the lowest rank of which was called-- something called the
Aediles, which is-- we'll-- I'll, I'll show you where that is in, uh, in the, the, the kind of career trajectory of, of Roman politicians.

And so they, they had what's called the ius imaginum, which is the right of images, the right to have your face in one of these death masks.

So they would be kept in, in wooden cabins.

By the way, uh, here's, here's a picture Of them.

Here's what they looked like.

So you would, you would have... This is a, an, an ancient one that we, we still have.

We think this ma- this death mask was more or less, uh, created by the same techniques, um, as, as the ancient Roman death mask.

So I think it's 4 or 500 years old.

And then the, uh, you can look up online, they have these famous pictures of, of, of recreations, wax recreations, and their eyes are closed.

Um, but they, they give a very particular kind of lifelike looking face.

So, so if anybody's seen, you know, like spy movies or sometimes you'll, you'll see kind of specials on latex masks, these rubber masks that you can put on, and you put on a rubber
mask and it, it, it doesn't look quite right maybe if it's, especially if it's a low, low-quality mask, but you can clearly see the, the person that you're supposed to see, right?

The, the, the image of a distinctive character.

If you put on an Obama mask or on a Biden mask or on a Trump mask, people are gonna know, oh, that's clearly Trump.

That's clearly, you know, these, these, these characters that, that people are using, right?

Um, so at a nobleman's funeral, um, actors would wear the masks and toga of each office, uh, held in process through the city.

So the dead literally, uh, uh, attended their city- their descendant's burial.

So you would have... There's kind of two things going on here.

One is you have multiple masks from the same person at different time periods in their life, and then you have multiple generations of masks.

And so people would... One of the, one of the ways that families communicated honor to each other was they would send, when somebody illustrious died, they would
break out the, the, the death mask of a particular important, uh, ancestor who might, you know, have died 50 or 100 years ago, if they preserved the mask well.

And th- th- they would have an actor put on the mask and attend the funeral in the name of their respected ancestor, okay?

And that, that actor would... And, and in different time, times, periods of time in Roman history, there were periods of time where it would, a person of rank would not wear the death mask, um, and they would send actors.

There were other periods of time in Rome's history where actual descendants would wear the death masks.

And, and so there's kind of a... You know, Rome was around for, for 1,000 years, and then Byzantium another, another, you know, 500 to 1,000 years.

And so there, there's a long period of time for different traditions, but they kept this for almost the entire time.

So there was a gentleman named, uh, Polybius, who was a Greek observer, and he called the, the, the, the imagines the single most powerful civic ritual he had witnessed.

He said it explained Roman ambition more than anyone else.

'Cause you think about it, uh- These death masks, they would last for, you know, if, if, if you carefully preserved them and you didn't use them too often, you might get 100, 150 years out of them, which is kind of amazing.

Um, so you, you could decide, and you've got, you've got a limited resource.

There's kind of a scarcity element here, right?

If your people are familiar with, like, going viral, there, it's important to have scarcity.

Um, but so you could, you, if you had a, a family that had produced a lot of ancestors, you could have, um, you could put on an event that people would find very powerful and very compelling.

So there, there's this extended quote Polybius describes in the, in the funeral of an illustrious man in the role of the imagines.

When any distinguished member of the family dies, they take the death masks to the funeral, putting them on men who seem to them to bear the closest resemblance to the original in statue and carriage.

The representatives of the aristocratic relatives would wear togas and sashes colored according to the respective dignity of the offices of the state held by each during his life.

And then at the rostra, w- they would sit in a row on ivory chairs.

Seated there in front of all those who had gathered at the forum, the actors appeared with shocking accuracy to be the living, breathing men that they represented.

So these, these people, these images, right, using these masks and, and, and, you know, interesting, we could do this, right?

We could do this today.

And, and I think to some extent we are doing it with, uh, I mean, we've been doing it for a long time with movies, right?

People talk about playing Winston Churchill, and there's some, there's some actors, several actors that have played Winston in Winston Churchill movies, and they have done amazing depictions of him.

And you can barely tell.

Like, you, you, you might know that, okay, this is an actor 'cause you'll, you'll have two different movies that were released very short, very close together with
a Winston Churchill in them, and they look kinda different, but you know that they're, they're Winston Churchill, and they look nothing like the underlying actor.

Okay?

And that's that kind of thing.

We do this with movies, and then increasingly we're, we're going to do this with AI.

So y- you can imagine, and for, for those, uh, the people that are on the live call, I- I've got an AI generated image.

You, you have an atrium, right?

Which is a pool, the, the, the kind of the cool room in, in the middle of the Roman house.

Um, and you would, you would walk past, you would have these, these busts, um, that people would... These kind of faceless busts that, that, that people would have with the, the
name and the rank of the person, um, on a little placard, and then they would put The wax mask on the bus, and so every morning as you're walking past, you're seeing these images.

And from time to time when somebody important dies, people will come by and they'll put on the death mask, and they will, you know, go out
and, and, and, and your ancestor will be walking around talking, and you're thinking about all of their deeds and, and, and what they did.

Okay?

So then you would have the, the, the forum, the funeral procession.

Y- the actors wearing the death mask would, would, would each dressed in, in the toga and insignia of their highest office would, would walk through in front of and behind the, uh, the funeral procession.

Um, and they... at, at Sulla's funeral, Sulla was a, was a famous Roman politician and general.

Um, 6,000 masked ancestors, which is basically all of the-- everybody with a death mask in Rome sent an actor with the death mask of their ancestor to attend the funeral, right?

And, and so this would, this would be very interesting because you would have, you, you'd have offices that are limited like the consuls or the cen- uh, censors where there's, there's only a couple of these at any given time.

And you would have hundreds of people in the formal dress of a censor or a consul walking in the funeral procession because at one time, the person whose, whose mask this person is wearing was the censor.

That was their highest rank.

Okay?

And you can, you can imagine that this was a very important, very powerful ritual, right?

So then the second thing that, that, that in addition to the death masks and, and kind of building on top of that was what they call the laudatio funebris, the funeral oration, right?

And this was not a eulogy in, in the sense that we think of it as, right?

A modern eulogy is, is-- tends to be very positive, right?

People don't want it... The eulogy is the, the Greek for good word, right?

And so you want a good word at someone's funeral.

You don't wanna tell all the bad things.

Um, this was not actually the, the custom of ancient Rome.

Uh, the laudatio had to be accurate, right?

Uh, you had to record every office, every campaign that they fought in, whether they won or lost, uh, every honor and every shame.

Uh, maybe not, maybe not non-public shames.

But anything that made the public eye, you had to, um, you had to talk about.

Your s- the, the oldest son, the heir of the house, had to discuss at his father's funeral.

He had to say that it happened and give some kind of positive spin.

And the whole extended lineage, the gens, was present along with the notables of the city.

Other families would send actors wearing their family's death masks and, and the point was that we're, we're reviewing character.

That's what we're doing.

Um, one of the, one of the things that makes this so... because people are like, "Well, how do we know that they followed it?" Well, one of the reasons that, that, that, that people
would actually give the entire story, and we talk about everything, is because, um- They, they had something called the instauratio, which is the principle of the sacred restart.

An incomplete or incorrect account required the entire rite to begin again from the beginning, right?

So Livy talks about this.

This, this is, this is just a general principle throughout Roman sacred life.

So when the presiding magistrate at the Latin festival omitted the Roman people from his prayer, which was-- So the, the way you're supposed to say the, the Senate and the people
of Rome, and he, he said the Senate of Rome, which was a political statement, um, the entire festival was ordered to res- to restart, to start over actually from the beginning.

So they had to take everything down, wait for another auspicious day, and do it all again.

Now, one of the things is there were a, a number of different people, uh, who were kinda high-level religious figures, most notably the Pontifex Maximus, but, but there were other high-level
priests who would notice and had the ritual authority to say, "Hey, wait, you left this out." And so you were heavily incentivized to be accurate, scrupulously accurate, because otherwise your
family's enemies who are sitting there, any of them ha- if any of them have the right rank or the right position, then those people are going to be able to, uh, say, "Oh, no, you gotta stop this.

You gotta start over from the beginning," which is a, uh, a, a, a, an incredibly expensive thing to do.

Um, and, and people would... They're-- While the historians don't ex- the Roman historians don't explicitly say this is what is happening, there's a lot of kind of suggestion that, that, uh, for instance, the, the, um, the Fabian family, when the Fabians had
a, a downturn of fortunes and they, they were-- only had one member left, that there was a number of times where the Fabians, there, there was a suspicious, um, there was a suspicious number of restarts in a big festival that they, that they had to pay for.

And the, the suspicion is, well, this was their political enemies trying to bankrupt them, trying to force them to restart over and
over again so that they would run out of money, be unable to continue with their duties, and then basically be forced out of politics.

So the funeral ora- the, and the point of-- the reason I'm telling you all this is the funeral oration was, to an incredible degree, an accurate
recounting of this person's, you know, life and, and, and of all the things that, that, that he had done over the course of, of, of that time.

Yeah?

So, um, finally, you know, you'd get to the rostra.

You would, you would have the, have the funeral oration.

The, the, again, the, the, all of the actors, especially the actors of, of the, the, the deceased person would be sitting behind or off to the side of the son in full view of everyone, right?

So if you're looking at the speaker in from the audience, you're gonna be able to see the, um, the, the, the death mask.

You're able to see this guy when he became a judge, and then when he became a senator, and then when he became... You know, as, as he advances to higher rank.

Each time you advance to higher rank, they would have another death mask made, okay?

And so, um, I've been, I've been talking around it, but, uh, one of the, one of the other things...

So, so sorry.

So that was, that was the first two things, right?

First was the death masks, and then there was the funeral oration, okay?

The third thing was what they called the cursus honorum, the ladder of offices, right?

And, um, you know, you can go online, you can find out that, uh, you know, Virginia had a cursus honorum.

You can find out that Britain, the British Empire, had a cursus honorum.

You can find out that Rhodesia had a cursus honorum.

You can find out that Singapore has a cursus honorum.

And we're, we're still, we're still thinking about how to do this because it was so effective, because the Romans did it so well.

So the first thing that you have to do is you have to be a military tribune.

You have to serve in the army first, no exceptions, and if you were to shame yourself or your family, basically you wouldn't ever, you wouldn't ever get, uh, to the point where you could... You wouldn't ever be offered anything higher than that, right?

Not, and, and not just from... 'cause your political enemies would block you.

Your family would do things to make sure if you shamed yourself as a tribune, that, that you were never appeared in public life again.

'Cause everyone would bring it up, right?

Um, so you had to go out, you had to fight, you had to demonstrate military virtue.

That was the first thing.

The second thing was you had to serve as a quaestor.

And, and, and quaestor was, um, it was a financial position, right?

So you, you had to track finances and demonstrate some level of finances.

So, so first you gotta demonstrate martial acumen.

Then you got to demonstrate financial acumen.

And then the third was the, the aedile, which was public works, games, and city administration.

Um, and, and this is, this is political acumen.

Can you get all of the temperamental, you know, uh, proud, kind of hard to deal with nobles to get along well enough to allow the life of the city to progress?

Can you make friends?

Can you, you know, be loyal to your friends and still impartial and even-handed and fair in your public offices?

That's a skill issue for a lot of people.

Um, and that's, you know, that's when you, you you had to demonstrate that to get further, right?

So the important thing about the aedile, so you, you've demonstrated military acumen, you demonstrated financial acumen, and now you're demonstrating political acumen.

This is when you get receive ius imaginum, right?

This is when you get your first death mask made, okay?

Then finally, you mo- move on to the, the praetor, which was, uh, a combined position.

It combined both judicial authority and military command.

And then finally was the consul, which was the highest civil and military office.

There were two per year, right?

They only served for one year.

So, so in a, in a generation, right, that means in, in 40 years, there were 80 consulships that were available to, to contend for, right?

So if you had distinguished yourself and done what you're supposed to, you know, you, you have a lot of time, you have a lot of opportunities to serve in this high office, okay?

And then there's two more mechanisms that I'm gonna touch on just briefly.

Uh, one is adoption, right?

So Rome was not addicted to bloodline.

Uh, they, they believed in character.

They believed in virtue.

Uh, they believed in, in the, the right and duty of a, of the, the paterfamilias in... who is in turn responsible to his ancestors to select an heir.

Uh, one of the things that people miss about the, the Roman context, because again, we're, we're very focused on, on bloodlines, uh, ironically enough in the modern age, is that, that for them, a lot of this was, was religious.

The Romans believed, you can read, there's a, there's a great book, The Ancient City by, uh, Kulanjas, uh, where he talks about, um... And again, those of you that are familiar with Chinese mythology will notice again, this is really s- this is really similar.

This is so similar that, that it, it would appear that there has to be some kind of central common ancestor to these, these patterns.

Uh, they believed, the Romans believed that if you didn't have someone to carry on the rituals of your household, that, that y- that act kind of down the line would cause you to become a hungry ghost.

You would, you would fall into hell if your ancestors, if your descendants did not do the funeral rites, okay?

Um, so that was... A- and that, that was an important, that's an important distinction.

It's one, it's one of those things that's very unusual about Rome, that they made a big deal about adoption.

They made a big deal about the right of a, of a father to adopt, um, and to, to choose, not, not just to adopt, but to make that adopted son the primary heir.

Interestingly enough, under Roman law, you, you know, you could fully disinherit Your son, um, uh, your natural son, but you could not disinherit your adopted son.

So as, I, I, as I recall, there was, there was a couple points in time where families that wanted more secure positions would formally disinherit
their sons, kick him out of the family, and then they would formally adopt him back in, 'cause that was the way to make his position legally secure.

Um, and then the second thing is, is the, the patron-client web.

I, we, I've talked extensively on the, on the podcast about patron-client relationships, but every senator, every nobleman, every Roman aristocrat was in... And especially
the, the great houses, the gens maiores, were embedded in obligation chains running both upwards and downwards, and the character was continuously tested in daily life.

Okay?

Um, you would have a senator, someone of a senator class would have thousands of people that called them patron in, in a direct personal way, right?

Across, you know, across Rome and Italy, and these are the men that provided them with votes, labor, military service, and kind of public deference.

They, they were, "I'm, I'm, I'm your man in, in this area."

So what that means is that there really wasn't very much in the way of private life.

The Roman aristocrat was, was always performing, was always building and maintaining or, you know, by turns tearing down the, uh, the, the patronage network within which he existed.

Okay?

So now we're gonna turn to the, the six great houses specifically, um, and and the, the idea of the mos maiorum.

So mos maiorum, as I said before, is the customs of the ancestors.

It's how Romans translate, transmitted virtue across their generations, and they did this through, through three, three things.

So first was the ancestral example, right?

That's the death masks, that's the funeral orations.

That's all of the stuff where you're thinking specifically about the character of your ancestor and, and as I said last week, that, that idea of character, of, of can you play a specific character, right?

What you want as a Roman son of a, of a, of a noble house, of a great house is to, is to have your ancestor's character so deeply in you that you can- always know exactly what they would say, right?

You could always know exactly what they would do.

Well, this is not exactly the same thing as, as, as being able to do it, of course, but it is knowing what they would say and what they would do, and that's a, that's a very important thing.

Okay?

The second thing is a family, uh, family education.

So fathers would train sons in the specific virtues the, the gens was known for.

So a Fabius was raised on patient endurance.

A Manlian, we'll get to the Manlians in a bit, on unyielding discipline.

And then three, kind of the, the, the family name or the family obligation.

So the, the worst possible failure, the thing that a Roman aristocrat, a Roman citizen was worried about was disgracing the family name.

Your, your primary goal was to live up to your ancestors' successes, and you had a permanent audience in, in, in these ancestors.

I mean, they believed that their ancestors were with them, could see them.

They, the, when, when Paul talks about, you know, this great, the great crowd of witnesses, that is a very... That is a, a framework that an upper class Roman would be very familiar with.

Um, they, they would have already thought of that.

And, and again, part of the, part of what Paul is doing there when he talks about that great cloud of witnesses is he is inviting people, he's inviting any Christian who believes, who becomes a member
of Christ's household, to say, "Now you are part of a, of a great and noble house," just like these Roman aristocrats, 'cause the, that was not a foreign concept to them, it was a restricted concept.

Okay?

And, and, you know, some, sometimes people will say, "Well, w- did they try to out- outdo or out-up, you know, outlive their ancestors?" Not really.

Um, that really wasn't- I, I don't think that was a, a big thing.

Uh, they, they wanted to keep the faith.

They wanted to, to, to carry forward what their ancestor had done.

They, they, they didn't-- I don't think they thought of it in, in the way that we moderns do about surpassing your ancestors.

Um, that- that's not, that's not really a, a framework that they would have thought about it in.

So, um, so who were the Gentes Maiores?

And, and it's important to understand there was 100 patrician families, and not all of them were, were Gentes Maiores.

They, they, they were a recognized inner circle, and, and basically all of the ancient sources say, "Hey, these are the, these are the high-tier people."
So, um, especially for the, the republic, for the period of time where it was the Roman Republic, there was centuries of continuous consulship presence.

They were, they were dominant, not occasional.

So basically, um, there was-- that meant that there was an expectation that in every generation, there would be one-- uh, each, each
member of these houses would, or at least the heir of each house, would serve as the consul of Rome for at lea- for that year period, okay?

Um, if there were dictatorships, they were, they were expected to be kind of first in line to be dictators.

Um, they-- many of them would become princess, uh, princeps senatus, which is the, the, the, the, the presider, the president of the Senate.

Um, and that, that rank was given to the person who had served the longest in the Senate a lot of times or had the most great-- the g- the greatest distinctions.

Uh, and so people that became senators that took on the senatorial seat early and, and, and had a, had a, a lot of honors in their career were first in line for that as well.

Um, then, then the other thing was triumphs, having a great military thing where you come back or... And, and, and, and triumphs weren't just military conquests.

They could-- they-- Well, they always required some, some kind of military event.

But Rome was fighting constantly, and so, um, there, there could be a triumph for a number of reasons, um, a- as a practical matter, and, and your family was expected to basically hold a party for the entire city of Rome a couple times a generation, okay?

And then, uh, you know, from, from our perspective, we would look, if we're trying to figure out who, who is the-- uh, who are these great houses, you're looking for explicit
recognition in ancient sources like Livy and Dionysus as a, as a founding family, and then continuous prominence through the, the 400 years, especially the 400 years of the Republic.

So that's who these people are, okay?

And, and they, they, they dominated the high offices.

So Manlia had, uh, 15 consulships.

Emilia had 20 consulships.

Claudia, 28 consulships.

Valeria had 34 consulships.

Fabia had 45 consulships across the, uh, the, um, um, the time period of the Republic.

And then, and then Cornelia, which was kind of the most, in some ways, the most political house, the most, um, politically active house in, in many ways.

They were also a very military family.

Um- They had 75 consulships, um, across the, the, the term of the republic, which is a, it's an incredible feat to do.

And what that means is in each generation, there were one or two members of their family that distinguished themselves.

'Cause once you served as consul, um, then you couldn't serve as consul again.

But you- your, your brother could serve as consul, and your cousin could serve as consul.

Okay?

Um, so yeah.

So, so now we'll, we'll go through the, uh, the six great houses.

So the- these are, these are the founding acts.

So the f- the, the, the, the trad- And, and these people weren't founders in the sense of like, it wasn't like they picked the name.

These families existed and even likely had some prominence and wealth and, and importance before then.

But, but, you know, somewhere in the 400 or 500s BC, somebody did something unique, and that's kind of viewed as the, the founding act, the, the, the founding piece of mythology that, um, that people, you know,
looked back to, to say, "What is the character of this house?" So last week we talked about, you know, the Aemilia House, the Mamercus Aemilius Mamercinus, and, um, he, you know, he, he had claim to be king, right?

Um, he had a claim to be the, the hereditary kingship of Roman, and probably an excellent claim, but instead he chose to curtail the censor's power as a dictator.

And then v- when their, their revenge on him was to increase his personal taxes by eight times, and he doesn't rise in revolt.

He doesn't say, "This is unjust. This is wicked. I'm gonna overthrow the government," right?

Um, that's kind of the, the defining act of, of the Aemilius family and their character was, "Hey, we're gonna do what's best for Rome- And we're gonna take whatever consequences that Rome measures.

Sort of very similar to Socrates or, or, or you can think of it, it's, it's, it's the, the, the attitude is kind of similar to those, those samurai dramas, right?

Where I think there's this line from, uh, from The Last Samurai where the, uh, the, the, the samurai that's technically in revolt against the emperor, um, or against, it's, he's against the, the emperor's ministers.

And, and, and Tom Cruise's character asks, "Well, what if, what if the emperor t- wants to have you killed?" And, and the samurai looks at him and says, "If the emperor wants my life, he has only to ask," right?

The idea that he would, he would commit suicide if the emperor asked him.

Um, and that's, you know, part of the court intrigue of the Japanese court at that time, okay?

But, but that's the kind of person, uh, that they, that they were.

We just, we just take, we take the, the punishment, whatever punishment is dealt out, but we act for the benefit, for the best interest of Rome.

Uh, that's what we're concerned with.

The second family is the Claudia family, Cl- uh, House Claudius.

And, and, uh, it's founded by a guy na- na- a guy named Attius Clausus, who's super interesting dude.

He was a Sabian.

Um, and he, he arrives in Rome with 500 armed men at a time when Rome really wanted that 500 armed men, so they make him a citizen.

Um, a- I think in the middle of a war against the Sabians, as I recall.

So he defects to Rome, becomes a citizen, and then immediately starts enforcing... He buys up a bunch of debt, uh, that the Roman nobles had, had lent to each other, and then starts actually enforcing those debt obligations in the middle of a war.

And, um, you know, generally a bunch of people were really offended by that, but that was his character and that was his descendants' character.

They, they remained incredibly consistent.

Um, then there's the Cornelius family, right?

Servius Cornelius, uh, Maluginensis.

Mali- uh, Maluginensis.

So he, he's important because he presides over the trial and then the execution of Spurius Cassius, who, who... Cassius, who was a guy that was trying... You know, it's, it's really funny.

You know, Rome, uh, you know, America has certain names that always turn up betraying the Republic.

There's an old, uh, an old hymn from the revolutionary era that names the traitors to the, to the Republic.

You know, Clinton's one of them.

And then, you know, if we were to redo that, that, that today, you know, Clinton would still be one of them, right?

So in, in the 400s, there's a guy named Cassius who's trying to betray the Republic.

And then, you know, 400 years later, there's another guy named Cassius who's, who's betraying the Republic.

It's, uh, it's funny how that happens.

It's funny how that runs in lines, uh, but, uh, a- as well.

So Spurius Cassius was a- a- accused of trying to buy favors with the plebs by taking land from the great houses, so he had political position.

And his plan was, "I'm gonna take land away from the great houses. I'm gonna give it to the little people, and the little people are gonna, you
know, listen to me." And this was, this was, you know, the great houses were giving land out, but only in patron-client relationships, right?

So they, they would negotiate with each other.

You had to negotiate with a, with a great house that had, um- had the, the the resources and you had to make an arrangement with them.

What Cassius was trying to do was say, well, I'm going to just use the government to nationalize the land and then I'm going to somehow get acquire it personally and then grant it out so that I'll have this, this patron client.

But the government is now going to be involved in what was supposed to be a private patronage relationship.

And this would have upset the patron client balance of the city.

And likely here's, here's one of the important things about that.

It almost certainly would have made it impossible for the city to grow, right?

Other cities that did that sort of nationalizing their economy, their, their, their ability to do stuff, it just stops.

So that's the third founder, the founder of the Cornelius house.

He's the guy that says, Cassius, no, what you're doing is corrupt.

And if you keep doing it, we're, we're, we're going to remove you.

And he, and he keeps doing it.

So they cut off or they, they, they throw him off the Tarpeian rock, as I recall.

Um, the next one is Quintus Fabius Vibulanus.

Um, sorry, I'm stumbling over these Latin names.

It's been a long time since I've said this many, this much Latin in a single day.

Um, but so Quintus Fabius Vibulanus was the only survivor of the Fabian family.

So the house Fabi goes out and they, uh, they, they're, they're fighting against the enemies of Rome back in the 400s, um, late or the early 400s.

And they, they get ambushed.

They, they get caught off guard.

They, they decide they're going to meet the enemy in, in open combat.

This is important later because they, they think that they can just take them and they get ambushed and they get wiped out.

Every single person that rode out with them dies.

Um, I think a couple of, of, of slaves and hangers on make it back, but nobody with the, their last name, no, but no actual bloodline member that rode out with them, uh, survives.

And this leaves one guy who's the heir, one kid.

I think he's, he's barely 13.

I don't even think he was old enough to actually inherit for like four or five years.

And by the way, that's the four or five years where there's a bunch of suspicious restarts of, of very important and very expensive Roman, uh, liturgic, liturgical events.

And they're, so they're trying to get rid of him, right?

They're trying to bankrupt him, what, to kick him while his house is down and he, he outlasts them.

Um, and then, and then the Fabian character comes back at a, at a very famous, uh, way during the, the, the war, the Punic Wars.

So then we have the Manlia family, the Manlius.

So Manlius Cincinnatus held the consulship in 480 BC when the Greeks dealt decisive defeats to both Carthage and Perse, uh, Persia.

And this gave Rome kind of ter- time to expand.

So he goes out and, and he seizes the initiative, right?

Um Rome's two great geopolitical enemies have suffered defeat, so they're, they're kind of reeling back.

And what that means is he grabs as much territory in the immediate vicinity of Rome as he possibly can, kind of takes care of the local, some of the local enemies, and strengthens Rome's position, um, on the, on the Italian peninsula, okay?

Unfortunately, he's not the Cincinnatus.

There, you know, there's some people in the, in the chat that I, I think will wanna know.

Um, he's not the Cincinnatus that had the cabbages, if you're familiar with that story.

Uh, but he, he's, uh, he, he is a Cincinnatus because he, he, he goes out and he makes peace.

Um, but he dies in the field.

So, so one of the things about the, the founding Manlius is, uh, he was able to personally hold the lines.

He was able to personally keep people going and keep people moving together.

And so, but his, his army was very vigorous, very young, but it had almost no experience.

This is when the, the Romans are still kind of figuring out how to professionalize their army, right?

Um, and so he gets injured, but every time he goes back to his tent to rest 'cause he's injured, they start to lose.

So he gets back out there, and he fights on the line until he dies, okay?

And that's the, uh... that, that's kind of what creates the legend of the Manlius family.

Um, and there's some historians that would say, "No, act like at the end, he, he retreated and fell back," and all this nonsense.

That's... The legend was that he died fighting.

He, he died in battle.

He stayed there on the line until the last second, until he, until he fell of his wounds, and he held the army together by personal character, okay?

And then finally, the Valeria family, Publius Valerius Publicola, uh, he was a, a co-founder of the republic.

He, he famously the, the, the, the highest, uh, judges, the, of, uh, in the city, they had a, a symbol called the fasces, and he made it Roman law that when the fasces entered the, uh, the city, that they would dip before the people.

They would... The, these fasces, you'd imagine as if the fasces are almost like people.

Um, they, the, the fasces are bowing before the people of Rome, right?

Uh, I think it's, uh, Senatus Publicola, uh, Rome, which is the Senate and the people in, in, in, in assembly around Rome.

Um, and so he, between the Senate and the people, uh, the, the Valerian family is the one that, that says, "We, we have the symbol of highest authority bow to the people to demonstrate that we are a republic, that our legitimacy comes from the people."

And then, so he's, uh, he, he's, he's very involved in kind of some of these reforms that the people say, "Okay, that's the date when, when the Roman Republic was founded," okay?

And then when his house on the Velia was what people were saying, "Well, this house is so nice, it's so gorgeous, this guy must wanna be king." And, um, and, and probably, again, these, these rumors were almost certainly started by his enemies.

Um, they were, they were not in good faith, and he just eats it.

He just goes there, tears down the house, and makes a kind of a big public statement of, "My honor is above reproach.

Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna bend on this.

You, you, you are not gonna use my house to impeach me." Um, and, and that, that kind of concern for what people would say about him, um, was a critical part of the Valerian character.

Again, they, they, they had this idea that our honor has to be above reproach.

Um, and that was, that was super important to them.

Okay.

So the pattern of the founding act was every founding act was performed in front of Rome on the record, every act came at a moment
of crisis or opportunity, and every act was either designed to be remembered or immediately recognized by Rome as a defining moment.

And, and I would say parenthetically, there, there's clearly, you know, PR, public relations is happening.

The great houses are using this to score political points, to, to be involved in things, to cause things to happen.

So which, which goes to say, I I believe that they, they definitely knew what they were doing.

Okay?

So, and this, and this shows up again, right?

'Cause, you know, in the Aemilia family, we talked about, um, earlier that, that the, the founder of the Aemilia family, he was taxed eight times, right?

Uh, in, in kind of vengeance for, um, for curtailing the power of the, the censors to, to do some abusive things.

So they did the abusive things to him.

So when his, his descendant, you know, Lucius Aemilius Paullus wins a great victory, instead of taking the general share, he returns the general share to Rome, and he, and he says, he gets...

I, I don't, I don't recall if he actually says this or if he has somebody else say it, but this was, this was not something that happened by accident.

He says, "What I want," basically, "is I want no more taxes against Roman citizens.

If you're a Roman ta- a citizen, what I want in reward for my victory is that those people can never be taxed again." Because that was the specific injustice that had happened to his ancestor, right?

Does that make sense?

So then we have the Claudia family.

So again, Claudius is the... The Claudia family is, their, their first ancestor- Started, he comes in from Sa- he's a Sabian.

He's got 500 men at arms.

He defects to Rome.

He starts enforcing debts.

He builds a financial empire.

His descendant, Appius Claudius Caecus, is the, is, is the one who builds the, the Via Appia and the Aqua Appia, right?

He, which is his name.

He puts his name on them, which is great.

Um, and he transforms Rome's infrastructure, and, and he is just egregiously rude to the plebs.

He, he doesn't like them.

He thinks they're worthless.

He says so.

Um, and i- in this, he is following his ancestor.

He's doing exactly what the first, uh, Claudius did.

Um, then we come to the, the Cornelius family, right?

So the, the greatest descendant of, of, of House Cornelius is probably, uh, probably Scipio Africanus, right, who defeated Hannibal, and he ends the greatest threat, uh, that Rome ever faced.

And then interestingly enough, one of the, one of the key pieces of his story is, so his ancestor was the person who executed Cassius for trying to, to pervert the patron-client structures of Rome.

And then after he has, after Scipio Africanus has this great victory, then he is accused.

He is accused of trying to pervert the institutions of Rome.

And, um, and, and his defense, uh, he, he gets up in the Senate, and he doesn't defend himself.

What he says is, "It's a feast day to Jupiter. I'm going to the Temple of Jupiter to sacrifice to Jupiter. That's a, a higher duty than even listening to this, this basically ridiculous accusation." And he walks out, and a huge amount of the people follow him.

And, and House Cornelius... So, so, uh, House Manlia was probably the, the, the, the pure military house.

They were, they were very aggressive on that front.

Cornelius was, was both w- you know, I say both warfare and lawfare.

So they, they were able to think about how do we, how do we win battles, but also h- they, they were very politically savvy and, and very interested in having political power.

That's why they have, you know, more consulships than I think the, the, they, they significant- they have 75, and the next, uh, the next nearest house has only 45.

Okay?

So then we come to, uh, Fabia House, uh, and, and, and their, their thing is they're, they're patient.

They're sacrificial endurance for the state.

So again, I told you about the, the Fabian family was the one that, that they, they lost all of their active members.

They have one, I think, 13, 12 or 13-year-old kid back in their house who has to endure like four or five years before he can formally inherit his position, and boy, it was... There, there's a, there's a lot of politicking that goes on there.

Okay?

So Quintus Fabius Is the one who goes out, um, when, when Hannibal is marching towards Rome, and basically Rome's army, his, their public army gets just smashed by Hannibal.

Um, and so it's the Fabian family... So what, what they need to do, what Rome needs to do, this, everyone understood this, was they needed a military commander to gather kind of the personal armsmen of the city, um, and go out and delay Hannibal, right?

So how do you delay Hannibal?

Well, the, the answer is you don't engage him in pitched battle, okay?

And this is, this was very countercultural, uh, in the day because it sort of, it was, it was seen as like a cowardly tactic.

It was seen as something that, well, you're, you're not somebody who, um, like, the, the, the, the aggressive, manly thing to do and, and something that probably the Manlian family would do, right?

Though I, I looked that up and to my great disappointment, there is actually not a, a, a linguistic relationship between the Manlia family and, and the English word for, like, manliness, right?

They're, they're, they're, they're different words.

Um, but in my heart, they, they are, they are connected.

Um, but so, so the Manlian family, it- everybody understands if we send a Manlian out, they're going to attack, right?

Whereas the Fabians, right, they would, um, they, they, they were the people that would delay and, you know, cut trees and put them over roads and try to spoil the, the, um, the,
the supply chain and, and do all of these things to, to make it hard for, for the, for Hannibal's army to advance, even though they couldn't meet them in battle and win, right?

And they do.

They delay them for months and months, and Rome is able to re-raise the army and get some mi- arms and, and, uh, and, and is able ultimately to, to push Hannibal back and, and defeat it.

And the important thing there is this is proving that they had learned the lesson that had almost destroyed their family in, in earlier centuries.

Okay?

So now we come to the Manlia family, right?

And, uh, the Manlia family, they, ironclad impartial military and legal discipline.

Um, you know, the Chinese have a, have a saying.

They, they talk of military orders, right, which are orders that have to be carried out literally no matter what, you know, no exceptions.

And the Roman version of that was literally called Manlian orders because, um, you know, their ancestor was the one who was famous for fighting on the battle lines until he died where he stood and kind of holding the army together.

So, um, Titus Manlius, uh, is, is, is in, in the second century BC, and his son breaks ranks, leaves without orders, attacks the enemy, wins the battle, right?

And Titus Manlius, um, under pressure, he, um, he actually executes his own son for breaking ranks because that was an unforgivable sin, not just against Rome, but against the honor of the Manlia family.

Like, they, they viewed that as, as a critical, a, a super important thing for them, okay?

And then finally, the Valeria, the Valeria family, um- They, they were the, um, they, this was the family that, that founded the Republic, right?

This is the family that had the symbol of ultimate authority bow before the people.

Uh, they, they, they basically have no vices.

Like you can go through the, all of the things that various people said about the Valerius family and, and there's just nothing, there's nothing really that bad about them.

And, and they hold true, you know, their bloodline holds true for pretty much the entire period of the Republic from 500 BC or so until the 30s.

And then, um, the story kind of the, the true descendant of House Valerius is, uh, is Messala Corvinus, right?

And Messala Corvinus was a, a very canny person.

Corvinus means the, the raven, right?

Um, and, and so they're, they're pe- people calling him that were saying, oh, you're, you're, you're a wise person, um, but also kind of a harbinger, an omen.

So Messala Corvinus was appointed by Augustus as Rome's first praefect- praefectus urbi, the city prefect, which is a new, powerful, and unprecedented peacetime office with authority over the entire city of Rome, right?

So, and, and you think about the kind of trust that that represents.

Like Augustus, Caesar Augustus is saying, hey, I'm going to trust you to manage the entire city, to guard it, right?

To, to, to be responsible for all these things.

There, there was an almost unfathomable amount of wealth that you would be able to extract from a position like that.

Um, the city prefect, I think later in the Byzantine period, they had the city prefect for Constantinople, and the, the dude was just always the richest person in, in the
Byzantine Empire because he had basically everyone in Constantinople was giving him bribes all the time because of things, different things that they wanted that he had power over.

And so he was just, it's, it's a fantastically powerful, you know, position that would be very easy to leverage into wealth.

And Messala Corvinus ex- you know, accepts the appointment, and then he resigns six days later.

His reported reason was the office was incompatibilis cum moribus, incompatible with Roman customs, or as some, some people would render it, incompatible with the liberty of the Republic, right?

And that, of course, was basically the last time that a Valerian ever held high office.

No, no emperor would ever trust them ever again, and they kind of declined from public life.

And, and in many ways, that is just as the Valerius, House Valerius was the beginning of the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic rather.

So this, this moment where they say, "Hey, this, this isn't our city, and we can't do this. We can't do this to our city." Parenthetically, in case I haven't ranted about this in the past, um, so historically, classically, Oedipus Rex, right?

Everyone's familiar with Oedipus Rex, the Oedipus complex from the Freudians, right?

That this is the guy who kills his father and sleeps with his mother, creating incestuous offspring, right?

So it's a bad, it's a bad story.

And, and Freud, you know, takes that and goes to all sorts of, of, of weird and terrible places with it.

Um, the point of that in an older time was the father w- was your house, your household, your lineage, your family, right?

And the city was your mother, the customs, the culture, the framework that you were raised in, the thing that made you who you were, right?

And so basically the, the point of that story is when you become dictator, when you become an autocrat, when you, when you take over
your city, you are killing your father because your lineage is gonna end, and your father's gonna wind up a hungry ghost, right?

And you are, you are entering into a perverse relationship with your mother that's gonna end badly, right?

And so that, that's, that, that ... Just, just, I just want, I want that interpretational possibility to be in your mind, right?

This was a story, this is the thing that they thought about.

This is how they thought about, you know, dictatorships and, and, and, and especially unreal- unrestricted dictatorships, right?

When, when you start getting the emperors who are genuinely centralizing power and changing the nature of the republic and, and moving forward.

Like, this is, um, this is what v- you know, v- the last Valerius was objecting to.

And again, the, the emperor, I don't think he had him killed, but, but he, it, he, there was a, there was a predictable response, uh, by the emperors
to that sort of behavior i- which is that, you know, "Hey, we're not gonna, we're not gonna entrust anything to you 'cause we can't have that," okay?

So in review, right, the, the houses had, um, you know, a set of clear virtues, right?

So House Aemilius had clean-handed incorruptibility and very little in the way of vice.

House Claudius had relentless dominance, but also they, they had a lot of contempt, especially for the, for the lower orders, for, for poor people.

You had Cornelius, which had overwhelming productivity, but was, was, uh, very cruel.

Later on, House Cornelius would kind of grow, and they actually had multiple factions that weren't always on the same side, and they were very, very aggressive, uh, with each other and, and, and often, often quite, quite cruel.

Um, then Fabia, uh, they had patient sacrificial endurance, uh, but they were also constantly criticized for being cautious and, and, and cowardly and all of these things.

And then the Manlian house, they had ironclad discipline.

We like them, but they were not seen ... They didn't have sophistication, and, and they were, again, I mean, they were willing to kill their own, their own family members to achieve this discipline.

And then finally, the, the Valerians, uh, you know, House Valerius had self-restraining justice, um, and, and very little in the way of vice.

But these ideas carry through the entire Republican period and, and I mean, even in some ways, you know, today.

Um- You know, we have the, uh, the, the, the the archetypes are still with us, right?

So, you know, a hundred, a little more than a hundred years ago, the Fabian Society, um, was, which was named explicitly for Fabius Maximus and his doctrine of patient incremental pressure, right?

Um, they, they wanted the, what they call the, the long march through the institutions, right?

They, they were looking back to the Fabians, you know, the House Fabius and, and what they accomplished in delaying Hannibal.

Then you have the name Valerian, right?

Which, which, um, um, in, uh,

the, the Game of Thrones guy whose name, the author whose name is escaping me, you know, he, he, he uses Valerian as the, as the name.

Like that name is still with us, right?

Um, and then, you know, like the Cor- Corvinus, right?

This old, old name that shows up in a, in a whole bunch of, uh, a whole bunch of, um, you know, fiction and arts and, and, and various, you know, stuff that we do.

We, we, we have not gotten over these archetypes and that's because, you know, the, the Romans documented these characters, right?

So you, we can imitate their character and then we can play the character that they represent.

Um, and they, they were tested across centuries and proven under pressure.

Uh, this is, this is one of the things, a, a culture that def- that identifies and transmits a real character produces something that persists.

If you wanna have the ability to, to match things over time, well, you, you need to have the character.

Okay?

So, um, one, one other point that I, I, I wanna make is that that they, there w- if, if we look at all three of kind of the aspects of public life, right?

The military pillar, these, these great families, they dominate the military pillar.

They also dominate things economically.

They have the largest patron-client networks.

Um, they, they control the, many of the provisional govern- governorships.

Um, there was something called the ager publicus, which was the, the public land that was supposed to be doled out various to, to various people.

Um, and, and that's, you know, that's part of what Cassius was talking about.

That's, that's, uh, there, there was this constant conflict in Rome between, "Hey, we want the great landowners to exist. We need them. They're
kind of core to our house, but we don't, we, we, we also don't want them to dominate everything and squeeze all of the little guys out," right?

And you can, the, uh, the, um, was it the, the, the TV show, the Roman TV show with the, the great, you know, architecture and, and, um, and the great outfits and the, the herald, right?

The, the public herald that gets out and, and, and he's very meme-able.

Um- They do a good job of kind of talking through the tensions around the agro publicus.

And then there was just general public contracts, right?

The censors would award contracts for roads, temples, aqueducts, port works, et cetera, and there was a lot of money that, uh, that, that kind of flows there.

And then finally, there's the, the social and cultural pi- pillars.

So the sacred priesthoods were reserved exclusively through, for patricians, um, and, and a lot of those were, were given heavily to the, the, the main families.

Um, they, they were able, because they had been around for a long time, they got to name a lot of the, the roads and the, and the architecture.

Um, and then, uh, you know, they, they had the, this... There was something called the Scipionic Circle, which is part, one of House Cornelius's projects, right?

Scipio Africanus.

Um, they, around 2nd century BC, they gather a bunch of artisans and, and... No, sorry, not artisans.

They gather a bunch of thinkers and playwrights and poets, and they create a lot of cultural artifacts that then go on to define what Rome becomes and how it thinks about itself and how,
how Rome kind of synergized its, its Roman virtue and vigor with Greek philosophy and Greek language and, and, you know, a lot of the customs that, uh, that, that they come along with.

And, and then when, when they have that great victory over the Greeks, over the Hellenistic kingdoms, and they bring back, they don't just bring back, you know, Alexander the Great's treasury, they bring back a bunch of slaves.

They bring back a bunch of kind of cultural icons from the Greek culture, and they, and they need a way to absorb that.

And that, that... So the, the great houses, as is always true of public works, were, were heavily involved in that.

And then finally, you know, the formation of leaders.

Noble sons were educated in the homes of these families.

The intellectual and moral formation of Rome's future leaders was instilled in these households.

They carried the values, not, not just sort of generic Roman values, but specifically the values and virtues of their house as defined by their ancestors' story into the Senate, into the law courts, into the army.

So that's all that, uh, we're gonna do for today on the public recording.

So next week we're gonna start with our, our first deep dive into the gens will be the Fabii and gens, right?

So which I've, I've talked about, you know, a couple of times already briefly, but we're gonna, we're gonna go deep into it and, and
talk about how does this one guy, after, after his entire family is massacred at Cremera, how does one boy rebuild his great house?

How do... What, what kind of political maneuverings does he have to go into?

And then how does, how does that, you know, carry forward for the next 400 years into, you know, one of, one of the, the great houses of Rome?

So again, thank you everybody, uh, for, for, for coming and, and, uh, we're, we're gonna move into the, the Q&A.

For anybody that's, uh, listening on the, on the public podcast, thank you so much and, um, we'll see you next time.