Lessons from Ancient Rome | Wealth, Rhetoric, and Religious Freedom
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There is no question that today we live better than anyone in history, but not in every possible way. This video goes over some aspects in which a 2000-year-old ancient Roman civilization did better than us. From the times of Julius Caesar, much of our lifestyle, social norms, and way of living has changed, and not always for the better. Today, we go over just a handful of aspects from which we have strayed away from the past.
Sources:
This video is a summary of knowledge from the top of our heads based on academic lectures and conferences attended during our university days. So sadly, there won't be plenty of direct sources, but we won't leave you empty-handed. You can access the life of the Gracchi brothers here: penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/... -Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 2.2 - AE 1971, 00282: db.edcs.eu/epigr/bilder.php?s...
Cicero's book on oratory can also be accessed freely here: www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/.... Hope you enjoyed the video!
Yours truly,
the Filaxim Historia team.
Wealthy pay for Poor (0:00)
The Art of Rhetoric (1:52)
Sponsor (4:20)
Religious Inclusion (5:17)
New Merch! (7:54)
That thumbnail 😂 “We’re going to build a wall and make the barbarians pay for it because let’s be honest, Caledonia isn’t sending us their best!” - Emperor Trumpius
People say I am the best. HEEHAW
Emperor Trumpius was the best, he made the empire strong again after that dreadful emperor Obamus apologized to all their enemies and much better than that loser named Bidenus that lost the empire.
Soon after, the Praetorian Guard gutted him to death
0:08 "The wolves are attacking mylord!" 1:22 "Extra rations!"
Firefly's Stronghold game soundtrack.
Should have had Biden on the photo, I think he was born in the late Roman empire.
He's the remake of emperor commodus.
Biden's Latin name: Confusus Maximus 😁
See any road in Britain, now imagine them being better 2,000 years ago because of these madlads.
During the Early Middle Ages all traffic and movement of armies was done following the roman roads. Long after the romans were gone 😂
@@JonEtxebeberriaRodriguez Bro, the A1 still in use today was built atop a Roman Road because it was so straight :D
Rhetoric during the Republic: "We must adequately guide the senses to govern the State with reason" Rhetoric during the Empire: "PUT THIS CHILD ON THE THRONE OR HEADS WILL START ROLLING ON THE GROUND"
Not quite accurate
2:41 Public speech IS art!
i would like to ad that hilter was a master of public speach. a same he did to many bad things
@@mitch8072 He did nothing wrong but lose
Getting rid of corrupt leaders was one of their admirable skills.
That's false
This man is a complete liar and this video is false
@@danielating1316 exactly
Well done man. The Romans outmatch us in quite many ways .. The one with religion i always wondered, and you have answered me, so again good job!
Thank you, I am very glad you enjoyed!
If you are interested in the question of religious freedom and how open and tolerant people have been e.g. to atheism, I can highly recommend the book: Battling the gods - Atheism in the ancient world. All religious freedom and tolerance was done when monotheistic religions became powerful. Which is quite obvious: If you teach that there is exactly one god and to pray to another god is praying to a false god and thereby heresy - well, how can anybody who takes the religion seriously be tolerant? Another god is a false god, praying to them NEEDS to be corrected. By reeducation and bringing the heretic to the true god. Or by killing him. It is absolutly impossible for a monotheistic religion to be tolerant and accept other beliefes. Such a religion only becomes tolerant, when the religion no longer has the political and military power to prosecute and execute disbeliefers. This can be seen perfectly by Christianity and Islam. As long as christianity was powerful, it went on crusades and hunted down every non beliefer. Today, nobody would care if the Pope called for a new crusade - that's why he is no longer doing it. And Islam? Well, there is not a single country on earth, were Islam is having heavy influence and Islam is tolerant. Moslems are only demanding tolerance, as long as they do not have absolute power. As soon as they have this power, they become absolute.
Add to this 'Protect our borders' (UK)
I love the music from Stronghold. It really took me back 15 years.
I have a feeling that by learning rhetoric and orathory skills since the youngest of years, these people were much smarter than us and had a lot better IQ. Better quality and natural food, clean air and much more physical activity than we have, must've only doubled it. Avarage patrician back then must've been a titan in comparsion to avarage modern president
what are you talking about romans did not have better food quality then we have
@@Assmanlicker What he is saying is that they ate natural foods. Not processed foods that taste better but still have a side effect of messing up your body.
I wouldn't say they were smarter then us. I agree that in many subjects they were probably more knowledgeable. But in that same sense we are more knowledgeable in different subjects. So you can't say that they were smarter than us just because they knew more about certain topics.
I would say that for ancient Romans the food was definitely healthier for those that were getting enough of it although there were those that weren't. In America the food is now almost always full of crap. If you go into a modern supermarket in America, if it is not in the produce aisle then most of it is full of bad additives such as chemicals and too much sugar. If you look at tribal people around the world today they oftern still have muscle tone and agility into their sixties. Compare that to the average American at about any age.
@@FerdyTheGreat True that. They might be not. But we will all agree they we re more adequate, civilised, and likely with more empathy. Their system was superiour to ours, despite it was 2000 or so years ago. And all the comunities, religion individuals, and pretty much foreigner we re living let s say well. Of course there we re some that weren t, but we aren t doing better nowdays neither. I think the Romans we re as far as we got into making a system that pleases humanity at its finest. Feel free to correct!
To be fair to modern day people, philanthropy has been a part of British life for hundreds of years precisely for the same reasons. Many schools, universities, hospitals, orphanages (foundling institutions) in the UK all have roots in personal philanthropy.
Today, some communities indeed have deep-rooted qualities from the past engraved in their culture which are exceptions of the rule. But it can be argued that such qualities are not exactly getting better with time in most areas. Only time will tell. Thanks for the comment!
especially when you consider how many modern charities are rife with scams and even the "legitimate" ones barely pass on a fraction of what gets donated to them to the actual causes they purport to support.
Yet you guys just had a short-lived prime minister whose entire policy platform was based around tax cuts for the rich, and many of the charitable institutions in the UK were tailored to provide support only to the "deserving" poor. Also, the bloated charity sector of today cannot really compare to the system of antiquity of directly funding infrastructure and massive programmes of social aid.
The Romans assfucked the Britons into civilization
The pen (and well trained orators) is/are mightier than the sword. That B.S. Marc Antony: hold my wine (proceeds to rouse up the people attending the funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar and destroy the reputations of Brutus, Cassius and the conspirators)
“Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?!”
Could you make a video about ancient Roman religion? No[__] No[__] Οι καιροί ου μενετοι " Fast actions are required in war because chances dont wait" -Perikles
Perikles, μπρο
Dude, I think I've told you before, your diction is so good that I can understand everything... Even in 2.0 speed 😲 And I'm not native English-speaker. I love your videos about our precious SPQR
Thank you! Once again, I am glad you enjoyed ;)
Christians: "We want our God to be officially considered as such by the Empire" Romans: "Well, having a crucified carpenter as a God is f*cking weird, but hey, our first God was a penis with wings. In any case, where on the scale of gods is yours?" Christians: "Gods?" Romans: "This isn't going to end well, right?"
Christianity and Judaism were truly foreign concepts to the Romans and overall were a revolutionary idea in the ancient world, and naturally being a foreign and new concept it heavily clashed with the pagan gods
I that’s very interesting 🧐 hope you make a separate video on Cicero
Where can I read more about the oratory studies and training of Roman public speakers? Is there a way to read what the teachers thought?
There’s a great compilation of Cicero’s works called “How to win an argument”. It’s a great book that shows you how sophisticated their speeches and thoughts would have been, I highly recommend it - Cicero was one of the best speakers in history!
@@HistoriaMilitum thank you!
@@oldmanballs Beware that Cicero had a bit of an ego, he can come as too pretentious at times 😂
@@JonEtxebeberriaRodriguez hey he has been dead for thousands of years so I'll give him a pass.
Great video
Is it deliberate that this video is only available via a link? I.e. you can't find it in "videos", only if you have a link or if you open a playlist
The Stronghold 1 Music Tho 😂😂😂
My man casually using Stronghold music.
I love the music from Stronghold
That Stronghold background music
Spectacular content
That thumbnail image does a really good job of blending the Roman Toga body with his face. It looks very good and is a tantalizing way to grab the audience into the topic
An 8 minute video with a sponsor? We can't avoid ads at all on this god forsaken website
If we could travel back in time, and as we enter the average Roman apartment, first thing we'd notice would be the blinking of "12:00" ... on the VCR and 0.00 on the microwave.
Yeah I don't know why we dont have great orators today. There are hardly any good speeches even compared to people of the recent past in the 20th and 19th centuries. I heard its because Politicians want to sound more down to earth and plain like the common folk but we all know they aren't. So can we at least get some fantastic speeches at least like Lincoln if not Caesar?
why is this unlisted?
On the other hand, Hitler was probably the best disciple of Cicero in recent history. We know how that turned out.
What an interesting comparison between old school Roman oratory and today's modern "speeches." Now if only we could compare the clipping and misinterpretations caused through the media to how the Romans delivered press, we'd really be building something there!
Regarding the jews and christians in the Roman empire: The most crucial problem was, that they could not worship the cult of the deified emperors, which was obligatory. Of course the living emperors didn't like that.
Christians were usually targeted more, in the temple the Jewish priests were allowed to sacrifice for caesar rather than to him
Good video! I definitely think there are things in the past that are admirable, rhetoric definitely, even compared to over one hundred years our rhetoric and levels of discourse has decline. I’m British, specifically English, so obviously I have a certain opinion of ‘Roman Inclusivity’, with the whole wholesale massacre of the Druids thing. But I do understand Romanisation and Roman Syncretism, something which actually continued with the Catholic Church, with plenty of pagan practices and traditions being incorporated into Christian or Catholic ideas, making the conversion process a smoother one. However, I hope you’re not one of those channels which underplays the persecution of the Christians, and overplays the persecution that Christians committed against Pagans. I often find with quite a few Rome centric channels, is that it occasionally turns into Anti-Christian grievance matches. Because they aren’t interested in Romans, they like the Romans, which I think is a very distinct difference. They say stuff like Constantine and others literally carried out wide scale anti-pagan persecutions and ‘spread Christianity by the sword’, when in truth, the Roman governmental system made that difficult and in archeological findings, only around 10% at most of pagan temples were destroyed. As far as I see, Pagan worship in the Roman Empire, despite some episodes of anti-pagan violence and persecution, largely died a more natural death by being replaced by the more attractive religion. P.S. The Crusades are a far more complicated topic then merely religious violence, with valid concerns of geopolitics involved and the fact it wasn’t black and white, nor was it constant violence between the servants of Christ and the servants of Muhammad, and I’d be very careful comparing it to the Romans. You may look at Jihad and Crusades and say ‘that’s terrible’, but then let’s look at Caesar conquering Gaul and sending 500 thousand to 1 million Gauls to the slave markets, and 500 thousand to 1 million into the grave. It’s another variation of the modern day opinion that we’re better then the people who struggled beyond what we could imagine today, when really, humans are humans, nothing about that has changed and if anything, we’re worse, because our methods of killing have only gotten more destructive. I don’t see people of the past threatening each other with Nuclear Armageddon
Let’s also not forget about the pagan relics and pagan churches that were burned and destroyed. Invaluable sources of historic knowledge. Libraries burnt to the ground on purpose. So don’t come here and try to pretend that the Christian’s were unfairly treated. Ancient pagan rome (aka the real Rome) was literally the most religiously tolerant world power hat ever existed. If you drive ancient pagan rome to the point where they are banning your religion and the practice of your religion, you know your people were f***ed up. The audacity of your comment lmfao
facts
The need to debate has gone. Some are so powerful they don't need to cooperate. Mass media and Social are like an illusion or a show. Showmanship depends on much more than simply speaking well. Also people are more emotional or value demonstrating emotions more, so using reason isn't necessarily valued.
You’re almost 100% correct, except that the Muslims are not the servants of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
MORALITY? IN THE UPPER CLASS!?!?! Tis' unheard of in the modern world.
Ok but lets be fair... remember Lex Agraria?
They built roads with no potholes turning up in a year with out engineers
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The first 1.5 minutes are problematic on so many levels. Public work and charity were done (like today) to gain political power for their personal gain. It was a crony system like so many political structures that unfortunately still exists. The obligations of the upper classes should be to pay a progressive tax so public work and social security can be ensured without the concentration of the political power in nepotistic and corrupt hand due to their control of funding flow. The distribution of the funding has to be democratically legitimised with a constitution that ensure human and civil rights, enacted by institutions following the rule of law etc. If your contemporary government is telling you, that you have all this, but you personally still see uncontrolled corruption and a massive disparity in political/economical power, then it is not because the they steered to far away from the romans upper class suggested “moral obligation” to spend money, but it is because it still resembles it too much. The Roman system may not have been the worst, but calling it better in a generalized way to any contemporary system is an oversimplification. This may seem like an innocent video, but is another drop spreading the wrong seed of a political understanding that is dangerous and only benefits the elite. If you compare historic political systems and are trying to make a personal judgement, don’t spend only 2min on it. Political institutions that inform the action of the actors within the system is a highly complex topic that would require hours of elaboration. Also, it would require quantifiable and probable evidence that can be compared. For example, how much (%) of the upper-class wealth was spend on public work and who did it benefit in detail? Only their cronies, a limited local supporting population… and how was this wealth generated… oh wupsi… there is something called slavery. Ahhh doesn’t matter. Look at that nice library made for the limited small portion of the population that a have voice in the forum and just happens to live around that library. EDIT: Ok. My comment sound a bit harsh reading it. But in my brain it was in a friendly voice. What I'm suggesting is... please make a follow up video to clarify it a more in-depth manner. The only one thing that is in majority (there might have bene a few) wrong is that they didn't expect anything in return.
@@fluffybunny5518 I believe you take this comparison a bit too seriously. We cannot compare entire political systems with the past because there are too many factors of difference. This video, as the title suggests, is a cherry-picked few qualities that have been lost by western culture through the years in between. The upper class of the time not only had an obligation to pay taxes for public work and security, as you mentioned, but were often involved in separate councils dedicated to maintaining their particular districts by any means possible, including through their personal wealth, which is unlike anywhere today! They were responsible for maintaining roads, public buildings, clean water, and even free food distributions for poor - all just because they happened to be rich, and as you can see, it was not only for the benefit of “cronies”, just like the public library in Ephesus, which was meant to be used by as many people as possible in order to spread the reputation of a single man. The system of Roman governance was very complex and changed through the centuries, but overall, such qualities of “fake” generosity in exchange for personal reputation or political power were very beneficial for the poorer population, which is all I mean to say in the video. Thanks for your comment! :)
@@HistoriaMilitum Sorry that I’m a bit tense on this subject. It’s just that more and more people favour autocracy and are falling for that strong man history narrative, looking now in the present for a “strong” saviour figurehead that does good for the “public”, which actually just means a specific circle/strata. They are totally ok if another portion of the population gets subdued, oppressed or enslaved. This 1.5m made me go immediately into overdrive, because I got stuck in way too many arguments where the other side started to cherry pick examples exactly on this topic from history totally ignoring and refusing to then discuss the wider context and implications. That’s not you. Please. I’m not accusing you of that at all. I’ve seen almost all of your other videos and those are well made and balanced *thumbs up*. But yes, you are right. I take this very seriously because I’m concerned about the achievements of democracy, rule of law and human rights being undermined. I live now in a country where everyone is benefiting of that, but my grandmother was originally from one where this wasn’t the case at all. So, I tend to jump on the ceiling when I hear the strong leader/elite looking out for the public narrative. We may disagree on the motivation of the roman leadership, because I still would argue they did it for their own benefit, but I hope you can see where I am coming from. It wasn’t my intention to attack you. Sorry for that if that was the impression. Edit: The "fake" generosity benefiting the poorer population is exactly what worries me. It is way to often used to manipulate them and there were so many historical (in roman time or more recent) where this in the big picture was more exploitative in the larger picture. I mean that is the very exact model e.g. the mafia or some very extremist political parties are operating in. And the worst thing is, people actually believe this is good until it is too late. I'm really concerned about this.
U need to stop crystallizing war games ! Also, very annoying when you interrupt the program in the middle to espouse these stupid war games of destruction !! Kids should be playing sports games, not decrepit war games !! 🤪
Today we live better than anyone in history, but there is always room for improvement - so today, we learn from the Romans! Check out our new merch (7:53) which brings back Roman fashion, here: spqrshop.com/ref/FilaximHistoria/
Pretty pathetic tbh its funny that you think the speeches given in pop culture movies were actually real, that you think the rich in Rome were more generous than the rich today.
@@danielmorris7648 Actually, as someone who is studying history in college and took a course where we studied the cultures of antiquity, this isn't innaccurate. Romans were more skilled at holding speeches on average than most modern politicans are. They were tolerant of other faiths except a select few such as Christianity.
@@danielmorris7648 Also his points about the rich, while exaggerated, wasn't innaccurate either.
The reason we live better today is because of the Romans. All aspects of western civilization is birthed from technology and ways the Romans created and took for thier own from conquered people.
No American politician would do anything to improve the community out of their own pocket.
📌 🎬 🎧 👍🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
Missed opportunity with the thumbnail to be honest, Biden would fit better regardless of your political opinions.
Charisma, intelligence and quick thinking....hmmm *Looks at the current leader of the strongest nation and looks at his predecessor.*
Christianity isn't the cause of war, it's the excuse used to justify war. Everyone wants God on their side.
Never put "caring & Politicians" in the same sentence.
p̶r̶o̶m̶o̶s̶m̶
🤠👍🏿
Also a bit strange to imply Trump was the one reading from a script instead of the Current Guy, who is famous/notorious for his many mishaps when reading a teleprompter.
Nice video. Though Trump is well known for working a crowd.
Exterminating disloyal minorities. Thank you Titus, though you could have done a bit more tbh.
When Trump gives a speech, he kind of rambles a lot. The crowds are low energy, except for those key moments when he calls out Mexicans, George Soros, or Transexuals. It’s pretty devoid of any policy positions, inspiration, or logical persuasion. Regardless of how you feel about his politics, president Obama is a good example of a modern day orator.
Quite surprised that the gracchi brothers were not the script introduction as they somewhat introduced widespread metropolita area romanus purchase of votes/acclimation by use of a grain dole for political followers and as such also kept the ever-present background unrest at bay. Romans of the first families could not resist upping each other as crowd adoration of the man was the virilitas basis of the civil authority, maintenance of control and familiae generationis dignitatem and so existed in Roma until by varying opinions 49 bce Caesar or 27 bce Caesar Augustus and Empire. For many the multigenerational electos familias public investments were both power and self-protection. Presumably the average roman citizen and the ever-expanding population of both slave/servants and newly arrived both legal/illegal non-core Roman looked up to the Seven Hill of Rome and the thereof families with pointed and earthly comments depending on one’s quick forming mob viewpoint. Oh! What is known as Buddhism is not a religion as it is ways/examples for a reasonable/now living and does not require a voiced/needed seed entity though such an acceptance/belief can be reasonable.
Say what you will about him but Trump was a notable exception on this point 1:59
No hate was meant towards him! We just happened to find the perfect image of him reading off a script :)
FJB
This is not very accurate. All the private donations made by wealthy Romans during the Punic wars are incomparable to the behavior of rich Americans during a time of peace. Instead, compare it with World War 2, when the entire American economy was turned into a war machine to defeat Germany and Japan, a lot of rich private citizens made huge contributions during that time.
This video is romanticizing Roman society.
Why because they bring up positive aspects of it that actually has real historical backing? The sad fact is that many of the people that talk about how we shouldn't romantice history and preach realism either ignore or at best barely acknowledge the positive aspects of ancient societies. Instead they demonize them and try to paint the past as nothing besides dark and terrible
Far from it. Acknowledging that people from the past could do some things better than us is an act of respect and humility. The same as saying that your father or grandpa knows some things better than you is not idealizing him. Because after all, the ancients were not completely stupid and our actual knowledge is based on what some of them figured out. When calculating the size of the earth and it's mass Ptolemy didn't had the technology we do today and he didn't miss the mark by a lot. Which is actually very impressive. The same can be said about the architecture. The position and spacing of the Parthenon's columns was done based on mathematic and perception formulas because they aren't all at the same distance from one another.
True, I would not like to have been a Roman
You had to bring modern politics to your history channel right? Unsub
Not at all. I was careful not to bring modern politics into it, and we take no sides. I just exposed the sophistication of Roman public speech and rhetoric as opposed to our own. Have a good day :)
buh bye
@@HistoriaMilitum Let the idiots talk, they used to wash the toilets and die in squares. You can see that by how they speak. I advice you answer to only those that are adequate, not every mere pleb.
Civic Virtue > chairity
You begin you video with;" Think of that horrible road." I suggest that when you refer to religion that you think through the differences in 'religions.' As one of those who assert your superior knowledge of these things using your hushed tones, and inflections, I prevail upon you to not treat any, and all 'religions' as if they are the same thing with simply different names. I'm one who is not a church goes, yet I believe every word of the Bible. Christianity did not lead to Rome's demise, another very important thing is that those who represent Christianity very rarely are worthy of representing anything, or anyone other than themselves. I'll keep this short, for those who are interested in islam I encourage you to simply research what the islamo religion teaches about how dogs should be treated, or should I say mistreated, killed..
It was the Romans who believed that certain foreign Gods were simply their own, known by a different name, not me. Nor have I ever said that I "represent" Christianity or that it led to Rome's downfall. I respect all religions and only wish to share interesting historic facts to the general audience, cheers! :)
@@HistoriaMilitum Read what the hell i said . I didn't say you represented anything. I said the you 'presented' all the religions as if they were relative the same, no relative difference. If I got that wrong, how about you explaining some of these differences since that was a big part of the video, are you not the subject matter expert??
@@hauntedmoodylady all religions are bullshit.
@@hauntedmoodylady Username checks out lol
@@hauntedmoodylady 😂😂😂we don't kill dogs. In fact in hadiths a man went to heaven for using his shoes to give a dog some water