Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire - Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443
One of the rare conversations that held my interest for 4 hours.
0:00 - Introduction
2:23 - Ancient world
16:18 - Three phases of Roman history
19:08 - Rome's expansion
30:48 - Punic wars
39:20 - Conquering Greece
40:59 - Scipio vs Hannibal
44:05 - Heavy infantry vs Cavalry
47:42 - Armor
1:00:32 - Alexander the Great
1:06:33 - Roman law
1:16:13 - Slavery
1:23:53 - Fall of the Roman Republic
1:27:38 - Julius Caesar
1:32:17 - Octavian's rise
1:42:09 - Cleopatra
1:50:32 - Augustus
2:18:42 - Religion in Rome
2:42:47 - Emperors
2:49:54 - Marcus Aurelius
2:56:05 - Taxes
2:59:13 - Fall of the Roman Empire
3:16:25 - Decisive battles
3:40:35 - Hope
"I'll tell you one thing that's always fascinated me in this comparison of ancient-modern battle warfare, is how people don't learn the lessons of the past in military history. And the very specific example that I've seen play out twice in my lifetime is just certain places people make the same mistakes over & over again. So, a nice example is Afghanistan."
"That is a geographic region that over & over again, the best most sophisticated armies in the world have invaded and have met horrible failure. That goes all the way back to Alexander the Great who tried to conquer that area, the Mongols tried, the Huns, the Moguls, Victorian Britain, the Russians, the Americans, and they made the very same mistakes over & over & over again. The two mistakes each made are not understanding the terrain and not understanding the fundamentally tribal nature of that area; it's not a centralized government."
— Gregory Aldrete
One of the rare conversations that held my interest for 4 hours.
0:00 - Introduction
2:23 - Ancient world
16:18 - Three phases of Roman history
19:08 - Rome's expansion
30:48 - Punic wars
39:20 - Conquering Greece
40:59 - Scipio vs Hannibal
44:05 - Heavy infantry vs Cavalry
47:42 - Armor
1:00:32 - Alexander the Great
1:06:33 - Roman law
1:16:13 - Slavery
1:23:53 - Fall of the Roman Republic
1:27:38 - Julius Caesar
1:32:17 - Octavian's rise
1:42:09 - Cleopatra
1:50:32 - Augustus
2:18:42 - Religion in Rome
2:42:47 - Emperors
2:49:54 - Marcus Aurelius
2:56:05 - Taxes
2:59:13 - Fall of the Roman Empire
3:16:25 - Decisive battles
3:40:35 - Hope
"I'll tell you one thing that's always fascinated me in this comparison of ancient-modern battle warfare, is how people don't learn the lessons of the past in military history. And the very specific example that I've seen play out twice in my lifetime is just certain places people make the same mistakes over & over again. So, a nice example is Afghanistan."
"That is a geographic region that over & over again, the best most sophisticated armies in the world have invaded and have met horrible failure. That goes all the way back to Alexander the Great who tried to conquer that area, the Mongols tried, the Huns, the Moguls, Victorian Britain, the Russians, the Americans, and they made the very same mistakes over & over & over again. The two mistakes each made are not understanding the terrain and not understanding the fundamentally tribal nature of that area; it's not a centralized government."
— Gregory Aldrete
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." – Thomas Sowell
