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23. The Valerian Gens Part 1 · Great Houses

0:00
All right.
0:00
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Great Houses Forum.
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I'm Gregory Treat, and, uh, we're here to talk today about what makes a great house.
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We're continuing specifically today on what I'm calling the Ancient H- City Series, where I talk about, uh, historical families that wielded power and influence, uh, usually over generations.
0:19
Um, so, uh, so far we, we, we spent a couple, three episodes talking about just kind of what, what was a gens, what was a Roman household or a lineage, and how did that work.
0:29
And then, um, we sp- we, we talked about the, uh, the, the Fabians, the Fabian family, House Fabius, and, um Kind of what they were like and, and what they were about.
0:40
So today, uh, we're gonna talk about House Valerius, right?
0:44
Uh, which is presumably, uh, the, the- their, some of their exploits in some way made it to, into, uh, George R.R. Martin's, uh, twisted imagination, and that's why that name, you know, is, figures so prominently in the, um, in the Game of Thrones series.
0:59
So let's get into it.
1:02
So, you know, one of the reasons why I started with the Fabians is, um, they are in many ways the closest of the ancient houses of Rome to the modern man.
1:11
S- like, specifically the, the, the modern man kind of in his current state, right?
1:16
We are, we live in a world that's been shaped by the, you know, Gramsci's long march through the institutions, famously explicitly based on, um, you know, the Fabian strategy, the Fabian socialists, all of this stuff.
1:29
Like, this, these, these are ideas, um, and it's really interesting how our world has been shaped by people that were attempting to do the Fabian thing, and when we who are the products of, of the world they created look at the Fabians, they're like, "Oh, that's us. That's, that's who we are. That's the, that's clearly the winning strategy, uh, for, for our time and, and, and in some way, uh, something that we need to, to contend with and recognize and be able to, to interact with."
1:55
Okay?
1:56
They endured patiently, relied on counter-cultural virtues, and have in many ways been the most studied of the, of the great houses of ancient Rome.
2:05
Now, the Valerii pose the opposite puzzle, right?
2:07
Valerian virtue, starting from a swor- sworn oath that they ensured was kept for centuries, embodied what I'm gonna call Republican virtues, right?
2:15
Uh, libertas.
2:16
Uh, the, the Valerii are sometimes called the most liberal house of ancient Rome.
2:21
Uh, you know, now, on the one hand I'll say liberal by the standards of ancient Roman aristocrats, okay?
2:27
So these are not, these are not woke people.
2:29
But, you know, there is an interesting sense in which, uh, you know, it was, some, some, someone said once upon a time, "We are all liberal with what we love."
2:37
Um, and the Valerii loved the city of Rome and the li- and the liberty of its people, and they really were, as we'll go through, I, I think there's some recognizable things.
2:46
Certainly I think our, our founders were in many ways self-consciously trying to, to imitate House Valerius and what they accomplished and what they were able to do.
2:56
Um, and they, they kind of embody these, these classical liberal virtues that, uh, that are so irritatingly attractive, right?
3:05
We, we even, even when there are many people kind of in the modern movement that are frustrated with classical liberalism or see it as a dead end or whatever, and yet the ideas, the ideas have to be contended with.
3:16
You can't just say, "Oh, well You know, if we could just get rid of, of this idea set, you know, where it go, go back to where it all went wrong, um, then, then you could get, get rid of the tension.
3:27
Um, now that does not mean that I don't think we, we took a dramatic negative turn i- in, in what I've called the, the long 20th…
3:33
I and others have called the long 20th century.
3:36
Um, and I, I do think there are things that, that we need to go back and just say, "This was a wrong call. We need to repent of doing this. We need to change some of these structural incentives." Um, but what I don't mean by that is that we need to get rid of some of these ancient, uh, principles, these ancient tactics.
3:54
Um, there is a need, I think, in any policy that wants to s- sustain or support an empire, um, or really even its own kind of sovereignty in the modern context, you're gonna have Valyrians, and you need Valyrians, and you need the, the impact that they have on your political system and what they allow you to do.
4:12
Uh, when, when Valyrians could no longer hold Rome together, that's when you got Caesar, right?
4:19
D- not, not, not to put too fine a point on it, okay?
4:21
So the big question that we're asking this episode is why would a powerful house choose to reduce itself, we'll talk about what that means, and how did that choice become the most durable political technology in Rome, or at least in Republican Rome?
4:33
So we're gonna start with a, a poetry reading, um, which I, I hope to do more of, so, uh, forgive me if I embarrass myself, but, uh, but here we go.
4:42
"Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore that the great house of Tarquin should suffer no more.
4:49
By the nine gods he swore it, and named a trysting day, and bade his messengers ride forth, east and west and south and north, to summon his array.
4:57
East and west and south and north the messengers ride fast, and tower and town and cottage have heard the trumpets blast.
5:04
Shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home when Porsena of Clusium is on the march for Rome." And this is, of course, uh, Thomas Babington Macaulay's Horatius from The Lays of Ancient Rome, uh, written in about 1842.
5:20
And this was known at one time to ef- effectively every, you know, every English schoolboy.
5:25
It was, it was a, um- It was a, a very common, uh, poem.
5:31
Famously, uh, Winston Churchill could recite, I think, uh, it was either H- Horatius or it might have been the entirety of the Lays of Ancient Rome, all of Macaulay's works, which is like 1,200 lines or something like this, and he could just recite it at great length, you know.
5:43
Uh, the closest I've ever come to that is, uh, in, in high school one time, I, I recited most of the lines of, uh, of The Princess Bride while on a, uh, a bus trip.
5:52
But, uh, but I, I, I think I may make it my aim to, um, to be able to recite Horatius at least.
5:58
There's some, there's some great lines in there.
6:01
But, uh, so it begs the question, who is Lars Porsena, and who is the great house of Tarquin, right?
6:07
Who has suffered, suffered this wrong?
6:09
What was the wrong?
6:10
Um, now that's, that's ironic.
6:12
The poem assumes that you know, and Macaulay's schoolboys did know, the answer is the founding story of the Roman Republic, and at the heart of that story is a bunch of people with the last name Valerius.
6:24
Um So, uh, the Tarquins were, uh, the great house of Tarquin, uh, were the Etruscan royal house that ruled Rome for most of a century.
6:32
So Rome's founding act as a republic, uh, was the destruction, we'll, we'll get the, the covenantal destruction even, um, I'll argue, of a tyrannical house.
6:41
So, uh, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, an Etruscan immigrant, became Rome's fifth king, counted in a, a mostly mythological line from Romulus.
6:49
His successor, Servius Tullius, was murdered on the Senate steps in a coup arranged by his own daughter, Tullia, and her husband.
6:56
That husband's name was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the proud.
7:00
Superbus, right?
7:02
Uh, seized the throne by the murder a- and ruled as a tyrant.
7:05
He did not consult the Senate.
7:06
There were capital trials without counsel.
7:09
Uh, the city's poor were conscripted as labor.
7:11
Like, he was doing the classic I'm a bad guy tyrant thing.
7:15
Um, so this goes on for several years.
7:17
His son, uh, Sextus Tarquinius rapes Lucretia, the wife of his kinsman, Collatinus.
7:22
She summons her father and husband, testifies to the crime, says, "This is what happened to me," and kills herself in front of them, okay?
7:30
And then over her body, Lucius Junius Brutus, a royal nephew who'd survived the reign by playing the fool, swore to drive out the kings.
7:38
Rome rose, the gates were shut against Superbus, and the monarchy was abolished in 509.
7:44
So at this time, you know, the Valerii were, were already an old house at this point in time.
7:49
Um, you know, they're… Th- one of the interesting things is there really, really isn't good records of any political offices being held before the establishment of the Republic.
7:59
So kind of the first documented, you know, case of, of, of a, of a, a, what became the gens' maiores holding a, a, uh, consular office or a recorded office is, you know, what happens in this story.
8:12
Um, the, the family tradition of the Valerii traces their line to Volusus Valerius, a Sabine who came to Rome with Titus Tatius in the generation of Romulus.
8:21
Again, in that, that founding generation when, when Romulus, you know, s- says, "Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna found Rome." The name derives from, uh, valere, to be strong, to be well.
8:31
We, we derive the modern English word valor from this root.
8:34
You know, the, the, the, the great line from, um, Dragonheart, "A knight is full of valor," right?
8:40
Um, the Valerii held standing during the reign of the kings as aristocrats of the joint Sabine-Roman community.
8:46
Uh, this is generations before the consulship, uh, existed.
8:49
And Publius Valerius enters the founding crisis as an established noble with nothing to prove and everything to lose.
8:55
But he was a friend of Spurius Lucretius Tri- uh, Tricipitinus.
9:00
Junus.
9:00
I, I'm, I'm losing that last line.
9:02
Tricipitinus Now, one of the interesting things that we're talking, we're gonna talk about here, um, is that there are two kind of notably Sabine houses, uh, in the, in the Gentes Maiores.
9:14
So there, there were, uh, the Valerii, which I'm talking about today, and then there was the Claudii who, who arrive basically within the next five years.
9:22
They're, they're, they're invited in during this early period of Rome.
9:25
They bring a bunch of armsmen.
9:27
Rome really needed armsmen.
9:28
Um, and again, the Valerii had been there for, you know, a couple hundred years at that point.
9:34
Um, and, and it's really interesting kind of the difference between those two, those two people.
9:39
Now, you know, obviously the way that these records were kept, the way that the stories come down to us, the people that, that, that kept, you know, people like Plutarch and Livy, they're, they're writing for effect.
9:49
They're telling stories that, that make the political points that they wanna make.
9:55
But it's interesting that, that this, this is part of that, the technology.
10:00
This is part of the social thing that made Rome what it was.
10:03
So, uh, I think people, you know, will sometimes say, "Well, this is just, you know, they, they, they decided, some later scribe decided that this is the character of these families." Uh, I mean, I, I, I think, I think if you were writing in, in a city in a time when, when these people had the kind of influence that they had, you probably were gonna tell the stories they, they more or less told about themselves, and the fact that they did that is really interesting.
10:26
Okay?
10:28
So Lucretia, um, uh, commits suicide and, um, in, in, in a ritually pure way to kind of expiate the, the, the, the fact that she has been tainted by, uh, by the prince.
10:40
And Brutus draws the blade from Lucretia's body, holds it up while the, the, while the, the blood is still dripping off of the blade allegedly, and, and swears an oath.
10:49
Then the knife passes hand to hand to Collatinus, her husband, to Spurius Lucretius, her father, and finally to Publius Valerius, and he… Interestingly, he's the only person here that's not, like, a blood, a relative by blood or marriage.
11:02
Um, so here is the oath that founded Rome.
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I love this stuff, right?
11:06
This is, this is, this is kind of one of the, the things that, that I find super interesting.
11:12
Um, and this is an English translation of course.
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"By this blood, most chaste until injured by royal insolence, I swear and call you, oh ye gods, to witness that I will prosecute to destruction by sword, fire, and every forcible means in my power, both Lucius Tarquinius the Proud and his impious wife, together with their entire race, and never will suffer one of them, nor any other person whatsoever, to be king in Rome."
11:38
So, uh, you know, I read these terms like a lawyer.
11:41
You have an oath sworn on blood.
11:43
The gods are called as witnesses.
11:45
Uh, the, the, the requirement is vengeance against the entire house rather than one rapist.
11:50
You know, the, the, in the traditional, um, the traditional translations where they just read, they, they call it the, their entire race, right?
11:58
The entirety of the people that were descended from, uh, from this guy.
12:03
And, and so it's the gens, it's the household, it's the ritual unit that, that guards that bloodline that is the unit of guilt.
12:10
They, they all bear the blood guilt for this one person, for, for his defiling act.
12:15
Um, and then there's this kind of, this perpetual constitutional clause, right?
12:20
No king.
12:20
N- not, not just the, uh, the Tarquins, but there will not be a king in Rome again.
12:27
And, and that's really interesting.
12:28
I mean, you know, I think it's, it's not until I wanna say, uh, Domitian, right, in the second or third century, um, where… And then it… So they've had emperors for, like, 250 years at this point, and they still really don't want anybody to call themselves king.
12:44
They're, they're still like, "There shouldn't be a king in Rome," 'cause this, this oath, this story gets told and retold and is kind of part of the core education of what it means to be a Roman nobleman.
12:53
Okay?
12:54
Uh, there's another historian named Dionysius that adds that the swearers bound their descendants and called down a curse on, on any man who broke it.
13:03
So this is the oath, this is the covenant that created the Roman Empire.
13:06
Okay?
13:07
And, and I, I, I wanna maintain that the oath was a covenant, um, technically speaking.
13:13
Um, and when we look at the other covenant forms of the ancient world, such as the structures on display at, at Mount Sinai and, and basically every Near Eastern treaty, these are called suzerainty treaties, it matches almost point for point.
13:25
Rome's republic was founded the way that ancient peoples founded everything that was meant to last.
13:29
It was cut in blood.
13:30
So you have a blood right.
13:31
Uh, covenants, you know, traditionally are cut rather than signed.
13:34
The oath is sworn on the blood of a sacrifice, and the knife passes hand to hand so that every swearer joins the, the rite physically.
13:41
Uh, you know, I've, I've seen certain kind of like, uh, reenactments of this where, where the people taking the blade will press the blade to their forehead, right?
13:49
So that there's blood on their head or, you know, some, some, some other part of their body to indicate they've, they've kind of made contact with the sacrifice.
13:57
Um- I, I call you gods to witness.
14:00
This is re- reminiscent of, of standard treaty formulas.
14:03
The gods witness and are thereby made parties to an agreement sworn between men.
14:07
Um, you know, again, like I said, Dionysus preserves the self-curse on oath breakers and, and it, and this extends to your descendants.
14:14
Um, a lot of English translations will sort of i- i- imply that this was just for the men in the room, that if, if they broke their oath that, that, that they and their descendants would be, would be punished.
14:25
The way that I would, I would understand this, and I think the way that those ancient people would understand this, is this became a running obligation for, for the families, for the households in the room.
14:35
Um, you know, one of the guys, you know, was a Tarquinius.
14:37
He, he was of the house of the larger house of Tarquin, and he eventually is pressured into leaving Rome because he's got the last name Tarquin.
14:45
Um, and he swore that oath himself, right?
14:48
Which is really interesting.
14:50
So, uh, you know, covenants found polities.
14:53
Sinai makes Israel a nation, and this oath makes the republic, right?
14:56
Libertas, this idea of Roman liberty that there would not be a king in Rome, um, and, and is, is basically the covenant inheritance that this thing creates, and the rest of the episode we'll, we'll talk about what that, what that means and what that meant, 'cause again, I think, I think that it's this family, it's the Valerians that are, that are most closely associated with it.
15:14
Now, being Rome, being Roman, right, uh, this is, this is different.
15:19
This is an exclusionary, uh, blood vengeance covenant.
15:22
It's not, it's not a bond of communion.
15:24
It's closer to the oath against, you know, the descendants of Amalek rather than to Sinai or, or some of these other kind of more positive covenants, um, that we see in the Biblical narrative.
15:33
Uh, it creates an obligation against a house.
15:35
Now, what's interesting is despite that, despite, you know, the very kind of vengeance style, bloody content of the oath, um, the Valerian family built something on top of that that really does look like a, uh, you know, a political community, a political unit, and they're kind of famous for, um, for their restraint, for their, for their…
15:57
Mercy is not quite the right word, but, uh, but, but something, something in that vein.
16:02
Okay?
16:03
So, uh, as I said, the Valerii made restraint a form of power.
16:07
The family became trustworthy because it repeatedly refused to take full advantage of, of the powers that were available to it.
16:14
So we're gonna get into the, the first kind of the, the titular founding member, Publicola, tore down his own house.
16:19
He, he did something called lowering the fasces, and critically, he wrote the people's right of appeal into law.
16:25
So those, we'll, we'll, we'll talk about all three of those things.
16:28
And Rome answered by burying him within the city's sacred boundary and entrusting his house with leadership for, you know, 500 years.
16:35
I mean, I think, you know, Caesar Augustus is still appointing a Valerian to, uh, posts, you know, right around the, the, the turn of the first century.
16:43
Uh, this voluntary limitation practiced visibly and repeatedly across generations made it successful for as long as Roman liberty endured
16:54
So let's talk about the founding crisis, right?
16:56
So Publius Valerius helps expel the Tarquins, and he, you know, kind of expects to be, be made a leader.
17:01
He was passed over, um, but, uh, then, then, again, um, one of the consuls, one of the early consuls, you know, was, was the last name, had the last name Tarquin, had the, the surname Tarquin.
17:12
And so he, he, he departs, right?
17:14
So, uh, the first two consuls, right, which are the first two consuls ever, um, two g- two guys, they were gonna be the chief executive.
17:21
They're gonna serve for one year together, and the idea is they're gonna act as a check on each other.
17:25
So Brutus, um, and then Collatinus were elected first, and, and, uh, Collatinus resigns under pressure because he's a Tarquin.
17:33
Um, and I mean, even, even in, I think I … It, it does not very long.
17:38
It's like a matter of months because even the liberator's kinsman was too royal to hold power, and then Valerius replaces him as consul.
17:45
Now, then there's a battle, right?
17:46
The Tarquins go off, and they kind of assemble an army And, uh, there's a battle called Silva Arsia.
17:52
Um, and Brutus is killed in combat, um, though he man- manages to kill, uh, Aruns Tarquinus, Tarquinius, the king's son.
18:00
Not the king's son who rapes Lucretia, but a- another king's son, kind of the most, the most, uh, viable heir of the Tarquins.
18:07
Um, so Valerius, as the surviving consul, celebrates Rome's first triumph and was left holding sole power in a state, you know, kind of founded on the fear of sole power, right?
18:17
So this is, this is kind of just a really interesting time.
18:20
Um, you know, the Republic's i- is, is, is very young.
18:25
It sort of seems likely that they will default to, um, some kind of monarchy.
18:30
Um, and so people are kind of very suspicious of, like, what's, what's gonna happen.
18:35
Are, are you gonna, are you gonna seize power the way that basically everyone else has?
18:40
So i- in, in the point, uh, at this point in the story, uh, Valerius, the, was building a house on the Velia.
18:47
It's a, it's a height that's kind of overlooking the forum, and, uh, the, the location turned his, his aristocratic residence into a political statement that he had not intended to make.
18:56
So the, the Velia, you know, again, like I said, it, it looks down on the forum.
19:00
People would make kind of, uh, uh, metaphors to the way a citadel commands a city.
19:05
You know, it looked, it looked just like a king's house kind of a de- a deal.
19:09
Um, so Valerius at this point is the sole consul.
19:11
He, he has delayed an election, uh, for, for good reasons, but, but he's, he's still, he's not quickly appointed a second, uh, consul.
19:19
Um, and he's just won a war.
19:22
Um, and each, each of these facts, you know, together they're, they're, they're kind of, uh, a mixed bag.
19:27
But you put them all together, they, they… Or sorry, excuse me.
19:29
Individually, they're, they're a mixed bag.
19:31
But when you put them all together, people are very concerned.
19:33
They're, they're, they're looking at this guy and saying, "W- why should we expect that you're not going to just take over this political system?"
19:41
And so th- and then you get the house, and people are starting to talk about the house.
19:44
So i- it's interesting the way that, that this is framed, and again, all of this stuff is written down hundreds of years later.
19:49
So this is, this is the, the rhetorical impact of this story.
19:54
Um, and, uh, but though, though people do note, like, he's not breaking any laws.
19:58
There's no law at this time to really break.
20:02
Um, one of the fascinating things about Rome at this time is that there, there really weren't written laws at the time.
20:06
Uh, so it was just kind of the aristocrats would come together and decide collectively what the, what the law was on any given point, and then once having decided what the law was, they would decide if it applies.
20:16
Um, but Publius Valerius interprets the rumors as a stain on his personal honor, a- a- an accusation that he was gonna break this freshly made covenant.
20:24
And, and at this point in time, he's basically the only one left in the city who, um, because Brutus is dead and, uh, and Collatinus has left.
20:34
He's one of the only people left in the city that, that is still, that was present at the original, at the original founding So Plutarch records that Valerius, learning of the suspicion, had the hels- house on the Velia demolished before dawn.
20:45
So Rome wakes up and he has torn down the house in a single night, um, and then he moves to the foot of the hill and lived in a house from which the tradition notes he looks up at his fellow citizens rather than down.
20:57
Then he summons the assembly and appeared before it with the fasces, which are… The fasces were like, uh, you get a bunch of rods and you kind of string thread through them, sort of like if you were gonna lay out a, a bamboo mat, if people have seen bamboo mats.
21:09
Well, if you were to roll that together into one big thick, um, kind of, um, stick, then it would make… Maybe not a thick stick, maybe like an inch or two across.
21:18
Then it would make a really kind of snappy, um, whip or a, or a… It w- it was used for beating people, right?
21:24
They had corporal punishment, not for children.
21:27
Uh, we recently had a, a discussion on- online about, uh, corporal punishment, um, and spankings and various things, and ah, yes, much, much, uh, much ink was spilt.
21:38
Um, fortunately the internet then got distracted by other matters.
21:41
Um, but, but in, in ancient Rome, they, one of the punishments that they could levy was, was corporal punishment of adults.
21:49
So if you had shamed the city or you had committed an impious act, one of the things they could do was bring you in front of the, uh, of, of the, the, the judges and usually kind of strip off your clothes, and then beat you with these, with these sticks, and these were the fasces, right?
22:06
Um, so he lowers the fasces.
22:09
He has the, the, the, the judges, the magistrates basically make the fasces bow before the people, before the assembly.
22:16
And, and then, and that becomes a very, uh, significant moment in, in Roman history.
22:24
People refer back to it a lot.
22:25
Um, it's kind of seen… Again, it's, uh, seen as this core, this core liberty, this core symbolic act where the, the instrument of punishment bows before the people instead of before the nobles or the magistrates or I think the, the lictors is what they were called.
22:39
Um, and, and another interesting thing that he did was, so normally the fasces, these ritual fasces, would ha- you kind of have the outer rods that are all, all wound together, and then in the middle you put an ax, right?
22:52
Um, and, and the ax was a symbol of the other thing, right?
22:55
'Cause the magistrate could have you beaten with rods, or he could chop your head off, right?
22:59
So he could, uh, execute capital punishment.
23:02
And so, um, those were the two tools.
23:05
So one of the things that Valerius does is he actually takes out, uh, the ax from the center of the rods for any, any interactions in this inner part of the city so that you… 'Cause the, the implication was, uh, you know, capital punishment had been removed from the magistrate's power and that, that's, that's based on his, uh, the appeal laws.
23:22
Okay?
23:22
And we'll talk about that.
23:24
So, um, you know, again, one of the interesting things about Valerius is he's very
23:34
He, he doesn't, he doesn't fit in our conception of, of, of an ancient Roman aristocrat.
23:40
He, they were aristocrats, right?
23:41
They, they didn't, they were not modern people.
23:44
Um, but they, they bear many of the same traits as kind of the, the, the classical liberals or, or maybe the American founder, uh, generation.
23:54
Um, so they, they, they, they do these things to kind of symbolically lower themselves before the people.
23:59
So, um, one of the ways to do this, if you're, if you're gonna, if you're gonna play this strategy, I, I, I… Which, which is not always a good strategy, but I commend to you the way that, uh, Valerius Publicola plays it, right?
24:11
So he gets trust because every citizen can see the, the leveled lot, right?
24:16
So he doesn't, he doesn't just restrain himself kind of privately behind closed doors.
24:20
He does this big, grandiose display.
24:23
He tears down his own house.
24:25
Um, he acts very quickly, right?
24:26
He acts before the accusation hardens into a crisis.
24:29
Um, he then kind of takes this, and this becomes a core identity of his house.
24:36
You know, for fi- for the next five centuries of Valerius in power was, was, was presumed to hold it within these limits.
24:42
Um, and, and, and on the basis of having sacrificed, of having placed, you know, all his chips in the, in the, the, the basket of the Roman Republic, that's the basis on which he, um, he asserts right to rule, right to make decisions, right?
24:56
He has kind of put, put his, his, uh, his lot in.
25:01
And, you know, he, he, he really did put a whole bunch of stuff in.
25:04
He, he, he basically doesn't profit at all from, from being in leadership and, and, and dies penniless and, and the city actually has to get involved, and we'll, we'll get to that in a little bit So kind of the most important law, uh, that Publicola passes is, uh, the Lex Valeria de Provocazione, um, which is often shortened to the Lex Valeria, right?
25:26
The Law of Valerius.
25:28
Um, and this, this law was the right of appeal.
25:31
It gave every Roman citizen the right to appeal to the popular assembly if a magistrate condemned him to death, okay?
25:37
Uh, this right of appeal made the people assembled the final judge of a city's life.
25:42
No consul could execute a city, a citizen within the city without the possibility of appeal.
25:48
And this law was the first structural check on kingship or on imperium in Roman history, and the founding document of the citizens' legal protection against the state.
25:56
Uh, the right of appeal became the legal core of Roman liberty.
25:58
When later Romans said libertas, this right of appeal was, was a large part of what they meant.
26:03
Um, interestingly, when the, the emperors ascended, this was one of the key rights that they took away, not just from their own people, but from the assemblies of all peoples under their reign.
26:12
Uh, this is why in the New Testament, it is the representative of the emperor, uh, which is Pilate, who must authorize Christ's crucifixion.
26:18
The Sanhedrin can't do it.
26:20
Um, they can't condemn him to death.
26:22
Um, when Paul appeals to Caesar, he is invoking the last little bit of, of his, of his ancient virtue, of this ancient virtue.
26:30
Now, um, you know, if you had, um, uh, j- to be clear, like, he's appealing to Caesar.
26:37
Caesar is hypothetically acting on behalf of the, the, the Roman, uh, the Roman people as the, the, the popular tribune or the tribune of the plebs.
26:45
Uh, that, one of the, one of the titles of the emperor was he was the lifetime tribune of the plebs, which is very interesting, uh, very interesting thought.
26:53
So
26:55
And, uh, you know, again, I wanna emphasize that this was unusual.
26:59
Um, you know, the right of appeal was not a common thing.
27:02
The, uh, the Athenians had a form of it.
27:05
Um, interestingly enough, the, the form that the Athenians had, um Was, um, was called the, the Ephesus, which is, uh, which means permission or, or, or the right to ask.
27:19
Um, and, uh, you know, one of the interesting things about the way that history works is if you, if you ask was the, the Athenian right of Ephesus related to the name of the city Ephesus, and, and all the modern historians will say, "No, there was this, there was this other word in, in the pre-Greek language, the pre, you know, Hellenistic language, um, that sounds kinda similar to Ephesus, and they adapted it."
27:41
But if you lived during the first century, in point of fact, and you said, "What was, what was the founding of Ephesus?" Uh, they, they said it was, there was a group of Amazons who asked permission, who appealed to Hercules, and Hercules gave them… answered their appeal and gave them the right to settle at Ephesus, and that's, that's what the city was named, uh, after.
28:02
Um, so for our purposes, right, I, I… number one, I just probably think that Paul, whatever Paul thought about, about the origin of a term, he was pretty close to it, um, much closer than we are, and so he, he probably had some insight on it.
28:15
But also, uh, if, if you're reading works from, from the ancient Near East, when, when you think about people that are referring to Ephesus and they're thinking about it, that's an important kind of linguistic thing.
28:26
In, in the minds of the people who lived in that time, Ephesus meant appeal, right?
28:31
And it would be tied back to this, this story of, you know, Hercules granting an appeal of, of, of, you know, again, some Amazonian women.
28:39
Um, but basically this was… aside from, aside from Athens, there really wasn't a, a, another, another similar, um, legal mechanism.
28:50
Um, so the, the Egypt, Persia, the Mesopotamian, Mesopotamian monarchies, uh, they had appeals to the king, right?
28:57
The appe- the, the, the king would make sure that you, you couldn't execute one of his citizens without his permission.
29:02
Um, F- Sparta famously did not have really any appeal mechanisms.
29:07
Um, and, and, you know, it was just the…
29:09
you, you, you kinda wanted to stay on the good side of the people in power.
29:13
Uh, they, they, they did not… They disdained this, this element.
29:17
Um, and you know, again, thinking about, you know, the, the, this, this modern idea of these, these… Where do these classical liberal ideas come from?
29:25
You know, when you have a city like Athens that's, the, the classical ideas win, uh, they, they…
29:31
that doesn't work out so well for them politically.
29:33
When you have a city like Sparta where there's just no trace of, of this, it's all hierarchy, it's all, you know, we're gonna trust the system that we have established, that too didn't, didn't actually work out quite as well.
29:45
When you have Rome, which has w- this, uh, these elements of kind of these, these classical liberal ideals and one family who is uniquely associated with, with protecting them and, and reintegrating them.
29:58
So one of the things that happens is the right of appeal, uh- either gets struck down or gets done away with or is, is otherwise inaccessible.
30:05
And multiple times it's a Valerius who says, "Oh, and as we're restoring the republic to its proper order, let's re- let's reinstate the right of repeal. You know, let's just, let's just pass that law again."
30:16
Um So, uh, you know, th- th- there's some larger things that, uh, that Valerius did.
30:22
Um, he passed a law making it lawful to kill any man who took steps towards kingship, uh, with his property forfeit.
30:29
The, the aspirant, uh, the person that was trying to become king became what's called Sacer, Sacer, forfeit to the gods, killable by anyone.
30:36
Um, this is the oath's perpetual clause, right?
30:38
In that, in that, that covenant that they swore converted to a statute with the covenant curse intact.
30:43
There shall never be a king in Rome.
30:44
Um, he also arranged for the state treasury to be placed in the Temple of Saturn under the quaestors, removing public money from the consul's personal control.
30:52
Um, and then he did, you know, promptly elect a, a colleague and, and, and create… had support for filling consular vacancies, which removed his own sole power.
31:01
And then as I mentioned, the, the axes were removed from the fasces inside the city, leaving the symbols of execution at the gates, right?
31:09
Outside of which, you know, military law applied and they, they could be, uh, people could be executed by the magistrates.
31:14
So Rome renamed him.
31:15
They gave him this cognomen Publicola, friend of the people.
31:19
Um, and you know, that… It's, it's interesting 'cause v- it's a, it's a different kind of name.
31:26
Most, most names are built on, like, a particular event that somebody, somebody does something.
31:32
There's, there's, you know, w- we'll go, one of his descendants was, uh, was Corvin, Corvinus, you know, because there was a notable event that, that involved a raven, and so he was called The Raven for the rest of his life.
31:42
This, this is more like a title.
31:45
It's, it's, it's not just relating to one event.
31:49
It's kind of, um… it's, it's, it's related to the whole, the whole arc of his life, which is, which is really interesting.
31:56
So again, you know, as, as I said earlier, one of the things, if you're gonna restrain yourself, right, uh, restrain yourself publicly, right?
32:04
If you, if you, if you want to do this thing, if you wanna do this classical liberal thing, then have something that you're doing that you can tear down.
32:12
Do it publicly.
32:13
Um, you know, any founder, trustee, or family head who holds concentrated power is gonna face the Valia problem.
32:18
The, the c- the capacity that makes him useful is the same capacity that makes him feared.
32:23
Q- but quiet good intentions do nothing for the people watching the house on the hill.
32:27
So the Valerian method is demonstrating, symbolically demonstrating your limitations.
32:32
You have governance documents that bind the founder, family members' rights of appeal made structural.
32:36
You have advantage visibly declined.
32:39
Like, don't, don't allow people, right, to bring you the advantage and offer it to you, right?
32:45
Um, and then decline it in front of everyone.
32:48
Have a little, have a little bit of theater.
32:50
A- and yes, the more sophisticated people in, in your movement, in your family, in whatever you're doing, are gonna know that you're, you're, you're engaging in theater.
32:57
That's okay.
32:58
Do it anyway , right?
33:00
Um, you know, currencies of trust, we've been talking about the, the architecture of trust in some of the other episodes, they respond to proof.
33:06
Right?
33:06
And proof requires giving up something in public.
33:09
You have to do it publicly.
33:11
If you do it privately, um, then, then it's, it's, it, this is not gonna work.
33:16
This is not like, you know, generosity in the Christian context where you don't want the right hand to let know the, what the left hand is doing.
33:22
If you are going to give up power, right, then you need to do that in public, right?
33:28
Be- because hopefully what you're doing is you're giving up power and converting it into trust, um And that, that's what you wanna do here.
33:36
You, you don't want to give up power and convert it into nothing.
33:39
Um, if you're, if you're gonna give up, like, if you're gonna give up something, give, give people money, right?
33:44
If you're gonna do something … And, and, and you can do the same thing wh- when you talk about transfers of power, right?
33:48
If you're gonna give the power to someone else, do that privately.
33:51
That's fine, 'cause the person that you're giving it to will know and, and, and you'll, you will have benefited your, your faction if you're wise and smart and doing, doing what you're supposed to be doing.
34:00
Um, but if you're just gonna, just gonna give up power so that it, it goes away, well, you better do that publicly so that you can get some kind of, uh, of response for it.
34:10
So, okay.
34:12
So we, we come to, uh, 508 BC, um, which is the next year, so the, the republic's, like, a year old.
34:18
And the, the expelled Tarquins did what exile, exiled royalty always does, they appealed to family, to allies, and to the nearest great power.
34:25
And the great power at that time was Etruria, and its strongest king or lord was Porsena.
34:30
Etruria was the dominant civilization of Central Italy, a league of wealthy city states north of the Tiber, whose power, religion, and engineering had shaped Rome itself for a century.
34:39
The Tarquins were Etruscan.
34:40
Under them, Rome had sat inside of the Etruscan orbit, right?
34:44
Th- that's why they became the kings of Rome.
34:46
They, they, they didn't just immigrate and, and sort of, like, work their way up.
34:49
They, they came in as nobles and, and, uh, were seen as, as legitimate potential rulers of the city, I'll, I'll add.
34:56
So Clusium was one of the great Etruscan cities ri- roughly 100 miles north of Rome.
35:01
Lars is an Etruscan title of lordship rather than a personal name.
35:04
For Porsena, restoring the Tarquins meant restoring Etruscan influence over a strategically placed river city that had just walked out or expelled the Etruscan world.
35:13
Um, he raised the league's army, the muster the po- o- poem's opening describes, and marched on Rome to put the great house of Tarquin back on its throne.
35:21
And by the way, later, um, there's, there's a, another battle at Lake Regillus, and Por- Porsena withdraws without restoring the Tarquins.
35:28
Uh, and then they, they form something called the Latin League, and that's destroyed at Lake Regillus around 4, uh, 96 BC. And the, uh, the Superbus, uh, sees his last son get cut down.
35:39
Uh, Macaulay wrote another lay about that battle.
35:41
Um, so we'll … may- maybe we'll get that.
35:43
So and then here's, here's … When I … If I'm gonna be talking about this, I have to quote what some of the greatest, uh, lines of poetry in the English language.
35:51
Um, so Porsena's army sweeps down from Clusium and, and takes the, what's called the Janiculum hill across the Tiber, and then drove for the, the Pons Sulici- Sublicius, the lone remaining wooden bridge into Rome.
36:04
If the army crossed, the republic would've been over at one year old.
36:07
Horatius Cocles and his two companions, Spurius Larsius and Titus Herminius, hold the bridge head while Rome cut the bridge down behind them.
36:14
So here's, here's the lines.
36:16
"Then out spake brave Horatius, the captain of the gate: To every man upon this earth Death cometh sooner or later: And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his gods?"
36:30
And of course, if you read the poem and the story, um, you know, the bridge falls and Horatius, as, uh, the other two guys get back before the bridge falls, Horatius actually swims the Tiber in armor and lives.
36:41
Um, this was, this was seen as a miracle.
36:43
This was seen as basically Horatius kind of entering into death itself and coming back out the other side.
36:49
Um, they, the Romans and, and basically all people of the time really did not like large bodies of water.
36:55
Um, and so Rome gave him a statue and as much land as he could plow in a day.
36:59
Uh, the story is the republican courage legend in its purest form, a citizen who spends himself, uh, for the city, i- literally passes into death, is, is reborn symbolically.
37:09
And, and, and again, in the, in the time pr- they, they would've seen that much more literally than we do.
37:13
Um, and then goes home to his plow and, and kind of en- en- enjoys the rest of his life.
37:17
So, so Horatius is the soldier at the bridge, but if you step back from the bridge, the war is a Valerian story.
37:23
At every hinge of the founding crisis, uh, Publius Valerius is standing in the load-bearing position.
37:28
So Publius Valerius again was present at Lucretia's death, adjoined Brutus's oath over her body.
37:33
Um, when the exiled Tarquins first march on Rome with an Etruscan army, Valerius fought at the Battle of Silva Arcia, where Brutus dies.
37:40
As a surviving consul, Valerius celebrates the republic's first triumph, which is…
37:44
The, a triumph was a, a religious ceremony where they celebrated the fact that they had just won a victory.
37:49
Okay?
37:51
When Porsenna comes in, uh, 508 BC, Valerius, by then named Publicola, was consul and commanded the defense of Rome.
37:58
Horatius held the bridge.
37:59
Publicola held the city, the siege, and the negotiation behind it.
38:02
Uh, the war the poem, uh, celebrates ended with Rome unconquered and the Tarquins unrestored.
38:07
On the Roman side, it was a Valerian command, so
38:12
Uh, the other things that happened during this war is, uh, you know, Pub- Publicola defend- commands the defense's consul.
38:17
The city, uh, held, the assaults failed, and the kind of the war settles into a, a blockade and hunger.
38:22
Um, then there's a guy named Gaius Mucius who, uh, crosses the river to assassinate Porsena.
38:27
He kills the wrong person, and when threatened with fire, thrusts his own right hand into the altar flame and kind of holds it there while it burns.
38:35
And, uh, Porsena is, is pretty shaken up by this.
38:38
Um, he, he, he, he says he, he's
38:40
He doesn't wanna fight a man that, that, the … a city that breeds such men, and he opens negotiations.
38:45
Mucius bore the name S- S- Savilla, Sivilla, I think is how you pronounce that, Left-Handed, the Left, after that.
38:52
So Rome gives hostages for the treaty.
38:55
One of them, uh, a girl, Clo- uh, Cloelia, escapes and also swim- swims the Tiber home.
39:00
Uh, interestingly, Rome returns her to honor the treaty, right?
39:04
Um, to, to show kind of that they are … They take their word seriously.
39:10
Um, and this, this is a … This is one of those things that is, um, you know, famously, um, um … The Italian whose name is escaping me right now.
39:20
Goodness, I'm going blank.
39:21
A, a lot of modern people have trouble conceiving of, of a group of guys that, that, w- that, that a city would actually behave in this way, that they would keep their promises even when it hurts, that they would do these big symbolic actions.
39:37
Um, I really think they took the girl back, you know?
39:41
I really think they did it.
39:42
I, I, I, I think that that's … That, that story is something that happened.
39:46
Um, and of course, in the story, uh, Porsena was so impressed that he frees her and half the hostages with her, and then ul- ultimately, he, he withdraws.
39:55
So, uh, for the rest of his life, uh, Rome elected Publicola consul four times, obviously 509, and then 508, and then 507.
40:02
Um, and then he, a final time in 504, which is the same year that the, that the, uh, the Claudia, m- the Claussus family comes in.
40:10
Um-
40:12
So they have a war with the Sabines, um, in 504 BC, which is his fourth and final consulship.
40:17
In the same year, he sponsored the migration of Attus Clausus into Roman citizenship, a Sabine chieftain who arrived with 5,000 armed clients, um, took the na- uh, excuse me, that, that…
40:27
I think that's more like 500 armed, armed clients.
40:29
Took the name Appius Claudius and founded the gens Claudia.
40:32
The Valerii personally welcomed into Rome the house that would become their opposite, and we'll, we'll, you know, we'll talk about that more in a future episode.
40:38
Uh, he repeatedly presided over elections that handed his power over to others, the routine proof that the demolition had not been theater, and his auth- authority, you know, the kind of the way that they frame it in these old accounts is his authority grew every time he gave it back.
40:50
Uh, by his final consulship, he held more practical influence than the kings had, and he was loved.
40:55
And this is kind of, this is what we all want, right?
40:57
This is, this is how we wanna rule.
41:00
This is how we wanna lead.
41:01
We wanna have a people group.
41:02
'Cause one of the things that's happening here is he, every time he hands over power, he is, he is depending on the virtue of the city.
41:09
He is, he is in, he is assuming that there, there, that it will come back to him, that, that this is not a zero-sum game.
41:16
You know, one of the, one of the problems that, that, uh, that all polities fall into at some point in their history is this idea that, well, if we lose the next contest, then there will never be another shot, right?
41:28
And by the way, it's really dumb to allow your enemies to feel that way.
41:32
Um, like, th- this is the structural advantage in saying, "Well, we're gonna preserve things, um, uh, and, and, and, and allow there to be… There, there's gonna be hope for in the future you can also potentially win.
41:45
You can also potentially share in power.
41:47
We're gonna get some good things now.
41:48
You're gonna get some good things later." Um, but of course, at some point, you know, one faction or, or most factions will start to say, "Well, no.
41:56
Uh, we just want, we want all the gives.
41:58
We want them forever.
41:59
We never want there to be another, uh, you know, enemy, uh, to, to hold power.
42:04
And so we're gonna make structural changes to make sure that, that our opponents could never, ever take power again." And at that point, um, at that point, the strategy stops working, and we'll get into that next, uh, next episode or the next time we talk about this.
42:17
Um, 'cause the Valerians just could not function effectively, uh, once Rome got to that point.
42:24
Now, the interesting mo- one of the most interesting details that people record, uh, about this is that he, he dies too poor to pay for his own funeral.
42:32
Uh, so Publicola dies in, uh, 503 BC, uh, at, after his, uh, his last consulship.
42:38
Um, and he, he did not have an estate that was sufficient to bury him.
42:41
He had spent his fortune and his standing on the republic and priced his own house last.
42:46
Um, the interesting thing is when this news kind of breaks, what happens is that the state paid for the funeral.
42:53
The Senate granted him burial inside the city walls, uh, which is an honor that Rome almost never gave.
42:58
Um, Livy records that the matrons of Rome mourned him for a full year as they had mourned Brutus.
43:03
Um, the poverty was the final proof.
43:05
There was no hidden fortune, there was no accumulated estate, there was no dynastic treasury.
43:09
Um, the Valeri- House Valerius had banked everything in a single asset, which was the, the trust, the acclaim of, of the people and, and kind of their own personal honor, if you will.
43:20
And you know, it's interesting, there's, there's, uh … And I don't want, I don't want this to be taken too literally, right?
43:25
The, the, the, the, the V- House Valerius would've seen a, a big distinction between their household and Rome, but when you read what the city did at Publicola's death, um, something remarkable i- is, is, it becomes evident.
43:40
So Rome performed the family functions for this man.
43:44
So, uh, when your father dies, a Roman, you're … I- if, if it was your duty to pay for the funeral, right?
43:50
The, the funeral was the heir's sacred obligation.
43:53
Publicola dies without means, and the city pays.
43:56
So Rome stands, if you will, in the son's place.
44:00
Family tombs stood on family land along the roads outside of the walls, right?
44:04
Um, the, the pomerium was closed to the dead, but Publicola was buried inside the city, and Plutarch, uh, says that the privilege became hereditary.
44:12
The Valerii kept a burial place within the walls where later generations carried their dead for a symbolic rite before burial elsewhere.
44:18
Um, and this was a heritable kin claim on, on the most in, in- kind of the inner circle of, of the ancient city.
44:26
Uh, the matrons of Rome mourned him for a full year, which is the full mourning of a household for its father.
44:31
Um, and then the name, right?
44:33
Publicola, as I said earlier, it defines the man by his relationship to the public.
44:36
Other cognomena remember a duel, a feature, a conquest, but his name, his character was built on republican liberty.
44:42
He is, you know, if you can accept it, the first classical liberal, as I've said.
44:47
Um-
44:50
So in sum, Publius Valerius Publicola, um, uh, Plutarch says, uh, "By universal consent, the foremost man in Rome in the war, arts of war and peace. Um, his virtue was self-restraining justice. He did it in public." Um, he, he's not really accused of any vices.
45:05
Their household didn't, didn't really have kind of hereditary vices.
45:09
Um, and he was consul four times and a co-founder of the Roman Republic.
45:13
His key act was that, key acts were he demolished his own house under suspicion of kingship.
45:18
He enacted, enacted the Lex Valeria to, uh, give people ri- the right to appeal.
45:23
And he, and he tilted the fasces towards the people So, and again, as I mentioned, you know, the right of, uh, appeal was enacted three times in Roman history, um, in 509 BC at the beginning, in 449 BC, and in 300 BC, and each time it was a Valerius who, who, who introduced that bill, as it were.
45:41
Uh, when Rome lost the right of, of appeal, a member of the family restores it.
45:45
So, uh, in 509 BC, Publicola enacts the original Lex Valeria at the Republicans, at the Republic's
45:51
founding.
45:52
449 BC, uh, Lucius Valerius Potitus with Marcus Horatius restores the provocatio after the de- what's called the Decemvirate suspended it.
46:00
We'll talk about that in a second.
46:01
Um, and then in 300 BC, Marcus Valerius Corvus in his fifth consulship re-enacts the appeal law with, with strength and force.
46:08
He actually… It wasn't just an appeal.
46:10
Um, it was the right to, uh, to rebuke the magistrate, right?
46:15
Corvus, uh, says that you can, you can, you could label a magistrate an impious magistrate, hold him up to public shame.
46:22
There's a lesson there, you know, as we're, uh, as we're trying to deal with, with, with judges in, in these troubled times.
46:27
Maybe, maybe one of the things that, uh, that was very effective, it gave Rome an extra, you know, kind of 200 years, um, two, 300 years, was you just sort of hold the judges up to public contempt.
46:37
When they do something bad, when they release something, someone they shouldn't or, or imprison someone they shouldn't, maybe you should just, you know, bring them out and say, "This is a really bad person."
46:47
And, and, uh, and, and, and we see how that, uh, how that does.
46:53
So the Decemvirate.
46:54
So 60 years into the Republic, Rome suspended its own constitution.
46:58
Um, so before this point, Rome's laws were unwritten and administered by the patrician magistrates.
47:03
So the plebs, right, uh, demanded a published code so that justice would stop depending on aristocratic memory.
47:09
After a decade of agitation, Rome appointed a board of 10, the Decemviri, d- December means 10, to write the laws.
47:16
The Decemvirs ruled with full power while drafting.
47:18
The ordinary magistracies, the tribunes of the plebs, and the provocatio itself were all suspended for that duration.
47:24
Rome had voluntarily turned itself back into an unaccountable state with a deadline.
47:28
Now, the first college, um, produced 10 tables of law, the core of the 12 tables, which was the foundation of all Roman law to come, and stepped down on schedule.
47:38
But the second college, dominated by Appius Claudius Crassus, the descendant of Attus Classus, completed two more tablets and then refused to dissolve.
47:46
It ruled until 40, 449 BC without election, without colleagues, it's outside itself, and without appeal, the precise condition that Publicola's law existed to prevent Um, and then you have kind of this little reenactment of the founding of Rome, if you will.
48:02
So there was a girl named Virginia, um, was the, he, she was the daughter of Lucius Virginius, a plebeian centurion serving with the army in the field, and she was betrothed to Lucius Icilius, a former tribune of the plebs.
48:15
Uh, Appius Claudius, the decemvir, wanted her.
48:17
He had his client, Marcus Claudius, seize her in the Forum on the claim that she was the daughter of his slave, stolen at birth, a claim aimed at moving her into Appius's, uh, reach.
48:26
If, if, if the claim were true, then he would have legal right to, to dispose of her, basically, as he saw fit.
48:32
Uh, the case came before the highest court in Rome, which was Appius' own tribunal, and he ruled for his client.
48:37
And he ruled that the girl would be held as a slave pending trial against the settled rule that a person claimed as free remained free until judgment.
48:46
Um, Virginius, summoned from the camp overnight, made his final plea the next morning and lost.
48:51
He asked only to speak with his daughter apart.
48:53
He drew her aside to the butcher stalls at the edge of the Forum, took up a knife, and killed her, because it was the one freedom still in his power to give her, is the way that it's framed.
49:02
And, um, "Then clasp me round the neck once more and give me one more kiss.
49:07
And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way but this." With that, he lifted high the steel and smote her in the side.
49:13
And in her blood she sank to earth, and with one sob she died.
49:17
So Virginius rides back to the army with the, the bloody knife still with him.
49:21
And there's a little, there's a little revolt, right?
49:25
Uh, the legions rise, the plebs secede, and the decemvirate collapses.
49:29
Uh, Appius Claudius was prosecuted and dies in prison, uh, before trial.
49:33
Uh, I, I, I, I note that this death was, uh, politically helpful to all concerned, um, I should say.
49:39
Um, and then Rome's tyranny ends the s- the way that the first had, a woman's death at the hands of unaccountable power and a city that just said, "Hey, we're, we're, we're not doing this.
49:47
Um, we're not doing this." So, uh, but at this point, you know, so the Decemvir has collapsed.
49:55
Uh, Claudius is, is, is, is, has been, uh, encouraged to die, some- some might, uh, some might think.
50:02
Um, but, but you still have the legions are in revolt, and you've gotta send somebody to go out and negotiate with the, the very angry plebs.
50:09
So who do you send?
50:09
Well, you send the Valerius, assisted by Marcus Horatius Barbatus, which, who was of the same house.
50:15
He wasn't actually, as far as I can tell, a bloodline descendant of Horatius at the Bridge, but he was of the same, the same household.
50:21
Okay?
50:22
Um, both of them had stood against the Decemvirs while they were ruling.
50:26
Uh, Valerius had actually demanded inside the Senate that Appius submit to the laws.
50:30
When the plebs seceded, the Senate sent Valerius and Horatius to negotiate, the only patricians both sides would accept, and the family name was itself the credential.
50:37
The plebs trusted a publicola.
50:39
As consuls for, for 449 BC, they enacted what was called the Leges Valerii Horatii.
50:45
The, the right of appeal restored, the tribune sacrosanctity apr- affirmed, and the plebeian assembly resolutions, their right, uh, to assemble, given force.
50:54
The secession ended as a covenant renewal.
50:57
The people returned, the words were restored, and the trustee house had brokered the peace.
51:01
160 years after the founding, uh, when Rome's constitution failed, the repair crew was the same family that wrote the original guarantee, which is so very interesting.
51:10
Um, and again, this is one of those we'll, we'll, we'll tell the story again, uh, from the, from the Claudia perspective when we talk about, uh, House Claudius, so.
51:19
So then, uh, a century later, um, House Valerius produces its arguably its greatest soldier.
51:24
Uh, in 390 BC, Gallic war bands under, uh, Brennus had destroyed a Roman army at the Allia and burned Rome itself.
51:31
For generations afterwards, Gallic invasion was the Roman nightmare, and Gallic champions, uh, ritually challenged Romans to single combat before battle.
51:40
Rome had one famous answer already.
51:42
In 361 BC, Titus Manlius had killed a Gallic champion at, uh, t-the bridge over the Anj- uh, the Anio and taken the torque from his neck.
51:50
That, that was the, that got him named, uh, Tor- Torquatus or, or Torquatus.
51:55
Um, in 349 BC, the challenge came again, and a young military tribune, Marcus Valerius, stepped out.
52:01
As the duel began, a raven settled on his helmet and struck at the Gaul's face and eyes through the, through the fight.
52:07
Valerius killed the champion, and the armies kind of interpreted the raven pecking out, you know, one, one of the guy's eyes as, as, as evidence that the gods were on the side of Roman.
52:16
And there's a, there's, you know, a complicated thing that, that you can go through about, uh, uh, the, the, the Gauls worshiped a, an O- they had an Odin figure who was associated with ravens, and so there was kind of this, this assumption that, well, the, our own gods are supporting the enemies, which is a really interesting, really interesting thing.
52:34
So, um, and then of course after that, they have a fight, and Rome wins the, uh, the general battle.
52:39
So the cognomen Corvus, or Raven, attached to him for life.
52:42
It was a name conferred by an omen rather than a conquest.
52:45
And the legend's function in the tradition is that the, the gods lended their, their, uh, their hand, their support to, uh, the modest champion who steps forward for the city.
52:54
And, and, and, you know, Corvus really was one of these restrained guys.
52:59
Um, he had six consulships between 348 and 299 BC, with dictatorships and decades of continuous public trust between them.
53:07
Um, there was something called, in that period of time, something called the Samnite Wars, and they, kind of the contest that decided which, which people group was gonna organize.
53:14
And late Corvus's victories at Mount Gaurus and Susula, the first of them were Rome's opening statements.
53:20
He shared, famously, he, he shared the s- soldiers' labors, competed with them in camp contests, and was remembered w- for winning loyalty without cruelty.
53:28
Um, his, his armies followed him from affection rather than fear.
53:31
He reached old aid as the most repeatedly trusted man in Rome, and his fifth consulship produced the third appeal law.
53:37
So Um, in 342, uh, here, another famous story about, uh, about Corvus is, uh, Rome takes a wealthy city called Capua in the Campanian Plain, and a Roman garrison wintered there among comforts no soldier farmer had ever seen.
53:51
Livy says the garrison plotted to seize Capua for itself.
53:54
The ringleaders were quietly discharged, concluded they were marked men, and the discontent hardened into a mutinous army marching on Rome.
54:01
The mutineers were Roman citizens under arms, the nightmare case where military discipline and civil liberty collide.
54:06
The Senate appointed Corvus dictator to put the mutiny down.
54:09
He had every legal instrument of severity available, and he, and he used none of them.
54:13
Um, he, like, people talk about, you know, the Whiskey Rebellion and, uh, George Washington riding out and just sort of set, you know, no one, no one being will- no American being willing to fight with him.
54:24
This is a similar kind of story.
54:26
So Corvus meets the rebel column, and he negotiates, and he doesn't attack.
54:29
He treats the mutinous soldiers as citizens with grievouses.
54:32
Um, and you know, the, the details of the mutiny and how that all worked out, there's several versions of that in the, in the, in the histories.
54:38
Um, the, the main point that I wanna drive at is Corvus ends this mutiny with restraint and a binding amnesty rather than by exemplary punishment.
54:47
So the settlement included, um, an associated military law that no soldier's name could be struck or p- punishment imposed for the mutiny afterward.
54:56
The army dissolved back into the citizen body without a battle, and Rome's most dangerous internal crisis of the century ended without a single execution as far as we know.
55:05
So, you know, one of the interesting things, and again, we'll, we'll talk in, in the future about House Manlia.
55:10
You know, House Manlia a couple years before, um, had executed one of its own sons, uh, for, for a lack of discipline, right?
55:18
So you had Manlian orders that became a Roman byword for merciless command.
55:23
'Cause the, the Manlian story is y- his son went out, wins the battle, um, fights, and, and is, is punished for it, right?
55:31
Because he, he attacked without orders.
55:33
Um, and, and the Valerians, by, by, kind of in, in, in the contrasting token, they, they restore the soldiers by treating them as citizens with standing.
55:43
They encourage trust in authority.
55:45
They, they want voluntary obedience and, and, and loyalty.
55:49
And then the Valerian commander is followed because he has proven he will not spend men for his own glory.
55:54
Now, again, this method only works while the followers believe that the restraint is real.
55:58
And, and this, you know, kinda becomes a, a tradition in, in, in Roman military history.
56:02
You know, centuries later, Belisarius, the B- the great Byzantine Roman general, um, you know, does this, does these same kinds of things.
56:09
I, I think it's a, it's a likely that he would have been… Oh, he certainly would have been familiar with all of these stories, but he models his military career after, uh, um, um, after Corvus.
56:22
That's what, um, that's what he's doing.
56:25
He, he, he sleeps with the soldiers.
56:27
He has a, a common tent.
56:28
He participates in the games.
56:30
He, he, he, he does all of the things.
56:32
He suffers their hardships with them, okay?
56:37
So, um, the second Samnite War ends in 304 B- BC, and Rome turns to domestic settlement.
56:44
In, uh, 300 BC, uh, the Lex Ogulnia broke the last religious monopoly, opening the pontificates and augurates to plebeians over fierce patrician resistance.
56:52
So there were these key religious, um, positions in the city, and for up until this point, up until 300 BC, only patricians, only members of, you know, the top 100 families, if you will, of, of, of which the gens Maioris were the, the most important, only those people could be elected to these high priestly offices.
57:11
Um, and, and they came with, you know, a lot of property, a lot of money, a lot of influence in the city.
57:16
Uh, you know, we, I mentioned in the Fabian episodes that one of the things that, that the, uh, the religious class, the priestly class could do was decide, oh, y- something went wrong with your ritual, and so we're gonna make you start it over, which was, you know, sometimes hideously expensive.
57:29
Um- And so there, there, there was real teeth in these religious offices.
57:35
By, by, by the way, there's no such thing as separation of church and state in ancient Rome.
57:40
Like, they, they, they, they, they wouldn't, they wouldn't have even known how to recognize that as a concept.
57:45
Um, so Livy names no single outrage, uh, behind the appeal law.
57:50
So, so what's interesting is the appeal law hadn't formally been revoked, okay?
57:55
Um, but one of the things that, uh, that Corvus does in, in his fifth consulship is he ritually reenacts it.
58:03
Like, like the, the… We're giving, we're gonna give the plebeians control over, or not control, but access to the, these priesthood positions, and we're gonna reenact the right of appeal.
58:13
Uh, so he reenacts the provocatio.
58:15
He calls it, uh, diligentius sanctum, more carefully secured.
58:19
So its teeth were still mild.
58:21
A violating magistrate was declared only to have acted, uh, improbe or wickedly, um, impiously.
58:27
Uh, shame was the, was the penalty.
58:29
But, you know, they get another 300 years out of the republic after this, basically.
58:33
Um, and so it, it, it works, it works pretty well.
58:36
Uh, again, I, I kind of… I, I note be interesting to think about what, what, what we could do to, to make use of that as we deal with our own struggles with judges.
58:44
Um, so the third enactment kind of… This is the, this is the end of the, the, the, the order struggle.
58:50
Um, the, the, the plebeian, uh, patrician struggles kind of p- taper off after this.
58:56
Um, and, and in each one there was a, there was a constitutional settlement.
59:00
In each of these contests between the original patricians and the plebs, uh, there was a Valerius involved in restoring the citizens' appeal, which is, which is a very interesting thing.
59:08
You know, um, and I'll, I'll, I'll close out.
59:12
So Marcus Valerius Corvus was the soldier's version of Valerian justice.
59:16
His virtue was personal courage, uh, joined to popular goodwill.
59:19
Again, he… There, there's really isn't any vices written down about him.
59:23
He was consul six times.
59:24
He was dictator once.
59:26
Um, and he won single combat against the Gaelic champion with a raven omen.
59:30
He ended the campaign in mutiny by amnesty, and he ends his career reenacting the appeal law in, um, in 300 BC. And he was consul six times over the course of o- over the course of that time.
59:42
So, but he, he basically… W- this means he was involved in politics at the highest level for something like 50 years.
59:50
Um-
59:53
So
59:56
Next time, uh, we're gonna talk about… So that kind of concludes my, my points for the day.
1:00:01
So next time, uh, we talk about the Valerians, we're gonna talk about, uh, in, in 210 BC, in Sabine country, there was a rough farmer soldier who came home from war against Hannibal.
1:00:09
Um, he didn't have any office-holding ancestor.
1:00:11
He had no fortune and no way into Roman politics.
1:00:13
The estate next door belongs to the Valerii Flacci, the steadiest branch of the oldest house, the noblest house some might say, in Rome.
1:00:20
And the patrician across the fence line is watching him, um, and this is, of course, Cato the Elder, who gets raised up by the, the Valerians.
1:00:27
So we'll talk about, we'll talk about their, their patronage of, of, of that significant figure next time.
1:00:33
So, uh, thank you, everybody.
1:00:34
This concludes, uh, my prepared remarks and kind of the, the public version of, of this, so see everybody on the other side of the paywall.