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24. The Valerian Gens Part 2 · Great Houses

0:00
All right.
0:00
Hello everybody, and welcome to, uh, episode 24 of The Great Houses Forum, where we talk about great houses, we talk about what it means to, um, to build a multi-generational business owning, politically involved, uh, family structure, which obviously, you know, when you get to the level of great house, includes far more than just, uh, just your immediate family members or, or, or things of that nature.
0:24
Uh, it includes… You're, you're usually a patron to numerous clients.
0:28
You have political influence.
0:29
You're politically relevant.
0:30
That's all part of what it means to be, to being a great house, and so from time to time, I, I take a, a couple of episodes and talk about a, uh, an ancient great house, the most famous of which are the six great houses of Rome.
0:42
Um, so, so today is the second episode talking about House Valerious, Gens Valerious from, uh, from ancient Rome, which is one of the great, the great houses of Rome.
0:52
So Last week, um, last time, we talked about, uh, you know, the, the, the birth of the Valeria f- of Valerius family.
1:01
There was a gentleman named Publicola, who was kind of the, the original person that makes this family special and significant and everything.
1:08
Um, he, he does a number of, of interesting things.
1:11
At one point, he's accused of, of starting… of, of trying to make himself king because he's building this fantastic large house on a hill.
1:19
And so he tears down the house at night.
1:21
Like in a single night, he just gathers all his guys.
1:23
They tear down the house and he moves his house and he, he ma- he makes the house where the rest of his life, he lives at the foot of the, the, the hill that he was, uh, he was building his house on.
1:32
Um, as they say, looking up at the, uh, the seat of government rather than looking down.
1:36
Uh, one of his most important things was that he wrote the, the people's right of appeal into law.
1:42
So, uh, before, before Publicola, uh, magistrates could condemn someone, um, and Rome became one of, of just a very, very few political, uh, units in the ancient world that had a higher authority than the magistrate.
1:56
They had somebody that you could, you could say, "Hey, well I've, I've been condemned. The, the judge has found me guilty of a crime, but, uh, I want to appeal to the people, to the assembly of the plebs, uh, before I can be executed." And that, uh, that, that law was kind of-- it was a very important political piece with, uh, within Rome.
2:17
It was, it was kind of emblematic of the Roman Republic.
2:20
Um, so it was enacted by Publicola.
2:23
It was reenacted by Patetus after, uh, there was something called the Decemvirs.
2:28
There was the, these, these groups of 10 men who ruled Rome for a period of time while they actually wrote down the laws of, of Rome for the first time.
2:35
'Cause before, uh, I think like something like three hundred and twenty-five BC, uh, Roman laws were just what, what the aristocrats collectively remembered the laws being.
2:44
And as, uh, more and more non-aristocrats, non-patrician families entered their political system, they kinda, they kinda wanted the deal in writing, 'cause there was some examples of people, uh, remembering laws in ways that, that, that greatly favored the aristocrats.
2:58
Uh, and then, uh, finally there was a guy named Corvus, um, who enacted it a third time, re- really almost more in a symbolic way.
3:05
But this law was, was very much associated with, with House Valerius.
3:09
They were kind of the, the liberty house, right?
3:11
Republican liberty was, uh, was their thing.
3:13
And, and, and the other thing was that they would tend to solve problems by being sent out by the patricians.
3:20
And 'cause they're a patrician family.
3:21
They're, they're, they're very old, right?
3:22
The, the, uh, the House of Valerius is one of the four people right there at the beginning when an oath, uh, that I read last week was sworn, um, that, that, that kind of founded the Republic and they, they, they, they recognized that there had been a great injustice done.
3:36
Lucretia had been, had been raped by the king's son, and so she kills herself out of shame.
3:42
And they, they swear an oath that they're gonna cast out that, that, that royal lineage and that neither the Tarquins nor any other man would be king in Rome.
3:51
Okay?
3:52
And they keep that oath for a very, very long time, um, that no man would be king at Rome.
3:57
And so at the end of the episode, I, I kind of closed in on a farm in Sabine country around 210 BC, and there was a rough farmer soldier who had come home from, from the war against Hannibal, and he has no family.
4:08
He has no office-holding ancestor, and one of his neighboring estates belonged, uh, to the Valerii Flacci, and the patrician, you know, was kind of watching him across the, the, the family line.
4:18
So that farmer's name, of course, was Cato, uh, Marcus Porcius Cato, Cato the Elder, the defining Roman of, uh, of his century, and he lacked access, and Valerians were very, very good at access.
4:29
Cato was what you called a novus homo, a new man.
4:32
He had no office-holding ancestor.
4:34
There's, there's not really… I mean, his family exists, right?
4:37
Uh, they, they had land, and they had property rights, but they hadn't been part of the political game.
4:41
So he had fought against Hannibal, worked his own land beside his slaves, and he had pleaded cases in the country courts, which meant that he was trained in rhetoric, so he'd probably been educated in Rome.
4:51
So, uh, his counterpart was Lucius Valerius Flaccus, uh, who was consul in 195 BC and then censor in 184 BC. He was a patrician of, obviously, the Valerian family, one of Rome's oldest houses.
5:03
Um, and, and he actually gets to be consul and then censor as hi- his other partner, 'cause, 'cause you tended to have two, uh, people in those roles at any given time, was Cato.
5:14
So it's, it's a really interesting thing that Flaccus is doing here, is he is using, like, the, the, the patrician-client, the patron-client relationship.
5:24
Um, but Cato, in many ways, is, is, is greater than his sponsor or becomes greater than his sponsor, right?
5:30
You've heard of Cato the Elder, probably most of the people on this.
5:33
You probably did not know that his partner was Lucius Valerius Flaccus.
5:38
You didn't know that, that that was kind of the, the, the power behind the throne, as it were, for him, so.
5:44
And, you know, this decision, it kind of marks a, a new era in, in Valerian power, and, and it's, it's a, it's, it's a, a split or a, a, a, a marcation point.
5:53
There, there's, there's a, a moment here where the, the Valerian family is doing something different, okay?
6:00
Um- So Cato was, was, you know, a really interesting person.
6:06
Uh, he rose through… He, he participates in the, the Cursus Honorum.
6:09
He, he rose through every office to the consulship and then the censorship.
6:12
Um, and, and, and being a censor was kind of where he became famous because he really goes whole hog.
6:17
Um, he, he is, is famous for instituting Roman discipline.
6:21
So as censor, he taxed luxury.
6:23
So if you, if you spent too much, if you demonstrated that you had too much money, kind of ostentatious displays of wealth, um, he would come down on you.
6:31
He struck senators from the rolls.
6:33
He actually excluded them from the Senate, so they couldn't vote, and, and some of them, I, I think the bans were for…
6:38
Some bans were kind of temporary.
6:40
You just can't vote for a while, and some bans are you're out.
6:42
Your family has to get a new senator in to, to hold that, uh, to hold that line.
6:47
And he, he made the office a public scourge of soft living, that is the censorship office, and that, you know, severity was what he was famous for.
6:54
Um, and this is, you know, in the backdrop of, of the Punic War.
6:57
So the… what's interesting is, is that this is the part where Rome is becoming the, the victim of its own success, right?
7:03
So they're, they're winning battles.
7:04
They are overtaking o- other kingdoms, and as a result of that, they are getting massive amounts of treasure, massive amounts of tribute.
7:12
Um, there, there is, is more wealth than anybody had ever expected pouring into Rome.
7:18
And so Cato is kind of this guy that's saying, "Hey, we're, we're losing this harsh Roman virtue," right?
7:23
Um, and as a result of that, he's a really contentious figure.
7:26
He prosecuted a bunch of people.
7:27
He was prosecuted by his political enemies on a bunch of times.
7:30
At one point, he drives all the Greek philosophers out of the city, says they're, they're corrupting, those darn, you know, effeminate Athenians.
7:37
They're corrupting Roman, Roman virtue, Roman boys.
7:40
Um, and then, you know, he, he was kind of famous for, um, for demanding that Carthage be destroyed, right?
7:47
He-- That was, that was one of his, one of his big things.
7:50
So, so he, he, he is, is famous for that.
7:55
A- and the point that I'm driving at here is that his temper, the thing that he's doing is very different from Valerian.
8:03
Like, the, the Valerian character was very much, "Hey, let's, let's treat people with honor. Let's offer forgiveness. Let…" I mean, the, the, you know, the thing about them is they're, they're almost like a Christian house, right?
8:15
There, there's a lot, you know, when, when the, when the, uh, the Christians were, um, looking back at Roman history, there's a lot in the early Valerian, you know, behavior to be, oh, you know, this is a great example of magnanimity and grace and the kind of, the kind of leader that we as Christians should aspire to be.
8:34
Um- Cato is not like that.
8:37
Cato is, "Hey, the problem is, is that you're all wimps, and we just kind of need to, to, to beat the devil out of you," right?
8:44
Um, and, you know, this, this alliance lasts a very long time.
8:48
Uh, you know, Cato, uh, first, first comes into, into public life in 214 BC, uh, all the way until, uh, Flaccus dies in, uh, in 180 BC.
8:57
Um, and, and again, I just want to emphasize this was a different kind of person.
9:03
He was a different, um, he was of different character, but he was backed by the Valerian political machine.
9:08
So they're, they're saying in some sense, what the Valerians are doing, they're admitting here is they're saying, you know, this old way, this way that we've, we've framed things in the past isn't gonna work, so we need somebody like Cato, okay?
9:20
And this is very different from their, their relationship with, with the Horatius, uh, the Horatius household, the Horatius family.
9:27
Uh, obviously Horatius at the bridge is kind of the soldier that saves, uh, Rome's bacon in, in the very beginning after they'd exiled the kings.
9:35
Um, and, and, uh, it's a, it's a Valerian who is consul during that time period.
9:39
Then 100 years later, give or take, um, Lucius Valerius are the, and, and, and Marcus Horatius are the ones who go out to try to reach a rapprochement with the plebs, which they do by offering concessions, by saying, "A, the aristocrats are basically wrong.
9:57
You guys basically have a legitimate complaint.
10:01
Come in from out of the cold, okay?
10:03
Uh, this is, this is how we're gonna solve this.
10:05
We're gonna extend you rights, we're gonna give you appeals.
10:08
We're gonna, we're gonna give political power, and we're gonna make those political concessions so that you come back in," okay?
10:15
By, uh, you know, 184 BC, 200 years later, give or take, um, 250 years later, that is not Cato's style.
10:24
That is not what Cato is doing.
10:26
Rome has a ton of new people in it, and Cato is not interested in making political concessions to them, okay?
10:33
So, uh, and, and, and I've, I, I've used this term, the Valerii Flacci.
10:38
Uh, who, who were they?
10:39
Um, and th-there was a, there was a particular branch of, uh, of the Valerians that, that kind of emerges in, in 261 BC.
10:48
That's when the, the, the first of them, uh, kind of gets appointed consul.
10:52
Um, they, they named a bunch of their, uh, their descendants Lucius Valerius Flaccus.
10:57
So there's, like, five different Lucius Valerius Flaccuses in the, in the account, um, which, which makes tr- figuring out who is who, you know, rather complicated.
11:08
Um, but they, they, uh, they raised… One of the critical things they did was they, they raised the praetorships from two to four.
11:16
They, they went as an envoy to Carthage, um, on the eve of the Second Punic War.
11:21
Um, and, and their, their method was patronage.
11:23
Like, they, they were classic Roman patrons, very generous with their people.
11:28
Again, the, the interesting thing about this is as, as time goes on, they're more… They continue to be generous, but they are generous less with everyone in Rome and more and more kind of with their people, with their particular clients.
11:43
Cato was a client of theirs.
11:45
Cato was somebody they were helping.
11:46
They were incredibly open-handed and generous with him, right?
11:49
They, they were happy to have him kind of exceed them and take the limelight and, and remain kind of faithfully wedded to each other for the rest of, uh, of their political lives.
11:58
But they're not as concerned, um, with, with benefiting all of Rome.
12:03
So the, so the Flacci, they're, they're very… There's a, there's a distinction here.
12:08
You can kind of point and then go, "Okay, this branch, they're still Valerians.
12:11
They still look like Valerians.
12:13
They still act like Valerians in some respects, but there is a distinct character being developed here, and it's, it's narrower.
12:19
Their generosity is narrower," okay?
12:22
Um, one of the interesting stories about, uh, the, the, the, the Flaccus branch is, uh, Gaius Valerius Flaccus, who was, uh, he was a dissolute youth, and he was kind of forced into what was called the Flamen Dialis, which was the, the priest of Jupiter.
12:36
Um, not, not the Pontifex Maximus, but the, the, the high priest of Jupiter.
12:39
And one of the things, as priest of Jupiter, you couldn't leave kind of the inner city of Rome.
12:45
Uh, it's not exactly the same, uh, uh, dimensions as the Vatican, but, but there was kind of this inner city part of Rome that was the, the consecrated, the hallowed part of Rome.
12:55
And as the high priest of Jupiter, you could never leave it, right?
12:58
And, uh, this, this, uh, was the family's way of rehabilitating their, uh, their wayward son because there were basically no bars and no whorehouses in, uh, in that part of the city.
13:09
And so he kind of had to, uh, he had to, to, to reform himself, um-
13:15
So then, then there was, then there's kind of the, the long procession of, of Lucius Valerius Flaccus.
13:20
Uh, the first one was consul in 100 BC. Uh, he stood with Marius in suppressing the demagogues.
13:25
Um, then there was a later Lucius Valerius Flaccus who was praetor in 63 BC, um, arrested the envoys of the Allobroges and broke up what was called the Catilinarian conspiracy under Cicero.
13:35
Um, and then, and then he, he was actually charged with extortion, and Cicero was his lawyer in, in a famous address called the Pro Flacco.
13:44
Uh, so the, the point here is that for two and a half centuries, the Flacci staffed the Republic.
13:48
They didn't dominate it, but they were, they were an incredibly steady administrative lineage, right?
13:53
So they, they kinda kept things going.
13:56
Um, and, and the problem is, is that the, the, the Flacci, their, their answer was, "Well, let's find a strong guy.
14:03
We… Our city has problems, and so what we wanna do is let's find a strong man and, and allow him to do the things that we're not gonna do." Right?
14:13
We're w- W- Again, this is just such, such an interesting way to think about it.
14:17
They're not doing these things.
14:19
They are still, like, in the way that they behave, they are, they are not the, the, the primary backers, at least not yet, of, um…
14:28
Or they're, they're not the people that are carrying out these kind of harsh, stern deeds, but they're politically backing it.
14:33
They're, they're kind of becoming the establishment, if you will.
14:37
So, so this is what's, this is what's going on in the family and, and they're, they're… This is, uh, kind of important to what's happening, and they have the p- the-- Rome wins the Punic Wars.
14:47
They get a bunch of wealth.
14:48
The Valerians are kind of trying to deal with that wealth, and they, they have decided on some level that their old methods, the old methods that had worked when they were dealing with differences between the, you know, the basically Italian patricians and the Italian plebs, right?
15:01
Oh, they're all, they're all from, and not just from, you know, the, the Italian Peninsula, but from this kind of particular zone around Rome.
15:08
Um, they, they had a way of dealing with that.
15:10
Now you're dealing with people from much further away, w- from much different cultures.
15:15
Like, the, the, the cultural difference of you're importing people, you know, from the Hellenistic kingdoms, uh, from Macedonia, from Persia, from Egypt, um, ultimately from Carthage.
15:24
Uh, you know, those people groups, they're, they're totally different.
15:27
They have a totally different, um, you know, kind of mental head space.
15:30
They have no political history with any of the institutions of Rome, and the Valerians don't seem to think that they can be, um, you know, assimilated the way that, that, that earlier waves, uh, had been assimilated.
15:42
You know, may- maybe they were wrong, but, uh, but it's certainly interesting.
15:48
So, um, one of the things I wanted to do is, is give you to talk about kind of the, what's going on behind the scenes.
15:55
So from one thirty-three to call it thirty-one BC, you have a, a century of breakdown, right?
16:00
So, um, the, the Valerians appoint, they get Cato in charge.
16:04
Cato's very stern.
16:05
He's a strong guy, but he's, he's very committed to Roman, Roman ideals.
16:10
He's almost, he's almost a Spartan type, right?
16:12
Uh, if you… Um, my, my friend, um, Alex Petkas has done some many great episodes on, on Sparta and, and Spartan thought and Lycurgus and all this.
16:21
Cato's very Spartan in that sense, right?
16:23
That's why he kicks out the Athenians.
16:25
He's very, like, it's not just Greeks, right?
16:27
Although it was all the Greeks, but, but Cato's framing of that was, "Ah, these effeminate Athenians, gotta get rid of them." Um, so starting in one thirty-three, uh, the, the Gracchi, who were reforming tribunes, were killed with their followers in the streets, and that was the first time that Roman political conflict was, was settled, you know, with, with, with a massacre of that nature, um, rather than kind of expelling people or, or, or things in open combat, right?
16:51
Um, the, the, the important part about it being in the streets was that was not supposed to be a place where you solve things with violence.
16:59
There, there was, there was a s- These were, these were consecrated spaces.
17:03
If you feared the gods, you would not kill someone here.
17:06
You would let them leave, right?
17:08
They kind of have safe passage to get out of the city, and then if you wanted to pursue them and, and attack, you know, their army with your army, knock yourself out.
17:14
That was, that was always kind of the Roman way, but this is different, right?
17:18
This is different.
17:19
Um, so then, um, eighty-eight to eighty-two BC, uh, Sulla, who marches his own army on Rome twice and rules as dictator, and he initiates what are called the prescription lists of citizens, um, that, that if, if that person's name was on the list, it made it legal to kill them, and you could post bounties and everything.
17:38
And then obviously forty-nine, uh, to forty-four BC, Caesar crosses the Rubicon, uh, ones-- wins the civil war, takes dictatorship for life, and then is, is promptly killed.
17:47
Um, and then forty-four BC to thirty-one BC, uh, the, the Avengers and the Assassins kind of fight it out, um, from Philippi in forty-two BC to Actium in, uh, thirty-one BC until, you know, one man was left standing, and that man is, of course, Caesar Augustus, right?
18:00
And each of these things, um, is these are just kind of raw military conflicts.
18:06
We're not s- really submitting governance, um, in some ultimate sense to an assembly.
18:11
There isn't… Voting no longer matters, right?
18:13
This is, we have men of action, men of war that are capable of fighting.
18:18
Their commanders are who gets appointed or, you know.
18:20
A- And many, many times, you know, the, the, the, the forms are followed.
18:25
The forms are not always disregarded.
18:27
Uh, though we'll get to kind of an important one where they are disregarded in many ways.
18:30
Um, but everyone understands, hey, the army has voted, and, and the army's votes matter, and, and everyone else's votes kind of better be in line.
18:38
Um- So let's talk about Sulla.
18:41
Uh, Lucius Cornelius Sulla rose as a general against Jeth-- uh, Jugurtha and the northern tribes, and then turned his rivalry with a, a man named Marius into civil war.
18:50
So this is kind of the beginning of the Roman civil wars.
18:53
Um, in 88 BC, he becomes the first Roman to march an army on the city itself.
18:57
This, this is, it breaks the oldest taboo in the Republic to keep kind of military commands subordinate to the, the legal processes of, of the city.
19:06
Um, when he returns victorious in 82 BC, he has himself made dictator and posts the proscriptions, again, these, these lists of citizens that if, if your name is on the list, you can be killed, your, your, your, your life is forfeit.
19:19
Um, and he resigns the dictatorship in 79 BC and retires to die in his bed.
19:24
You know, technically, he hands power back over, but i-it was kind of… Th-the way that everyone in, in Rome interprets what goes on is, well, he knew he was dying, and so he just kind of was like, "Okay, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be in power anymore.
19:36
I'm gonna, I'm gonna hand this over, but it's 'cause I'm…" It's, it's not really handing over power.
19:42
The, the assumption was had he thought he could live longer, he would have stayed in power.
19:47
Yeah.
19:48
Um, so what was really interesting is how Sulla became, um, became dictator.
19:56
So in 82 BC, both consuls died, and Sulla's army holds the cities.
20:00
Now, u-under the old laws, uh, when no consul remained, authority reverted to an interrex.
20:05
Uh, interrex means between king, whose only task was to restore lawful elected government.
20:12
Now, the interrex in 82 BC was Lucius Valerius Flaccus.
20:17
Uh, he, he'd been consul, you know, twenty years earlier.
20:19
He was kind of old, retired.
20:21
It was, it was, it was not really supposed to be, at least they were not… They were hoping it would not be.
20:25
Obviously, you kind of never hope that you're never, uh, in a position where all of the current people in power has died.
20:31
This is sort of, sort of equivalent to, like, the Speaker of the House, right?
20:33
So the president has died, the vice president has died.
20:36
The Speaker of the House is, is now in charge.
20:39
You know, bad things are happening if, if, if you're in this situation.
20:43
So on Sulla's instruction, he used his authority as interrex to, to propose a new lex Valeria.
20:48
And, and it's, you know, it's such a, such a poignant thing because the lex Valeria was the, the, the name for that right of appeal.
20:57
For centuries, what lex Valeria means is, well, the people have this right to appeal the magistrate, um, and, and, and the, the tribune of the plebs.
21:06
The, the assembly of the plebs has the ability to say, "No, no, you can't execute this person for this crime." You might be able to punish him.
21:13
You might be able to take his property.
21:14
You might be able to sanction him in some way, but you can't kill him.
21:17
Um, that was the meaning of lex Valeria for three centuries, right?
21:22
And then, and then when Sulla comes down, his lex Valeria creates a dictatorship with no fixed term and no appeal, right?
21:31
And then Flaccus becomes, uh, Sulla's magister equitum, the master of the horse, uh, which was basically the, the, the, the second in command, master of, of, of the equitum.
21:39
The, the, the equites were, were the knightly class, so he's sort of head of all of the knights of, of Rome.
21:46
Not exactly that, but, but, but symbolically that in some, some important ways.
21:50
And he holds that post until Sulla resigns in 79 BC, again before Sulla dies of, of illness in 78 BC. So this, I, I think we can, we can fairly say is not exactly what the, uh, the people, the Roman Republican and, and this guy's forebears, um, expected the interrex to do.
22:09
Um, and, you know, the, the other, the other point here is, is to look at another way of thinking about this, is to look at the, the Valerius' relationship with Cicero.
22:19
Um, so Marcus Tullius Cicero, born in 106 BC, was a novus homo like Cato before him, the first of his family to reach the Senate, and he again climbs the whole cursus honorum to the consulship of 63 BC on, basically on the, the strength of his voice, on, on the strength of his ability to orate.
22:36
By virtually every account, he was the finest orator, uh, that Rome ever produced, and his treatises on duty, law, and the republic, uh, you know, he carried Greek philosophy into Latin, and I mean, those, those things are, are famous.
22:49
People still study them to this day.
22:51
Um, a- and he handed the, the vocabulary of natural right to every republic that followed, right?
22:55
I mean, the natural… The American founders, when they're talking about natural rights and natural law and duties and the nature of things, there, there's, there's, there's a very, there's a lot of debt to Cicero that's involved in this, right?
23:07
Um, so again, as, as consul, he, um, he broke, uh, the, the, the Catilinarian conspiracy, um, and was hailed Pater Patriae, the father of his country.
23:18
Um, the, the praetor who arrested the, the Allobroges' envoys and seized the letters that proved the plot was Lucius Valerius Flaccus.
23:25
So, so the Allobroges were, were trying to take over Rome.
23:28
They had backing from, uh, you know, foreign enemies of Rome.
23:32
Um, and, and, and Cicero says, "Hey, I'm not gonna allow this to happen," and, and so he seizes power in a lot of ways, and he takes a lot of heat for it, right?
23:42
Um, if you, uh, if you, if you enjoy kind of military science fiction, military, you know, kind of historical fiction, uh, there's a great book, a great series of books by a guy named David Drake, um, called, uh, the L- Lieutenant Daniel Leary series.
23:57
And, um, the, the backstory of Lieutenant Daniel Leary is his father is, is, is, was the speaker, Speaker Leary, Speaker of the House, and he crushed a, a conspiracy.
24:07
Um, that's kind of a, a good dra- dramatization of what, of what Cicero does with the Catilinarian, uh, conspiracy.
24:14
So
24:17
So, um, the point, the point here for, for purposes of the Valerius family is the guy that goes and actually arrests everyone, that gets the initial proof that allows, um, that allows, uh, Cicero to, to, to take this action and, and in many ways save Rome is a Valerian.
24:34
It's, it's, it's the, it's the Valerian of that time.
24:36
And, and there, there isn't as much evidence that Cicero was… Like Cato, he, he is, is consul and then censor, and his co-consul and his co-censor is a Valerian.
24:49
Cicero is more complicated, um, and Cicero was, was connected with a bunch of different families in Rome.
24:55
Uh, but w- in the, in the moment, right, in the heat, in, in the pl- the time when it's like, "Hey, we, I need one guy that I can trust to save Rome," 'cause Cicero is asking, uh, uh, this Valerius to do something that is, is breaking the rules in a lot of way.
25:10
Uh, so he needs someone that's reliable, that's, that's, that's going to understand the seriousness of the accusation and, and go deal with it and not, and not come back at Cicero and say, "Hey, it sounds like you're breaking the rules, too.
25:22
Maybe you're a traitor to the Republic." Um, and he picks, when he has that need, Lucius Valerius Flaccus.
25:29
And, and that, in my mind, n- you know, and people, people and, and scholars are free to disagree with me.
25:34
They're, they're wrong, but they're free to disagree with me.
25:36
That proves that there was the same kind of, of long-term partnership with the Valerius family, um, that, that there was a m- the, the, the, m- there was a, a, a deep and abiding trust.
25:51
Um, and, and again, it's, it's not, it's not the same as Cato.
25:54
There isn't, there isn't the same, uh, level of, of, of alignment, but, but it's, it's, it's… There's many similar dynamics, okay?
26:01
And then obviously, you know, four years later, Cicero defends Lucius Valerius Flaccus against a charge of extortion in Asia, um, and that's, that's, uh, that speech that I mentioned, Pro Flacco.
26:13
And then, uh, in 43 BC, the Second Triumvirate proscribes Cicero, and, uh, Mark Antony's men cut him down on the road and nail his head and his writing hand to the rostra, um, which is, is a, a, a terrible thing, right?
26:30
It's, it's one of those things where, um- The rostra was the, the, the, the, the place where free speech in Rome kind of has its most, uh, its most important, uh, place.
26:44
You were allowed to say a bunch of different things from the rostra.
26:47
And, and when Mark Anthony does it, it, it's kind of, it's a symbolic act that, that it's kind of the end of free speech in Rome.
26:54
It's the end of, of people standing up and, and, and making plucky public announcements and, and kind of causing trouble for, for the people in, in power.
27:03
You know, Cicero defends the Roman constitutional system.
27:07
Uh, again, it's, it's complicated 'cause he's defending it.
27:09
He's also breaking it in a variety of ways 'cause everyone is breaking it, right?
27:13
Um, but the point that I, I, I wanna make is, you know, again, Cicero, um, was backed by, by the Valerius.
27:22
He was… Not, a client is probably the…
27:24
I wouldn't use that word for, for Cicero, but he has a long-term reciprocal close political relationship with the Valerius family.
27:32
Uh, they're important in, in raising him up.
27:34
And you see the difference here, right?
27:35
We've gone from Cato, who's a pretty good guy.
27:38
He seems to do what's necessary.
27:39
There isn't really any negatives.
27:41
Sulla is, is a pretty bad guy.
27:43
Um, there, there are a lot of negatives, uh, ironically, including the, uh, the, the practice of prescriptions.
27:50
Um, and that's, you know, part of, part of, uh, what, what gets Cicero killed, right?
27:56
So that is, that is the end of, uh, of the, the, the Flaccus branch.
28:00
So now we're gonna talk about a different branch of the Valerian family, the, uh, the Messali branch, right?
28:06
The, the Messali descend from Valerian Maximia, a separate line from the Flacci.
28:10
The, the cognomen comes from the relief of Messana in Sicily in 264 BC, which is at the very beginning of, of the fierce Punic War.
28:18
Um, their, the Messala lineage produces a, a couple of, of, of, uh, consoles, and they were augurs and allies of, uh, of Cicero in the politics of the '60s and '50s.
28:29
Um, interestingly, Rufus, uh, Messala Rufus was a kinsman of Sulla.
28:33
They kinda, I think they had a m- a marriage relationship.
28:36
Uh, one of the interesting guys, uh, M- Messala Rufus held the augurate for 55 years and wrote the antiquarian works on the auspices and on the patrician families, De Familiis, that preserves Rome's memories of its own houses.
28:49
Um, the, the Messali also produced the model orator of the Augustan age in Messala Corvinus, who w- we'll talk about, and he was the patron under whom kind of the, the Latin love elegy reached its height.
29:01
And so who is an augur?
29:02
I just used that term augur.
29:03
They're the priests of the auspices.
29:05
If you, uh, if, if people had gotten here on time, you would have heard a fascinating discussion on omens, right?
29:10
Uh, Britain is, uh, Britain is having some things that, that, uh, that, uh, you know, some people might consider omens.
29:17
Uh, you might con- you might consider it an omen when, uh, you know, a rape gang report, uh, is published in your, about your, your country and then one of the most famous oaks in, in Sherwood Forest of, of Robin Hood fame is struck by lightning and falls down.
29:29
Now, you know, that's, that's kind of an omen.
29:32
Um, and the, the Romans were very, very intense about omens.
29:35
They believed at an institutional level, um, in, in omens.
29:41
Uh, so you know, things like, uh, the, the flight of birds, lightning, the feeding of sacred chickens.
29:45
No election, no assembly, no l- uh, you know, political or military campaign could lawfully proceed against the auspices.
29:53
The augurates, uh, you know, among the oldest priesthood, it's traced to Romulus and is held for life.
29:58
Its authority to declare an act improperly begun gave the college, you know, real political weight.
30:03
And, and so the Messali are very focused on, on, you know, these kind of cultural things, right?
30:10
Culture is the, is the thing.
30:12
They, they, they, uh, rather-- The Flacci were, were like, "Okay, what we need to do, our solution is we're gonna raise up strongmen." The Massali, uh, the Messali are, are saying, "Well, what we need to do is kind of have cultural works," right?
30:24
Um- You know, it's interesting, uh, I, I'm, I'm not quite there.
30:28
I'll get to, you know, the, uh, how does, how does this apply to, uh, to the United States of America in 2026?
30:34
Hopefully you're, hopefully you're seeing some things, right?
30:36
Hopefully, hopefully I'm, I'm drawing the lines, uh, clearly enough.
30:40
So, uh, the Messali answered the same corruption with culture instead of force.
30:44
Uh, so where the Flacci raised a strong man to disciple, to discipline Rome from above, the Messali cultivated the things that corrupt age forgets: eloquence, religious scruple, uh, poetry.
30:53
Uh, Messalla Corvinus ran the finest literary circle of the age, and he, he sheltered people like Tibullus, uh, the young Ovid, the po- uh, the poetess… and now I gotta see if I can pronounce this correctly, Sulpicia.
31:04
Uh, the Messalla cure for, uh, corruption was memory and example carried in verse.
31:09
And, and, and it's important to note is that, uh, the, the Flacci, as the Republic starts going downhill, as law and order breaks down, their kind of political solution, it really doesn't go very far.
31:22
Uh, the Messali are still relevant under Augustus, and they, they keep trucking along right into the empire.
31:27
Um, a, a house that could no longer raise consuls and lawgivers in, in kind of the, the normal, the normal way could still raise poets because verse was the one arena that the princeps kinda left open.
31:37
And, and interestingly enough, it became a way.
31:40
The, the Messali did have consuls.
31:42
Um, they, through the arts and through, uh, their, their kind of their artistic patrons, their cultural power, they were given, like, real power.
31:50
But it also, it also fails, right?
31:53
Um, and, and in many ways is it, it, it fails in a, in a worse way.
31:57
Um, culture, as it turns out, preserves the memory of, of virtue without preserving the thing itself.
32:02
And, and within, uh, two generations, the cultured brains produced, uh, the, the Valerian gens, what we call the, the cruelest man and, and its most notorious woman.
32:12
But before we get there, let's talk about the last, the last Republican, Messalla.
32:17
Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, born about 64 BC, he studied rhetoric and philosophy at Athens besides Cicero's son and the young Horus.
32:26
He was educated for a republic that collapsed before his generation could lead it.
32:30
When Caesar's killers raised their army, Messalla joins Brutus and Cassius.
32:34
I mean, he's, this is also, again, in the same time period, uh, Cicero has just been, been executed by Mark Antony, so he, he's, he's, he's inclined by, you know, both kind of the tradition, the Republicans, this is the Republican side was the side of the assembly, the appeal.
32:49
Like, the, Brutus and Cassius are ostensibly taking the side that the Valerian house had always supported.
32:57
Um, he, he commands with distinction at Philippi in 42 BC, uh, even though, you know, the, the battle generally gets lost, uh, for, for his side.
33:05
After the, interestingly, after the defeat and suicides of Brutus and Cassius, the remaining Republicans say, "Hey, we, we want you to be in charge."
33:13
And, and he says no.
33:15
I mean, we're, our, our, our cause is lost.
33:17
Um, and, and, and he kind of declines to die over a point of honor.
33:22
Um, you know, this Ma- Messala then serves Antony and then Octavian, a- and both people wanted him.
33:28
What's, what's really interesting is, is that the Valerian name was, was super important to, to, uh, I guess a legitimizing function.
33:38
If you're, if you're trying to get yourself appointed in control of Rome, you want the Valerians on your side.
33:44
So, um, you know, he gets appointed consul.
33:47
He, he, he hosts the triumph after Aquitania in 27 BC. Once the civil, civil wars are over, again, he, he turns the family method to culture.
33:56
He runs that, that, that great unofficial literary circle, uh, patron of the young Ovid.
34:00
Um, w- what happens in 26 BC is, is, is really interesting.
34:04
It's kind of the turning point for, uh, for the Valerian family.
34:08
Augustus makes him praefectus urbi, prefect of the city, which would… It was a, a new standing office.
34:14
It was… He was gonna have police power over Rome.
34:16
He was gonna have no colleague, no term, and there wasn't, other than the emperor himself, there wasn't gonna be anyone, uh, who had the right to appeal his decision, certainly not, you know, the assembly of the people.
34:27
Um, within Rome, he was gonna be the law.
34:30
Uh, a- and, and I mean, you think about, like this is a, this is a crazy thing to do in, in some way.
34:35
You have to… The, the level of honor that you have to have, uh, for somebody who you were fighting against, you know, N five years ago, maybe less, uh, to, to say, "Actually, I wanna make you, you know, give you absolute, you know, kind of plenipotentiary powers within the, the city limits of Rome 'cause you're, everybody trusts you," right?
34:56
Um, I mean, in many ways, he, he was being offered a position that would allow him to check Augustus.
35:03
He was being offered a position that would allow him to, to say, "Okay, you can, you can be, um- You can hide people from me.
35:15
If you decide that you want to slow walk, if I decided I want somebody dead and you kind of want to slow walk that execution while, you know, time elapses so that people can come to the emperor and make the case for this guy, I'm, that's, I'm letting you do that, right?
35:32
Um, so, you know, the, the historically the praefectus urbi was a temporary stand-in who governed Rome when both consuls were away.
35:39
It was a survival of the, the royal era, like the interrex.
35:42
The office had not been filled for centuries.
35:45
And, and again, so it's one of these things that it's like when Augustus revives the office, he says, "We're gonna have a praefectus urbi," uh, he's saying, "Yeah, I'm, I'm basically king, right?
35:54
And I need a g- just like the old kings needed a guy who they, who they absolutely trusted to hold the capital, I need a guy to, who I absolutely trust to hold the capital." And he offers it to Messala, but I think famously he holds it for, for eight days and then resigns.
36:08
He says it's a, it's an in civilis potestas, a power, uh, an in civil power.
36:12
It is a power that no citizen should hold over fellow, fellow citizens.
36:17
And there's kinda two ways to, to, to think about this.
36:20
You know, one, one way is, you know, this guy, he just didn't understand what time it was.
36:26
Um, he, he, he made a mistake.
36:28
He, um, wasn't willing, you know, why, people are like, "Why didn't he, why didn't he just res- you know, refuse the, the office when it was first offered to him?
36:37
What's going on there?" And, and I think it, charitably, what you can say here is that, that this Valerian is trying his ancestors' methods one last time, right?
36:46
The Valerian way was we, we have power, we, then we give it up, right?
36:51
There's, there's this kind of dance of honor thing that we do.
36:53
We give up power.
36:55
We surrender an advantage in, in public.
36:57
We demolish a mansion.
36:58
We lower the fasces.
36:59
We decline an office.
37:00
And, and the Roman people are supposed to respond with trust and with power returned.
37:05
So restraint in this, in this idea was, was an investment.
37:08
And, and for centuries, the Roman people had repaid that investment, right?
37:12
Messala does what, what he's supposed to do.
37:15
He, he's, he's fulfilling kind of that ancient compact.
37:19
He declines the uncitizenly power.
37:21
He says, "This is bad.
37:22
I won't do it.
37:22
It's, it's, it's not, this is not how we should govern the people of Rome, the citizens of Rome." And basically, yeah, what's interesting is he's still so, um His name is so important, he's still got enough political power that, that, that Augustus doesn't do anything to him.
37:40
And he doesn't have him executed for, for, uh, you know, con- contradicting him.
37:43
In later emperors, if you declined a s- a, a, an office of sufficient honor and you kind of, you know, made it sound like you didn't think the emperor was doing a good job, they'd just have you killed.
37:52
But, but Augustus doesn't do that.
37:54
He, he kind of lets him retire.
37:56
Um, but the, it doesn't, it doesn't change anything.
37:59
Like, the only thing that Augustus does, he kind of notes the gesture, and he just sort of lets the office lapse for, for a decade or so.
38:05
Um, the stance of honor needs a virtuous public to be the other partner, and in many ways it doesn't seem like the public was virtuous enough even to really notice what was going on So that's Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus.
38:19
He, the, he's the last guy that really tries to do… And, you know, he, he's kind of classically educated.
38:24
He, he, he has all of these stories.
38:26
He was produced by this, this family education system that's supposed to produce somebody that, that follows in his ancestors' footsteps.
38:33
He really does the thing.
38:35
Like, like, I think, I think that's the, the right reading, is he really tries, uh, what Publicola Valerius had, had done, you know, five centuries before, and it just doesn't work, doesn't have any impact.
38:46
Um, so after that, things kind of go downhill, right?
38:52
Uh, so the, the, the next notable, uh, Valerius is Lucius Valerius Messalla Valessius or Valessus.
38:58
He's consul in, in AD 5.
39:00
He governs Asia as pro-proconsul.
39:03
Um, and when he gets to the, the, the province, he, he has some, some things that people, um, people dislike, uh, that, that he, he disliked about something they were doing.
39:13
So he orders mass executions.
39:15
So the tradition records 300 people beheaded in a single day, and, uh, Valessius walks among the bodies, and he goes, "O regi- o rem regium, what a kingly deed. What a, what a kingly thing to do," right?
39:28
Um, and, and then, uh, he was tried for cruelty and extortion under Tiberius.
39:34
Now, he was tried and condemned by the emperor for saying, "I'm doing a thing that a king would do," right?
39:40
Uh, not a good-- That, that's not a smart play to do while you have a very, you know, suspicious emperor above you.
39:46
Um, but, but this is kind of he's casting aside, uh, the Valerian tradition of self-restraint.
39:52
Um, he, he is, he is behaving as kind of an anti-Valerian, you might call it.
39:58
Um, so I use the term proconsul.
40:00
Uh, the proconsul was a former consul or a magistrate granted equivalent rank, who was sent to govern a province with full imperium, the power of military command and capital jurisdiction outside the city of Rome.
40:11
The office was the mechanism by which a city-state's one-year magistracies were stretched to run a Mediterranean empire.
40:17
In a distant province with the citizen assemblies far away and no appeal that reached him, a proconsul's power over the provincials was nearly absolute, which is the condition that produced, uh, Valessius, Valessus.
40:29
So, and again, as I said, he, he is the, the anti-Valerian, um, and he was executed for, uh, for, for cruelty by the emperor So a-and I said earlier, you know, both of the branches of the Valerius that, that we, we talked about today, the Flacci, they, they, they had their kind of political activism.
40:46
They would find a guy… They, they weren't really wanting to engage in direct action themselves, um, but they, they, they would find people like Cato, and then Sulla, and then, and then Cicero and kind of back them on their, their rise to power.
41:00
Um, and, and, and these, these clients… Not, clients may not the right word.
41:04
Um, the- these, these reciprocal long-term political relationships were, um, these relationships of honor, were people that could accomplish things that the Valerians couldn't.
41:14
Um, and, and that kind of runs its course and, and, and when, uh, when, you know, when Cicero dies, basically that's, that's kind of the end.
41:21
Um, then you have the Massali and their, their idea was, we're gonna, we're gonna really focus on how do we, how do we be educated?
41:29
How do we be cultured?
41:30
How do we, how do we focus?
41:31
And, and, and I, I didn't bring this out earlier.
41:33
You know, the, the, the Flacci kind of c- they, they incline more toward the, the Spartan virtues, the, the Rome versus Athens, right?
41:41
Um, th- this idea that, that the Athenians, the philosophical mindset, the kind of the cultured person, that's, you know, that's not really what's, what's… That's not really true Roman virtue.
41:52
That's not how you should think about things.
41:54
Um, and so they kind of push back on that.
41:58
Whereas the Massali are very much, "No, no, we need to cultivate our spirits.
42:01
We need to cultivate our mindsets.
42:03
We need to be educated, deeply educated.
42:05
We need to be capable of, of, of, uh, you know, generating poetry ourselves.
42:09
We, we need to be poets and, and, and culture makers, content creators, if you will." Um, and that too, you know, kind of, kind of runs its course.
42:18
So the next chapter, uh, is, um, kind of there's, there's a, there's interregnum.
42:23
There really isn't that many, uh, notable Valerian men for 40 or 50 years.
42:28
Uh, what there are is two, two women, uh, Messalina and Statilia.
42:33
Um-
42:36
And basically, this is the, this is the, the demarcation line.
42:40
Uh, after, after this event, uh, after the, these two women, the, the, the Messalina line, the Messala li- lineage, they survive, right?
42:46
There's still f- you know, physical bloodline descendants of House Valyrius, but they don't think of themselves as Valyrius.
42:52
They think of them as Messalans, right?
42:54
They think of themselves that way.
42:55
So Valyria Messalina descended from Messala Corvinus and married the Emperor Claudius, a Claudian.
43:00
The House of Valyri- Valyria had personally welcomed into Rome five centuries before.
43:04
Uh, she made her name a byword for palace appetite and abuse of position.
43:08
She had multiple lovers.
43:09
She judicially murdered rivals.
43:11
Uh, at one point, she has a public wedding to her, you know, her favorite, uh, you know, gigolo, while, while still married to the emperor.
43:19
He, he did eventually cut her head off.
43:20
Um, a second descendant of Corvinus reached the throne in the same way.
43:24
Statilia Messalina became the third wife of Nero around AD sixty-six and was one of the few kind of people to survive Nero.
43:32
Um, and, and through that, that, those relationships, you know, there, there were a number of, uh, of consuls, uh, that, that were produced by the Messala branch during the first century.
43:40
A- but they were basically all related to these women, right?
43:43
They were, they were… These were political app- I mean, they were, they were symbolic appointments, I should say.
43:49
That the, the amount of political power that they wielded was, was, was not, uh, not terribly significant at this time 'cause obviously the emperor's ruling directly.
43:56
Um, but, but they're… The, the women were the primary power brokers, and then as a favor to their, to their wives, the emperors would have these guys appointed as, as, uh, as consuls.
44:07
So Now, the, the one exception in the first century, uh, is a guy named Catullus, uh, Messalinus, and he is the most sinister man in Rome.
44:18
Uh, so five years after Messalina, the Messala name surfaces one last time at the center of power, not as an orator or a patron, but as the most feared informer of the age.
44:25
Lucius Valerius Catullus Messalinus held the consulship in
44:30
AD seventy-three as a colleague of the future Emperor Domitian, and a second time after.
44:35
Um, again, this is, this is the, the, the cursus honorum has now been basically, like, reduced to a, a, a thing that the emperor gives out to his favorites.
44:43
Um, he was blind and, and, uh, you know, the, the… There's a, there's a, kind of some mentions of the fact that he was blind, uh, throughout the, uh, throughout the, the histories.
44:55
A-and, and him being blind was important.
44:57
I-in Rome's heyday when it, when, when the consul was a, a military office or you had to be a general, they would not have allowed a blind man to hold that office.
45:05
Um, the, the idea of, of the person, the, the consul, the, the, the person who's supposed to be, like, the protector of Rome being blind while the emperor rules, you know, talking about omens, that, that was, that was, like, a living metaphor for, for what was going on in Rome.
45:20
Um, h- the position, one of the positions that he held was a delator, an informer.
45:25
So a delator was a private accuser who brought criminal charges above all, uh, maiestas or treason before the courts, uh, or the emperor, and, and interestingly was rewarded with a share of the condemned man's estate.
45:36
Uh, Rome had no public prosecutor, so a- accusation was left to private citizens, and under suspicious emperors this, you know, this kinda hardened into a, into a profession, into a way of making money.
45:46
The delatores of the first century AD grew rich and feared by denouncing senators to the throne, and their name became a byword for justice turned into the weapon, a weapon of the palace.
45:54
Um, you know, it's a good thing that we don't have, you know, civil asset forfeiture or, you know, EPA lawsuits where you get a portion of what you accuse other people of.
46:02
That would be just terrible.
46:03
I mean, it would be, it would be, you know, equivalent to the breakdown of our, our, of our legal system.
46:08
Good thing we don't have that.
46:09
Um, so he, uh, he sat on Domitian's, uh, consilium, the inner circle of advisors, where, uh, Juvenal Satire the four, uh, Satire Four remembers him as a great and conspicuous monster of the age, a blind flatterer ready to condemn men he could not even see.
46:25
Um, you know, it's interesting 'cause you go in a very short period of time, you have Corvinus who s- who sheltered poets.
46:32
His descendants, you know, f- are, are now using those same rhetorical abilities, those same cultural abilities to accuse people, um, and, and so the branch's cure for corruption, eloquence and culture becomes an instrument of terror.
46:47
'Cause he was a cultured person, right?
46:50
He was a cultured person.
46:52
So, and, and, and one of the points I wanna make is, is that by the time the empire rolls around, Valerius was not… It was no longer a virtue, it was just another word for the old establishment.
47:01
For a long time, uh, Valerius had meant, uh, specific content.
47:05
There was this founding covenant, there was the rights of appeal, there was the self-limitation, there was, you know, Publicola's, you know, tearing down his house.
47:12
To be a Valerius was to be the man who spent the family standing for the people.
47:16
By the first century AD, that, that, that goes away.
47:18
What remains is a pedigree, one of the oldest senatorial names in Rome, and valuable precisely because it was old, attached to whoever happened to be born to it, or whoever adopted it, right?
47:27
I mean, the, the emperors, um, by, by adoption, you know, you have women that marry in, um, and that are, that are Valerians.
47:35
And so the emperors adopt the, the, the, the name Valerius.
47:38
Different people start taking the name Valerius who have, who have no bloodline connection.
47:43
Um, and, and it just becomes kind of a, a, a brand, right?
47:47
The, the, the remaining family members think of themselves as the Messalié, a brand of cultured eloquence, court prestige, and nearness to the throne, you know, with an occasional burst of gross sexual amor- immorality thrown in for good measure.
47:58
Uh, that's a different virtue set, and a very… I mean, to the extent that it's virtuous, it's, the, the virtues involved are far narrower.
48:04
Um, and so this, this branch has kinda swallowed the gens.
48:07
And, and this is in many ways how a great name dies.
48:10
You know, the irony is that these acts would've been scandals that destroyed the Valerian reputation in earlier times But by the time the emperor, empire comes on, around, uh, no one cares.
48:20
Like, that's one of the things that's so interesting to me.
48:22
Um, no one cares about these things that the Valyrians are doing.
48:25
Like, like, like, people care, people talk about it, but it doesn't affect their power.
48:29
It doesn't affect their prestige.
48:30
Somehow, their, their, their legitimating function just kinda keeps generating the, the right to appoint power, and appoint power, and appoint power.
48:40
Um, and this is, of course, so different from how the family started, right?
48:44
The Republic begins, as we talked about last time, when, you know, Sextus Tarquinius rapes Lucretia, and, and s- a, a very small number of men, but including a Valyrius, swears on her blood to destroy the house that did it.
48:56
For five centuries, the Valyrii were the answer to, to a violation of the public trust.
49:01
Publucola against the Tarquins, the family against the Decemvirs who seize Virginia.
49:05
The, the covenant… And Virginia, by the way, was a, was a woman, was a, was a specific girl who was, um, basically forced into, into, into dying by, uh, by the tyrants who were ruling around the Decemvirs.
49:16
The covenant was a punish to promise the crime, right?
49:19
And it ends with a Valyrian who's the same kind of tyrant they once opposed.
49:23
Appetite without limit, position turned into a weapon.
49:26
Um, and just as the early Valyrians… Now, there's still, a, one of the points I wanna make is, these are still, like, incredibly high-capacity people.
49:33
They're really, really smart.
49:35
They're really well-connected.
49:36
They're rich.
49:36
They own a bunch of things.
49:37
They have a bunch of people's loyalty.
49:39
But just as a bunch, as the early Valyrians were the greatest in the O- arts of war and peace, so the later Valyrians were the greatest in treachery and suspicion.
49:47
And it's not like there wasn't opportunities for them to kinda defend this, right?
49:52
You know, Sulla's proscription filled the Forum with heads of murdered citizens and the auctions of their estate.
49:57
Men were killed so others could take their property and their wives, and the Valyrians don't do anything about that, you know?
50:03
Uh, the triumvir's proscriptions of 43 BC nail Cicero's head and his right hand to the Rostra, the platform of Roman speech.
50:09
And, and while, you know, the, the, the Messala branch, you know, he, he initially responds by joining, you know, the liberators, joining the, the, the enemies of, of Augustus.
50:18
When, when things go badly, he, he, he doesn't wanna die.
50:21
He doesn't wanna say, "Nope, I am unwilling to live in a Rome that, that allows this." I, and, and, you know, I, I don't know that I brought this out as well as I should have last, um, last week.
50:36
There were no guarantees, um, i- in terms of, like, when, when the, the first Valyrian swears his oath and, and he says, "We're gonna drive the Tarquins out," there were no guarantees.
50:45
There was no, like, sense that this was a thing that we could definitely do.
50:49
Um, there, there, there are, you know, just a bunch of, of, um, a bunch of people who, who came together, who coordinated on a point of honor, um, and they won.
51:02
You know, the gods favored them, and they believed that that was going… Maybe they believed that that was gonna happen, but they believed it as a, as an act of faith, um-
51:13
So, and then later on the civil wars, you know, they had the usual harvest of seized women, dispossessed families, and citizens condemned without trial.
51:19
Um, and, and again, these conditions had once produced a demolished house and a seceding army.
51:24
People used to care about it, right?
51:26
When, when, when someone in power did these great, terrible, awful things, Rome was up in arms.
51:31
You know, the, an entire, you know, uh, order, the, the plebs le- marches out of Rome and says, "We're not gonna fight for you guys anymore," right?
51:38
Y- y- you hold all the land, you're oppressing our people, and you're killing our women.
51:42
We're not gonna, we're not gonna help you.
51:45
But later, the Valerians don't do anything, right?
51:48
Um, there was no oath that the family would exhaust itself to keep.
51:53
So again, the, the, there are the three main failures, uh, here.
51:57
First, the, the house lent its name to a- absolute power.
52:00
Um, Lex Valeria is what made Sulla dictator and abolished the appeal laws that the family had written.
52:06
Um, the second one was, was kind of the empty refusal.
52:11
Um, the house performed restraint to an audience that no longer existed.
52:14
Messala declines the uncitizonly power and, excuse me, no virtuous people remain to answer the gesture.
52:21
And then finally, you know, the, the, the crackdown.
52:24
The house produced an unaccountable butcher.
52:26
Felicus beheads three hundred people in the day and calls it a d- a kingly deed.
52:30
Like, that's what, that's what h- the education of his family had produced was this idea that, well, kings are just bad, and so I'm gonna be a king, right?
52:38
Um, and then, uh, then obviously you kind of continue on.
52:42
Messalina, you know, exhausts… Like after, after Messalina, there's no real sense that, that these are virtuous people.
52:48
And then, you know, Catulus turns his house into… He, he's this sinister political manipulator.
52:53
Um, and that's, that's the end of the Valerians in, in many ways.
52:58
Um, and, and their, their failure are, i- is, is the, the, the, the end of the republic.
53:06
Now, I say failure.
53:09
Could they have stopped it?
53:11
I don't know.
53:12
You know?
53:12
They, they didn't seem to think so.
53:14
They, they didn't seem to think that, uh, that Valerian methods were gonna work when even as early as Cato, even as early as, you know, kind of the, the, the Punic Wars, um, the Second Punic War.
53:24
They're, they're, they're kind of, they've kind of moved away from the, those traditional, um, you know, emblematic Valerian virtues where we, where we extend power and we say, "Hey, these people, they're, they're important. We, we wanna, we wanna bless them," et cetera, et cetera.
53:39
Um-
53:41
But it's important, I think, as, as we're trying to learn from this stuff to take, okay, what, what, uh, what did they do?
53:48
What could they do different?
53:49
Um, and this is important, you know, for us because America was founded by self-conscious imitators of the Valerians.
53:56
Uh, the American founders, when they're, when they're talking about what, what it means to be a good leader are thinking about these stories.
54:04
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, you know, they built a constitutional order out of voluntary self-limitation and bound it with an oath.
54:10
Um, you know, Washington is, is, is, is imitating Pub-- He's also imitating Cincinnatus, right?
54:15
But he, he knew all of these stories, you know, the general who could have taken a crown and instead goes home.
54:21
Um, the Valerian arc is what happens to such a house over the long run.
54:25
After the founders were gone and the legitimacy passed to their heirs, it, it seems that they didn't understand how their forefathers built the reputation that sustained their house.
54:33
And again, the goal of this is to think about what becomes of a covenant without men willing to risk the system to keep it, right?
54:40
Um So I want to, I want us to think about, you know, Washington, right?
54:47
George Washington.
54:48
He resigns his commission, he steps down after two terms, and a sovereign people answer with a trust that founded the office of a self-limiting executive.
54:55
Masala's re- refusal fails because by 26 BC, the people could no longer answer.
55:00
It was, it was a similar act, um, in the same family of regiment silence instead of office.
55:04
So, uh, you know, i- in the final analysis, our Sulla was probably FDR failing to step down until he died and kind of dramatically changing the powers of the presidency to win World War II with many powers, uh, never being handed back.
55:17
Uh, by the way, in this, uh, in this, this style of analysis, our version of Cato was probably Lincoln.
55:22
Um, and, and, and Lincoln was a, was an interestingly severe man in many ways.
55:27
Uh, we don't think of him that way, but, uh, but he, he really was a severe man.
55:30
But, you know, the, the, the, the test of a covenant, the thing that, that, that makes it a covenant is do you, will you…
55:39
W- the Bible talks about will you stand to the covenant?
55:42
Will you, will you rise up?
55:44
Will you get up and say, "No, I'm gonna enforce this thing"?
55:47
Um, the Valyrians, the early Valyrians were very willing to just put it all on the line, to risk the system itself in order to, in order to get, you know, satisfaction for their covenantal duties.
56:04
Their honor was more important to them than, than keeping, you know, the, the empire going, if that, if that makes sense.
56:10
Uh, once you get to the era of corruption, you know, 33 or 133, uh, BC, the Valyrians are not… They're not doing that.
56:18
They're trying to preserve the system.
56:20
They're trying to keep things going.
56:22
Um, they're, they're, they're the establishment in many ways, and they're making kind of establishment-like plays.
56:27
So the story of House Valerius, in my mind, leaves the Covenant of Republic a single question.
56:32
When a citizen is wronged in the way the founders would once have answered with everything they had, do the heirs still rise or do they s- do they remain seated?
56:40
Right?
56:40
Do they remain seated?
56:42
So- And finally, um, a covenant that, uh, does not protect its weaker members becomes collateral for the very powers it was sworn against.
56:50
The house that prefers institutional stability over the strict terms of the covenant will live to see its descendants and its nation corrupted beyond what they might beli- believe possible.
57:00
Um, and again, uh, and I've said this already, but true character, true loyalty means risking the system.
57:06
It means saying, we cannot allow the, the, the Constitution to be perverted into harming the people that the Constitution was meant to protect.
57:16
Like, if, if the, if the formal processes, if the offices, if the accretions, if the laws, if the amendments, if all of these things, if the way they cash out, right?
57:26
If all of these, these, these formal processes cash out in ways that, that, that prevent our people from being protected, um, then it's not gonna work.
57:38
When the American political system cannot maintain election integrity, when it cannot defend its women and girls, and rape and molestation begins to be normalized, uh, or, or even just sort of sexual exploitation, and the system does not concern itself with people being entrapped, you are on the brink of destruction.
57:52
And the establishment needs to realize, um, that spending their legitimacy to protect the institutions is throwing good money after bad.
57:58
Their legitimacy must be earned defending actual people.
58:01
And push back against things like the EPA, allow small businesses to flourish, prosecute election and immigration fraud, and you know, prosecute to the ends of the earth those who prey upon helpless women and children.
58:12
Um, that is, uh, that is the end of my prepared remarks on, uh, this, uh, this second, uh, session of, on, on House Valerius, and I hope that all of you who are listening for free got some benefit for it.