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15. Rebuilding a Great House: The Fabian Gens Part 1 · Great Houses

• 0:00
  Gregory Treat: All right.
• 0:00
  Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 15 of The Great Houses forum, where we discuss how to build a great house.
• 0:08
  A great house is a multi-generational lineage that owns property, that has provision in place where it doesn't have to sell that property, where it can keep its people, it can educate them, it can provide for them in retirement, and it has done so successfully with, with enough generations and with enough, uh, impact on their community that when you become a great house, people actually are banging on your door.
• 0:29
  They are trying to associate with you.
• 0:31
  It is a benefit to you and to them.
• 0:33
  So today we're, we're continuing in our ancient city series, and we're talking about the Fabian gens.
• 0:40
  So, uh, this, this, uh, series talks about the six great houses, the six... They call them gentes maiorum, uh, of Rome, and they're, they're...
• 0:49
  They each were Roman aristocrats.
• 0:52
  There was a kind of a consistency of character between all of them.
• 0:55
  But they each had their own specific special little thing that they did and that they did well, that they did differently than other, um, other houses.
• 1:04
  They kind of each provided balance to the city.
• 1:07
  So, um, I, I, uh, uh, uh, by...
• 1:11
  Because of consistent prompting by, by some of my good friends, I'm starting with House Fabia, uh, because they are the house that I think most resembles, uh, where we find ourselves in the modern moment.
• 1:25
  So where we left off, um, the Fabian house is, is, uh, renowned for its, its, its l- its willingness to engage in delayed gratification.
• 1:38
  Um, the, the Fabian society, the Fabian school of, of, uh, socialism is based on we want to do a long march to the institutions, and the, the figure, the inspiration that they took was the, the Fabian house of ancient Rome because they famously delayed Hannibal.
• 1:56
  We'll actually talk about that next week.
• 1:58
  Um, I want to talk about how does a Roman, you know, lineage, a Roman- house get to the point where it's famous, Rome was famous for its courage on the whole, how do you get a Roman house that's famous not for courage, but for restraint?
• 2:13
  Okay?
• 2:14
  And, 'cause this is so- sort of a contradiction between the core values, not just of Rome, but of every city, which was aggressive courage, right?
• 2:20
  We want people that are not afraid to die, and they're gonna ride out and just punch the enemy in the mouth.
• 2:24
  That's what we do.
• 2:25
  That's what we're good at.
• 2:26
  So we have to go back, um, to a, a, a time period early in the Roman Republic and in a battle called Cremera.
• 2:35
  So, uh, 306 Fabii ma- marched out to a frontier garrison, and they, and they left behind one boy, one, I think he was 12 or 13 years old, and he became, uh... Well, the, the reason why I don't know is because the, the way Romans counted their ages makes it difficult to tell if he was 12 years old or 13 years old.
• 2:51
  He was somewhere in that range.
• 2:52
  Um, so every single m- member of the lineage died, and they left behind one survivor.
• 2:58
  And so today, we're gonna talk about how do you rebuild a lineage alone?
• 3:02
  You're gonna have wealth.
• 3:02
  You can have a great name, but you don't have family, and you don't have peers.
• 3:06
  What do you do then?
• 3:08
  So, uh, we're gonna talk about what other virtues, uh, besides courage do you need to be successful?
• 3:15
  I think we, we do need courage.
• 3:17
  Courage is absolutely essential, and it's a, it's a virtue that, that we, uh, find ourselves severely lacking.
• 3:23
  But I think one of the, one of the reasons why, uh, we struggle in this area is because as soon as you find someone who, who, uh, you know, overclocks or over, um, overindexes on courage, they run out, and they get themselves killed, and they cause a bunch of problems, and they, and they are, they are not good, not just for them and their families, but for the movement as a whole, okay?
• 3:43
  So what else do we need besides courage?
• 3:45
  We're gonna talk about that today.
• 3:46
  We also are gonna talk about how do you rebuild a house with, with wealth but no peers and when the religious machinery of the city can be turned against you.
• 3:53
  I'm sure none of us on this call have ever had that experience.
• 3:57
  This is just a completely foreign concept.
• 3:59
  Um, there's nothing new under the sun, friends.
• 4:02
  Um, and then three, how does, uh, one, one boy's answer to how, how do we rebuild this house become... How does he rebuild his house to the point where, where this doctrine of restraint becomes one of the top, uh, the top things in the Roman world, one of the, the most recognized, most distinctive tactical aspects and, and a house that, that held significant political power, uh, for over a century?
• 4:27
  So, so again, the, the, the, the Fabians, they, they are a noble house.
• 4:34
  They have 306 direct members of the lineage.
• 4:37
  They might have been, because the way that we... Again, we're not sure, uh, but they might have had the most, uh, adult males in Rome at the time.
• 4:45
  So, um- They, they are looking the, the, the... Rome is fighting with its traditional enemies in the, it's called the Veil, and, uh, they're talking about, "Hey, we're gonna go north.
• 4:58
  We're gonna create a fortress.
• 5:00
  We're going to build this, uh, this, this defensive line, and we're gonna try to take territory, uh, for the sake of Rome, but also for ourselves.
• 5:09
  This is gonna be our, our personal property." Right?
• 5:13
  So let me talk, before, before we go into that, I'm gonna talk a little bit about Rome's warrior ethos in, uh, the, the, the early part of, of the 5th century BC. So every Roman boy of the great houses was raised on a single template of virtue, courage, which was exemplified in, in single combat, right?
• 5:30
  You can think of, you know, the opening of the movie Troy, where Achilles fights the, the, the representative of this other army and, you know, slays him in a single blow and, and the, the armies are defeated, right?
• 5:39
  So single combat against enemy champions was the test.
• 5:43
  This was the thing that people were culturally primed for.
• 5:46
  They had a bunch of stories about it.
• 5:47
  They had a bunch of rituals on how to do it.
• 5:50
  Um, the, the, the most, uh, the things that people were seeking most in terms of battle was the spolia op- opima, which is the armor which was stripped from a commander killed in personal combat.
• 6:00
  This was the, the, the rarest and most prestigious of Roman honors.
• 6:04
  And then the other thing was, was the torque, right?
• 6:07
  Um, so you would take crowns.
• 6:09
  One of the, one of the, uh, Torquatus we talked about, uh, we talked about him last week, uh, was a, a guy who became famous by slaying a Gaul in single combat and taking his torque, putting it around his neck, and kind of riding back into the Rome, into Rome with it.
• 6:23
  So the, the virtues were aggressive frontal combat, personal risk, visible courage, and, and it's important to understand this was not like a, just a personality thing.
• 6:32
  This was explicitly how you advanced in, again, the cursus honorum, which we talked about last week, uh, the, the, the way that people moved up in the internal rankings of Rome.
• 6:43
  So the assumption was that courage wins, right?
• 6:47
  The, the... Every young patrician would've been taught over and over and over again through his, through his, the literature that he imbibed as well as probably explicit teaching, Rome wins because Rome is braver.
• 6:58
  Romans are braver than their enemies.
• 7:00
  Um, they did not really have a framework, at least in the early days, that courage might be insufficient.
• 7:06
  Um, and, and so we, we come to the Battle of Cremera, where, where they follow all of the, uh, all of the indications.
• 7:14
  They do everything that Rome says you should do, and they, they, they don't succeed.
• 7:20
  So- And again, there, there were some specific heroes.
• 7:24
  So the w- leaving aside kind of the Greeks and, and the Trojan War and all of the things that we're more familiar with, in, in Rome's history, there was the founder himself, right?
• 7:33
  So in the first decade of the city, Romulus kills King Acron of Canina in single combat, takes his armor, right?
• 7:39
  And this is, this is what starts the tradition of the spolia opima, uh, with, uh, he, he demonstrates his fitness for kingship by killing another king face-to-face, right?
• 7:50
  Then you have Horatius at the bridge, right?
• 7:51
  Which, uh, the modern image that most people will be more familiar with is, is Gandalf on, on, you know, in Khazad-dûm, "You shall not pass," right?
• 7:58
  That's a, that's a modern retelling of, uh, Horatius on the bridge, which is a great story, and you should read it to your children.
• 8:05
  And I mean that quite seriously.
• 8:06
  That's, that's a story that your children should know and be familiar with and maybe even be able to recite.
• 8:11
  And then, um, you had more recently, uh, you know, to c- closer, pretty close to this battle within living memory, you have Gaius Mucius Scaevola, uh, was his name, and he infiltrates Porsenna's camp to assassinate the king, uh, the enemy king.
• 8:27
  He is caught, and, and when he, uh, when he's told to sort of, "Why should we let you go?" Or, "Why, why, why shouldn't we kill you right now?" He sticks his hand into the fire and holds it there, just kind of eyeballs them, and just holds his hand into the fire.
• 8:42
  Okay?
• 8:43
  And basically, he says, "Hey, there's 300 men that are just as brave, just as courageous, ju- just as courageous, just as unflinching in battle as I am. You should let me go." And they basically did, right?
• 8:56
  They, he, uh, Porsenna lets him go, and that's, uh, that's kind of the conclusion of the war that starts with Horatius at the bridge, was Roman demonstrations of visceral courage.
• 9:06
  This was, this was basically how Rome had won the, the most recent war that, uh, that had seriously threatened their survival, okay, about 30 years before.
• 9:19
  So, um, then in, in, in 306, uh, the adult male Fabii... Or sorry, in, in 479 is when it, when it happened.
• 9:28
  306 adult male Fabii, which is the, the entire military generation of the lineage, and again, they pr- this probably, the, the, what's going on here probably means that they had the most armsmen out of any household in Rome.
• 9:40
  They... And it's not just the 306.
• 9:42
  They have probably 4,000 to 5,000, um, armed men with them, uh, clients, freedmen, dependents, various things.
• 9:49
  They, they march out in formation, um, through the, the northern gates of Rome, and, and the head of their house at the time was Caeso Fabius Vibulanus at the head, and they were gonna build a fortified outpost on the Cremera River and run a private war.
• 10:02
  This is sort of the, the, the, the model for what w- what would become Rome's expansionary adventures.
• 10:08
  But it was a single house, right?
• 10:10
  Um, so he, you know, Livy describes that, that basically the, the, the, the procession was, was incredible.
• 10:17
  And basically what they're demonstrating, this is 30 years after, after again, the, the, the, the big war that, uh, Horatius at the bridge is talking about.
• 10:26
  Um, this house has as many arms men potentially as alm- as the entire city of Rome had had relatively recently.
• 10:35
  So they've grown, they've recruited a bunch of people.
• 10:38
  They are, they are flush.
• 10:39
  So this is Cremera, right?
• 10:42
  Um, it's a, it's a, an, a little city between, or it's a, it's a little sp- spot on the river between Roma and Veii, which was a traditional enemy of, of Rome's.
• 10:54
  And they're gonna go build a fort there, which would mean that the Veii could not use the river to get down into Roman territory, right?
• 11:04
  That's, that's obviously got a lot of, of, um, tactical importance to, to Rome.
• 11:10
  Um, and what happens is the, the Veientines stayed a herd of cattle as bait, and the Fabii s- pursued in and they just kind of charged in.
• 11:18
  There, there really wasn't much they... There really wasn't much reflection.
• 11:22
  They didn't send scouts in.
• 11:23
  They didn't look around.
• 11:24
  They just kind of go straight in, um, and they were drawn into a prepared position on broken ground.
• 11:30
  There's a lot of these, these, in these early stories, um, Livy makes a big deal about broken ground because later on Rome would develop the maniple system, which was what allowed them to be very military successful on, on uneven ground or broken ground.
• 11:45
  Um, but they get surrounded.
• 11:47
  Their, their enemies have the high ground, as they say, and they weren't able to get back information.
• 11:52
  And, you know, a, a couple of the dependents and the clients escape, but basically the entire house, House Fabius doesn't, doesn't run.
• 12:00
  They just sit there, they fight, and they all die, uh, as, as far as, as far as we know, as far as it comes down.
• 12:06
  Okay?
• 12:09
  And they leave behind one boy.
• 12:12
  Uh, he was too young to have marched.
• 12:14
  Again, that, that probably means he was 12 or 13.
• 12:17
  Uh, his name was Quintus Fabius Vibulanus.
• 12:20
  His mother, his aunts, the women of his household, the clients, the freedmen, the slaves, the stewards of the ancestral property, they all depended on him alone.
• 12:29
  And this is in, in, in the context the, the adult male world that normally raises a Roman patrician dies at, at Cremera.
• 12:36
  He has, uh, the name, the land, the household.
• 12:38
  He has a bunch of obligations, but he has no father, no uncles, no older cousins, no peer cohort.
• 12:45
  Uh, whatever his house was going to become, he was gonna have to build by himself So, uh, it's interesting when you study, you study these, these names.
• 12:55
  Uh, Quintus was, was the fifth or, or, uh, you know, colloquially one of the things at cer- at some point in Roman's history, they actually named their sons Primus, Secondus, you know, Tertius, Quartus, Quintus.
• 13:08
  But over time, those names became associated with ideals, right?
• 13:12
  And so Quintus means some- something to the effect of like exceptional or exceeding expectations, right?
• 13:19
  This is, this is a wonderful thing when you have a fifth son.
• 13:22
  So, um, that's, that's, that's kind of colloquially what that, that me- means.
• 13:27
  Fabius is derived from fava, the bean, or fodere, to dig.
• 13:30
  So it's, it's interesting.
• 13:31
  Uh, one of those is probably correct, but Plutarch tells you about both of them, right?
• 13:35
  So it's, it's...
• 13:36
  he says, "Yeah, the- these are the words from which this house is derived." Um, whi- which is an interesting way to think about, um, it's an interesting way to think about naming people, right?
• 13:47
  Because this is not e- etymology as a, as a linguistic discipline, right?
• 13:53
  So modern etymology will look at a word and they'll say, "Well, historically we know that this word was derived from X source," right?
• 14:02
  The Roman thought a- a- about, about names and etymologies was more like, well, you know, this name sounds like several other words, so when people hear this name, they're gonna think of these other words, and that's going to be the thing that, that, that, that, that is in the minds of the people listening, which is a really important, uh, it's a really important frame.
• 14:24
  It's sort of a more practical frame, right?
• 14:26
  It's, it's less, it's less historical.
• 14:28
  We're not, we're not saying, "Hey, uh, the, the, the, the name Fabius literally come, it comes from both fava and fodere." It's these people were of the soil.
• 14:38
  They, they, they, they endure.
• 14:40
  They produced well.
• 14:42
  Those are the qualities that, uh, that you're supposed to, to think of, um, when, when you think of Fabius.
• 14:48
  And then Vibulani was, was the senior, uh, h- uh, the senior branch.
• 14:52
  It's the line from which the consuls of, of the Cremera generation had come.
• 14:56
  So it was the most senior line.
• 14:57
  It's really interesting.
• 14:59
  Um, you know, it's, it's, it's remarkable that, that that's the lineage that survives, right?
• 15:05
  Like that, that's, that's...
• 15:06
  in fact, that's so remarkable, um, that you, you, you look at it and, and you're sort of like, how, what are the odds that the one guy that's left behind is actually the legitimate heir, right?
• 15:19
  And then there's only one.
• 15:20
  There's no contest.
• 15:21
  There's no ability to split the house.
• 15:23
  There's no other people.
• 15:24
  It's just this one kid, right?
• 15:26
  Now in the modern context, as I, as I'll get into, we kind of have this situation.
• 15:30
  This, this, this shows up quite a, quite a bit.
• 15:33
  But, uh, but in, in, in the ancient world, um, you know, there's this verse, uh, in the Bible, in Psalms, where it says, uh, "He places the, the lonely into households," speaking of the, the, the redemptive work of, of, of God, of the God of the Bible.
• 15:47
  He places the lonely in households, and sometimes that word in many modern translations is translated orphan.
• 15:53
  Um, and it, it, it's interesting.
• 15:55
  It means only child, but it means only child with a aggressive negative context that we associate with orphan, right?
• 16:03
  So to be an only child, to be brotherless, was just a really, really bad thing in the ancient world, not just in, in, in Hebrew, but in Rome, and everywhere.
• 16:12
  Like this, this was, was, it was almost like being in hell, right?
• 16:16
  Like they, they, they would view that as, as being denied a, a psychological comfort that was core to, to their understanding of what it was to be human.
• 16:25
  So.
• 16:27
  Now, this boy is, uh, is not destitute, okay?
• 16:31
  Um, this, this... He, he is not scrabbling in the dust, right?
• 16:35
  He has the land, right?
• 16:36
  They're, they have had extensive ancestral holdings, um, in Etruria and, and what was called the, the Quirinal.
• 16:43
  Uh, they were income producing.
• 16:44
  They were intact.
• 16:45
  The economic base of the household, I mean, you know, the, the warriors marched off.
• 16:48
  The economic engine of the house is still producing.
• 16:50
  Um, and while you, you are losing-- You, you lose a lot of the clientele, the clients, um, and a lot of the freedmen obviously also die at Cremera with that, that three to four thousand people that marched out with the, the, the core lineage.
• 17:04
  There's, there's still a lot of, there's a lot more intact families, and a lot of these would be like merchants.
• 17:09
  So they would send one member of their family off to join, you know, the, the, the, the great house with whom they were allied.
• 17:16
  But they're not sending every male, okay?
• 17:18
  Uh, that, that, that wouldn't be a thing that, that most clients would do.
• 17:22
  Um, so they, so for most of them, their families are basically intact.
• 17:26
  They've lost one relative, likely an uncle or somebody that, that, that didn't have great marriage prospects, wasn't good at the family business, and had kind of learned the sword or learned to fight, um, as, as a backup plan.
• 17:38
  He's got his name, right?
• 17:40
  He's got centuries of Fabian magistracies, consulships, and triumphs.
• 17:43
  He's got a lot of reputational capital.
• 17:46
  He's got access to, um, to the, the family records.
• 17:49
  He can go in and look and say, "Okay, how did my family solve problems?" And then interestingly, you know, the Fabi- the Fabians had a, a unique relationship with the Roman religion.
• 18:00
  There's, there's some suggestions, like... Obviously, one of the things that's, that's important to recognize is the Romans didn't write everything down.
• 18:06
  There were certain truths that were a little too, um, a little too Uh, politically tense to, to make a big deal of.
• 18:17
  So the, the people that were descended from Rome's ancient kings, their, their ancient royal lineage, did not make a big deal about it, and the people that were descended from Rome's ancient priestly lines also did not make a big deal about it.
• 18:29
  But if you had to pick one house that where did this house come from, House Fabia is probably the priests.
• 18:35
  They're, they're probably the first group of people that served as the priest of the city of Rome as a whole when, when whatever, by whatever process that these disparate households kind of first start worshiping together and build the, uh, the, the ritual union that was the, the ancient polis.
• 18:52
  Okay?
• 18:54
  And so, uh, he, he participates in the Lupercalia, which was a very important, uh, religious rite in Rome, and, and that, that religious prestige was, was independent of, of office, right?
• 19:05
  Uh, his family had the right to attend and orchestrate, um, those, those rites regardless of, of what the family was doing or what they were doing politically, which again suggests that there's something they have...
• 19:17
  This is an unusual relationship with the, the religious, uh, hierarchy of the city.
• 19:22
  Okay?
• 19:23
  Um, now the problem was that there's a lot of practical things that he doesn't have.
• 19:30
  So, uh, he doesn't have a paternal authority to introduce him at 17 into the forum, to vouch for him at his toga virilis, to place him in his first military appointment.
• 19:40
  Uh, he doesn't have uncles and elders, so, um, he doesn't... One of the, one of the interesting things, they didn't really use a- adoption.
• 19:47
  Like, one of the first things people think of when they think of a Roman house that's fallen on hard times was, well, what if, what if they just adopted a bunch of people?
• 19:55
  Um, well, they didn't, they didn't use adoption because they, they weren't able, uh, to form what was called the consilium, right?
• 20:02
  So this was the private council of older kin that would advise a patrician on every major decision of his public life.
• 20:08
  So when you were trying to get an adoption registered, they would wanna know that the consilium, the r- the, the older representagies, uh, representatives of the lineage of the whole, as a whole, had consented to the adoption.
• 20:21
  And because, you know, Vibullanus has no, uh, relatives, uh, no, no consilium, he can't adopt, which is, which is sort of really interesting.
• 20:29
  He doesn't have cousins and peers.
• 20:31
  You know, other patrician boys would move through, uh, their career trajectory with a peer group, and, and he does not have that.
• 20:38
  And then also this is, this is less, it's harder to see, but, uh, there was fewer daughters, right?
• 20:45
  They still, they still had some daughters and, and, you know, the, the, the remaining heir is able to use those.
• 20:51
  Vibullanus was able to use those and, and, and form some marriage alliances, but it wasn't, it wasn't quite the same.
• 20:57
  Okay?
• 20:58
  And again, I want to, I wanted to frame this for us, um, as a, um- as something that's very similar to the s- the scenario that we face, right?
• 21:10
  This is the modern founders problem.
• 21:11
  We, we tend to have abundant material wealth, right?
• 21:14
  We live in houses with air conditioning and power and computers and all of those things, but we tend to lack community.
• 21:20
  We don't have a cohort of peers.
• 21:22
  We don't have fathers and uncles that are interested and able to kind of induct us into political life or into social life.
• 21:30
  Uh, we have no standing introductions.
• 21:31
  We have very little in the way of inherited friendships.
• 21:33
  We don't have a council of elders to kind of advise us on, is it a good thing to bring this person into your household or not?
• 21:40
  Um, so we, I I think we can learn a lot from, uh, from this story, right?
• 21:48
  Another thing that, and that, um, that the, the, the House Fabius and the Vibullanus faced was that, um, there was something called insta- instauratio.
• 22:01
  I talked about this last week.
• 22:02
  But Roman public rites had a rule.
• 22:04
  So any flaw, if there was any flaw, anything somebody could point to and say, "Okay, that, that means that this ceremony was bad or wrong," it would void the whole ceremony.
• 22:14
  It had to be restarted from the beginning at the projec- the presiding magistrate's personal expense or the, the expense of their household.
• 22:20
  So the grounds varied.
• 22:22
  People would, would find things like a flute player paused, or a slave was struck within sight of, of a ritual, um, a word was mispronounced, or a chair was in the wrong position.
• 22:34
  Um, and, and any of those could be cited as this is a reason why, um, why the, the rite has to be restarted.
• 22:42
  And these, these, these public games, they cost a lot of real money to s- to stage.
• 22:47
  So a forced restart could economically break the presiding magistrate, especially if it happened over and over again.
• 22:52
  So the, the group of people that, that did this was called the Pontifical College, and they were the body that declared the rites defective, and they were drawn from the same competing patrician families as, as everyone else.
• 23:04
  So a defect that was overlooked in a friend's rite could be raised in an enemy's.
• 23:08
  This wasn't a... Again, as far as we can tell, at least as far as the Romans tell us, these things were not fabricated, but the pontificates were not exactly disinterested observers, right?
• 23:20
  Um, another thing was that, that by the nature of just having one heir, um, it, it, it called a bunch of things into question.
• 23:31
  So with... Because he doesn't have heirs, at least for the first, you know, several years of, of his life, because he's, he's not married when he, when this all happens, um- There's some, th- there's religious uncertainty around all of these things.
• 23:44
  So you could object that the, the, the sacra, which was the, the, the Roman demonstration of heirship, had lapsed, and because he doesn't have a legitimate heir, then perhaps what he's doing is invalid.
• 23:56
  You know, we, we, we talked in earlier episodes of the Great Houses forum of the Greek concept, the r- Greco-Roman concept of an elder.
• 24:02
  An elder is someone who has a son of the legitimate wife who has a son of his legitimate wife who's at least four years of age and not physically, mentally, or morally defective or, or, um, crippled, right?
• 24:16
  And so this, uh... He, he obviously, as a young boy, doesn't have that.
• 24:23
  He, he's not married.
• 24:24
  He doesn't have a grandfather.
• 24:25
  So the house is missing some of these key things.
• 24:28
  And so even though as the head of the house, as the only surviving member, he should be allowed to enter the assembly, he should be allowed a certain amount of political power.
• 24:36
  Because he doesn't have this demonstration of virtue, it places him in a very, um, a very vulnerable position.
• 24:43
  Okay?
• 24:44
  So, um, how does he rebuild, right?
• 24:48
  Uh, basically, and I, I talked about it earlier, that he doesn't, he doesn't adopt, which is interesting, but he leans on his clients, right?
• 24:56
  He had... They have thousands of dependents whose loyalty was more hereditary, and they use the, the Fabian freedman.
• 25:02
  So freedmen are, are an interesting concept, um, uh, one that I think is, is very... It's very interesting as a Christian, as a modern Christian, to study this, this concept of freedmen.
• 25:12
  So when you had a slave, a, a freedman was somebody who had been a slave, okay?
• 25:16
  If you, if you, if you hadn't been a slave, you wouldn't call yourself a freedman.
• 25:19
  You'd call yourself something different.
• 25:21
  So to call yourself a freedman means you were a slave at some point in the past, um, and the master of your house had freed you, right?
• 25:28
  So there was two documents that every freedman would make sure he had access to.
• 25:32
  Number one was the, the, the s- bill of sale selling him to his former master's house, okay?
• 25:40
  And then the manumission, pr- and proving his master had ownership of him and the legal right to manumit him, and then the actual manumission, okay?
• 25:48
  But these people were not, um, they were not economically independent, right?
• 25:54
  They, they, they were not slaves, but the, the, the way that the Romans viewed freedmen, it wasn't like you got freed and then you left.
• 26:02
  In fact, the other thing is, is that it's, it's, it's interesting when you think about people demonstrating what qualified someone to be a freedman, um, because people will record rights where a, a freedman, he'll, he'll participate in a ritual and, and like when the clients of the, the master of the house are coming and giving the master gifts, then, then the slave comes and he stands in the line at the end of the line, the, the lowest status, and he comes up and he gives a gift of a certain amount of money that he's been able to acquire.
• 26:31
  Now, that money belongs to the master Okay?
• 26:35
  All, as, as does all of the economic productivity of the slave.
• 26:39
  Okay?
• 26:40
  There was no, you know, on hours, off hours.
• 26:41
  Anything that a slave produced was technically the master's property.
• 26:45
  All right?
• 26:45
  But the master has a certain set of expectations for how much money that slave is supposed to bring in or, or what he's supposed to do, and the fact that he was able to show self-discipline, that he was able to get a large amount of money, to, to a slave at least, and not spend it, not dissipate it, was very important.
• 27:02
  So he, by, by joining the ritual of the clients giving offerings to their master, he's demonstrating that, that he doesn't need to be ruled by fear.
• 27:11
  He's got honor, he's got self-control.
• 27:13
  He is ready to participate in a relationship of honor with the master of the house.
• 27:18
  And that moral fitness, which Rome would attribute to the c- the, the spiritual teachings, the quality of the instruction at the house.
• 27:29
  N- note, not the quality of the instruction of the slaves, the slaves generally weren't educated, but the quality of the instruction that the house gave to its sons.
• 27:36
  All right?
• 27:37
  Critically.
• 27:38
  that's that's the key.
• 27:40
  You, you've sort of observed or overheard how the family is teaching its own children how to live, and you have applied some of those lessons, and you've been able to gather some money, so you've demonstrated that you're worth freeing.
• 27:52
  Okay?
• 27:53
  So that's a freedman.
• 27:54
  And they, they were, they tended to be very loyal, exemplary loy- exemplarily loyal, um, and they would, they would fight with th- they, they, they would come to the assistance of the house that, that had freed them.
• 28:05
  You know, there's this great scene in, in Gladiator, uh, the first one, of course.
• 28:09
  We, we, we, we do not acknowledge the existence of a Gladiator without Russell Crowe in it, um, in this house.
• 28:15
  Um, so, so the, uh, the, the main gladiator, uh, the head of the gladiator company that, that, that, uh, Russell Crowe's character gets sold to, um, was freed by Marcus Aurelius, right?
• 28:25
  Who is, who is m- murdered.
• 28:27
  I'm not gonna give away the secret of the movie.
• 28:28
  And he, he has the wooden sword, which is the, the, the token of his freedom, and, and his loyalty to that deceased emperor was pretty profound.
• 28:40
  It's interesting, the, the, the gladiators... I know I'm going a little off, pretty far afield on the freedman question here, but we'll, we'll get back to the Fabians here shortly.
• 28:47
  They actually made a law in Rome that if you were a sufficiently high ranked gladiator, that only the emperor could free you, 'cause they didn't want that, that ritual loyalty to be given to any other, any of the, the, the major houses.
• 29:03
  Um, which is interesting So the other thing that he does is he, he mobilizes alli- the, the allied houses.
• 29:10
  So the Aemilii, which are another member of the gens' minorities, we'll talk about the Aemilii here in the future, and then, then the Junii who are a, a jun- a junior house.
• 29:19
  They're not, um, they're not quite as prominent.
• 29:20
  They're not one of the big six.
• 29:22
  But they are, uh, they are a notable house.
• 29:24
  They have property.
• 29:25
  They have people.
• 29:26
  They're, they're, they are able, and the Aemilii in particular, uh, were able to function as kind of that older male relative, at least in the political context, introducing him, getting him his seat in the Senate when he turns 18, allowing him to get some level of, of appointment so that he can follow the Cursus Honorum.
• 29:44
  And then in- interestingly, he, he relies on the sacred College of Luperci, uh, Fabiani as a surrogate cohort of male peers.
• 29:51
  So there's this kind of priestly group that, um, this drawn from, again, other, other patrician families in Rome.
• 29:59
  Uh, but he, he doesn't, um,
• 30:04
  he doesn't, he doesn't pull... He, he, he, he uses those people as the, the substitute for his social peers, right?
• 30:11
  So they're the people that kind of go around with him to events, that provide the sounding board that he makes decisions with, right?
• 30:17
  The Aemilii and the Junii, they're able to help him with these formal requirements, right?
• 30:22
  When you need a senator class person to do something for you, 'cause they don't want the, the, the, the Fabians to, to cease from the earth, right?
• 30:29
  Um, I'm, I'm reminded in the, in the biblical context of the, of how Paul sort of mentors, he mentors, uh, Titus and Timothy, right?
• 30:38
  Timothy was a, um, a Jew, and Titus was a Greek, and he, he mentors both men in different ways and helps them access their inheritance, right?
• 30:48
  That's why he circumcises Timothy, for instance, because he wants Timothy to be able to get access to, uh, his inheritance, his, his, his rights as a citizen.
• 30:59
  Okay?
• 31:02
  So, um, one of the interesting things about the, the Luperci Fabiani was it was what is called a sodality.
• 31:12
  There's some people on, on the call that really like sodalities.
• 31:15
  Um, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a fun term that's kind of making a, a renaissance here in, um, in, uh, in in the, the church world.
• 31:24
  Uh, the, the origin of that are, are the Roman sodalities.
• 31:27
  So these are sworn religious brotherhoods, and they were a, a very important part of the infrastructure of e- uh, elite life.
• 31:34
  So the Fabian College of Luperci ran half of what was called the Lupercalia, which is a very important religious rite, every February, um, uh, alongside the Luperci Quin- Quintiales.
• 31:46
  So for Fabullanus, the Luperci became w- what blood kin would've been anoth- in another house, a sworn cohort of men his own age, bound by ritual and secrecy.
• 31:56
  And, and you know, this is important, right?
• 31:58
  If you share secrets with a member of another house, th- it's not just that they have- Maybe the right to tell their elders what you've told them.
• 32:08
  In some ways, I mean, not in some ways, i- in explicit, you know, religious and legal ways enforceable in Rome, they had a duty to tell their hou- the, the other members of their house.
• 32:18
  And, and that house is gonna have interests that are not the same as yours.
• 32:23
  So you need some way of having people that you can, you can share ideas with, that you can bounce things off of.
• 32:30
  Okay?
• 32:31
  and and again, this is, this is very important.
• 32:33
  It's, it... The, the surviving Western equivalent, the sodality is, is, is very much sort of the, uh, representative of the positive aspects of the modern American church, right?
• 32:45
  So modern American churches, they, they do some things well, they do certain things badly.
• 32:50
  Um, you know, what they do badly is being like a perfect representation of your spiritual ideals.
• 32:56
  That's not what most churches are, are able to do.
• 32:58
  That's really not what most churches are trying to do.
• 33:01
  What they are, what they are trying to do is create communities.
• 33:03
  They have regular communal worship on a ritual calendar.
• 33:06
  They have age and stage-graded groupings, men's fellowships, youth groups, elder board, small groups.
• 33:11
  They have mutual obligation.
• 33:12
  They really want you to, to hang around, and they're open to anybody who will take the oath, right?
• 33:18
  So for the founder without inherited community, the local church is, or your local parish for the, for the Catholics, is the institution in which the Fabian answer still works, right?
• 33:27
  You have a cohort of peers and, and, and if you can select what you're doing based on that rather than, you... So, so you're... If you're looking into community, there's gonna be one church that has a certain amount of legitimacy, a certain amount of political influence in the community, and they're gonna do this thing, right?
• 33:45
  They may not have a perfect doctrine.
• 33:48
  In many, in many cases, a lot of people get turned off by these churches because in some ways, doctrine is almost less important for them, right?
• 33:56
  They're not trying to be a perfect instantiation of some doctrinal procedure.
• 34:01
  What they are trying to be is, is a place where, that preserves certain rituals, that preserves an understanding of the world.
• 34:08
  Um, if you don't know where this place is in your, in your town, ask the nearest real estate agent.
• 34:12
  I guarantee they u- they will know exactly which church it is, okay?
• 34:16
  Um, and they do events, okay?
• 34:18
  And, and this is important.
• 34:20
  This is, this is something that we need.
• 34:22
  This is something that we, um, that we want to, to replicate, and I think a lot of us feel like we have to build that alone, and I don't think that ma- very many of us actually do.
• 34:32
  Now, again, y- you may have, y- you know, in, in order to kind of get what you, what you want on, in, in the religious context, there might be other places you go.
• 34:41
  You may, you may have other places where you go where your ideal worship is, is happening, okay?
• 34:46
  It might not be culturally the best fit for you, but- I, I just, I wanna encourage everybody, take a look around at your community.
• 34:54
  Say, "What is working? What is holding this community together?" Look for a church with a very clear kind of set of, of things that you can participate in, and you might be surprised at what you find.
• 35:06
  Okay?
• 35:09
  All right.
• 35:10
  Um, so Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, uh, he, he, he does, he climbs back up.
• 35:17
  Um, he, uh, becomes, he eventually becomes consul three times.
• 35:21
  He campaigns against the Aequi and the Volsci, and, and he's very... He's famous for, he doesn't want to engage in pitched battle, he wants to attack the supply lines.
• 35:30
  And so interestingly, there was a bunch of people that expected him when he first became consul to say, "We need, you know, I want a, I want a war of vengeance against the Veii," and he doesn't do that.
• 35:40
  He shows restraint, right?
• 35:42
  He doesn't, he doesn't... In fact, for the rest of his life, they don't really go to war with the Veii.
• 35:46
  They just kind of, they kind of sit there and they rebuild Rome.
• 35:49
  Okay?
• 35:51
  Um,
• 35:54
  then his son, uh, Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus, right?
• 35:59
  Um, he's a very important... Or h- he's not his son, his, his, uh, his grandson.
• 36:05
  He is, um, uh, the victor at, at a, at a battle called Sentinum.
• 36:11
  He was the magister equitum under Papirus Cursor.
• 36:13
  He engaged with the enemy against the dictator's orders and was almost executed for it, right?
• 36:18
  And I think that a lot of, uh, a lot of this was the f- the family, the, the, the lineage had a reputation for a lack of courage, and he was kind of bent out of shape about this, so he wanted to prove his courage.
• 36:31
  So what happens is, um, Papirus Cursor, who's the dictator of the city at the time, he leaves Rullianus in charge of the em- of the army and says, "Don't engage." Well, Rullianus, he's, he's looking at this and he says, uh, you know, "I see an opportunity to, to win," right?
• 36:48
  So he engaged.
• 36:49
  He wins a major victory.
• 36:50
  Uh, part of this there, there's a, there's a question about did he do that, could he have done that before while Papirus was there, and waited until Papirus was gone so that, uh, the, the, the, the glory would not go against, uh, this guy, uh, go, go to the credit of the, uh, the dictator?
• 37:06
  Instead it goes to, uh, Rullianus.
• 37:09
  Um, but Rullianus flees to Rome and he appeals to the Senate and to his father, the former consul Fabius Ambustus.
• 37:17
  Uh, and the Senate and the people intervened, right?
• 37:19
  They, they kind of cry out.
• 37:20
  They, they, they ask for Rullianus to be released, and then Papirus reduces the sentence and then ultimately releases him.
• 37:27
  So it's, it's a very, it's a very significant, this is a very significant trial in the history of Rome, and it's interesting that it's a Fabian that does this, right?
• 37:35
  Because again, the, the, the history of their family, the thing that they're most famous for is restraint, but this is not restraint, right?
• 37:42
  Um, and, and I think it's, it's an important story because it- It, it demonstrates, number one, that courage is still necessary, and that you have to, you have to be able to, to attack when it's time.
• 37:55
  Um, but it also, it also shows that, that, you know, courage covers a multitude of sins, right?
• 38:01
  If you are, if you are hesitant, if you are restrained and you lose, no one is gonna intercede on your behalf.
• 38:09
  But if you are aggressive, if you take big risks and you win, right, the Senate, the people... Uh, Rullianus gets five consulships over the course of his life, which is more... I believe that's, that, that's, uh, certain- more than anyone else in his lineage.
• 38:21
  It might be one of the, uh, more than basically anyone else in, uh, in Roman history.
• 38:27
  Um, so the, the, the word for this, when we talk about the Fabian synthesis, um, the word for this is constantia, right?
• 38:37
  Um, that was the, the core virtue of the Fabians.
• 38:41
  So, um, you know, more than courage, we... The, the Fabian synthesis is the idea that more than courage is required, but the courage is still required and that, you know, as I said, it covereth a multitude of sins.
• 38:52
  So Rullius died a censor, a five-time consul, a princeps senatus.
• 38:56
  A princeps senatus is the highest ranking member of the Senate, so it's, it's the, the person who he, he has achieved so much that he gets to sit at the front of the Senate for the rest of his life, kind of no matter what happens.
• 39:07
  It's not really available to anyone until he dies, okay?
• 39:14
  And then so we'll move on to, uh, Gurges, right, who was the son of, of Rullianus, who was the princeps senatus after his father.
• 39:22
  Um, so he was consul three times, and he sustained the Fabian hold on the Senate's first voice across three generation.
• 39:29
  No other group, uh, was able to do that.
• 39:32
  No other house ever had three generations in a row where they, they climbed up and were princeps senatus.
• 39:39
  Um, and again, there's, there's this, this implication by the way that these stories are told that it was the Fabian restraint.
• 39:45
  It was the Fabian willingness to say, "Hey, I'm gonna work patiently. I'm gonna work. Um, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get upset." 'Cause, you know, one of the things about Vibullanus, um, that when, when he refounds the house, he goes through all these things, right?
• 39:59
  His, his, his, uh, the religious rituals that he does are challenged at about twice the, the rate that other people's, uh, religious rituals are challenged, so it costs him a ton of money, and he just kind of sits there and takes it.
• 40:12
  There's no recorded objections.
• 40:15
  He just kind of restarts, and what he does is he kind of uses it as an opportunity to, uh, to build his name, to build his character.
• 40:22
  Later on in the Roman Empire, uh, they would actually... They actually had to limit the rule of instauratio because if you, um, if you gave a senator the opportunity to keep restarting, then people keep coming back and hearing the name of this senator over and over and eating the free food and just getting to kind of enjoy this party that goes on and on.
• 40:42
  And the emperors had to step in to prevent- people from building their, their, uh, their reputation using that, that, that trend.
• 40:49
  Um, and, and so they, they, they kind of became, uh, known that what the Fabians did was every time that somebody would object, they would just do the party, excuse me, they would do the party bigger the next day.
• 41:02
  And they, they, they, you know, so at some points I think they went into debt, uh, to do that, but they were able to pull it out because this was, um, this was the way of building their reputation, this was the way of, of, of getting their acclaim.
• 41:15
  And, and that's where you get so later on Gurgus, right, at these, these events that the, the, the Fa- House Fabius would do, he ate a lot, like, in public, and that's how he gets the name Gurgus for, for gluttony, right?
• 41:26
  But they, he, he's able to do that because the family has a reputation basically for throwing the best parties in the city, and for, and for throwing them in public, right?
• 41:35
  So that anyone who wants to, to come and join the ritual can.
• 41:38
  Okay?
• 41:40
  Um, and, and, and he carries on that, uh, that, that lineage, right?
• 41:45
  So again, the, the, the core virtue that, uh, that House Fabius represents is Constantia, okay?
• 41:52
  Courage that has learned what courage alone cannot do.
• 41:55
  This is tempered by judgment, it's tempered by hierarchy, and by recognizing that being brave in the wrong way is not enough to be a premier family of Rome.
• 42:04
  And, and, and it wasn't just... W- the interesting things was it wasn't just that the Fabians learned Constantia, it was that Rome learned, hey, we need at least one family that, that deeply understands this virtue around in our, in our, uh, in our councils.
• 42:22
  That's what giving the prince- senatus to three generations in a row did, right?
• 42:28
  It meant that Rome was signaling, hey, we, we always need to hear from the family that has mastered this restraint.
• 42:35
  We always need to know, okay, what is, what is the thing that, um... What do the Fabians say, right?
• 42:43
  Because the Fabians are going to, to be willing and, and be able to sort of predict, okay, we're, we're not gonna do the, um, the m- we might not do the thing that's the most aggressively courageous, or if we are gonna do the thing that's most aggressively courageous, let's understand what the risks are.
• 42:59
  Okay?
• 43:00
  Let's understand what the risks are.
• 43:02
  Because aggressive courage can, i- i- is great, but it can also get you killed, right?
• 43:08
  And so we need to, we need to have the ability to plan and not constantly be basically virtue signaling with our military decisions.
• 43:17
  We need to know that courage is absolutely necessary, but we, we need to not be proving our courage all the time when we're making, um, when we're making military decisions and we're ma- we're making any decisions really.
• 43:29
  So again, uh, for the, for the modern founder, um, the Fabius House Fabius offers kind of some advice.
• 43:38
  So the first is continue to meet your social obligations, right?
• 43:41
  Don't, don't chafe in public, at least at the extra expenses that society will extract from a weak or insecure house, and do what you can to try to turn whatever people give you into, into your own advantage, right?
• 43:53
  Again, the Fabians would, would use the instaurat- instauratio as a, as a way of attracting more people into their world.
• 44:01
  That- that's what they would do that.
• 44:02
  So they would hold this really great party, people would really enjoy it, and some of them would stick around to the end of the day and be like, "Okay, can, can, can we join your house?
• 44:10
  Can we become clients?
• 44:11
  You did this, you did this incredible thing," right?
• 44:14
  Um, so use the institutions to, to build kind of an alternative peer cohort, right?
• 44:19
  This is, this is what, uh, the, the sodality does for them and what I, again, I think that a modern church... I really do think as, as, as I look at what most modern churches when, when, when you have pastors that are trying to serve the community, they're talking to a bunch of people, and they, and they start a bunch of programs, right?
• 44:38
  And again, for many of us, we look at that and we're like, "Well, that might not be the most consistent. That might not be the most sort of doctrinally pure thing." But there's a reason why these guys spend all this time doing that, and it's because on some level we have to build these places where, um, you know, the men's groups is just a critical, a critical thing.
• 44:58
  There, there really isn't an alternative to the men's group in broader society, right?
• 45:03
  Um, there is, there is a, a need for people to do this institution building and to create rooms where people can come together based on affinity and build stuff.
• 45:14
  Now, that's not the end-all be-all, right?
• 45:17
  It's not a replacement for a great house.
• 45:20
  Um, it's not re- a replacement for family and all of those things.
• 45:23
  But it is a good or, or at least a, a useful kind of way to, to get through, uh, the time when you, when you're, when you're coming into it and it's like, well, well, we wish we had a big family.
• 45:35
  We wish that our parents and grandparents had had more children, right?
• 45:39
  Uh, but they didn't, and so here we are.
• 45:42
  And we have, we have a name and we have an understanding that, that our, our people did great things, uh, but we actually don't have very many bodies around us.
• 45:51
  Well, where are the bodies?
• 45:53
  Well, most of them are in your local churches, so, so go looking there.
• 45:56
  Go, go at least try.
• 45:57
  Go see what can be built, um, when you can build brotherhood and relationship with, with people that are on, on the same page, on the same side, right?
• 46:05
  Um, you know, one of the, the, the interesting things that, that, that I'm I, I've really been studying is this idea that there, in almost every community, there's, there's pretty much one, one major church, right?
• 46:20
  There's one church that holds a bunch of the, uh, the things together.
• 46:25
  That they're, they're kind of core to the way that the local politics work, to the way that the local economy works.
• 46:30
  They're the place where the, again, like I said, the- the- the real estate guys, the real estate developers tend to be maybe some major architects.
• 46:38
  Um, pay attention to that.
• 46:40
  Those people are doing something real and something important.
• 46:44
  Okay?
• 46:45
  Now, obviously, at the core, one of the other things to keep in mind is at the core of each church is usually a hand- or basically every- everywhere that I'm- I'm aware of, is usually a, uh, a- a group of families that- that are, that are doing that.
• 46:58
  That's absolutely correct.
• 46:59
  So, um, and then, and then, um, the final thing is- is build and- and really celebrate the- the clients in your life.
• 47:07
  I think there's a lot of people, you know, I speak to- to- to guys all the time that, uh, their f- their father or their grandfather was something special.
• 47:14
  Um, I- I spent some time at a, at the, a recent event, uh, where- where I got to- to meet some of those guys again, and they- they have the- the- the reputation of their father and grandfather lives large in their town.
• 47:30
  And most of these young guys just have no idea, "Well, how do I access that?
• 47:34
  How do I activate that?
• 47:35
  What- what- what do I do with that?" And I think studying families like- like the Fabii, who- who are able to- to come in and say, "Hey, we don't... We- we have one guy left, but by leveraging these relationships, uh, we're gonna rebuild from the ground up." Okay?
• 47:52
  That's- that's really important.
• 47:54
  Um, and- and again, I think, I think we have more of this than we realize.
• 47:57
  There's a lot of people who- who they want to help the- the son or the grandson of somebody that they liked and admired.
• 48:04
  They wanna be part of a big story.
• 48:06
  They want to, in many cases, save their town, save their church, save their community, something of this nature.
• 48:11
  And having a- a way of understanding that, of- of- of- of being open to it, of- of saying, "Hey, I might be interacting with people like this. Let me, let me keep my eyes open." I think when you keep your eyes open, you will find people that- that you really can build long-term client relationships with.
• 48:29
  And then again, as new people come into your world, always have the mindset, "Hey, could this person be somebody that is, that is related to my household?"
• 48:38
  Not just with a relationship with me, but- but- but something that can be passed down.
• 48:43
  Okay?
• 48:46
  So next week, we're gonna get into, um, the most important of the- the descendants of the- the House Fabius, um, which is Fabius Maximus Cunctator, right?
• 48:58
  And this is, uh, t- 217 BC. This is, this is the- the campaign where they delay Hannibal, um, and they- they harass the supply.
• 49:06
  They're- they're very much... It- it's a very different campaign.
• 49:09
  It's the exact opposite of what happens in Camera.
• 49:12
  Um, and- You know, a lot of people basically call him a coward through most of this, but he endures and, and he saves Rome, you know?
• 49:21
  Um, and I think the, the, the way that I would frame this for us is I think many of us are, are being led by our, our culture, by our experience, m- you know, by, by our, our spirituality to develop very counter-cultural virtues.
• 49:36
  Okay?
• 49:37
  And I think for many of us, um, we're going to be given an opportunity here, maybe in, maybe in the relatively near future, to use those counter-cultural virtues to the benefit of our cities and the benefit of our country and, and certainly to the benefit of our families.
• 49:51
  And so how do you be ready?
• 49:52
  How do you prepare for that day when the thing that you are known for being able to do is exactly what, what your city needs?
• 49:59
  Um, so... 'Cause it would be great if we could say, you know, if we could have some- it said about us that, that, uh, one man by delaying sa- restored the state, right?
• 50:09
  'Cause that's, that's what the House Fabius does.
• 50:11
  That's their great accomplishment.
• 50:12
  So we'll, we'll get into that next week.
• 50:15
  Um, and that, uh, concludes my prepared remarks.
• 50:17
  So thank you everybody who's listening on the public podcast