On this episode of news World, What if the Roman Empire never truly fell? In The never Ending Empire, Aldo Cazulo argues that Rome's influences the foundation of the modern West and the United States. From the language of American democracy, republic, senate, liberty, citizen, to the architecture of its most powerful institutions, the echoes of Rome are everywhere here. To discuss his new book, I am really pleased to welcome my guests, Aldo Cazzulo.
He has been reporting on major Italian and international events for thirty five years, published thirty books in Italian history and selling one and a half million copies. He is currently deputy editor of the Italian newspaper Coreerra della Sera. And I have to say, as somebody who had the fortune to live in Rome for three and a half years, having a chance to talk about Rome, a city which is truly eternal, and to talk about the Republic and the Empire, which is one of the great historic periods
in human history, to me is very exciting. Aldu, I really welcome you, and I thank you for joining me on newts World.
Thank you so much.
Now you say in your book The never Ending Empire, the infinite impact of Ancient Rome quote. The Roman Empire never really fell, nor will it ever fall. It has continued to live on in the minds, words, and symbols of the empires that came after it. What do you mean by that?
Every empire history presented and portrayed itself has the real heir of the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, kostante Ople, the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne, Thar and Kaiser are words that derive from Caesar, the Russian Empire, the German Empire. Napoleon adore Caesar. He wrote a book about him, and he wanted to be crowned, not a king, rather than emperor of the French. We had the British Empire. But in my opinion, the real heir of the Roman Empire
is the American Empire. What was the symbol of the Roman legions the egle? What the symbol of the USA? The egle? What's the USA's motto a pluribus unum out of many states one it's a Latin motto. I think that English is the new Latin, the language of the world. Everything in d C reminds me of Rome. The Senate Capitol Hill is named after the Capitolium, one of the seven genderly hells upon which Rome was born. Jefferson Memorial is a copy of the Pantheon. The dom of Capitol
Hill is a copy of Saint Peter Doma. But above all, the strategy of the American Empire is the same of the Roman Empire, turning the defeated enemies into allies, just like America did with Italy, German and Japan after World War Two, forging different pacts, different alliances, different agreements with different peoples, and valuing the cultural, military, and political influence more important than occupation of territories. Real power is power
on minds and on souls. End. If not sure what America is declining, in my opinion, if there is something new in the world, a book, a film, a song, a medicine, a vaccine, as signientific discovery, technology and innovation, a cultural fed it comes from the USA, the rest of the world, China, include all copies or buys.
From your standpoint, Let's go back to Rome itself. Why did it emerge and why was it such a remarkable center of achievement for the ancient world.
I think that, for example, women women in Rome had greater rights and freedom than in any ever ancient civilizations. In Rome, women dined with the men, could frequent therms and arenas, and women could own, sell and buy things. I write that in Europe was granted to the women just a century ago. Democracy is a Greek world, but the first real democracy was the Roman Republic. It was the people, not the Senate, who elected the consuls. It was the people, not the Senate, who declared the war,
who made laws. And in fact, the founders fathers of the USA looked to the Roman Republic. You know that Hamilton signed his articles with the name Publius. Publius was one of the first consuls. In seventy seventy seven, George Washington rejected the peace offers of the British generals, saying, the United Armies of America are fighting for the noblest of causes, freedom. The same principles inspired the arms of
the ancient Rome at the days of its glory. It's amazing how the founders fathers of America looked to the Roman Republic. But John Booth, Lincoln's killer, chose the Gode name Ees eyed so much like Brutus, he was convincted to kill a tyrant. He was wrong. Lincoln was not a tyrant. Lincoln was a great president, but he thought that the USA was becoming an empire. I remember when Kennedy in June nineteen sixty three spoke in Berlin. He told two millennia ago, the greatest pride was to be
able to say, chiev is Roman. Who sussum? I am a Roman citizen Now in the free world, Kennedy said, the greatest prout is to say he had been I Berlin. I am a citizen of Berlin. The key phrase of the Cold War is carved out a motto, a motto of the ancient Rome. It's incredible. Rome is alive. Roman civilization is alive. And you before you were saying all the words of politics, all the language of the power.
They derived from Latin citizens. People, emperial dictator, prince, president, liberty, dignity, infamy, honor, justice, treaty, society, veto, suffrage, propaganda, socialist, communism, fascism, nationalist liberalists are Latin words, and the most important is republic as public, public thing. The idea that the state belongs to everyone was born in Rome.
But I agree largely with your possession. Somehow in the period of the Republic before decayed and collapsed. They had found a system of liberty and a system of self government, which then gave them a resilience so that even when they went to war, even if they were defeated temporarily, they just kept coming because they could draw on the totality of the Roman people in a way that nobody
else could. So you have Hannibal, for example, spend seventeen years going up and down Italy, can't break into the walls of the city, and ultimately is defeated because the Romans can keep generating more resources and more people. I want to push you just a little bit here. When you look all the way back to that period, you look to the very tiny city which gradually keeps growing
and growing and growing. What do you think was the ingredient in their culture which gave them this capacity to have enormous resilience and an extraordinary capacity for mobilizing the entire society in a way that nobody else could compete with.
All Right, Rome could lose a battle, and Rome lost many battles, but in the end Rome always won the wars. Why because the Romans were not only able to make war, they were able also to think of war, to understand war. Roman legendary was not a hero, was not a warrior. He was a soldier. He was a citizen. He fought for something more than himself or his clan, or his tribute or his family. He fought for Rome, for the republic, res public, public thing. And his goal was not a
glorious death. His goal was a peaceful retirement thanks to the lens and the gold taken away by the enemy. And the Roman general was not a figure we nor die. No, he was an engineer, He was a strategist, He was a planner. He knew but Rome could lose a battle, but in the end Roman will win the war. I think the Romans had to face the same issues we have now, to face the permanent state of war and immigration. How did the Romans face immigration? By integration, one could
become Roman, whatever one's origin, skin color, or religion. And also for America, one could become American. This is the greatness of America. It's not important where your answer stors come from, what the color of your skin, which religion you believe in, what foods you eat, what your sexual orientation. What matters is what your worth, what you know what you do is important, what you bring to the community. This is the secret of the force of the ancient Roman.
This is the secret of the force of the United States of America.
It's fascinating both the way the republic emerged and grew from the legend of Romulus and Remus to the replacement of the king, which I think is four seventy six BC two, and then you get about four centuries of a pretty stable system which then begins to decay. And part of it, I think is that as Rome began to conquer the whole Mediterranean, it began to appear to foreign governments that it was cheaper to bribe the Romans than to fight them, and so you had this enormous
explosion of corruption. I was very struck years ago by Colin McCullough's seven volume novel about Caesar, which begins with his uncle, the first man in Rome, Amarus, and you have kings showing up and princes showing up with huge amounts of cash and just gradually corrupting the system, and in a sense, as it's falling apart, you then have this amazing resurgence. I've often wondered if Caesar had failed and you'd had Pompey when and the old order continued,
what would have happened? But when Caesar first emerges then gets killed, then his nephew Augustus or Octavius, who becomes Augustus, takes over Augustus somehow stabilizes the system, creates a framework that is able to function, that lasts for another four hundred years. You've said that you regard Guias Julius Caesar as one of the greatest men to have ever lived. I happened to Greeky, But I'm curious to get your take. What is it you see in Caesar that you think made him so extraordinary.
If he had just a writer, or just a political leader, or just a military commander, Julius Caesar would have gone down in history. But he all of the three things. He was a great writer gallia omnis, divisist in party stress. The whole goal is divided into three parts, the beginning of the Bello gallic extraordinary. He was a great political leader. He was also a great military commander, and it was also a journalist. He invented the tweet when he defeated
the King of Pontus in four hours. He hold to the Senate Vani vd vicci I came i saw I conquered three words twelve letters, the first tweet in history. When he was thirty two, he got his first political charge, procurator in Spain. He traveled all Spain. He went to Cadiff in Gibraltar, where Hercules erected the columns to say this is the end of the world. And there was a great statue of Alexander the Great, and Caesar had
an emotional breakdown, bursting into tears. His companion asked him, why are you crying, Caesar A He answered, at my age, Alexander was the master of the world. I haven't done anything glorious yet. The companion said, you're crazy, Caesar. Rome is not an empire, Rome is not a kingdom. A rom is a republic. And we the popularist we are losing. Caesar was the leader of the opposition of the popularists.
We can consaid the last it was. He supported the Fromentacio free distribution of wet but at the power the power was in the hands of his enemies, the aristocrats Optimatis, Pompeii, Sila, Cato, Cicero, and Caesar wanted to become the master of the world. It was becoming the mass of the world. Before being assassinated, he planned to conquer Persia and Germany, and the defense of the Republic killed them to save the republic. But
they failed. They failed because at the funeral of Caesar, Anthony read his will, his testament, and Caesar left three hundreds estersis thousands of dollars to the people, to each Roman citizen. And I think at every funeral everyone mourns their own death, but that time even so more because for the people Caesar appeared like a father. So the people revolted against Brutus, against Cassius, against the conspirators who
had killed Caesar. They had to flee, and Brutus had a vision a giant shadow saying, I am your evil genius. I will you in Philippi. The day after the last battle, Brutus asked, where are we now? What the name of his place? We are in Philippi, And he understood that his destiny would be terrible.
Every time I listened to somebody giving mark Antony's oration the Shakespeare version, it is so stunning. Anthony took them from hating Caesar to loving Caesar in one speech, which is quite remarkable, but in some ways, although their roles are very different, I think that Augustus is as fascinating as his uncle. How do you measure how do you think about Augustus as compared to Julius.
I think that Julius Caesar was a genius. Augustus was not a genius. He was a wise and cool man, but he died in his own bed. Unfortunately we cannot say the same about Caesar. Augustus was a great politician. He invented propaganda. Augustus was the first man in history whose face was known by all of his contemporaries. There were two thousand and five hundred statues with the face
of Augustus, one in each city of the Empire. In fact, Priscilla Zackerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's wife, wrote, we spent our honeymoon in Rome, but I thought we were three because Mark wanted to be photographated with all the statues of Augustus he met. There were many, many, many statues of Augustus. It's very interesting Mark Zackerberg has his hair cut like Augustus. He handed his meetings with the cry dominium in Latin. He called his daughters Auguste Maxima in Aurelia Latin names
Junove Tilmaski proclaimed himself Emperor of Mars. Also, Gates is a fan of demntionient Rome. The digital emperors look to the ancient Rome, to the Roman emperors, who were the first to real immense communities composed of people who would never meet physically, but who were born, lived and died under one caesar. And the first caesar was Juduses was Augustus.
Also if there is also a rumor that the wife of Augustus, Livia in the poisoned him by the figs. He liked the figs, and Livia wanted his son Tiberius was the hair. We don't know. I hope that Augustus died of a natural death. Surely he changed everything. It changed also the calendar. He created a new era. He had the great poets at his court, just like Virgil. You know, Virgil had to choose a father for the roles founder. Some claimed the Romans, we are the descendants
of Achilles the strongest. Some claimed we are the descendants of Ulysses, the smartest. Virgil said, no, we are the descendants of Eneas. The pious. The merciful doesn't mean only mercy. It means responsibility, moral strength. Eneas is not a winner, is not a conqueror. He's a defeated hero. He has to flee from Troy, but he flees with holding his son a LUs Eulus, relating the ancestor of Julius Caesar by the hands and carrying on the shoulders, and caises
his father. So Eneas is the pious hero who cares for the elders and for the descendants, who take charge of the past and of the future, who looks a head and behind, and the Pietas is the Roman feeling in which the Christians recognize themselves. This is the reason why Dante chose Virgil as a guide for his trip
into Paradise and Hell and Purgatory. And you know that Virgil wrote that a poorer will be born to save the mankind, and the Christians thought that Virgil had predicted the birth of Jesus Christ.
He wrote that if today we are Christians, it is because Rome became Christian. From your perspective, how central is Rome's conversion the Christianity.
Very very important. Also, the gods could become Romans, but every god had his homeland. Isis from Egypt. Mitra from Persia, Jave from Judea. The Christian God was universal. At the beginning, their emperors persecuted the Christians because they didn't understand the Christians. The Christians refused to adore the emperor, refused to recognize the other gods, and the Christianity appeared to the Romans
to have turned their ward upside down. Poverty that for the Romans was a disgrace became a virtue for the Christians. The body, instead of being massaged, perfumed, made up, exhibited, delighted with any pleasures, for the sex one in terms, became something negative. The important is not the matter. The important is the soul and the spirit for the Christians. And the cross that was the symbol of the most atrocious, painful,
humiliating public death became the symbol of salvation. But an emperor, Constantine understood that strange religion that no one could erase, he could embrass It's true that Christianity promises a revolution. The last one will be the first ones, but not if it's life in after life, one emperor on earth and one God on heaven.
It was a great idea, and I just realized that without the Roman, the orderliness of the Mediterranean, it might have been dramatically harder for Christianity to explode the way it did. You mentioned Constantine. Can you sort of describe the story of Constantine's dream in the night of October twenty seventh, eighty three twelve, and in your judgment is this mythical or do you think it really happened.
According to the tradition, Constantine dreamt an angel with a cross, and the angel told him enough, Senior vincees, with this sign, you will win. And the day after he put the cross on the shields of his army, and Constantine's army defeated the army of his hanemy Masamfield, and Roe became Christian. We won't ever know if the tradition is true or not. Surely it's a mystery. The conversion of Constantine is a mystery. His mother, Helena, was a Christian, and according to the tradition,
he discovered the real cross, the Jesus Cross. In Jerusalem. He found three crosses. He touched the body of a dead man. With each cross, the dead man was erected. And this was the realtorals that the custody of the cross is in Rome in a greater Roman Basilica. If a tradition, we don't know. It's surely it's a mystery because before the emperors persecuted the Christians and Constantine became Christian. But if you go to Rome, to the Constantine arch,
there are no Christian symbols, there are no crushes. There are also the ancient pagan symbols. It's a mystery also understanding if Christianity made the empire weaker or not. We won't ever know this.
It's also intriguing because well, the Western Empire falls around I think four seventy if remember correctly, the Byzantine Empire, which thought of itself as Roman, called themselves Romans. Byzantine is actually a late historian word, and it's not what they would have called themselves. They last another thousand years exactly.
Byzantine is a ward that we Westerners invented during the Renaissance to say there are Byzantines, we are the Westerners, we are the heirs of the Romans. But they called themselves Romae, that means Romans, and we think Constantinople just like a decadorating word that did nothing than decay for a thousand years it's not true. Constantinople was a miracle,
was a prodigy. They resisted the Barbarians, they resisted the Arabs, they resisted the Turks until fourteen fifty three, and the nephew of the last emperor ZOI married the first third. Even the Great and the Russians spoke about the third Rome. The first rom is Rome, the second rom is Constantinople. The third Rome is Moscow, as you know better than me. In eighteen forty five five an American journalist of Salivan first called manifest destiny to rule the world. Virgil wrote,
we have the manifest destiny. With the Romans have the manifest destiny to rule the world. O Salivan wrote with the Americans have the manifest destiny to rule the world. But also the Russians think to have a manifest destiny to protect Christianity. I think that the Putting I am against put the Emperor Ukraine. But I think that Puttin is doing the war Ukraine also in his mind to save a certain idea of Christianity, a civilization, our Greek
orthodox Christian civilization. Also, the Turkish emperor Mathematic the second sought to be the new Roman emperor. The founder of a new dynasty. This is the reason why Roman history doesn't end. And I moved when I think to a great speech delivered by an American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was five June nineteen forty four, the day before the American troops entered Rome, the day after they landed in Normandy. It was the turning point of the Second
World War. Roosevelt said to Italy, or Americans, to the Americas, to Italians, Italian people is not our enemy. Italy is done, Italy is Michelangelo, Italy is Galileo, Italy is Marconi, Italy is a Castopher Columbus. And Rome is not only a military target. Rome was the Republic. Rome was the Empire. Rome is the Catholic Church. When I listened to Vetter Roosevelt's speech, I moved.
That's remarkable. Let me ask you one last sang, which is what advice would you give Americans? What's the lesson they should draw that applies to the time we are now in.
Do you remember Gladiator? The movie? Everybody remembers how the Gladiator begins at my signal unleash. Hell ifew remember how Gladiator ends before dying The Gladiator said, there was once a dream that was Rome. It shall be realized. What was the Rom's dream? The government of the world, the universal peace, a community as large as the known world at peace, not because it was a wicked divided but because it was united and strong, a multicultural, multi ethnic world.
I think that the Roman dream is alive. We need a government or the world. We leave a word unified by the values of democracy and liberty. And the only country now that can fulfill the Rom's dream is the United States of America.
I want to thank you for joining me. Your new book, The Never Ending Empire, The Infinite Impact of Ancient Rome is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. You're remarkably studied, you have an enormous sense of history. I'm really really glad that you came and you joined us. So thank you very very much.
Thank you. I am so proud about America is the new Rom. So thank you for electing me. Thank you for your time.
Thank you to my guest, Aldo kaZulu. You can get a link to buy his new book, The Never Ending Empire, The Infinite Impact of Ancient Rome on our show page at newsworld dot com. Newt World is produced by Ganglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our researchers ah Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
at Ginglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World can sign up for my three free weekly columns at ginglishro sixty dot com slash newsletter I'm Nut Gingrich. This is Nuts World.