May 16, 2024 • 38 mins
The story of Sulla and how he dealt with the Populares. Everything from the growing number of Roman slaves to the Jugurthine War and the Social War of Rome. Briefly looking at some parallels to modern life.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is a Jesse Kelly show.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on Ay Wednesday, another
hour of the Jesse Kelly Show. And here's what you
can expect for this hour. I will tell you normally
this is more of a political talk show. Of course.
Now clearly we drive the show off the rails and
top food and life and the fact that I'm wearing
a back brace today and other embarrassing things. And obviously
(00:36):
we do talk quite a bit of history on the
show because I am a history freak. I love it.
I talk about politics and power and anti communism because
I feel obligated too, because I feel an obligation, a
duty to try to do what I can to save
my country. But I will tell you if tomorrow America
(00:56):
was saved and fixed and we got everything worked out,
I would love to just do a history show every day.
I would. I feel obligated to talk about the fights
that do matter, and they do matter, So I'm going
to keep doing that a lot. But history is what
I love. If you're a new listener, I will do
this from time to time. You may love it, you
(01:18):
may turn off the radio. Doesn't matter. I'm still going
to keep doing it. I would just decide that I
want to talk about history for a while, and that's
what I'm about to do. All I know about inflation
numbers and everything else, and we'll get to a bunch
of that stuff next hour. But for now, we're going
to talk about Sola. Lucius Cornelius Sola. He finished his
(01:41):
life with one of the great great quotes of all time,
a quote I'm not going to give you right now.
You're gonna have to wait until the end for that one.
But first of all, who was Sola? What are we're
talking about here? Well, we have to set this up
and we have to go to Rome. This is pre
Jesus Rome. So there you go, Christian like that, this
(02:04):
is pre Jesus. No, seriously, we're talking just I don't
give out dates and specific things like that because it
ruins a story. Just take one hundred years before Christ.
It's right around that time. This is before Christ. Now
what's going on in Rome at the time? Well, remember Rome?
The Rome most people know, not you, but the norms.
If you were the norms mostly know the Rome that
(02:26):
was ruled by emperors. You ask people about Rome or Romans.
Don't think about a dictator like Julius Caesar or one
of the real monster types Colleguila Nero. That's what most
people think Rome is. But Rome was really one of
the only ones in the ancient world. It began as
a republic. In fact, they were dead set against any
(02:49):
kings or any dictators. They wanted their country to be
ruled by a group of men. Now, when I say republic,
you need to not picture America's system. It wasn't quite
that representative at all. There were classes, strict classes in
the society, the senate class, the night class. Okay, so
it's not as if this was just rom was just
(03:10):
free land of the free.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No, freedom is not free.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
No, no, no no. But it was a republic where
they did not have a king. Now, the Romans they
understood that every form of government doesn't suit every scenario.
So they understood, on occasion you kind of need a king.
You can't have a legislature debating this, so that you
got to have one guy picked the right guy, put
(03:35):
him in charge temporarily. Hey, you're a dictator, you run
the war. As soon as the war's over, you give
up your power. So they had that system in place,
but it was a republic and because of that and
the fact that they're fighting was excellent, their fighting style
was excellent. But for that, in a laundry list of reasons,
Rome began to grow. Rome began small, obviously, like all
(03:57):
nations do. It's just nothing, tiny village, and then they
began to grow and kick people's butts, and grow and
kick people's butts, and grow and kick people's butts. And
it's the butt kicking part we need to talk about specifically,
because here's what was happening in Rome. Rome was getting very,
(04:17):
very very wealthy as a nation. They were getting wealthy
because militarily they were just dominating people. And in the
ancient world, very much at this time, when you won
a war against another civilization, you would pillage that civilization.
(04:38):
Maybe you would just take it completely. Hey we won
the war, this is Rome now. But if you didn't
take it completely, forget about just stripping the treasury of everything.
They'd be taking the gold leafing off the wallpaper. You
would take all the men, women and children, and you
would use them as slaves. Slavery is insanely lucrative financially
(05:03):
and always has been, and it makes sense why it
would be right slavery is horrific. Yeah, you don't ever
want to be one, and frankly you should stand against
the practice, but you understand set aside the morality of it.
Of course, it would be profitable. Ever talked to a
business owner, maybe you are a business owner or a manager.
Have you ever looked at a profit loss sheet? We
(05:26):
call them p and ls profit loss sheets. You can
go look one up online. I'm sure there's a million
examples of them you'll look at. Well, you can look
and see how they're broken down. You want to know
what virtually every business owner business manager on the planet,
the costs. They're always trying to reduce labor costs. Now
you can yell and scream about that they don't want
(05:47):
to pay me. No, No, I get all that. I'm
not the one that takes the employer's side all the time.
But that is the big thing that's always dragging you down. Always.
What if? What if you could reduce those costs down
to zero. Well, that's what slaves do for you. I
don't have to pay you, I don't have to worry
about your complaints. No, you will go work in my
(06:08):
farmers field, and if not, I'll crucify you in front
of everybody. So that's how it worked. Slaves are big, big,
big money, and so Rome. As it began to conquer
and conquer and conquer, everyone in Roman society was prospering.
One of those rising tide raises all boats thing, think
nineteen hundred in America, right, everybody. Now, we're not all
(06:30):
the same, and we never will be all the same.
But everyone is benefiting from living in this free country
where money is pouring it and pouring it and pouring it
and pouring in. But slavery especially was beginning to kill
Rome from the inside out. The Roman leaders they stopped
falling in love with Rome and wanting what's best for Rome,
(06:54):
And as they drifted further and further away from their founding,
they started to fall in love more and more with
just each other and their bank account. And they started
to figure out, if we work together, we can make
even more money, we can gather even more power for ourselves.
And because we're pieces of crap who don't care about
(07:14):
the people anymore, we don't have to be burdened by
their concerns. None of this sounds familiar, does it? And
so when they won these wars, they would hoover up
gobs of slaves, gobs thousands and thousands and thousands and
thousands of slaves, and the slaves would all be purchased
by the rich guys, by the richest guys, the senators,
(07:35):
to everyone else. As soon as you won a war,
you would know it's slave auction time, baby, and you
would go down. I want that man, that woman, that kid,
that this, And then you go down, just like you're
at Walmart picking out toilet paper. If you're a rich guy,
you'd go down and start buying slaves. Well, what would
it happen? What would happen in a society if they
(07:55):
started importing people from foreign lands in math, Yes, because
they could pay them less money. Not that you, an
American citizen, would have any relation to that at all.
Do I need to mention that over the last three
and a half years, we have a net positive by
the million for jobs for immigrants and a net negative
(08:16):
for American citizens. They were going through this exact same
thing in Rome at the time, mass slaves coming in.
And so if you're a Roman rich guy, you own
a big plantation, you've had two hundred employees forever, Well,
that's two hundred men with families, wives, kids, They support them,
they feed them everything else. And you've had to pay
(08:36):
these guys to work on your plantation, grow my graves,
feed my cattle, do my this and that. And then
you show up one day and say, hey, all two
hundred w step on up. Yeah, you're all fired. You see,
we just won a war with Carthage, and I have
two hundred guys who will never complain about their wages.
They are slaves. Bye bye, you're all unemployed now. And
(08:57):
this was happening all over the place in Rome, where
middle class Romans were being smashed by the corruption of
the elites in society, by their mass import of slaves.
And here's the thing, and you can pay attention to
this in America today. When you have significant numbers of
(09:19):
people upset about something, there will be a response. There's
an old saying, a great saying. I believe it was
somebody who worked for Nixon if I remember right. But
there's an old great saying, and it's so true about
so many things in life. And the saying goes like this,
(09:40):
things that cannot go on will not go on. You
cannot have a nation full of citizens who are being
smashed by the elites in their society and think there
will never be a response. There began a political movement
in Rome. Know it, I would know it. We would
(10:01):
call it a populist movement. They weren't called that. They
were called popular ras though, so you know, I don't
have to use your imagination. The popular as were the populace?
Who were they? What did they want? And this is
going to come back to slah a story about Roman history.
Some done talking politics for a little while. It's too
depressing before we get to that. You know what's wild
(10:22):
about this time? One hundred years before Christ? Think about this,
Think how crazy this is. It's the year twenty twenty four.
And if I were to hand you right now a
sack of gold coins from Oxford Gold, and I put
you in a time machine and I sent you back
one hundred years before Christ, and you walked into Rome itself.
It's just you, the close on your back and a
(10:43):
sack of gold coins that you could get anything you wanted.
You need. Lodging, no problem, we take gold here. Food,
no problem, Services, no problem. You plug the toilet, we
can get you a plumber. Give us some gold coins.
The lasting power of precious medals tells you all you
need to know. I could give you that same sack
(11:03):
of coins and send you two thousand years in the future,
and you'll still have solid ground long after America is
dead and gone. That's what buying precious metals is about.
That kind of reliability. Call Oxford Gold Group and let
them send you some. They'll get it in your retirement,
they'll get some in your physical Possessiony'll mail it right
(11:25):
to your home. You don't need a bank vault. They're
not gold bars. Do something that will last. Eight three
three gold, all right, eight three three nine nine five gold.
We'll be back.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Miss something. There's a podcast, get it on demand wherever
podcasts are found, The Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It is The Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Reminding
you you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow
dot com. This is formerly a political show, but now
it's a history show for this hour, just because I'm
done talking about politics for an hour and we're talking
about Salah. Just gave a little background on the populist
movement in Rome at the time, so on and so forth.
(12:08):
So a populist movement in Rome began to rise in
case you're just now joining us, because the elites of
that society lost touch with their duty and honor, and
they begin to wipe out the middle class with the
mass import of slave labor from foreign lands. None of
that sounds familiar. It could ever happen here, right anyway,
(12:29):
So this POPULARI movement started to rise. Now I'm going
to pronounce the opposite party in a weird way because
I've listened to five different ways to pronounce it. Optimate
is how I have always pronounced it. But then I've
heard optimate opt to. You have the populace and you
(12:49):
have the optimates. I'm just going to call them optimates
to make it easy. That's not how you say it.
I'm sure who were the optimates? Well, they were the elite,
These were the senators. These were the ones who wanted
their corrupt system to remain in place. The populace. They
wanted the system blown up. The system was not treating
(13:10):
the people. Right now, I need to clarify something before
we get to Salah, because many of you will love Sala.
When I'm telling this story, you will hate him. Remember,
there weren't necessarily good guys and bad guys. The way
I just set up the story. I made the optimates
sound really, really bad, and they were really bad. I'm
not saying they weren't. But it's not as if the
populace were just salt of the earth people who just
(13:32):
wanted some bread and water. Out there. There were a
lot of dirtballs. There were a lot of powerful people
who thought they could gain more power for themselves by
playing off the anger of the people. It's an ugly situation.
Very few times in history are all the good guys
on this side and all the bad guys are on
that side. And this time is no different. All right, whatever,
(13:53):
the populists are fighting the elites. That's it. Now. That
brings us to a man named Sulah. Sallah grew up
poor and in Roman society. One of the best ways
to rise was the military. In fact, whether you were
poor or elite, you almost had to have military service
(14:15):
as part of your resume. I shouldn't even say almost.
I've never found an elite Roman. I'm sure they exist.
I have all kinds of experts who listened to the
show who will correct me, but I've never heard of
an elite Roman that didn't have military service. That's just
something that required at some point in time. And I
don't mean sitting in the rear with the gear A. Yeah,
I was, I was in the I was in the
(14:37):
I was scrambling eggs for thirty five seconds in California.
Thank me for my service. It was none of that.
It was no, no, no, no. You go strap it on
and you go stab people or get stabbed yourself. Remember
the Romans lost a third of the Senate in one
battle when Hannibal wiped them out the senators themselves. Imagine
(14:57):
a country like that where senators got up in, strapped
it on, and went and died with everyone else. So
military service was required, and it was a way you
could advance in society, and it was a way you
could make money, make a name for yourself. And Slah
shows promise early on. It's very obvious to everyone around
(15:17):
him early on that he's a capable human being. Now
pause on Sola for a moment, because we cannot tell
the story of Salah without telling a bit of the
story of a Roman that everyone should know. Everyone knows
the name Julius Caesar, and I'm a Julius Caesar fan,
but everyone should also know the name Gius Marius. Gius Marius.
(15:41):
He was never a dictator, so that's probably why he came.
He was one of the earlier Roman lions, but he
was one of these generals who was credited with saving Rome.
At one point in time, these gigantic Germanic tribes were
wiping out entire Roman armies, and they looked like they
(16:01):
were gonna wipe out Rome itself, and they probably would
have until this dude named Gius Marius raises an army
and goes up there, outnumbered and beats the crap out
of them. Rome probably only existed at this time because
of Gius Marius. Every single Roman at this time, every
(16:22):
Roman would have known the name Gius Marius in the
exact same way every single American knows the name George Washington.
Even the dumbest human being in this society, even Kamala
Harris knows who George Washington is. Everyone would have known
Gius Marius. He's Gias Marius. Look, you want to know
(16:43):
how big this guy was. Just at the end of
his life, Roman troops were sent to kill him, and
he said, are you going to strike down Gius Marius.
An assassin on orders was sent into the house where
Marius was as an all man to kill him, and
Guius Marius sits up and says, are you really gonna
(17:03):
kill gius Marius? And the guy says, man, no, I
freaking can't, and he turning he left. That's who That's
how much of a legend Gius Marius was at the time.
All right, now, there was something I'm not gonna go
into the details of this called the Jigirthean war. Don't
worry about the names, and don't ever worry about stress
(17:24):
about remembering the names when we go over these things.
But it was against I know you're gonna find this
shocking against a man named Jigirtha. Jagirtha was one of
these warrior kings, kind of a horseback guy in a movie.
He'd be he'd be an outlaw type and you would
like him, honestly, you would like him. He sounds like
(17:45):
one of these rebels, super tough, super smart, and he
squares off against the Romans. The Romans send down Guias Marius.
Because Jigurtha keeps beating up Roman generals and avoiding Roman generals.
He keeps escaping to the mountains. They can't find him
it's starting to get embarrassing for Rome, and so Rome,
(18:06):
as they often did, they turned to Guius Marius and
then said, hey, can you can you get an army
and go down there and handle this situation. This is embarrassing.
We need to stop this, and Guius Marius does and
he brings along with him a young officer named Lucius
Cornelius Sulla, and I will continue our story in a moment.
Before I continue that story, let's do something really quickly.
(18:29):
We we honored the fall and again at the beginning
of the show. I hate how often we have to
do it, but that's part of life. And you know,
we honor him on the show. We play taps for him,
we pray for him, and that stuff doesn't matter. I
won't wan to act like it doesn't. But then what happens.
What happens to the families who are left behind? That
(18:49):
doesn't It doesn't bring dad back, does It doesn't bring
your husband back, It doesn't fill that hole in your life.
We move on and we talk about issues and history
and other things. Tunnel to Towers is there, and they
don't move on. Tunnel to Towers. They've made it their
mission in life to help these gold star families, they're
(19:11):
paying off their mortgages to ease that burden for them,
fallen first responder families, homeless veterans, catastrophically injured veterans. They're
building them smart homes. You're eleven dollars a month. That's
where it goes. And go look up Tunnel to Towers.
When you give to Tunnel to Towers, it goes where
you want it to go. That's unheard of in the
charity world. Go to tthumber two t dot org sign
(19:36):
up to give eleven bucks a month t twot dot org.
We'll be back.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
What's the feeling a little stocky? Follow like and subscribe
on social at Jesse kellydc.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Don't forget.
If you miss any part of the show, you can
download it on iHeart, Spotify, I too. Uns Now we're
getting back to history. In case you're just joining us,
We're not doing politics right now. I'm talking history, and
in fact I'm just getting into the meat of it,
so it still might be Admit, I can't promise you.
I can't promise you it won't last the rest of
(20:12):
the show because I feel like it. Look, we had
bad primary results, the inflation numbers are bad. We're debating
on CNN. I don't want to talk about that stuff
right now. So we're talking history, talking about Solah and
the Romans and who he was. All right, So the
Jigurthian War, this guy Jagirthia is given the Romans nightmares.
They they can't get their hands on him. He's so elusive.
(20:35):
It's one of these crafty devils. And they send the Romans,
send gius Marius down there to get him, and gius
Marius whatever. I won't go into the details of it,
but eventually some hot shot young officer under gius Marius
named Sullah comes up with what's basically a covert op
(20:58):
to pretty much go undercover, recruit an asset. It's a
cool little story and capture Jagirtha, and Sulah pulls it off.
Sala actually manages to capture Jagutha, like I said, a
very very capable man. But Sala wasn't in charge. Let's
(21:21):
pause on this for a moment. There's something about military
things that we should always keep in mind, especially as
we read history, both our history, American history, world history, whatever.
The history may be. So often, pretty much every single time,
when you discuss a battle, we discuss the commander of
(21:44):
each side, and we say something like MacArthur fought this
other general. We act as if it was their war.
And I understand why we do that. It simplifies things,
and he is the man in charge, therefore he's the
most important one. I understand and why we do that.
But so many times throughout history there have been generals, admirals,
(22:07):
whoever they may be. They didn't come up with the
genius battle plan that won them the battle on that day.
They didn't come up with this this strategy to hide
this group in ambush. So many times there was some lieutenant,
some sergeants, somebody underneath him and said, hey, sir, you
know what, there's some trees over there. We could hide
(22:27):
a couple thousand dudes in there and ambush them from
behind and win. And the general says, yeah, that sounds good,
and he stashes the troops there and they ambush him,
and they come from behind and they win. And what
does everyone say after that? Look at this genius general man.
He really outfoxed them. It's just how it goes. I'm
not even complaining about it. That's how history goes. The
(22:48):
guy who's in charge, they always talk about him like
he was the one who won it. We do it,
I do it. The same situation happened here to Sullah Guius.
Marius gets back to Rome after Sala's craftiness got Jagirtha.
But Sala wasn't in charge. Marius was in charge, and
Marius took all the credit for it, and the Romans
(23:10):
were more than happy to give Marius all the credit
for it. Well, now for a guy like Sala, that's
just it's just too much for him. So now they're
mortal enemies. Mortal enemies. That brings us to something that
is a horrible affair. And honestly, we could do a
totally separate history on this sometime. I'm not going to
do it today. Something broke out in Rome called the
(23:34):
Social War, the social war, and here's what it was,
and actually this is going to apply to us today too.
To be a Roman citizen, it was something in these
times that was sought after. You wanted to be a
Roman citizen. If you were a Roman citizen, if you
(23:57):
were officially a citizen, then you got to participate in elections.
You gotta say you had protections, including protections when you
went abroad. That citizenship of Rome thing was almost to
get out of jail free card because no other nation
wanted to make Rome mad, and Rome would make you
(24:17):
pay for that. Remember that famous story in the Bible
when Paul he's sitting there getting whipped and they're yelling
at him, and he says to the guy, are you
comfortable doing this to a Roman citizen? You know I'm
a Roman citizen, right, and the guy almost poops his pants.
I didn't know. Could we get in a blanket? I'm sorry, Paul.
Why you could go anywhere in the world and hold
up your Roman citizen card and they would know, don't
(24:40):
tangle with this guy, or you'll have a Roman army
at your door. You wanted to be a Roman citizen. Well,
Rome they had been. Remember it started out as Rome,
and then they began to conquer the Roman peninsula of
the Italian boot as you would know it today. Well,
these were separate society. It was sam Knights, and there
(25:02):
was whatever, all kinds of different Italian societies, not Roman
but Italian, and Rome began to conquer all of them.
And Rome had conquered all them by this time, and
these societies were living under Roman rule, and these societies
were forced to provide Rome with troops whenever Rome wanted them. Hey,
ten thousand of your young men tomorrow, bring them here.
(25:24):
But they weren't given citizenship, and they were starting to
chafe under it, and a war broke out. They wanted citizenship.
Now let's talk about the two separate parties right now,
as it comes to that. The populaces in Rome, the popularees,
they wanted these other cities to get their Roman citizenship.
(25:46):
The elites, the optimates, for lack of better way to
put it, they did not. They were dead set against it.
This war breaks out, cities rebelled all over the place.
It was a law brutally bloody affair. And unlike most
Roman affairs, it wasn't Roman armies going out and curb
(26:08):
stomping these things and winning every time. Because remember these
societies were trained by Romans, equipped by Romans. They were
by all accounts Romans themselves. So it was Romans squaring
off against Romans. Salah gets involved in this thing. He's
fighting tooth and nail in this thing, and in the
end Rome has to give citizenship to all of these citizens.
(26:34):
It's called the social war. It was anything but social. Okay,
Now let's talk about Mithridates, another guy throughout history who's
so fascinating. This is amazing. Mithridates is a king, He's
running a kingdom called Pontus, and Pontus they're not bending
(26:55):
the need to Rome like everyone else is at this time.
In fact, Mithridates he's more than just throwing shade at Rome.
He's killing Romans. He's attacking Romans. Rome's not going to
stand for this. Sala This is about eighty eight BC.
Sala Is made console, he's made president, and sala Is
(27:19):
so well regarded militarily at this time that eventually, with
this Mithridates thing, they decide they're going to put Salah
in charge of the army that will go and defeat Mithridates.
Now pause. We have a tendency when we hear things
(27:39):
like this to think about this, like we put our
modern shoes on when we think about this. So if
it was me getting called up into the Marines to
go fight in Afghanistan, you would probably think and I
would think, oh, well, that that sucks. I mean, that's horrible.
(28:00):
The only thing worse than the food is to pay
and the fact you might get shot in the face.
I don't I don't want to go. I don't want
to fight anymore. My fighting days are done. I'm forty
two now, I got a back brace on. I don't
want to do that. But that's how we looked at it.
For generals and their troops back then, warfare was not
something they shied away from in Rome because of the
(28:23):
insane money that would come into your coffers when you
fought a war. If you were a Roman, just a
Roman regular troop or a Roman general, you wanted to
go fight a war, and you wanted to go fight
a big one. Yeah, you might die, but if you didn't,
at the end of it, you were crazy rich because
(28:45):
you were allowed to loot, and the Roman generals would
pay off their troops with slaves and money. You wanted it,
and the Romans decided Slah gets to go fight this Ah.
But then guyas Marius steps in and I'll tell you
that story. I'll try to finish this up next, no promises,
(29:05):
I might not. I ain't worried about it. Now. What
the Romans did was they had to send men to
go tell Slah the news that must be frustrating. I
bet those men the entire way we're sitting there thinking
to themselves, if only I had a pure Talk phone.
(29:26):
What Chris, pure Talk is on this grete five G network.
I don't want to have to ride all this way.
It's hot, I'm thirsty. I know the call won't get dropped.
In fact, I can just text him because pure Talk's
on the same five G network as the big guys.
Pure Talk also doesn't fund blatant open communism like the
(29:46):
big guys do. Why do you have AT and T,
Verizon T Mobile? These companies hate your guts, they hate
your values. Today is today. Switch to pure Talk. Pick
up your phone, Dial pound two five zero and switch
to Puretalk. You dial pound two five zero, You say
(30:07):
Jesse Kelly. Dial pound two five zero, say Jesse Kelly.
Take ten minutes on the phone, Switch to Puretalk, and
we'll be back to do more history. Hang on what.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Feeling a little stocky? Follow like and subscribe on social
at Jesse Kelly's show.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show doing an hour of history.
Maybe more than an hour of history. I'm not totally
sure I'm gonna get this whole thing wrapped up in
the next ten minutes, so it may bleed over into
hour three and that's just too bad. If you're listening
to the show, you love it. You want to send
us love, hey, death threats, ask doctor Jesse questions for Friday.
You can email us anything you want. They're always welcome
(30:45):
Jesse at jesse kellyshow dot com. All right, all right, now,
I'm not going to cover everything I've already covered. Just
know that we're doing a history story about Lucius Cornelia
Sulla and sala Is about to get command of a fighting,
a fighting force, a Roman fighting force. Who's going to
go fight this guy Mithridates, Mithridates of Pontus. But Gius
(31:09):
Marius is still around, and remember him and Solah they're
mortal enemies, and Gius Marius is a populist, Mithridates is
one of the elites. They are against each other in
every possible way. Sullah he wants this military command. He
wants it badly. Of course, he would want it really,
(31:31):
really badly. It would be lucrative for his reputation, for
his bank account. His men want it really badly. Salah
has already found out he's going to get it. He's
already told his men. They are all excited about it.
This is a good thing. But gius Marius is back
in Rome and he's politicking. And gius Marius twists enough arms,
(31:53):
pours enough honey into enough ears that he gets the
command of the Salah expedition and the Mithridates expedition. I
should say, he gets it taken away from Salah. This
is Salah's hour of glory, where he gets to command
and army and go conquer somebody. They send men to
(32:15):
Sala's camp to inform him that he has his command
now revoked. Hey, Salah, too bad, so sad you're no
longer allowed to lead the Mithridates campaign. Well, you want
to know how well that was received. Salah's men took
(32:35):
the messengers and stoned them to death. And then Salah
rallies his men and says, well, men, they want to
take this away from us. We can either let them,
or we can march on Rome and make them make
(32:56):
them do what we want. Now. I need to pause
right now because there are a couple of things I
need to say that we've kind of glossed over. You know,
I told you the populace were rising and there was
this populist movement rising, and how people, when there's enough
people angry about something, that will eventually start to get reforms.
There were a bunch of populous reforms that had already
(33:17):
been put into place, that were being put into place
to try to calm down the anger of the people,
to soothe their anger, tell them they're going to have
more reputation, the elites aren't going to be quite as evil.
So these reforms had already gone into place, all right,
So there's that. There's also this little thing Rome. Rome
(33:39):
didn't have a barracks with an army in it. That's
how I would picture it. Maybe you're different, but whenever
I picture a powerful ancient city, I always pictured well,
surely they've got an army laying around, right. That was
way against the law in Rome. You were not allowed
to have an army within the Rome when borders at all,
(34:01):
that is not allowed. Well, Salah gets his men rallied
up and he says to them, fellas, let's go to Rome.
And his men say absolutely, let's go to Rome. And
Sala marches on Rome. Now you know how I said,
Marius was there. He was the one who got Sala's
(34:22):
command taken away. When they all found out Sala was
marching on Rome, they freaked out. That had never been
done before. Wait a minute, he's what he is?
Speaker 1 (34:31):
That mad?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
He's coming here. What do we have? Do we have
anything that can fight him? Wait, we don't even have
an army. So Marius fled. Salah marches into Rome. He
marches into Rome with his army and he begins to
do some reforms. What kind of reforms. Well, he's cleaning
(34:55):
up a lot of this populos. Scrap a little thing here,
little thing there. He goes and tweaked some things, and
then he tells him, Okay, I'm glad I got you
all straightened out. If it's okay with you, I'm gonna
go on my military campaign now, and I'm gonna go
fight anyone else. How many complaints about that, and as
you can imagine, all the Romans were all sounds good,
(35:16):
say Salah, I just want to make sure you guys
have everything you need your Do you have your emergency
three month food kit from my patriots supply?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yet?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
What, Chris, I didn't add that into the story. That's
probably what they said. I mean, I'm not sure if
my patriots Supply was around one hundred years before Christ.
But they're such a great company, I assume so they have,
after all, helped millions of Americans already get prepared with food,
emergency food. How much non perishable food do you have
(35:46):
in your home? Does everyone in your home have the
ability to eat for three months if things go bad?
And things do go bad, gosh. I talked to Victor
Davis Hanson today. He wrote this new book, and I
mean there was Look, you need emergency food, Okay, everyone does.
My Patriots Supply has their three month emergency food kits
(36:09):
two hundred dollars off with free shipping. Right now, when
you go to prepare with Jesse Kelly dot com. Prepare
with Jesse Kelly dot com. That's where you go get
your emergency three month food kit. You don't have to
go crazy, you don't have to get thirty years worth,
get three months, all right, Prepare with Jesse Kelly dot com.
(36:32):
Now back to Salah. Sla marches off to war, and
Sala is fighting his war and he's doing well. But
something happens when SLA's gone. Remember Sla marched in with
his army, got a few reforms done, and then he left,
he was off to war. And remember this is the
ancient world. He's not an eight hour plane ride away.
(36:53):
There aren't trains, there aren't automobiles. When you're marching off,
you're gone for a long time. As soon as Sala leaves,
Gius Marius comes right back into Rome and essentially takes
Rome over for the populace. Sala had put a bunch
of his men in place. Gius Marius starts to slaughter them.
(37:15):
He starts to kill Sala's men that were in place,
and starts to put in his populous government where he's
in charge. Now, that brings me to something that's uncomfortable
to talk about it, but we talk about it all
the time, especially because Joe Biden's the president. Age at
this time, Saala, he's still a man very much in
(37:38):
his thinking and fighting prime. Probably forties fifties, I could
look it up and tell you exactly, but he's very
much in his fighting prime. Marius is an old man
by now, and we don't know exactly what his condition was,
but we know from a lot of the things that
they've written down he was having things like seizures. He's look,
(38:01):
he might have had dementia, right, We don't know. He's
on the back end, all right. So when I say
Gius Marius from now on, I don't want you to
picture the Guius Marius that went up and took on
a gigantic army of Germans and defeated them all, because
he's Gias Marius, and he's the man. This is look
life happens. We get old, this is old broken down
(38:25):
Gius Marius, but he's not too broken down to kill
Sala's men. Sala, off fighting a war, of course, gets
worried about what's happening in Rome, and Sala says, oh no.
So Sala quickly gets with Mithridates and he makes peace
because Salah has a different war to fight. We will
(38:46):
wrap up our history story and go back to politics
next
This is a Jesse Kelly show.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on Ay Wednesday, another
hour of the Jesse Kelly Show. And here's what you
can expect for this hour. I will tell you normally
this is more of a political talk show. Of course.
Now clearly we drive the show off the rails and
top food and life and the fact that I'm wearing
a back brace today and other embarrassing things. And obviously
(00:36):
we do talk quite a bit of history on the
show because I am a history freak. I love it.
I talk about politics and power and anti communism because
I feel obligated too, because I feel an obligation, a
duty to try to do what I can to save
my country. But I will tell you if tomorrow America
(00:56):
was saved and fixed and we got everything worked out,
I would love to just do a history show every day.
I would. I feel obligated to talk about the fights
that do matter, and they do matter, So I'm going
to keep doing that a lot. But history is what
I love. If you're a new listener, I will do
this from time to time. You may love it, you
(01:18):
may turn off the radio. Doesn't matter. I'm still going
to keep doing it. I would just decide that I
want to talk about history for a while, and that's
what I'm about to do. All I know about inflation
numbers and everything else, and we'll get to a bunch
of that stuff next hour. But for now, we're going
to talk about Sola. Lucius Cornelius Sola. He finished his
(01:41):
life with one of the great great quotes of all time,
a quote I'm not going to give you right now.
You're gonna have to wait until the end for that one.
But first of all, who was Sola? What are we're
talking about here? Well, we have to set this up
and we have to go to Rome. This is pre
Jesus Rome. So there you go, Christian like that, this
(02:04):
is pre Jesus. No, seriously, we're talking just I don't
give out dates and specific things like that because it
ruins a story. Just take one hundred years before Christ.
It's right around that time. This is before Christ. Now
what's going on in Rome at the time? Well, remember Rome?
The Rome most people know, not you, but the norms.
If you were the norms mostly know the Rome that
(02:26):
was ruled by emperors. You ask people about Rome or Romans.
Don't think about a dictator like Julius Caesar or one
of the real monster types Colleguila Nero. That's what most
people think Rome is. But Rome was really one of
the only ones in the ancient world. It began as
a republic. In fact, they were dead set against any
(02:49):
kings or any dictators. They wanted their country to be
ruled by a group of men. Now, when I say republic,
you need to not picture America's system. It wasn't quite
that representative at all. There were classes, strict classes in
the society, the senate class, the night class. Okay, so
it's not as if this was just rom was just
(03:10):
free land of the free.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No, freedom is not free.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
No, no, no no. But it was a republic where
they did not have a king. Now, the Romans they
understood that every form of government doesn't suit every scenario.
So they understood, on occasion you kind of need a king.
You can't have a legislature debating this, so that you
got to have one guy picked the right guy, put
(03:35):
him in charge temporarily. Hey, you're a dictator, you run
the war. As soon as the war's over, you give
up your power. So they had that system in place,
but it was a republic and because of that and
the fact that they're fighting was excellent, their fighting style
was excellent. But for that, in a laundry list of reasons,
Rome began to grow. Rome began small, obviously, like all
(03:57):
nations do. It's just nothing, tiny village, and then they
began to grow and kick people's butts, and grow and
kick people's butts, and grow and kick people's butts. And
it's the butt kicking part we need to talk about specifically,
because here's what was happening in Rome. Rome was getting very,
(04:17):
very very wealthy as a nation. They were getting wealthy
because militarily they were just dominating people. And in the
ancient world, very much at this time, when you won
a war against another civilization, you would pillage that civilization.
(04:38):
Maybe you would just take it completely. Hey we won
the war, this is Rome now. But if you didn't
take it completely, forget about just stripping the treasury of everything.
They'd be taking the gold leafing off the wallpaper. You
would take all the men, women and children, and you
would use them as slaves. Slavery is insanely lucrative financially
(05:03):
and always has been, and it makes sense why it
would be right slavery is horrific. Yeah, you don't ever
want to be one, and frankly you should stand against
the practice, but you understand set aside the morality of it.
Of course, it would be profitable. Ever talked to a
business owner, maybe you are a business owner or a manager.
Have you ever looked at a profit loss sheet? We
(05:26):
call them p and ls profit loss sheets. You can
go look one up online. I'm sure there's a million
examples of them you'll look at. Well, you can look
and see how they're broken down. You want to know
what virtually every business owner business manager on the planet,
the costs. They're always trying to reduce labor costs. Now
you can yell and scream about that they don't want
(05:47):
to pay me. No, No, I get all that. I'm
not the one that takes the employer's side all the time.
But that is the big thing that's always dragging you down. Always.
What if? What if you could reduce those costs down
to zero. Well, that's what slaves do for you. I
don't have to pay you, I don't have to worry
about your complaints. No, you will go work in my
(06:08):
farmers field, and if not, I'll crucify you in front
of everybody. So that's how it worked. Slaves are big, big,
big money, and so Rome. As it began to conquer
and conquer and conquer, everyone in Roman society was prospering.
One of those rising tide raises all boats thing, think
nineteen hundred in America, right, everybody. Now, we're not all
(06:30):
the same, and we never will be all the same.
But everyone is benefiting from living in this free country
where money is pouring it and pouring it and pouring it
and pouring in. But slavery especially was beginning to kill
Rome from the inside out. The Roman leaders they stopped
falling in love with Rome and wanting what's best for Rome,
(06:54):
And as they drifted further and further away from their founding,
they started to fall in love more and more with
just each other and their bank account. And they started
to figure out, if we work together, we can make
even more money, we can gather even more power for ourselves.
And because we're pieces of crap who don't care about
(07:14):
the people anymore, we don't have to be burdened by
their concerns. None of this sounds familiar, does it? And
so when they won these wars, they would hoover up
gobs of slaves, gobs thousands and thousands and thousands and
thousands of slaves, and the slaves would all be purchased
by the rich guys, by the richest guys, the senators,
(07:35):
to everyone else. As soon as you won a war,
you would know it's slave auction time, baby, and you
would go down. I want that man, that woman, that kid,
that this, And then you go down, just like you're
at Walmart picking out toilet paper. If you're a rich guy,
you'd go down and start buying slaves. Well, what would
it happen? What would happen in a society if they
(07:55):
started importing people from foreign lands in math, Yes, because
they could pay them less money. Not that you, an
American citizen, would have any relation to that at all.
Do I need to mention that over the last three
and a half years, we have a net positive by
the million for jobs for immigrants and a net negative
(08:16):
for American citizens. They were going through this exact same
thing in Rome at the time, mass slaves coming in.
And so if you're a Roman rich guy, you own
a big plantation, you've had two hundred employees forever, Well,
that's two hundred men with families, wives, kids, They support them,
they feed them everything else. And you've had to pay
(08:36):
these guys to work on your plantation, grow my graves,
feed my cattle, do my this and that. And then
you show up one day and say, hey, all two
hundred w step on up. Yeah, you're all fired. You see,
we just won a war with Carthage, and I have
two hundred guys who will never complain about their wages.
They are slaves. Bye bye, you're all unemployed now. And
(08:57):
this was happening all over the place in Rome, where
middle class Romans were being smashed by the corruption of
the elites in society, by their mass import of slaves.
And here's the thing, and you can pay attention to
this in America today. When you have significant numbers of
(09:19):
people upset about something, there will be a response. There's
an old saying, a great saying. I believe it was
somebody who worked for Nixon if I remember right. But
there's an old great saying, and it's so true about
so many things in life. And the saying goes like this,
(09:40):
things that cannot go on will not go on. You
cannot have a nation full of citizens who are being
smashed by the elites in their society and think there
will never be a response. There began a political movement
in Rome. Know it, I would know it. We would
(10:01):
call it a populist movement. They weren't called that. They
were called popular ras though, so you know, I don't
have to use your imagination. The popular as were the populace?
Who were they? What did they want? And this is
going to come back to slah a story about Roman history.
Some done talking politics for a little while. It's too
depressing before we get to that. You know what's wild
(10:22):
about this time? One hundred years before Christ? Think about this,
Think how crazy this is. It's the year twenty twenty four.
And if I were to hand you right now a
sack of gold coins from Oxford Gold, and I put
you in a time machine and I sent you back
one hundred years before Christ, and you walked into Rome itself.
It's just you, the close on your back and a
(10:43):
sack of gold coins that you could get anything you wanted.
You need. Lodging, no problem, we take gold here. Food,
no problem, Services, no problem. You plug the toilet, we
can get you a plumber. Give us some gold coins.
The lasting power of precious medals tells you all you
need to know. I could give you that same sack
(11:03):
of coins and send you two thousand years in the future,
and you'll still have solid ground long after America is
dead and gone. That's what buying precious metals is about.
That kind of reliability. Call Oxford Gold Group and let
them send you some. They'll get it in your retirement,
they'll get some in your physical Possessiony'll mail it right
(11:25):
to your home. You don't need a bank vault. They're
not gold bars. Do something that will last. Eight three
three gold, all right, eight three three nine nine five gold.
We'll be back.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Miss something. There's a podcast, get it on demand wherever
podcasts are found, The Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It is The Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Reminding
you you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow
dot com. This is formerly a political show, but now
it's a history show for this hour, just because I'm
done talking about politics for an hour and we're talking
about Salah. Just gave a little background on the populist
movement in Rome at the time, so on and so forth.
(12:08):
So a populist movement in Rome began to rise in
case you're just now joining us, because the elites of
that society lost touch with their duty and honor, and
they begin to wipe out the middle class with the
mass import of slave labor from foreign lands. None of
that sounds familiar. It could ever happen here, right anyway,
(12:29):
So this POPULARI movement started to rise. Now I'm going
to pronounce the opposite party in a weird way because
I've listened to five different ways to pronounce it. Optimate
is how I have always pronounced it. But then I've
heard optimate opt to. You have the populace and you
(12:49):
have the optimates. I'm just going to call them optimates
to make it easy. That's not how you say it.
I'm sure who were the optimates? Well, they were the elite,
These were the senators. These were the ones who wanted
their corrupt system to remain in place. The populace. They
wanted the system blown up. The system was not treating
(13:10):
the people. Right now, I need to clarify something before
we get to Salah, because many of you will love Sala.
When I'm telling this story, you will hate him. Remember,
there weren't necessarily good guys and bad guys. The way
I just set up the story. I made the optimates
sound really, really bad, and they were really bad. I'm
not saying they weren't. But it's not as if the
populace were just salt of the earth people who just
(13:32):
wanted some bread and water. Out there. There were a
lot of dirtballs. There were a lot of powerful people
who thought they could gain more power for themselves by
playing off the anger of the people. It's an ugly situation.
Very few times in history are all the good guys
on this side and all the bad guys are on
that side. And this time is no different. All right, whatever,
(13:53):
the populists are fighting the elites. That's it. Now. That
brings us to a man named Sulah. Sallah grew up
poor and in Roman society. One of the best ways
to rise was the military. In fact, whether you were
poor or elite, you almost had to have military service
(14:15):
as part of your resume. I shouldn't even say almost.
I've never found an elite Roman. I'm sure they exist.
I have all kinds of experts who listened to the
show who will correct me, but I've never heard of
an elite Roman that didn't have military service. That's just
something that required at some point in time. And I
don't mean sitting in the rear with the gear A. Yeah,
I was, I was in the I was in the
(14:37):
I was scrambling eggs for thirty five seconds in California.
Thank me for my service. It was none of that.
It was no, no, no, no. You go strap it on
and you go stab people or get stabbed yourself. Remember
the Romans lost a third of the Senate in one
battle when Hannibal wiped them out the senators themselves. Imagine
(14:57):
a country like that where senators got up in, strapped
it on, and went and died with everyone else. So
military service was required, and it was a way you
could advance in society, and it was a way you
could make money, make a name for yourself. And Slah
shows promise early on. It's very obvious to everyone around
(15:17):
him early on that he's a capable human being. Now
pause on Sola for a moment, because we cannot tell
the story of Salah without telling a bit of the
story of a Roman that everyone should know. Everyone knows
the name Julius Caesar, and I'm a Julius Caesar fan,
but everyone should also know the name Gius Marius. Gius Marius.
(15:41):
He was never a dictator, so that's probably why he came.
He was one of the earlier Roman lions, but he
was one of these generals who was credited with saving Rome.
At one point in time, these gigantic Germanic tribes were
wiping out entire Roman armies, and they looked like they
(16:01):
were gonna wipe out Rome itself, and they probably would
have until this dude named Gius Marius raises an army
and goes up there, outnumbered and beats the crap out
of them. Rome probably only existed at this time because
of Gius Marius. Every single Roman at this time, every
(16:22):
Roman would have known the name Gius Marius in the
exact same way every single American knows the name George Washington.
Even the dumbest human being in this society, even Kamala
Harris knows who George Washington is. Everyone would have known
Gius Marius. He's Gias Marius. Look, you want to know
(16:43):
how big this guy was. Just at the end of
his life, Roman troops were sent to kill him, and
he said, are you going to strike down Gius Marius.
An assassin on orders was sent into the house where
Marius was as an all man to kill him, and
Guius Marius sits up and says, are you really gonna
(17:03):
kill gius Marius? And the guy says, man, no, I
freaking can't, and he turning he left. That's who That's
how much of a legend Gius Marius was at the time.
All right, now, there was something I'm not gonna go
into the details of this called the Jigirthean war. Don't
worry about the names, and don't ever worry about stress
(17:24):
about remembering the names when we go over these things.
But it was against I know you're gonna find this
shocking against a man named Jigirtha. Jagirtha was one of
these warrior kings, kind of a horseback guy in a movie.
He'd be he'd be an outlaw type and you would
like him, honestly, you would like him. He sounds like
(17:45):
one of these rebels, super tough, super smart, and he
squares off against the Romans. The Romans send down Guias Marius.
Because Jigurtha keeps beating up Roman generals and avoiding Roman generals.
He keeps escaping to the mountains. They can't find him
it's starting to get embarrassing for Rome, and so Rome,
(18:06):
as they often did, they turned to Guius Marius and
then said, hey, can you can you get an army
and go down there and handle this situation. This is embarrassing.
We need to stop this, and Guius Marius does and
he brings along with him a young officer named Lucius
Cornelius Sulla, and I will continue our story in a moment.
Before I continue that story, let's do something really quickly.
(18:29):
We we honored the fall and again at the beginning
of the show. I hate how often we have to
do it, but that's part of life. And you know,
we honor him on the show. We play taps for him,
we pray for him, and that stuff doesn't matter. I
won't wan to act like it doesn't. But then what happens.
What happens to the families who are left behind? That
(18:49):
doesn't It doesn't bring dad back, does It doesn't bring
your husband back, It doesn't fill that hole in your life.
We move on and we talk about issues and history
and other things. Tunnel to Towers is there, and they
don't move on. Tunnel to Towers. They've made it their
mission in life to help these gold star families, they're
(19:11):
paying off their mortgages to ease that burden for them,
fallen first responder families, homeless veterans, catastrophically injured veterans. They're
building them smart homes. You're eleven dollars a month. That's
where it goes. And go look up Tunnel to Towers.
When you give to Tunnel to Towers, it goes where
you want it to go. That's unheard of in the
charity world. Go to tthumber two t dot org sign
(19:36):
up to give eleven bucks a month t twot dot org.
We'll be back.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
What's the feeling a little stocky? Follow like and subscribe
on social at Jesse kellydc.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Don't forget.
If you miss any part of the show, you can
download it on iHeart, Spotify, I too. Uns Now we're
getting back to history. In case you're just joining us,
We're not doing politics right now. I'm talking history, and
in fact I'm just getting into the meat of it,
so it still might be Admit, I can't promise you.
I can't promise you it won't last the rest of
(20:12):
the show because I feel like it. Look, we had
bad primary results, the inflation numbers are bad. We're debating
on CNN. I don't want to talk about that stuff
right now. So we're talking history, talking about Solah and
the Romans and who he was. All right, So the
Jigurthian War, this guy Jagirthia is given the Romans nightmares.
They they can't get their hands on him. He's so elusive.
(20:35):
It's one of these crafty devils. And they send the Romans,
send gius Marius down there to get him, and gius
Marius whatever. I won't go into the details of it,
but eventually some hot shot young officer under gius Marius
named Sullah comes up with what's basically a covert op
(20:58):
to pretty much go undercover, recruit an asset. It's a
cool little story and capture Jagirtha, and Sulah pulls it off.
Sala actually manages to capture Jagutha, like I said, a
very very capable man. But Sala wasn't in charge. Let's
(21:21):
pause on this for a moment. There's something about military
things that we should always keep in mind, especially as
we read history, both our history, American history, world history, whatever.
The history may be. So often, pretty much every single time,
when you discuss a battle, we discuss the commander of
(21:44):
each side, and we say something like MacArthur fought this
other general. We act as if it was their war.
And I understand why we do that. It simplifies things,
and he is the man in charge, therefore he's the
most important one. I understand and why we do that.
But so many times throughout history there have been generals, admirals,
(22:07):
whoever they may be. They didn't come up with the
genius battle plan that won them the battle on that day.
They didn't come up with this this strategy to hide
this group in ambush. So many times there was some lieutenant,
some sergeants, somebody underneath him and said, hey, sir, you
know what, there's some trees over there. We could hide
(22:27):
a couple thousand dudes in there and ambush them from
behind and win. And the general says, yeah, that sounds good,
and he stashes the troops there and they ambush him,
and they come from behind and they win. And what
does everyone say after that? Look at this genius general man.
He really outfoxed them. It's just how it goes. I'm
not even complaining about it. That's how history goes. The
(22:48):
guy who's in charge, they always talk about him like
he was the one who won it. We do it,
I do it. The same situation happened here to Sullah Guius.
Marius gets back to Rome after Sala's craftiness got Jagirtha.
But Sala wasn't in charge. Marius was in charge, and
Marius took all the credit for it, and the Romans
(23:10):
were more than happy to give Marius all the credit
for it. Well, now for a guy like Sala, that's
just it's just too much for him. So now they're
mortal enemies. Mortal enemies. That brings us to something that
is a horrible affair. And honestly, we could do a
totally separate history on this sometime. I'm not going to
do it today. Something broke out in Rome called the
(23:34):
Social War, the social war, and here's what it was,
and actually this is going to apply to us today too.
To be a Roman citizen, it was something in these
times that was sought after. You wanted to be a
Roman citizen. If you were a Roman citizen, if you
(23:57):
were officially a citizen, then you got to participate in elections.
You gotta say you had protections, including protections when you
went abroad. That citizenship of Rome thing was almost to
get out of jail free card because no other nation
wanted to make Rome mad, and Rome would make you
(24:17):
pay for that. Remember that famous story in the Bible
when Paul he's sitting there getting whipped and they're yelling
at him, and he says to the guy, are you
comfortable doing this to a Roman citizen? You know I'm
a Roman citizen, right, and the guy almost poops his pants.
I didn't know. Could we get in a blanket? I'm sorry, Paul.
Why you could go anywhere in the world and hold
up your Roman citizen card and they would know, don't
(24:40):
tangle with this guy, or you'll have a Roman army
at your door. You wanted to be a Roman citizen. Well,
Rome they had been. Remember it started out as Rome,
and then they began to conquer the Roman peninsula of
the Italian boot as you would know it today. Well,
these were separate society. It was sam Knights, and there
(25:02):
was whatever, all kinds of different Italian societies, not Roman
but Italian, and Rome began to conquer all of them.
And Rome had conquered all them by this time, and
these societies were living under Roman rule, and these societies
were forced to provide Rome with troops whenever Rome wanted them. Hey,
ten thousand of your young men tomorrow, bring them here.
(25:24):
But they weren't given citizenship, and they were starting to
chafe under it, and a war broke out. They wanted citizenship.
Now let's talk about the two separate parties right now,
as it comes to that. The populaces in Rome, the popularees,
they wanted these other cities to get their Roman citizenship.
(25:46):
The elites, the optimates, for lack of better way to
put it, they did not. They were dead set against it.
This war breaks out, cities rebelled all over the place.
It was a law brutally bloody affair. And unlike most
Roman affairs, it wasn't Roman armies going out and curb
(26:08):
stomping these things and winning every time. Because remember these
societies were trained by Romans, equipped by Romans. They were
by all accounts Romans themselves. So it was Romans squaring
off against Romans. Salah gets involved in this thing. He's
fighting tooth and nail in this thing, and in the
end Rome has to give citizenship to all of these citizens.
(26:34):
It's called the social war. It was anything but social. Okay,
Now let's talk about Mithridates, another guy throughout history who's
so fascinating. This is amazing. Mithridates is a king, He's
running a kingdom called Pontus, and Pontus they're not bending
(26:55):
the need to Rome like everyone else is at this time.
In fact, Mithridates he's more than just throwing shade at Rome.
He's killing Romans. He's attacking Romans. Rome's not going to
stand for this. Sala This is about eighty eight BC.
Sala Is made console, he's made president, and sala Is
(27:19):
so well regarded militarily at this time that eventually, with
this Mithridates thing, they decide they're going to put Salah
in charge of the army that will go and defeat Mithridates.
Now pause. We have a tendency when we hear things
(27:39):
like this to think about this, like we put our
modern shoes on when we think about this. So if
it was me getting called up into the Marines to
go fight in Afghanistan, you would probably think and I
would think, oh, well, that that sucks. I mean, that's horrible.
(28:00):
The only thing worse than the food is to pay
and the fact you might get shot in the face.
I don't I don't want to go. I don't want
to fight anymore. My fighting days are done. I'm forty
two now, I got a back brace on. I don't
want to do that. But that's how we looked at it.
For generals and their troops back then, warfare was not
something they shied away from in Rome because of the
(28:23):
insane money that would come into your coffers when you
fought a war. If you were a Roman, just a
Roman regular troop or a Roman general, you wanted to
go fight a war, and you wanted to go fight
a big one. Yeah, you might die, but if you didn't,
at the end of it, you were crazy rich because
(28:45):
you were allowed to loot, and the Roman generals would
pay off their troops with slaves and money. You wanted it,
and the Romans decided Slah gets to go fight this Ah.
But then guyas Marius steps in and I'll tell you
that story. I'll try to finish this up next, no promises,
(29:05):
I might not. I ain't worried about it. Now. What
the Romans did was they had to send men to
go tell Slah the news that must be frustrating. I
bet those men the entire way we're sitting there thinking
to themselves, if only I had a pure Talk phone.
(29:26):
What Chris, pure Talk is on this grete five G network.
I don't want to have to ride all this way.
It's hot, I'm thirsty. I know the call won't get dropped.
In fact, I can just text him because pure Talk's
on the same five G network as the big guys.
Pure Talk also doesn't fund blatant open communism like the
(29:46):
big guys do. Why do you have AT and T,
Verizon T Mobile? These companies hate your guts, they hate
your values. Today is today. Switch to pure Talk. Pick
up your phone, Dial pound two five zero and switch
to Puretalk. You dial pound two five zero, You say
(30:07):
Jesse Kelly. Dial pound two five zero, say Jesse Kelly.
Take ten minutes on the phone, Switch to Puretalk, and
we'll be back to do more history. Hang on what.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Feeling a little stocky? Follow like and subscribe on social
at Jesse Kelly's show.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show doing an hour of history.
Maybe more than an hour of history. I'm not totally
sure I'm gonna get this whole thing wrapped up in
the next ten minutes, so it may bleed over into
hour three and that's just too bad. If you're listening
to the show, you love it. You want to send
us love, hey, death threats, ask doctor Jesse questions for Friday.
You can email us anything you want. They're always welcome
(30:45):
Jesse at jesse kellyshow dot com. All right, all right, now,
I'm not going to cover everything I've already covered. Just
know that we're doing a history story about Lucius Cornelia
Sulla and sala Is about to get command of a fighting,
a fighting force, a Roman fighting force. Who's going to
go fight this guy Mithridates, Mithridates of Pontus. But Gius
(31:09):
Marius is still around, and remember him and Solah they're
mortal enemies, and Gius Marius is a populist, Mithridates is
one of the elites. They are against each other in
every possible way. Sullah he wants this military command. He
wants it badly. Of course, he would want it really,
(31:31):
really badly. It would be lucrative for his reputation, for
his bank account. His men want it really badly. Salah
has already found out he's going to get it. He's
already told his men. They are all excited about it.
This is a good thing. But gius Marius is back
in Rome and he's politicking. And gius Marius twists enough arms,
(31:53):
pours enough honey into enough ears that he gets the
command of the Salah expedition and the Mithridates expedition. I
should say, he gets it taken away from Salah. This
is Salah's hour of glory, where he gets to command
and army and go conquer somebody. They send men to
(32:15):
Sala's camp to inform him that he has his command
now revoked. Hey, Salah, too bad, so sad you're no
longer allowed to lead the Mithridates campaign. Well, you want
to know how well that was received. Salah's men took
(32:35):
the messengers and stoned them to death. And then Salah
rallies his men and says, well, men, they want to
take this away from us. We can either let them,
or we can march on Rome and make them make
(32:56):
them do what we want. Now. I need to pause
right now because there are a couple of things I
need to say that we've kind of glossed over. You know,
I told you the populace were rising and there was
this populist movement rising, and how people, when there's enough
people angry about something, that will eventually start to get reforms.
There were a bunch of populous reforms that had already
(33:17):
been put into place, that were being put into place
to try to calm down the anger of the people,
to soothe their anger, tell them they're going to have
more reputation, the elites aren't going to be quite as evil.
So these reforms had already gone into place, all right,
So there's that. There's also this little thing Rome. Rome
(33:39):
didn't have a barracks with an army in it. That's
how I would picture it. Maybe you're different, but whenever
I picture a powerful ancient city, I always pictured well,
surely they've got an army laying around, right. That was
way against the law in Rome. You were not allowed
to have an army within the Rome when borders at all,
(34:01):
that is not allowed. Well, Salah gets his men rallied
up and he says to them, fellas, let's go to Rome.
And his men say absolutely, let's go to Rome. And
Sala marches on Rome. Now you know how I said,
Marius was there. He was the one who got Sala's
(34:22):
command taken away. When they all found out Sala was
marching on Rome, they freaked out. That had never been
done before. Wait a minute, he's what he is?
Speaker 1 (34:31):
That mad?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
He's coming here. What do we have? Do we have
anything that can fight him? Wait, we don't even have
an army. So Marius fled. Salah marches into Rome. He
marches into Rome with his army and he begins to
do some reforms. What kind of reforms. Well, he's cleaning
(34:55):
up a lot of this populos. Scrap a little thing here,
little thing there. He goes and tweaked some things, and
then he tells him, Okay, I'm glad I got you
all straightened out. If it's okay with you, I'm gonna
go on my military campaign now, and I'm gonna go
fight anyone else. How many complaints about that, and as
you can imagine, all the Romans were all sounds good,
(35:16):
say Salah, I just want to make sure you guys
have everything you need your Do you have your emergency
three month food kit from my patriots supply?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yet?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
What, Chris, I didn't add that into the story. That's
probably what they said. I mean, I'm not sure if
my patriots Supply was around one hundred years before Christ.
But they're such a great company, I assume so they have,
after all, helped millions of Americans already get prepared with food,
emergency food. How much non perishable food do you have
(35:46):
in your home? Does everyone in your home have the
ability to eat for three months if things go bad?
And things do go bad, gosh. I talked to Victor
Davis Hanson today. He wrote this new book, and I
mean there was Look, you need emergency food, Okay, everyone does.
My Patriots Supply has their three month emergency food kits
(36:09):
two hundred dollars off with free shipping. Right now, when
you go to prepare with Jesse Kelly dot com. Prepare
with Jesse Kelly dot com. That's where you go get
your emergency three month food kit. You don't have to
go crazy, you don't have to get thirty years worth,
get three months, all right, Prepare with Jesse Kelly dot com.
(36:32):
Now back to Salah. Sla marches off to war, and
Sala is fighting his war and he's doing well. But
something happens when SLA's gone. Remember Sla marched in with
his army, got a few reforms done, and then he left,
he was off to war. And remember this is the
ancient world. He's not an eight hour plane ride away.
(36:53):
There aren't trains, there aren't automobiles. When you're marching off,
you're gone for a long time. As soon as Sala leaves,
Gius Marius comes right back into Rome and essentially takes
Rome over for the populace. Sala had put a bunch
of his men in place. Gius Marius starts to slaughter them.
(37:15):
He starts to kill Sala's men that were in place,
and starts to put in his populous government where he's
in charge. Now, that brings me to something that's uncomfortable
to talk about it, but we talk about it all
the time, especially because Joe Biden's the president. Age at
this time, Saala, he's still a man very much in
(37:38):
his thinking and fighting prime. Probably forties fifties, I could
look it up and tell you exactly, but he's very
much in his fighting prime. Marius is an old man
by now, and we don't know exactly what his condition was,
but we know from a lot of the things that
they've written down he was having things like seizures. He's look,
(38:01):
he might have had dementia, right, We don't know. He's
on the back end, all right. So when I say
Gius Marius from now on, I don't want you to
picture the Guius Marius that went up and took on
a gigantic army of Germans and defeated them all, because
he's Gias Marius, and he's the man. This is look
life happens. We get old, this is old broken down
(38:25):
Gius Marius, but he's not too broken down to kill
Sala's men. Sala, off fighting a war, of course, gets
worried about what's happening in Rome, and Sala says, oh no.
So Sala quickly gets with Mithridates and he makes peace
because Salah has a different war to fight. We will
(38:46):
wrap up our history story and go back to politics
next
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