30 Rome's Most Lethal Weapon w/ Steele Brand
Ancient Greece Declassified
Dr. Lantern Jack
4.8 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2020
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our guest Steele Brand offers an original answer to this question in his new book Killing for the Republic: Citizen Soldiers and the Roman Way of War. Brand is professor of history at The King's College in New York City. His understanding of military matters is informed by his service in the US army as a tactical intelligence officer including a combat tour in Afghanistan.
------------------
Support Ancient Greece Declassified on Patreon: patreon.com/greecepodcast
Or make a one-time donation: paypal.me/greecepodcast
------------------
Scholarly works mentioned during the conversation:
Arthur Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome, University of California Press, 2007. (discussed at the 33:55 mark)
------------------
The intro to this episode was provided by Genn McMenemy and Jenny Williamson of the Ancient History Fangirl podcast, a show that offers wildly entertaining and well-researched journeys through the ancient world. Check it out at ancienthistoryfangirl.com
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A brief message from Friends of the podcast. |
| 0:03.1 | I'm Jen McMenemy. |
| 0:04.6 | And I'm Jenny Williamson. |
| 0:06.1 | And in our podcast, Ancient History Fan Girl, we tell tall tales and true stories of the ancient |
| 0:11.9 | world, misbehaving emperors, poison assassins, star-cross lovers, and more. |
| 0:17.3 | We go back to the original sources, dig into the latest archaeology, and get geeky about |
| 0:22.1 | military history and mythology to bring you the ancient world like you've never heard it before. |
| 0:26.9 | Check out ancient historyfangirl.com or find us at ancient history fangirl wherever you get your |
| 0:32.5 | podcasts. |
| 0:45.5 | Hi. thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece declassified. |
| 0:51.7 | Episode 30, Rome's most lethal weapon. |
| 0:58.5 | What made Rome great? |
| 1:04.9 | What enabled a small city state in Italy to grow until it conquered everything from Spain to Syria? |
| 1:10.0 | Historians have been trying to answer this question ever since the time of the Roman Empire itself. This question has also been of particular interest to American thinkers, since our Constitution |
| 1:15.6 | was deliberately designed with Rome as a model, and since America then went on to experience |
| 1:20.6 | a meteoric rise in power, much like Rome had. |
| 1:24.6 | Not surprisingly, over the past couple hundred years, American writers and foreign observers |
| 1:29.0 | have repeatedly compared America to Rome and have used such analogies to draw lessons or |
| 1:34.6 | warnings from history. Such comparisons, of course, continue today. But there's a big confusion |
| 1:41.7 | that permeates a lot of contemporary America versus Rome discussions that I think we need to clear up once and for all. |
| 1:49.2 | And that is the difference between the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic. |
| 1:54.0 | The Rome that we know through most of our books and movies is the Roman Empire. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr. Lantern Jack, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dr. Lantern Jack and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.