I'm John Bacheler, Professor Josiah Osgood's new book is Uncommon Wrath, House Caesar,

The Warrior, and Red Earrishin, and Cato, The Red Earrishin and Busybody.

House Caesar and Cato's deadly rivalry destroyed the Roman Republic, who introduced Pompey,

who's successful as a general, and wins his triumph, and is a man seen as the strongest

representative of Roman military.

Now we introduce a man named Crasseus, because Pompey and Caesar and Crasseus are going

to find a way to work together.

What do we need to know about Crasseus and how did Caesar use Crasseus, Professor?

Yeah, so Crasseus really was perhaps other than Catalan, the shadiest politician in Roman

had that reputation, and Olivier did play him very well in Kubrick's movie Spartacus,

so I do recommend that portrayal.

So Crasseus came of age in this Civil War and really used it to advance himself and wanted

to make money.

He would do things like, at least so, we're told by his ancient biography, which show

up during fires, Rome had terrible fires, and he'd offer sort of cut-rate prices for real

estate as the tenements were burning down and snap up these bargains, then redeveloped

the land.

So he had a lot of money, and he wanted always to kind of advance his finances as well

as his political fortunes.

So he found in young Caesar a helper, and the two of them kind of cooperated on various

schemes, probably later their critics exaggerated some of these things.

Fake news was very much a phenomenon in ancient Rome, and the two really came together,

...