This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I am Gaius, John Bachelor.

Germanicus is here. We have our cups of wine where the Thames at Springtime, early spring and

Londonium. I've been conversing all week with a cobbler. The cobbler is a former

centurion, he retired and he makes shoes now, beautiful shoes. And we were talking about the battle days fighting the Burgantis in the earlier years

before they settled down.

We haven't built a Hadrian's wall yet, that's in the future, but we do have a string of forts to watch the Burgundis. This is the north, the Penines if you know the United Kingdom.

And he was commenting about the security that we have because we have the Ninth Legion here.

And we also bring in, it's called auxiliaries of the empire. For example, in the north we don't have

Romans running the fort systems. We have Batavians who troubled us once upon a time. We conquered

them, we Romans, and then convinced them that there was a good life for them if

they served in the Roman army in Britain. So we moved them to Britain knowing that they would be

good soldiers because their folks are back home in Batavia and that's not going to

go well for them if they desert or fight badly against the Burganties.

So we were having a good laugh about how well the Empire works.

And I enjoyed myself thinking, now why doesn't the 21st century work as practically as we do here in the Roman Empire?

So Germanicus, I've just given a lesson as to how our genius Augustus created a system where we leverage the conquered.

We don't enslave everybody. We turn some of them into our soldiers along the

frontier. Then we found market towns like Londingham and Colchester and we build our temples, we build our games, we have a forum, we start market technology, and we prosper. That's how we work here in the first

century. The Americans tried it and now they've run into some difficulty.

They're not solving the European Wars,

which they fought twice in the 20th century,

thinking they were over forever.

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