This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor and Germanicus is here and he knows that I've made a list and I could go through that it's it's no need of the women who had power in the first century

A.D. and there was a long list and they were very powerful.

Olivia of Augustus this time, Messselina and Agrippina the younger of Claudius this time.

Very powerful.

And yet, there was not the move into total power that is possible in this election cycle.

Total power as in if Cleopatra had been successful. She was not. As if Agrippina the younger

had been successful. She was not. But there was a moment that it was an imagined

possibility, imagined outcome in Rome. Is that possible in the 21st century?

And Germanicus, I don't ask you to account for the therapeutic culture. We're in one. However, if you're Empress of

America, it doesn't matter what the culture is. Your Empress, is it possible that

we'll do what Rome could not do.

Women in Rome and later Rome's successor,

Bizantium, and then even in the Western Latin European Middle Ages,

there were women who stood out as having amazing leverage, influence and even a decisive capacity to shape events. And they were able to do so because women had power as a result of the nature of

societies where for example, in in in in

in feudal Europe, you know, women could could be in a position where they had

like Eleanor of Aquitaine had an entire duchy that was the most powerful and prosperous

placed in all of Europe and thus had enormous power and in our world which says that

oh it was the world of the patriarchy until today and women had no say. That is not just a lie, it

contravenes the reality of the historical record and you had very powerful women like Budica and

Zenobia of Palmyra who were tremendous leaders And so there is no bar to women doing that today.

You know, you could see in the 18th century even that you had Maria Theresa and Catherine the Great in the

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