This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm Gaius. I'm with Germanicus.

Germanicus is my Greek whisperer. Now, the Greeks work for us because they can count, they can write, they can read, they're smart.

Eventually, we know they're going to take over the Roman Empire. Good for them. They're really good managing editors of estates, which is what they do for us.

Where did that come from? I don't know. It's just, it's in the water in the Mediterranean.

However, the Greeks are also inventive, or they were, and we've inherited their invention.

One is the word tyranny, another is the word republic.

We've inherited them.

We Romans.

Didn't work out so well for us, so we got rid of the republic, and now we're very happy

with an emperor who no one calls a tyrant, but in the original understanding of that

word for the Greeks, and this is tricky because it's a

translation problem, a tyrant was a strong man. And Germanicus is okay with me saying

Cardio, which is the new world version of a strong man, liked, loved, celebrated by the people, not hated.

And the word tyrant has the bite of brutality.

However, the city was Syracuse, which is now Sicily.

And this is early 4th century BCE, between 400 and 350, somewhere in there.

And Syracuse becomes a very powerful state under tyrants, under strong men. But there's this dream of a republic or restoring

the republic or in some fashion having democracy the way Athens brags about, eventually brags

to the point that everybody gets bored hearing it. However, there's a story behind this. It's quite

dramatic. It has lots of reversals. It's a melodrama about a man named Dionysius, his son,

his son-in-law's brother-in-law, man-man named Dian, and money changing hands hands and tyranny and conquest.

And eventually, according to some observers, it comes out that the republic is restored.

...