The Fall Of The Roman Republic Was A Warning | Barry Strauss
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2026
⏱️ 70 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
What destroyed the Roman Republic was not one man or one moment, but a slow collapse of trust, duty, and shared values. In this episode, Ryan and ancient historian Barry Strauss discuss the broken civic bargain, economic strain, political violence, and personal ambition that pushed Rome toward civil war. They also talk about Cato’s refusal to compromise, Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon, and the warning the fall of the Roman Republic still holds for us today.
Barry Strauss is a bestselling author, classicist, military and naval historian, and one of the leading authorities on leadership lessons from the ancient world. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies Emeritus at Cornell University, and a leading expert on ancient military history.
Barry is the author of ten books on ancient history, translated into twenty languages, including The War That Made the Roman Empire, Ten Caesars, The Death of Caesar, and his latest book, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire.
Follow Barry on Instagram | @barrystrauss
📚 Barry Strauss' Books:
Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire
The War That Made the Roman Empire
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. |
| 0:14.6 | Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome back to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So whole family just got back from Rome. We spent |
| 0:23.3 | about two weeks in Italy. We were in Rome and we're in Sorrento, we're at Capri and Iskiya. |
| 0:29.7 | But the chunk of the trip, the big chunk of the trip, the trip, I was excited about that my two |
| 0:34.3 | boys were excited about was the Rome part. We did Greece last year. |
| 0:37.7 | We did Rome this year. |
| 0:39.0 | I'll get into all that in another episode. |
| 0:40.9 | But the thing about Rome is not that it feels ancient. |
| 0:44.4 | It doesn't. |
| 0:44.9 | It feels familiar. |
| 0:46.3 | It's timely and timeless, right? |
| 0:49.5 | A republic, it becomes powerful, becomes wealthy, becomes successful. |
| 0:53.4 | It's filled with great and brilliant |
| 0:55.0 | and fascinating characters. But then slowly the very things that made it strong began to weaken it. |
| 1:01.9 | Ambition and confidence. Ambition replaces service. Careerism replaces competence., luxury replaces discipline. |
| 1:11.9 | The institutions are still there in paper. |
| 1:14.2 | The power is there. |
| 1:15.6 | It's still the center of the world. |
| 1:17.4 | But the character and the trust and the values that made those institutions work |
| 1:21.4 | begin to wane or finally disappear. |
| 1:24.1 | This is the story of Rome, but it's also a warning. You know, it's fascinating, |
| 1:29.4 | just walking through Rome, looking at it from different vantage points and just thinking about |
... |
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