Lore of the Founding: Cicero And The Duty To Serve

A republic doesn’t collapse all at once. It frays in public, and it frays in private, through shortcuts that feel justified, norms that stop being enforced, and citizens who decide it’s safer to sit things out. That’s why we end our Lore of the Founding series with Cicero: Rome’s sharpest talker, a brilliant lawyer, and a painfully human political figure who tried to hold the Roman Republic together while it was coming apart.

We talk with Joanna Kenty about why Cicero mattered so much to the American founding, especially to John Adams. From courtroom speeches that became the backbone of rhetoric education to the personal letters that reveal doubt, ego, and fear, Cicero shows how public service really works when the stakes are high. We unpack his exile after the Catiline conspiracy, what he saw as Senate authority weakened and corruption spread, and why he turned to philosophy when politics became a maze.

The centerpiece is On Duties, where Cicero argues we are not born for ourselves alone and that justice requires an active life of civic engagement. We connect that to the Founders’ habit of turning reading into action and to Adams’s post-presidency shift into local involvement and public-minded correspondence. If you’ve ever wondered what “duty” means when politics is exhausting, polarized, or disappointing, this conversation is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome back to Civics in the year. This is our last episode in our Lore of the Founding series that we have with Joanna Kenti. And Joanna, I'm so excited to have you back, obviously. And today we're talking about Cicero. And his name has been mentioned in previous episodes. And you know, looking at like notes and everything else, it's looking at this like obligation of a citizen, right? And Cicero essentially fails to save the Republic, but tried anyway. Yeah. So who is this Cicero and why is he important to the American founding, to American history?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah.

Why Cicero Matters Here

SPEAKER_00 0:49

This is I'm like not a very objective source on this subject because I wrote a book about Cicero. And like he's I there are a lot of things I like about reading Cicero. I think his jokes are funny, which like most people don't. So I it says more about me than about him, probably. He was famous for being funny in antiquity. So the the like big picture about Cicero is we've been bringing him up because he lived through the period of Caesar's rise to power and dictatorship. We talked about his Philippics last time and like the execution of Cicero on the order of Mark Antony as a pretty terrible sign for the future of the Republic and the freedom of speech. Cicero wrote a ton of different kinds of things. And we have like more literature surviving that was authored by him than almost anyone else from classical antiquity. So we just know an incredible amount of what he was doing and thinking, which is really important. And it's really wild period of history, so it's really nice to have that much information about it. I will concede he's like a little full of himself, maybe a lot full of himself. He did write an epic poem about himself at one point, which was like pretty ill-advised and didn't go away with people. Nevertheless, he's a really important author. If you're studying Latin or Roman history, he got his start because he was a lawyer and he was such a good lawyer. He it was like watching a courtroom drama every time he defended a client. He was incredibly dramatic, kind of alternating between being funny and being serious and quoting the law and telling stories about the person and what kind of person they were. And he was especially good at the end of the speech. He would have everyone like crying out of pity for the defendant and be like, we can't possibly condemn this person. And he would publish a version of what he had said in court afterward as a speech for that client or against the person he was prosecuting. And those speeches became like

Rhetoric And The Courtroom Legend

SPEAKER_00 3:04

basically rhetoric textbooks immediately. So he's just incredibly influential all through the Middle Ages. If you want to learn rhetoric, you're doing it from Cicero. And that's true for England and the colonies. One of his biggest fans in early America is John Adams, who also got his start as a lawyer. And so he gets a lot of inspiration from Cicero's law speeches. Cicero was not born into a family of senators. So his full name is Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Tullius family wasn't in politics before. And for Cicero to break in and eventually become consul, which he did, is really remarkable and unusual. He calls himself a new man. That's the Roman term for a man who does not have any ancestors who are in politics. And John Adams also finds inspiration in that to be kind of like a self-made man in Boston. So we have like letters from John Adams talking about reading Cicero with John Quincy when he's like 12. The two of them travel together to Europe, they're in France. John Quincy is with him sometimes and then in

The Outsider Who Became Consul

SPEAKER_00 4:16

school in the Netherlands for a while. Or they'll be like on a ship and they pass the time by translating Cicero's speech against Catiline. So his whole life he's reading Cicero. It's very nice. He tells this story about like how the declaration kind of came to be. And he says, we had actually been debating for so long that no one could quite remember what we were even talking about anymore. And so they asked me, could you summarize the terms of the debate about independence? And he says that he stood up and said, This is the first time in my life when I wished for the genius and eloquence of the celebrated orators of Athens and Rome. I wish I had been Cicero in that moment. And he says, if Demosthenes or Cicero ever had been called to deliberate on a question like this that is so important, either one of them would have prayed to the goddess Minerva for wisdom

John Adams Wants Cicero’s Eloquence

SPEAKER_00 5:22

or sacrificing to the god of eloquence. And he's reporting this later to his friend Mercy Otis Warren, who's writing a history of the period. And she's like, Did you pray to the god of eloquence in Continental Congress? And he's like, No, I said Cicero would have. If he had been in my position, that's totally different. It's, I don't know why people keep saying that about me, that I have some kind of like pagan sympathies. And at the time, everyone was calling, I think it's Richard Henry Lee, the Cicero of Virginia. So like Cicero is a very common reference for all of them. So he's important to the founders, but also just important for kind of the legacy of Latin literature. Sometimes John Adams and other English-speaking authors will call him Tully for his family name Tullius. So Tully becomes like his nice little nickname for all the Latin nerds of the 18th century. Yeah, so that's a little bit of why Cicero was so important. He wrote, so he published his speeches. We also have his personal letters, which were published after his death. That's a lot of like behind the scenes ugliness. The speeches are, you know, his public face. And then you also get to see what's going on in private, which does not always reflect well on him. And then while he's living through this very tumultuous period of history, so he becomes consul, he thinks, this is great. I've reached the top of Roman politics. I will live the rest of my life as a political luminary and like lion of the Senate. That is not what happens. He ends up getting exiled for a year and a half. He doesn't know that he'll ever be able to come back. It's a really painful period for him. And by the time he gets back, this is

Public Speeches Versus Private Letters

SPEAKER_00 7:11

when Julius Caesar and Pompey and Crassus have kind of taken over politics. And it doesn't leave a lot of room for Cicero to maneuver in the way that he would like. He ends up like defending some of their lackeys in court, which he is pretty upset about. He gets pressured into it. And one of the ways he consoles himself is he starts writing philosophy in the tradition of Plato, so dialogues between great Romans about what the Republic was supposed to be like and what the ideal laws of a republic would look like. So he was thinking a lot about when did when was the Roman Republic at its best? What made it great at the time? And what are the most important kind of civic virtues about that?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Can I ask a quick question? So when we you talk about exile, so is that a form of punishment? Like I I've heard it a lot, but I don't actually know a whole lot about it.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

This was like a really weird situation. There are a few different forms of exile. For Cicero and a few other actually people he prosecuted. This sometimes happened to them. If you are condemned or sentenced for a capital crime in Rome, you can leave Italy and then live elsewhere. So some Romans who are sentenced for capital crimes just go to France and live in Marseille. And you know, that's okay. Cicero

Exile And The Catiline Aftermath

SPEAKER_00 8:47

ends up going to Greece, but he's not very happy about it. And then yeah, he's trying to kind of evade a decree that was passed against him by one of his political enemies, related. Yeah, he this might be a long story, but his speeches against Catiline, which I just mentioned Adams is reading with John Quincy. So Catiline was planning an uprising to overthrow the Roman government and assassinate Cicero while he is consul and just like seize whatever power and money they can in the chaotic aftermath of this uprising. Cicero discovers it and reveals it. And the Senate, with Cicero presiding, decides to execute the co-conspirators of Catiline. Later, Cicero is then accused of executing Roman citizens without a trial, these conspirators, even though it wasn't really his decision in the first place, but he is the buck kind of stops with him in that situation. And so a decree is passed, like anyone who passes, who executes Roman citizens without a trial is his life is forfeit unless he leaves the country. And so Cicero left the country. And eventually the decree is repealed, but it takes a really long time.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

So he comes back then during Caesar's and what like what is he noticing or seeing coming back into this kind of dictatorship?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

So Caesar isn't dictator yet. I mean Cicero lives through that also. But even before that point, he's noticing that things just seem really out of balance. Um one of the main things he's concerned about is that no one has respect for the institution of the Senate anymore. And he's like, the Senate needs to carry a certain degree of authority to keep the consuls and other magistrates in line. You have to have a sense that if you behave badly in an official capacity, that the Senate is going to make sure that you suffer consequences for that. And that's no longer happening. He's definitely aware that bribery is very rampant, especially in election seasons.

Corruption And A Weakened Senate

SPEAKER_00 11:20

We actually his brother wrote a pamphlet about how to run for consul. So we know a fair amount about what it was like to run a political campaign back then, at least for Cicero. But Cicero is not coming in with the same degree of like money or the same tolerance for corruption as other candidates. He defended some people accused of bribery in court. So he's not, you know. We talked about Cato the Younger as like the great example of integrity in this period and like anti-corruption. Like Cicero is not that. He's a little bit more opportunistic than that. And you know, everyone deserves a fair trial and legal representation. So that's what Cicero thinks his job is. But yeah, so he, I think he feels like the institutions and the norms of decorum are really suffering. He does not particularly sympathize with a lot of the prominent politicians from old families, and they really look down on him as an outsider in any case. So he has no particular desire for them to have more power as people, but he thinks like the institution they represent ought to.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

Yeah. So how does he then like kind of take this, if you will, and talk about kind of active citizenship and like what you know citizens should be doing, if you will?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah. The the best statement we get about it is in a treatise he wrote right after Caesar's assassination. He writes a treatise on, it's usually translated like on obligations or on duties, and he writes it to his son. This is how to be a good person, and particularly a good member of the political class in Rome. He divides it up into a into three books, and he says, I'm going to talk about how

On Duties And The Active Life

SPEAKER_00 13:35

to be a good person, what people do to get ahead in life, what is expedient or advantageous to them. And then the third book is going to be about how they're actually the same thing, because it's by being a good person that you establish social bonds and relationships and credibility that will get you the things you want in the long run without anyone constantly trying to take them away from you because you've like treated them badly. And in that treatise, so he's now lived through the first triamborate, he's lived through the Civil War, the assassination, a lot of political chaos, possibly the end of the republic. He's not really sure what kind of government he's living under at this point, but he wants to restore what he feels has been lost, and he wants his son to participate in that. So he tells him, you're gonna hear a lot of things. He sent his son to go study philosophy in Greece. That was like pretty common to kind of study abroad and go study some Plato. So he says, you know, you're gonna read in Plato that we are not born for ourselves alone. You're also gonna hear that from Stoic philosophers. The Stoic philosophers say everything on earth is created or comes to exist for human use, and that includes humans themselves. So like we're born to help each other and contribute to the common good in some way. But he says, when you're reading Plato, you know, Plato thought that philosophers are spending all their time in the search for truth. And that's that's a good thing. And often, while they're searching for truth, they don't care about the things that motivate most other people, like becoming famous or making a lot of money. That's also good. And Plato says, you know, that's that's virtue, that's justice, that's honesty. But Cicero says, I think they're achieving justice in one way, but they're also falling short of justice in another way, because they're spending all their time reading philosophy and searching for truth and not helping other people. And particularly, Plato got pretty cynical about democracy and participating in politics and was like, you know what? I don't think it's really worth it for the philosopher. Politics, sorry about the dogs, politics is not about the search for truth. So Plato thought you just shouldn't do it. And Cicero says, I think that is unjust. I think if, you know, maybe you're committed, you're spending all your time taking care of your family's property. Maybe you just have given up on humans in general, you're just minding your business. You think you're not hurting anyone, but actually you are hurting society because you're withholding your contributions to the social bonds of life. And so his idea is that you should live an active life instead of a contemplative life, the vita activa. So he thinks everyone is expected, and it doesn't matter what role you fill in society or what capacities you have. It's about taking whatever you have and applying it to the common good and particularly to civic engagement and participation. I think he's talking mostly to his peers who have been very well educated. They might, you know, they're familiar with these Greek philosophers. So they've spent a lot of time probably being tutored and have a lot of wealth and kind of class privilege at home. But he says that confers on you a responsibility to then find some kind of public service. You can do it in a lot of different ways. It doesn't matter if you are a wealthy person, a billionaire, like running a big farm operation, or a banker, one of Cicero's best friends, is a banker, or just a citizen of Rome, like everyone has their part to play in contributing to the common good. And it's obligatory, especially for the high classes, not in spite of their status.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

So then how does this kind of translate to the founding and to how the founders thought about citizenship?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

I think it's interesting to like make that connection, I think, with the point about philosophers in particular, because somebody like James Madison or Thomas Jefferson really is immersed in philosophy all the time. And they're doing exactly what Cicero suggests, which is taking all of what they're reading and saying, how does that help me develop a constitution for the new society that I want to live in that's gonna guarantee life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How does reading Montesquieu or Cicero or looking at the history of England or the Netherlands,

Founders Turn Reading Into Action

SPEAKER_00 18:48

how does that help me take lessons and apply them to creating a new form of government or thinking about government in a new kind of way? So they are pursuing truth, but also living an active life, a life of active citizenship. So John Adams also tells John Quincy that the point of reading Latin, he says, you're going to spend time with Cicero, Sallus, Tacitus, and Livy, all Latin authors. And by spending time with them, you will learn wisdom and virtue. You'll see them represented with all the charms which language and imagination can exhibit, and vice and folly also painted in all their deformity and horror. You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen. So the reason we read Latin is not because it's important for its own sake, but to be a good person and a useful citizen. And so Cicero was kind of making that same point. And I think they find, I think, particularly John Adams, because he's such a fan of Cicero. I think, like, find some inspiration in that. And I think, like, we talked about trying to save the Republic and failing. I think that's also really important for the founders, particularly for John Adams. Like, that's one of the things that he comes to really sympathize with. It's really hard. Cicero talks about this in that work on obligations, too. When you're in politics, you have to have this spirit of public service. So you have to make sure that you're not getting caught up in the competition for glory or power, which is a philosophical virtue in itself. So you have to maintain that balance. And like Cicero failed to maintain that balance. Like if you're writing an epic poem about yourself, like you've lost the plot a little bit. You're not really staying on that tightrope real well. But, you know, he tried to bring it back. It's not, it's not all or nothing. It's a constant struggle to be in public service for the right reasons and to accept, as someone with a lot of privilege and education, that what the voters do is not in your control. And you're just gonna have to let it happen. People vote for weird reasons. They make choices for reasons that aren't always super rational. And you just have to kind of keep going. So, like, there's a thankless element to it. And that makes it all the more important to strengthen the commitment to public service. So, like Cicero is very upfront and honest about this. It's something you see him really struggle with. And like, I think that's very human and very instructive. And he it over the course of his career, I mean, like defending lackeys of Caesar in in court, was that saving the Republic? Like, no, that probably wasn't really contributing to making the situation better. He's not somebody who was thinking about grand reform. Or like transformation of institutions on a radical scale to try to solve the problems that were legitimately pulling the republic apart. That's kind of not the type of political thinker Cicero was. He's more the type who is trying to find a path through a situation and kind of like bend instead of break and do his best under whatever the circumstances are. So he's not always like a straightforwardly admirable figure. But like watching him struggle, like I think there's a lot of value in that. And I think it's something like John Adams, so like when he gets sent over to France and he feels like he's wasting his time during the revolution, he feels like that's a form of exile and he compares it to Cicero's exile. And then for especially when he loses the run for his second term as president to Jefferson and feels betrayed, he starts talking a lot about how he feels like Cicero. And he's like, well, at least if it happened to someone as great as Cicero, like that that's some consolation. And Adams at that point goes back to like hardcore reading of Cicero's philosophy. So he's like, well, when Cicero went through all this, he helped he tried to make himself feel better by writing this philosophy. So maybe if I read it, like I'll feel better. I will say, like watching Adams defend Cicero and be like, no, I don't think, I don't think he was vain. I think he just knew how great he was. It's like you you're talking about yourself. But okay, that's fine.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

That's fine. No, it is what it is. Like like sees like.

unknown 23:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

It's interesting that you bring up, you know, him losing a second term and he lost it to Jefferson. And I think that that's how does that go into active citizenship? Because I think human nature, right, is well, I lost, I'm done.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

But we see, like, not just in the American founding, but like throughout American history, this like shift a little bit from I lost, but you know, I'm still an active citizen, I'm still doing these things, and that's part of like civic virtue, is not, like you said, not trying to get all of this glory because Adams, and I'm still learning about John Adams, I want to preface this. He's not a founder

Losing Office Without Quitting Citizenship

SPEAKER_03 24:36

that I've been keen on learning about until recently. But I do know that he made a lot of decisions and did a lot of things in his presidency that weren't necessarily popular. Now, granted, he's coming after George Washington. So those are incredibly large issues to fill. So, how, you know, how does he you talk about him like diving back into Cicero? How does he use that to kind of further his civic, you know, involvement, but also too, like his son ends up becoming president. So Cicero clearly has an impact on the Adams family.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah. Yeah, I think he did. And uh, I mean, John Quincy Adams is like the real shining example in that family. His his brother Charles like has no particular interest in politics or aptitude for it. Like they're very different people. So this is something that's specific to the relationship between John Quincy and his father. Although his daughter Abigail also read a lot of Latin and would like to talk to him about it. Yeah, that's a whole side plot. It's true. Yeah. So Adams did a lot of unpop, unpopular things during his presidency. The main one I think about is and has to do with the Sedition Act, the Alien and Sedition Act, and having French spies arrested, which I think included Ben Franklin's grandson. And, you know, having alleged French spies arrested is a bit of a constitutional crisis. And so, like, legitimately, actually, like Cicero, he may have kind of gone too far in exercising the authority that he thought he had in a time of crisis. So, like, they really do have quite a lot in common. But he, I think there is like a lot of rationalizing

Sedition Fears And Crisis Power

SPEAKER_00 26:38

that goes on while he's comparing himself to Cicero. But Cicero does give an example of kind of going back to writing, reading and writing, and writing a lot of letters to friends and taking up this kind of advisory role that Adams does find himself in eventually. So in the I think as the 19th century goes on, Adams becomes more and more involved in writing letters to people who seek out his advice on what he thinks has gone wrong with American politics. He there the optimism at the moment of the revolution and the declaration of independence, or even the passing of the Constitution, a lot goes wrong in terms of the rise of partisan politics and this factional conflict that turns into political parties, with Jefferson representing the Democratic Republicans, Adams representing the Federalists who kind of turn into the Whigs. And as we've all experienced, like once people identify with political parties and kind of representing the party line and then develop animosity towards members of the other party, political discourse doesn't look like the rational, enlightened debate that I think everyone hoped would happen in the new republic. And that's really disappointing. And, you know, they spent a lot of time trying to set up this perfect system, and then they watch people actually engage in that system and think that's not how I thought this would work. And that's really frustrating, too. But I mean, the the contexts are a little bit different. So Cicero is still in the Senate, which means that whenever they're debating a question in public, he can decide to speak about that. So he doesn't have to keep running for election to serve in the Senate. He just is in that body for the rest of his life. That's how he ends up delivering the Philippics. That's not true in the American system. So understandable that Adams doesn't want to run for office again after losing the presidency. And so he has to find different ways of being an active citizen, of advising other people, kind of staying engaged in Massachusetts, in his home community on a different level. So instead of national politics, he's going local. And he's continuing to think and write about what a democratic republic ought to look like. And those are ways of contributing to and kind of applying knowledge and applying a study of philosophy to civic engagement.

SPEAKER_03 29:42

Why do you think it's so important for us to know about Cicero and you know his kind of defense of being a civic leader?

SPEAKER_00 29:54

I think Cicero isn't the kind of person who gets put on a pedestal and like seems like he's larger than life. He's quite human. He made some pretty bad decisions. He is not always consistent from one day to another about you know what he's saying as a lawyer. He fulfilled his role very well. He was very good at it, but he was very talented and very

Learning From Messy Imperfect Leaders

SPEAKER_00 30:29

bright, but not a perfect person by any means. But like in some ways, that makes it even more interesting to think about that, you know, what do real people do when confronted with a constitutional crisis? And saying, like, this is, you know, I thought I was operating in a certain kind of political system, a republic, and I'm not sure that's really what's happening anymore. And I don't really know how to think about it, or how do I know what the difference is? Like, where's the line between the republic fell yesterday? So his like confusion about that and just kind of scrambling to kind of keep things moving, I find to be more interesting than like the Cato the Younger black and white version of the world. And when we talk about the founding, we see something a little bit similar that there's a temptation to treat the founders as these enlightened, calm, brilliant guys who just sat in a room and spoke in the language of the declaration. That's the way it just kind of poured out of them. And they came up with this sacred set of documents that we can never change because they were geniuses and they weren't like us and they were they were better than we are. And the more you delve into, especially things like John Adams' personal letters, like when you have personal letters, you can see they didn't agree with each other all the time. They didn't all think that each other were rational and enlightened and brilliant. They called each other a lot of really unpleasant names a lot of the time. There was a lot of bickering, a lot of egotism, like, you know, Adams is guilty of this, but so are others of kind of overestimating how perfect a system the one in their head was, as opposed to the one the guy across the room was describing. So I think Cicero is useful for helping. I mean, he's useful for articulating this vision of active citizenship and that responsibility. But and we could just kind of take that as the main lesson. But I think it's like much more thought-provoking to say, well, that was the lesson he was trying to teach. And he was also trying to teach it in a time when the conditions for that active citizenship were terrible and really difficult. And he did not always grapple with them particularly well. And like he didn't solve the problem. So I think holding both of those things together is the lesson I would want people to take away from Cicero.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

So, what would American society look like if we all took on a responsibility to serve our community in whatever capacity or with whatever skills and energy we have? And how can a republic or a democracy work or build institution in ways that encourage and facilitate that?

SPEAKER_00 33:43

I don't know the answer. I think it's a really important question. I think it's, you know, it's kind of a new question for every generation. Like, we gotta come up with our own answers. In kind of surveys of American attitudes toward politics, I mean, attitudes toward politics and towards politicians, pretty low right now. However,

Building Civic Life Into Modern Work

SPEAKER_00 34:11

and pretty polarized. So, like the same terminology to the same people might be very positive or very negatively viewed. But when you talk to people across the country about community and helping each other, like that tends to be popular across the board. Like that is something that I think Cicero is right. Like humans, where he's quoting Plato, like humans are born as kind of social animals. Aristotle called us political animals, but like meaning that you know, we congregate in like cities and societies. We live amongst each other and like form social bonds. And that's something that people want. And I really like the idea that there's no one right way to serve the community, but that everyone has an obligation to find a way that suits them. I think that's very appealing. And maybe that means interacting with people online. Maybe it's in person. Hopefully it's both. Like we all, you know, having been forced to go online for a few years there, online only, in person, we're seeing the value of in-person phones downtime. And then the broader question of how do we have institutions that facilitate everyone contributing in that way? Danielle Allen talks about work-life civic balance. So we all think about work-life balance, but what if we factored in civic education, civic engagement into that equation and left room for that and considered that to be kind of one of the cornerstones of a meaningful life? How could our employers support that? How could our political institutions support that, that level of participation and kind of input from people? And how can we push the institutions we have in that direction?

SPEAKER_03 36:06

And I love that you said that there's not an answer because you're right. I think for everybody, you know, it's it's a different answer and it's a different thing to grapple with. And I really appreciate that like civic balance too, because you know, civics is everywhere. You can't really divorce it from work and life because it really isn't everywhere. It's in the communities, it's in our homes, it's in our workplaces, because it's how we function within those communities. And I I love the local aspect of it. You know, I've I've learned a lot on this podcast about national politics, national history. But what really has always struck me is that local and the differences you can make, you know, in those little smaller things there. And I I really I and I I know I shouldn't have favorites, but I do because it's human nature. I think I really like this story of Cicero because I I think that the whole messy thing works, right? It shows that we can try things and we can fail. And it doesn't, it doesn't always have to be perfect. It doesn't always have to be these big grand gestures, these big things. And there is humanity in the mess, and that's where we learn things, and that's when the founders learn things, you know, people throughout history, that's where they learned most was in that mess. And I feel like Cicero is such a great example of that.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Yeah, like he has a lot of clarity about what his values are, and then he gets into the Roman Forum, and those like it's really easy for them to just go out the window when you're confronted with a whole lot of people scheming behind the scenes and strategy and who's aligned with who, and like what's that gonna mean for the next time I need to ask that guy to vote with me in the Senate? Like, it's really hard to hold on to the big picture and kind of keep steering in the right direction, but it's something he tried really hard to do and thought a lot about, and that's helpful, as well as knowing that you don't always get there.

SPEAKER_03 38:20

And you can write an epic poem about yourself and you're still not perfect.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Yeah, maybe don't do that.

SPEAKER_03 38:29

Joanna, this series has been so fun to connect all of these people we've learned about throughout the podcast as a whole and really kind of like take it back again to the the founding of the founding, the lore of the founding. And I just want to thank you for your expertise, for your storytelling. This has just been so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Thank you so much for I think I've said this at the end of every episode, but for letting me like nerd out for all this time about things I love talking about. And yeah, I hope everyone enjoys it and is inspired to read a little bit more.