Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and ...
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GUEST BIO:
Anthony Kaldellis is a historian of the Roman Empire and author of "The New Roman Empire", a comprehensive history of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire).
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2:47As a person who understands the full journey of it with a focus on East Roman history, is there obvious glaring holes or incorrect things in what I just said?
So, late Roman Empire we use for both East and West, starting around the reign of Diocletian, maybe even a bit earlier, so during the 3rd century AD. And that goes down to maybe the early 7th century. So, that period we call late Roman Empire. And if you ask me to define its principal characteristics, it would probably be the tax system and the administration bureaucracy of the later Roman Empire, that comes from mostly Diocletian and Constantine's reforms.
753 BC, Rome, a small city-state, is founded. Then in 509 BC, the kings are overthrown and the Roman Republic is born. 390 BC, the Gauls sack Rome. And this, I believe, among other events throughout its history, is a formative trauma that hardens Rome's security obsession. It turns out throughout its history, people want to attack from different directions. And so, you have to defend. So, there's two wars, as we're actually saying off mic, there's two kinds of military operations. One is wars of conquest and expansion, and one is more defensive. And we'll talk about how the military changes throughout its history to allocate more effort to one versus the other.
In 264 to 146 BC, the Punic Wars and the survival against Hannibal transform Rome into a Mediterranean superpower. Then, like you mentioned, Caesar in 49 to 31 BC, Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon to the assassination of Caesar to the Battle of Actium, and then the Civil War dismantles the Republic and concentrates power in the single ruler, Octavian, aka Augustus, the first Roman emperor, let's say.
Kaldellis, A. (2026, July 4). The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire: 2,200 years of the Roman State | Anthony Kaldellis [Interview transcript]. Lex Clips. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3061294/
MLA
Anthony Kaldellis. "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire: 2,200 years of the Roman State | Anthony Kaldellis." Lex Clips, 4 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3061294/.
BibTeX
@misc{kaldellis2026_3061294,
author = {Anthony Kaldellis},
title = {The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire: 2,200 years of the Roman State | Anthony Kaldellis},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Lex Clips. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jul},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3061294/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
