It's hardcore history.

A tantrum.

So like most of you, I have my historical pet peeves and one of them is when sort of the

lightweight media program here or there, I'll be listening and they will confuse the Roman

Empire and the Roman Republic.

They mean the Roman Republic, but they say the Roman Empire.

Right, so it's the fall of the Roman Empire or whatever.

So that gets under my skin in a way that is totally out of proportion to the seriousness

of the crime, but like I said, we all have our little things.

But as many of you know, and we did an exhaustive long series on this, there was a Republican

period and then an empire and what's so fascinating in the history of books is that hinge

point during the transition when it becomes an empire out of a republic.

And this is traditional, right?

I mean, it's Caesar, it's Shakespeare.

I mean, you know, everybody understands this is a very interesting spot here.

And our entire long series, Death Rose of the Republic was supposed to be a not very

long show about this fabulously interesting person from the ancient world, Cleopatra.

And as is, you know, I have problems, but one of those problems is the need to try to go

back earlier in the story to set up, you know, the way things are by the time you get to

the story and I can't ever find a logical beginning point because every time I get to

something earlier, that has a history of its own, right?

That explains how that, so, you know, we ended up covering centuries, I believe, and barely

...