Manuring your mind with the history of Rome

Lessons from the history of Rome

I have been listening to a history of Rome.  I find the parallels with our modern world and especially the Pax Americana of my life fascinating.  Rome never met an enemy it could not defeat, except the enemies from within that eventually caused it to rot from the inside out. Still, a thousand years is a good run.

Did you know that ‘decimate’ is a Roman phrase that originally referred to the practice of executing every 10^th member of a legion that brought disgrace by retreating in battle?  I did not.

The history of Rome is just peppered with charismatic and brilliantly confident leaders too.  I listened recently to the story of Marius.  Marius created the first professional Roman army.  One of the cool things he did was to take the existing tactical arrangement of the army and dramatically reorganize it.

Originally they used the Greek phalanx which was rows of soldiers hiding behind a shield wall and pushing forward.  But that only worked well on level ground and couldn’t react to being flanked.  Then they switch to the maniple which was a phalanx with gaps in it, like a checker board so they could turn and fight as individual units.

Marius up and changed it so that the maniples could rotate fresh lines to the front, like changing lines in a hockey game and made it even more flexible.  He also made the new professional soldiers carry their own packs so they could move faster without a baggage train.

What struck me most about all this is that he didn’t have to do it.  When he reorganized the army there was no external threat.  Rome had crushed Carthage, had Greece and Anatolia under wraps and there was no one to fight with.

Leaders, great leaders do things proactively, make changes in anticipation of events.  Great men and women take the risky different path even when there is no reason not to stay with a system that worked well for hundreds of years and usually have to fly in the face of customer and the ‘way it’s always been done’ to do so.

You may ask, “Chris, why do we care about Rome?  Why are you reading history and science and things that have no tactical relation to your career or even your hobbies?”  That’s easy for me to answer.  I have found that the mind needs fresh dirt to grow the best crops.  You might even say it needs a little manure.

By reading and learning continuously and broadly you become a much more intuitive and agile thinker, problem solver and leader.  Your mind connects the dots even if you can’t and it finds big, out-of-the-box solutions to problems and situations that you may even consider mundane.

You, my friends, should consider the fact that your next promotion may come from an insight that you leveraged from the actions of a 2500 year-old Consul, or a medieval French love poem or an alien race in a science fiction novel.

Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy.  Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer’s Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack.  Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com.  Chris’ Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad.

Email me at cyktrussell at Gmail dot com

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