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What About A Mind Keen Enough To Amass It?

What About A Mind Keen Enough To Amass It?

Important lessons from Spartacus and Crassus

Matthew Larsen
October 28, 2024

What About A Mind Keen Enough To Amass It?

Because all I do, especially in the winter is work 12 hours per day and watch TV shows after, I was of course watching the TV show called Spartacus.

It is set in Ancient Rome and is centered around the Servile Wars which were basically slave revolts against the Romans.

I will spare you most of the details. If you want to watch it, you can do that.

Spartacus is the protagonist of the story, and in the current season I am watching, the antagonist is a Roman General and Senator named Marcus Licinius Crassus. If you know anything about Roman history, you would probably recognize the name.

Crassus was the richest person in the Roman Republic, and in the show (and in real life) he self-financed his own army to fight Spartacus when no one else wanted to.

Again, watch the show if you want (it is pretty good), I am not going to go into more detail than that.

In one scene, Spartacus is attacking and taking over a city, and he does so, and the wife of the Edile (an elected official) is kind of like the liaison or ambassador or emissary between Spartacus and the citizens of the captured city.

She tells Spartacus that Crassus is coming and that he is the richest man in Rome.

Spartacus doesn't care and tells her something (paraphrased because I can't find the scene on YouTube and don't want to spend an hour going back and finding it on the streaming platform) like "wealth doesn't win battles" and she says "how about a mind keen enough to amass it?"

I think that is an interesting question.

In real life, Crassus accumulated his wealth through some "less than noble means" but money is money. Selling something that people want is the only pre-requisite to making money. Whether that thing is morally good or not has no bearing.

The lesson here is that if someone has had massive success financially, or in their marriage, or in their fitness level, or in any skill or situation, it is a sign that their mind is well-suited and optimized to have achieved that result.

They know something (or many things) that you and everyone else do not. You would be amazed at the volume and quality of "specific knowledge" that ultra rich people have about their specific industry. It would make sense that they would have a ton of specific knowledge, but no matter how much you would imagine they have, they always have more.

They have the type of knowledge, skillset, connections and more that you cannot simply "Google" or "pay for an intro" to accumulate.

I like the word "keen" in this context, especially instead of "smart." There are plenty of smart people who are absolutely broke (ie. every academic ever). Keen is a great word and a character trait you may consider developing because it takes into account many factors far beyond simple intelligence.

Good luck.