The Basement: Alex Petkas | Julius Caesar's Final 24 Hours

September 28, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Basement: Alex Petkas on Julius Caesar's Final 24 Hours

Alex Petkas, a Princeton-trained classicist who failed history in high school and now hosts the podcast Cost of Glory, came to the basement to talk about ambition, conspiracy, and what ancient history can teach us about how to live. Petkas sold the family business to go all in on retelling Plutarch's heroes, and he helped produce a documentary with Ridley Scott's company about the Herculaneum scrolls—ancient texts that AI just read for the first time after being buried by Vesuvius nearly two thousand years ago.

The Statue and the Sting

One of the most revealing moments in Caesar's life happened when he was 32, serving as a low-level staff officer in Spain. Visiting a temple in Cadiz with friends, Caesar fell behind. When they looked back, he was standing in front of a statue of Alexander the Great, crying. "Do you not think it is a matter for weeping," he said, "that when Alexander was my age, he was king of so many peoples, and yet I have done nothing worthy of renown?"

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Opening & Guest Introduction** - AJ introduces Alex Petkas, PhD in classics from Princeton and host of Cost of Glory, who failed history in high school.
2 (02:49) **Caesar's Statue of Alexander Moment** - Alex retells the story of 32-year-old Caesar weeping before a statue of Alexander the Great in Spain.
3 (08:42) **Alex's Own "Statue Moment" & Turning Point** - Alex describes his own rough patch at 17 and how self-help books and Stoicism turned him around.
4 (16:45) **Falling in Love with Attic Greek** - Alex explains how he stumbled into Attic Greek and became obsessed, abandoning his jazz guitar career.
5 (26:02) **The Student Who Changed His Life** - Alex recounts the moment a student's essay floored him and validated his entire calling.
6 (30:28) **The Day He Decided to Leave Academia** - Alex reveals the one driver that made him say "now is the time" to leave his tenure-track job.
7 (36:06) **Lessons from the Odyssey: Distractions & Focus** - Alex discusses an essay he wrote on Homer and paying attention, and the mistakes he learned from his own life.

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Show Notes

-Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code WHYFILES at https://cowboycolostrum.com/whyfiles -Get 40% off your first Hungryroot delivery and free veggies for life at https://www.hungryroot.com/basement. Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook "Gertie's Hump Day Recipes" at https://hungryroot.com/THEBASEMENT Dr. Alex Petkas spent years learning dead languages so he could tell you what the greatest men who ever lived were actually like. This one goes everywhere — a library buried by Vesuvius, a coup that broke Sparta, philosophers who got way too close to power, and why Julius Caesar wept in front of a statue. There are hundreds of scrolls under that villa that no living person has read. That's about to change. PETKAS LINKS Website: https://costofglory.com Join: https://theclassicalsociety.com/ Podcast: Cost of Glory YouTube: @costofglory X: @costofglory