The Ancients8 Mai 2025

Barbarian Invaders: The Sacks of Rome

How did the Huns, Goths, and Vandals help bring down the Roman Empire - and sack the city of Rome itself, not once but twice?

In this second episode of our special series on the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Peter Heather to explore the dramatic wave of invasions that shook Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. From the arrival of the Huns to the sacks of Rome by the Goths in 410 and the Vandals in 455, we trace how the advance of innumerable barbarian tribes brewed decades of tension, betrayal, and bloodshed which helped bring the empire to its knees.

Fall of the Western Roman Empire:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fKMe2jrV1oZKzRSws83w4

The Goths:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5PbZnN3xtQbLkcn2dPZPy2

Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds

The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.

You can take part in our listener survey here:

https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(620)

The Invasion of Persia | Alexander the Great

In spring 334 BC, a young Macedonian king sets out to conquer the Persian Empire.Tristan Hughes and Dr Adrian Goldsworthy explore Alexander the Great’s early campaigns, from the daring crossing into A...

12 Feb 1h 4min

How to Write Cuneiform with Dr. Irving Finkel

More than 5,000 years ago, a revolutionary script emerged in the fertile lands of Mesopotamia that would transform how people counted, governed, worshipped and told stories. This was cuneiform, the wo...

8 Feb 1h

Alexander the Great | Rise to Power

NEW SERIES! Journey through the early life of Alexander the Great, from his education under Aristotle to his first military experiences and rise to Macedonian kingship.In this first episode, charting ...

5 Feb 1h 24min

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve: parents of humanity, or characters in a Near Eastern myth about wisdom, mortality, and the limits of being human?Tristan Hughes and Dr Dylan Johnson strip away the Sunday school varnish ...

1 Feb 59min

The First Popes

What do we know about the earliest Popes, and how did they shape the early Christian Church amidst persecution?Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Rosamond McKitterick to journey back to Imperial Ro...

29 Jan 56min

Xerxes the Great

He is one of the most famous rulers of the ancient world, remembered for leading a vast Persian invasion of Greece. Yet Xerxes the Great was far more than just a battlefield king.In this episode of Th...

25 Jan 55min

The Origins of Rome's Empire

396 BC. The city of Veii lies in ruins, destroyed by Rome in a brutal act of early imperial expansion. Yet just six years later, Rome itself would face devastation at the hands of invading Gauls, a sh...

22 Jan 58min

The First Arabians

What can ancient DNA tell us about the first homo sapiens to arrive in Arabia over 50,000 years ago? Tristan Hughes is joined by Prof. Pierre Zalloua to delve into the groundbreaking advances in ancie...

18 Jan 50min