Episode 61. Arminius: The Roman Who Turned
Works CitedPrimary SourcesCassius Dio. Roman History, Book 56, chapters 18–24. The fullest ancient narrative of the battle, written two centuries after the events but drawing on earlier sources now lo...
16 Jul 39min
Episode 60. Augustus, Part Four: Teutoburg, Tiberius, and the Question of Legacy
Works CitedPrimary SourcesCassius Dio. Roman History, Books 55–56. The narrative backbone for the decade.Ovid. Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The exile poetry, especially Tristia 2.Res Gestae Divi Au...
20 Jun 46min
Episode 59. Augustus, Part Three: The Succession Unmade
Works CitedPrimary SourcesCassius Dio. Roman History, Books 54–55. The narrative backbone for this episode. Dio covers Agrippa's death in the closing sections of Book 54, and the main subsequent event...
20 Jun 52min
Episode 58. Augustus, Part Two: The Succession He Could Not Arrange
Works CitedPrimary SourcesActa Ludorum Saecularium (CIL VI 32323). The inscribed contemporary record of the Secular Games, recovered in 1890 from the banks of the Tiber.Cassius Dio. Roman History, Boo...
20 Jun 53min
Episode 57. Augustus, Part One: The Man Who Would Not Be King
Sources and HistoriographyThis episode has been drafted primarily from Suetonius's Life of Augustus. Suetonius was writing in the early second century CE, a century after Augustus's death, with access...
14 Jun 36min
Episode 56. The Gods of Rome: Religion, Ritual, and the World Augustus Inherited
Works CitedPrimary SourcesAugustus. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (“The Deeds of the Divine Augustus”). Augustus's own first-person summary of his career and achievements, inscribed on bronze tablets and po...
14 Jun 1h 19min
Episode 55. Actium: The End of the Republic and the Hellenistic World
Works CitedPrimary SourcesCassius Dio. Roman History, Books 50–51. The fullest ancient narrative of Actium; read with awareness of the Augustan shadow.Horace. Odes 1.37 (the Cleopatra ode). The most c...
14 Jun 47min
Episode 54. The New Dionysus: Antony, Cleopatra, and the Eastern World
Works CitedPrimary SourcesAppian. Civil Wars, Books 4–5 (c. 150 CE). The fullest surviving narrative of the period 49–31 BCE. Essential for the Sextus Pompey campaign, the confrontation with Lepidus a...
14 Jun 55min
