Aug 25, 2024
ChatGPT gives us Shakespeare’s version of Otho’s last speech, while the news of his demise makes its way to Rome and everyone yawns and swears an oath of loyalty to the third guy to be declared emperor since the death of Nero less than a year earlier. If...
Jan 16, 2021
This is the story of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Known to us as Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. Or just “Nero”. On this episode, we ask – how is it possible that a man tutored and guided by one of the most famous Stoic philosophers, Seneca, would end...
Jul 11, 2020
The first 50 years of Tiberius Claudius Nero’s life was a mixture of wealth, power and cruelty. With symptoms similar to cerebral palsy, the young Claudius was called “a monstrosity of a human being, one that Nature began and never finished” – by his...
Oct 19, 2019
To kick off our Caligula series, we are doing a commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Written by Gore Vidal, directed by Tinto Brass, produced by Bob Guccione, starring Malcolm McDowell, Hellen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, Teresa Ann Savoy,...
Aug 25, 2018
And so it was that in the year 767 Ab Urb Condita, 14 AD if you’re a Christian, or 14 CE if you’re secular Or, if you were living in Rome at the time, you would called it the year of the consulship of Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius Caesar Augustus...
Oct 9, 2015
On the 19th August, 14 CE, 767 years after the founding of Rome, nearly exactly 2001 years ago, the first Emperor of Rome, Augustus, finally died, at 75 years of age. His great-uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar, the most brilliant and successful general in...
