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Robert Harris on Roman General Agrippa
Episode 699
Augustus was Rome's first Emperor. But who made his empire possible? Behind the throne stood Marcus Agrippa, the brilliant general whose victories se…
1 day, 11 hours ago
The Vandals
Episode 697
The Vandals have gone down in history as the barbarians who helped bring down the Western Roman Empire. Their name became synonymous with violence an…
4 days, 11 hours ago
Terror Birds
Episode 696
What kind of predator needs no teeth to terrify its prey? The terror birds were enormous flightless hunters that ruled South America for millions of …
1 week, 1 day ago
The Maya Ballgame
Episode 695
A rubber ball. A stone court. And a sport where the stakes could be life and death.
For more than 2,000 years, Mesoamerican peoples played a remarkabl…
1 week, 4 days ago
How Slavery Built the Roman Empire
Episode 694
Was the Roman Empire really made by conquest? Or was it powered by something much darker?
For centuries, millions of enslaved people sacrificed their …
2 weeks, 1 day ago
Romulus & Remus
Episode 692
The story of Romulus and Remus is one of the most famous myths from the ancient world. But the Romans believed the founding of their city stretched f…
2 weeks, 4 days ago
Shapur I: Rome's Greatest Enemy?
Episode 691
Few rulers humbled Rome quite like Shapur I. A King of Kings, he rebuilt the Sasanian Persian Empire, defeated Roman armies and captured Emperor Vale…
3 weeks, 1 day ago
Scotland's First Warriors
Episode 690
Three thousand years ago, prehistoric Scotland was a landscape of rival communities, raids and warfare. Bands of warriors fought for power and territ…
3 weeks, 4 days ago
The Catiline Conspiracy
Episode 689
In 63 BC, Rome faced a conspiracy that threatened to tear the Roman Republic apart. At its centre stood two figures: Marcus Tullius Cicero, the grand…
4 weeks, 1 day ago
Alexander the Great's Mad Scientist
Episode 687
WARNING: graphic descriptions of violence and warfare
Meet Diades, Alexander the Great’s overlooked military engineer, the man who made the impossible…
1 month ago