Over 143 episodes of audio, Mike Duncan has covered the founding of Rome through the Crisis of the Third Century in his
History of Rome podcast [
previously], having now reached the last pagan Emperor,
Julian The Apostate. Enlivened by drawing on comparisons to popular culture, from
The Empire Strikes Back (when Hannibal makes his appearance) to
The Godfather (as a metaphor for Rome's social client system), Mr Duncan's work makes for fun, informative 25-minute sessions with the greatest empire of the ancient western world. If you're interested in more, the podcasts could be handily supplemented with...
In his "
Hardcore History" podcast (
previously), former broadcaster Dan Carlin covered the fall of the Roman Republic (episode
I,
II,
III,
IV,
V and a suitably epic final five-hour
part VI). He also dramatically addressed the wars against the Carthaginians as the "Punic Nightmares" series (now sadly behind a paywall). Much of the same era was covered by Melvyn Bragg with an
In Our Time episode on the
destruction of Carthage. IOT has also recently broadcast an episode on
Cleopatra (as NPR's
All Things Considered did in a
brief interview with the author of Cleopatra: A Life) along with episodes on
Roman Britain, the broader
influence of Rome on European civilization, and the
decline and
fall of the empire.
From another angle,
Professor Bob Packett has just
summarized the life of Ceasar (MP3) after an extensive audio biography [
recent archive]. The penultimate episode of the series, on Ceasar's funeral, was his very first broadcast, almost 2000 episodes ago.
If you're more the visual type, Mr Duncan
(recent BBC profile) has nicely illustrated many of his podcasts with maps, but you may wish to add:
Of course, you might also want to consult the original sources, from the
Perseus Digital Library: Livy's
History of Rome, the
Annals and
History of Tacitus (about whom there is another IOT
episode), and Caesar's
Gallic War. And if you want to know what happened after Romulus Augustulus, the fittingly named last emperor of Rome, at least for the eastern half of the empire you could do worse than turning to the podcast that inspired Mr Duncan to produce his own work:
12 Byzantine Emperors, by
Lars Brownworth, who has since turned to covering the
history of the Normans (
previously).
Famous Romans
Rome and the Barbarians
History of Ancient Rome
Emperors of Rome
World of Byzantium
posted by Carius at 2:49 PM on July 10, 2011 [11 favorites]