Roman Empire

Recorded hours after Joe Biden was named President of the United States, we ask if Donald Trump is a modern day Caesar, willing to do anything to stay in power? Or is Trump the natural successor to th…

Counterfactuals are the great what ifs of history. Imagine the Nazis winning World War 2, or the Roman Empire never falling. Is this a valid form of historical enquiry? Or is it simply game-playing?…

The battle lines are drawn as Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook get involved in this most timely of subjects. They discuss the historical significance of culture wars from Ancient Rome to the US Civil Rights movement.

He remains one of the great characters in all history. But was he depraved, corrupt and evil? Or an artist much maligned by elitist historians? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland discuss Nero.

Tom and Dominic explore what Edward Gibbon called “the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind”: the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Join The Rest Is History Club f…

Who was the most influential leader of the 20th century? What would have happened if the South had won the American Civil War? Would you rather be under siege from the Mongols, the Romans, or the Assy…

Historical Love Island has swept the nation and the podcasting world since Monday, when four couples made it to the final: General Custer & Lola Montez, Lord Byron & Sporus, Stanley Baldwin &a…

Tom and Dominic are joined by friend of the show Kyle Harper to discuss how pandemics and disease played a far greater role in the decline of the Roman Empire than previously understood. On the sh…

In this second episode on perhaps the most notorious assasination in world history, Tom and Dominic look at the bloody and chaotic aftermath of the death of Julius Caesar. They discuss the fate of the…

The roots of the coronation ritual are fabulously ancient: certain elements of the ceremony are vestiges from the later Roman Empire, others have their origins in the Old Testament and ancient Egypt…

“The Church was anxious to draw the attention of its members away from the old pagan feast days, and the December date did this very well, for it coincided with the birthday of the invincible son of M…

Extolling his love for democracy, the Senator took on autocratic powers, during a time of emergency, to save the Republic. The Republic was then abolished, and in its place rose an Empire… This is not…

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals. A military grave from the 5th century BC…

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the Habsburg dynasty's mightiest ruler, was at once King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, Lord of the Netherlands and Duke of Burgundy. With a lineage supposedly stretc…

The unexpected evolution of Italian food can serve as a tantalising doorway into some of the greatest moments of Italian history: from medieval monarchs, murdered popes, and the Renaissance, to secret…

The Roman historian Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars, written during the early imperial period of the Roman Empire, is a seminal biography covering the biographies of the early emperors of Rome, du…

"Enough of the Princeps, what remains to be described, is the monster..." The Roman emperor Caligula endures as one of the most notorious figures in not only Roman history, but the history of the…

How did the Battle of Cannae - one of the most important battles of all time for Ancient Rome, with a whole Empire at stake, and a reputation that had reverberated across the centuries - in 216 BC, un…

Where did gladiatorial combat originate? Who was Spartacus, the legendary gladiator? How did he come to lead the most famous slave revolt in all Roman history? How did the rebellion unfold? And, what…