Diocletian, Constantine and Christian Rome

Hypatia in Alexandria, and the only feature film about late antique intellectual life. Takes liberties with her death and is honest about the world she lived in.

Part of The Ancients

With Peter Heather

How a small movement went from persecuted to imperial in three centuries. The demographic arithmetic is the interesting part.

Part of The Ancients

Fifty-eight minutes on what happened to temples, statues and libraries as Christianity took the state, and on how much destruction the evidence will actually carry.

Part of The Ancients

With David Gwynn

The most systematic Roman attempt to destroy Christianity, launched in 303, over within a decade, and followed by a Christian emperor. Also good on the four-emperor system that worked exactly once.

Part of The Ancients

With Rosamond McKitterick

The bishops of Rome before there was a papacy, when the claim to primacy was still being invented.

Part of The Ancients

With Joan Taylor

Joan Taylor on Bethlehem before the nativity, a small place south of Jerusalem with a longer history than the one story it is known for. Fifty-two minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With David Potter

Milvian Bridge, the sign he described differently to different audiences, and a deathbed baptism. Whether he was convinced or calculating is an argument that will outlive all of us, and the episode does not pretend otherwise.

Part of The Ancients

Forty-nine minutes on Constantine's climb from York in 306 to sole rule, and on how much of the Christian account of it comes from writers who needed him to be a convert.

The harbour of Theodosius, found under a modern city while they were digging a railway. Forty-three minutes on the port that fed the capital of the last emperor to rule both halves of the empire.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

With Jason Klazmer

Jason Klazmer on how Diocletian rebuilt an army that had spent fifty years making and unmaking emperors, and on the price of the fix. Forty minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Dafydd Daniel

What Christians actually argued about in 325, which was not what most people assume, and how an emperor came to be chairing it.

Part of The Ancients

Thirty-one minutes on Valentine of Rome, patron saint of beekeepers and of epilepsy, and on how a martyr with almost no biography acquired one.

Part of Being Roman with Mary Beard

Twenty-seven minutes on the clerks: the thousands of men who kept the provinces fed and watered, and the complaints they left behind about each other.

Part of When in Rome

With Caillan Davenport

Twenty-five minutes on the largest baths Rome ever built, put up in the early fourth century and now holding a church, a museum and a railway station.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Twenty-two minutes on the emperor remembered for one word, Apostate, and on the rest of him: the writing, the reforms, the eighteen months he had.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Twenty-two minutes on Julian sent to Gaul as a junior Caesar with no military experience, and on what he did with it.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Twenty-one minutes on the years after Adrianople, when the empire had a religious civil war on top of a military one.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Seventeen minutes arguing the fourth century was a good time to be alive, which cuts against the decline story most listeners arrive with.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Fifteen minutes on how a small movement became the empire's religion in under a century. The shortest route into the question in this whole catalogue.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Ten minutes on whether Christianity changed how the Roman army fought, recruited and swore its oaths, or only the words it used for those.

Part of Ancient Rome Live

Nine minutes on the last great bath complex built in Rome, raised on the Quirinal around AD 315 and pulled down in 1605 to clear ground for a cardinal's palace. The drawings made before it went are most of what survives.

Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Greeced Lightning · Myths and movies with a doctor of classics; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed