Julius Caesar

Two seasons, cancelled far too early, and still the only screen Rome that feels lived in. It follows two soldiers through Caesar's rise and Octavian's, and the politics of the street is as carefully built as the politics of the Senate.

Part of Roman Empire

The Caesar season, and the strongest of the three: reenactment cut with historians who are given room to disagree with the script. Season three is the weak one.

Part of HistoryHit

Seventy-five minutes running from Caesar's two landings in 55 and 54 BC to Agricola in the north, in one sitting. A single historian to camera, which suits a story usually told in fragments.

Part of The Ancients

With Steele Brand

Seventy-four minutes on the man whose ancestor supposedly expelled the last king, which is a family expectation nobody should have to carry.

Part of Cost of Glory

Sixty-five minutes on the pursuit of Ambiorix and the destruction of the Eburones, which Caesar describes himself. Reading his own account of it is the point.

Part of The Ancients

Counterfactuals are usually a waste of an hour. This one earns it by making the case that the Republic was already gone and the assassins were the last people to notice.

Beard on Caesar as general, dictator and politician at once, and on how much of the man we have is his own account of himself. Fifty-nine minutes; start here before the assassination episodes anywhere else in the index.

Part of The Rest Is History

The Ides of March at thriller pace, fifty-seven minutes. The detail that sticks is how many of the sixty-odd conspirators Caesar had personally pardoned after fighting them in the civil war.

Part of The Rest Is History

Fifty-six minutes on what the assassins had not planned for: no plan. The liberators freed a Republic that no longer had anyone able to run it.

Part of The Ancients

With Maria Wyke

Maria Wyke on what the Ides became afterwards: Dante, Shakespeare, and John Wilkes Booth shouting Latin from a stage. Fifty-five minutes on an afternoon that keeps getting reused.

Part of The Rest Is History

Fifty-three minutes on how much of Star Wars and Dune is Roman furniture: a republic that votes itself an emperor, a senate, an imperium already rotting at the centre.

Part of The Ancients

The shorter, tidier version of the same day. Take this one if you want the events and the other if you want the room.

Part of The Ancients

With Catherine Steel

The unglamorous decades before Gaul, when he was a heavily indebted politician buying an electorate. The part that explains the rest.

Part of Cost of Glory

Fifty-one minutes on the moment Caesar nearly lost Gaul, in a series that reads the Commentaries as propaganda as much as report.

Part of The Ancients

What happened on 15 March 44 BC, minute by minute, and how many of the sixty men involved Caesar had personally pardoned.

Bibracte is where the Gauls made Vercingetorix their commander and where Caesar wrote up his own campaign. Fifty minutes in Burgundy on the town that was a capital before Rome arrived and empty within a generation after.

Part of The Ancients

October 42 BC, and both of Caesar's assassins die by their own hand within three weeks on the same plain. Forty-nine minutes on the day the Republic stopped having defenders.

Part of The Ancients

With Hannah Cornwell

Hannah Cornwell on the months after the Ides, when Antony held the consulship and the nineteen-year-old Octavian held Caesar's name. Forty-nine minutes on how that standoff became a triumvirate.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part one, forty-eight minutes on 55 BC: scouts along the Kentish coast, a contested landing, and a Roman picture of Britons as savages the Romans half envied.

Part of The Ancients

Forty-seven minutes on 15 March 44 BC, a date that was the first full moon of the Roman year before it was anything else.

Part of The Ancients

With Lloyd Llewellyn Jones

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on the six Cleopatras before the famous one, a Ptolemaic line of queens who ruled, married brothers and killed relatives as policy. Forty-seven minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Philip Nothaft

Philip Nothaft on the Julian calendar, Caesar's reform that outlasted every other one and still sets the year, with 46 BC stretched to 445 days to force the seasons back into place. Forty-six minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Simon Elliott

Forty-five minutes setting the two against each other on what can actually be compared: sieges, logistics, and what each of them inherited. Simon Elliott does pick one.

Part of The Ancients

With Simon Elliott

Simon Elliott on the two landings of 55 and 54 BC, neither of which left a garrison behind. Forty-two minutes on what Rome knew about Britain before it went, which was almost nothing.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Forty-two minutes on 10 January 49 BC: what the crossing legally meant, how inevitable it actually was, and why a small river carried that much weight.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part two of four on Cleopatra, covering the Alexandrian war and the years she spent in a villa across the Tiber while Caesar was alive. Forty-one minutes.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part one, thirty-nine minutes on how Caesar became powerful enough that crossing a small river in northern Italy counted as a declaration of war.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part two, thirty-seven minutes on the crossing itself and on Caesar going into Italy with a single legion against the Senate and Pompey.

Part of HistoryHit

The two British expeditions that achieved almost nothing militarily and everything politically, which is why Caesar wrote them up at length.

Part of Historia Civilis

The Ides drawn minute by minute, with who stood where in the theatre of Pompey. Sixty conspirators is a logistical problem and this shows it as one.

Part of Historia Civilis

The years of manoeuvring before the crossing, drawn as diagrams the way this channel does everything. You see the legal trap close around Caesar before he reaches the river.

Part of Historia Civilis

Twenty-two minutes of moving rectangles on Philippi in 42 BC, two battles three weeks apart in which both sides lost a commander to suicide on bad information.

Part of Historia Civilis

Antony's speech and the riot it started, which decided more than the murder did.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Eleven minutes on dice and board games in the ancient world, which is where Caesar's line at the Rubicon comes from and what it actually meant to a player.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Ten minutes on Macedonian arms manufacture under Philip and Alexander, and on how much thinner that evidence is than the Roman equivalent.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Eight minutes answering a listener: how legionaries fought at the Arar and Bibracte in 58 BC and were fit to do it again weeks later. Murray Dahm on training, grain ration and discipline.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Ad Navseam · Two classicists in lively discussion; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Ken Bratt

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 Young Heretics · Spencer Klavan on the great works; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; 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 Echoes of History · History Hit for Assassin's Creed; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Echoes of History · History Hit for Assassin's Creed; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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