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Reviewed, ranked and indexed episode by episode

The Best Ancient Rome Podcasts

Twenty-four shows, what each one is for, and the episode to press play on first.

24 shows reviewed · 3,604 episodes indexed

I feel like…

ThinkingAny

Cogitare, how it was thought and ordered

FeelingAny

Sentire, what was lived and endured

DoingAny

Facere, what hands made and did

PeriodAny

when it happens

FormAny

how it is made

NarratorAny

who is talking

Twenty-four shows, and the spread is the whole of it: one narrative runs seventy-three hours from the founding myth to the last emperor, another gives a full hour to the pay of a single legion, and two are written, scored and cut like films.

The History of Rome

Mike Duncan, 179 episodes, 2007 to 2012 · 189 episodes indexed · 70 h

Duncan recorded this while working in the fish trade, alone, with no co-host and no sound designer, and took the story from the founding myth to the deposition of the last western emperor in 179 episodes. It won best educational podcast at the 2010 Podcast Awards and has stayed at the head of the field for the fifteen years since. Seventy hours are indexed here. The first dozen episodes sound like a man in a cupboard, and he gets audibly better around thirty. What you get for the length is continuity: by the third century you know the families, and the collapse lands because you watched it get built.

Where to start. Episode 1. Fifteen minutes, and it is built to be the beginning.

Every episode in order →

The History of Byzantium

Robin Pierson, continuing from 476 for the last fourteen years · 352 episodes indexed · 192 h

Pierson started in 2012, in the year Duncan stopped, and has now published 368 episodes and 193 hours: longer than the show he set out to continue. He was working as a television critic when he began and does this for a living now. Every so often the narrative halts for an episode on trade, the army or the church, and he brings on the historians whose books he has been working from to argue with him about them. Eleven centuries, in order, by one person.

Where to start. Episode 1, or the reign of Justinian if you want to hear the house style first.

Every episode in order →

The Partial Historians

Dr Fiona Radford and Dr Peta Greenfield, the Republic year by year · 222 episodes indexed · 190 h

Both finished doctorates in Roman history and started this in 2013, out of a late-night conversation about where else the material could go. Radford wrote her thesis on Kubrick's Spartacus and is the one to hear on Rome at the cinema; Greenfield works on the Vestals, and on religion, politics and women in the late Republic. Their main series takes the Republic one year at a time from 753 BCE, reads Livy out loud, argues with him, and then scores him on a scale of their own invention. 221 episodes and 189 hours here, and it is the most detailed treatment of early Rome in audio.

Where to start. The Foundation of the City series from the beginning, or any year you care about.

Every episode in order →

Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Every emperor, scored, 202 episodes and 247 hours · 201 episodes indexed · 246 h

Two hosts take every Roman emperor in turn, tell the life properly, and then score him across categories they invented, feeding a league table that runs the length of the series. The scoring sounds like a gimmick and turns out to be a teaching device: put Claudius next to Aurelian on the same scale and you have to decide what an emperor was actually for. 247 hours, and it takes the obscure third-century men as seriously as the famous ones.

Where to start. Augustus, so the scoring has a benchmark.

Every episode in order →

The Pax Romana Podcast

Professor Colin Elliott, 119 episodes · 119 episodes indexed · 39 h

A Roman historian narrating the imperial centuries straight, in short episodes, without guests. The political intrigue is handled with the pacing of drama and none of the facts are bent to fit. 39 hours, and it starts where most people finish a first pass at the Republic.

Where to start. Episode 1.

Every episode in order →

Life of Caesar

Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours · 160 episodes indexed · 170 h

The longest Roman run indexed here: 158 episodes and 170 hours since 2013, one subject at a time and at a length nobody else attempts. The Julius Caesar arc alone runs to nearly fifty episodes, several of them past two hours. Two Australians talking, so it moves at the pace of a conversation, which some evenings is the point.

Where to start. The Julius Caesar arc from its first episode.

Every episode in order →

The Fall of Rome Podcast

Patrick Wyman, 33 episodes, finished · 32 episodes indexed · 23 h

Wyman has a doctorate in exactly this period and the series is the argument from it: the western empire came apart as a political decentralisation, and the economic and archaeological evidence carries the argument, without reaching for decadence. 33 episodes and 23 hours, complete since 2018, which makes it the rare show you can finish. Listen to it before you argue with anyone about why Rome fell.

Where to start. Episode 1; the run is short enough to take in order.

Every episode in order →

Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast

Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes · 139 episodes indexed · 43 h

A numbered chronological run through Roman history in episodes of fifteen to forty minutes, going since 2023 and now past 130. Independent and unpolished in the way the early History of Rome was, and useful for the same reason: it keeps going, in order, and assumes you have read nothing.

Where to start. Episode 1.

Every episode in order →

Echoes of Empires

Nick Holmes, an argument in audio · 47 episodes indexed · 17 h

Holmes writes books about the end of the Roman world and the podcast is the argument from them, told in his own voice. Worth knowing before you go looking: it ran as The Fall of the Roman Empire until 2026, so that name now finds a different show by somebody else. He commits to a position and defends it for 47 episodes, which makes it better to argue with than a survey.

Where to start. The fall sequence, in order.

Every episode in order →

Rome Retold

T.E. Sarma, narrative history by season · 20 episodes indexed · 8 h

Organised into seasons, so a period is easy to take on its own; season three is the Punic Wars. Twenty episodes and eight hours, clean chronology, no guests, and short enough to finish a season on a long drive.

Where to start. Season one, or the season covering the period you want.

Every episode in order →

The History of Constantinople

The city, from the Greek colony onwards · 21 episodes indexed · 14 h

Begins with Byzantion as a Greek colony and works forward, so the first season is largely pre-Roman and better for it: by the time Constantine arrives you know why he chose that site, and the harbour and the walls stop being a coincidence. Eighteen episodes here, and it sits well next to The History of Byzantium, which starts in 476 and takes the city as given.

Where to start. Season one, episode one.

Every episode in order →

Byzantium And The Crusades

Nick Holmes, the eastern half · 17 episodes indexed · 6 h

Holmes' second series, picking up the eastern empire and carrying it into the crusading centuries across 17 episodes. It reads as the sequel to his argument about the west, so it lands harder after Echoes of Empires.

Where to start. Episode 1.

Every episode in order →

The Ancients

Tristan Hughes and the History Hit team, twice a week since 2020 · 238 episodes indexed · 195 h

Two episodes a week, every Sunday and Thursday, past six hundred in total and 237 of them about Rome. The guest is the person who did the work: the archaeologist from the excavation, the academic who wrote the monograph, the translator who gave a decade to the text. Hughes has read it before they arrive and asks the question a listener would ask, which sounds small and is the whole difference. Producer Joseph Knight, senior producer Anne-Marie Luff and audio editor Aidan Lonergan keep two of these a week on air, which is a schedule most weekly shows would not survive.

Where to start. Any subject you already like. Every episode stands on its own.

All the Roman episodes →

Emperors of Rome

Dr Rhiannon Evans, Dr Caillan Davenport and Matt Smith · 270 episodes indexed · 133 h

A collaboration between La Trobe and the Australian National University, running since 2014, and named Australia's best history podcast by Apple in 2019. Evans and Davenport bring the scholarship, Smith asks what a listener would ask, and an episode rarely passes thirty minutes. 271 of them are indexed here. It is the show to reach for when you want Elagabalus explained on a walk.

Where to start. The Augustus episodes, then follow the numbering.

Every episode in order →

The Rest Is History

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, Goalhanger · 58 episodes indexed · 51 h

Holland has translated Herodotus and Suetonius and written three books on Rome; Sandbrook is a modern historian who plays the interested outsider. They do Rome in multi-part runs of four or five episodes, and 58 of those are indexed here. It is the most entertaining way into a subject, and the trade-off is that two widely-read generalists are talking, so the confident asides are asides.

Where to start. Any Rome multi-parter; each run is self-contained.

All the Roman episodes →

Tides of History

Patrick Wyman, with a production budget · 53 episodes indexed · 39 h

Wyman again, with more range and better production. The Roman episodes sit inside a longer project about how the ancient world became the modern one, and he keeps turning the question towards ordinary people, trade routes and disease. 53 Roman episodes are indexed here; they stand alone.

Where to start. Any of the Roman episodes listed here.

All the Roman episodes →

The Ancient World

Scott Chesworth, Bronze Age to Rome · 55 episodes indexed · 26 h

An independent series that spends its time on everything Rome inherited, which is the part most Rome shows begin after. Chesworth works from the sources, moves slowly, and covers the Near East and Greece in enough depth that the Etruscans stop looking like an accident. 55 episodes are indexed here.

Where to start. The Bloodline series if you want Rome specifically.

All the Roman episodes →

Being Roman with Mary Beard

BBC Radio 4, one Roman life in twenty-eight minutes · 12 episodes indexed · 5 h

Beard takes a single ordinary Roman and rebuilds a life out of whatever survives of it, in twenty-eight minutes, with a BBC Radio 4 budget behind her. Twelve of those are Roman and they are indexed here; the feed was renamed Ancient Lives in 2026 and moved to Greek subjects. She is the most widely read Roman historian alive and this is the shortest way to hear how she works.

Where to start. Anywhere in series one. Each episode stands on its own.

All the Roman episodes →

Ancient Warfare Podcast

The companion to Ancient Warfare magazine, since 2008 · 142 episodes indexed · 68 h

A panel of working specialists, running since 2008, with 350 hours indexed here. They will give an hour to the pay and rations of a single legion, or to the design of one piece of kit, because the magazine behind them has readers who want exactly that. Nothing else covers Roman military logistics at this depth in audio. It assumes you know the outline already.

Where to start. Any episode on a battle whose outcome you already know.

All the Roman episodes →

Cost of Glory

Alex Petkas on Plutarch, 45 hours · 38 episodes indexed · 45 h

Petkas taught ancient philosophy and history at university and left to make this. He works from Plutarch's Parallel Lives and retells them at full length, which is the whole point: Plutarch wrote biography as a study of character under pressure, and that survives only at length. Greek and Roman both, so 38 Roman episodes are indexed here. The multi-part Caesar sequence is the fullest treatment of him in audio outside the big narrative series.

Where to start. The Caesar sequence, or any life you already half know.

Every episode in order →

Lost Roman Heroes

Matteo and Matthew Storm, 101 episodes · 103 episodes indexed · 126 h

Two brothers giving an hour each to Roman and Byzantine figures who never make the emperor lists, 124 hours of it so far. The value is reach: names that get a sentence elsewhere get sixty minutes here, and the run goes deep into the Byzantine centuries where most Rome shows have already stopped.

Where to start. Any figure you have never heard of. That is the premise.

Every episode in order →

Understanding Rome

Agnes Crawford, licensed guide in Rome · 20 episodes indexed · 5 h

Crawford guides in Rome for a living, and this is the city itself: what a building was for, who paid for it, and what happened on the ground you are standing on. Twenty episodes running from before the founding to the Pantheon, numbered as Parts and then as Episodes, which is one series and not two. Five hours, and the only show here that covers topography.

Where to start. Part I, then in order. It is a walk.

Every episode in order →

Fall of Civilizations

Paul Cooper, two to three months per episode · 3 episodes indexed · 8 h

Cooper works on this full time and spends two to three months writing and recording a single episode, most of which run past three hours. Alexey Sibikin does the sound design, the theme is John Bartmann's Home at Last, and for each civilisation Cooper commissions musicians who play that tradition: the Vijayanagara episode carries original music composed and performed by Aruna Sairam. The result has the sound of a film and the reading list of a thesis, and it exists because one person decided to make it at that standard. Available as video and worth the video.

Where to start. Roman Britain: The Work of Giants Crumbled.

All the Roman episodes →

Hardcore History

Dan Carlin, six parts, twenty-two hours · 1 episodes indexed · 22 h

Death Throes of the Republic runs to six parts and twenty-two hours on the fall of the Republic, which is a full working day and then some. Carlin says on every episode that he is not a historian, and what he is instead is the best popular narrator working in audio. Take it as the way in, then go to the Partial Historians for the same events handled by people with doctorates in them.

Where to start. Death Throes of the Republic, part one.

All the Roman episodes →

Where to go from here

Pick a century and the same 3,604 episodes rearrange themselves around Hannibal, or Vesuvius, or the year the west ran out of emperors. The centuries are here.

Every complete run on this page is also listed episode by episode, in order, with running times. It beats scrolling a podcast app backwards for an hour. And if you would rather read than listen, the historians above have written books.

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