The Late Republic 133 – 44 BC · 1
32mCicero's Finest Hour (44 to 43 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Cicero in his sixties taking on Antony with words alone, and losing his head for it. The Philippics as a political campaign.
Julius Caesar 100 – 42 BC · 4
32mThe Assassination of Julius Caesar (The Ides of March, 44 B.C.E.) 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.
26mCaesar Crosses the Rubicon (52 to 49 B.C.E.) 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.
22mThe Battle of Philippi (42 B.C.E.) 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.
22mCaesar's Funeral (44 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Antony's speech and the riot it started, which decided more than the murder did.
Antony, Cleopatra and Augustus 44 BC – AD 14 · 5
38mSextus Pompeius and the Sicilian War (42 to 36 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Thirty-eight minutes on Pompey's surviving son, who held Sicily with a fleet and starved Italy of grain until Agrippa built a navy that could beat him.
30mAntony's Invasion of Parthia (42 to 33 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Thirty minutes of rectangles on Antony's Parthian campaign, the one that lost him the reputation Actium then finished off.
26mThe Death of Antony & Cleopatra (30 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Twenty-six minutes of coloured rectangles on the last year of both of them, Actium to the asp. Historia Civilis is strongest on sequence, and 30 BC is almost entirely sequence.
26mWar and Peace ...and War (35 to 32 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Twenty-six minutes on the years when the triumvirate stopped pretending, told through the propaganda each side published about the other.
22mThe Battle of Actium (31 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Actium in animated blocks, which sounds absurd and is the clearest explanation of the battle anywhere. Historia Civilis makes fleet movements legible in a way no documentary manages.
Roman Life, Army and Culture across the centuries · 6
23mCaesar as King? (45 to 44 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
The question mark in the title is the episode: whether Caesar was reaching for a crown, and what the evidence for that really is.
21mThe Fall of Pompey (48 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
Pharsalus and the flight to Egypt, ending with a murder on a beach. The diagrams show where each legion stood, which a narration cannot.
19mCaesar Marches on Rome (49 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
What happened after the Rubicon, with the senate leaving the city and Caesar walking into an empty capital. The animation makes the speed of it legible.
18mThe Roman Triumph Historia Civilis
What a triumph actually involved: the route, the spoils, the prisoners killed at the end. A standalone explainer; it stands outside the narrative run.
16mThe Roman Pomerium Historia Civilis
The sacred boundary of the city, why a general lost his command by crossing it, and how that one line shaped Roman politics for five centuries.
13mRome's New Political Order (48 to 46 B.C.E.) Historia Civilis
What Caesar actually built once he had won, which is the part the story usually skips on its way to the Ides.