Roman law and punishment

Part of The History of Byzantium

With Anthony Kaldellis

Eighty-seven minutes with Kaldellis on his single-volume history and on the argument that this was the Roman empire throughout, never a Byzantine one.

Part of The Partial Historians

Seventy-six minutes on two trials in the 420s BC: a consul who failed in the field and a Vestal who dressed too well. What a prosecution meant in those years comes out clearer here than in any summary.

Part of The Partial Historians

Livy and Dionysius both tell the story of Verginia, and the two doctors read them side by side. Sixty-nine minutes on a father who kills his daughter in the Forum to keep her from a decemvir, and on why Rome needed that story to be rid of its second decemvirate.

Part of Life of Caesar

The year 61, when a city prefect is killed by one of his own slaves and the senate applies the old law: all four hundred slaves of the household die. Sixty-seven minutes on a rule everyone found monstrous and nobody dared repeal.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-one minutes on what Caesar actually changed as dictator: the colonies, the grain dole, the calendar. His enemies conceded the reforms made sense, and this episode shows why.

Part of The Partial Historians

The years 413 and 412 BC, straight after the murder of the patrician Postumius. Fifty-nine minutes on spoils, punishment and who ends up in court in a war year. The title borrows from a television show; the episode is about the law of spoils.

Part of The Partial Historians

Fifty-eight minutes on 472 and 471 BC, the years the tribunes start being elected by the comitia tributa. Dr Radness reads Livy and Dr G reads Dionysius, and the gap between those two is what the episode is about.

Part of The Partial Historians

The sequel to Verginia, and this one is about what happened to Appius Claudius. Fifty-four minutes in which the sources contradict each other over whether he died in prison or by his own hand, and the two doctors decline to choose for you.

Part of The Partial Historians

Fifty-three minutes on the end of the decemvir, and on the sources disagreeing about whether it was prison, poison or his own hand. The two doctors lay out who says what and decline to pick.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Zachary Herz

Forty-eight minutes on the law that condemned every slave in a household when the master was killed by one of them, and on the senate debate that upheld it in AD 61. Four hundred people died under a rule the senate itself called monstrous.

Part of The Partial Historians

Forty-eight minutes on the demand to write the law down, which took eight years and an embassy to Greece before anyone put chisel to bronze.

Part of The Partial Historians

Forty-six minutes on the long middle of the conflict, where the patricians conceded slowly and kept the priesthoods longest.

Part of The Partial Historians

Forty-six minutes on a senate that had lost the habit of meeting and a board of ten that preferred it that way.

Part of The Partial Historians

Forty-six minutes on the collapse: a soldier killed, a daughter killed by her own father, and a second secession that swept the whole board clean.

Part of Tides of History

Peter Sarris on his own biography of Justinian, with Patrick Wyman pressing on the balance sheet: the reconquest, the Code, Hagia Sophia, and the plague that arrived in the middle of all three. Forty-six minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Helen Bond

Helen Bond on Pilate outside the Gospels: a prefect of Judaea under Tiberius, known from an inscription at Caesarea and from Josephus complaining about him. Forty-five minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Gillian Shepherd

Forty-four minutes on a punishment reserved for slaves and rebels, designed to take days and be watched.

Part of The Partial Historians

Ten men given all the power in the state to write a law code, and for one year it worked. Forty-four minutes on the experiment before it soured.

Part of Tides of History

Forty-four minutes on the Republic around 450 BC, when the magistracies and the written law appear and the city is poorer than it had been under the kings.

Part of The Partial Historians

Forty-three minutes on the year the tribunate reached ten members, and on whether that made it stronger or easier to buy.

Part of The Partial Historians

The second decemvirate refusing to stand down, with Appius Claudius at the centre. Forty-two minutes on a commission turning into a regime.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Forty-one minutes on a man charged with sorcery for marrying a rich widow, and on the speech he gave in his own defence. It survives in full, so we can read a Roman magic trial almost as it was argued.

Part of The Partial Historians

The lex Icilia that handed the Aventine to the plebs for housing. Thirty-nine minutes on the first Roman public housing scheme.

Part of The Partial Historians

The plebeian secession to the Sacred Mount, a general strike two and a half thousand years early. Thirty-eight minutes on the fight that produced the tribunate.

Part of The Partial Historians

The first Roman accused of aiming at kingship, executed for proposing a land law. Thirty-eight minutes on a pattern that would repeat for four hundred years.

Part of The Partial Historians

Volero Publilius and the reform that moved tribunician elections to the plebeian assembly, plus a murder nobody solved. Thirty-eight minutes on procedure as a weapon.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-seven minutes on a constitution that was never written down, and on how Romans knew what it said anyway.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-six minutes on the bill, the deposed colleague and the inheritance from Pergamum that turned a land law into a constitutional crisis.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Zachary Herz

Thirty-six minutes on the jurist who supplies a third of the Digest and was killed by the praetorians in front of the emperor.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Caillan Davenport

Thirty-six minutes on the order that every inhabitant sacrifice and collect a certificate, the first empire-wide persecution and the first census of belief.

Part of The Partial Historians

Thirty-six minutes on the code itself, which survives only in quotation and covers debt, property and the rights of a father over his household.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Thirty-three minutes weighing what was left in 565: Italy ruined by twenty years of war, the treasury empty, and a law code that outlived every province he took.

Part of The Partial Historians

Thirty-two minutes on the general prosecuted by the tribunes he had insulted, and on how much of Coriolanus is a fifth-century figure at all.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-one minutes on the Augustan law that made adultery a public crime, and on the daughter and granddaughter he exiled under it.

Part of Emperors of Rome

The will that made an eighteen-year-old his heir and gave every citizen of Rome a cash legacy. Reading it aloud at the funeral was the act that turned a murder into a war.

Part of The Partial Historians

The second king, who founded priesthoods and a calendar and fought nobody for forty-three years. Twenty-nine minutes on a reign invented to balance the first.

Part of The Partial Historians

Twenty-nine minutes on the strangest office Rome invented: sacrosanct, able to stop any act of state with one word, and confined inside the city walls.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twenty-eight minutes on the land problem: veterans with nothing to return to and estates worked by the enslaved they had captured.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Emma Southon

Twenty-eight minutes on the freedwoman whose testimony triggered the suppression of the Bacchanalia in 186 BC, with seven thousand implicated.

Part of Being Roman with Mary Beard

Gaius Julius Alpinus Classicianus arrived as procurator in 61 to find the governor still killing Britons, and wrote to Nero that a province of corpses pays no tax. Twenty-eight minutes; his tombstone is in the British Museum.

Part of The Partial Historians

Twenty-three minutes on the office: six months, absolute power, and a magistrate appointed to hand it back. The Republic's emergency brake, and it worked for three centuries.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

The edict of 301 fixed a price for a thousand goods, from lions to legal fees, with death for overcharging. Twenty-one minutes on an experiment in price control that the market simply walked around.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Nineteen minutes on the Antonine Constitution of 212, which made almost everyone a citizen and changed what the word meant.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Seventeen minutes on a treason trial built on forged correspondence, reported by a historian who was there.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Seventeen minutes on how Byzantines expected to be treated by their own state, and what they did when they were not.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Trajan's instruction that Christians should be punished if accused and never hunted, and anonymous denunciations ignored. Seventeen minutes on a policy of deliberate inattention.

Part of Ancient Rome Live

The edict of 212 that made almost every free inhabitant a citizen, and the argument about whether it was principle or tax revenue.

Part of The History of Rome

Fifteen minutes on the first written Roman law, put on bronze in the forum so that nobody could claim it said something else.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Eleven minutes on what happened to auxiliary recruitment once Caracalla made everyone a citizen in 212, which removed the main incentive for joining.

Part of Ancient Rome Live

Where executions actually happened: the Carcer, the Tarpeian Rock, and what the locations meant to the crowd.

Part of Cost of Glory · Alex Petkas on Plutarch, 45 hours

Part of Lost Roman Heroes · Matteo and Matthew Storm, 101 episodes

Part of Rome Retold · T.E. Sarma, narrative history by season

Part of Rome Retold · T.E. Sarma, narrative history by season

Part of Rome Retold · T.E. Sarma, narrative history by season

Part of Rome Retold · T.E. Sarma, narrative history by season

Part of Rome Retold · T.E. Sarma, narrative history by season

Part of The History of Rome · Mike Duncan, 179 episodes, 2007 to 2012

Part of The History of Rome · Mike Duncan, 179 episodes, 2007 to 2012

Part of The History of Rome · Mike Duncan, 179 episodes, 2007 to 2012

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