Women in Rome

The 1976 BBC serial, thirteen episodes, made on a budget that shows and with a cast that does not care. Derek Jacobi's Claudius is the performance every later screen Roman is measured against. The history is Robert Graves', which is to say Tacitus at his most gossipy, but nothing has bettered it as drama.

Livia's story as drama, and much better than its lack of an audience suggests. Takes the standard hostile sources and asks what she would have said.

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 Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Nearly two hours on the reign that followed Zoe and Theodora, when the empire still looked strong and the army was being cut. The decline that ends at Manzikert starts in this episode.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

The first woman scored in this series, a hundred and ten emperors and eight centuries in. She ruled in her own name after blinding her son, and the hosts have to decide what that is worth on a scale built for men.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Ninety-two minutes on Severus Alexander, thirteen years on the throne under his mother's management, killed by his own troops in Germany.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Eighty-one minutes on an empress who made three emperors by marrying them, which was the only constitutional route she had.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Fifty-eight minutes on Zoe Karbonopsina, the fourth wife, who ruled as regent for the son the marriage produced.

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

With Emma Southon

Emma Southon on twenty-one women used as a way through the whole empire, from Livia to the unnamed. Seventy-six minutes on writing history from the half that left fewer records.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-six minutes on the death of Claudius, the poisoned mushrooms and the feather that may have finished the job. The sources disagree on almost every detail, and the episode lays out which ones and why.

Part of Life of Caesar

The marriage to his brother's daughter, the senate vote that made it legal, and the adoption of her son over his own. Seventy-six minutes on the four years that ended the dynasty's luck.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Seventy-two minutes on the revolt of 60: a flogged queen, three cities burnt, and an army that nearly lost Britain.

Part of Life of Caesar

Boudica burns three cities while Nero is in Rome, and the empire nearly loses Britain in a summer. Seventy minutes, with the Roman sources read against what archaeology found in the burnt layers.

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 The Partial Historians

With Rebecca Futo Kennedy

Rebecca Futo Kennedy on Athenian women and citizenship, and on how badly Athens compares with Rome on that count. Sixty-nine minutes, and the comparison is the point.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Katharine Huemoeller

Katharine Huemoeller on where women appear in the slave wars, which is rarely and then decisively. Sixty-nine minutes on the part of the revolts the sources skip.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Sixty-nine minutes on Eudokia Makrembolitissa, who swore not to remarry, remarried anyway, and put Romanos Diogenes on the road to Manzikert.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Jane Draycott

Jane Draycott on Antony's third wife, who raised armies in her own name and besieged Perusia. Sixty-eight minutes on the first Roman woman on a coin.

Part of The Ancients

With Carey Fleiner

Carey Fleiner on spinning: sixty-seven minutes on the work that produced clothes, sailcloth and rope, done by women and slaves, and almost absent from the histories written by men who wore the results.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Sixty-four minutes on her sister, who ruled alone at seventy and ended the Macedonian dynasty by dying without an heir.

Part of Life of Caesar

The building programme: the Ostia harbour, the Claudian aqueducts, and the draining of the Fucine Lake that took eleven years and thirty thousand men. An hour on public works as legitimacy.

Part of Emperors of Rome

The two hundredth episode, live: the Donations of Alexandria, in which Antony handed Roman provinces to a foreign queen's children. An hour on the gift that made Actium inevitable.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Emma Southon

Emma Southon on Nero's mother: sister of one emperor, wife of another, mother of a third, and murdered by the last. Sixty-three minutes.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-three minutes on the sister he deified, the first Roman woman to be made a goddess by vote of the senate.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-three minutes on the governorship that paid off his debts and gave him a triumph he gave up to stand for consul.

Part of Emperors of Rome

An hour live on a queen who spoke nine languages, ruled Egypt for twenty-one years, and is remembered for two affairs. The reign gets the attention here.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on the private life the sources dwell on, and on how much of it is standard invective aimed at a dead emperor with no heirs to defend him.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on the court after Messalina, with four freedmen competing to choose the next empress and the winner installing his own candidate.

Part of The Ancients

With Joyce Tyldesley

Cleopatra before the Romans got hold of her story: a Ptolemaic ruler who learned Egyptian when her dynasty had not bothered for three hundred years, playing the only hand a client kingdom had.

Part of The Ancients

With Emma Southon

Livia had more influence than any woman in Roman politics and a reputation as a poisoner invented mostly by Tacitus. The episode separates the two.

Part of The Ancients

With Matilda Brown

Elagabalus took the throne at fourteen and was dead at eighteen, and the people actually running the empire in between were his grandmother and his mother. Sixty minutes with Matilda Brown on the women.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Victoria Austen

Victoria Austen on the altar of peace and the painted garden room from Livia's villa, two Augustan works about nature and control. Fifty-nine minutes.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-nine minutes working through the scandal material and asking what each story was for when it was written.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Fifty-eight minutes on the regent who restored the icons in 843 and then was pushed aside by her brother.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Fifty-seven minutes on Claudius' third wife, the bigamous wedding held while he was away, and a name that became a byword within a generation.

Part of Life of Caesar

Messalina at fifteen, married to a man of fifty, and the court that grew around her. Fifty-seven minutes on a marriage that was policy before it was scandal.

Part of The Ancients

With Elodie Harper

Elodie Harper on the revolt of AD 60, when Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium all burned and the province came close to being given up. Fifty-six minutes.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Kaarina Parker

Kaarina Parker on the same woman from the reception side: how Fulvia was written up by the men who beat her. Fifty-six minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Caitlin Gillespie

Caitlin Gillespie on the evidence for Boudica, which is Tacitus and Cassius Dio writing decades later with speeches they invented. Fifty-four minutes separating the queen from the statue.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Yentl Love

Fifty-four minutes on two thousand years of reinvention: Roman propaganda, Shakespeare, Hollywood, and the argument about who gets to play her.

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-four minutes with Genn and Jenny of Ancient History Fangirl on the women of myth. Carries a warning for violence and sexual violence, and earns it; the hosts do not soften the stories to make them tellable.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part three, fifty-four minutes on the revolt of AD 60. Cassius Dio puts the dead at eighty thousand and blames the loss of the province on a woman.

Part of The Ancients

With Daisy Dunn

Daisy Dunn on the pair from Tarsus to the tomb, fifty-three minutes. The political arithmetic gets as much room as the romance, which is the only way the ending makes sense.

Part of The Rest Is History

The last of three: the reconquest of Italy, the plague that arrived in 541, and the ledger afterwards. Fifty-three minutes.

Part of The Rest Is History

Fifty-three minutes on Theophanu, sent from Constantinople in 972 to marry the heir of the western emperor, and ruling the west as regent when he died.

Part of The Ancients

With Daisy Dunn

Daisy Dunn on the women of the late Republic, Servilia, Fulvia, Clodia and the rest, who had no office and considerable power. Fifty-one minutes.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part one of three, forty-nine minutes on Theodora before the throne, whose early life comes to us through Procopius writing in private and with a grudge.

Part of The History of Byzantium

With Leonora Neville

Forty-nine minutes with Leonora Neville on the princess who wrote the Alexiad, the only full history of the period by a woman.

Part of The Ancients

Lauren Ginsberg of Duke on Octavia, Poppaea and Statilia Messalina: the three women Nero married, and the two he is said to have killed. Forty-eight minutes given to their side of it.

Part of The Ancients

Emran El-Badawi on Mavia, queen of the Tanukhids, who fought Rome in the 370s and then supplied it with cavalry on her own terms. Forty-eight minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Forty-eight minutes on Augustus' sister, married to Antony to seal a treaty, and who raised his children by Cleopatra after Actium.

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

Six women at a time, chosen between six and ten years old, sworn for thirty years, and buried alive if the vow broke. Forty-six minutes on Rome's only full-time priesthood.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Emma Southon

His niece, married after a change in the law, and the last four years of the reign run largely by her. Forty-six minutes ending with a plate of mushrooms.

Part of Tides of History

With Douglas Boin

Douglas Boin on Clodia, known to most people only as the target of one of Cicero's nastiest speeches, and on the political weight that speech was written to destroy. Forty-six minutes.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Forty-six minutes on the emperor blinded by his own mother, scored on a reign he never really held.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Forty-four minutes on Arria, who stabbed herself first and handed the dagger to her husband with that line. Roman suicide as a public argument.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Sian Phillips

Forty-four minutes with the actress who played Livia in I, Claudius, on playing a woman the sources made into a poisoner.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Liz Smith

Forty-four minutes on how women are represented across the sources they use, which is the methodological problem under half of this show.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Forty-three minutes on witches as Romans wrote them, alongside the women who actually sold curses and brews. The distance between the two is the episode.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Forty-one minutes on the longest private inscription from Rome: a husband's funeral speech for a wife who hid him during the proscriptions.

Part of The Partial Historians

With Karen Carr

Karen Carr on what Roman women could own, inherit and lend, which is more than the rhetoric about them suggests. Forty-one minutes.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Forty-one minutes on Irene, who ended iconoclasm at a council and had herself called emperor in the masculine.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Forty minutes on Cato's daughter and Brutus' wife, who wounded herself to prove she could keep a secret before he told her about the plot.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Caillan Davenport

Forty minutes on Marcus Aurelius' wife, who bore thirteen children, followed the armies, and got a charity for orphan girls named after her.

Part of The Partial Historians

Forty minutes on Augustus' wife: fifty-one years of marriage, a son on the throne, and a reputation for poison that begins with Tacitus.

Part of The Ancients

With Honor Cargill-Martin

Honor Cargill-Martin on Claudius's third wife and, more usefully, on the charge sheet: who wrote it, how long after, and what they wanted from it. Thirty-nine minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Peta Greenfield

Thirty-nine minutes on six women with more legal freedom than any other in Rome, and a death penalty of being walled up alive.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-nine minutes on Antony's wife, who raised legions in her own name and is the first Roman woman whose face went on a coin.

Part of The Partial Historians

A Vestal buried alive and a plebeian agitation in the same year, which the sources connect and modern historians doubt. Thirty-nine minutes on how Rome explained a bad year.

Part of The Ancients

With Duncan Mackay

Duncan Mackay on the final battle, whose location is still unknown, and on why the candidates keep moving. Thirty-eight minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Caillan Davenport

Thirty-eight minutes on a thirteen-year-old emperor governed by his mother, which worked for thirteen years and then killed them both.

Part of The History of Byzantium

With Katherine Pangonis

Thirty-seven minutes with Katherine Pangonis on the women who ruled the crusader kingdom, several of them in their own right.

Part of The Ancients

With Jane Draycott

Jane Draycott on Cleopatra Selene, walked through Octavian's triumph as a child and later ruling Mauretania as queen. Thirty-six minutes on the one who got out of that family alive.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Thirty-six minutes weighing the dynasty as a whole: they held the walls against the Arabs and are remembered for smashing pictures.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Emma Southon

Thirty-five minutes on Julia Domna and her sister, mother and niece, who between them ran the empire through four emperors.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-five minutes on the siege of Perusia, fought between Octavian and Antony's family while Antony was in the east, with insults still legible on the slingshot.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Jane Draycott

The daughter who survived, was walked in a triumph, and ended as queen of Mauretania with a capital named for Augustus. Thirty-five minutes on the Ptolemy nobody mentions.

Part of The Ancients

With Emma Southon

Emma Southon on Zenobia, who beat the Sasanians, stabilised the Roman east and then claimed it. Thirty-four minutes on the three years she ran a third of the empire.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Caillan Davenport

Thirty-four minutes on the queen of Palmyra who took Egypt and Asia Minor, and who may have ended her life in a villa outside Rome.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Thirty-four minutes on the restoration of icons in 843 and the feast that still marks it in the Orthodox calendar.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Trudie Fraser

Thirty-three minutes on Domitian's wife, divorced, recalled, and possibly involved in the plot that killed him.

Part of The Partial Historians

The last king and the rape of Lucretia, the story Romans used to explain why they hated the word. Thirty-three minutes on a founding myth for the Republic built on a woman's death.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Thirty-three minutes on a regency run by an empress and her brother, and the son who eventually killed the uncle.

Part of The History of Byzantium

With Leonora Neville

Thirty-three minutes with Neville on whether the coup attributed to Anna Komnene happened at all, and on who wanted the story told.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Thirty-three minutes on women's lives across the empire, built from law codes, saints' lives and wills.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-two minutes on the woman who called her sons her jewels, refused a king, and outlived them both.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Thirty-two minutes on Irene blinding her own son to keep the throne, and on a court that accepted it.

Part of The Ancients

Thirty-one minutes on what the evidence for Boudica actually is, which is two Roman writers and a burnt layer in three towns.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty-one minutes on the woman Catullus wrote as Lesbia and Cicero prosecuted as a poisoner, which are the only two portraits we have.

Part of The Ancient World

Thirty-one minutes on Zabdas taking Anatolia for Zenobia while Aurelian cleared the Danube and turned east.

Part of The Ancient World

Thirty-one minutes on the siege, with Zenobia inside the walls sending to Persia for help that never came.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirty minutes on the witch as a literary figure, from Horace's Canidia to Lucan's Erictho, and the laws that treated magic as real.

Part of The Ancient World

Thirty minutes on Drusilla of Mauretania, great-granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, married to the procurator of Judaea who kept Paul in prison for two years.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twenty-nine minutes on an office that did not formally exist and carried real power anyway.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With T. Corey Brennan

Twenty-nine minutes on Hadrian's wife, who travelled the empire with a husband who preferred other company, and was deified anyway.

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 The Ancient World

Twenty-eight minutes taking Boudica's revolt, renewed war in Armenia and the Great Fire of Rome as one connected stretch of the 60s AD.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-eight minutes on Mavia of the Tanukh, who beat Roman armies in the 370s and then supplied cavalry to the empire on her own terms.

Part of The History of Rome

Zenobia taking Egypt and Asia Minor, and Aurelian taking them back. Twenty-eight minutes on the empire that briefly split three ways.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Twenty-eight minutes on Cleopatra as a player in Roman politics with her own interests, which is how she behaved and rarely how she is written.

Part of Being Roman with Mary Beard

With Elizabeth Fentress

Julia Balbilla wrote verses on the leg of the Colossus of Memnon while travelling up the Nile with Hadrian and Sabina, and they are still legible. Twenty-eight minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twenty-seven minutes on a man caught in women's clothes at a women-only rite, the trial that followed, and the enmity with Cicero it started.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Emma Southon

Agrippina married her uncle, buried him, and put her son on the throne, then found she could not control him. Twenty-seven minutes on a career that ended with a staged shipwreck.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-seven minutes on Julia Domna marrying Septimius Severus and raising Caracalla and Geta in a Rome that Commodus was refounding in his own name.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-seven minutes on Zenobia taking Arabia and Egypt while Rome buried two emperors in a year and found Aurelian.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Twenty-seven minutes opening the second act of the eleventh-century crisis, after the first one had already cost Anatolia.

Part of Being Roman with Mary Beard

Allia Potestas, remembered on her tombstone by a lover who shared her with a friend and thought the arrangement worth carving in stone. Twenty-seven minutes with Mary Beard on a single inscription.

Part of Being Roman with Mary Beard

The longest private inscription to survive from Rome: a husband's account of a wife who hid him through the proscriptions and offered him a divorce when she could not bear children. Twenty-seven minutes.

Part of The History of Rome

Twenty-six minutes on Galla Placidia, taken by the Goths, married to their king, and later regent of the west.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-six minutes on Severus beating Pescennius Niger, Julia Domna being hailed Mother of the Camps, and Caracalla made Caesar at seven, which started the next civil war.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-six minutes on Severus Alexander, governed by his mother and grandmother through a decade of calm and then destroyed by a Sasanian invasion.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-six minutes on Zenobia taking over after Odaenathus was murdered, and holding Palmyra against Rome and Persia at once.

Part of The Ancient World

Twenty-five minutes on Julia Domna, daughter of the high priest at Emesa, who married Septimius Severus and outlasted him. Scott Chesworth reads Cassius Dio on gold turning to rust.

Part of The History of Rome

Severus Alexander, killed by his own troops in Germany, ending the pretence that an emperor ruled with the senate. Twenty-five minutes.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Twenty-five minutes on an empress who had been an actress, which was a legal barrier until the law was changed for her.

Part of The History of Byzantium

Twenty-five minutes on the dynasty running out of heirs after two centuries, and on what that did to a state with no succession law.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twenty-four minutes on Sulpicia and the handful of women whose verse survived, mostly because a man copied it into his own collection.

Part of The History of Rome

Twenty-four minutes on the dynastic marriages of the Julio-Claudians, where every wedding was a succession plan and most of them failed.

Part of The History of Rome

Agrippina's end, ordered by the son she had made emperor, with the line she is said to have given the assassins. Twenty-four minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Caitlin Gillespie

Caitlin Gillespie on Boudica as Tacitus and Dio built her: a barbarian queen written for a Roman audience to think about its own rulers with. Twenty-three minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Alisa Vanlint

Alisa Vanlint on the evidence for women fighting in the arena, which comes down to a relief from Halicarnassus, a Senate ban, and a handful of hostile lines. Twenty- three minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twenty-three minutes on the woman who was sister, wife and mother to emperors, and the only one of the three relationships she chose.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twenty-three minutes on fifty-one years as empress, a deified widow, and a reputation for poison built almost entirely by Tacitus.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Twenty-two minutes on the murder in 415 and on the politics between a bishop and a prefect that used her to settle it.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With T. Corey Brennan

Twenty-two minutes on Trajan's wife, who announced the adoption of Hadrian from a deathbed nobody else witnessed.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Twenty-one minutes on Honoria sending her ring to Attila, and on a Hun who chose to read it as a marriage proposal with half the empire as dowry.

Part of The Partial Historians

Twenty minutes on the queen of Palmyra who took Egypt and Asia Minor from Rome and held them for three years.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Twenty minutes on the prison diary of a young woman executed at Carthage, one of the earliest surviving texts by a Christian woman.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Nineteen minutes on the mathematician and teacher, before the mob and before every later writer made her a symbol.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Nineteen minutes on Agrippina managing her son's accession and discovering that a grown emperor takes orders from nobody.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

The third part on the mathematician killed by a mob in 415, and on what her death is used to argue about ever since.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

How a competent early reign turned into the standard example of tyranny, and how much of that turn happened in the writing afterwards. Eighteen minutes.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Eighteen minutes on the last Severans and the mutiny that opened fifty years of crisis.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Sixteen minutes on the imperial women who died conveniently, and on how often the sources reach for poison.

Part of Ancient Rome Live

The children Antony had with Cleopatra and with Octavia, and what Augustus did with them. Most of them lived.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Ten minutes on whether the revolt of AD 60 could have ended differently, including what an alliance with the northern tribes would have been worth.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Eight minutes more on the same episode, including the meeting with Pope Leo that turned Attila around.

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

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

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

Part of The Ancients · Tristan Hughes and the History Hit team, twice a week since 2020

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast · Vince and Cassie, 137 numbered episodes

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

Part of The History of Ancient Greece · Greek history in order, from the Stone Age forward; 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 Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

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