Everything we have on one person
40 entries · 29 hours · 17 shows
Available content about Augustus. Counts refer to the entries displayed on this page, not complete coverage of their life or reign.
I feel like…
Cogitare, how it was thought and ordered
Sentire, what was lived and endured
Facere, what hands made and did
how it is made
who is talking
how much time you have
Antony, Cleopatra and Augustus 44 BC – AD 14 · 39
Part of Life of Caesar
A hundred and twelve minutes opening the Augustus run from the day he died at 75, then working back. Starting at the end is the point: it sets up how much one man had changed before anyone could say how.
Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast
Ninety-three minutes with the Ancient Warfare panel on how Octavian cut some sixty legions down to twenty-eight and made them permanent. The professional Roman army starts here, and so does the pension bill.
Part of Lost Roman Heroes · Matteo and Matthew Storm, 101 episodes
The building programme, the marriage laws and the revival of old priesthoods, all of it aimed at a past that had never quite existed. Eighty minutes on restoration as a governing technique.
Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium
Eighty-two minutes on the first emperor, and the show spends much of it on the question of what to call him, because Octavius, Octavian and Augustus are three political positions with one man inside them.
Lindsay Powell, who has written biographies of Augustus' generals, on the men who actually won the wars. Eighty minutes on Agrippa and the others whose names are missing from the monuments.
Mutina, the two consuls dead in a month, and a nineteen-year-old marching on Rome to demand a consulship. Eighty minutes on the year the senate discovered what it had encouraged.
Part of The Partial Historians
Two podcasts arguing over how to rank the first emperor, one of them scoring him out of ten. An hour and a quarter in which the disagreement carries the episode.
Part of The Ancients
Lindsay Powell on the later career of Marcus Agrippa: the aqueducts, the first Pantheon, the fleet that won Actium. Sixty-seven minutes on the man who built most of what Augustus is remembered for.
With Victoria Austen
Victoria Austen on the tomb Augustus built for himself at thirty-five, decades before he needed it, and on what a garden-topped mound was saying to Romans. An hour on architecture as a claim.
Robert Harris on writing Cicero as a character, which turns into a conversation about what a novelist may invent and a historian may not. An hour with a working novelist, and the license question gets a straight answer.
Part of Emperors of Rome
An hour live on how a constitutional position was assembled out of old republican offices, none of which was called king. The audience questions are worth staying for.
With Robert Harris
Robert Harris on Agrippa, who won the wars and then had his name quietly worked out of the record by the friend he won them for. Fifty-seven minutes.
Part of Ancient Rome Live
Fifty-six minutes on the constitutional sleight of hand: a man who invented no new office ended up holding everything, and the Senate voted him each piece of it.
The family that nobody had heard of, in a town outside Rome, and the great-uncle who noticed the boy. Forty minutes on the years when the name was still Gaius Octavius.
Part of Tides of History
Forty minutes opening a run of episodes on the first-millennium economy, starting with whether the ancient economy is one subject at all.
Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed
Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed
With Sam Moorhead
From the reading of the will to the Second Triumvirate, including the proscriptions in which he signed away Cicero. Half an hour on the ruthless stretch that the Augustan peace was built on.
With Christopher Gribbin
The campaign in Illyricum in the thirties BC, fought partly to give his soldiers something to do and his reputation something to stand on. Half an hour on a war chosen for its usefulness.
With Brian Blessed
Brian Blessed, who played Augustus in I, Claudius fifty years ago, talking about the man. Exactly as loud as you are hoping and considerably more thoughtful.
Part of The History of Rome
The settlement of 27 BC, where Octavian handed the Republic back and was handed everything in return, along with a new name. Twenty-seven minutes on the most successful piece of political theatre in Roman history.
Part of The Pax Romana Podcast
Twenty-five minutes on the succession problem: an emperor who outlived every heir he chose and settled at last on the stepson he liked least.
Part of Autocrat: A Roman History Podcast
A Christmas crossover with the Augustus History podcast, running the year in review. Lighter than the main series and useful mostly to find the other show.
Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed
An eighteen-year-old student in Illyria hears that his great-uncle is dead and that the will names him. Duncan on the six months in which a boy with a borrowed name outmanoeuvred consuls.
Part of Echoes of Empires
Twenty-one minutes covering the whole reign, which gets you the outline and none of the argument. Start here, then move to the multi-part series on Octavian.
Thirteen minutes on one object: a bronze head cut from a statue in Egypt and buried under a Kushite temple step, so that everyone entering trod on the emperor. Portraiture as politics, both ways.
Marcellus, Gaius, Lucius and Agrippa Postumus, the four who were supposed to succeed and did not. Tiberius was the last option, not the first.
Eleven minutes on what the legions under Caesar and Augustus actually wore, decades before segmented plate appears. Mail, and three competing accounts of shield shape.
Part of toldinstone
The monument Augustus built where his camp stood before Actium, decorated with the rams of the ships he captured.
With Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
With Steve Saylor
Steven Saylor on the Rome of his Roma Sub Rosa novels, and on the everyday detail that survives in the sources only by accident. Fiction used as a way into the evidence.
The Julio-Claudians AD 14 – 68 · 1
Caligula measured against the model his great-grandfather left, which is the comparison his own court kept making. Twenty minutes on how quickly the settlement could be worn the wrong way.
