Julius Caesar

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

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

Part of Life of Caesar

A hundred and four minutes on 57 BC, when Clodius and Cicero fought each other with gangs in the street and speeches in the senate at the same time. The episode takes the speeches as political acts with consequences, which is how Romans heard them.

Part of HistoryMarche

The dictatorship as a template, and the argument that Caesar copied a working model. Sulla laid down the office voluntarily, which is the part Caesar left out.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-six minutes with Alexander Mikaberidze on Mithridates, the king who killed eighty thousand Romans in one day and fought three wars over forty years.

Part of Life of Caesar · Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours

Part of Life of Caesar

The young Caesar captured by pirates, demanding they raise his ransom, and crucifying them afterwards as promised. Forty-nine minutes on the anecdote that tells you the rest.

Part of Life of Caesar

Thirty-six minutes placing the revolt inside Caesar's own lifetime, which is the detail most tellings drop: he was in his twenties while it happened.

Part of HistoryMarche

Vercellae in 101 BC and the reforms that made it winnable. Marius as the model Caesar inherited.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Twelve minutes on the family, the marriage to Cornelia he refused to end, and the flight from Sulla that nearly ended everything before it started.

Part of Life of Caesar

Over three hours in Egypt: a head in a basket, a queen who needed a Roman, and a war in the streets of Alexandria that Caesar had not planned and nearly lost.

Part of Life of Caesar

Thapsus and the end of the Republican armies in Africa, including the suicide at Utica that made Cato a name to conjure with for the next four centuries. Nearly three hours.

Part of Life of Caesar

The crossing to Epirus in winter with half an army, and the months at Dyrrachium where Pompey had him beaten and let him go. Two and a half hours on the campaign before the famous battle.

Part of Life of Caesar

Ilerda, where Caesar was cut off by a flooded river and won the campaign without a pitched battle. Two and a half hours on a victory made of engineering and supply lines.

Part of Life of Caesar

Two and a half hours on 15 March 44 BC alone: who was in the room, who held the knife, who stood aside. The length is the argument, because the conspiracy had sixty members and most accounts name four.

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

Part of Life of Caesar

Two and a half hours on the year Caesar nearly lost Gaul: a massacre at Avaricum, then a defeat at Gergovia that cost him legionaries and prestige at once.

Part of Life of Caesar

Pharsalus at length: outnumbered two to one, Caesar put a fourth line behind his cavalry and aimed it at the faces of Pompey's young horsemen. Two and a half hours on a battle decided by one instruction.

Part of Life of Caesar

Two hours and a quarter on Alesia: seventeen kilometres of inner wall, twenty-one of outer, and an army besieging while besieged. The most complete Roman siege there is.

Part of Life of Caesar

Zela in five hours of fighting and three words of dispatch, plus the Pontic campaign around it. Two hours and a quarter on the briefest famous victory in Roman history.

Part of Life of Caesar

Two hours on the moment Caesar let a defeated garrison walk free, including its commander. Clemency as a weapon is the subject, and it worked: the next towns opened their gates.

Part of Life of Caesar

The mopping up after Alesia, including Uxellodunum where the survivors had their hands cut off. Two hours on what pacification meant in practice.

Part of Life of Caesar

Two hours on the weeks before 10 January 49 BC, in the detail the moment deserves: which senator moved what, which tribune vetoed it, and how a legal dispute about a provincial command turned into a civil war.

Part of Life of Caesar

The hosts announced the Ides as their last episode and then found the aftermath needed two more. This is the first, nearly two hours on the days when nobody in Rome knew who was in charge.

Part of Life of Caesar

Nearly two hours on 54 BC in the city while Caesar was in Gaul, when bribery reached the point that interest rates doubled on election days. It explains why the Republic could not absorb a returning general.

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

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

Part of Life of Caesar

The Sambre, where the legions were surprised mid-camp and Caesar picked up a shield himself. An hour and forty on the closest he came to losing the army.

Part of Life of Caesar

A bridge built in ten days, used for eighteen, then demolished. An hour and a half on an engineering stunt aimed entirely at readers in Rome.

Part of Life of Caesar

The migration Caesar stopped at the Saône and the numbers he reported afterwards, which his own census tablets undercut. An hour and a half on the war's opening and its first casualty, the truth.

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

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

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

Part of Life of Caesar

The revolt of the Eburones and the loss of fifteen cohorts, after which Caesar swore not to shave until it was avenged. An hour and a half on the winter Gaul nearly turned.

Part of Life of Caesar

The months after the Ides, with the assassins discovering that killing the dictator had not restored the Republic. An hour and twenty on the vacuum.

Part of Life of Caesar

Munda, the last battle, fought against Pompey's sons and won at the cost of a thousand dead. An hour and twenty on a victory that ended the war and solved nothing.

Part of Life of Caesar

The second crossing, with eight hundred ships and a storm that wrecked most of them. An hour and twenty on an expedition that took hostages and held nothing.

Part of Life of Caesar

Mike Duncan as guest, on the structural rot he later wrote a book about: the land, the armies and the men who owned both. An hour and twenty on why the Republic was already failing.

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

Part of Life of Caesar

The vengeance: a whole people hunted through their own forests with neighbouring tribes invited to help. An hour and a quarter on what Caesar wrote up as a police action.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-seven minutes on the German king Caesar had recognised as a friend of Rome a year earlier and then drove back across the Rhine.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-six minutes on four triumphs in one year, with Vercingetorix strangled at the end of the first and a Ptolemy paraded in the second.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-five minutes with an economist on the Roman economy, applying modern tools to evidence that was never collected for them.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-four minutes with the British History Podcast on what Rome left in Britain and what the island made of it afterwards.

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

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy minutes on the last campaign, against Pompey's sons in Spain, fought by an army that had stopped expecting to go home.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy minutes on the first crossing, with two legions, no cavalry that arrived, and a beach landing against a defended shore.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-nine minutes on Catiline, with Caesar arguing in the senate against executing the conspirators and nearly being lynched for it.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-seven minutes on Pompey abandoning Italy without a fight, which left Caesar the capital and the treasury in two months.

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

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

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-six minutes on the great-nephew arriving in Italy to claim a name, with almost nobody taking him seriously.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-six minutes on the dictatorship as a working government: the calendar, the colonies, the debt laws and the senate packed with provincials.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-five minutes with Tom Stevenson on Caesar scholarship, and on which ancient claims about him still survive examination.

Part of Life of Caesar · Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours

Part of Life of Caesar · Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours

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

With Barry Strauss

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-four minutes on Caesar's consulship of 59 BC, when he ignored his colleague so completely that Romans joked about the year of Julius and Caesar. The precedents set here are what the civil war was later fought over.

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

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-three minutes with a working archaeologist on what a dig actually produces, which is rarely the object the documentary opens with.

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 Echoes of History · History Hit for Assassin's Creed; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Life of Caesar

Arthur Keaveney, who wrote the standard biography of Sulla, on whether the dictator believed his own restoration. An hour with someone who has spent a career on the question.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-two minutes on the private arrangement between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus that ran Rome without holding any office for it. It was not a constitutional body, and that is the point.

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 Cost of Glory · Alex Petkas on Plutarch, 45 hours

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on how sixty men were recruited without one of them talking, which is the hardest part of the story to believe.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-nine minutes with Rhiannon Evans, who presents Emperors of Rome, on reading the late Republic through its own propaganda.

Beard on Caesar as general, dictator and politician at once, and on how much of the man we have is his own account of himself. Fifty-nine minutes; start here before the assassination episodes anywhere else in the index.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-eight minutes on the day itself and the hours after, when the assassins found the forum empty of support.

Part of Life of Caesar · Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours

Part of The Rest Is History

The Ides of March at thriller pace, fifty-seven minutes. The detail that sticks is how many of the sixty-odd conspirators Caesar had personally pardoned after fighting them in the civil war.

Part of Life of Caesar · Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Life of Caesar · Cameron Reilly and Ray Harris, 170 hours

Part of The Ancients

With Maria Wyke

Maria Wyke on what the Ides became afterwards: Dante, Shakespeare, and John Wilkes Booth shouting Latin from a stage. Fifty-five minutes on an afternoon that keeps getting reused.

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

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-three minutes on Caesar's marriages and affairs as political instruments, including the wife he was told to divorce and did not.

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

Part of The Ancients

The shorter, tidier version of the same day. Take this one if you want the events and the other if you want the room.

Part of The Ancients

With Catherine Steel

The unglamorous decades before Gaul, when he was a heavily indebted politician buying an electorate. The part that explains the rest.

Part of The Ancients

What happened on 15 March 44 BC, minute by minute, and how many of the sixty men involved Caesar had personally pardoned.

Part of The Ancients

With Hannah Cornwell

Hannah Cornwell on the months after the Ides, when Antony held the consulship and the nineteen-year-old Octavian held Caesar's name. Forty-nine minutes on how that standoff became a triumvirate.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part one, forty-eight minutes on 55 BC: scouts along the Kentish coast, a contested landing, and a Roman picture of Britons as savages the Romans half envied.

Part of The Ancients

With Philip Nothaft

Philip Nothaft on the Julian calendar, Caesar's reform that outlasted every other one and still sets the year, with 46 BC stretched to 445 days to force the seasons back into place. Forty-six minutes.

Part of The Ancients

With Simon Elliott

Forty-five minutes setting the two against each other on what can actually be compared: sieges, logistics, and what each of them inherited. Simon Elliott does pick one.

Part of The Ancients

With Simon Elliott

Simon Elliott on the two landings of 55 and 54 BC, neither of which left a garrison behind. Forty-two minutes on what Rome knew about Britain before it went, which was almost nothing.

Part of Emperors of Rome

The hundredth episode, live, on the Ides of March. Forty-two minutes on who was in the room, what they thought would happen next, and how badly they had thought it through.

Part of Echoes of History · History Hit for Assassin's Creed; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Rest Is History

Part two of four on Cleopatra, covering the Alexandrian war and the years she spent in a villa across the Tiber while Caesar was alive. Forty-one minutes.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part one, thirty-nine minutes on how Caesar became powerful enough that crossing a small river in northern Italy counted as a declaration of war.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Emperors of Rome

Alesia, recorded in front of an audience: a Roman army besieging a hill fort while itself under siege from a relief force. The double ring of fortifications is the reason this battle is still taught.

Part of HistoryHit

The two British expeditions that achieved almost nothing militarily and everything politically, which is why Caesar wrote them up at length.

Part of Emperors of Rome

A longer return to Gaul than the early episode, this time reading the war as a book Caesar wrote for voters back home. The campaign and the publicity campaign were the same operation.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of 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.

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed

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 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.

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The History of Rome

The consulship of 59 BC, so thoroughly run by one man that Romans dated the year to Julius and Caesar as a joke about his colleague. That joke is the whole story of how the Republic bent.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The History of Rome

Caesar before anyone had reason to watch him: the proscriptions he survived at eighteen, the pirates, the long climb through the priesthoods. Duncan keeps it to the years when the outcome was still open.

Part of Historia Civilis

Antony's speech and the riot it started, which decided more than the murder did.

Part of Echoes of Empires

Twenty minutes covering the whole life, which is enough for the shape and not for the argument. Take it as the map before the longer series.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

The question put plainly, with the case for the assassins and the case against, in under twenty minutes. Useful precisely because it refuses to settle it.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Fifteen minutes on the part that gets skipped: the debts, the bribes and the alliances that put Caesar in a position to command an army at all. Rhiannon Evans treats the politics as the real campaign.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Eight years of conquest compressed into a quarter of an hour, with the numbers Caesar himself reported and the reasons to distrust them. A short, honest introduction to the Commentarii.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Four triumphs in one year, staged with captured leaders and paid crowds. Fifteen minutes on what a triumph cost and what it bought.

Part of Emperors of Rome

What survived him: the calendar, the colonies, the name that became a title in two languages. Fourteen minutes on the afterlife of a man killed to stop exactly this.

Part of Emperors of Rome

Thirteen minutes covering the Rubicon to Munda, which is fast. Take it as the spine, then go to the multi-part treatments for the arguments.

Part of Emperors of Rome

The Ides in thirteen minutes: the warnings ignored, the senate meeting in Pompey's theatre, and twenty-three wounds of which one was fatal.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Eight minutes answering a listener: how legionaries fought at the Arar and Bibracte in 58 BC and were fit to do it again weeks later. Murray Dahm on training, grain ration and discipline.

Part of The Ancients

With Jeffrey Tatum

Jeff Tatum on the stretch from Philippi in 42 BC to Actium, the years when Antony was the senior partner in the triumvirate and spent that advantage. Forty-five minutes, the second of two parts.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

The opening episode of the series starts where most Caesar stories end, with the body on the floor and nobody in charge. Twenty minutes on the vacuum that made Augustus possible.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

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.

A hundred and seventy hours of conversational Roman history, beginning with Caesar and carrying well past him at the pace of two people talking.

Part of The Partial Historians

Two shows in one room on Tiberius, the heir nobody wanted and the emperor who left Rome for Capri. An hour of argument between hosts who read the sources differently.

Part of The Partial Historians

The Taylor and Burton epic held against what is actually known, which is less than the film assumes and stranger. An hour and a half, and the costume budget gets the scrutiny it deserves.

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; 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 Ad Navseam · Two classicists in lively discussion; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Seventy minutes on Dyrrhachium and Pharsalus, where Caesar lost the first engagement badly and won the war a month later. The full panel on it.

Six rulers from Julius Caesar to Hadrian, taken one at a time, public life beside private life. Forty-nine minutes an episode, and the shape of the whole empire read off the men who held it.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

With Vicky Kalambakal

Thirty-six minutes with Vicky Kalambakal and Murray Dahm on Caesar as a commander, working from the campaigns he wrote up himself and the gaps he left.

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Partial Historians

The Coen brothers' Hollywood satire read by two ancient historians, who find the Roman film inside the film more accurate than expected. Half an hour, and mostly for fun.

Part of The History of Rome

Four triumphs in a single year, paid for out of Gaul, and the dictatorship that followed them. The episode that explains why men who had been pardoned still reached for knives.

Part of 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.

Part of 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.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Eight minutes on the standing argument about Caesar in Gaul, where the casualty figures come from his own account and are not modest.