Ancient History Fangirl

⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When Octavian (Augustus) returned home victorious from his final battle against Marc Antony and Cleopatra, he was met by an ecstatic crowd. The Senate had ordered all classes and priesthoods, including the Vestal Virgins, to joyously greet him at the entrance to the city. This was the man who would be responsible for demolishing their democracy and ushering in an imperial military state that would last another 500 years (roughly). What was it like to stand in the shadow of the walls that day? What questions were burning in the people’s hearts? What did they think that they did not dare say? Was the mood celebratory? Raucous? Rebellious? Join us as we travel back in time to the gates of Rome, to watch Octavian return. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ In this episode, we return to the beach at Actium with author, historian, and academic Barry Strauss as our tour guide. His new book, The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium, discusses the infamous sea battle Marc Antony and Cleopatra fought against Octavian and Agrippa for love, for supremacy, for their very survival. Join us as we deconstruct this battle, paint a vivid picture of ancient war at sea, and tackle the one question everyone’s asking: why did Cleopatra flee the battlefield? Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! This file contains the last two episodes in our series on Marc Antony and Cleopatra: Lovers in a Dangerous Time, all in one place. This series has everything: love, war, violence, betrayal, Marc Antony barfing everywhere, and Cleopatra being extremely glamorous at all times. Please enjoy while you wait for us to return from hiatus on April 9. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! The romance between Mark Antony and Cleopatra has beguiled us for centuries. What most people don’t realize is that when Mark Antony met Cleopatra, he was already married—to someone just as epic. Her name was Fulvia. Cleopatra had glamour and divinity and lots of money. But Fulvia had the gangs. She was a populist firebrand, military leader, and for a while, the undisputed power in Rome: both in the Senate and in the streets. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ We're on hiatus until April 9. Until then, enjoy this long, binge-able episode on Julius Caesar's early life. Most accounts of Caesar's life start later on--such as during his time in Gaul or crossing the Rubicon. But his early life was just as fascinating; maybe even more so. This is the Caesar who stood up to Sulla and refused to divorce his wife. The Caesar who made an early career of prosecuting corrupt governors to cement his cred as a populist--even as it made him powerful enemies. The Caesar who, when kidnapped by pirates, demanded they raise his ransom and spent his time in captivity hanging out on the beach and reading them bad poetry. It's a fun, lighthearted introduction to Caesar's life before it takes its dark turn. We hope you enjoy. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! More than 1,800 years after Spartacus fought for his freedom, another rebel leader spearheaded the most successful slave revolt in history: the Haitian Revolution. That leader was a man named Toussaint L’Ouverture. This week, we invited Mike Duncan of The History of Rome and Revolutions to help us compare these two revolutionaries and discuss what advice Toussaint L'Ouverture might have had for Spartacus. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ This file contains the first three episodes of our Spartacus series. You'll learn about the conditions in Italy that gave rise to the Third Servile War; how Spartacus rebelled and the pressures he was under in holding together a disparate crowd of rebels with differing priorities. It's a riveting tale that's sure to keep you hooked. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠⁠ Dionysus was a god of revolutions. He featured prominently in two out of three major Roman slave rebellions. Why is that? And why was that aspect of Dionysus forgotten? In this episode, we'll focus on what happened after Dionysus won his place as a god on Mount Olympus--how people worshiped him on earth, and what made him so dangerous to the Roman status quo. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠⁠ Teotihuacan is an ancient pre-Colombian city in central America, founded two thousand years ago. It’s the home of some of the most iconic Mesoamerican monuments in existence, including the Pyramids of the Moon and Sun. The city was abandoned after about 750 years of habitation. When the Aztecs first encountered it, it had stood empty for 600 years. Walking through the empty ruin, they marveled at the towering pyramids, the incredible murals, the enormous palaces—and wondered where the people had gone. They thought these people must have become gods. This city has something for everyone: mysterious skeletons. Volcanoes. An eating of the rich. And so many mysteries, it’s hard to pick just one. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When we think of large Roman slave rebellions, we usually think of Spartacus. But what if we told you that Spartacus was only the third in a 30-year cycle of slave rebellions that happened twice before? The wars that came before Spartacus were larger, more all-encompassing, and maybe more violent—sweeping up hundreds of thousands of people before the rebellions were done. And their leaders—one a very salty birthday magician, the other a skilled astrologer —were just as epic. We’re on hiatus until April 9. Until then, enjoy our episodes on the First and Second Servile Wars, all in one place. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Hundreds of years before European contact, the biggest city in North America was located along the Mississippi River. At its peak, perhaps 15,000 people lived there—and over 30,000 in the surrounding suburbs. Today, we call it Cahokia. Nobody knows what the original name of this city was. But there was a time when everybody knew its name—from the Great Lakes to the Eastern Seaboard, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. What was that name, and why was it lost to time and memory? That’s just one of the many mysteries of Cahokia. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! We're on hiatus until April 9. Until then, please enjoy our entire Boudicca series, all in one place. The story of Boudicca’s revolt is as epic as you can get. It’s got murder and pillage, Romans behaving badly, cities on fire, and a layer of destruction that was scorched into the earth. But it's also the story of a people on a precipice of great change. Who was Boudicca? Who was this iron-age warrior queen who stood up to the Romans—and whose name was so revered and feared that stories of her are still being spun almost 2,000 years later? In these episodes, we’re going to find out. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ It is the End of Season 14--a brief but intense season! Big changes have come in our lives over the past year, and in this episode we take you behind the scenes and discuss the past year and our upcoming plans! Find Jenny's book, ⁠Enemy of My Dreams⁠, Here! (And preorder the sequel, Game of Thieves!) Get Genn's most recent book, the ⁠Official Lore Olympus Cookbook⁠, here! Find our book Women of Myth here! Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ Janus is the two-faced god of the Roman pantheon. He was the god of beginnings and endings, of dual natures, of passageways and passage through time. He’s the god of thresholds and doorways and gates, and the god of change, both concrete and abstract. He’s constantly in motion; he’s the god who’s always just passing through. Janus may not be very well-known. But in his time, he was considered one of the most important gods—perhaps more important than Jupiter himself. Today, we’re going to tell you all about him. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠⁠ Wish you had a holiday all about feasting, drinking, the upending of the social order, blood sacrifices, the harvest, pranks, novelty gifts, honouring a god who devoured his kids, and the returning sun? Don’t we all??? Welcome to Saturnalia. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ This year, we decided that the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without a mythological foray into one of the most famous characters of the season: The Krampus. And some of you might be saying: wait a minute, Krampus isn’t ancient; he’s modern. Also, everyone knows about Krampus, the festive demon of Christmas. Why are you covering this well-trodden topic? Wait until you hear the wild things we uncovered about him and his history, and then make your judgements about how old and well-trodden this topic is. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices