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Real Roman History

Real Roman History

By: Hugo Prudentius
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Real Roman History is a comprehensive, chronological account of Rome from its origins to its end—told with the depth the subject deserves. This is not a highlight reel. Every major figure, every turning point, and every war gets the full treatment: the stories as the Romans told them, the ancient sources and what they got right and wrong, and the historical arguments that scholars are still having today. Hugo Prudentius takes listeners from the kings of the early city through the Republic, the civil wars, the empire, and beyond—episode by episode, in sequence, without skipping the parts that made Rome what it was. If other Roman history podcasts have left you wanting more, you've found the right one.

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Episodes
  • Episode 56. The Gods of Rome: Religion, Ritual, and the World Augustus Inherited

    Episode 56. The Gods of Rome: Religion, Ritual, and the World Augustus Inherited
    Jun 14 2026
    Works CitedPrimary Sources
    • Augustus. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (“The Deeds of the Divine Augustus”). Augustus's own first-person summary of his career and achievements, inscribed on bronze tablets and posted throughout the empire. The religious restoration is mostly in chapters 8, 10, 12, 13, 20, and 21—the temple restorations, the Janus closures, the Ara Pacis, the assumption of the Pontifex Maximus. Loeb Classical Library edition (with English translation).
    • Cicero. De Divinatione (45 BCE). The Roman intellectual position on augury and divination, written by a sitting augur. Book One defends divination; Book Two demolishes it. Loeb Classical Library edition.
    • Cicero. De Natura Deorum (45 BCE). The fullest ancient account of educated Roman thinking about the gods. Three speakers representing the Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic positions. Loeb Classical Library edition.
    • Livy. History of Rome. Numa and his religious institutions are in Book 1. The first lectisternium is in Book 5. The Cybele arrival in 204 BCE is in Book 29. The Bacchanalian crisis of 186 BCE is in Book 39—the longest single ancient narrative of a Roman religious panic. Penguin Classics translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt for the early books; Loeb editions cover the rest.
    • Lucretius. De Rerum Natura (mid-first century BCE). The major surviving Epicurean text, and one of the greatest works of Latin verse. Lucretius's systematic argument that the gods are real but irrelevant, that the soul dissolves at death, and that religion is the source of most human misery. Penguin Classics translation by Ronald Melville.
    • Ovid. Fasti (early first century CE). The Roman religious calendar in verse—six surviving books, one for each month from January to June. The single best ancient source for the festivals and rituals that punctuated the Roman year, including the Cybele/Claudia Quinta episode in Book 4. Penguin Classics translation by A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard.
    • Plutarch. Parallel Lives. The Life of Numa is the major ancient narrative of Rome's religious founder. The Lives of Caesar, Cicero, and Antony provide most of what we know about the religious dimensions of the late Republic—Caesar's election as Pontifex Maximus, Cicero's augural service, the propaganda war of the 30s. Penguin Classics translations available for all the relevant Lives.
    • Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus (186 BCE). The surviving bronze decree, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. One of the oldest surviving Latin prose documents and the contemporary record of the Bacchic suppression that Livy 39 narrates. The Latin text is in CIL I² 581 with translations widely available online.
    • Suetonius. Divus Augustus. Augustus's biography. Chapters 30 and 31 specifically address the religious restoration programme, including the eighty-two temples and the management of the priestly colleges. Penguin Classics translation by Robert Graves.
    • Virgil. Aeneid. The founding epic of Augustan Rome, and the most sophisticated single statement of the Augustan religious-political programme. Aeneas's pietas as the organizing virtue of the poem, the burning of Troy and the rescue of the household gods in Book 2, the descent and the parade of future Romans in Book 6. Robert Fagles translation (Penguin Classics) is the standard modern English version.
    Secondary Sources
    • Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Two volumes. The standard modern scholarly treatment, and the work this episode draws on most heavily.
    • Rüpke, Jörg. Religion of the Romans. Polity, 2007. A clear, sociologically-minded treatment of Roman religion as a system of social practice rather than belief. Particularly good on the institutional and political dimensions.
    • Scheid, John. An Introduction to Roman Religion. Indiana University Press, 2003. The best short modern treatment for the general reader.
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    1 hr and 19 mins
  • Episode 55. Actium: The End of the Republic and the Hellenistic World

    Episode 55. Actium: The End of the Republic and the Hellenistic World
    Jun 14 2026
    Works CitedPrimary Sources
    • Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 50–51. The fullest ancient narrative of Actium; read with awareness of the Augustan shadow.
    • Horace. Odes 1.37 (the Cleopatra ode). The most complex poetic response to the battle and its aftermath.
    • Plutarch. Life of Antony, chapters 60–86. The essential account of the final years, Actium, and the deaths.
    • Suetonius. Life of Augustus. Essential for Augustus's own account of his constitutional arrangements and the Eutychus anecdote.
    • Tacitus. Annals, Book 1 opening. The indispensable counter-reading; the most compressed and precise analysis of what the principate actually was.
    • Virgil. Aeneid, Book 8. The shield of Aeneas; the Augustan ideological framework at its most artistically powerful.
    Secondary Sources
    • Carter, John. The Battle of Actium. Hamish Hamilton, 1970. The most focused scholarly treatment of the battle itself and the strategic question of what the plan actually was.
    • Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2014. The best modern biography; presents the principate as improvised rather than planned, which is probably closer to the truth.
    • Roller, Duane. Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 2010. The most scholarly modern treatment; essential on the question of the asp versus prepared poison.
    • Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra: A Life. Little, Brown, 2010. The most readable modern account; particularly strong on Cleopatra's death and the sources' disagreements about it.
    • Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1939. The foundational modern analysis of how Augustus built his power; still indispensable after eighty years.
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    47 mins
  • Episode 54. The New Dionysus: Antony, Cleopatra, and the Eastern World

    Episode 54. The New Dionysus: Antony, Cleopatra, and the Eastern World
    Jun 14 2026
    Works CitedPrimary Sources
    • Appian. Civil Wars, Books 4–5 (c. 150 CE). The fullest surviving narrative of the period 49–31 BCE. Essential for the Sextus Pompey campaign, the confrontation with Lepidus at Messana (5.122–126), and the political narrative of the Triumvirate. Drew on sources now lost, probably including Asinius Pollio.
    • Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 48–51 (c. 230 CE). Continuous narrative from Philippi to Actium and the Augustan settlement. More systematic than Plutarch but less vivid; Octavian-favorable. Important for the Donations of Alexandria and the reading of Antony's will.
    • Plutarch. Life of Antony (c. 100 CE). The essential biographical source. Plutarch drew on Asinius Pollio, who knew Antony personally; Dellius, who served on the Parthian campaign and wrote a memoir of it; and Antony's own memoir of the same campaign. Key passages: chapters 24–31 (Tarsus and Alexandria); 32–42 (the Triumvirate, Perusine War, Brundisium, Misenum); 50–54 (Octavia, Ventidius and Gindarus); 55–71 (the Parthian campaign); 72–75 (Donations of Alexandria).
    • Velleius Paterculus. History of Rome, Book 2 (c. 30 CE). Near-contemporary, written under Tiberius. Hostile to Antony and admiring of Octavian, but his chronology is sometimes more reliable than later sources. His brief account of the Lepidus confrontation (2.80) confirms the main outlines of Appian's narrative.
    Secondary Sources
    • Goldsworthy, Adrian. Antony and Cleopatra. Yale University Press, 2010. The most thorough recent character treatment of both figures.
    • Huzar, Eleanor. Mark Antony: A Biography. University of Minnesota Press, 1978. The standard scholarly biography.
    • Roller, Duane. Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 2010. Essential for the Egyptian and Ptolemaic context, and particularly good on the nine-language question.
    • Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1939. The foundational modern work on the period. Syme's argument that the Augustan propaganda apparatus has continued to shape how we understand this period is the frame for this episode.
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    56 mins
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