By Cameron Reilly & Ray Harris
A long-form podcast about the lives of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
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Messallina decides the time has come. She has a poison expert released from prison and they prepare a special dish of mushrooms for Claudius’ last meal. But the mushrooms weren’t enough and so they had to finish him off -...
Claudius builds the world’s biggest tunnel and puts on a huge show to celebrate. But things don’t go to plan. Nero gets married and starts to build his political profile - he is only 16.
Claudius and Agrippina get hitched despite the fact that she was his niece. She immediately starts to get rid of her enemies, reward her supporters, and prepare the ground for the next stage of her plan to make her young...
It's 48 CE. Messalina is dead. So now Claudius needs a new wife. There are several candidates, including Julia Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus, making her Claudius' niece. Conveniently, her rich husband had recently died. She is also the mother...
Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo - brother-in-law of Caligula - is sent by Claudius to Germany to deal with some rebellious tribes. But he's TOO successful, so Claudius calls him home. Messalina decides to get married again - while still married to...
Messalina starts killing off men who refuse her sexual advances or who just have something she wants. Meanwhile, Claudius keeps being a nice guy and the people feel sorry for him.
The invasion of Brittania continues. When Plautius has them nearly finished, he sends for Claudius who turns up to take credit for the final blow. The Senate grant him tons of honours as a result of his victory. But he’s...
In 43 Claudius is consul again. Messalina is setting him up with girls to bang while she’s running sex parties in another part of the palace. Then he invades Britain, finishing the job Julius Caesar started nearly a century earlier.
While the attempted coup was going on, Claudius had troops in Mauretania under the command of Suetonius Paulinus. One of Paulinus’ officers, Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, chases the Moors over the Atlas Mountains and into the desert - where he has...
Claudius was a builder and a visionary. Humble and generous. He liked gladiatorial contests a little too much. But then there was his wife. Valeria Messallina. Like Livia, Messallina often gets blamed for some of the deaths that occurred...
When Caligula was assassinated in 41, Claudius hid in a room of the palace called the Hermaeum, and then behind a curtain on a balcony. According to Suetonius, he was discovered by a soldier named Gratus - Gratitude - who...
For most of his life, Claudius was the Rosemary Kennedy of the Caesars. Without the ice pick lobotomy. Hidden from the public. If he wasn’t allowed to participate in Roman affairs, he would look elsewhere. He became a historian, writing...
The first 50 years of Tiberius Claudius Nero's life was a mixture of wealth, power and cruelty. With symptoms similar to cerebral palsy, the young Claudius was called “a monstrosity of a human being, one that Nature began and...
In this special post-series wrap up episode of Caligula, I'm joined by my fellow Aussie history podcasters, Dr G and Dr R from The Partial Historians.
On the last morning of his life, Caligula entered the temporary theatre on the Palatine in a good mood. The conspirators attacked him in a narrow corridor, on his way back to the palace during the lunch break between performances....
There's nothing worse than having a Finicky Anus aka Lucius Annius Vinicianus. According to Josephus, Vinicianus was one of the main conspirators. As we'll see, Vinicianus was a long history of conspiring against the Julio-Claudians - he was complicit in...
The final conspiracy against Caligula involved Cassius Chaerea, an officer of the Praetorian Guard; Callistus, Caligula's wealthy freedman adviser; and the senator Lucius Annius Vinicianus. Over the next three episodes, we'll explore whether or not the conspiracy was about getting...
My guest today is Anthony Poulton-Smith - Freelance Journalist, Author of 78 books, and many more articles, ghostwriter, speaker and etymologist. Chair of Tamworth Literary Festival, Tamworth History Group. He spoke to me recently about the Latin roots of...
Caligula got back to Rome around May 40 but stayed outside of the city until he could celebrate his ovation on his 28th birthday, 31 August. In the meantime he met with delegations from various parts of the world, including...
Ray recently interviewed Lindsay Powell about Caligula. I asked Ray for show notes. This is what he gave me. "We talked of keeping the sources in context, considering the times they lived it and agenda. He went deep. Then his analysis...
Many historians claim that Caligula’s demand to be treated as a living god is a sure sign of madness. And yet - JESUS claimed the same thing and nobody calls HIM insane. Why does he get special treatment? On this...
Caligula plans his invasion of Britain. It would have been the first time any Roman solider had been there since Julius Caesar. What motivated his plans? Was he even serious? It's often portrayed as a stupid stunt. But we discover...
Sometime around the year 40, Caligula executed Ptolemy, the king of Africa Proconsularis and Roman ally. It's usually portrayed as evidence of his insanity and greed - but perhaps there is an alternative explanation.
Caligula suspects a grand conspiracy against his person and the sword falls on a variety of people - including the commander in Gaul, his two surviving sisters and his best friend / lover, Lepidus.
Caligula built a 3-mile long bridge over the Bay of Naples. Why? So he could ride over it to prove someone wrong. Then he marries his third and last wife, Caesonia. Then he fires two consuls for not celebrating his...
In 39 CE, Caligula walked into the Senate and tore them all a new one. The gloves came off. The nice guy act was over. He criticized them for enabling Sejanus' persecution of his family and for criticizing Tiberius when...
My inaugural guest is Dr Nathan Brooks PhD from CQUniversity. He's a forensic psychologist with a background in researching psychopaths. He (and a couple of colleagues) have a new book that came out just after mine, called "Corporate Psychopaths". It's...
From his sickbed he named his favorite sister, Drusilla, to inherit the imperial “property and the throne”. But when he recovered, he decided to rid himself of some enemies, real or imagined, including Gemellus, Macro and Silanus, his former father-in-law.
Caligula's absolute favourite thing in the world, apart from spending money, is screwing. And seriously, who can blame him. It's good to be the king. And, like Ray, he was happy to be a power bottom. He liked horse racing,...
The Nemi ships were two pleasure barges, one larger than the other, built under Caligula at Lake Nemi. Although there were several attempts to recover them from the 15th century onwards, it wasn't until 1929 that Mussolini ordered the whole...
According to Suetonius, Caligula was quite proud of his "adiatrepsia" - shamelessness. He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters and was especially fond of Drusilla. He made her divorce her first husband and marry his friend and lover...
How does a 24 year old kid, who's never even been on a battlefield, let alone lead an army to victory, get declared "imperator"? How would you handle it if you were granted ius arbitriumque omnium rerum (‘power and authority over...
One of the other first things Caligula did when he took power was to release Herod Agrippa from jail - King Herod from the New Testament. The grandson of Herod the Great. Which all gives me an excuse to talk...
By all accounts, Caligula was extremely popular with the people, as his father, Germanicus, had been. Suetonius reports that Caligula was “the emperor most earnestly desired”. When he entered Rome, the celebrations are said to have gone on for almost...
We all think we know something of the story of Caligula. We have a picture of him as a destructive monster, an insane sadist. But truth is rarely that simple. Let's take a look at the sources and their individual...
We continue and finish our live commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Picking up where we left off last week, Caligula is fisting the married couple and he doesn't even remove his ring. A dark and stormy night leads...
We continue our live commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Picking up where we left off last week, still in Tiberius’ sex palace on Capri, with a lady holding a writhing legless lizard that she is apparently about to...
To kick off our Caligula series, we are doing a commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Written by Gore Vidal, directed by Tinto Brass, produced by Bob Guccione, starring Malcolm McDowell, Hellen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, Teresa...
In March 37 CE, aged seventy-seven years, four months, and nine days, of which time he had been emperor twenty-two years, seven months, and seven days, Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti filius Augustus fell ill and died. OR DID HE?
The death of Agrippina came soon after that of her son. There are more majestas trials, trouble with the Parthians, and, despite the assurance from his favourite astrologer that he had many years left, Tiberius addresses his own mortality. With...
Tiberius runs amok. Usury runs rampant. Drusus chews the stuffing.
We go into more detail about Tiberius’ sex palace than you ever wanted or needed to know. Honestly, you’ll probably regret listening to this episode. Maybe skip this one if you have a sensitive disposition. Who am I kidding? We...
When Ray’s away, the Cam doth play.
Sejanus decided to remove the next in line of Germanicus’ heirs, Drusus, and finally married Livia Julia, the widow of the other Drusus, son of Tiberius. He also became Tiberius’ official partner in power – in 31CE Tiberius took his fifth consulship, with Seianus...
Shortly after Livia’s death, Tibbo wrote a letter to the senate attacking both Agrippina and Nero. They were prosecuted by Aulus Avillius Flaccus – the future prefect of Egypt, which leads Cam into a sidenote about Flaccus’ treatment of the...
With Tiberius safely ensconced in his sex dungeon on Capri, Sejanus goes after more friends of Agrippina, starting with one of Germanicus’ generals, Titius Sabinus. About the same time, Julia The Younger, Augustus’ grand-daughter, finally died, after being in exile...