A queen’s accusation sends Bellerophon across the sea carrying the order for his own execution. He survives a fire-breathing monster, wars and an ambush, wins Pegasus, a royal marriage and a home—then reaches for heaven and ends farther from human company than ever. This is the brutal Greek story of borrowed power, clean-handed kings and a hero who could conquer everything except belonging.

Full transcript: https://www.owenonthenet.com/podcasts/owens-history/bellerophon-24a7039c/

Sources:

https://dcc.dickinson.edu/homer-iliad/intro/essay/vi-156-190

https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus2.html

https://research.dial.uclouvain.be/bitstreams/563c2353-5bc7-40b4-95e2-edb687e85e76/download

https://gantzmythsources.libs.uga.edu/chapter-10-perseus-and-bellerophontes-part-ii/bellerophontes/p-315/

https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/da520dfc-e6c2-4e5c-af9f-8cb13403c70a/content

https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/jdhp/texts/hesiodtheogony104.html

https://topostext.org/work/206

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ramus/article/myth-letters-and-the-poetics-of-ancestry-in-plautus-bacchides/84A9510FDAA57CE6C33DB916DFE48213

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Odes_of_Pindar_(Myers)/Olympian_Odes/13

https://topostext.org/work/213

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/reconsidering-euripides-bellerophon/46C4167C44149597327F2365B4BA0F6B

Gaius Marius rose without consular ancestors to become the commander Roman voters repeatedly chose when established leaders failed. This is the story of the discipline, poor volunteers, hard victories and soldiers' rewards that made him Rome's great rescuer—and of the political power created when a republic began depending on one man's earned authority.

Full transcript: https://www.owenonthenet.com/podcasts/owens-history/gaius-marius-bb26147c/

Sources:

https://topostext.org/work/659

https://www.attalus.org/cicero/balbus.html

https://www.attalus.org/cicero/rab_perd.html

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Marius*.html

https://topostext.org/work/498

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Velleius_Paterculus/home.html

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antichthon/article/plutarchs-laterepublican-lives-between-the-lines/56E842EAC9A9C8D12DE20DB5107A6E8F

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/27881/excerpt/9780521827881_excerpt.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45019313

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:97aec7dd-e956-42b3-8ac1-59f722a07187/files/m79e8395fc7b59ac29535a937113ac081

The Roman emperor remembered as a philosopher was not born serene, and his private notebook is not proof of a flawless life. This is the story of Marcus Aurelius learning Stoicism through demanding teachers, carrying its exercises into court, epidemic and frontier war, and repeatedly fighting fatigue, anger, distraction, vanity and fear. It follows the making of the Meditations, tests its ideals against the choices and limits of imperial rule, and asks why an unfinished practice of beginning again has survived the empire that produced it.

Full transcript: https://www.owenonthenet.com/podcasts/owens-history/marcus-aurelius-a78b7c62/

Sources:

https://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.mb.txt

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/marcus-aurelius/

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Marcus_Aurelius/1*.html

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Marcus_Aurelius/2*.html

https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/citizenship-african-headsman-tabula-banasitana-iam-ii-94

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=fll_etds

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:14b2d582-c332-4128-869e-3f5f4d901436/files/m36c6a428405e6eea90a4dbb43ab49141

https://romanlegaltradition.org/contents/2010/RLT6-COLORIO.PDF

https://una-editions.fr/the-study-of-the-antonine-plague-and-other-roman-pandemics/

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/empire-and-religion-in-the-roman-world/germs-and-empire/6B4EF47A8FFE223AC3ADB0E40DBA1142

https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/eusebius-caesarea-ecclesiastical-history-iv131-8

https://resources.metmuseum.org/resources/metpublications/pdf/Roman_Portraits_Sculptures_in_Stone_and_Bronze.pdf

https://camws.org/sites/default/files/meeting2016/213.AureliusandVerus.pdf

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-marcus-aurelius-meditations/marcus-aurelius/CEC14E78800BD258012CAA0FB8DB2DE7