LOST ROMAN HEROES

Join LRH as we interview historian and podcaster Emma Southon, author of the recently published "Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire." For 98 episodes we've covered Roman heroes. But we've never told the story of the millions of enslaved people who built everything our favorite heroes stood on. It always appeared as backdrop. As color. As afterthought. Roman slavery started in earnest in 146 BCE. The year Rome destroyed Carthage and erased Corinth in the same breath. The year something snapped. Enemies stopped being adversaries and started being examples. A New Rome. A Darker Rome. And inseparable from that darkness, an explosion of slavery on a scale the ancient world had never seen. Emma Southon has spent her career recovering the people Rome tried to erase, the enslaved, and the women, both written out of a record created entirely by the rich men who owned and overlooked them. In this episode we talk about what that record can and can't tell us, why no Roman ever tried to abolish the institution, how America's experience with slavery might inform our understanding of Roman slavery, and why Spartacus matters more than Hollywood understands.

Today we collaborate with the awesome father-daughter team of Roly and Maddie from the History in Zoomer Podcast for a very special Father's Day Episode. Together we explore candidates for the very best, and worst fathers in the history of Rome and choose a winner for 'best' and 'worst' Roman dad that are bound to surprise you. Happy Father's Day everyone!

Rome is an island in a Lombard sea. The emperor is in Constantinople, offering criticism instead of troops. The plague is killing people in the streets. And Gregory, the man who tried to flee his own election hidden in a wine cask, is the only one left to save it. In Part 2, we watch a reluctant monk become the de facto ruler of Italy, negotiate face-to-face with a Lombard king, and send a nervous monk to convert an England that Rome had abandoned for nearly two centuries. He fed the hungry, freed slaves by name, and kept the light burning when no one else would. He built the foundation of medieval civilization while thinking he was just keeping the ancient world alive. He never wanted the title. He never stopped earning it. The last man built from truly Roman parts, trying, until the very end, simply to be good, he wound up being truly Great.

In 540 AD, Rome had thirty thousand people struggling to survive, living inside walls built for a million. Sheep grazed in the forums of Augustus and Trajan. Into this world was born one of the last great Roman aristocrats, a man who would give away his fortune, flee to a monastery, get sent to Constantinople, and spend six years politely chastising Emperor Mauricius, would would not listen, or did not care, about the forgotten children of the fallen Western Empire. This is Gregory the Great. Part 1.

This week we're doing something a little different. We've joined forces with the wonderful Ladies of Lore, a podcast dedicated to the fierce, forgotten and fascinating women of history, mythology and folklore, to bring you three exceptional women who helped keep Rome alive when the men around them were dropping the ball. Galla Placidia, who survived sack, exile and captivity to rule the Western Empire. Anicia Juliana, who outmaneuvered an emperor to build the greatest church in Constantinople. And Theodora, who told a room full of panicking men exactly what she thought of running away. Three absolute powerhouses, to whom we owe a great debt, they defined Rome, they held the line, and yet were largely forgotten...