The great Mike Duncan, who did this as a podcast several years ago, has published at least two books: “The Storm Before the Storm,” about the late Roman Republic, and a biography of Lafayette. He also does the Revolutions podcast.
The storm before the storm and this podcast and all I can speak for they are both beyond excellent. That's actually not true the revolutions podcast the English one was great and now I'm listening to the French revolution. But I keep going back and forth even though I've listened to this many times lol
@@ansfridaeyowulfsdottir80951st- Timaeus didn't make these videos, so your "correction" is misplaced. 2nd- How are you so certain about the pronunciation of terms from a dead language? How could you, or someone else, possibly get the expertise required to correct others in good faith? They can't even be sure how ancient Romans sounded and the Latin is preserved in the church but not the authentic sound. How could you possibly be this confident, and what does that mean?
0:00 - Burn It To The Ground (Nero's Foreign Policies, Conflicts with Parthia and Britannia) 23:53 - 666 (Fall of Nero, Pisonian Conspiracy and the Great Fire) 47:10 - What an Artist the World is Losing (Start of the First Jewish-Roman War and the Fall of Nero) 1:09:39 - Three Emperors 1:31:20 - A 'History of Rome' Wedding
Interesting choice by Nero to embalm his wife so he could visit her in the family mausoleum 🧐 Mike, if you’re out there, you have an exquisite taste for the odd little details of history, thank you
44:20 a long time ago I saw a documentary on Nero (I think on the channel formerly known as "History"), where the plot to assassinate Nero was undone by a slave, of one of the conspirators, not looking for advancement, but out of an obedient love of the emperor... Although this details seems minor, it coincides with the idea that Nero was still popular with the lowest levels of society, as expressed earlier in the podcast. As to why "as bad as Nero was, Caligula was still more hated".
Hey man, thanks for your support. Of course I will continue to upload new installments every week or so as I compile them into 1.5 - 2 hour sections. I am also working on compiling the audio book of Josephus' History of the Jews in a similar fashion as well so my time is divided between the two.
The revolt of Judea is to me at least one of the most interesting episodes of Roman History. Irresistible force meeting immovable object, culturally speaking. Brutal and neither side could afford to back down.
Hasn't popped up in recommendations, shit how many people on RU-vid u think really comb for historical content, documentaries & the like... not even as a fluke is my guess
Nero shows what is elite problem through ages: put harsh adultery laws, even stone some people, yet emperor expects to be praised for doing same. Like previous emperor wife, Claudia's wife was ultimately stabbed for adultery openly.
Christian propaganda is not history. Tacitus' account is 60 years after the event. No historians, in Rome at the time, say a word about Christians. Tacitus' alleged event is not mentioned by anyone till 900CE.
become a father we cut TV you are putting out work that is important and entertaining what a society we would have if folks where looking forward your next podcast with same vigor as the next episode of the bachelor or the Kardashians. thank you
@@cassiescott6884 FYI... I may be named Jersey, but I am not, nor is anyone I know like those meatheads from that terrible show... those are Staten Island accents. If there’s an accents that sounds worse than a southern hick’s drawl then it’d be that from Staten Island...
@@jerseymusicman3332 im a brit. Im not so keen on the pitts accent, but that might be because of my ex. I am in the services so thankfully i dont get a chance for tv and i do not have one in my flat...just me and my six string plus a dam good stero. Cool name btw. Be mysterious say its in honour of the uk place jersey
Thanks to Mike Duncan for his master piece. I also dont want to forget for the great format, he should have way more subscribers Please subscribe to him and lets give thumps up to his videos.
Great work. A lot of missing details. Emperor Nero was a convert to Judaism and was known for reading the Talmud. He also fathered a Rabbi as well and his name equals 666.
Robert…I don’t know who you are…but I read the comment three times questioning the vague familiarity… Until…the synapses fired and the memory of Michael and Dwight singing that line…well the memory is there and it cracked me up!
Nero had the bad luck of picking probably the only religion present in Romanat at the time that would be around for the next 2000 years And the number of the beast has been miss interpreted as 666 when the number should be 616
Wasn't bad luck they were shit at the time so it was smart on his part. It just grew way more then he could or most people at the time could imagine. And sadly history is written by the Victor's lol so ya
Excelent job! It was really informative. However I dont understand why IBERIA isnt the iberic peninsula, and its the region in north of Armenia. Could you explain it for me please? Thanks!
Samuel Montenegro Serniotti There was a kingdom in the East that the Greeks called Iberia in modern-day Georgia. The Greeks also called areas of Spain and Portugal Iberia. It's a coincidence that developed over time from translations into Greek from different languages - like Macau the Chinese city and Macaw the kind of parrot. There's no relation between the two.
You say the greeks gave names to both territories and called them both Iberia? Thats interesting... Maybe the word "Iberia" is a descriptive term, like Mesopotamia? (It means the land of the two rivers)
I don't know why you do this but these podcasts are some of the best I've ever encountered. I'm perplexed, however. Did you write this stuff? Was/is it in book form and what made you decide to do this? I appreciated this stuff greatly.
He doesn't make these. He is just uploading Mike Duncan's podcast into video and adding maps. I appreciate this format very much, but I hate that Mike is not getting the credit he deserves, because people think THIS guy is Mike Duncan. At least he gave credit though. This series is finished, and Mike is now doing the Revolutions podcast, about, well, revolutions.
Eh, the top line of the vid description says "This is from the podcast series The History Of Rome by Mike Duncan," and then he links his website. I don't blame Timaeus just because people on YT are incapable of reading video descriptions before commenting.
I would argue the christians had quite similar beliefs to Rome and it's people if you look at stoic-inspired Christian belief in laws of the universe by which things run into which people's actions fit, or supreme Gods as all polytheistic religions had a supreme God (Rome: Jupiter, ancient Greece: Zeus, etc.) So this likely played a part in how the people of Rome ended up even more so hating Nero for doing this to people similar to them, even if they were foreigners mainly.
They Hated it because he went to far and they are there neighbors just normal people with a different belief. The common people usually always stuck for for eachother no matter the differences. Sadly it's nowhere near that anymore here In amercia the 2 sides absolutely hate eachother well all the politicians are laughing
I've seen the case made that the cristianos (who were apparently being told the apocalypse would happen in their lifetimes) really did pitch in and help spread the great fire...for what it's worth...
not even a joke. worshiping a bleeding man on a stick and then eating his flesh has long spooked people and has fed a lot of anti-Christian sentiment over the centuries. Maybe why so many Christian expansionists have had less than Christian conversion strategies.
Plot Twist: Christians did it. I mean, they hated Rome. They also believed in Second coming of their Messiah (soon, very soon) and the end the world with fire. 1+1=2
Something else about Palace building and city building in general. The roman state was willing to go broke over warfare. Even this country will loose good sense over defense spending - what was it, perhaps as much as 6 trillion for the last 20 years in the ME - but will get "sensible" about money spent for peaceful purposes. Of course with the war spending in Nero's day, there was always the prospect of booty. The only country now able to do it so successfully for the past 70 years has been the state of Israel. Everyone else usually has to give back - per UN agreements- the spoils of war. Go figure? But money spent on Urban development and palatial structures are the next best thing to the "glories of war" and the money so spent is generally multiplied in benefits because the improvements are usually productive and permanent. Money spent domestically is also subject to the multiplier effect as one learns in basic economics class. One thing Mr. Duncan and most of this generation will never know, now that we live in the era of Aids and Covid, is the fun and class annihilation of the Roman orgy or even the "liberated sixties" That's what the senate couldn't stand. It forces you to find the other, regardless of class, ethnicity or wealth, beautiful and even desirable. It probably served as a glue- or at least a slave, to allow people from such diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, to find something more in each other than a potential suspicious and confusing rival in such a large compact population. The senate, on the other hand was the ultimate self-serving command structure that should not be confused with the modern sense of the word. I always have to remind themselves that the Romans and the Nazi regime would have understand each other very well. They were far more likely to kill than to kiss. The Christians never understood the value of actually sharing one's flesh - here and now. They may have a purported higher idea but it also hid nasty subconscious attitudes and a tendency to hate life and the finer things and tended to sacrifice all present improvement for the vague "will of God". Didn't Nero ask "why do Christians hate life so much". Gibbon blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome but it is hard to read him today and I don't quite agree with him either.
Just to comment on your statement that Israel has been successful in capturing war booty. It is only in the waging of a defensive war that a nation may retain control of land and even then only to maintain a better defensive position vis a vis the invading aggressor. Hence retaining control of Golan Heights etc. Not exactly the same thing as Roman conquests and the booty taken as the Romans were the aggressors.
Lee Suta Both Hebrew and Aramaic. Mainly Hebrew, idk why most people think they spoke Aramaic, that was a Mesopotamian based language. Paul spoke in Hebrew to the masses on the steps of the Temple in think it was the temple. Might have been Fort Antonia sepending on where you think the true sight of the Temple of YHWH was.
lol dude. Mike duncan recorded these with ONE 20 minute episode every Sunday over FOUR years. I think a 1.5 to 2 hour upload every week or 2 is just fine.
Why does your map label the area between the Caspian and Black Seas as "Iberia"?!? Everybody knows that Iberia and the synonymous Iberian Peninsula consists of SPAIN and PORTUGAL.
Um, 50% correct. There are quite famously two Iberias, just as there are a multiple of Galicias. A Georgian ruler (yes, there's even more than one Georgia!) once approached a Spanish one in order to bridge the two Iberias, thinking there was some connection between them (the etymologies of both are obscure) but was ignored.
@@eschsoapy2809 - So, does that mean the Romans were confused about where things were on maps, or is it modern people who can't figure out what areas they were talking about? Personally, I lean towards the latter; otherwise, Roman generals might march their troops to the WRONG place, and I really don't think that ever happened.
@@StarShine-Ranch You've offered up a false dichotomy that I can't possibly answer. The origin of names of places can be extremely complicated. Iberia is one of those places that historians and etymologists scratch their heads about.
The Britons were a tribe who, along with the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, made\make up the 'Anglo-Saxon race'. To call the English 'Britons'-ignoring the other tribes- is no more correct than referring to the U.S. as 'America'-ignoring the rest of two continents.
Twerp. They weren't a combined group until well after Rome buggered off and they weren't even the original Britons - they were spawned from the beaker people invasion and the subsequent almost total massacre of the locals. PS the correct way to refer to the country between Mexica and Canada is Inbredistan.
You are using tTacitus to argue Nero blamed theChristians. Tacitus spins this case not a reliable source. Not contemporary. And how many Christian s do you really think there were in Rome 30 years after Christ’s death? And would they have been called Christians at that time? Highly unlikely. More likely Tacitus assumed it was Christians of how they viewed in his own time. He was also seeking to paint Nero as the mad Emperor It’s not even clear that translation in Latin is Christians from Tacitus
Even if they weren't christians, they were followers of christ and believers of the core of christian dogma, then they were by definition christians even if they weren't called like that back in the time. Also, their number doesn't have to be large to show how gruesome the excutions were, they didn't follow Roman religious rituals and that made them easily to blame for treason to Rome (a good reason to blame the fire on them) and be a target of normal ancient killings (which were gruesome to moden standards). Even if Tacitus was an unreliable historian, we don't have much to disprove him so he remains our scarce source of the events.
@@violetrose415 That early date it means they would have been to few Rome to be of any significance and not known by that name even if they were there, which in Tacitus is a doubtful 'Christian' misnomer anyway. That means it is unlikely that they were Christians in name or belief. Even if they were followers of Jesus or Paul they would have been to few in number to pin the blame on at that time as an effective scapegoat. Tacitus lived at a time when Christians were only just registering on the Roman elites register and thus possibly disapproved of. He certainly viewed and wished to emphasise is unstable mental state of Nero, because that is how the political situation of his time needed to see Nero for political reasons Tacitus' day. And later Christian tradition was keen to promote the myth of the cult of the early Christian martyrs for obvious reasons. All of this makes it highly doubtful not to say implausible that Tacitus meant Christians and that Nero would have even heard of such a embryonic Jewish sect, let alone used them as a scapegoat.
said tensions between the Jews and Christians in Europe would culminate into a number of anti-semetic pogroms and eventually, the holocaust enacted by Germany during the second world war. the silver lining was that the land of the jews will regn autonomy in 1948 with the independence of Isreal.
My dad was was into this stuff. When I was a toddler, he would pretend to whip me and then would put my on a cross in the front yard for hours in the hot sun until my mom would give him a (pretend) donative.
I really enjoy Mr. Duncan's excellent essays but with Nero he sounds like the traditional Christian moralist. Not to defend the man too much but he probably had some reason to suspect the Christians. Mr. Duncan leaves out an episode in Nero's reign where, at the insistence of the senate, he ordered the execution of over 125 slaves in the household of one man who was killed by one of his slaves. It was done in the middle of the street in spite of the wailings and protest of everyone else in the neighborhood. And as Mr. Duncan says, the early Christians were primarily from the Greeks, Jews and slaves of Rome. Neighborhoods, even in what used to be Italian neighborhoods in this country, knew what was going on in their quarters and probably saw a few Christians who wouldn't have minded throwing an ember or two onto the already burning city. The Book of Revelations didn't exist yet so whatever was said about Nero was apocryphal. It also is likely that whatever was said about these emperors was modified by later copyists, and , although I'm not an expert on old manuscripts, isn't it likely that the stories were altered in monastic scriptoriums that preserved them. I'm sure the original scrolls rotted away quickly and the Monks might not have been able to resist embellishing the stories. .The Romans at war were no less cruel and didn't seem to loose a taste for sadistic spectacle even during the reigns of the "good" emperors. The golden house was actually the first central park in history and was open to the general public. At least the lavish gardens were and they could probably have walked the galleries and special rooms the way visitors today see the White house or Versailles... The poor loved Nero and continued to visit his grave. I think they liked the emperors that shook the trees and let some of the rich fruit down to their level. BTW - I've read what I can find - without as thorough a job as Mr. Duncan has done, and have many stories I can't always place. One is that during Nero's reign the government had to set a limit on the number of slaves that could be manumitted by their masters each year. Slaves were becoming a problem and a risk. And I wonder if it was because of Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon and the story of Trimalchio who wanted to will something to each of his slaves so they "would love him while he was still alive"? The big houses may have thought it a good idea to have freemen clients instead of resentful bondsmen?
While your theory is interesting, it is conjectural. I think Mike was just trying to get the story out there with no fuss, and I'd say that the Christians had nothing to do with it.
@@a-nus - I'm playing the devil's advocate, I suppose, but everything said about the great fire is conjectural. There is always the tendency now for western history to damn Nero because Christianity became the state religion. There is the episode in Shaw's "Androcles and the Lion", where a more zealous Christian convert actually had committed a crime the rest were accused of. Christianity at the time was not organized or even possessed a coherent set of beliefs or ethics. It was a very counter cultural movement rather like the flower children of the late 60s. The flower children were people who could be both genuinely peaceful, or more aggressively revolutionary like Abbie Hoffman, or even out right psychotic like Charles Manson. BTW - One thing I've begun to appreciate about ancient historical writing is that the desire for fact based reporting is really rather modern. Ancient people - even the writers of the Bible, were more interested in writing "inspirational" works than fact based work. They liked to tell history, that they couldn't always verify with many reliable sources, what happened and what it meant. It was so like the writers like Lucretius, Pliny and Aristotle, or many state propagandists (who outright lied) who tried to observe history or nature, but only superficially, without much ability or desire to test their conclusions fro accuracy. Another BTW - The is a misspelling in my other comment below. The word "slave" should have been "salve". But, I suppose, slaves went to orgies too?
It's amazing how Americans can't pronounce place names of the country they originate from correctly. Norfolk - Wrong. Anglesey - Wrong. Petty I know but it does slightly annoy me.
@@pontificusrex1501 That doesn't make sense. My ancestors were from southern France, that doesn't change just because I say a few words. Have a rethink.
