HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-09T15:31:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: What was the most important year in history? We asked 9 experts – and this is what they said
items: Why Rome fell
items: Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices
items: Nero's doomed love affair: did a failed romance trigger his descent into madness?
items: Julius Caesar's hellraising youth: did he really defy tyrants and crucify pirates?
items: Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
items: The making of Rome's monster
items: Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures”
items: Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death
items: Rome's worst nightmare: the story of Spartacus

What was the most important year in history? We asked 9 experts – and this is what they said
type: item
date: 2026-03-09T15:30:15.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British queens
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical events
subject: Roman rulers
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: Our crack team of historians, broadcasters and authors offer their takes on a conundrum that continues to divide opinions
encoded: AD 1000 Norse power: when worlds collide This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of Greenland to the edge of the North American continent. There they met inhabitants of coastal regions of what’s now Canada: ancestors of peoples such as the Beothuk and Algonquin. The circle of humanity was closed for the first time in recorded history. In the 1960s, archaeologists found a Norse overwintering site at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. This backed up what the sagas had already described: a series of voyages west from Greenland, the discovery of new lands and resources, and increasingly violent encounters with the people they called Skrælingar – an unpleasant name meaning ‘wretched ones’. These cross-cultural encounters began promisingly enough, with red cloth and dairy products traded for animal pelts. Eventually, though, relations disintegrated into distrust, violence and murder – an uneasy foreshadowing of what would follow centuries later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2RA49CHwebready-675b6fb-e1772549042852.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cluster of reconstructed Viking buildings with sod-covered roofs sits inside a white wooden fence near a rocky coastline. The turf-walled structures vary in size and line a central dirt path, with wooden beams and tools displayed outside. Low hills and open water frame the background, evoking the historic Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland." title="Viking dwellings reconstructed at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, likely the site of the first Norse settlement in North America (Image by Alamy)" /> This is, of course, a moment of retrospective significance. Those voyagers didn’t realise that they had reached an entirely new continent. Their expeditions did not make big new…

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Why Rome fell
type: item
date: 2026-02-23T15:30:21.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical events
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
description: How do civilisations collapse? That was the question at the heart of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two hundred and fifty years after it was published, Guy de la Bédoyère argues that Gibbon’s magnum opus remains a landmark in the writing of history
encoded: Sometimes, a single narrative comes to dominate how we remember a year. So it is with 1776. This, as every history lover knows, was the date that the American colonies declared their independence, beginning the history of the United States. But back in the old world, another, rather more modest event would have a profound influence on cultural history. For 1776 was also the year that the first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published in London. And though it may not have spawned a nation, there’s little doubt that the book’s release was a landmark moment in the writing of history. Authored by Edward Gibbon, an essayist and, at this time, Whig MP for Liskeard, this epic work eventually grew to encompass the story of the Roman empire from the accession of the emperor Trajan in AD 98 through to 1453, when the Ottomans captured Constantinople and the rump of the Eastern empire fell. The last of its six volumes appeared in 1788 just before another tumultuous year in global history, 1789, when the opening salvos were fired in the French Revolution. What, in the year of its 250th anniversary, are we to make of Decline and Fall? Is it coincidental that a book written at a time of rebellion, and where so much of the narrative is about political intrigues and the loss of power, connected with 18th-century readers? And how did a history based on limited resources that few scholars would refer to today escape its time to become a classic? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-122219029webready-2206e03-e1771851490986.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A life‑sized marble statue of a Roman leader stands upright against a carved stone wall. The figure wears ornate armor decorated with reliefs, including a central face and small mythological scenes. A heavy cloak drapes over the left shoulder and arm, adding a sense of movement to the otherwise rigid pose. The right arm is raised, holding a …

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Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices
type: item
date: 2026-02-09T15:30:00.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British queens
subject: Debate
subject: Historical people
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Roman rulers
subject: Viking life and culture
description: In the first of a new monthly series, we asked an expert team of historians to tackle one of the big questions about the past
encoded: Homer Composite figment of imaginations The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated historical figure. That’s mostly because it’s likely that there was no one person called Homer. Careful study of those works, as well as other surviving epic fragments, has shown that they weren’t written at a single time by one person. Instead, it is likely that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed over generations by poetry performers known as rhapsodes. Each of these improved on the work of their predecessors, curating these epics and honing them to a point of perfection. From that time, probably around 700 BC, these works started to be transmitted in a more stable format. By around 550–500 BC, they were written down for the first time. By then, the belief was circulating that their genesis lay with one particular poet, Homer – not least because the idea of a single, genius author is simpler and more attractive than a slow process of evolution involving hundreds. A whole narrative was woven about the likely fictitious Homer: that he lived on Chios, that he was blind, even that he may have had some divine parentage. In fact, the notional Homer became so popular that later rhapsodes, doing performances of these now ‘finished’, stable poems, liked to claim themselves as ‘sons of Homer’ to give themselves more gravitas and fame. Ancient historians even wrote biographies of Homer as a historical figure, and busts were created of him. Yet, as a single man, he probably never existed at all. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Charles Dickens Verbose Victorian who distorted views of his era At the risk of being tarred and feathered next time I show my face at a Victorian history conference, I’d have to say that Dickens is overrated. It’s not that I dislike his work. Critics usually object to his long-winded prose, or baulk…

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Nero's doomed love affair: did a failed romance trigger his descent into madness?
type: item
date: 2025-12-29T16:00:12.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
description: He’s reviled as a cruel tyrant who killed his own mother and fiddled while Rome burned. But was Nero’s descent into madness triggered by his failed romance with a former slave? Edward J Watts tells a story of murder, incest and political intrigue
encoded: It is difficult to feel empathy for the emperor Nero, a man who did such unquestionably terrible things that he has become a prototype for the monstrous Roman ruler. During his lifetime he was labelled a matricide, an arsonist and a persecutor of Christians who also killed his pregnant wife by kicking her in the stomach. After his death, these stories grew into terrifying legends about his cruel madness. By the Middle Ages, chroniclers even detailed a tale in which Nero commanded doctors to make him give birth. Fearing for their lives, the terrified doctors “made up a potion in which they put a frog and gave it to the emperor to drink”, while prescribing him a special diet that would cause his stomach to expand. When Nero vomited the animal out, he “commanded that the foetus be fed and kept in a domed chamber” as his imperial heir. Some manuscripts even featured an image of Nero on a birthing chair beside his frog-child to illustrate his “evil madness”. And yet it is not hard to imagine a different life for Nero. This is because, before Nero became a monster, he was a heartbroken boy prohibited from marrying Acte – his one true love. Family trauma The tragic history of Nero’s family made it all the more surprising that he found such a romantic partner. His mother, Agrippina, was the daughter of Germanicus – the man whom Rome’s second emperor, Tiberius, hoped would assume imperial power following his planned retirement. When Germanicus predeceased Tiberius, however, his wife and children became potential rivals and were ultimately arrested. Agrippina’s mother starved to death in captivity, while her brother took his own life by eating the mattress in his cell. Their fates taught the princess that real financial and political security came only from a strong connection to some devoted, powerful male figure. She married thrice, each time to a rich and powerful suitor. Her first marriage, which was celebrated in AD 28 when she was just 13 years old, joined Agrippina to …

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Julius Caesar's hellraising youth: did he really defy tyrants and crucify pirates?
type: item
date: 2025-12-03T09:00:43.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical people
subject: Roman rulers
description: Ancient accounts of Julius Caesar’s early life depict an all-action hero who outwitted tyrants and terrorised bandits. But can they be trusted? David S Potter investigates
encoded: The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he’d made his big splash in the vast ocean of history. In 75 BC, Julius Caesar – then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himself as the most powerful man in Rome – sailed to Rhodes to study with a famous Greek rhetorician. But on his journey east, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates from southern Anatolia. There was nothing so unusual about this stroke of misfortune – the waters of the eastern Mediterranean were plagued by bandits all too willing to prey on Roman travellers. But there was certainly something unusual about what happened next. Seemingly oblivious to the danger in which he now found himself, Caesar decisively took control of the situation. According to his biographer, Plutarch, “when the pirates demanded 20 talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them 50”. While his agents set out to raise the ransom money, Caesar made the pirates listen to his speeches and poetry, assuring them that he would come after them as soon as he was freed. He was as good as his word. Having paid the ransom, Caesar raised a fleet from the cities of the Roman province of Asia (western Anatolia) and captured the pirates. Then, when he discovered that the corrupt governor of Asia was looking to make a profit from the captives, he “took the robbers out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking”. It was a brutal act of revenge – softened only slightly by the fact that he slit the pirates’ throats to spare them the agony that would have been their fate on the crosses. Origin stories Caesar’s pirate-slaying escapades represent a truly extraordinary tale. But what are we to make of it? We know a great deal about Julius Caesar in the ‘colossus’ phase of his career – that period stretching from his mid-thirties to his assassination in his mid-fifti…

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Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T13:02:32.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Death
subject: Gladiators
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
description: Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
encoded: 1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum…

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The making of Rome's monster
type: item
date: 2025-10-08T08:00:55.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical events
subject: Roman rulers
description: In the second century BC, Roman troops razed the city of Carthage and obliterated its civilisation. So why, asks Eve MacDonald, did the victors remain obsessed by their conquered foes for the next 200 years?
encoded: Carthage burned for six days. After three long years of siege, in the spring of 146 BC Roman soldiers finally broke through the city’s defences and began to slaughter the population. But still the Carthaginians resisted. Street by street, they threw themselves at their enemy. Rome’s relentless military machine moved from the city’s ports, across the temple-filled marketplace and up the streets that lined the central hill. There they were assailed by projectiles hurled down from roofs by women, children and old men. Yet the Romans’ fierce assault on that already ancient city on the north African coast could not be stopped. They went from house to house, ascending to roofs, rooting out Carthaginians from their hiding places. Houses burned and bodies lined the streets while a unit of ‘sweeper’ soldiers cleared away the dead to allow access for more troops. The scene, as told by the Greek historian Appian – in what, it seems, was an eyewitness account – paints a gruesome picture of conquest in the ancient world. It was so brutal, in fact, that the Roman commander, Scipio Aemelianus, had to change his troops frequently, sending in fresh fighters to combat the Carthaginians’ desperate attempts to defend their land, their houses, their families, their gods and their very lives. Those attempts at defence came to nought. The people of Carthage were slaughtered or enslaved, their once-beautiful city left in smouldering ruins on the shores of the Mediterranean. As a result of the destruction, and of the memory of the wars fought between these two ancient superpowers, Carthage became an integral part of the story of Rome and its rise to empire. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/shutterstockeditorial14491209jWeb-Ready-b90d516.jpg" width="5824" height="3883" alt="A photograph of a ruin. The foreground is a large, ragged stone arch, and beyond it, there are some white columns coming out of various size of rocks" title="A century after des…

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Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures”
type: item
date: 2025-09-15T08:00:29.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Burial
subject: Roman rulers
description: Alice Roberts speaks to Danny Bird about the evolution of the new religion that swept across the Roman empire and beyond
encoded: Danny Bird: What made you decide to write about the collapse of the western Roman empire and the rise of Christianity? Alice Roberts: I’ve long been fascinated by this historical period, especially in Britain, where written records are scarce. This book grew from my interest in burial archaeology, shaped by excavations I took part in 20 years ago on a Welsh cliff. Bones were eroding from the cliff face, and we uncovered cist graves – stone-lined, coffin-like structures – some dating from as early as the fifth century. One grave even had a stone lid carved with a simple cross. These early Christian burials sparked my curiosity. More recently, I visited an excavation at Llantwit Major, where archaeologists are investigating what may be Britain’s earliest monastery, possibly dating to the fifth century. This raised further questions: why was Christianity spreading so early? And who was behind it? Rather than relying on broad generalisations, my book focuses on individuals: the people who carried Christianity across regions, and their motives. A story that began with burials in Wales led me across the Roman world from Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) to Alexandria, aiming to find out how Christianity spread so widely, and what that reveals about the fall of the western Roman empire. Christianity presents itself as a faith for the powerless, but your book suggests that it was adopted by urban elites in its early centuries. How does this challenge the mythology surrounding its origins? It stands in stark contrast, really. It’s a tricky point, because those writing about Christianity were necessarily literate members of the elite. So, from the outset, we’re seeing a movement that appears to have spread among relatively well-off individuals. By the fourth century, it had clearly reached the highest echelons of Roman society. Emperor Constantine had begun to take notice, convening a council of bishops in AD 325. But even in the earliest years, this was a movement involving…

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Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death
type: item
date: 2025-07-10T08:00:53.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Death
subject: Roman rulers
description: The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC drove tensions sky-high in ancient Rome. As Jessica Clarke reveals, plays staged at his funeral were carefully chosen to inflame anger and incite revenge on his killers
encoded: On 20 March 44 BC, a violent death in Rome was about to send assembled masses into uproar – sparking pandemonium that threatened to engulf the city. The incident described by the ancient biographer Suetonius wasn’t a real murder but, rather, the climax of a theatre show. If we reconstruct the performance, using both Suetonius’s writing and fragments of the scripts that survive from the time, we can picture the leading actor standing in the centre of the stage before a packed auditorium. He would have raised his sword over his head and declaimed boldly, his voice ringing out across the stands: “What, did I save these men so that they might murder me?” With these words, he would have plunged the blade into his chest. Falling forward onto the stage, he would then ‘die’ slowly and dramatically in front of his enthralled audience. Cries of sorrow broke out from the audience, Suetonius tells us, and shouts of indignation were raised against the characters who had instigated his suicide. Like so many other theatre shows at the time, which are recorded for us by the ancient writer, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, this performance – staged in the last years of the collapsing Roman Republic – caused a volcanic reaction among the crowd. The performance was part of the funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. Five days earlier, the Roman general and dictator had been stabbed to death at a senate meeting by a group of conspirators. The city had gone into mourning, and a huge celebration had been organised to commemorate Caesar’s military and political achievements. It would include the usual eulogy and burning of the funeral pyre – but the centrepiece of the event would comprise two magnificent theatre shows. Incendiary shows First came the Contest for the Arms of Achilles, set during the legendary Trojan War. In it, Greek heroes Ajax and Odysseus argue over who should keep the sword and shield of their deceased comrade. Odysseus wins the debate and is proclaimed the victor.…

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Rome's worst nightmare: the story of Spartacus
type: item
date: 2025-06-05T08:00:30.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Gladiators
subject: Roman rulers
description: When the Spartacus revolt erupted in 73 BC, it exposed a terrifying truth: that the cocksure Roman Republic was nowhere near as invincible as it liked to believe. Guy de la Bédoyère takes up the story
encoded: It’s a measure of the enduring appeal of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 swords-and-sandals epic that, when most of us hear the name Spartacus, a dimple-chinned Kirk Douglas springs immediately to mind. Heroic. Noble. Doomed. Roman citizens, it’s safe to say, saw Spartacus rather differently – as a rebellious slave who threatened the future of the Roman Republic. Violent. Disobedient. Dangerous. Though writing in the imperial Roman era long after the defeat of Spartacus, the words of the author Plutarch (AD 46–c120) capture something of the dread the warrior inspired. “It is said that, when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept,” noted Plutarch, “and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would end in misfortune.” So what’s the truth behind these very different legends? Why did Spartacus take up arms outside the gladiatorial arena? And why was the uprising he led – the third of the so-called Servile Wars, following rebellions in 135–132 BC and 104–c100 BC – perceived as being so threatening to Rome? Brutal degradations To answer these questions, it first helps to remember just how reliant upon slaves Rome had become by 73 BC, when the renegade band of trainee gladiators led by Spartacus burst out of their barracks in southern Italy. Their rebellion exposed the terrifying truth: that every city, every village and every villa estate was at risk from the slaves on whom every aspect of Roman life depended. Paradoxically, this reliance on slave labour had grown from Rome’s success. Having seen off the naval trading power of Carthage in three Punic Wars (264–241 BC, 218–201 BC and 149–146 BC), and having seized Greece in 146 BC, Rome had vastly increased its reach and territory. The Romans had also defeated Macedon and, in 133 BC, been granted the kingdom of Attalus III of Pergamon (spanning …

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