HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-21T15:06:17.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Friends, Romans, citizens: why Rome opened its doors to people across the empire
items: Have archaeologists just found proof of ancient Carthage's legendary anti-Roman war weapon?
items: Why Rome fell
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: What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
items: One of ancient Rome’s most notorious emperors murdered his own mother, and there's a dark reason why
items: Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death
items: Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant

Friends, Romans, citizens: why Rome opened its doors to people across the empire
type: item
date: 2026-04-19T11:30:48.000Z
creator: Dr Shushma Malik
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
subject: Roman women
description: From Romulus’s open-city policy to Claudius’s reforms, citizenship was used by Rome as both a reward and a weapon. And, as Shushma Malik explains, it enabled the burgeoning empire to build power and define identity
encoded: What made Rome so powerful? Writing in the early 16th century in his Discourses on Livy, Niccolò Machiavelli (best known for The Prince) argued that the secret lay not in geography or luck, but in people – and in a ruthless flexibility in acquiring them. “Those who design a city to create a great empire must strive with great diligence to fill it full of inhabitants,” he wrote (as translated in 1997 by JC and P Bondanella). “This may be done in two ways: either through love or through force. It is done through love by keeping the pathways open and safe for foreigners who wish to come there to live… it is done through force, after nearby cities are destroyed, by sending their inhabitants to live in your city.” Rome enlarged its population through both of those two methods, enabling it to build enormous fighting forces – Machiavelli cited a figure of 80,000 men, compared with just 20,000 for Athens or Sparta at their peak. Rome flourished, said Machiavelli, not because it had an advantageous location but because of one simple but powerful policy: it made outsiders into Romans. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-113636408-4087aad-e1776332738730.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A bronze sculpture shows a she‑wolf standing alert with her head turned, while two human infants beneath her reach toward her teats." title="A bronze statue shows Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf. According to legend the twins, who founded Rome in 753 BC, were themselves refugees (Image by Getty Images)" /> This concept was integral to the city’s founding story. Romans were not from Rome – as Athenians were thought to be born from the earth of Athens – but travelled and settled there as refugees. According to myth – specifically, Virgil’s epic Aeneid – Aeneas came to Italy after fleeing from a burning Troy. Romulus and Remus, twins supposedly descended from the line of kings that traced back to Aeneas’s son Ascanius, were rescued fr…

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Have archaeologists just found proof of ancient Carthage's legendary anti-Roman war weapon?
type: item
date: 2026-02-27T10:46:21.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: During the Second Punic War, the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal led his forces to numerous victories. But did he really take war elephants across the Alps?
encoded: The Punic Wars – and the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) specifically – were a definitive chapter in the history of the ancient world. Fought between the formidable Mediterranean power of Carthage and the upstart Roman Republic, the conflict ultimately saw the balance of power shift decisively away from the Carthaginians and towards the Romans. Had Rome fallen, Carthage would have retained its influence, and Roman civilisation may never have grown out of its infancy. Instead, the Romans won. Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, at the end of the Third Punic War, eliminated its greatest rival. In victory, they took hold of the ancient Mediterranean, using it as a springboard for imperial expansion across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. It wasn’t until the invasions associated with Attila the Hun centuries later that Rome would again face such an existential threat. But that’s not to say that Roman victory was inevitable. During the apogee of the war, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca inflicted a series of devastating defeats on Roman armies. At Cannae in 216 BC, perhaps 50,000 Roman soldiers died in a single day – one of the worst military disasters in Roman history – while earlier victories at Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC) had already demonstrated Hannibal’s military genius. Read more | Long before the ancient Roman empire, a rival superpower looked set for supremacy His most audacious, move, however, was none of these. Marching from Carthaginian territories in Iberia – modern-day Spain – Hannibal led an expeditionary force through southern Gaul and across the Alps, where he traversed the imposing mountainous slopes with a vast army that included war elephants. It was a force that arrived at the gates of Rome, pushing for a Roman surrender. It’s an astonishing story that underlines Hannibal’s determination, and most of all, his astounding logistical capabilities. But for all its fame, did it really happen? While many historians and arc…

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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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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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What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
type: item
date: 2025-09-10T08:00:55.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: The wealthy civilisation that dominated the Italian peninsula before the Romans left a legacy that’s full of surprises. Lucy Shipley explains why we have the Etruscans to thank for the way we write, the shape of our towns, Renaissance art – and even horror movies
encoded: They taught us to read and write (well, kind of) Long before the Romans came to dominate the ancient world – before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Claudius invaded Britain and Vesuvius buried Pompeii – another civilisation dominated the Italian peninsula: the Etruscans. You may have heard of them, or that name may mean nothing to you. Either way, there’s little doubting their influence, continuing through the long hegemony of the Romans (who occupied Etruscan settlements) and the medieval period all the way to the modern age. The Etruscans, whose name is echoed in the modern region of Tuscany, emerged in central Italy around 900 BC. Their heartland, Etruria, lay between the rivers Tiber and Arno, and their cities were often perched on imposing plateaus with views across the fertile fields and metal-bearing soils that made their fortune. Their ports sent vessels out into the Tyrrhenian Sea (which bears their Greek name), trading as far afield as Spain and the near east. If you know the Etruscans at all, you might identify them as the villains of many a Roman tale or Greek myth. But who were these people? How did they live? And what impact do they have on our lives today? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-webready150617775-378ec5d.jpg" width="3602" height="2401" alt="A pale green and cream tablet with white letters inscribed across the top" title="An ivory writing tablet discovered in Marsiliana d'Albegna. The characters of the Etruscan alphabet inscribed along the top clearly influenced modern Latin letters (Image by Getty Images)" /> Well, a good place to start is with the words you’re reading on this page. Without the Etruscan alphabet, the Latin characters we use in modern English writing could have developed totally differently. Etruscan letters are clearly influenced by Greek and Phoenician scripts, but you’ll find you can read them with relative ease because the letter forms are so familiar. Read more | The hi…

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One of ancient Rome’s most notorious emperors murdered his own mother, and there's a dark reason why
type: item
date: 2025-07-24T13:38:31.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Historian Tom Holland uncovers how politics, myth and maternal ambition collided in the scandalous reign of the Roman emperor Nero
encoded: Few Roman emperors are as synonymous with scandal as Nero. From stories of arson and artistic vanity to theatrical cruelty and imperial excess, his name has long conjured images of a decadent tyrant – the archetype of Roman madness and badness. But was Nero truly deranged? Or was there a brutal, even calculated, logic to his most shocking acts? Nero’s villainy was a “deliberate political strategy” says historian Tom Holland, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. According to Holland, even Nero’s infamous crimes as leader of the Roman Empire – including the murder of his own mother – were calculated acts of political theatre, designed to project a new, populist vision of imperial power. A mother’s ambition and a son’s ascendancy To understand Nero, you also have to understand his mother. Agrippina the Younger was born into the ruling Julio-Claudian dynasty. She was the great-granddaughter of Augustus and the sister of the erratic emperor Caligula. Her third marriage – to her uncle, the emperor Claudius – scandalised ancient Roman society, but it was ruthlessly strategic. Once married to Claudius, Agrippina ensured that her son Nero was adopted as heir, pushing aside Claudius’s biological son, Britannicus. Read more | 6 women who changed the course of Roman history When Claudius died suddenly in AD 54 (possibly even poisoned by Agrippina herself) Nero was just 16 years old. His mother moved quickly, orchestrating a smooth transition and assuming the role of regent. For a brief period, coins and imperial artwork depicted mother and son as ruling partners, their profiles facing each other in a rare display of maternal power. Agrippina’s public prominence was extraordinary and deeply unsettled Rome’s male elite. She donned imperial colours, appeared in state ceremonies and walked alongside her son in public. But as Nero aged and sought independence, the partnership began to fracture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages…

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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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Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant
type: item
date: 2025-07-01T17:17:14.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: From seasonal intimacy schedules to open-air nudity, ancient Greco-Roman thinkers had no shortage of theories on how to stay healthy. Some might still feel surprisingly useful today
encoded: Think of the Roman empire or ancient Greece, and your first thoughts might be of political scheming, cultural innovation and incredibly violent warfare, rather than the world of wellness. But even in the ancient world, questions on how to preserve good health commanded the attention of the era’s deepest thinkers. Among the Greeks and Romans, physicians like Hippocrates, Galen and Diocles were fixated on health, how to build it and how to maintain it. They viewed good health as a constantly shifting balance between internal forces and external conditions: food, temperature, movement and even your clothing choices (or lack thereof) played a part. And the wrong choice – at the wrong time of year – could tip that balance in a very unwelcome direction. Read more | What did people eat in Ancient Rome? Professor Claire Bubb, an expert in ancient science and literature, joined the HistoryExtra podcast to explain some of the measures that Greco-Roman doctors advised for a healthy life. Here, we share five tips for maximising your health and longevity, from those ancient Greeks and Romans, as told by Professor Bubb. Tailor your health to your goals, not someone else’s Even before the rise of modern wellness programmes, ancient doctors were pushing personalisation. A healthy regime wasn’t a fixed rulebook. It was a flexible set of principles, adjusted to suit your specific body, lifestyle and ambitions. Want to build strength? There was a plan for that. Want to slim down? A completely different routine applied. “The Hippocratic approach here is very individualised,” explains Bubb, “and this to me is the thing that ancient medicine can still really help us think through and help us be more aware of.” “If you, as an individual, feel that you are overweight and you want to lose weight, you're going to do one thing. If you're underweight and you really want to bulk up and you'd rather be stronger and you want more mass, you have to do these other things, so everyone has their own …

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