A listener's guide to ancient Rome

Most people meet Rome twice. Once at about eleven, as a list of emperors and a diagram of an aqueduct. Then again as an adult, usually through a film or a game or a very long podcast series, at which point it becomes obvious that the eleven-year-old version left out the whole plot.

The plot is this. A city with an unusually stubborn constitution conquered the Mediterranean, discovered that its constitution could not govern what it had conquered, and spent a hundred years tearing itself apart over the problem. What came out the other side ran for another four centuries in the west and another thousand in the east.

That is a coherent story, and it is much easier to hold in your head than a list of emperors. Here is a listening order that follows it.

Start with the republic, not the empire

The Roman Republic, about nineteen minutes. This is the entry to begin with and most people begin in the wrong place. The republic is the interesting part. It is a system built to stop any one man from taking over, which worked for four hundred years and then failed spectacularly, and everything that happens afterwards is downstream of how it failed.

The Punic Wars, about fourteen minutes, and then the Second Punic War, about thirteen. Rome becomes a Mediterranean power here rather than an Italian one. This is also where the strain starts, because the wars produce generals with private armies and provinces with private fortunes.

Hannibal, about twelve minutes. Worth doing as a person rather than as a campaign. He beat Rome in the field three times and still lost, and the reason he lost tells you more about Rome than any Roman victory does.

Sulla, about fourteen minutes. The one nobody remembers and the one that matters. Sulla marched an army on Rome and made himself dictator, then resigned. He proved it could be done. Every later Roman who did it had his example.

Then the collapse

Cicero, about eleven minutes. The republic's best advocate, watching it die, writing all of it down. Almost everything we know about the period we know because he could not stop writing letters.

Julius Caesar, about twelve minutes. By now you will understand why crossing a small river in northern Italy was the end of something rather than the start of a battle.

The assassination of Julius Caesar, about eleven minutes. Sixty men, twenty-three wounds, and a plan that ended one dictatorship by guaranteeing a permanent one.

Augustus, about ten minutes. The most consequential political operator in Roman history, who won by never once claiming the thing he had. He kept every republican title and drained each one of meaning. The republic never formally ended. It just stopped mattering.

Then the empire at full height

The Roman Empire, about ten minutes, as the overview, and then follow the people, because the emperors are where the empire gets legible.

Caligula, about fourteen minutes, and Nero, about fifteen. Both are more interesting once you know that most of what you have heard about them was written by their enemies. The entries say so.

Trajan, about nineteen minutes. The high-water mark, and the longest of these. Maximum extent, maximum confidence, and the beginning of the problem of governing more than you can reach.

Marcus Aurelius, about ten minutes. The philosopher on the frontier, writing a private notebook that became one of the most-read books in the world. Also the last of the good run, which is not a coincidence.

The Colosseum, about ten minutes, and the Roman legion, about eleven, if you want the machinery rather than the personalities. Pompeii, about seventeen minutes, is the one to do when you want the ordinary Tuesday rather than the emperor, because the ash preserved the graffiti along with the bodies.

Then the long ending, which is two endings

Constantine the Great, about sixteen minutes. He moves the capital and legalises a small eastern religion, and both decisions outlive the empire that made them.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire, about fourteen minutes. Not a date. A century of subcontracted defence, tax bases that stopped paying, and a court in Ravenna that kept issuing edicts to provinces it no longer controlled. The last western emperor was deposed by a general who did not bother to replace him.

The Byzantine Empire, about fifteen minutes. The half nobody was taught. Rome kept going in the east, calling itself Roman the entire time, for a thousand years after the west fell.

The Fall of Constantinople, about ten minutes. May 29, 1453. This is where Rome actually ends, on a Tuesday, nearly a thousand years after the date in your school textbook.

How to pace it

Nineteen entries at roughly twelve minutes each is about four hours. That is two weeks of commutes, or four long walks.

Do not try to do it in order in one go. The order above is a spine, not a schedule. What tends to happen is that you get four entries in, hit something you did not expect, and disappear sideways for a week. Cicero sends people to Roman law. Pompeii sends people to volcanoes. Hannibal sends people to Carthage and then to north Africa, and you do not come back to the spine for a fortnight.

That is the correct way to use it. The spine is there so you can find your way back.

Start with the republic. Caesar makes a lot more sense afterwards.

The rabbit hole has no bottom.