Episode #249 - Who Built Rome? (ft. Dr. Emma Southon)
Our Fake History
PodcastOne
4.7 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 86 minutes
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Summary
The Roman Empire is often remembered for it's grand works of architecture and formidable military. However, for most of its history Rome's economy was underpinned by the labour of millions of individuals who had been forced into slavery. Despite the fact that enslaved people quite literally built Rome, their lives were rarely recorded by the ancient historians. In her new book Not Built In a Day historian Emma Southon seeks to bring new attention to Rome's relationship with slavery. Dr. Southon joins Sebastian for a wide ranging chat about Rome's addiction to bondage and the lives of people caught up in the this brutal institution. Tune-in and find out how fake speeches, bogus Bithynians, and heartwarming graffiti all play a role in the story.
Pre-order Not Built In a Day here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Not-Built-in-a-Day/Emma-Southon/9781668089552
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1842, an undergraduate at Bowdoin College in the northeast of the United States |
| 0:13.2 | entered a student writing competition. The contestant was a talented young man named |
| 0:20.3 | Elijah Kellogg, who would eventually make a name for himself as a congregationalist minister and the author of adventure stories for young readers. |
| 0:29.8 | But in 1842, he was simply a college boy with a love of history and a great premise for a monologue. |
| 0:38.7 | The ancient authors loved putting speeches in the mouths of historical figures at pivotal moments in their careers. |
| 0:47.4 | These were almost always made up, but they spiced up the historical narrative and helped historians underscore moments that they saw |
| 0:55.8 | as particularly significant. But there was one famous figure from Roman history that was |
| 1:02.7 | noticeably tight-lipped in the sources that had survived from antiquity. This was Spartacus, the famous gladiator-turned rebellion leader. |
| 1:16.2 | If there was a more famous enslaved person to live during the Roman centuries, I don't |
| 1:23.2 | think I could name him or her. And while there are many accounts of Spartacus's doings during the |
| 1:30.9 | conflict that has been remembered as Rome's third servile war, Spartacus's voice can be hard to locate |
| 1:39.7 | in the sources. So the young Elijah Kellogg simply had to imagine what he thought someone like |
| 1:47.8 | Spartacus might have sounded like. To that end, he came up with a speech that he thought |
| 1:53.4 | Spartacus ought to have given to rouse his force of gladiators and other enslaved people |
| 1:59.3 | to throw off their shackles and turn violently on the |
| 2:02.8 | Romans who had put them in bondage. It's a sizable monologue, but here's a taste of Kellogg's |
| 2:10.5 | imagined call to arms. His Spartacus declares, quote, today I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet clasps, |
| 2:21.6 | behold, he was my friend. |
| 2:24.3 | He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped and died. |
| 2:29.4 | The same sweet smile upon his lips that I had marked when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty |
| 2:36.7 | cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes and bear them home in childish triumph. |
| 2:42.7 | I told the praetor that the dead man had been my friend, generous and brave, and I begged that I might |
... |
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