Are they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr.

Riana Nevins, an associate professor in Classic Sand Ancient History at Latrobe

University and with us today is Dr. Emma Southin, co-host of the History is Sexy Podcast and author of A History of the Roman Empire in 21 women.

This is episode C.C.X.

Hispala Fakina and the Bacchanalia conspiracy.

Hispala was instrumental in bringing the dangerous cult of Bacchus to the attention of Roman authorities, ending a conspiracy that

was threatening lives and the rule of law.

Her story is one of the topics of Emma Southin's new book, which I can heartily recommend, and she begins this interview

by telling us how she chose those 21 women.

Here's Emma Southin.

Well we were wondering how you chose the women that you decided to put into your book.

What was the winnowing process like?

Did you have a long list and then narrow them down?

It was a very long list initially and then narrowed down and then ended up with some kind of face-offs at certain points.

So I always knew that I wanted it to be as much of a chronological history of Rome from beginning to kind of arbitrary end point as possible.

I wanted there to be a representation of every period of histories.

I didn't want to just skip over the whole of like the Middle

Republic or the early Republic which is kind of the hardest periods to find people and

I knew I didn't want people who were already famous basically so a cut-down process was anybody who's already

had a book or a TV show about them or shows up too much in I-Clause or anything like that

was cut because I wanted it to be people who are

...