OFH Throwback- Episode #72 - Did Emperor Hadrian Murder His Teenage Lover?

Our Fake History

PodcastOne

Education, Talk Radio, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this throwback episode Sebastian takes you back to the start of Season 4 to explore the historical reputation of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian has been celebrated as one of Rome’s “five good emperors”, but is that reputation actually deserved? Hadrian’s reputation is complicated by the mysterious death of his teenage lover, Antinous. What should we believe about this strange chapter in the life of one of Rome’s most celebrated emperors? Tune-in and find out how radical beards, fantastical walls, and ancient man-love all play a role in the story.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this very special throwback episode of our fake history.
0:14.1	Today I am throwing you back to the very first episode of season four.
0:18.8	That was episode number 72 titled, Did Emperor Hadrian Murder His Teenage
0:26.7	Lover? Now, the story of how this particular episode came to be is a little different than most
0:34.0	our fake history episodes. This is one of the few times I've let myself be influenced by outside forces
0:42.1	about what topic I should pick for the show.
0:45.2	Let me tell you the tale.
0:47.3	A friend of mine was working at the Canadian Opera Company,
0:51.4	and they had this new opera coming up that was going to be about the life of
0:56.9	Hadrian and his lover Antinous that had been written by the great Canadian songwriter Rufus
1:05.0	Wainwright. Yes, Rufus Wainwright also writes operas.
1:15.3	So he calls me up and says, Sebastian, we're doing this really cool opera.
1:17.2	It's based on Roman history.
1:21.4	It might make for an amazing story on our fake history.
1:24.0	And I'm like, oh, you want to do like a cross-promotion?
1:29.9	And he's like, well, the Canadian opera company doesn't really have a lot of money for this sort of thing. Just look into the story. If you like it, then maybe I can hook you up
1:35.0	with some opera tickets if you end up doing an episode on this topic. So, yeah, not really like
1:42.3	a brand integration thing more like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if there was a little bit of synergy here?
1:50.2	And so I was like, okay, I'll check out this story.
1:53.2	And you know what?
1:53.7	The story was so interesting, I had to do it.
1:57.2	So you will hear me say in this episode that there's this opera going on at the Canadian
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PodcastOne, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of PodcastOne and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.