Hello and welcome to conflicted. As always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.

Today, we're going to be doing something a little different. This will not be a full episode,

as you've probably noticed from the much shorter timestamp. No, this is actually going to be a

bonus episode to accompany our 10th full episode, King Breakers. This is part of a larger bonus series I'd like to start doing moving

forward whenever time allows or inspiration strikes. And the idea came from the fact that when I'm

writing scripts for the full episodes, there's usually tons and tons of really great stuff I have to

leave on the cutting room floor in the surface of brevity and narrative cohesion, things that were super

interesting or entertaining, but were also kind of extraneous to the story or felt like self-indulgent

tangents.

Well, this new bonus series, which I'm calling epilogues, is all about the tangents.

Today's episode is a continuation of our episode about the Pretorian Guard and their messed-up

relationship with the Emperors of Rome.

In King Breakers, we talked about Augustus and how he founded the Praetorians as an institution.

We talked about Tiberius and how he almost had the throne stolen from him by his scheming

Praetorian prefect,

Sejanus.

And then we talked about the insanity of Caligula's reign,

and a conspiracy that finally succeeded in bringing him down.

We also gave a passing nod to the Black Sheep Claudius,

and how the Senate and the Praetorians elevated him to the throne after his nephew Caligula's assassination.

And that seemed like a pretty good place to end things,

especially through the lens of the Praetorian Guard.

...