The Games to Win Ancient Rome

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

July 13, 44 BCE. Julius Caesar is dead, stabbed by a trusted friend. With Rome shaken, the Senate meets to decide next steps. They're confronting the brutal power struggle already breaking out among three men: Brutus, the deadly friend; Marc Antony, Caesar's gifted military commander; and Octavian, Caesar's teenaged heir. First, Brutus and Octavian will square off with a clash of festivals designed to sway popular opinion to their side... while the wily Antony bides his time. Today, the final day of the Ludi Apollinares, the games that Brutus arranges to sway the people of Rome. Will mounting the wildest spectacle be the key to grabbing the reins of the entire empire? And how does a bolt of lightning reshape Rome's destiny?

Special thanks to Dr. Geoffrey Sumi of Mount Holyoke College, author of Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome Between Republic and Empire.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.0	History this week, July 13th, 44 BC.
0:10.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:12.0	If the ancient Roman senator Marcus Junius Brutus
0:17.0	were a listener of this podcast,
0:19.0	he would prefer that we identify this date
0:21.0	as the 13th of Quintilus or Quintilus.
0:26.0	But not July.
0:28.0	The name July is new.
0:31.0	It honors Julius Caesar.
0:33.0	And Marcus Brutus doesn't like it.
0:36.0	Because Marcus Brutus has been trying his best
0:39.0	to get people to stop thinking about Caesar.
0:43.0	Four months ago, almost to the day,
0:46.0	Brutus was a leader of the group of senators
0:48.0	that stabbed Caesar to death.
0:52.0	He says he did it to save the Republic.
0:55.0	Caesar had recently named himself dictator for life.
1:00.0	Brutus hoped that people would rally
1:02.0	around the assassins for killing the dictator
1:04.0	and restoring their Republic.
1:06.0	Some of them do, but a lot of them don't.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.