The Origins of Rome
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Known as the Eternal City, ancient Rome was one of the greatest civilisations in human history, but how did it come about?
With a turbulent history of Kings, civil wars and imperial desires - Rome has an incredible history. But who founded it? Were Romulus and Remus real brothers fighting for their kingdoms, or did a Trojan hero found one of the mightiest Italian states? Recent archaeological discoveries indicate a far more complicated picture of Rome's beginnings - but where does its mystic past fall into this new story?
In this episode, Tristan is joined by Professor Guy Bradley from Cardiff University to discover more about the origins of Rome around the 8th century B.C.
TW: This episode contains a reference to rape
This episode was produced by Annie Coloe and edited by Aidan Lonergan.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is sponsored by Audible, where you can now stream the new series of that brilliant Stephen Fry's |
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| 0:38.6 | Hi, history at listeners. Everyone loves the ancients with the Tristan Hughes in the office. We call them the Tristorian. |
| 0:44.1 | We make fun of him, but now he's a monster broadcaster in his own right. So it's less funny than it used to be. The jokes on us. |
| 0:50.8 | He's an absolute legend. He convinced us years ago that there was an appetite for ultra detailed ancient history in a podcast format. |
| 0:58.3 | And you know what? He was right. If frankly the classical fair you're getting on this podcast is too meager, |
| 1:04.1 | then you need to get involved in the ancients. He goes really deep. You can love it. Check out the ancients with Tristan Hughes wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:22.2 | It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast where we're going back to the beginnings of ancient Rome. |
| 1:31.6 | We're talking all about the origins of Rome looking at the archaeology and also the literature that refers to Rome's beginnings. |
| 1:39.0 | What the Romans believed. So names such as Romulus, Anius and then we're going to be going a bit later on and talking about a few of the kings as well. |
| 1:49.5 | But alongside that we're also going to be looking at what the most recent archaeology is revealing about this distant time in Rome's history. |
| 1:59.4 | And it's really exciting at the moment because of some brand new discoveries, particularly surrounding the mythical figure of Romulus. |
| 2:07.0 | Did he exist? Did he not? Well, there is some archaeology which seems to be now shining some more lights on that. |
| 2:13.0 | As our guest today will explain in this episode, our guest is none other than Professor Guy Brasley from the University of Cardiff. |
| 2:21.4 | I headed over to Guy's office a couple of weeks back to interview him all about the origins of Rome. |
| 2:26.7 | It was a great chat and here is the finished episode. So that further ado to talk all about the origins of Rome, here's Guy. |
| 2:37.3 | Guy, it is great to have you on the podcast today. |
| 2:40.0 | Lovely, it's great to be here and thanks very much for coming down to Cardiff to talk to me. |
... |
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