The Hidden Empire

History

Ancient Rome, but the parts they left out of the textbook. Each episode digs into one strange, overlooked corner of the Roman world — the emperor who made his horse a senator, the fish sauce Romans couldn't live without, a twelve-sided bronze object nobody can explain, and the truth behind the infamous vomitorium. Carefully researched, told with a raised eyebrow, and always clear about where the evidence ends and the legend begins. A Rogue Media Network production.

The Emperor Who Was Killed by a Mushroom

Claudius conquered Britain, drained a lake, and wrote his own histories, then allegedly died from a plate of poisoned mushrooms served by his own wife. We look at his real achievements, the poisoner Locusta's career, and how much of the death-by-mushroom story historians actually believe.

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The Midnight Ritual of the Lemuria

Every May, Roman households performed a strange midnight ritual to drive restless ghosts from their homes, spitting black beans and chanting the same nine words nine times. We trace the Lemuria festival back through Ovid's origin myth about Remus, a real haunted-house story from Pliny the Younger, and the ancient distinction between honored ancestors and wandering spirits.

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The Emperor Who Made His Horse a Senator

Caligula's horse Incitatus supposedly had a marble stall, a jeweled collar, and a promised consulship. We separate the real chariot-racing culture behind the story from the centuries-later gossip of Suetonius and Cassius Dio, and look at what the tale really tells us about power, spectacle, and Roman politics under an unstable emperor.

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The Poo-Powered Pharmacy of Ancient Rome

Roman medicine leaned on a surprising ingredient: waste. From urine-based teeth whitening and Vespasian's famous urine tax to a wider ancient tradition of copropharmacy, we look at the strange, well-documented world of Roman remedies that modern chemical analysis is only now starting to confirm.

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The Roman Feast: Dormice, Flamingo Tongues, and the Truth About the Vomitorium

Roman banquets were built for spectacle: reclining couches, fattened dormice rolled in honey, flamingo tongues, and household slaves choreographed down to the last course. We dig into how the elite really dined, the sumptuary laws that tried (and failed) to rein it in, Lucullus's legendary feasts, and the real meaning behind the infamous "vomitorium." Plus: Petronius's satirical Roman dinner party from hell, and what ordinary Romans actually ate. For more stories of ancient empires, follow this show anywhere you get your podcasts.

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The Exotic Pets of the Roman Elite

From Hadrian's beloved horse Borysthenes, who got a full tomb and epitaph, to pet monkeys imported through the Egyptian port of Berenike and Martial's poems about a spoiled lapdog named Issa, wealthy Romans kept an astonishing range of animals. We look at the real evidence for exotic Roman pets, alongside the darker world of the arena that existed right next to it.

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The Smelliest and Tastiest Condiment: Garum

Nearly every Roman recipe called for garum, a fermented fish sauce made in vats left to ferment for weeks in the sun. We trace the trade in this pungent, expensive condiment from Pompeii's famous garum-merchant house to the premium grades shipped from Cartagena, and ask what garum can tell us about ancient globalization and taste.

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The Forgotten Emperor Silbannacus

During Rome's chaotic Third Century Crisis, dozens of usurpers seized power for weeks at a time before vanishing from the record entirely. Silbannacus is the most extreme case: an emperor known only from two surviving coins, with zero mention in any ancient text. We look at how numismatics reconstructs lost rulers, including the once-dismissed-as-fake emperor Sponsianus, and what these phantom reigns tell us about how history gets written, and unwritten.

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The Mystery of the Roman Dodecahedron

In 1739, a small twelve-faced bronze object was pulled from the ground in England, and archaeologists have been arguing about what it's for ever since. Tonight we dig into the Roman dodecahedron: nearly 130 of them found across the former empire, not a single ancient text that mentions them, and theories ranging from knitting tools to cosmic symbols to portable wealth. We look at the 2023 Norton Disney find in Lincolnshire, the leading theories, and why this odd little object remains one of archaeology's best open mysteries.

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The Lost Voices of Roman Women

History remembers Rome's emperors and generals in exhaustive detail, but the women of the Roman world left behind fewer words of their own. Tonight we piece together their voices from the Vindolanda writing tablets, poetry written about (and occasionally by) Roman women, tombstones of ordinary tradeswomen, and the unusual legal power of the Vestal Virgins, to ask what everyday Roman womanhood actually looked like.

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