
A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Murder in Ancient Rome
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Narrated by:
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Sophie Ward
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By:
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Emma Southon
About this listen
An entertaining and informative look at the unique culture of crime, punishment, and killing in ancient Rome
In ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common - murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city; Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater; Claudius was poisoned at dinner; and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered.
But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside ancient Rome’s darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life and death and what it means to be human.
©2021 Emma Southon. Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, New York. All rights reserved (P)2021 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The scandalous image of the Empress Messalina as a ruthless and sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of Roman historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, has taken deep root in the Western imagination. The stories they told about her included nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute. Tales like these have defined the empress's legacy, but her real story is much more complex. In her new life of Messalina, the classicist Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history.
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Fantastic Deep Dive
- By Matt on 03-11-25
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Kill Anything That Moves
- The Real American War in Vietnam
- By: Nick Turse
- Narrated by: Don Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."
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A book that shakes you to your core
- By Gary Yevelev on 04-26-15
By: Nick Turse
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The Ghosts of Cannae
- Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic
- By: Robert L. O'Connell
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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For fans of Victor Davis Hanson, Donald Kagan, and Barry Strauss comes a rich, sweeping account of the most imitated---and vicious---battle in history.
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Hannibal's Legacy
- By Douglas on 11-10-10
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Conquerors
- How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
- By: Roger Crowley
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Conquerors tells the almost forgotten story of how Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India, and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire.
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Beautifully balanced
- By Nigel Roberts on 05-08-16
By: Roger Crowley
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Blood and Iron
- The Rise and Fall of the German Empire; 1871-1918
- By: Katja Hoyer
- Narrated by: Natasha Soudek
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring 39 individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France - all without destroying itself in the process?
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Misleading title/subtitle
- By Ethan Brown on 12-15-21
By: Katja Hoyer
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The Faithful Executioner
- Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century
- By: Joel F. Harrington
- Narrated by: James Gillies
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on the rare and until now overlooked journal of a Renaissance-era executioner, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington's The Faithful Executioner takes us deep inside the alien world and thinking of Meister Frantz Schmidt of Nuremberg, who, during 45 years as a professional executioner, personally put to death 394 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured many hundreds more. But the picture that emerges of Schmidt from his personal papers is not that of a monster. Could a man who routinely practiced such cruelty also be insightful?
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Excellent
- By James on 03-30-18
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The Rise of Rome
- The Making of the World's Greatest Empire
- By: Anthony Everitt
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become the ancient world's preeminent power. Everitt fashions the story of Rome's rise to glory into an erudite book filled with lasting lessons for our time. He chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome's shrewd strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire.
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Rome from the fall of Troy through Julius Caesar
- By Mike From Mesa on 12-11-12
By: Anthony Everitt
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Carthage Must Be Destroyed
- The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
- By: Richard Miles
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased.
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Outstanding! This is THE book on Carthage.
- By Haakon B. Dahl on 01-21-13
By: Richard Miles
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Rubicon
- The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
- By: Tom Holland
- Narrated by: Tom Holland
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness—the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall.
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Story of the Fall of the republic told in a very lively manner.
- By Marteinn Úlfur on 12-16-24
By: Tom Holland
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Children of Ash and Elm
- A History of the Vikings
- By: Neil Price
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Viking Age - from 750 to 1050 saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.
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Outstanding
- By Than on 10-06-20
By: Neil Price
Not a run of the mill history of Rome
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best history book ever
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Excellent
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Roman history without gloss
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This one was fun!
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History is absolutely nuts sometimes.
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Funny yet serious
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Some technical glitches
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Unfortunately her use of expletives and dark humour detracts. The subject matter can not be treated as terrible, inhuman and beyond comprehension at the same time as being strewn with swearing and attempts at humour.
That being said it is certainly a book that forces one to acknowledge that all that sparkles has been hewn from the earth at a terrible cost. The Roman heroes stood upon the corpses of the murdered.
Interesting but turns tedious
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Hilarious!!!!
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