The Secret History
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Narrated by:
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James Cameron Stewart
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By:
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Procopius
About this listen
The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period.
Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record: The Secret History, a vivid, salacious and detailed account of the outrageous behaviour of Justinian and his wife, Theodora, and the equally corrupt, licentious and cruel members of the court and administration of the time.
Secrecy was a necessary precaution for Procopius to prevent a painful and untimely death, for Justinian emerges as a grasping, ruthless and unprincipled ruler who would do anything to increase his wealth and power and who would not brook opposition on any level. No-one was safe around him - he was on a par with the worst Emperors of Rome such as Caligula. Theodora was no better - Procopius portrays her as a vulgar woman of insatiable sexual appetite given to scandalous displays and equally ready to kill to satisfy her desires. Not even Belisarius, the outstanding general of the time, was free from criticism: he is shown to be in thrall to his wife, Antonina, also a woman of wild habits, keen to pursue any person or object which appealed to her without let or hindrance.
This was a time, Procopius shows, when no-one in the great capital of Constantinople was safe, a time when the rule of law could be subsumed at any time according to the whim of those in power. James Cameron Stewart reads the unabridged anonymous translation published in 1896 by The Athenian Society.
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The Jewish War
- By: Flavius Josephus
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 23 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In AD 66, nationalist and religious revolutionaries in Judaea led a ferocious revolt of the Jewish people against the authority of mighty Rome, culminating in the greatest upheaval and savagery the world had known up to that time. By the end of the conflict seven years later, over one million Jews had perished and tens of thousands were sold into slavery. Until the Holocaust, it remained the greatest tragedy ever endured by a people. How had this once prosperous region been laid low, and by what process did its fratricidal feuds take it down a slippery slope to utter annihilation? Fortunately for us, there was an eyewitness.
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mispronunciations are irritating
- By DR on 01-22-18
By: Flavius Josephus
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Dying Every Day
- Seneca at the Court of Nero
- By: James S. Romm
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman.
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Outstanding
- By michael bobadilla on 05-04-23
By: James S. Romm
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The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages
- By: Ferdinand Lot
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Ferdinand Lot (1866-1952) was one of the great historians of his generation, and the transition from Roman to Medieval civilization was a process that fascinated him most of his life. Rather than placing the emphasis for Rome’s fall on purely political or military reasons, Lot put forth multiple explanations for the birth of the Middle Ages which embrace not only politics and war, but linguistic, geographic, cultural, social and economic factors.
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A Rome "too vast, too complicated and too cunning"
- By Philo on 11-26-15
By: Ferdinand Lot
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A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- By: Bartolome de las Casas
- Narrated by: Jason McCoy
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies is the story of the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas, who came to the Americas in the 16th century. Immediately he was struck by the inhumane ways in which the native peoples were treated by the European explorers and conquerors, Las Casas went on to be a leading opponent of slavery, torture, and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists.
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History written from who witnessed
- By Leonardo on 07-09-20
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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
- By: Charles MacKay
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.
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People don't change
- By J. on 07-05-16
By: Charles MacKay
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The Assassination of Julius Caesar
- A People's History of Ancient Rome
- By: Michael Parenti
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility - the one percent of the population who controlled 99 percent of the empire's wealth. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti recounts this period, spanning the years 100 to 33 BC, from the perspective of the Roman people. In doing so, he presents a provocative, trenchantly researched narrative of popular resistance against a powerful elite.
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another side to Roman history
- By Darksnovia on 04-16-22
By: Michael Parenti
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The Roman Way
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
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Not so bad
- By steve on 04-25-11
By: Edith Hamilton
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The Peloponnesian War
- By: Thucydides
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 26 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Historians universally agree that Thucydides was the greatest historian who has ever lived, and that his story of the Peloponnesian conflict is a marvel of forensic science and fine literature. That such a triumph of intellectual accomplishment was created at the end of the fifth century B.C. in Greece is, perhaps, not so surprising, given the number of original geniuses we find in that period. But that such an historical work would also be simultaneously acknowledged as a work of great literature and a penetrating ethical evaluation of humanity is one of the miracles of ancient history.
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You better know the events before listening
- By David A. Montalvo on 05-25-16
By: Thucydides
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Nero
- Matricide, Music, and Murder in Imperial Rome
- By: Anthony Everitt, Roddy Ashworth
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Roman emperor Nero’s name has long been a byword for cruelty, decadence, and despotism. As the stories go, he set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. He then cleared the charred ruins and built a vast palace. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. But these stories, left behind by contemporary historians who hated him, are hardly the full picture, and in this nuanced biography, celebrated historian Anthony Everitt and investigative journalist Roddy Ashworth reveal the contradictions inherent in Nero
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An amazing 360 degree portrait
- By Cooper A Day on 01-01-23
By: Anthony Everitt, and others
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A New HIstory but not a better history
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The history of England can be said to have begun with the arrival of Julius Caesar in 54 BC. Four hundred years later, Romano British civilization came to an end with the withdrawal of Roman military protection and the onslaught by successive waves of Germanic invasions. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Norsemen ravaged Britain for almost 500 years. The native Celtic peoples were displaced and driven westward into present-day Wales, where their descendants dwell to this day.
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Very Interesting
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The second volume of David Hume's classic survey of English history covers nearly 300 years (1200-1485) from the long reign of Henry III to the dramatic end of Richard III on Bosworth Field—he was the last Plantagenet, and the last king of England to die in battle. In telling this all-action tale, Hume delves deeply into contemporary records and presents a considered, even sympathetic view, showing that many factors, not just personalities, resulted in dramatic consequences for the nation.
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The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then master of offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524, and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution.
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A Self-Help Bestseller since 524 AD
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For the Very Dedicated
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What listeners say about The Secret History
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- HalfWit
- 10-13-19
A Bit Hyperbolic
I wish I could say that this was an insightful glimpse into the Byzantine empire, but Procopius is so hyperbolic that it's difficult to take any of it seriously. There are a few bits of interesting information scattered here and there by accident, as (for the most part) the point of this book is to attack the morals of Justinian and Theodora. It's hard to tell where the bitter grievance ends and the truth begins.
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2 people found this helpful
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- will hanson
- 09-14-20
Procopius is a hero and a light keeper.
Even though few have read this. We all owe a debt to Procopius. Unfortunately It does seem modern leaders have adopted Justinian’s tool kit.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 05-11-24
Not what I expected
Hatchet job history, unbelievably vicious, full of venom...not at all what I was expecting...hard to listen to so much negativity
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