''The History of Rome'', often abbreviated ''THoR'', was a podcast created by

Mike Duncan Robert Michael Duncan (born 1951) is a Kentucky Republican who served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2007 to 2009. Throughout his career, he has served on the boards of a variety of public- and private-sector organizat ...

which aired between 2007 and 2012. In the 2010

podcast awards The People's Choice Podcast Awards, better known as the Podcast Awards, are global awards given annually to the best podcasts as voted by the general public. Founded in 2005 by Todd Cochrane of Podcast Connect Inc., the Podcast Awards changed han ...

, ''THoR'' won best educational podcast. ''THoR'' covers the time period from the origin of the Roman Kingdom to the

Fall of the Western Roman Empire The fall of the Western Roman Empire (also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Ancient Rome, Rome) was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rul ...

, focusing on the most accepted chain of events according to historical consensus.

Origins

Duncan came up with the idea of THoR during a plane flight and subsequent vacation. He was impressed by 12 Byzantine Rulers, a podcast by

Lars Brownworth Lars Mehrling Brownworth (born c. 1975) is an author and former United States history, political science and humanities teacher at The Stony Brook School in Stony Brook on Long Island, New York, who created the top 50 podcast, 12 Byzantine Ru ...

, however, he struggled to find anything similar on the history of Rome. Duncan had a longstanding interest in Roman history and was reading The War With Hannibal by

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Ancient Rome, Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditiona ...

at the time. He enjoyed many of the historical episodes he encountered in the book, but realized that much of the public knew little about Rome outside of

Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman people, Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caes ...

and Augustus' time. One of Duncan's motivators for creating the podcast was to make the whole of Roman history attractive to the public through the form of a podcast.

Making of the podcast

Duncan used primary sources such as Livy and

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his t ...

as much as possible, while using secondary or modern sources to help judge the veracity and objectivity of each source. In making the podcast, Duncan read almost exclusively about Roman history. Each show required Duncan 10 to 12 hours prep time, in addition to countless hours reading source material throughout the week. Duncan would aim to keep his episodes at around 4000 words. When recording, he would run two parallel tracks in

GarageBand GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed by Apple for macOS, and was once part of the iLife software s ...

to preempt any errors, and would do a preparatory reading beforehand. He finished each podcast with a celebratory beer. Duncan has mentioned that in making the podcast, he learned "human nature has changed very little," and that people generally respond to the same situations in the same sorts of ways. "I don't think we're so completely different than any Roman was." The soundtrack which begins and ends each podcast comes from the GarageBand snippet Acoustic Picking 18.

Tours

As an extension to the podcast, Duncan has led recurring guided tours around

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, also visiting Ostia,

Pompeii Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried ...

Capri Capri ( , ; ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. The main town of Capri that is located on the island shares the name. It has been ...

, and the field of Cannae; the tours walk through many sites mentioned in The History of Rome.

Books

On June 4, 2016, Duncan's book, ''The History of Rome: The Republic (Volume 1)'' was published. The book is a collection of edited transcripts from the first 46 episodes of the podcast, covering the time period from the founding of the Roman Kingdom through the breakdown of the Republic. In October 2017, Duncan's book ''The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic'', was published by PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It focused on the period between the rise of the

Gracchi Brothers The Gracchi brothers were two Roman brothers, sons of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who was consul in 177 BC. Tiberius, the elder brother, was tribune of the plebs in 133 BC and Gaius, the younger brother, was tribune a decade later i ...

through

Sulla's Civil War Sulla's civil war was fought between the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla and his opponents, the Cinna-Marius faction (usually called the Marians or the Cinnans after their former leaders Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna), in the ye ...

, which is covered in Episodes 29 through 34 of the ''THoR'' podcast.

Legacy and influence

The ''History of Byzantium podcast'' by Robin Pierson is explicitly modelled after ''THoR'' in style, length and quality; Pierson said in an interview on Podcast Squared that he intended the podcast as a sequel to ''The History of Rome'' in order to complete the story. David Crowther of ''The History of England podcast'' has mentioned Duncan as an influence, as has Peter Adamson of the podcast: ''The History of Philosophy without any Gaps''. Isaac Meyer of the ''History of Japan podcast'' has mentioned in a few episodes that ''The History of Rome'' podcast inspired the "A day in the life of..." episodes. Duncan has mentioned in turn being greatly inspired by the prior work of Lars Brownworth. Duncan has said he hopes that other history podcasters will follow his mantra and stick to "just the content" without a lot of "extraneous babbling", in order to give their podcasts as professional a feel as possible – thus making the podcast an educational experience geared to learning the subject of the podcast. Duncan mentioned on ''Podcast Squared'' consistency as critical to building an audience and being respectful to their time and advises every podcaster to set a deadline and stick with it. "If you can get (people) on a routine and looking forward to (the podcast), they'll stick around". The series proved popular enough that six years after the podcast ended, Duncan released two sets of appendix ''THoR'' episodes that covered topics he had not been able to properly address in the main series, and which he had learned a lot about through the research for ''The Storm Before the Storm''. The first set of episodes covered the lives of the ancient writers whose sources he used for ''The Storm Before the Storm'', including

Cato the Elder Marcus Porcius Cato (; 234–149 BC), also known as Cato the Censor ( la, Censorius), the Elder and the Wise, was a Roman soldier, senator, and historian known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization. He was the first to write histo ...

Polybius Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail. Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed ...

Sallust Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust (; 86 – ), was a Roman historian and politician from an Italian plebeian family. Probably born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines, Sallust became during the 50s BC a partisan o ...

, and

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...

. The second set covered the Iberian Wars of the 2nd Century BC, a series of bloody conflicts largely unmentioned in the main series. Both sets of appendix episodes are currently locked behind a paywall on his ''Revolutions'' Podcast Fundraiser site.

References