Aurelion: Historical Audio Drama

In 108 BC, Rome is under pressure on every front. In the north, the legions have suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the Cimbri. In Africa, the war against Jugurtha drags on with no end in sight, as the Numidian king refuses to meet Rome in open battle. Amid this stalemate, one man begins to see a different path forward. Gaius Marius, a rising figure with little patience for aristocratic...

In 109 BC, the Roman Republic stands on a knife's edge. While the legions of Marcus Junius Silanus march north to face a terrifying Germanic wildfire, a different kind of war is being fought in the shadows of the Subura. Lucius Cornelius Sulla is a man with a legendary name and an empty purse, living among actors and outcasts. But a series of dark events is about to change the course of Roman...

Rome is on the brink. While the grain trade withers and the shadow of the Numidian King, Jugurtha, looms over the Senate, the "New Man" Gaius Marius must choose his path. As the elite Metellus offers him a position as Legate, Marius finds himself caught between his burning ambition for a seventh consulship and the high-stakes reality of a Roman household in crisis.

In this episode of Rubicon, we finally meet the man who would prove that the Roman Republic’s greatest weakness wasn't a lack of legions, but a surplus of greed. King Jugurtha of Numidia has arrived in Rome, but he hasn't come to beg for mercy. He has come to own the theater. As a client king under investigation for the slaughter at Cirta, Jugurtha navigates a city of "bottomless purs...

In this episode of Rubicon , Lucius Cornelius Sulla finds himself ensnared in a house of whispers, rivalries, and quiet humiliations. His clash with the insidious Bassus pushes him toward a decision that will alter the course of his life. But on the Palatine, beneath the fading light of winter, an unexpected encounter with a young girl named Jullina offers something rare—clarity… and a glimpse of...

Lucius Cornelius Sulla is a name etched in the blood of the Roman Republic, but in 107 BC, he was nothing more than a "Patrician of the Gutter." Bankrupt, decayed, and living in a crumbling tenement between a mistress and a stepmother, Sulla was a man whose birthright said "Consul" but whose reality said "Nobody."In this first chapter on Sulla within the Rubicon serie...

In the dying days of the Roman Republic, the old guard held the keys to power with an iron grip. To the elite patricians of the Senate, Gaius Marius was a "barbarian"—an uneducated provincial from Arpinum with no family name and no future in politics. They were wrong. This is the story of the early years of Gaius Marius. We trace his journey from a rugged childhood in the Italian countryside to th...

This omnibus episode is a compilation of Act I - The Conquering Republic, charting the Roman Republic's meteoric rise to global supremacy and the internal rot that followed its greatest victories. The story begins in 146 BC , at the height of the Third Punic War. Rome has achieved the unthinkable: the total annihilation of its rival, Carthage . But as gold and slaves flood into the city, the &...

In the Act 1 finale of Rubicon , we move to 121 BC . Twelve years have passed since the blood of a Gracchus first stained the Capitoline, and now Gaius, the younger and more radical brother, stands at the edge of the abyss. He has spent his life building a vision for Rome that his brother could only imagine—stabilized grain prices, rights for the Italian allies, and a challenge to the Senate’s abs...

In this harrowing conclusion to the story of Tiberius Gracchus, the tension in Rome reaches a terminal velocity. What began as a legal movement to restore the Roman farmer has devolved into a street-level civil war. As election day dawns on the Capitoline Hill, the air is thick with dark omens—chickens that refuse to eat, a stumble on a threshold, and ravens fighting in the sky. While Tiberius cal...

In this episode of Rubicon , the year is 133 BC . The Roman Republic is flourishing in wealth, yet hollowed out at its core. As massive slave estates swallow the Italian countryside, the traditional citizen-soldier is being pushed into the slums of the Subura, landless and desperate. We join the household of Hilaria and her son Quintus as they debate the explosive rise of Rome's most controversial...

In this episode of Rubicon , we move away from the front lines to sit with Cornelia , the daughter of Scipio Africanus and one of the most formidable women in Roman history. As she awaits news of her son Tiberius from the African front, Cornelia reflects on the heavy burden of the Scipio legacy and the shifting soul of the Republic. While Rome celebrates the total destruction of its greatest rival...

In a single, blood-soaked summer in 146 BC, the Roman Republic did the unthinkable. It erased two of the most legendary cities in history—Carthage and Corinth—from the face of the earth. On that day, Rome became the "Universal Hegemon," the undisputed master of the Mediterranean. But in the moment of his greatest triumph, the Roman commander Scipio Aemilianus did not celebrate. He wept....

This is the beginning of Aurelion , a historical audio drama series exploring the defining moments of the classical world. Our first series, Rubicon , follows the final century of the Roman Republic—an age of ambition, reform, and collapse. Through fully cast narration and cinematic sound design, we bring to life the figures who shaped Rome’s destiny, from the Gracchi to Caesar. This introduction...