Life Of The Caesars

This episode we're deep in the Temple of Isis - which turns out to be exactly where Vespasian and Titus had to spend the night before their joint triumph, for reasons both boring and genuinely weird. We also cover Decius Mundus, a man so obsessed with a married woman that he bribed priests to let him dress up as Anubis and have sex with her.... which Josephus drops right after his suspiciously glo...

Titus wraps up the Jewish War with a five-month tour of the region, dropping in on city after city with two legions at his back and thousands of Jewish captives in tow.... who he then has killed, in as many creative ways as possible, as entertainment. Meanwhile he's sleeping with Berenice, Jewish princess and co-ruler of the very territory he just levelled, which is complicated. And somewhere in S...

Vespasian is finally making his way back to Rome and apparently every city he passes through absolutely loses its goddamn mind.... according to Josephus who is, of course, completely unbiased. Meanwhile Domitian is talking a big game about personally crushing the Batavian revolt until Mucianus very firmly tells him to go back to his room. The post The Last Man Standing – Vespasian #21 appeared fir...

On this episode, the siege of Jerusalem is over and Titus is handing out medals, melting down temple gold to crown his best soldiers, and carving up his legions for their next postings around the empire. We dig into what happened to the early Christian community in Jerusalem — spoiler: nobody really knows, and that's the fascinating part. Then Cam and Ray pause to take in the sheer scale of what j...

On this episode, Cameron and Ray wrap up the fall of Jerusalem in September 70 CE — Titus strolls into the ruins, declares Yahweh helped him destroy Yahweh's own temple, and the boys go deep on the genuinely wild linguistic coincidence that the Roman sky-god Jove and the Hebrew God share the same name. Then it's grim accounting time: survivors get sorted into gladiators, mine slaves, and beast-fod...

This week we finally reach the end of the Siege of Jerusalem — and it's brutal. Titus storms the upper city, the rebels' back is broken, Simon and John have vanished into the tunnels, and by September 25th, 70 CE, the city is rubble and the Temple is gone forever. We also dive into the fate of the sacred Menorah — where it went, what it meant, and why nobody knows where it is today. The post UNLEA...

It's August 70 CE, and the siege of Jerusalem is entering its apocalyptic final act. In this episode, Cameron and Ray pick up where the last one left off — starving rebels launching desperate sorties against exhausted Roman legionaries, Titus ordering his men to burn down the silver-coated temple gates to finally crack open the last Jewish stronghold, and the mounting pressure on one of the ancien...

It's 70 CE, the walls of Jerusalem are crumbling, and the city is eating itself alive — literally. In this episode of Life of Caesar, Cameron and Ray wade deep into Josephus's harrowing account of the final, grinding assault on the Antonia Fortress and the Temple Mount, where the siege of Jerusalem has reached a level of horror almost beyond comprehension. Titus is still trying to take the city in...

The post Vespasian #13 – Titus Likes It Tight appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Gallienus: The Pragmatist Who Kept Rome Alive appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #7 – Birds, Betrayal, and the Birth of Christianity appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #6 – Bitumen, Blood, and Bias appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #5 – Circumcision, Sabbath, and Salt appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #4 – Marc Hyden, author, “Emperor Titus” appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #3 – The Sticky Wicket appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #2 – Big Dick Imperium: Vespasian’s Real Power Brokers appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vespasian #1 – Welcome to Vespasian appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vitellius #20 – Despite Everything, I Was Your Emperor appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vitellius #19 – Rome’s Civil War Gets Horny appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vitellius #14 – Order 66 appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vitellius #9 – STRIKE FIRST, STRIKE HARD, NO MERCY appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vitellius #5 – The Mule Guy appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Vitellius #1 – The Third New Emperor appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The post Otho #12 – Fortitude and Firmness appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .

The Praetorians push for a fast campaign because they didn't want to spend any more time away from the comforts of Rome than necessary. Unfortunately, in letting them drive the strategy, Otho sealed his doom. The post Otho #10 – The Comforts of Home appeared first on Life Of The Caesars .