Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was the legendary seventh and final king of Rome, reigning 25 years until the popular uprising that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. He is commonly known as Tarquin the Proud, from his cognomen Superbus.
Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City'', covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history.
According to Roman tradition, Lucretia, anglicized as Lucrece, was a noblewoman in ancient Rome, whose rape by Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquin) and subsequent suicide precipitated a rebellion that overthrew the Roman monarchy and led to the transition of Roman government from a kingdom to a republic. The incident kindled the flames of dissatisfaction over the tyrannical methods of Tarquin's father, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome. As a result, the prominent families instituted a republic, drove the extensive royal family of Tarquin from Rome, and successfully defended the republic against attempted Etruscan and Latin intervention.
Polybius was a Greek historian of the middle Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work The Histories, a universal history documenting the rise of Rome in the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries BC. It covered the period of 264–146 BC, recording in detail events in Italy, Iberia, Greece, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt and Africa, and documented the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars among many others.
In Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus are twin brothers whose story tells of the events that led to the founding of the city of Rome and the Roman Kingdom by Romulus, following his fratricide of Remus. The image of a she-wolf suckling the twins in their infancy has been a symbol of the city of Rome and the ancient Romans since at least the 3rd century BC. Although the tale takes place before the founding of Rome around 750 BC, the earliest known written account of the myth is from the late 3rd century BC. Possible historical bases for the story, and interpretations of its various local variants, are subjects of ongoing debate.
RheaSilvia, also known as Ilia was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, who founded the city of Rome. Her story is told in the first book of Ab Urbe Condita Libri of Livy and in Cassius Dio's Roman History. The Legend of Rhea Silvia recounts how she was raped by Mars while she was a Vestal Virgin and as a result became the mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. This event was portrayed numerous times in Roman art and mentioned in the Aeneid and the works of Ovid.
The First, Second, and Third Samnite Wars were fought between the Roman Republic and the Samnites, who lived on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains south of Rome and north of the Lucanian tribe.
Tullus Hostilius was the legendary third king of Rome. He succeeded Numa Pompilius and was succeeded by Ancus Marcius. Unlike his predecessor, Tullus was known as a warlike king who according to the Roman Historian Livy, believed the more peaceful nature of his predecessor had weakened Rome. It has been attested that he sought out war and was even more warlike than the first king of Rome, Romulus. Accounts of the death of Tullus Hostillus vary. In the mythological version of events Livy describes, he had angered Jupiter who then killed him with a bolt of lightning. Non mythological sources on the other hand describe that he died of plague after a rule of 32 years.
Valerius Antias was an ancient Roman annalist whom Livy mentions as a source. No complete works of his survive but from the sixty-five fragments said to be his in the works of other authors it has been deduced that he wrote a chronicle of ancient Rome in at least seventy-five books. The latest dateable event in the fragments is mention of the heirs of the orator, Lucius Licinius Crassus, who died in 91 BC. Of the seventy references to Antias in classical literature sixty-one mention him as an authority on Roman legendary history.
The work called Ab urbe condita, sometimes referred to as Ab urbe condita libri, is a monumental history of ancient Rome, written in Latin between 27 and 9 BC by Livy, a Roman historian. The work covers the period from the legends concerning the arrival of Aeneas and the refugees from the fall of Troy, to the city's founding in 753 BC, the expulsion of the Kings in 509 BC, and down to Livy's own time, during the reign of the emperor Augustus. The last event covered by Livy is the death of Drusus in 9 BC. 35 of 142 books, about a quarter of the work, are still extant. The surviving books deal with the events down to 293 BC, and from 219 to 166 BC.
The battle or, more precisely, the battles of Croton in 204 and 203 BC were, as well as the raid in Cisalpine Gaul, the last larger scale engagements between the Romans and the Carthaginians in Italy during the Second Punic War. After Hannibal’s retreat to Bruttium due to the Metaurus debacle, the Romans continuously tried to block his forces from gaining access to the Ionian Sea and cut his eventual escape to Carthage by capturing Croton. The Carthaginian commander struggled to retain his hold on the last efficient port which had remained in his hands after years of fighting and was ultimately successful.
The First Celtiberian War and Second Celtiberian War were two of the three major rebellions by the Celtiberians against the presence of the Romans in Hispania.
The First Celtiberian was the first of three major rebellions by the Celtiberians against the Roman presence in Hispania. The other two were the Second Celtiberian War and the Numantine War. Hispania was the name the Romans gave to the Iberian Peninsula. The peninsula was inhabited by various ethnic groups and numerous tribes. The Celtiberians were a confederation of five tribes, which lived in a large area of east central Hispania, to the west of Hispania Citerior. The eastern part of their territory shared a stretch of the border of this Roman province. The Celtiberian tribes were the Pellendones, the Arevaci, the Lusones, the Titti and the Belli.
Lars Mehrling Brownworth 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 Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire. This podcast was created on a whim by Lars and his brother, Anders Brownworth. Often mistaken for a college professor, Lars was, in fact, a high school history instructor at the time the podcast was produced.
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was a Roman general and statesman, most notable as one of the main architects of Rome's victory against Carthage in the Second Punic War. Often regarded as one of the greatest military commanders and strategists of all time, his greatest military achievement was the defeat of Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. This victory in Africa earned him the epithet Africanus, literally meaning "the African," but meant to be understood as a conqueror of Africa.
The Roman–Latin wars were a series of wars fought between ancient Rome and the Latins, from the earliest stages of the history of Rome until the final subjugation of the Latins to Rome in the aftermath of the Latin War.
The Roman–Volscian wars were a series of wars fought between the Roman Republic and the Volsci, an ancient Italic people. Volscian migration into southern Latium led to conflict with that region's old inhabitants, the Latins under leadership of Rome, the region's dominant city-state. By the late 5th century BC, the Volsci were increasingly on the defensive and by the end of the Samnite Wars had been incorporated into the Roman Republic. The ancient historians devoted considerable space to Volscian wars in their accounts of the early Roman Republic, but the historical accuracy of much of this material has been questioned by modern historians.
Charles Duncan Trussell is an American actor and stand-up comic, known for his podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour. He appears on the Netflix series The Midnight Gospel, and starred alongside Joe Rogan in the SYFY series Joe Rogan Questions Everything.
The Battle of Saticula, 343 BC, was the second of three battles described by the Roman historian Livy, in Book Seven of his history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, as taking place in the first year of the First Samnite War. According to Livy's extensive description, the Roman commander, the consul Aulus Cornelius Cossus was marching from Saticula when he was almost trapped by a Samnite army in a mountain pass. His army was only saved because one of his military tribunes, Publius Decius Mus, led a small group of men to seize a hilltop, distracting the Samnites and allowing the consul to escape. During the night Decius and his men were themselves able to escape. The next day the reunited Romans attacked the Samnites and completely routed them. Several other ancient authors also mention Decius' heroic acts. Modern historians are however sceptical of the historical accuracy of Livy's account, and have in particular noted the similarities with how a military tribune is said to have saved Roman army in 258 BC during the First Punic War.
Michael William Duncan is an American political history podcaster and author. A self-described "complete history geek", his love for history grew from an interest in ancient civilizations as a child, with a particular affinity for Roman history. After not finding any Roman history podcasts in 2007, Duncan began The History of Rome, a narrative podcast chronicling events from the founding of Rome until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The podcast concluded in 2012. A year later he began Revolutions, which ran for ten seasons over the course of nine years, covering the American, French, and Russian revolutions, among others. The series' main narrative ended in July 2022.
