Lost Roman Heroes Podcast

Exploring the lives, and times, of lost Roman heroes, from Aeneas to Constantine the XI, and ranking them!

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

So cool!! A bit of Heraclius discovered on the ocean floor. This Medieval Byzantine Shipwreck Boasts More Gold Treasures Than Any Other Vessel Found Beneath the Mediterranean https://t.co/Zpnud1vC2a

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

Rome had survived Nero. Caligula. The Huns, the Vandals, the Goths, and a plague that killed half the Mediterranean world. But in 602 AD, Rome met something it had never faced before.
His name was Phocas.
Not merely a bad emperor. Phocas was something new — a brute who systematically destroyed every capable general and administrator who might have threatened him. Until there was almost no one left who knew how to run a state or command an army.
Rome’s enemies were watching.
Khosrow II, King of Kings of Persia, seized the moment. His generals began dismembering the Roman East. Until a Persian army stood at Chalcedon, its watchfires visible from the walls of Constantinople itself.
And then, from the one corner of the Roman world still standing — from Carthage, the ancient city Rome had once burned to the ground — an old soldier raised the standard of rebellion and sent two young men east to save a dying world.
Carthago delenda est had become Carthago Roma servanda est.
Carthage must save Rome.
Episode 101. Six episodes. One emperor. The end of the ancient world.
#LostRomanHeroes #Heraclius #AncientRome #ByzantineEmpire #RomanHistory #Podcast #HistoryPodcast #Byzantine #Rome #Phocas #Persia #Carthage #AncientHistory #HistoryLovers #RomanEmpire

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

🔥🔥🔥🔥

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

A 5,000-year-old Hittite sword identified in an Armenian monastery in Venice.

In 2017, an Italian student Vittoria Dall’Armellina was visiting the Mkhitarist monastery on San Lazzaro in Venice when she spotted a familiar looking sword. The sword was mistakenly labeled as a medieval artifact and was thought to be a few hundred years old. It turns out it’s one of the oldest known weapons in the world.

Dall’Armellina, who was getting her doctorate in archaeology at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University at the time, thought the object looked familiar to those she had studied for her master’s thesis on the early Bronze Age, when swords were believed to have been first invented. It turns out she was right: After more than two years of analysis, experts have dated the artifact back 5,000 years, according to an announcement from the university.

The University contacted the Mekhitarist congregation at San Lazzaro degli Armeni to find out more details about the object.
Father Serafino Jamourlian researched the archives and manage to find out its history. The sword was apparently sent in a donation of gifts from an Armenian art collector named Yervant Khorasandjian, to a monk named Ghevond Alishan, known as Father Leonzio, about 150 years ago.

Alishan was a famous poet and writer who was a friend of the famed English art critic John Ruskin; Alishan died in 1901, and his belongings passed on to his monastery.

According to a document that accompanied the donation, handwritten in Armenian and dating from the second half of the 19th century, the sword was found in historic Armenia minor, at Kavak, a settlement near Trabzon.

A surprising detail is that the sword was made of arsenical copper, an alloy of copper and arsenic used about 5,000 years ago, before true bronze was invented by alloying copper and tin. The sword was crafted during the era of the Kura–Araxes culture at the sight where the tribe named Hayasa was later described by the Hittites.
Archaeologists think swords were invented in that region, and the sword from San Lazzaro degli Armeni is now thought to be an early example — perhaps even the oldest.

It is well known that ancient Armenia was one of the earliest metallurgical centers. Ca’ Foscari University archaeologist Elena Rova told Live Science:

“It seems that in this area, between the northern Caucasus and Armenian Highlands, the sword was invented, and there were at least two typological variants,”

At Metsamor (Armenia) for example a 6000 year old metal smelting foundry was discovered, considered the worlds oldest. The foundry is known to have extracted and processed gold, copper, and several types of manganese, zinc, strychnine, mercury, and iron.

#archaeohistories

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

100 episodes. Three years. A father and a son, and the greatest empire the world has ever seen.

It started on a lark. We sat down one day and thought, we should share these stories that have always fascinated us. The forgotten ones. The unlikely heroes buried under centuries of dust while Caesar and Augustus and Trajan get all the glory. The generals who saved Rome and were murdered for it. The empresses who held empires together while history looked the other way. The scholars, the soldiers, the survivors, the rebels. The lost ones.

We had no idea what we were doing when we recorded our first episode, nearly three years ago to the day. But we had a crazy passion for Rome, and we had each other, and it turns out that’s enough.

One hundred episodes later, we’ve barely scratched the surface. We’ve watched the Republic tear itself apart and the empire rise from the wreckage. We’ve lived through the Crisis of the Third Century and watched Aurelian, Restitutor Orbis, pull it back from the brink. We’ve seen the West crumble, the barbarians divide its provinces, and the last Western emperor deposed with barely a murmur. We’ve watched the East survive, endure, and then, impossibly, fight back. Justinian and Belisarius reconquering North Africa, Italy, and Spain. Theodora saving the throne during the Nika Riots. The Plague of Justinian killing half the Mediterranean world and the empire somehow staggering on.

And now we are standing at the edge of the greatest challenge Rome ever faced. The Sassanid Persians at the gates. The old enemy, resurgent and hungrier than ever, pushing deeper into Roman territory than any Persian king since Darius. And beyond that, on the horizon, something Rome had never encountered before and would never fully recover from, the rise of Islam that would reshape the world in a generation. This is Heraclius’s Rome. And it will take everything the empire has left.

We are just getting started.

None of this means anything without you. Our listeners who write in, who correct us, who share episodes with friends, who walk ancient sites with our voices in their ears. You made a father-son passion project into something real. You are as much a part of Lost Roman Heroes as Belisarius, Theodora, Aurelian, or Galla Placidia.

So here’s to episode 100. And here’s to the next hundred. The centuries ahead are as dramatic, as heartbreaking, and as extraordinary as anything we’ve covered so far. Rome’s greatest trials are still to come.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a podcast worth listening to. We hope that we are creating just that for all of you.

Thank you. From both of us. 🏛️⚔️

#LostRomanHeroes #Episode100 #Podcast #RomanHistory #ByzantineHistory #FatherAndSon #Milestone #Rome #Heraclius #Justinian

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

LRH Episode 100! We travel to Visigothic Spain to meet the two brothers who saved Roman civilization. Leander of Seville, best friend of Pope Gregorius, made Spain Catholic, converting the Visigothic kingdom from Arianism to Catholicism at the Third Council of Toledo and fusing Roman and Gothic culture into one people. Isidore of Seville made certain that Rome would not be forgotten, writing the Etymologiae, a twenty-book encyclopedia that preserved the knowledge of the entire classical world before it disappeared forever. Together, these Hispano-Roman brothers built the cultural foundation that survived the Muslim conquest of 711, fueled the Reconquista, and became modern Spain itself. #ancientrome #reconquista #saints

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

Ancient lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert https://t.co/Pxj7jqx6Jx

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

It truly is stunning and a must see in Syracuse (one of many)…

[Muse @xmuse_]

The Cathedral of Syracuse was an ancient Greek temple.

It sits right on top of the old Temple of Athena.

Literally built into it.

Those huge Doric columns you see inside aren’t 'inspired by' the Greeks. They are the Greeks.

They didn’t destroy the temple. They filled the gaps and turned it into a church, letting the ancient structure live on almost untouched.

So you walk in and you’re surrounded by 2,500 years of history in one room.

Greek stone, medieval walls, Christian altars, all layered together.

It feels less like architecture and more like time folding in on itself.

An absolute wonder.

📍 Cathedral of Syracuse, Italy

(vid: theblackhairedboy)

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD, Rome did not actually end — it simply continued, in a different form, for nearly another thousand years through what historians now call the Byzantine Empire, centered on the magnificent city of Constantinople.

The Byzantines themselves never called their state "Byzantine" — they considered themselves Romans, the direct continuation of the Roman Empire, speaking primarily Greek rather than Latin but maintaining Roman law, Roman administrative structures, and a direct unbroken line of emperors tracing back to Augustus himself. The term "Byzantine Empire" was actually coined by later European historians, well after the empire's eventual fall in 1453.

During the centuries when most of Western Europe is popularly imagined as experiencing technological and cultural stagnation during early medieval period, Constantinople remained one of the largest, wealthiest and most technologically and culturally sophisticated cities on Earth — a center of trade connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, home to extraordinary architectural achievements like the Hagia Sophia, and a preserver of classical Greek and Roman knowledge that would eventually help fuel the European Renaissance centuries later.

The empire survived numerous existential crises that would have ended most states — plague, civil wars, religious schisms, and repeated sieges from Arab, Bulgar, Crusader, and eventually Ottoman forces — partly through sophisticated diplomacy, partly through formidable fortifications, and partly through military technologies like Greek Fire that gave it decisive advantages during critical moments.

Constantinople finally fell to Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmed II in 1453, an event that many historians mark as the definitive end of the ancient world and the true beginning of the early modern era — nearly two thousand years after the founding of Rome itself.

#archaeohistories

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

Join LRH as we interview historian and podcaster Emma Southon, author of the recently published "Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire." For 98 episodes we've covered Roman heroes. But we've never told the story of the millions of enslaved people who built everything our favorite heroes stood on. It always appeared as backdrop. As color. As afterthought. Roman slavery started in earnest in 146 BCE. The year Rome destroyed Carthage and erased Corinth in the same breath. The year something snapped. Enemies stopped being adversaries and started being examples. A New Rome. A Darker Rome. And inseparable from that darkness, an explosion of slavery on a scale the ancient world had never seen. Emma Southon has spent her career recovering the people Rome tried to erase, the enslaved, and the women, both written out of a record created entirely by the rich men who owned and overlooked them. In this episode we talk about what that record can and can't tell us, why no Roman ever tried to abolish the institution, how America's experience with slavery might inform our understanding of Roman slavery, and why Spartacus matters more than Hollywood understands.

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

For Lost Roman Heroes episode 98 we collaborate with the awesome father-daughter team of Roly and Maddie from the History in Zoomer Podcast for a very special Father's Day Episode. Together we explore candidates for the very best, and worst fathers in the history of Rome and choose a winner for 'best' and 'worst' Roman dad that are bound to surprise you. Happy Father's Day everyone!

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

What is it about this image that it seems to see through you, thanks to the monks at St. Catherine’s, the God Trodden Imperial Monastery of Mt. Sinai…

[Echoes of Hellas 🇬🇷 @HellenicEchoes]

Christ Pantocrator, 6th century AD
The oldest Byzantine icon of Christ ☦️

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

Rome is an island in a Lombard sea. The emperor is in Constantinople, offering criticism instead of troops. The plague is killing people in the streets. And Gregory, the man who tried to flee his own election hidden in a wine cask, is the only one left to save it. In Part 2, we watch a reluctant monk become the de facto ruler of Italy, negotiate face-to-face with a Lombard king, and send a nervous monk to convert an England that Rome had abandoned for nearly two centuries. He fed the hungry, freed slaves by name, and kept the light burning when no one else would. He built the foundation of medieval civilization while thinking he was just keeping the ancient world alive. He never wanted the title. He never stopped earning it. The last man built from truly Roman parts, trying, until the very end, simply to be good, he wound up being truly Great.

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

Nearly three years ago, a father and son sat down in front of a microphone with a simple mission: tell the stories of Rome’s forgotten heroes (and create some memories together along the way).

Since then, we’ve journeyed from Aeneas and Romulus to Scipio, Caesar, Aurelian, Majorian, Belisarius, Gregory the Great, and dozens of other remarkable men and women who carried Roman civilization through triumph, crisis, collapse, and renewal.

Now, we’re only 3 episodes away from Episode 100.

To celebrate, we’re opening the doors to the Lost Roman Heroes Hall of Heroes.

But not every famous Roman gets in.

And some of the greatest heroes you’ve never heard of do—that’s what Lost Roman Heroes is all about. 💪

Three episodes to go.

The Lost Roman Heroes Hall of Heroes awaits.

Check out @lostromanheroes wherever you get your favorite podcasts. We’d love to hear from you—send us a DM or email us at [email protected].

#LostRomanHeroes #RomanHistory #AncientRome #HistoryPodcast #Belisarius #Aurelian #Majorian #Byzantium #Episode100

[ShadowsOfConstantinople @RomeInTheEast]

There is an alleged exchange between the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and the last Roman Emperor Constantine XI documenting the venom between the sides over the construction of Rumelihisari (a fortress) in the buildup to 1453. The Roman ambassadors allegedly said:

“Some 100 years or more have elapsed since your forefather Murad, Orchan’s son, seized Adrianople. In their treaties with us, none of his descendants, except yourself, has ever considered the erection of a tower or hut within the environs of the City…We entreat you, therefore, renounce this design and we will be your genuine friends just as we were the friends of your father, the honorable ruler. If you wish us to pay tribute, we will do so”

Mehmed replied to the Romans from a position of strength and dismissiveness:

“I take nothing from the City. Beyond the fosse (walls of Constantinople) she owns nothing. If I desire to build a fortress at the Sacred Mouth, the Emperor has no right to stop me.”

Mehmed added that his father had wanted to build a fortress near Constantinople but “He did not live to achieve this but, with God’s help, I will do so. Why do you (try to) stop me? Is it not permissible for me to do as I wish in my own lands? Go and tell the Emperor, ‘The present ruler is not like his predecessors. The things which they were unable to do, he can achieve at once and with ease, and those things which they did not wish to do, he both desires and is determined to accomplish. The next man who comes here to discuss this matter will be flayed alive.’”

Constantine later said after seeing he had failed to avoid changing Mehmed’s mind:

“Since you have chosen the way of battle and neither with oaths nor with flattery am I able to prevail upon you, do what you will. As for myself, I take refuge in God and if it be His will to deliver the City into your hands, who is able to stop you?…For the present, however, take back your treaties and oaths. From this moment on, with the City gates secured, I will defend the inhabitants within as long as there is strength in me”

Source - Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks by Doukas, a contemporary source for the fall of Constantinople

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

Erdogan Government Seizes Control of Istanbul’s Historic Basilica Cistern from Opposition Municipality. No good! https://t.co/Rn1nlRyNAk

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

In 540 AD, Rome had thirty thousand people struggling to survive, living inside walls built for a million. Sheep grazed in the forums of Augustus and Trajan. Into this world was born one of the last great Roman aristocrats, a man who would give away his fortune, flee to a monastery, get sent to Constantinople, and spend six years politely chastising Emperor Mauricius, would would not listen, or did not care, about the forgotten children of the fallen Western Empire. This is Gregory the Great. Part 1. #popegregory #ancientrome #saints

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

@groundshy That is true, and shame on him!

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

May 29, 1453. The day Rome finally died.

Throughout the 53-day siege, Mehmed II made Constantine XI multiple offers — safe passage, his life, his freedom, exile with dignity. Constantine refused every one. He would not leave his people. He would not leave his city. When advisors urged him to evacuate by sea while there was still time, his answer was always the same.

When the final offer came, his response has become one of history’s great declarations:

“To surrender the city to you is beyond my authority or anyone else’s who lives in it, for all of us have reached the mutual decision to die of our own free will and we shall not regard our lives.”

He had 7,000 defenders. Mehmed had 80,000. The math was never in doubt. Constantine knew it. He walked the walls anyway.

When the walls finally broke on the morning of May 29th, Constantine stripped off his imperial purple so the Ottomans couldn’t identify him. Then the last emperor of Rome — heir to Augustus, Trajan, Justinian, and Basil II — drew his sword and charged into the breach alongside his soldiers. No throne, no crown, no surrender. Just a man who chose to die as a Roman rather than live as anything else.

His body was never recovered. The legend says he turned to marble in the moment of defeat, buried beneath the Golden Gate, waiting. The Marble Emperor.

We stood in front of his statue in Athens this week and felt the weight of it. 2,206 years of empire. The greatest political entity in human history. Ended not with a whimper, but with an emperor charging into the rubble, sword in hand, having refused every chance to save himself.

Lost Roman Heroes salutes you, Constantine XI. The last Roman. 🏛️⚔️

#LostRomanHeroes #ConstantineXI #MarbleEmperor #FallOfConstantinople #1453 #RomanEmpire

[Echoes of Hellas 🇬🇷 @HellenicEchoes]

Περιμένουμε όλοι την επιστροφή του μαρμαρωμένου βασιλιά 🇬🇷☦️

[Lost Roman Heroes Podcast @LostRomanHeroes]

@RomeInTheEast Criticize Constantine XI however you wish, none of his predecessors could have done anything different in his place, and absolutely no one could have gone out with a dignity more befitting a Roman emperor than Constantine.