Author: admin

  • Episode 69: Rome’s Comic Novel

    Episode 69: Rome’s Comic Novel

    Petronius’ Satyricon is a contender for history’s first novel, a picaresque filled with sex, misadventures, and details about daily life.

  • Episode 68: Love Means Sin

    Episode 68: Love Means Sin

    Seneca’s Phaedra (c 50s CE) is the story of an illicit passion, a stoic cautionary tale and simultaneously vivid character study.

  • Episode 67: Jaws Dripping Blood

    Episode 67: Jaws Dripping Blood

    Seneca’s Thyestes, probably written around the 50s CE, is one of the most horrifying and influential plays ever written.

  • Episode 66: Stoicism, Seneca, St. Paul

    Episode 66: Stoicism, Seneca, St. Paul

    Stoicism, starting with Zeno in 300 BCE, was a popular philosophy by the lifetime of Seneca, perhaps even making its way into the New Testament.

  • Episode 65: Seneca and the Julio-Claudians

    Episode 65: Seneca and the Julio-Claudians

    Seneca the Younger (c 1 BCE-65 CE) practiced the philosophy of stoicism over the course of several volatile, and very different imperial reigns.

  • Episode 64: Ovid’s Exile

    Episode 64: Ovid’s Exile

    For mysterious reasons, in 8 CE, Ovid was exiled from Rome. Ovid’s last works were composed an ocean away from Italy, on the western shore of the Black Sea.

  • Episode 63: All Is in Flux

    Episode 63: All Is in Flux

    Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 11-15. The vast Metamorphoses draws to a resonant conclusion as Ovid brings his great poem to Rome itself.

  • Episode 62: A Curious Passion

    Episode 62: A Curious Passion

    Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 6-10. In the middle portion of Ovid’s great poem, psychological transformations become as gripping as physical ones.