8 Days That Made Rome Season 1
Bettany Hughes relives eight pivotal days that defined the Roman Empire and made it the world's first superpower.
Episodes
E1Examining the day in 202BC when Rome defeated the might of Carthage at the Battle of Zama. This decisive moment set Rome on the path to greatness.
E2Bettany Hughes relates the events of 73BC when a Thracian gladiator started a slave revolt that so panicked the Roman elite that they offered power to a single man.
E3Rome had defeated her great rival Carthage and overcame a slave revolt led by Spartacus, but these victories came at a price. Army generals who could deliver foreign conquests accumulated enormous amounts of power…
E4Upon Julius Caesar's death, his 18-year-old great nephew stepped into the delicate balance of power and became Rome's first emperor and a ruthless political operator. The 44-year reign of Octavian, also known as…
E5It's 60 A.D. Seventeen years after the invasion of Britannia, Roman forces march into the settlement of the Iceni tribe, flog its queen, and abused her daughters. The attack sparked a retaliatory revolt that came…
E6It's 54 A.D. and Nero just succeeded his stepfather Claudius to become the fifth emperor of Rome. What followed was 14 years of cruel behavior that would unite the empire against Nero and, on June 9, 68 A.D., bring a…
E7Out of the carnage of Emperor Nero's death and the civil war that followed, a new imperial dynasty was born, one that looked to win over the hearts of the people by building the largest arena the world had ever seen…
E8After more than a century of steady Roman decline, one man restores order to the disintegrating empire, setting it on a new course with Christianity at its heart. Host Bettany Hughes examines the life of Constantine the…