Episodes
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Bassus is mopping up the last Jewish holdouts in Judaea, and things go about as well as you'd expect for everyone who isn't a Roman. The defenders of Machaerus negotiate a deal to walk free.... turns out the Gentiles living below the fortress weren't included in that deal. Then Vespasian, ever the pragmatist, declares all of Judaea his personal property and slaps a permanent tax on Jews everywhere in the empire. Not governing Judaea. Owning it. The post The Landlord of Judaea – Vespasian #26 appeared first on Life Of The Caesars.
This episode we go deep on the hilltop fortresses still holding out in Judaea after the fall of Jerusalem, which turns into a very long detour through Pliny the Elder's chapter on menstrual blood.... which is, it turns out, absolutely packed with practical tips you can use at home. Don't let your pregnant horses anywhere near a menstruating virgin, obviously. We also get to Machaerus, the fortress where John the Baptist allegedly lost his head, and a magic root that will kill your dog but cure demonic possession, so swings and roundabouts. The post Pliny’s Guide to Menstrual Magic – Vespasian
We're covering the triumph of Vespasian and Titus, and our eyewitness is Josephus.... a Jewish priest who watched Rome parade the looted contents of his own temple down the street and somehow managed to keep it together enough to write one of the most vivid accounts of a Roman triumph we have. The menorah, the multi-storey floats, rivers of gold and ivory, Jewish prisoners dressed in finery to hide how emaciated they were. It's an extraordinary document from an extraordinarily compromised man. The post A River of Gold – Vespasian #24 appeared first on 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 glowing account of Jesus, purely by coincidence. And we take a hard look at whether Nero actually blamed the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome, or whether Tacitus just made that up fifty years later.
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 Syria, Josephus spots a river that only flows on the Sabbath, spawning a legend that runs for 2,000 years. The post Titus’ Victory Tour – Vespasian #22 appeared first on Life Of The Caesars.
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 first on Life Of The Caesars.
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 just happened: a 2,200-year-old city, wiped off the face of the earth. The post CROWNS FROM THE TEMPLE – Vespasian #20 appeared first on Life Of The Caesars.
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-fodder, Josephus rescues some mates, and rebel leader Simon Bar-Gioras emerges from a tunnel dressed in a white robe trying to pass himself off as a ghost. Plus Cameron's AI fact-checker contradicts itse
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 UNLEASH THE CARL – Vespasian #18 appeared first on Life Of The Caesars.
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 ancient world's most sacred structures. Before the walls even fall, Cameron takes a deep dive into the remarkable cast of Jesuses and Ananiases haunting Josephus's account of the war — including a wild-eyed
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 intact, still offering surrender terms that rebel leader John of Gischala keeps refusing, even as 600,000 corpses have been thrown out of the gates and the starving population has been reduced to eating
The post Vespasian #13 – Titus Likes It Tight appeared first on Life Of The Caesars.
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