The Fall of Rome Podcast
Episodes
32: Listen to Patrick's New History Podcast, Past Lives
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick has a new history podcast, Past Lives! It's all about the experiences of real, everyday people throughout the human past, people just lik...
32: Patrick is Hosting a New Show! Check out the "Pursuit of Dadliness" Now!
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to "The Pursuit of Dadliness." This is a podcast for folks who want to enjoy their passions and their hobbies, whatever those might be, and ge...
31: Interview: Historian Kyle Harper on Disease, Climate and the Fall of the Roman Empire
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How did a changing climate and plague play into the fall of the Roman Empire? I'm joined by Kyle Harper, Professor of Classics at the University of Ok...
30: Tides of History: Natural Disasters and the End of the Roman Empire
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Justinian was the last great Roman emperor, but his reign was plagued by disasters beyond his control: volcanic eruptions, a changing climate, and a p...
29: Tides of History: Justinian the Great and the Reconquest of the Western Empire
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Justinian is one of the defining figures of the Roman Empire. In many ways, he marks the boundary between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In this episo...
28: Tides of History: How the Eastern Roman Empire Survived Attila the Hun and the Disastrous Fifth Century
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While the western half of the Roman Empire was collapsing, the east managed to weather the storm of the disastrous fifth century. In this episode, we ...
27: Tides of History: Why Didn't The Eastern Empire Fall?
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we talk about the fall of the Roman Empire, we're only talking about the western half - France, Spain, Italy, North Africa, and Britain. The east...
26: Tides of History: How Latin Became the Romance Languages
14 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did Latin splinter into the Romance languages? In this episode, we explore how Latin transformed from a single, widely dispersed language into a s...
25: Tides of History: The Decline and Fall of the Roman City
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Cities were what made the Roman world Roman, but as the Empire fell apart, so did its cities. They shrank drastically or disappeared entirely bet...
24: Tides of History: The Roman City
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Cities were what made the Roman world, well, Roman. They were centers of culture and political life, and they were the bedrock that tied together its ...
Introducing Tides of History
20 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, said Mark Twain. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of the modern world: history eb...
23: Could the Roman Empire Have Survived?
22 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Could the Roman Empire have survived past the fifth century? To answer that question, we examine some other points when the Empire could have fallen a...
22: The Brilliance of Saint Augustine. An Interview with Elizabeth Bruenig
15 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Saint Augustine is one of the foundational figures of Christianity and one of the most influential thinkers of all time. He was also a complex and fas...
21: Rome's Legacy and the Barbarian Kingdoms
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As central government disappeared from what had been the Western Roman Empire, the barbarian kingdoms stepped into the void, creating new forms of rul...
20: The Anglo-Saxon Migration, the North Sea World, and the Birth of England
25 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Roman Britain fell fast, and it fell hard. Into the ruins of this world stepped a wave of migrants from the North Sea coast of the Continent whom we k...
19: Why Didn't Rome Rise Again? An Interview with Professor Walter Scheidel
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Why didn't Rome rise again? Everywhere else in the world, the appearance of one great empire was marked by their recurrent resurgence, but in Europe i...
18: The Warlords of Northern Gaul and the Rise of the Franks
11 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As the Roman Empire disintegrated, northern Gaul turned first into a military province and then into a playground for warlords, some Roman and some ba...
17: Ostrogothic Kingdom or the Western Empire Reborn?
27 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Under the leadership of their great king Theoderic, the Ostrogoths built a kingdom for themselves in Italy. But was this a kingdom, and Theoderic a ki...
16: The Kingdom of the Visigoths
13 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The ashes of the Roman Empire produced a host of new states built on the foundations it left behind. The first of these was the Visigothic Kingdom of ...
15: The Death of the Roman Political System
30 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Taxes, soldiers, and loyalty: these were the foundations, the structures, of the Roman political system. This episode explores how and why they fell a...
14: The Calamitous Fifth Century - A Narrative History
16 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It took just 80 years for the Roman Empire to fall apart completely, from a ponderous but functional state at the death of Theodosius the Great 395 to...
13: The Unraveling of the Roman World
02 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Roman world was more than just an empire; it was a cultural, social, economic, and political space built on the easy movement of goods, people, b...
12: The Fall of the Roman Economy
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Roman economy was a marvel, the powerhouse that produced surpluses big enough to support huge cities, maintain an enormous standing army, and cons...
11: The Roman Economy Before the Fall
03 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The economy of the Roman Empire was surprisingly modern, featuring commercial markets, large-scale production, and agricultural sophistication that wo...
10: The Late Roman Army, Barbarians, and the Frontier
13 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Roman army was the central institution in the late Roman world. It had changed dramatically from the classic legions of Augustus and Marcus Aureli...
9: Attila and the Empire of the Huns
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Attila the Hun is the best-known barbarian from antiquity, but the Hunnic Empire he inherited and expanded hasn't gotten the credit it deserves for it...
8: The Vandals and the Fall of Roman Africa
23 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
North Africa was the most prosperous region of the western Roman Empire, the agricultural heartland that fed the city of Rome, and the barbarian Vanda...
Special Episode: The End Of The Gladiators
30 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Gladiators are one of the defining characteristics of the Roman Empire in popular culture. How and why did they disappear? We explore the topic in thi...
7: The Three Transformations Of Roman Gaul
20 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Gaul was one of the heartlands of the Roman Empire, and it encompassed a tremendous amount of diversity within its borders. Over the course of the fif...
6: The Catastrophic Fall Of Roman Britain
01 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 350, Britain was a thoroughly integrated province of the Roman Empire, full of prosperous, Latin-speaking cities, luxurious villas, and all the oth...
5: Just How Screwed Up Was the Later Roman Empire?
15 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One of the fundamental questions about the later Roman Empire is just what a mess it really was. Did the barbarians topple a fundamentally healthy, fu...
4: The Gothic Sack of Rome
03 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 395, the barbarian Goths rebelled against the Romans and fought a campaign that culminated in the sack of Rome in 410. But were the Goths really ba...
3: The Goths and the Beginning of Rome's End
27 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the third episode of The Fall of Rome, we explore the Goths' migration into the Roman Empire and their desperate war for survival against the force...
2: The Barbarian World
12 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We explore the barbarian world beyond the frontiers, focusing on the fearsome Goths who would one day leave an emperor dead on the battlefield, sack R...
1: Introduction
05 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Barbarians, political breakdown, economic collapse, mass migration, pillaging and plunder. In the introduction to this series, PhD historian Patrick W...