Hammurabi: Rise of the Babylonians

What drove Herodotus to write the first great story of history? Tristan Hughes speaks with Dr. Roel Konijnendijk to uncover the world of Herodotus of Halicarnassus - the traveler, investigator, and storyteller behind The Histories.From Persian kings to Greek heroes, they explore ...  Show more

Three thousand years ago, Phoenician ships sailed west across the Mediterranean, their holds packed with pottery, wine and enslaved people to trade. Passing beyond the fabled Pillars of Heracles, they were pushing at the familiar limits of the ancient world.In this episode of The ...  Show more

The urban cultures of ancient Mesopotamia formed the foundation for so much of our modern world. Nowhere exemplifies this better than the city of Babylon, which was the cultural seedbed for the Greek and Roman civilisations that in turn left such lasting legacies.

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Host Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid and comedian Kae Kurd in Ancient Mesopotamia as they explore the Babylonian civiliisation. If your knowledge of Babylon doesn’t extend beyond the Boney M. song then this is the episode for you. We reveal all sorts of fas ...  Show more

Rome has attracted aspiring conquerors and leaders for millennia, not just as a great metropolis, but as an idea. It has long been a symbol of military might and universal power, defined by political and religious authority as well as great feats of engineering that would leav ...

The popes of Rome emerged from the humblest of beginnings. The first was a fisherman, charged with spreading the word of God under the watchful eye of a pagan Roman Empire. But just a few centuries later, the papacy had flourished into one of the wealthiest, most powerful inst ...