What can we learn from the fall of Rome?

'Keep calm and carry on' has long been held up as the defining spirit of wartime Britain. But was the nation really as united, stoic and unquestioning as popular memory suggests? In this episode, Steven Casey takes Isabel King through the often surprising reality of Britain's war ...  Show more

How did the politically neutral Catholic church come to have dealings with the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler? In this episode, Ambrogio Caiani tells Charlotte Vosper why the Curia was enticed by authoritarianism, and what these deals with dictators meant for ordinary Ca ...  Show more

For centuries, the Roman Empire commanded unparalleled control over the world around it. It expanded its borders through trade and conquest, sucking resources from the periphery into its thriving centre - Rome. And then, suddenly, everything changed. The Empire entered a state ...

In 476, the last of the Roman emperors in the West was deposed; in 1776, historian Edward Gibbon wrote “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, and Rome’s fate became a major point of comparison for all empires. In Gibbon's view, instead of inquiring why the Rom ...  Show more

The history of The History of Rome...Why the Western Empire Fell when it did...Some thoughts on the future...Thank you, goodnight. 

What can ancient Rome teach us about American democracy? The Roman Republic fell for a lot of reasons: The state became too big and chaotic; the influence of money and private interests corrupted public institutions; and social and economic inequalities became so large that citiz ...  Show more