006- The Twelve Tables

Cincinnatus was famously appointed dictator of Rome in 458 BC and then resigned soon after, securing his place in history as a paradigm of republican virtue. 

The years after the creation of the Twelve Tables were hard. Political discord, grain shortages and famine all conspired to weaken the city, but the Romans soldiered on in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity. 

In 281/280 BC, the Hellenistic King Pyrrhus ventured to southern Italy to aid the Italiote-Greek city of Tarentum against a rising power based in central Italy. This enemy was the Romans. Over the next 150 years this civilisation would rise to become the Mediterranean superpow ...

Ancient Rome was perhaps the most significant ancient civilization to have existed throughout history, the empire lived for over 1000 years and in that time, it gave us the foundations for our modern society. Democracy, a court-based legal system, Latin languages and alphabet, th ...  عرض المزيد

“Every man is the architect of his own destiny” Long before Rome reigned over the Mediterranean, there was Carthage: the supreme predator of Antiquity. But how did Rome rise to become one of the most ruthless powers of all time, united in cold, disciplined violence? And what was ...  عرض المزيد

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy. In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by d ...  عرض المزيد