Ancient History Fangirl
An ancient history podcast run by two Millennial women. Misbehaving emperors, poison assassins, mythological mayhem; it’s like if Hardcore History met up with My Favorite Murder in the ancient world, with a heavy helping of booze and laughter.
Episodes
September 17, 2026 • 67 mins
Enemy of My Dreams is just $2.99 on Kindle!
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Short answer: no.
Long answer: no, and they didn't function that well in pluralistic Roman society, either.
Many of the qualities of high-control Christianity--spiritual warfare, fascistic tendencies, the desire to bring on the end times through war in the Middle East, Christian persecution complex, refusal to follow soci...
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Mark as Played
September 10, 2026 • 56 mins
Enemy of My Dreams is just $2.99 on Kindle!
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!
We are thrilled to welcome USA Today bestselling author Eva Leigh to the podcast. Eva has had two recent releases that piqued our interest: The Sea Witch (about a lady pirate who’s also a witch, paired with a hunky navigator) and a wild novella about a woman whose world is rocked by multiple werewolf highwaymen. ...
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September 3, 2026 • 90 mins
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One of the most famous quotes from Augustus’ reign was “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” And Augustus did that—he had a real thing for construction. Augustus would leave his mark on Rome, and the city would never be able to forget him.
Turns out this is…how do we put this…fascism-coded. Other authoritar...
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August 20, 2026 • 64 mins
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Have you noticed that our tech overlords cannot be normal
about the Roman Empire?
Elon Musk has approximately 14 known children, which he
refers to as his “Legion.” Mark Zuckerberg famously took the Emperor Augustus on his honeymoon. And in some of the darker corners of the Internet (and real life), wildly rich techbros openly fantasize about a “Re...
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August 6, 2026 • 78 mins
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Slavery touched every part of life in ancient Rome. Depending on the time period and location, as many as one in ten or one in three people was enslaved.
How does it warp a democracy when so many of its people are not free? Today we talk to author, historian and podcaster Dr. Emma Southon, host of the History is Sexy podcast and author of Not Built in a Day: How Slave...
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July 23, 2026 • 71 mins
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In our last episode, Livia and Octavia were at each other’s throats over which one of their sons would be chosen as Augustus’ heir. The unfortunate thing is that the heirs kept dying.
Meanwhile, the daughter and granddaughter of Augustus—Julia the Elder and Agrippina the Elder—were the first generations of the new autocracy. They never knew de...
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July 9, 2026 • 85 mins
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In our last episode, Octavian had just defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony. His sister Octavia had refused to renounce her wayward husband (Mark Antony), behaving with an intensity of loyalty that Octavian did not hesitate to use in his propaganda war against his enemy.
Meanwhile, Livia and Octavian had both divorced their spouses, shortly after children were born, t...
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Mark as Played
July 2, 2026 • 98 mins
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The romance between Mark Antony and Cleopatra has beguiled us for centuries. What most people don’t realize is that when Mark Antony met Cleopatra, he was already married—to someone just as epic. Her name was Fulvia.
Cleopatra had glamour and divinity and lots of money. But Fulvia had the gangs. She was a populist firebrand, military leader, and for a whi...
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Mark as Played
June 25, 2026 • 76 mins
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The First Ladies of Rome—the women of Augustus’ family—played a role in building his empire. Octavia, Livia, Julia, Agrippina—these were the women who helped kill a democracy.
In this episode, we will explore how they were complicit in their own oppression—how they were manipulated, how they were used, and how they used their power and i...
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June 11, 2026 • 69 mins
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Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex, took many lovers in the mythology. But perhaps the most important was Ares. They adored each other; they had many children together; they could not keep apart . Their relationship was (for the ancient Greeks) surprisingly…healthy?
Today we talk all things Aphrodite with bestselling author Jennifer Saint: her relationship...
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June 4, 2026 • 51 mins
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Due to changing marital laws (among other things), the late Roman Republic saw a rise in a certain kind of wealthy elite woman with more independence and power than her foremothers. These women were financially independent, highly educated, sexually liberated, and unafraid to seize the reins of power. One of those was a woman named Clodia.
Daughter of the aristocr...
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Mark as Played
May 21, 2026 • 99 mins
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You may have noticed that MAGA (Republicans in general, really) are weird about women.
That weirdness is ancient. It goes all the way back to ancient Rome, all the way back to ancient Greece, and all the way back to the beginning of the city-state, when gender-based oppression was built into the foundations of the polis. Augustus was similarly weird about women, an...
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May 14, 2026 • 70 mins
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We are thrilled to welcome #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Elizabeth May to the podcast. Elizabeth May is the author of The Wolf and the Crown of Blood, a bestselling new release about deranged homicidal gods and the equally deranged princesses who drag them around like stuffie toys.
Join us for a fun and laughter-filled conversation with an author whose playground ...
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Mark as Played
May 7, 2026 • 76 mins
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When Augustus rolled into town after defeating Marc Antony
and Cleopatra, he was greeted as a hero—because the Senate ordered its people to stand outside the gates and cheer. The reality was, there was fear on both sides. Augustus was afraid to grab power too quickly—or he’d find himself meeting Caesar’s fate. The Senators feared bloody proscri...
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Mark as Played
April 23, 2026 • 86 mins
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When we look at the demise of Roman democracy, we think of the time of Augustus—and maybe Caesar before him. But in reality, the seeds of the republic’s destruction were planted at the time of its birth.
It’s probably not too far out on a limb to say that Caesar couldn’t have grabbed so much power if there hadn’t been a Sulla, or a Mar...
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Mark as Played
April 16, 2026 • 46 mins
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Join us as we return to Cleopatra’s Alexandria—the glamor,
the political intrigue, the history—and take a second in-depth look at Egypt's last Pharaoh. Our guide for this episode is none other than Saara El-Arifi, bestselling author of The Ending Fire and Faebound trilogies
and the exciting new release, Cleopatra: A Novel.
In this episode we’l...
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Mark as Played
April 9, 2026 • 21 mins
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When Octavian (Augustus) returned home victorious from his final battle against Marc Antony and Cleopatra, he was met by an ecstatic crowd. The Senate had ordered all classes and priesthoods, including the Vestal Virgins, to joyously greet him at the entrance to the city.
This was the man who would be responsible for demolishing their democracy and ushering in an imper...
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April 2, 2026 • 65 mins
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In this episode, we return to the beach at Actium with author, historian, and academic Barry Strauss as our tour guide. His new book, The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium, discusses the infamous sea battle Marc Antony and Cleopatra fought against Octavian and Agrippa for love, for supremacy, for their very survival.
Join us as w...
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Mark as Played
March 26, 2026 • 132 mins
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This file contains the last two episodes in our series on Marc Antony and Cleopatra: Lovers in a Dangerous Time, all in one place.
This series has everything: love, war, violence, betrayal, Marc Antony barfing everywhere, and Cleopatra being extremely glamorous at all times. Please enjoy while you wait for us to return from hiatus on April 9.
Sponsors and Advertisin...
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Mark as Played
March 19, 2026 • 98 mins
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The romance between Mark Antony and Cleopatra has beguiled us for centuries. What most people don’t realize is that when Mark Antony met Cleopatra, he was already married—to someone just as epic. Her name was Fulvia.
Cleopatra had glamour and divinity and lots of money. But Fulvia had the gangs. She was a populist firebrand, military leader, and for a whil...
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Mark as Played
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