Ancient History Fangirl

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

June 11, 2026 69 mins
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ 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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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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April 9, 2026 21 mins
⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ 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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⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! 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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Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ We're on hiatus until April 9. Until then, enjoy this long, binge-able episode on Julius Caesar's early life. Most accounts of Caesar's life start later on--such as during his time in Gaul or crossing the Rubicon. But his early life was just as fascinating; maybe even more so. This is the Caesar who stood up to Sulla and refused to divorce his wife. The Caesar wh...
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⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! More than 1,800 years after Spartacus fought for his freedom, another rebel leader spearheaded the most successful slave revolt in history: the Haitian Revolution. That leader was a man named Toussaint L’Ouverture. This week, we invited Mike Duncan of The History of Rome and Revolutions to help us compare these two revolutionaries and discuss what advice Toussain...
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February 26, 2026 158 mins
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ This file contains the first three episodes of our Spartacus series. You'll learn about the conditions in Italy that gave rise to the Third Servile War; how Spartacus rebelled and the pressures he was under in holding together a disparate crowd of rebels with differing priorities. It's a riveting tale that's sure to keep you hooked. Sponsors and Advertising This podca...
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February 19, 2026 104 mins
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠⁠ Dionysus was a god of revolutions. He featured prominently in two out of three major Roman slave rebellions. Why is that? And why was that aspect of Dionysus forgotten? In this episode, we'll focus on what happened after Dionysus won his place as a god on Mount Olympus--how people worshiped him on earth, and what made him so dangerous to the Roman status quo. Sponso...
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February 12, 2026 95 mins
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠⁠ Teotihuacan is an ancient pre-Colombian city in central America, founded two thousand years ago. It’s the home of some of the most iconic Mesoamerican monuments in existence, including the Pyramids of the Moon and Sun. The city was abandoned after about 750 years of habitation. When the Aztecs first encountered it, it had stood empty for 600 years. Walking throu...
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⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When we think of large Roman slave rebellions, we usually think of Spartacus. But what if we told you that Spartacus was only the third in a 30-year cycle of slave rebellions that happened twice before? The wars that came before Spartacus were larger, more all-encompassing, and maybe more violent—sweeping up hundreds of thousands of people before the rebellio...
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January 29, 2026 99 mins
⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Hundreds of years before European contact, the biggest city in North America was located along the Mississippi River. At its peak, perhaps 15,000 people lived there—and over 30,000 in the surrounding suburbs. Today, we call it Cahokia. Nobody knows what the original name of this city was. But there was a time when everybody knew its name—from the Great La...
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January 22, 2026 228 mins
⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! We're on hiatus until April 9. Until then, please enjoy our entire Boudicca series, all in one place.  The story of Boudicca’s revolt is as epic as you can get. It’s got murder and pillage, Romans behaving badly, cities on fire, and a layer of destruction that was scorched into the earth. But it's also the story of a people on a precipice of great cha...
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January 15, 2026 22 mins
⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ It is the End of Season 14--a brief but intense season! Big changes have come in our lives over the past year, and in this episode we take you behind the scenes and discuss the past year and our upcoming plans! Find Jenny's book, ⁠Enemy of My Dreams⁠, Here! (And preorder the sequel, Game of Thieves!) Get Genn's most recent book, the ⁠Official Lore Olympus Cookbook⁠, ...
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