by Mike Duncan

There are 189 podcasts by Mike discussing the history of Rome from about the sixth century BC until 479 AD, when the western empire fell. These podcasts were recorded over a five year period from approximately 2007 to 2012.

Mike does a great job walking his listeners through this history. He not only told the story of each emperor, but he also devoted several episodes to discussing Roman culture, society, laws, etc., to provide the reader with a backdrop of the events that transpired. He had no formal training as an historian (or a podcaster) but managed to bring some fairly dull history to life. I greatly appreciated his sense of humor and down-to-earth manner of addressing the events that transpired made it very enjoyable to absorb the history of Rome from the earliest formation until its eventual demise. I never much liked ancient history as a subject in high school but I enjoyed this a lot.

The last episode was devoted to summarizing all that had been discussed and Mike did a very nice job of pulling it all together. This was a herculean effort and he executed it very well.