Tides of History

The decades after the death of Alexander the Great saw a massive increase in the scale and intensity of warfare over an area stretching from Italy to Afghanistan. Dr. Charlotte van Regenmortel joins m...

The German Peasants' War was the largest popular revolt in Europe before the French Revolution, but it's largely been forgotten. Why? Professor Lyndal Roper of the University of Oxford joins me to dis...

Pyrrhus of Epirus won costly but clear victories over the Romans in their first battlefield meetings, but couldn't win the war. Rome's dogged determination eventually won the war for them and placed t...

Early modern Europe was a violent place, full of duels, bloody encounters, and decades-long feuds. In many ways, it was more fractious and dangerous than it had been during the Middle Ages. Professor ...

By 281 BC, Rome controlled much of Italy, but the city was still a minor player on the larger Mediterranean scene. That changed when King Pyrrhus of Epirus crossed the Adriatic with a powerful army of...

While the Punic Wars mark the stage of Roman history with which most people are familiar, Rome's entrance onto the stage of Mediterranean power politics actually came a decade earlier, with a bloody, ...

As the fourth century drew to a close, Rome wasn't the only rising power in the central Mediterranean; Syracuse and Carthage were battling for dominance in Sicily and beyond, fighting devastating wars...

Dr. Gino Caspari returns to discuss the extraordinary finds at his most recent excavation of an early (maybe the earliest) Scythian royal burial mound in Siberia! We discuss horse sacrifice, state for...

How would history look different if Alexander the Great had died in 334 BC? Would Macedonia still have conquered most of Asia? Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance,...

Carthage spent most of the fifth century BC building up its economy, but in the aftermath of the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily, the Carthaginians decided that the time was ripe to create a ...