EPISODE · Jun 28, 2026 · 55 MIN
Lost Roman Heroes - Episode 99: How Slavery Made Rome with Emma Southon
from LOST ROMAN HEROES · host Matteo & Matthew Storm
Join LRH as we interview historian and podcaster Emma Southon, author of the recently published "Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire." For 98 episodes we've covered Roman heroes. But we've never told the story of the millions of enslaved people who built everything our favorite heroes stood on. It always appeared as backdrop. As color. As afterthought. Roman slavery started in earnest in 146 BCE. The year Rome destroyed Carthage and erased Corinth in the same breath. The year something snapped. Enemies stopped being adversaries and started being examples. A New Rome. A Darker Rome. And inseparable from that darkness, an explosion of slavery on a scale the ancient world had never seen. Emma Southon has spent her career recovering the people Rome tried to erase, the enslaved, and the women, both written out of a record created entirely by the rich men who owned and overlooked them. In this episode we talk about what that record can and can't tell us, why no Roman ever tried to abolish the institution, how America's experience with slavery might inform our understanding of Roman slavery, and why Spartacus matters more than Hollywood understands.
What this episode covers
Join LRH as we interview historian and podcaster Emma Southon, author of the recently published "Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire." For 98 episodes we've covered Roman heroes. But we've never told the story of the millions of enslaved people who built everything our favorite heroes stood on. It always appeared as backdrop. As color. As afterthought. Roman slavery started in earnest in 146 BCE. The year Rome destroyed Carthage and erased Corinth in the same breath. The year something snapped. Enemies stopped being adversaries and started being examples. A New Rome. A Darker Rome. And inseparable from that darkness, an explosion of slavery on a scale the ancient world had never seen. Emma Southon has spent her career recovering the people Rome tried to erase, the enslaved, and the women, both written out of a record created entirely by the rich men who owned and overlooked them. In this episode we talk about what that record can and can't tell us, why no Roman ever tried to abolish the institution, how America's experience with slavery might inform our understanding of Roman slavery, and why Spartacus matters more than Hollywood understands.
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Lost Roman Heroes - Episode 99: How Slavery Made Rome with Emma Southon
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