The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 01, 2026


PREVIEW： Epochs #287 ｜ The Topography of Rome

PREVIEW： Chronicles #70 ｜ Prometheus Bound With Stelios Panagiotou The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1540

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

190.2

Word count

3,980

Sentence count

130

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this Epochs where we should be talking all about Rome but the topography of
00:00:27.480 modern rome basically really a jumping off point to talk about the history and i am joined by
00:00:31.800 marcus how are you sir excellent thank you for joining me who better to talk to than an actual
00:00:37.460 roman well a half roman half roman yes people might have heard the aussie twang to your accent
00:00:43.600 but you are italian just to remind everyone correct yes my father was born just out of
00:00:48.460 rome and my mother's sicilian so i'm well qualified for this topic right for those who've watched our
00:00:52.920 past epochs and those who are familiar with me from apostolic magic channel i've spoken
00:00:57.440 about italy from a place of you might say deep sincerity and actual belonging you know even
00:01:01.680 though i'm a proud australian patriot i am very i'm very proud of my heritage too and and the
00:01:06.720 fact that when you and i first met for the first time i think one of the first things we spoke
00:01:10.480 about was visiting rome and being in rome um because i think uh i think when i came here for
00:01:15.520 the first time i just come from rome right and you said you hadn't had not been for a while but
00:01:20.160 that's now changed hasn't it yeah yeah so we've both been to rome many many many times spent a
00:01:25.200 A long time in Rome.
00:01:26.060 I've just come back from a holiday in Rome, well, a week or two ago.
00:01:29.180 And that was like my fifth or sixth time I've been to Rome
00:01:31.980 and actually studied the topography of the Forum at undergrad level.
00:01:36.300 So in other words, you're in safe hands.
00:01:38.080 We both know this stuff really quite well.
00:01:40.340 So I thought what we could do.
00:01:42.140 I was going to say, we've both been about half a dozen times,
00:01:44.040 so it's about equal.
00:01:45.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:01:46.140 So I thought what we could do is basically sort of do the work
00:01:49.580 of sort of like a Rome tourist board.
00:01:52.640 I assure you we're not being paid.
00:01:54.140 I'm not being paid by, like, the Rome Tourist Board.
00:01:56.260 I don't think such a thing exists.
00:01:57.560 But it's the sort of thing.
00:01:58.760 I just want to talk all about what it's like in Rome
00:02:01.360 if you were to visit in the 2020s.
00:02:03.600 But, again, a jumping-off point to talk about the history.
00:02:05.740 And, indeed, should Miss Maloney wish to sponsor the lower seeders,
00:02:09.280 please, while we're going to get in touch.
00:02:10.360 Feel free.
00:02:11.100 Give us loads of money, yeah.
00:02:12.420 Grazie mille.
00:02:13.520 So, for me, I'm a real Italiophile.
00:02:16.740 Is that even a word?
00:02:17.960 I love Italy.
00:02:18.960 I'm in love with Italy.
00:02:20.340 It's a wonderful, wonderful place.
00:02:21.720 If I had Bill Gates' money, I would certainly own a giant property,
00:02:25.180 probably in Tuscany, and I would spend a lot of time in Italy.
00:02:28.720 I just really, really love it.
00:02:30.260 And Rome particularly, although it's a city
00:02:33.180 and there's a lot of people out there that I know that don't like cities,
00:02:36.080 it really is a unique place.
00:02:38.780 It's a wonderful, wonderful place.
00:02:40.080 I've described it before, and what do you think about this?
00:02:43.020 I've described it before as a type of one big giant open-air museum.
00:02:49.840 Do you think that's a fair way to describe it?
00:02:51.280 it's a very fair way to describe it it's kind of astonishing where i think we might have mentioned
00:02:55.440 this in the discussion before i'm not too sure if like with cameras or just in personal discussions
00:02:59.200 but i remember one time going to uh being in rome and this is going to sound so sort of stereotypical
00:03:04.960 but i was looking for a specific pizzeria right okay and i remember sort of turning a corner in
00:03:10.480 this sort of piazza and just seeing this old baroque church that was would have been four
00:03:16.080 stories high and you know like with a really really high sort of ceilings and and like very
00:03:21.020 large windows and the large edifice with the tall columns and what have you and um and and like you
00:03:27.580 know these wonderful beautifully carved statues at the front and just having no idea that was there
00:03:32.700 oh yeah and you know and you walk through the streets like oh you know the like he has it
00:03:36.680 the sun michael and like he has it the sun you know katarina like there's all these little churches
00:03:42.420 that is dotted through the city.
00:03:43.640 I mean, there's other landmarks too,
00:03:45.000 but obviously because Rome being the centre of the papacy
00:03:49.060 and being the centre of, you might say, the Latin Catholic world,
00:03:54.960 Rome is, of course, going to be lit with a lot of these little churches
00:03:59.060 all through the city.
00:04:00.620 And, I mean, Rome, much like probably another city
00:04:04.540 which it's comparable to is, I suppose you could sort of say
00:04:07.640 the same of Athens, although Athens, sadly,
00:04:09.700 because of its history has had more aspects of dilapidation you know Ottoman occupation that
00:04:15.440 sort of thing modernity and taking a lot of refugees um in the 20s and 30s um you definitely
00:04:21.200 see that with Istanbul where sort of just it's layers of cities sort of built on top of each 0.84
00:04:25.540 other and for instance probably compared to the time you were last in Rome versus now and even
00:04:33.160 the times that i've been so i've been a couple times in the last like five or so years um you
00:04:39.880 know for the longest time we didn't know where for instance caesar was assassinated yet they
00:04:44.520 actually found pompey's theater i think what three years ago and you know all of us history buffs
00:04:49.560 kind of wondering you know trying to walk the footsteps of caesar in rome and yet they have
00:04:54.200 actually found the place where he was assassinated and these discoveries happen perhaps not all the
00:04:58.120 time but they do happen with a degree of frequency which lends itself to the idea that like you
00:05:03.080 you say Rome is very much a city which is an open-air museum there's lots of things you've
00:05:07.040 said there which absolutely ring true one of my overriding impressions of Rome from the very first
00:05:11.860 time I went I went when I was quite young just after my undergrace I must have been 22 or so
00:05:16.680 is exactly that you walk along and you're you're not expecting anything wonderful and you turn a
00:05:22.780 corner and suddenly there's some sort of fantastic usually renaissance some sort of unbelievable
00:05:29.680 baroque edifice in front of you like wow what is that if that was in you if that was in london or
00:05:35.260 somewhere that would be that would be one of the most famous things in the country uh somewhere
00:05:41.220 like uh the united states has got nothing nothing like this you go wow what is that and they're
00:05:45.800 like what it's nothing that's like that's the post office yeah literally that literally that
00:05:50.360 that's a post office like really that's that there's nothing to compare to that and they're
00:05:55.460 like yeah okay and it's like tons and tons of stone and tons and tons of marbles and it's a
00:05:59.260 Yeah. Or ancient things. You turn a corner and suddenly there's an ancient, clearly an ancient ruin of something.
00:06:06.860 And it's still quite large. It's not just a footprint. It's something quite large.
00:06:10.040 And you're like, what's that? Again, it's like it's more grand than almost anything you've got in England.
00:06:16.680 And you'd have to look it up. And it's something really obscure that no ancient historians don't particularly care about.
00:06:24.120 It's something from like the first century B.C., first century A.D. or something.
00:06:27.720 and it's got some name, even though you've studied Rome,
00:06:31.340 you've probably never heard of it, it's just another thing.
00:06:34.400 And it's just endless.
00:06:35.580 It just goes on and on and on like that.
00:06:38.260 And you talk about layers, like in Athens or in Constantinople.
00:06:43.600 That's another overriding thing, my impression of Rome,
00:06:47.220 is that there's many, many layers.
00:06:48.680 There's the modern Rome, which is much like any other modern city.
00:06:52.980 There's quite a lot of graffiti, actually, in Rome.
00:06:54.780 There always has been to this day.
00:06:56.160 and so there's the modern bits
00:06:58.820 and then there's the
00:07:01.000 Renaissance medieval bits
00:07:02.820 and then there's the truly truly
00:07:04.900 ancient bits of course I'm most
00:07:07.060 interested in the ancient stuff but
00:07:08.760 nonetheless it really is like an onion
00:07:10.920 of history and even
00:07:12.880 if you look back to say classical Rome
00:07:14.980 even you know because Rome
00:07:17.140 is even in our
00:07:19.120 time an old city but even in the time of
00:07:21.040 say the end of
00:07:22.980 what we would colloquially call the end of the Roman Empire
00:07:25.200 Rome was itself an old city then in many ways.
00:07:28.540 And if you look at the contrast between, say,
00:07:30.720 the condition of the Aurelian Wall, which, let's face it,
00:07:33.440 is essentially still an upstanding, you know,
00:07:35.720 technically if we still had medieval weapons would function
00:07:38.380 as a fortification, whereas the old, you know,
00:07:42.980 Severan Wall that is deep inside the city,
00:07:45.040 there are only very, very small, tiny fragments of it that exist,
00:07:48.540 whereas, you know, the Aurelian Walls are very substantive
00:07:51.180 and still very much existent and upright.
00:07:53.780 and noticeable, you've got to think to get from Barberini
00:07:59.240 into the Villa Borghese, you basically go through one of the archways.
00:08:02.760 Yeah.
00:08:03.600 And you sort of see little Fiat's and VW's go through those gateways
00:08:09.340 every day, you know?
00:08:10.520 Yeah, it's still functioning.
00:08:12.160 Yeah, yeah.
00:08:12.720 The thing why I love Rome so much is that it's actually relatively small.
00:08:17.680 Well, because I'm used to London.
00:08:19.580 I was born and raised in greater London, went to uni in London,
00:08:22.000 and worked in London for the best part of 20 years.
00:08:24.140 And London is actually gigantic.
00:08:26.500 It's one of the biggest, it's among the bigger cities of the world.
00:08:29.620 When you go to Paris, you realise, oh, it's actually much more petite.
00:08:34.240 Rome is the same.
00:08:35.820 Most of the good stuff to see is almost within walking distance.
00:08:40.080 It's much more, and a lot of the main stuff to see,
00:08:42.760 the ancient stuff to see is all right next to each other, really.
00:08:45.400 So it's really, really nice.
00:08:46.600 So, OK, we're ready to get into it.
00:08:49.240 I'd like to start by talking about the Forum, the Roman Forum,
00:08:55.540 because there's lots and lots of different forums.
00:08:57.700 There's like the Forum of Augustus, but the main forum, the forum really.
00:09:02.740 I'd like to start there because for me, I love that more than the Colosseum,
00:09:09.400 much more than St. Peter's or anything like that.
00:09:11.880 It's the Forum, which is for me the heart of ancient Rome.
00:09:16.460 well it is the heart of the ancient empire ancient republic of the ancient empire and so there um
00:09:22.280 i'd like to start if you do a few minutes talking about that the first thing i'd like to say what my
00:09:27.060 my impressions when i first went there and my impressions even when i was there just a few
00:09:31.100 weeks ago is that it's and it's mostly ruined it's almost entirely ruined um with a few famous
00:09:37.080 pillars still standing a small number and it's actually a confusion um as i say i studied it
00:09:45.560 uh at undergrad and so i happened to be able to pick out ah that's the house of the vestals that's
00:09:52.620 that was uh the temple of saturn etc etc etc right yeah if you're not used to if you haven't
00:09:59.540 studied it it would just look like a big old mishmash of ruin you wouldn't know exactly what
00:10:03.960 you're looking at in one corner you've got the giant arch of um september severus so that's still
00:10:09.820 entirely standing it's a giant thing uh and there's the it's sort of dominated in another corner by
00:10:15.660 the basilica the ruins of the basilica of maxentius that's probably one of the first things
00:10:19.900 you see is this giant thing still standing it's taller than anything else you're like oh um and
00:10:24.460 of course being being the uh the maxentius that is in the latter stages of the empire it's also
00:10:29.260 rather new building compared to some of the like for example you know uh ju uh the temple jupiter
00:10:34.220 but Optimus Maximus was an old building by the time the one that Maxentius was built.
00:10:40.060 That's right.
00:10:40.620 There's centuries between them.
00:10:42.360 So that's the other thing.
00:10:43.000 Not only are you not aware of what really you're looking at,
00:10:45.320 if you're in that camp, you also won't be aware of how old each thing is.
00:10:50.460 Like that Basilica of Maxentius, which dominates one corner of it,
00:10:53.560 much older, so that's the late 3rd century, early 4th century.
00:10:57.160 So centuries and centuries younger than some of the other ruins that are there.
00:11:02.200 and unless you know these sorts of things it would just be like a big old mishmash um so anyway
00:11:08.120 oh there's there's the senate house there which is much much newer it's obviously where the old
00:11:12.440 senate house was but the building that's there now is much much newer um so for me walking among
00:11:19.800 among those ruins in the forum um i can't help but almost get goosebumps because you know this is
00:11:28.220 this is where Brutus the original Brutus would have walked this is where uh this is where Marius
00:11:35.400 and Sulla would have walked Caesar and Augustus and oh no no no no and you go back Domitian Trajan
00:11:39.840 well you go back early it's like it's where Quintus Fabius Maximus would walk that's right
00:11:43.780 the Scipios would have walked right you know and before them so on so forth there's the there's a
00:11:48.600 main little thoroughfare it's not very wide actually down the down the middle of it and
00:11:52.800 you think yeah everyone from romulus if he's real everyone from romulus in fact the people
00:11:58.600 from the iron age settlements like 1200s bc aeneas if he's real uh everyone from aeneas through to
00:12:06.400 well everyone to now they've walked down this little bit of road this little cobbled bit of
00:12:12.160 lane and for me a history nerd it's impossible not for your imagination to run wild with that
00:12:20.020 What are your thoughts and feelings about the forum, just generally?
00:12:24.260 Exactly that.
00:12:26.000 You know, there's a sense of awe that, and I mean, on one hand,
00:12:32.160 you kind of sometimes the, and I suppose it's a bit hypocritical saying this
00:12:36.760 as a tourist as well when you go, but you kind of think,
00:12:39.100 oh, the throng of tourists, you know, people here really,
00:12:41.180 for the historical experience, they just here to sort of, you know,
00:12:43.760 go through the motions of seeing something old and impressive.
00:12:46.000 So they can tick it off and say they've been there.
00:12:47.880 Exactly.
00:12:48.240 but in the end maybe we shouldn't be too pretentious about these things because in the end
00:12:51.860 it's it is still good that I think people travel to a place like Rome or you know and you could
00:12:57.460 say the same for Athens you could say the same for Constantinople indeed you could say the same
00:13:01.700 for a place like London a place that has sort of you know that is that is old and has you know
00:13:07.080 a deep sort of cultural legacy and historical importance and and a sense of grandeur when you
00:13:13.580 when you arrive there and you're sort of amongst us you know it's it's it's hallowed streets
00:13:17.900 um you know that's obviously fantastic and you sort of look at the number of tours and
00:13:24.560 enthusiasm people generally have it's actually very remarkable and then you can and then for
00:13:29.380 you know you said like history geeks like us you feel immensely awed that you're like
00:13:34.360 did caesar's foot touch that cobblestone am i standing where trajan stood am i standing where
00:13:40.760 you know when sort of you know when Constantine vanquished you know Maxentius at Milvian Bridge
00:13:45.360 did he'd walk along this sphere you know and how many popes have gone through here and how many
00:13:52.000 condottieri or legionnaires have walked along this road you know how many triumphs went through
00:13:56.280 these streets oh and like I say your imagination runs wild and you feel like when I say small not
00:14:02.760 in an insignificant sense but you feel deeply present in a place of great you know of great
00:14:09.240 age and time and significance oh god absolutely absolutely a few other things so there's the
00:14:15.180 there's the temple of the vestal or the house of the vestals there which is just one one of the
00:14:19.680 things now in ancient rome that was unbelievably hallowed unbelievably hallowed and normal people
00:14:27.480 just simply weren't allowed in it yet you could just walk around it now you can just walk around
00:14:32.220 um the the other thing is uh well don't forget too the defilement of that particular temple 0.90
00:14:37.960 came with the death sentence right yeah yeah yeah because you know the the vestal virgins was sort
00:14:42.200 of so safeguarded by the republic and another thing once you know a bit of roman history as well
00:14:47.040 the amount of riots and in fact killings that went on in that forum one way or another
00:14:53.660 many many times of the roman people burnt down the forum destroyed the forum not that's not to
00:14:59.740 You mentioned the barbarians burning it down, various armies, 1.00
00:15:06.760 dozens and dozens of invading armies over the years.
00:15:10.300 Not only is it a place of awesome veneration, the whole of the Forum,
00:15:16.480 but also a place of slaughter over and over and over and over again.
00:15:19.760 And chaos.
00:15:20.960 Absolute chaos over and over and over and over again.
00:15:23.460 I think in the context, even say, Cicero's denunciation of Catiline,
00:15:29.740 and the mob wars between Clodius and Catalina and Caesar
00:15:34.540 and the Populares and the other.
00:15:35.640 A place of fear and terror.
00:15:37.460 Yeah, like actual thuggery.
00:15:39.640 You basically get the worst period of British football hooliganism
00:15:46.520 and times it by 50 or 100 with togas and sandals
00:15:50.900 and pugios, little daggers and stuff and truncheons
00:15:55.340 and God knows what.
00:15:56.000 A place of unbelievable celebration for triumphs
00:15:59.000 And then a place of, like, horror and terror.
00:16:01.960 For example, when Caesar was killed and Mark Hensley does his pyre right there
00:16:06.860 and the people go insane, they burn the – a place of political turmoil.
00:16:12.020 They threw furniture into the Forum and set a light.
00:16:14.040 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:15.360 And so so much has happened there.
00:16:19.940 One other thing before we move on, because I just haven't got time
00:16:21.860 to keep going on and on and on about the endless stories,
00:16:24.920 the stories you could talk about about the Forum.
00:16:28.140 As late as the 18th century, they called it the Campo Vecchio,
00:16:31.720 the Field of Cows, and it wasn't excavated.
00:16:34.680 There's old drawings from, like, the 17th, 18th century
00:16:37.120 where Englishmen would go on the grand tour,
00:16:40.160 and it's unexcavated, and so the ground is halfway up
00:16:45.260 the arch of Septemius Severus, and the Field of Cows,
00:16:52.520 because cows just grazed there.
00:16:53.860 and so everything you see now has only been exposed to the air in the last couple of hundred years
00:16:58.940 yeah um not to get agricultural on you but i was just going to say that if you know anything about
00:17:03.100 cows too between like them moving dirt with their hooves and them you know doing their business
00:17:08.440 like and and this is true of most livestock but especially cows they do actually add to topsoil
00:17:13.220 because what they're basically doing is bringing dirt into the forum and then defecating in the
00:17:16.800 forum and just adding more and more basically um material to the forum and therefore like you say
00:17:23.200 they had half-submerged the Arch of the Septim of Severus,
00:17:26.540 you know, before the modern era.
00:17:28.680 Yeah, it's – I've got to move on because there's so many things
00:17:32.000 I want to talk about.
00:17:32.640 But if anyone's interested in going to Rome, you have to go to the Forum.
00:17:37.720 Oh, yeah.
00:17:38.160 For me, it's the main thing to see.
00:17:43.180 It really is.
00:17:44.300 Just as like an ending point to that is that, you know,
00:17:47.200 there's that long walkway um when you go from the coliseum and you sort of you have the forum
00:17:56.800 on the left hand side as you walk up the street and it's the appian way the appian way like the
00:18:03.380 very beginning of the appian way essentially and you have statues of the emperors on each side you
00:18:07.780 have you know trajan hadrian augustus uh cloudy etc etc and although julius caesar is technically
00:18:15.580 not an emperor his statue was still there and um you see on the bottom of the statue there like
00:18:21.560 the base of it it has a dictator perpetuo the perpetual dictator which was an honor given to
00:18:27.400 him by the senate and the people and i was there on one occasion i was there on the anniversary of
00:18:33.220 his of his birth and um seeing one of the most heartening things and there's something i've
00:18:40.680 actually referenced in like previous streams with people or i think we've even talked about it
00:18:44.440 before, the idea that Caesar is essentially two millennia removed from us and yet Romans,
00:18:51.540 as in people who live in Rome, you know, Roman people who live in Rome still have an attachment
00:18:56.380 to someone like Caesar and will lay flowers at the foot of a statue as a sort of a memorial
00:19:02.880 but also as a celebration of who he was and arguably one of the greatest Romans to have
00:19:08.060 lived, arguably one of the greatest people to have ever lived, is a very sort of heartening,
00:19:13.600 In essence, it would be like if people took a pilgrimage to say the greatest statue of Alfred in England
00:19:19.080 and later reads at the foot of his statue every year on his birthday, it would be a comparable thing.
00:19:26.120 Before I move on, I just want to say a quick note on the realities of going to the Coliseum or the Forum or St Peter's or something.
00:19:33.960 The reality is that you have to queue for an extremely, extremely long time.
00:19:41.740 If you're prone to sunburn, then do take a hat and water
00:19:46.600 because you're going to queue for a long, long time,
00:19:48.740 a long time, especially in summer, a crazy long time.
00:19:52.180 You read my mind.
00:19:52.840 In summer, be well covered and be well watered because it is hot.
00:19:57.060 Because nowadays, it didn't used to be the case,
00:19:59.060 but nowadays they try and make sure it's not insanely packed.
00:20:02.780 So it's almost one in, one out.
00:20:04.200 For the Coliseum, you actually have to book a time when you have to turn up.
00:20:09.180 You can't just turn up whenever.
00:20:11.000 So it's actually a bit of a ball lake to get in there.
00:20:14.020 You do have to actually plan it a bit and pay a bit of money, of course.
00:20:19.560 Indeed, if you have both the money and the inclination,
00:20:21.820 not that these things are terribly expensive,
00:20:23.380 but if you have the money and the inclination,
00:20:25.060 you are best off also in terms of actually going into the Coliseum
00:20:28.580 and perhaps doing a tour.
00:20:29.560 If you are less historically familiar with the place,
00:20:32.620 you actually do book with a tour because in that way you do get the access.
00:20:36.240 They give you the pass and you go through
00:20:38.460 and you will actually be able to have guaranteed access.
00:20:43.440 Chances are, like, you get to the end of the day
00:20:45.240 and you're at the back of the queue, you're out of luck.
00:20:47.020 Like, it's not going to happen.
00:20:47.480 Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:20:49.780 We hope you enjoyed that video.
00:20:51.320 And if you did, please head over to lotusseaters.com
00:20:53.900 for the full unabridged video.