Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="Gavin Richardson, post: 2810014, member: 83956"]I've recently discovered Mike Duncan's fine HISTORY OF ROME podcasts from ca. 2010. Occasionally I'll take issue with something he says or, more commonly, a pronunciation. But in the main, he does a good job of packaging a lot of complex material into 24-minute segments. The fact that these units are traditionally organized by emperor (as opposed to, say, a social history) makes them great companion pieces to Roman coin collecting. In episode 117, he makes an interesting comparison between Aurelian and Sandy Koufax, the great Dodger pitcher. Basically, for a few years there in the 270s, Aurelian was unhittable. Aurelian did much to bring the Empire out of chaos as the "restorer of the world" (Restitutor Orbis). But just as Koufax didn't pitch long enough to put up massive win numbers, Aurelian was perfidiously dispatched after only about a 5-year reign. But what a reign it was. So here's to Aurelian, the Sandy Koufax of the third century. [ATTACH=full]657212[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]