Ancient History Fangirl · Jenny Williamson and Genn McMenemy

ALL IN ONE PLACE: Julius Caesar Parts 1 & 2

March 12, 2026·2 hr 8 min·3 clips

When dictator demanded divorce or die—18-year-old said no.

Rome is not just a dude thing. The hosts push back on the idea that thinking about Rome all the time belongs mostly to white dudes, then steer listeners into their Julius Caesar season. The Republic matters here. They separate Roman Empire fascination from Roman Republic fascination, with Caesar as the messy doorway between them. Caesar can still sound like another dude-centered story, so the framing also makes room for the women around him, including his mother, Cleopatra, Servilia, and others in his orbit. Then the pirates show up. The highlighted scene turns Caesar's captivity into a strange little power trip. The pirates are holding him, technically, but he acts like royalty who has been inconvenienced. He wants sleep. When pirate business gets noisy, he sends his retinue to quiet them because bedtime, in Caesar's mind, outranks hostage protocol. The source gets even stranger. For thirty-eight days, he joins their sports, exercises with them, reads poems and speeches aloud, and comes off less like a prisoner than a difficult guest. The hosts have fun with that. They picture the pirates trying to critique bad early-twenties poetry and getting Caesar's full theatrical scorn in return. Criticism does not go well. Anyone unimpressed by his writing gets labeled illiterate barbarians in the source, while the pirates treat his crucifixion threats as boyish joking. Then the joke turns ugly. Caesar's companions raise the ransom, mostly from creditors. He goes free, gathers a fleet, and captures the pirates himself. The punchline is brutal. The threats were not just swagger. The excerpt says Caesar crucified each and every one of them after the ransom had been paid, captured their plunder, repaid his ransom, and had their throats slit first. That is the hook: Caesar as charming, absurd, entitled, funny in the telling, and terrifying once the laugh dies down.

As heard by us

A lively Caesar entry point, strongest when the jokes about arrogance curdle into Roman violence.

Julius Caesar Parts 1 & 2 pulls together the start of Ancient History Fangirl's Caesar season as an easy way into their Rome coverage. The hook is not just Caesar as another famous Roman man, but the people around him: his first wife, the mother who helped save him from Sulla,…

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Why you'd press play

Caesar, pirates, and the women Rome keeps trying to sideline.

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