Caesar and Pompey
Tomorrow night, september 14th, we're recording a new episode of the Ancient Warfare podcast. It'll be the standard format, discussing the latest issue with our regular team and a guest appearance of former regular Lindsay Powell. The topic is issue XI.3, Caesar and Pompey in the Balkans.
Looking back, this issue ended up being one of the most tightly focused editions ever. That's a good thing, I feel, though it made editing distinctly more difficult. There's some overlap, especially between the articles penned by Murray Dahm and Paul McDonnell-Staff, but since they take a different point of view, they've become each other's counterpoint which I think is interesting. The problem, for once, is that there's so much to say about both those characters, their armies and the campaign. We'll probably have to come back to it at some point, or at least pick up where XI.3 left off. In short, I very much doubt we'll run out of things to say tomorrow night. But just in case we do, or to guide our discussions, do you have any questions? Don't hesitate to let us know in the comments below, or on our Facebook page!
As you may know, we produce the Ancient Warfare podcast in cooperation with Angus Wallace of The History Network. Angus and I first got in touch in the fall of 2007 when I discovered his Military History podcast and we discussed if it'd be possible to do something similar for AW. After some to-and-fro, we released the first episode on 19 February 2008 in which contributors Nick Barley, Stephen English, Murray Dahm and myself debated issue II.1, Light Infantry and Auxiliaries. As with all new podcasts, the first attempt was, errrr, rustic, but I think we got the hang of it soon enough and listeners certainly liked it!
Over time, it appeared that getting contributors to a certain issue to join the podcast wasn't always easy. We soon put together a team of regulars who now spend 60-90 minutes discussing some ancient military topic (and some tenuously related things) out of which Angus edits 40-45 minutes of material. It's sometimes a bit awkward to coordinate a team living truly all over the globe and discussing academic topics at 11PM on a Friday (for me anyway...). While it isn't always ideal, it does seem to be popular with listeners. With our 67th episode coming soon, Angus tells me we're getting 50-60,000 downloads a month now for a total of about 2.5 million. That, frankly, is almost as astounding as the achievements of Caesar and Pompey. Thanks for listening!
