The Godfather of Athens

Controlling the 2nd century city of Athens with their enormous wealth and intimate connections to the most powerful families in Rome were a local mobster, Herodes Atticus and his young Roman wife, Regilla. They spent their riches on lavish display, building theatres and athletic stadia, sponsoring the Olympic Games and endowing temples where she was installed as the priestess of the gods. But this carefully curated world of influence came crashing down with accusations of corruption, deceit and murder.

It’s a story that’s fascinated the film director Martin Scorsese for many years and he joins Mary to analyse Herodes- a man caught between two worlds as a proud Greek profiting from his relationship with the empire that’s conquered his country.

He married when he was in his 40s, choosing a bride from a powerful Roman family who was only 14. Herodes had revealed signs of a violent temper from an early age, even it seems, daring to get in a fist fight with a future Roman emperor, but his reputation was sealed when Regilla, eight months pregnant, was killed by the blows of one of Herodes’s lackeys.

A Greek man had apparently ordered the murder of a Roman woman from a family intimately connected to the imperial court. Surely nothing could save Herodes from his inevitable downfall?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Anna Charalambou

Actor: Stavros Demetraki as Philostratus

Expert Contributors: Rebecca Sweetman of the British School at Athens, Martin Scorsese and Carrie Vout of Cambridge University

Sound Design: Suzy Robins

Special thanks to the British School at Athens and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture