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His stepfather was killed when he was 18. First, he had his stepfather's murderers against him, then his stepfather's closest associate. He defeated them all and ruled Rome and the entire Mediterranean as an autocrat. He once said of himself: I found Rome made of bricks, I leave it of marble. Historian Ronald Syme called this undertaking the "Roman Revolution". What happened in that revolution? How did this young man, who lost his powerful stepfather at 18, manage to do all this? Listen to it in History on Thursdays.