1 00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:05,960 Once you've got an empire, what do you do with it 2 00:00:05,960 --> 00:00:08,480 and what did it feel like to be part of it? 3 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:12,160 Buona sera. Ciao. Prego. 4 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:16,120 Well, clues can often be found in very surprising places. 5 00:00:24,680 --> 00:00:26,680 I'm talking rubbish. 6 00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:30,080 Ancient Roman rubbish. 7 00:00:30,080 --> 00:00:33,560 I'm in the middle of a Roman landfill site. 8 00:00:33,560 --> 00:00:37,120 Millions and millions of broken pots 9 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:40,880 that once contained the fuel of the ancient city - 10 00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:42,600 olive oil. 11 00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:44,040 It's trash, 12 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:46,560 but it's very valuable trash, 13 00:00:46,560 --> 00:00:50,720 because it's through the leftovers of the Roman world - 14 00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:52,800 the bits and pieces and the junk 15 00:00:52,800 --> 00:00:55,200 as much as the monuments and the treasures - 16 00:00:55,200 --> 00:00:59,000 that we can see how the Roman Empire works. 17 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:00,680 What feeds it? 18 00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:02,600 What connects it? 19 00:01:02,600 --> 00:01:04,000 Who are the winners 20 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:05,360 and who are the losers? 21 00:01:14,440 --> 00:01:17,640 The Romans never set out to acquire an empire, 22 00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:22,520 but their undistinguished little town came to control a territory 23 00:01:22,520 --> 00:01:25,560 that stretched from Britain in the north 24 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:27,280 to Algeria in the south... 25 00:01:29,400 --> 00:01:31,960 ...Spain to Israel, 26 00:01:31,960 --> 00:01:33,680 the Nile to the Rhine. 27 00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:39,960 How did it look to the Romans? 28 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:42,040 What did they make of it all? 29 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:43,640 How did they visualise it? 30 00:01:45,160 --> 00:01:48,440 We tend to joke when we say "All roads lead to Rome," 31 00:01:48,440 --> 00:01:50,120 but actually they did. 32 00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:51,440 What about the conquered? 33 00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:53,360 What difference did it make to them? 34 00:01:53,360 --> 00:01:56,480 Just olives, olives and more damn olives. 35 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:00,240 There were great fortunes for some, 36 00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:03,080 but at the expense of the many. 37 00:02:03,080 --> 00:02:06,160 This tombstone, for me, is a bit of a tear-jerker. 38 00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:14,880 So just how did Rome transform the landscape of our world? 39 00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:36,000 For an extraordinary record 40 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:39,000 of the scale and impact of the Roman Empire, 41 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:42,040 I've come to see what must be one of the most remarkable 42 00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:45,520 and surprising leftovers from the Roman world. 43 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:48,520 So I'm going to show you our freezer. 44 00:02:48,520 --> 00:02:52,200 And it's not a piece of pottery or even an inscription. 45 00:02:52,200 --> 00:02:53,920 Should I shut the door? Yes. 46 00:02:55,960 --> 00:02:58,800 Blimey, this must be what Greenland feels like. 47 00:02:58,800 --> 00:03:00,080 Yes. 48 00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:02,480 What I'm here to see is ice 49 00:03:02,480 --> 00:03:05,320 recently drilled from the Arctic ice sheets, 50 00:03:05,320 --> 00:03:08,640 preserving layers and layers of buried history 51 00:03:08,640 --> 00:03:11,200 right back to Roman times. 52 00:03:13,240 --> 00:03:15,880 How far in Greenland do you actually have to drill down to 53 00:03:15,880 --> 00:03:17,320 get to the Roman bit? 54 00:03:17,320 --> 00:03:20,120 I would say 400-500 metres deep in the ice sheet. 55 00:03:23,280 --> 00:03:25,560 By analysing this ice, 56 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:28,680 Celia Sapart and her team at Utrecht University 57 00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:31,240 have discovered some striking evidence 58 00:03:31,240 --> 00:03:35,120 about Rome's impact on the environment. 59 00:03:35,120 --> 00:03:37,880 So here you can see a piece of ice from Greenland 60 00:03:37,880 --> 00:03:39,320 that we have already measured. 61 00:03:39,320 --> 00:03:42,320 So in fact you see all these small air bubbles 62 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,440 and each air bubble represents the composition of our atmosphere 63 00:03:45,440 --> 00:03:46,680 in the past. 64 00:03:48,360 --> 00:03:49,560 Gosh. 65 00:03:51,480 --> 00:03:54,760 There's Roman history melting in your hands. 66 00:03:54,760 --> 00:03:58,240 And what we do, in fact, is we measure the greenhouse gases 67 00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:00,400 in those little bubbles, especially methane. 68 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:01,920 That's our main interest. 69 00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:03,400 And we had a big surprise - 70 00:04:03,400 --> 00:04:09,000 around year one we had an increased level in this methane fingerprint 71 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:11,320 showing that higher level of biomass burning, 72 00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:13,960 burning can be... burning because of deforestation, 73 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:16,320 burning because of all kind of other processes. 74 00:04:16,320 --> 00:04:18,920 Comparing our data with historical data, 75 00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:22,680 this peak was related to population growth 76 00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:25,240 and to the Roman Empire expansion. 77 00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:30,240 The data revealed a sharp spike in the level of methane 78 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:31,960 in the Earth's atmosphere 79 00:04:31,960 --> 00:04:35,800 that wouldn't be seen again for over 1,000 years. 80 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:37,480 This is really great for me 81 00:04:37,480 --> 00:04:41,560 because we know that the Romans had all this extra increase 82 00:04:41,560 --> 00:04:43,560 in productivity and industry etc, 83 00:04:43,560 --> 00:04:47,720 but, you know, actually to see it kind of trapped there for ever 84 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:50,600 in the ice, that's truly extraordinary. 85 00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:53,360 I kind of think we feel a bit differently about it perhaps, 86 00:04:53,360 --> 00:04:56,200 but I think the Romans would have been absolutely delighted 87 00:04:56,200 --> 00:05:00,040 to see their impact kind of preserved like this. 88 00:05:02,200 --> 00:05:05,920 Roman pollution captured in the Greenland ice sheets 89 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:09,120 is dramatic evidence of a burst of energy 90 00:05:09,120 --> 00:05:12,240 as Rome transformed the world it conquered. 91 00:05:26,640 --> 00:05:30,240 In southern France is another of the remaining traces 92 00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:33,520 of that transformation - the Via Domitia, 93 00:05:33,520 --> 00:05:37,400 the ancient road linking Italy to Spain, 94 00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:41,280 because Rome built its empire from the ground up, 95 00:05:41,280 --> 00:05:43,280 connecting people and places 96 00:05:43,280 --> 00:05:45,840 in a way that had never been seen before. 97 00:05:48,040 --> 00:05:52,160 For us, roads almost STAND for Rome 98 00:05:52,160 --> 00:05:56,520 and, actually, Roman roads still do lie underneath 99 00:05:56,520 --> 00:05:59,640 many of our own transport routes, 100 00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:03,680 but it's easy to forget quite how revolutionary it was 101 00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:08,480 to go from a system of windy local dirt tracks 102 00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:14,280 to great paved highways striking out across the continent. 103 00:06:14,280 --> 00:06:18,280 It wasn't that the speed you could go on them was that impressive - 104 00:06:18,280 --> 00:06:21,800 it still took even the fastest Romans about a week 105 00:06:21,800 --> 00:06:24,440 to go what we could cover in a day, 106 00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:27,720 but the idea that you could start out in Rome, 107 00:06:27,720 --> 00:06:30,080 get on a road, stick on it 108 00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:34,400 and end up in Spain or Greece, that was entirely new. 109 00:06:37,880 --> 00:06:40,240 Like sinews crossing the empire, 110 00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:42,680 the Romans built a network of roads 111 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:45,400 over 80,000km long, 112 00:06:45,400 --> 00:06:48,000 not only creating a new geography 113 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:51,880 but introducing an entirely new Roman way 114 00:06:51,880 --> 00:06:53,560 of thinking about the world. 115 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:02,560 This is a bit of disused signage from a Roman road. 116 00:07:02,560 --> 00:07:08,320 It's one in a series of milestones that were set every Roman mile - 117 00:07:08,320 --> 00:07:10,360 that's about 1.5km - 118 00:07:10,360 --> 00:07:12,760 along all the major routes. 119 00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:14,240 Most of the writing on it 120 00:07:14,240 --> 00:07:17,320 is actually the emperor's name and titles 121 00:07:17,320 --> 00:07:20,920 so you know who to thank for this lovely road. 122 00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:24,720 Underneath, there's a big number three. 123 00:07:24,720 --> 00:07:29,160 That means we're three miles from the nearest staging point. 124 00:07:29,160 --> 00:07:34,800 What's important about this is that you know exactly where you are. 125 00:07:36,040 --> 00:07:40,280 For the first time, you can place yourself in the world. 126 00:07:52,360 --> 00:07:55,160 Of course, once you got off the beaten track, 127 00:07:55,160 --> 00:07:59,400 people in the countryside may hardly have noticed the arrival of Rome. 128 00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:01,840 Life would have gone on much as before. 129 00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:07,120 But where there were Roman roads, things changed, 130 00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:09,320 not necessarily for the better. 131 00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:13,120 It wouldn't have been fun finding a brand-new superhighway 132 00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:15,120 going straight through your land 133 00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:17,760 and Romans complained, much as we do, 134 00:08:17,760 --> 00:08:20,600 about the bad food and exorbitant prices 135 00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:23,840 at the ancient equivalent of service stations. 136 00:08:23,840 --> 00:08:27,720 For some, though, these new roads were a cause for celebration. 137 00:08:31,560 --> 00:08:36,760 These are copies of four really strange Roman drinking goblets. 138 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:42,920 They're quite recognisably in the shape of milestones, 139 00:08:42,920 --> 00:08:45,200 but not just that, 140 00:08:45,200 --> 00:08:52,080 they've got lists and lists of names of places scratched into them. 141 00:08:53,400 --> 00:09:00,320 What it says round the top is that this is the route from Gades - 142 00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:02,640 that's Cadiz in Spain - 143 00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:04,880 to Roman, to Rome. 144 00:09:04,880 --> 00:09:08,000 And between each place, 145 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:11,880 it's giving you the number of Roman miles 146 00:09:11,880 --> 00:09:13,320 that you have to travel. 147 00:09:14,400 --> 00:09:17,400 And at the bottom, it does a grand total 148 00:09:17,400 --> 00:09:19,520 of the whole length of the road, 149 00:09:19,520 --> 00:09:23,400 which is over 1,800 Roman miles. 150 00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:26,880 That would take you more than 40 days to travel. 151 00:09:26,880 --> 00:09:31,840 Now, quite what they were for is actually a bit of a mystery. 152 00:09:31,840 --> 00:09:33,760 I mean, they might be very practical. 153 00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:36,640 It might be a useful travelling cup 154 00:09:36,640 --> 00:09:40,840 plus your route inscribed on the outside of it, 155 00:09:40,840 --> 00:09:43,040 but I think it's rather more likely 156 00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:47,320 that they're either souvenirs of the road 157 00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:51,080 or a sort of celebration 158 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:55,280 of the length and the splendour 159 00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:57,120 of this great road. 160 00:09:57,120 --> 00:10:01,400 The simple idea that you could find Romans 161 00:10:01,400 --> 00:10:05,320 drinking out of lookalike milestones 162 00:10:05,320 --> 00:10:09,360 really shows how sort of internalised 163 00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:12,560 that sense of road culture had become, 164 00:10:12,560 --> 00:10:14,840 which is exactly what I'm going to do. 165 00:10:18,520 --> 00:10:20,280 Salut, everybody! 166 00:10:31,920 --> 00:10:34,960 The goblets also point to that other great marker 167 00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:37,320 of Roman presence on the landscape - 168 00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:39,560 towns. 169 00:10:39,560 --> 00:10:43,040 The Romans sponsored the greatest programme of urbanisation 170 00:10:43,040 --> 00:10:44,760 in history, 171 00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:48,840 and in Western Europe, their cities still often underlie our own. 172 00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:53,200 All over the empire, 173 00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:55,880 towns needed infrastructure. 174 00:10:55,880 --> 00:10:57,920 It's the old cliche about the Romans, 175 00:10:57,920 --> 00:11:00,360 that they built roads and bridges, 176 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:02,520 baths and drains 177 00:11:02,520 --> 00:11:04,640 and aqueducts like this one, 178 00:11:04,640 --> 00:11:08,560 and they ploughed an awful lot of cash into it. 179 00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:16,800 This wasn't one of the longest or the most vital aqueducts 180 00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:18,120 in the Roman world - 181 00:11:18,120 --> 00:11:20,800 it channelled water just 15km 182 00:11:20,800 --> 00:11:25,200 from a mountain spring to the small Spanish town of Segovia, 183 00:11:25,200 --> 00:11:28,840 but all the same, it's hard not to feel impressed 184 00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:30,760 by the ingenuity of it 185 00:11:30,760 --> 00:11:34,560 and the sheer chutzpah of that series of arches. 186 00:11:34,560 --> 00:11:38,680 This is where even I get a bit gobsmacked by Roman engineering. 187 00:11:43,520 --> 00:11:46,000 And in a way, that's the point. 188 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:48,760 It's one of the trademarks of the Roman Empire. 189 00:11:48,760 --> 00:11:50,640 It's meant to be in your face 190 00:11:50,640 --> 00:11:54,360 and its message goes far beyond any practical purpose. 191 00:11:58,280 --> 00:12:01,360 This can't just be about the water supply. 192 00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:03,680 This is about Roman power, 193 00:12:03,680 --> 00:12:06,920 it's about the Romans making an impact on the landscape, 194 00:12:06,920 --> 00:12:10,240 it's about the Romans making themselves permanent. 195 00:12:10,240 --> 00:12:11,840 To put it another way, 196 00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:15,560 if you want to bring a water supply to a small town, 197 00:12:15,560 --> 00:12:18,120 do you really need all this extravagance? 198 00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:21,880 Aqueducts, 199 00:12:21,880 --> 00:12:23,800 towns, 200 00:12:23,800 --> 00:12:25,280 roads - 201 00:12:25,280 --> 00:12:28,400 these are the classic stereotypes of the Roman Empire. 202 00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:30,520 They're what it did for us. 203 00:12:30,520 --> 00:12:33,680 But, more than just clever engineering projects, 204 00:12:33,680 --> 00:12:37,960 the Romans could imagine them all fitting together. 205 00:12:49,280 --> 00:12:52,160 This is a map of the Roman Empire. Oh, right. 206 00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:55,200 An ancient map. It's a medieval copy of an ancient map. 207 00:12:55,200 --> 00:12:59,200 Oh, medieval. But it's copying a Roman map 208 00:12:59,200 --> 00:13:01,360 which doesn't survive. 209 00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:05,160 This is the only Roman map of the empire we have, 210 00:13:05,160 --> 00:13:08,880 or, actually, it's a copy of a 13th century copy 211 00:13:08,880 --> 00:13:10,480 of an ancient Roman map. 212 00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:14,800 Why this is important is it gives us a glimpse 213 00:13:14,800 --> 00:13:17,880 of how the Romans pictured their own empire. 214 00:13:17,880 --> 00:13:19,320 Some of that's pretty obvious. 215 00:13:19,320 --> 00:13:22,440 You've got Rome right in the middle 216 00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:25,040 and leading out from it you can see the roads. 217 00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:26,640 There's some familiar names. 218 00:13:26,640 --> 00:13:28,840 There's Naples, or Neapolis, 219 00:13:28,840 --> 00:13:31,120 and there's Pompeii. 220 00:13:31,120 --> 00:13:35,480 And that rather squashed island there, that's Sicily. 221 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:39,200 But then you move further and further east. 222 00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:41,960 Past Crete here. 223 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:45,360 But my favourite bit, I think, is the Nile Delta 224 00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:48,560 with the city of Alexandria and its lighthouse here 225 00:13:48,560 --> 00:13:52,320 and then all the little rivers and tributaries in the delta there. 226 00:13:54,040 --> 00:13:58,440 In some ways this looks like a very mad representation of the world - 227 00:13:58,440 --> 00:14:03,000 it's all terribly squashed and it's not arranged north-south, 228 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:05,640 but it's making more important points than that. 229 00:14:05,640 --> 00:14:08,520 It's saying that Rome is at the very centre 230 00:14:08,520 --> 00:14:12,040 and what's important about the empire is its cities, 231 00:14:12,040 --> 00:14:14,880 its towns and its roads. 232 00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:18,280 We tend to joke when we say "All roads lead to Rome," 233 00:14:18,280 --> 00:14:22,840 but, actually, they did and they led away from Rome, too. 234 00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:28,120 What the Romans are telling us is that theirs is a joined-up world. 235 00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:42,920 It's a dramatic statement of Roman power and control 236 00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:44,840 and a network of connectivity 237 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:48,520 which joins up places never before joined up. 238 00:14:48,520 --> 00:14:52,480 And in this new, connected world, the demands of the Roman state 239 00:14:52,480 --> 00:14:55,320 and over a million consumers in Rome itself 240 00:14:55,320 --> 00:15:00,280 could be met by producers many hundreds of kilometres away. 241 00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:04,400 This is when the hills of southern Spain became a giant olive farm 242 00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:07,360 and juicing enterprise. 243 00:15:07,360 --> 00:15:13,720 This kind of monoculture - just olives, olives and more damn olives, 244 00:15:13,720 --> 00:15:15,920 is one legacy of the Roman Empire. 245 00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:19,680 It was then that southern Spain first became 246 00:15:19,680 --> 00:15:22,480 the world's biggest producer of olive oil. 247 00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:26,560 More than seven million litres of the stuff 248 00:15:26,560 --> 00:15:29,360 going to the city of Rome alone every year. 249 00:15:30,840 --> 00:15:33,480 It was an agricultural revolution. 250 00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:36,600 Anyone who'd lived through it would have seen 251 00:15:36,600 --> 00:15:40,160 the countryside around about them completely transformed. 252 00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:45,880 The Roman Empire ran on olive oil. 253 00:15:45,880 --> 00:15:48,960 It was used not only for cooking, but lighting, 254 00:15:48,960 --> 00:15:52,400 and even the ancient equivalent of soap. You couldn't live without it. 255 00:15:55,680 --> 00:16:00,840 Olive grower Francisco Nunez de Prado is still in the business. 256 00:16:00,840 --> 00:16:04,960 Is the whole economy of this area, is it all based on olives? 257 00:16:04,960 --> 00:16:10,520 Yes, olive trees with olive oil and the whole process, 258 00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:13,920 represent, in this area, 259 00:16:13,920 --> 00:16:18,280 practically 70% of the income. 260 00:16:18,280 --> 00:16:22,000 Some people, like you, are growing the olives. Yes. 261 00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:26,040 But then you've got your pickers, your specialist pickers. 262 00:16:26,040 --> 00:16:29,280 But you've got, presumably, transporters, 263 00:16:29,280 --> 00:16:32,680 you've got a middleman, expert agents. 264 00:16:32,680 --> 00:16:36,040 Everybody has to be specialising in something. 265 00:16:38,160 --> 00:16:41,400 It was much the same 2,000 years ago. 266 00:16:41,400 --> 00:16:45,760 Olive oil provided jobs in a highly profitable industry. 267 00:16:47,680 --> 00:16:50,840 There were lots of people who made lots of money out of all this. 268 00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:54,240 There were the growers and the pickers and the pressers 269 00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:59,440 and the packers and the transporters and the distributors. 270 00:16:59,440 --> 00:17:02,640 And don't forget, there were the men who cashed in on it all 271 00:17:02,640 --> 00:17:06,000 by making the containers to put it in. 272 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:08,080 This was an oil economy. 273 00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:11,720 BELL CHIMES 274 00:17:24,480 --> 00:17:27,000 Shipping seven million litres of olive oil 275 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:30,440 to Rome and the wider empire each year, 276 00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:33,480 required more than just trees and presses. 277 00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:35,880 It needed an entire infrastructure, 278 00:17:35,880 --> 00:17:39,480 whether in the form of warehouses, bottling plants or ports. 279 00:17:44,760 --> 00:17:48,160 One of the main transport hubs and distribution centres 280 00:17:48,160 --> 00:17:52,480 was a place the Romans called Hispalis, and we call Seville. 281 00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:57,000 Built into the fabric of the modern city, 282 00:17:57,000 --> 00:17:59,360 unnoticed by most passers-by today, 283 00:17:59,360 --> 00:18:03,760 is an introduction to one of the Roman officials whose job it was 284 00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:07,920 to make sure the precious oil reached its final destination. 285 00:18:09,400 --> 00:18:12,400 This is a plaque put up in honour 286 00:18:12,400 --> 00:18:16,320 of a man called Sextus Julius Possessor, 287 00:18:16,320 --> 00:18:21,000 and it's ended up, I'm afraid, in an extremely inconvenient place. 288 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:25,400 Really, what it is, is a description of Possessor's whole career. 289 00:18:25,400 --> 00:18:30,880 First of all, he seems to be stationed in Italy itself, 290 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:35,520 looking after the incoming supply of oil 291 00:18:35,520 --> 00:18:38,680 from both Africa and Spain. 292 00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:41,600 But then he moves out to Seville to a job 293 00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:45,240 which is described as procuratorial, 294 00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:49,720 somebody's who's in charge of the "ripam Baetis", 295 00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:52,440 the river bank of the river Baetis. 296 00:18:52,440 --> 00:18:57,040 An interesting case of how Roman imperial administration works. 297 00:18:57,040 --> 00:18:59,360 They never have very many people on the ground, 298 00:18:59,360 --> 00:19:05,720 but they do get men into place in key areas. 299 00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:08,600 And here we've got Possessor, I think, 300 00:19:08,600 --> 00:19:12,000 as a safe pair of hands in Seville, 301 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:15,600 making sure that nothing goes wrong 302 00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:19,720 with the supply of oil to Rome from this end. 303 00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:25,360 Of course, ultimately, this was all for the benefit of Rome. 304 00:19:25,360 --> 00:19:29,160 But a more complex exchange was taking place too. 305 00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:34,560 As olive oil flowed to Rome, money flowed into Spain 306 00:19:34,560 --> 00:19:39,000 and there's evidence in the branding stamped into the oil jars themselves 307 00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:42,080 that this new wealth allowed some people 308 00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:44,840 access into the politics of Rome itself. 309 00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:50,960 This is a particularly tantalising example, 310 00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:54,160 because the stamp here reads very clearly, 311 00:19:54,160 --> 00:19:57,400 "Port P-A-H". 312 00:19:57,400 --> 00:20:03,320 That's port, short for portus, or probably river warehouse, 313 00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:06,400 of someone called P-A-H. 314 00:20:06,400 --> 00:20:10,960 One thing we know is that the father of the Emperor Hadrian had 315 00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:13,320 those initials. 316 00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:16,440 Publius Aelius Hadrianus. 317 00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:21,120 So it's possible that this handle is telling us something 318 00:20:21,120 --> 00:20:25,680 about the source of the wealth of Hadrian's family in the oilfields 319 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:30,720 of Spain and that it's telling us something about the commercial 320 00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:35,960 profits that underpinned the power structure of the Roman Empire. 321 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:41,440 Whether this was really where he'd made his money or not, 322 00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:44,520 we know that Hadrian, the man on the Roman 323 00:20:44,520 --> 00:20:48,720 throne for 20 years in the second century AD, came from Spain. 324 00:20:51,120 --> 00:20:55,360 It's a reflection of just how joined up the empire had become 325 00:20:55,360 --> 00:20:57,480 and it's not surprising 326 00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:02,840 that Hadrian bankrolled big building schemes here. 327 00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:06,640 This is what's left of the town of Italica, where the 328 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:09,440 Emperor Hadrian's family came from. 329 00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:11,840 They weren't native Spanish, 330 00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:14,560 they were Roman settlers from way back, 331 00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:18,720 but they obviously thought of Spain as their home. 332 00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:24,200 Hadrian ploughed an awful lot of cash into his hometown, 333 00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:29,280 tremendous showing off and, to be honest, all a bit out of proportion. 334 00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:33,400 One of the biggest things he did was 335 00:21:33,400 --> 00:21:37,160 put up this huge amphitheatre. 336 00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:42,280 It would have accommodated 25,000 people. 337 00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:44,440 Now, to put that in context, 338 00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:49,560 the Coliseum in Rome accommodates about 50,000 or so, 339 00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:53,520 so you've got a small town amphitheatre in Roman Spain 340 00:21:53,520 --> 00:21:56,720 with half the seating of the Coliseum. 341 00:21:56,720 --> 00:22:02,720 Or to put it another way, the population of little Italica 342 00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:06,480 was only something like 8,000 people in all. 343 00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:11,960 To me, that sounds a bit like a plutocratic benefactor giving 344 00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:16,440 little Cambridge United a stadium half the size of Wembley. 345 00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:17,880 It is a little bit absurd. 346 00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:29,320 We're now almost in the century of the arena. 347 00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:34,040 This is where the gladiators would have fought, where the wild beasts 348 00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:37,880 would have been slaughtered and, right in the middle here, you've 349 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:42,560 got a sort of mini version of what you find in the Coliseum itself. 350 00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:45,560 The underground cellars, where the gladiators 351 00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,840 and the animals would have waited to come up into the arena 352 00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:51,960 through trap doors in the floor. 353 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:55,320 It's very easy to get a rather 354 00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:59,160 overblown view of the brutality 355 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,280 and the extravagance of gladiatorial 356 00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:04,160 and animal spectacle. 357 00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:08,120 My guess is that you didn't see gladiators here very often. 358 00:23:08,120 --> 00:23:12,000 You certainly didn't see very many exotic wild beasts. 359 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:14,000 They did put on performances, 360 00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:18,880 perhaps once a year on Hadrian's birthday, would be my guess, 361 00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:23,960 because the real point of this monument was not actually 362 00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:27,120 entertainment for the locals, of whatever sort. 363 00:23:27,120 --> 00:23:30,640 The real point of this monument was to stamp 364 00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:33,640 the image of Hadrian on his native city. 365 00:23:37,360 --> 00:23:41,360 And what Hadrian's Italica really shows is something of the wider 366 00:23:41,360 --> 00:23:45,880 process by which Rome remodelled the world in its own image. 367 00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:54,520 In Spain and elsewhere, Rome established itself for good, 368 00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:58,720 not just in bricks and mortar, but in institutions and laws 369 00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:03,240 which defined a specifically Roman urban way of life. 370 00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,920 These bronze tablets are just covered in columns 371 00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,240 and columns of writing, 372 00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:17,600 and what that writing is, is a constitution 373 00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:21,920 devised in Rome for a Roman town in Spain. 374 00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:25,920 Really, it's a series of do's and don'ts, 375 00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:29,160 how to be a Roman town abroad. 376 00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:30,920 Here's one about what the local 377 00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:34,120 officials called the aediles should do. 378 00:24:34,120 --> 00:24:39,760 They're supposed to, every year, to put on some nice plays in the city. 379 00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:45,280 They have to pay no less than 2,000 sesterces - 380 00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:49,640 that's twice a soldier's pay - from their own money, 381 00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,800 "de sua pecunia", and they might just get 382 00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:58,000 a grant of 1,000 sesterces from public funds if they do that. 383 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:02,560 So here we've got our generous local officials obliged to 384 00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:04,920 give us a theatrical display. 385 00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:08,440 Everything, from seating arrangements at public events to 386 00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:12,440 the speaking time allotted to accusers and defendants at trial, 387 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:17,080 are outlined in this document, and many have a familiar feel. 388 00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,880 There's a great bit here which is about... 389 00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,280 well, in our terms, it's about electoral expenses. 390 00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:30,320 It says - if you are standing for office, you're a candidatus. 391 00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:36,040 What you mustn't do is lavish expensive meals 392 00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:40,760 on people in order to encourage them to vote for you. 393 00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:44,600 Although it is allowed to give 394 00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,280 nine people a meal on one day. 395 00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:49,280 But no more than that. 396 00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,280 After that, it's bribery. 397 00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:54,400 That's the kind of level of micromanagement that the Romans 398 00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:56,120 are trying to impose. 399 00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:03,160 From roads to aqueducts, civil servants to public performances, 400 00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:07,960 in this kind of empire building, cash was as important as armies. 401 00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:16,680 In the ancient world, if you needed cash, you had to dig for it. 402 00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:21,280 Southern Spain wasn't entirely olives. 403 00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:24,600 There were plenty of riches in the form of silver to be 404 00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:27,280 unearthed here too. 405 00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:31,440 Ex-miner and local archaeologist, Saturnino Aguera, is taking me 406 00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:34,840 to see evidence of the Roman operations here. 407 00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:39,280 2,000 years ago, this would have been an industrial landscape, 408 00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:41,520 heaving with people. 409 00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,800 One Roman who actually visited reckoned that there 410 00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:50,920 were 40,000 men working for the mines in this area. 411 00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:54,760 HE SPEAKS SPANISH 412 00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:56,680 Right. 413 00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:00,840 So what we've got here is a place where the later mining has 414 00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:05,080 cut through to give a cross-section of the Roman working 415 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:08,360 and you can see some little square holes, 416 00:27:08,360 --> 00:27:12,960 galleries or passageways, and all over the rock you can, 417 00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:16,560 I think, see the pockmarks where the Roman miners have come in 418 00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:20,880 and they must have followed the ore seams and just taken 419 00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:23,960 the silver ore out and not bothered with the rest of it. 420 00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,240 And it's the scale of the industrial processes that 421 00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:35,160 went on around here, from the mining to the smelting, that helps us 422 00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,680 understand those traces of methane we can still recover 423 00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,080 from the Arctic ice sheets. 424 00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:45,560 The Romans also recognised the problem of pollution. 425 00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:49,160 They built the chimneys of the smelting plants very high, 426 00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,400 to get rid of the noxious smoke. 427 00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:56,200 It was a terribly exploitative system of resources, 428 00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:59,200 of landscape and of people. 429 00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:02,520 But there were also vast profits to be made too. 430 00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:07,840 There were people who came here from Italy in search of their fortune. 431 00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:12,920 I mean, in a way, this was a bit like the Gold Rush, 432 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:16,480 or Spain, in a sort of way, was Rome's Eldorado. 433 00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:24,400 The first silver entrepreneurs took full advantage of a ruthless system 434 00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:28,080 in which profit was the sole consideration. 435 00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:33,480 The organisation of the Spanish mines was a mixture of public 436 00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:36,320 enterprise and private enterprise. 437 00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:40,920 The Roman state owned most of them, but didn't have the infrastructure, 438 00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:45,720 so it sold the franchise to a range of private companies. 439 00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,080 They called them publicani. 440 00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:51,760 In our terms, that's public service providers. 441 00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,040 The dangers of that are obvious. 442 00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:56,520 The state gets the basic minimum. 443 00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:00,320 The only incentive for the private companies is to maximise their 444 00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:05,760 profits, and the people who pay the price are the poor guys down there. 445 00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:19,840 We've got to imagine hundreds of people underground, 446 00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:24,880 all toiling to get the ore out, and using pretty rudimentary tools. 447 00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:31,480 This is a Roman pick and you have to imagine that there's a wooden 448 00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:37,600 handle here and you're picking at the surface of the rock like that. 449 00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:42,520 This one is really heavy. It's a rather clever dual-use tool. 450 00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,720 Again, it's got a wooden handle going through there 451 00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,520 and you can either hammer at the rock or you can 452 00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:51,920 pick at the rock, using the other end. 453 00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:55,840 You'd have to be pretty strong to wield that effectively. 454 00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:01,480 You'd have to be even stronger, though, to manage this crowbar. 455 00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,800 Imagine you're coming and you're trying to pick out 456 00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:08,840 the seams of the ore and you're jabbing this 457 00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:14,880 into the rock to loosen it out with this sharp end. 458 00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:20,880 This is obviously very dark, dirty, sweaty, heavy labour. 459 00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,920 And it's a reminder that beneath the surface of this sparkling new empire 460 00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:39,720 there were the silent underclasses keeping the wheels in motion. 461 00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:43,280 This tombstone for me is a bit of a tear-jerker. 462 00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:48,320 We read about Roman children being used in the mines as workers, 463 00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:50,880 but here we actually seem to meet one. 464 00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:57,520 He's a little boy called Quintus Archilus 465 00:30:57,520 --> 00:31:01,000 and he lived to be just four years old. 466 00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:06,040 There he is - he's got a little tunic on, 467 00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:10,640 he's got a pick in one hand and a basket in the other. 468 00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:13,400 He's all set for working the mine. 469 00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,080 We don't actually know that that's where he died, 470 00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:20,400 although many children must have. 471 00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:25,080 What we do know, is that it is as a miner that he is being remembered. 472 00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:37,080 It was on small backs like these that the wealth of Rome was built. 473 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:42,760 The silver he helped to mine minted into the currency of empire. 474 00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:48,720 What most of this Roman silver went into was coin, things like this. 475 00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:53,640 One Roman estimates that each year in this area, they got 476 00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,040 nine million of these. 477 00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:58,960 That's an enormous impact 478 00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,800 on Roman economy and society. 479 00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,080 You can buy an awful lot of aqueducts 480 00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,680 and armies for nine million of these. 481 00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:12,440 But what's amazing is that these coins came to be used all over 482 00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:16,800 the Roman Empire - same denomination, same designs. 483 00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,120 Jonathan Williams is an expert in coins 484 00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:23,240 and deputy director of the British Museum. 485 00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:25,560 These are two very similar coins 486 00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:27,880 of the Emperor Hadrian. 487 00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:29,680 Distinctive face there. 488 00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,560 And Hadrianus Augustus. That's right. 489 00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:36,760 They are very similar. They're both Roman silver denari, 490 00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:39,920 the lifeblood in many ways of the Roman currency system. 491 00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,960 Both have that of Hadrian on, very similar. 492 00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,200 They're the same value, same mount of silver, 493 00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:46,800 but they were found completely 494 00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:48,240 opposite ends of the Earth. 495 00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:49,880 This one here was found 496 00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:52,520 in Bletchley, in southern England, 497 00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,320 and this one was found in southern India. 498 00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:57,240 Britain, of course, inside the empire. 499 00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:58,640 India, outside the empire. 500 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,360 But loads of trading links. 501 00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,440 Absolutely. Does that mean that, 502 00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:04,280 in a sense, what Rome has done 503 00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,640 has created a unified, internal 504 00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:08,760 economy and coinage system? 505 00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:10,560 We've got monetary union, really, 506 00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:11,720 in the Roman Empire. 507 00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:14,840 It's a single currency union when you're talking about gold 508 00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:18,040 and silver coins particularly. Those are the ones, as we see, 509 00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,760 that circulate throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. 510 00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:23,480 Everybody wants good Roman gold and good Roman silver. 511 00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:25,600 But what you do have, the other way 512 00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:27,520 in which the currency unifies 513 00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:31,520 the Empire, is that they have all got the head of the ruling man 514 00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:36,040 and it's his head being seen and used and noticed and counted upon, 515 00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,280 from Britain all the way through to India. 516 00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:42,520 That's one of the key unifying factors about the Roman Empire, 517 00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:45,600 together with all those statues and all those other things. 518 00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:52,520 From its Spanish mines, 519 00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:56,520 Rome maintained a constant flow of hard cash, 520 00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:59,520 trickling down to contractors, soldiers 521 00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:02,480 and traders across the Roman world, 522 00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,520 who could hardly have forgotten that all this wealth 523 00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:07,760 was tied to Roman power. 524 00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,040 In return, Rome became the focal point 525 00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,200 for all the Empire had to offer, 526 00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:17,280 drawing in taxes, talent and the raw materials 527 00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,720 to build the imperial city we know today. 528 00:34:20,720 --> 00:34:24,920 And one of the highlights still standing in all its glory 529 00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,040 is the Pantheon. 530 00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:29,760 For many Romans walking past this building, 531 00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,280 the most striking thing about it would have been the columns 532 00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:35,040 holding up the porch. 533 00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:37,760 We tend not to pay them very much attention 534 00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:42,280 and if we do notice them, we really don't know how to read them. 535 00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:47,040 But they're actually one of the loudest boasts you can make 536 00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:49,280 about imperial power. 537 00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:52,080 That's partly because they are monoliths. 538 00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:55,520 They're carved out of a single piece of stone. 539 00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:58,280 Just think how difficult that would be to do 540 00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:00,520 without them breaking or cracking. 541 00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:03,760 But it's also the material itself. 542 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,760 They all come from quarries 543 00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:12,040 deep in a province 3,000km away from here - Egypt. 544 00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:16,040 They've been loaded onto camels and donkeys, dragged across the desert, 545 00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:19,760 put onto ships in the Nile, taken to the Mediterranean, 546 00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:23,040 across the sea, to stand here. 547 00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:29,040 It's an extraordinary statement about the resources of empire 548 00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:33,520 and about the ability of the Emperor Hadrian, who put this building up, 549 00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,040 to control those resources. 550 00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:39,840 In a sense, the stone is the message. 551 00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,440 But even emperors couldn't control everything. 552 00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:56,520 If you look hard at the building, you'll see some awkward mismatches, 553 00:35:56,520 --> 00:36:00,760 some odd misalignments, which make it look as if the architects 554 00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:04,760 had been expecting columns a few metres taller 555 00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,520 and had to make some last-minute adjustments 556 00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:09,760 when smaller ones arrived. 557 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:14,040 Maybe the quarry just couldn't supply what was asked for, 558 00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:17,040 or maybe some poor devil got the order wrong. 559 00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:19,360 I wouldn't have liked to have been him! 560 00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:30,280 For me, the Pantheon reflects how the empire changed Rome 561 00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,280 just as much as Rome changed the empire. 562 00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,280 The capital was where stuff from all over the Roman world 563 00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:39,440 was on display and on sale. 564 00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:46,280 And at the centre of this world was the Mediterranean itself - 565 00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:48,760 Rome's internal sea. 566 00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:53,040 It was much quicker and cheaper to bulk transport goods by water 567 00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:57,520 than by land, and the Mediterranean became a busy highway 568 00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:02,520 with cargo ships laden with things from grand granite columns 569 00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:05,560 to humble objects of daily life. 570 00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,040 Everywhere you went in the Roman Empire, 571 00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:13,040 you would have found people eating and drinking 572 00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:15,680 out of shiny red pots like this. 573 00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:19,360 You still find them stacked on museum shelves 574 00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,520 everywhere from Hadrian's Wall to north Africa. 575 00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,280 Most of us - that's me included - 576 00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:29,560 just walk past them without a second glance. 577 00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:34,280 But, actually, they are what's left of a most extraordinary case 578 00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,960 of Roman mass production. 579 00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,280 Most of them are pretty plain 580 00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:42,760 but this one has got a more exciting decoration. 581 00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,440 It's got pictures of the goddess Diana having a bath 582 00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:50,760 and being spotted by the unfortunate Actaeon, 583 00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:54,760 who gets attacked by his dogs 584 00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:56,840 as punishment for having seen 585 00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:59,040 the goddess with no clothes on. 586 00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:03,040 It's quite hard to place exactly the social level of this, 587 00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:05,760 but I reckon it's, erm, sort of... 588 00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:09,760 very, very middle-market ordinary. 589 00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,280 That's to say there would be some people 590 00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,520 who would lust for just one of these bowls for their table. 591 00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,280 There would be others for whom this would be 592 00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:21,520 normal everyday crockery. 593 00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:25,040 What's really important about all this is the simple fact 594 00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:27,880 that it just got everywhere. 595 00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:31,280 When people dig us up in 2,000 years' time, 596 00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:34,520 I guess they'll find loads and loads of fizzy drink cans 597 00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,840 and identical trainers across the world. 598 00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:42,280 This is one of the first examples of globalisation. 599 00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:45,440 This is the Roman brand. 600 00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:50,520 Through its roads and sea routes, 601 00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:54,280 the Roman brand spread throughout the empire. 602 00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:00,760 This wasn't only the movement of goods, but people too. 603 00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,760 In the remote town of Hierapolis, in modern Turkey, 604 00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:13,320 we find the remarkable tomb of a man who seems to have made the most 605 00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:17,520 out of the opportunities of belonging to the new Roman world. 606 00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:22,520 This is a wonderful story of an exciting life on the high seas. 607 00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,520 It's the tombstone of a man called Flavius Zeuxis 608 00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:30,040 and he says that during his life 609 00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:34,760 he has sailed around the promontory of Cape Malea - 610 00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,280 that's the very southern tip of Greece - 611 00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:40,760 between here in Turkey and Italy... 612 00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:45,280 72...times. 613 00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:47,520 So what's he doing? 614 00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:52,760 Well, Hierapolis was the textile capital of this part of Turkey 615 00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:57,040 and he can only have been going from here to Italy 616 00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:59,760 to flog all the things they were making. 617 00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:04,760 But what's interesting is, what he chooses to put on his tombstone 618 00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:07,040 to sum up his life 619 00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:10,360 are those dangerous 72 journeys. 620 00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,360 Zeuxis must've been unusually successful, 621 00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,720 or he wouldn't have bragged on his tomb. 622 00:40:25,720 --> 00:40:27,240 But with someone like him, 623 00:40:27,240 --> 00:40:33,840 the Roman Empire made the world simultaneously bigger and smaller. 624 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,840 Bigger because of the expanded horizons 625 00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:40,960 and the distant markets now open to those who dared. 626 00:40:42,240 --> 00:40:46,360 Smaller because of the network of connectivity that enabled 627 00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:51,280 people and goods to get around the world more easily than ever before. 628 00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,760 And a key part of that distribution were the ports - 629 00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:58,720 nerve centres of Roman trade and commerce. 630 00:40:58,720 --> 00:41:01,600 One of the cities that flourished in the commercial world 631 00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:04,680 of the Roman Empire was Ephesus, 632 00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:08,520 which became a hub of import and export. 633 00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:14,280 It had once been an old famous Greek town going back centuries, 634 00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:17,040 but it was transformed by the Romans. 635 00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:21,920 Everything we now see here is the result of Roman investment. 636 00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:25,720 And the reason it was so important in the Roman world is simple - 637 00:41:25,720 --> 00:41:27,520 its harbour. 638 00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:31,400 Imperial trade needs more than ships and merchants, 639 00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,480 it needs well-functioning harbours. 640 00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,400 The coastline around Ephesus has long since changed, 641 00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:45,280 and it's now a good way inland. 642 00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:48,240 But in its heyday it was an important maritime gateway 643 00:41:48,240 --> 00:41:52,800 to the East and to rich pickings from as far away as India. 644 00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:58,040 A reminder that the Roman world was much bigger than the Roman Empire. 645 00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:02,800 And Ephesus would have felt like the whole cosmos had descended here. 646 00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,760 People from everywhere, speaking as many languages 647 00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,760 on the streets then as they do now. 648 00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:10,760 A city of a quarter of a million. 649 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:15,040 Not just those that lived here, but people coming and going. 650 00:42:15,040 --> 00:42:18,000 And everyone busy, busy, busy. 651 00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,480 The honest guys doing a hard day's work, 652 00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:25,280 the cheats and the chancers, the go-getters and the bureaucrats, 653 00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,400 and of course the money makers. 654 00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,680 If you could afford a pad in the heart of Ephesus, 655 00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:44,920 then the chances are you'd profited 656 00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,280 from the constant flow of goods through the harbour. 657 00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:52,880 These are upmarket houses for those who'd made it. 658 00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,040 This is all amazing, but it's also quite confusing. 659 00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:01,240 There's a series of houses, one above the other, 660 00:43:01,240 --> 00:43:04,520 running up the hillside. And they're partly interlocking, 661 00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:09,640 so it's quite hard to tell where one house stops and the next one starts. 662 00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:15,160 But what is clear is that there was a luxurious lifestyle going on here. 663 00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:17,360 That some people in Ephesus, 664 00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,800 including the owners of these properties, 665 00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:22,240 were doing very nicely, thank you. 666 00:43:22,240 --> 00:43:26,880 And it makes the point that the benefits of empire did not 667 00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:32,440 only flow to the Imperial Palace or to people in Rome itself. 668 00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:39,360 The homes of the Ephesus elite were evidently pretty flashy - 669 00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:41,400 no expense spared. 670 00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,200 The fashions and trends of the city of Rome itself 671 00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:47,320 were imitated and reproduced. 672 00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,480 Here we've come into a kind of reception hall 673 00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,480 on a really palatial scale. 674 00:43:54,480 --> 00:44:01,120 Also, it must all have been faced with marble right the way round. 675 00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:03,920 And you can see the columns of marble on the side, 676 00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:06,720 and there would be panels in between. 677 00:44:06,720 --> 00:44:10,200 And this is where somebody big entertained 678 00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,760 and displayed his wealth and power. 679 00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:16,640 This is, you know, almost imperial scale. 680 00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:19,200 It must have been pretty terrifying, I think, 681 00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,320 to be a guest at this house. 682 00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:23,920 I'm standing on a modern walkway, 683 00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:27,600 but you can see there must have been a great big door, 684 00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,920 and there's big door fixings on either side. 685 00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:34,360 You have to imagine that you would have had the door opened 686 00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:35,920 for you into this. 687 00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:38,800 And there, the big man would be ready 688 00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,840 to greet and possibly humiliate you. 689 00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:54,640 The things that came from the temples of Ephesus really live up 690 00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:58,560 to that classy Roman style. 691 00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:04,520 So too do the things from the terraced houses. 692 00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:08,000 One of the highlights are some exquisite - 693 00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,240 of to my taste, slightly militaristic - 694 00:45:11,240 --> 00:45:16,560 ivory plaques showing the Emperor on campaign. 695 00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:19,360 But across the board, the finds here 696 00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:22,400 really are top of the range - 697 00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,560 the best that money could buy. 698 00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:32,760 The question is, where did the money come from? 699 00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:37,120 Where did these guys who own these houses make their cash? 700 00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:38,800 Well, trade, obviously. 701 00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:43,840 But to say "trade" makes it all sound a bit easy, a bit comfortable. 702 00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:46,960 Cos one of the biggest commodities that came through 703 00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:50,160 the port of Ephesus were human beings. 704 00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:53,280 This town was a great centre of the slave trade. 705 00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:59,360 Slaves flowed through the marketplace at Ephesus, 706 00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,760 like olive oil through Seville. 707 00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,000 The brutal truth was that many Romans wouldn't have seen 708 00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:07,560 much of a distinction between the two. 709 00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:12,120 As they saw it, slaves were one of the products of empire. 710 00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:17,320 Many, the victims of Roman conquest, kidnapping or just foundlings. 711 00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:22,320 If you wanted to buy a slave this is where you'd have come. 712 00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:24,280 It's uncomfortable to grasp, 713 00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:28,080 but the Roman Empire depended on slave labour and, 714 00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:30,400 like every other ancient society, 715 00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:35,120 the Romans took slavery absolutely for granted. 716 00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:39,480 But uncomfortable as it is, if we want to understand, 717 00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,480 rather than just deplore, what went on here, we have to try to 718 00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:48,000 get into the mind-set of those who came to buy slaves. 719 00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:50,080 What did they think they were doing? 720 00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:54,800 My guess is they thought they were doing their shopping. 721 00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,040 Perhaps they were here after a gardener, 722 00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,040 or a tutor for their child, 723 00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:00,920 or maybe a hairdresser. 724 00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:03,680 How are they going to be sure they weren't ripped off? 725 00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,520 Could they trade in last year's model? 726 00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:08,960 Where they missing out on a special offer next week? 727 00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:10,880 Three for two. 728 00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:13,520 That may seem a very callous way of putting it, 729 00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:17,560 but it is the everyday reality of Roman life. 730 00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:22,960 Slaves were the operating system of empire. 731 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:26,240 Picking the olives, quarrying the stone, mining the silver 732 00:47:26,240 --> 00:47:28,440 and constructing the buildings. 733 00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:31,200 They weren't just a perk for the rich, 734 00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,120 quite ordinary craftsmen or small farmers 735 00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:34,680 could have afforded at least one. 736 00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,840 But if you were the emperor, it would have been thousands. 737 00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:41,680 In fact, it's at the Emperor Hadrian's villa, 738 00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:44,720 just outside Rome at Tivoli, that we can see still get 739 00:47:44,720 --> 00:47:48,040 one of the clearest glimpses of the slaves' world, 740 00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:52,360 and the strict social hierarchy that underpinned the empire. 741 00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:56,760 And this is where the slaves lived - 742 00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:58,680 in hundreds of rooms. 743 00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:02,240 How many were squashed into each one we just don't know. 744 00:48:02,240 --> 00:48:06,680 But I don't imagine we should be thinking of individual bedsits. 745 00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:10,880 Some of those slaves were servants or labourers, 746 00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:13,960 and that's how we usually think about slavery. 747 00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:17,440 But others would have been slave doctors, accountants, 748 00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:20,480 librarians and musicians. 749 00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:24,200 These were the people who were needed to power this estate. 750 00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:31,600 A slave in the imperial household would have been in a lucky position 751 00:48:31,600 --> 00:48:36,360 compared to those working in the silver mines of Southern Spain. 752 00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:41,640 But the truth is we can't ever see it from their point of view because 753 00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:45,600 they haven't left any account which gives their side of the story. 754 00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:47,960 So all we can do is imagine it. 755 00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:55,440 This is where some slaves spent most of their working lives - 756 00:48:55,440 --> 00:49:00,240 downstairs in a network of dark service tunnels - 757 00:49:00,240 --> 00:49:04,080 beneath the grand, airy quarters upstairs. 758 00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:08,440 But people scurrying about down here were always meant 759 00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:09,840 to be invisible, 760 00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:12,600 and they've remained pretty much invisible to us, 761 00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,480 largely because they've left no trace behind them. 762 00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:21,480 For me, this underground world is a powerful symbol of 763 00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:25,840 one very nasty side of Roman slavery and exploitation. 764 00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:31,440 But before we feel too much moral superiority coming on, 765 00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:35,680 it might be worth reflecting how many invisible people 766 00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,800 there are beneath the surface of our world, too. 767 00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:48,040 This was the empire that Hadrian kept hidden - 768 00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:52,880 a labyrinth of tunnels separating the underclasses from the elite 769 00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:55,720 who inhabited the luxurious buildings above. 770 00:49:57,640 --> 00:50:02,400 This was the empire that Hadrian wanted to present to the world, 771 00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:07,160 and it was built very deliberately to do just that. 772 00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:10,240 Even after almost 2,000 years of plunder 773 00:50:10,240 --> 00:50:12,000 and exposure to the elements, 774 00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,200 it's at Tivoli that we can still see 775 00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:19,120 better than anywhere Hadrian's own vision of the empire 776 00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:23,400 in the biggest palace the Roman world had ever seen. 777 00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:29,080 If you came to visit the Emperor Hadrian in his great villa 778 00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:31,520 this is the approach you'd have taken. 779 00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:34,200 And pretty impressive it was too. 780 00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:37,720 Big flight of stairs leading up to the monumental gates, 781 00:50:37,720 --> 00:50:40,920 and on each side fountains playing, 782 00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:42,640 a niche for statues, 783 00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:46,280 and there probably would have been some burly guards. 784 00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:49,440 In fact, "villa" is a dreadful understatement. 785 00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,080 Even "palace" doesn't quite get it. 786 00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:55,720 This imperial residence - Hadrian's country pad - 787 00:50:55,720 --> 00:50:57,360 was the size of the town. 788 00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:06,400 Once you'd passed security and got your foot in the door, 789 00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:10,600 the sheer scale of the place and the luxury would have been dazzling. 790 00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,720 The paths, the libraries, the miniature theatres. 791 00:51:17,720 --> 00:51:22,120 Not that you'd have found Hadrian here very much though. 792 00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:24,120 More than any other Roman ruler, 793 00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:26,920 he was off for years touring his empire. 794 00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:35,520 Hadrian was always getting on the back of his horse going somewhere. 795 00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:38,360 He was one of the greatest tourists of the Roman world, 796 00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:42,520 and half of his 20-year reign he spent on the road. 797 00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:45,640 What he saw - the monuments, the temples, 798 00:51:45,640 --> 00:51:48,480 the exotic highlights of the provinces - 799 00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:52,200 he reproduced, replicated and copied at Tivoli. 800 00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:58,080 The organisation it would have taken to construct this place 801 00:51:58,080 --> 00:51:59,720 is almost unimaginable. 802 00:51:59,720 --> 00:52:02,400 The builders themselves were only a part of it. 803 00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:05,080 There were the people who sourced the material, 804 00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:06,520 who placed the orders, 805 00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:10,200 the architects, the accountants and clerks, 806 00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:13,040 and the dinner ladies who catered for the whole team. 807 00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:16,560 I don't know if anybody's ever actually counted 808 00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:20,480 the total number of bricks in Hadrian's villa. 809 00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:24,200 But this really is building as a military operation. 810 00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:28,520 Those bricks now do make it all look a bit naked, but remember, 811 00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:33,840 it was originally covered with slabs of marble and works of art. 812 00:52:39,520 --> 00:52:43,640 It's difficult to visualise it today, but Tivoli's interiors 813 00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:46,920 must have been amongst the most lavish in the Roman world. 814 00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:53,080 Just a few broken pieces of marble have been unearthed, 815 00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:56,560 giving us a snapshot of what it might have looked like. 816 00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:02,800 Conservationist Barbara Caponera has the tricky task of trying 817 00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:04,880 to put the jigsaw back together. 818 00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,000 Sometimes you can get to see what covered those bare brick walls, 819 00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:15,040 and this is an amazing image of a horse 820 00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:19,440 and a charioteer or his rider. 821 00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:24,200 It's the horse's tail here and his leg there. 822 00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:27,280 It's all made on the kind of same principle as a mosaic, 823 00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:29,160 but with larger pieces. 824 00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:30,600 So this is marble 825 00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:34,560 and the horsemen's belt is made out of blue glass. 826 00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:38,080 And it was surrounded by a frame, 827 00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:40,960 so it's kind of like a painting on the wall. 828 00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:45,320 These marbles have been brought in from all over the empire. 829 00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:48,680 The horse's body is a rich yellow marble 830 00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:51,760 that we know comes from Tunisia. 831 00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:56,280 And one of these other fragments here is a great green marble 832 00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:59,760 that was from Greece, actually in the area around Sparta. 833 00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:01,520 What else have you got, Barbara? 834 00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:04,480 SHE SPEAKS ITALIAN 835 00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:10,000 Right, so this is porphyry from Egypt, 836 00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,240 and it can go next to Tunisia. 837 00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:20,120 And this is another very bright, red, orange marble 838 00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:21,840 that comes from Greece. 839 00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:24,480 That goes next to Sparta there. 840 00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:28,840 It's almost as if we've got a map of the empire in marble 841 00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:31,680 on the walls and the floors of the villa. 842 00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:40,680 Tivoli echoes Rome's imperial possessions. 843 00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:46,840 Here, statues representing Rome, with its mythical founders, 844 00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:51,880 Romulus and Remus, sit side by side with the God of the River Nile, 845 00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:54,360 representing Egypt. 846 00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:59,800 A visual reminder of how far and wide the emperor's domain stretched. 847 00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:03,200 At the pantheon, 848 00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:07,920 Hadrian had displayed his power to control the resources of empire. 849 00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:11,040 But here he went a step further - 850 00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:13,640 trying to evoke, on his own estate, 851 00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:18,480 some of the most admired monuments and landscapes of the provinces, 852 00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:22,120 including a slice of Egypt. 853 00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:24,600 This was perhaps the swankiest dining room 854 00:55:24,600 --> 00:55:27,280 in the whole of the Roman world. 855 00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:32,000 You have to imagine the select few guests reclining here, 856 00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:37,680 surrounded by water and picking up the delicacies from little boats 857 00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:39,840 floating in front of them. 858 00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:44,560 But they weren't just eating five-star food 859 00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:46,960 in a lavish setting, 860 00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:49,440 they were eating in a replica of one 861 00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:53,400 of the most famous monuments of the province of Egypt. 862 00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,200 Because Hadrian's project was not simply 863 00:55:57,200 --> 00:56:01,560 to create a luxurious lifestyle for himself, 864 00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:05,720 it was to make the empire seem to converge here. 865 00:56:05,720 --> 00:56:10,440 Whether by sucking in its resources to this one place, 866 00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:17,160 or by literally recreating the wonders of his world on his estate. 867 00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:21,760 To tour the villa must have been like touring the empire. 868 00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:25,640 This WAS the empire in microcosm. 869 00:56:32,120 --> 00:56:36,320 In its ambition, Tivoli captures the essence of an empire that 870 00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:39,920 brought together places and people as never before. 871 00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:45,040 Along its roads, in its busy cities and ports, 872 00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:47,320 the inhabitants of the Roman Empire 873 00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:51,680 experienced deep changes which still affect the world around us - 874 00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:55,880 revolutions in engineering, trade and agriculture. 875 00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:00,840 These offered new opportunities and the riches for some, 876 00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:04,560 and matching inequality for others. 877 00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:07,800 It's always easier to find the winners than losers. 878 00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:11,720 The destitute, the exploited, the underdogs 879 00:57:11,720 --> 00:57:14,160 have left very little behind them. 880 00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:18,040 The profiteers of Ephesus, the oil barons of Spain and the 881 00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:22,600 entrepreneurs of the seas have left the traces of their success stories, 882 00:57:22,600 --> 00:57:28,040 whether in the shape of broken bits of pottery or great grand columns. 883 00:57:28,040 --> 00:57:33,960 But one thing is for sure, winners and losers lived in a new world. 884 00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:39,720 Hadrian's villa at Tivoli offers an idealised and, 885 00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:43,960 to be honest, rather sanitised vision of the Roman Empire. 886 00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:48,760 An ordered world with established hierarchies and everything in its place, 887 00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:54,080 And here, obviously, under the command of one man. 888 00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:59,160 The reality of course was more fluid, more fractured and messy. 889 00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:02,320 But this is the emperor's frozen vision 890 00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:06,600 of how the Roman world was and should be. 891 00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:13,680 In this new joined-up world, 892 00:58:13,680 --> 00:58:16,240 what did it really mean to be Roman? 893 00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:20,960 You saw the toga everywhere - "frequens toga". 894 00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:22,560 How would you become one? 895 00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,120 And what difference would it make to your life? 896 00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:26,920 "Have a good bath," it says. 897 00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:28,200 And I suppose it means, 898 00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:29,680 "Flip-flops only in here."