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00:00Ancient Rome.
00:10The city was a superpower that practically controlled the world.
00:16But it couldn't control its own back alleys.
00:19Just ask Sextus Ratius.
00:45Coming up, we'll witness the crime and violence that haunted the imperial capital.
00:50See the cops who patrolled the mean streets, and the tools they used to enforce the law.
00:56We'll also experience Roman justice, and the punishments it handed down.
01:01Tonight on Criminal History.
01:18Sextus Ratius was a wealthy farmer in from the provinces.
01:22He'd come to the big city looking for a good time.
01:25He found it.
01:27And much more on the dark streets.
01:32Thanks to a couple of muggers, Sextus would never return to his old farm.
01:39One of the jabs from a pugio dagger punctured his liver.
01:42He lay in the street bleeding to death as the thieves stripped his body.
01:52Rome, 2,000 years ago, was an unforgiving place.
01:56Home to more than a million people, the city was practically the center of the civilized
02:00universe.
02:02Capital of what amounted to a worldwide empire.
02:07Rome was the biggest city in the world.
02:12It's the luxuries available in the city of Rome were greater than those that could be
02:16found anywhere, really, in the world.
02:19Unfortunately for our friend Sextus, it was also a city of immense poverty.
02:25Like most modern cities, Rome had its good and not-so-good neighborhoods.
02:30Rich merchants lived in townhouses along the banks of the Tiber, or near the Capitoline
02:36and Palatine Hills.
02:38The hills themselves were Rome's poshest real estate, home to the nobility.
02:46Most Romans lived in the city's sprawling slums, crammed into tenements called insulae.
02:51Cramped, dark, and cheap, built of timber and brick, these massive five- and six-story
02:58buildings were Rome's housing projects.
03:01Three or four hundred people could call a single insula home.
03:05A whole family, and their few belongings, might share a single room.
03:15Life was, in ancient Rome, for the lower classes, it could be fairly short and unpleasant.
03:23Disease, crime, squalid living.
03:27Sounds like the perfect recipe for a riot.
03:30But the Romans had a simple solution to keep the peace in their city, bread and circuses.
03:36For entertainment, there were chariot races at the Circus Maximus, and gladiator fights
03:40at the Colosseum, fights that would play a pivotal role in Roman law and order.
03:46But the bread was more important.
03:52The government gave out free grain to a significant portion of the populace in order to forestall
04:00any sort of famine or hunger that might have created a fomented disorder.
04:12But bread alone wouldn't stop a few thugs from murdering a man out at night for little
04:16more than his spare change.
04:18Coins like this one, the Roman denarius.
04:22Minted from about a tenth of an ounce of pure silver, these small coins circulated throughout
04:27the empire.
04:28A denarius was equal to a day's pay for the average Roman worker, or a few minutes' work
04:33for a thief.
04:36Pickpockets were as common as rats in ancient Rome.
04:41One hotspot for petty thieves was the public bathhouse.
04:46In the bathhouse, you would go in, divest yourselves of your clothes, put them in a
04:51cabinet or put them somewhere, and then go off into the building to carry out your evolutions.
04:56So there was plenty of pickings for a pickpocket or a thief.
05:00And larceny at the baths is a feature of life there that we hear about from 3rd century
05:05B.C. all the way up to the 6th century A.D.
05:11Since there were no pockets in a toga, one way to keep your pocket money safe was a coin
05:15purse.
05:17It was a hammered out bronze boat shaped receptacle, which had a hinged opening at the top.
05:27When you inserted your arm into this thing, you could not open the latch because it was
05:32pressed close to your arm.
05:35So it was actually a very secure method of carrying coinage in ancient Rome.
05:40As long as the owner was alive, that is.
05:43Which is why anyone who could afford it bought protection.
05:47If you were mugged or attacked, the first thing that would be expected is that you'd
05:51look after yourself because there are no police on the streets really to look after you.
05:56You wouldn't want to go out, perhaps, without a bodyguard, especially if you're wearing
06:01jewelry, if you're a person of substance or wealth.
06:04You will have some slave bodyguards with you.
06:07Barbarian tribesmen, Gauls, Germans and Thracians, were good, but the best and most expensive
06:12bodyguards were ex-gladiators.
06:16A gladiator would make just an excellent bodyguard.
06:18You would much rather have someone like a gladiator that had the training, had the skills
06:24and had the experience than just to get someone else off the street, some big specimen that
06:29had never experienced this.
06:31But sometimes all that private muscle made Rome's streets even more dangerous.
06:37In the late Republic in the first century B.C., certain politicians took to going around
06:43in public with armed gangs, including hired gladiators, who imagined modern-day congresspeople
06:48or senators having crips and bloods attached to them, wandering around the streets of Washington
06:53looking for their opponents and attacking them on sight.
06:56Which is one reason why in 6 A.D. Rome got its first police force, the Vigiles, or Watchers.
07:04Recruited from freed slaves, the 3,500-man force of Vigiles was organized into 500-man
07:10units called cohorts.
07:12The seven cohorts, in turn, were divided into groups of 70 men called a sentry.
07:18Each cohort was stationed in one of seven barracks scattered like modern police precincts
07:23across the city.
07:28The Vigiles were under the power of their prefect, who was the individual who was designated
07:35to be in charge.
07:37The prefect was the one who did have some rather petty police power control over criminality
07:46in the city.
07:47In addition to being cops, the Vigiles were also history's first fire department.
07:52That's a huge danger in an ancient city where there's a lot of buildings tightly
08:00packed together, not necessarily very well constructed, and throughout Rome's history
08:04there are a series of these large fires.
08:07For really big fires, the Vigiles brought out the heavy artillery, literally.
08:12Their arsenal included catapults that fired grappling hooks for pulling down large buildings
08:17like Insulae.
08:19For smaller demolition jobs, the Vigiles carried crowbars and axes, which doubled as weapons
08:25if they came across a robbery in progress.
08:27And the Vigiles weren't in the business of making arrests.
08:31You saw them coming, you were unlikely to commit a crime because they'd probably just
08:35beat you up on the spot.
09:02They would intervene probably if they found a mugging in progress or a fight in progress
09:06and put a stop to it.
09:08The Vigiles enjoyed handling the street punks themselves.
09:12But what if they ran into a situation that was too tough for their axes and crowbars
09:16to take down?
09:17An armed gang or a mob out for blood?
09:21Well, a smart cop would call for backup, and in ancient Rome that meant one thing, a specialized
09:29urban force, highly trained, heavily armed, and ready for action on the mean streets.
09:35The world's first SWAT team, when Criminal History Returns.
09:48The streets of ancient Rome, like a lot of big cities, weren't all that safe.
09:53Beat cops like the Vigiles may have taken a bite out of street crime, but they couldn't
09:58prevent it entirely any more than present-day police can.
10:03And in a city with a million bodies, bodies fed on a little bread and a lot of violent
10:09entertainment, big trouble might be just one chariot race away.
10:15There were four teams of chariot racers, determined by color, and the people followed these teams
10:21and the individual drivers with fanatical enthusiasm in a way that would be similar
10:26to NASCAR today, only with more violence.
10:31And after a race, fans hopped up on a big win or big loss would hit the streets looking
10:35for a fight.
10:44But the government had just the guys to keep an angry crowd under control.
10:49The urban cohorts, 3,000 strong and officially part of the Roman army, these guys put the
10:55iron in street-level law and order.
10:58They're much better equipped, they're better armed, and they're better trained than your
11:02average police officer or law enforcement officer.
11:06It's sort of like bringing in the National Guard or riot police.
11:09Unlike the Vigiles, the urban cohorts came equipped for a fight.
11:18Starting with their trusty sidearm.
11:22It's called the gladius, and this isn't just any sword.
11:26It's one of the weapons that made the Romans world conquerors.
11:34Gladius had an iron blade.
11:35The edges, though, were sometimes constructed of a case-hardened, more brittle, sharper
11:43kind of iron that would hold a better edge, and this was inletted into the softer core
11:48of the sword.
11:50It was an effective but not showy weapon, designed for the close-quarters combat of
11:56ancient warfare, which also made it perfect for taking care of business on Rome's crowded
12:03streets.
12:08In the later empire, for instance, a riot broke out over a chariot race that resulted
12:15in the deaths of 7,000 people when the emperor called in the troops, who just slaughtered
12:20everybody.
12:22To handle these situations, the urban cohorts were well-protected.
12:28In Augustus' day, they wore chain-mail shirts called lorica hamata.
12:36This was an armor composed of tens of thousands of tiny metal rings.
12:44Usually half of these rings were punched from metal sheets so there would be no opening,
12:49and the second half were riveted together.
12:54Typical first-century lorica hamata would probably weigh about 35 pounds.
13:02No wonder Roman soldiers later traded up to the breastplate of metal strips called lorica
13:06segmentata.
13:10Weighing anywhere from 12 to 17 pounds, it was lighter than chain mail.
13:14In fact, it didn't weigh much more than a modern Kevlar vest.
13:17And more importantly, it could stop most sword thrusts.
13:24The lorica segmentata was an excellent defense against slashing weapons.
13:31The shoulder was very well-reinforced, where you have literally overlapping iron plates.
13:38Also against stabs, the plates, because they overlap, it's very difficult to find an opening,
13:44so to speak.
13:45Heavier weapons like a spear or lance could get through.
13:49Luckily, those were pretty rare on the streets of Rome.
13:53But even with the vigilis and cohorts, Rome's miles of streets, avenues, and alleys were
13:58largely unprotected.
14:01No wonder once the sun went down, most Romans stayed home.
14:06But did that really mean they were safer?
14:10The poor, crowded into tenements, didn't have too much to worry about.
14:15They had little worth stealing.
14:17The average person living in a tenement probably will not own more than a few personal items.
14:23Combs, a few changes of clothing, perhaps a chair.
14:28Private homes were where the money was.
14:31But they were rare in Rome.
14:33A survey from 350 AD, near the end of the empire, counted more than 40,000 of the apartment
14:39buildings the Romans called insulae, but listed fewer than 2,000 private houses in the city.
14:46Most of them clustered around Rome's two biggest hills.
14:49The area at the foot of the Palatine, along the so-called Sacred Way, was the richest,
14:56the poshest part of Rome, going back to the 6th century BC.
15:00And it showed.
15:01A Roman townhouse, called a domus, was loaded with modern conveniences.
15:08Everything from central heat to running water.
15:13They even had home security systems, beginning with the design of the home itself.
15:20There's generally speaking only one way to access the interior of a Roman domus.
15:27Through a door which leads to sort of a vestibule.
15:31And at night, the doors were locked tight.
15:34Roman locks were massive affairs, made from bronze or wrought iron.
15:39The locks used tumblers to secure a bolt.
15:42Metal wards within the lock were used to ward off the entry or turning of the wrong key.
15:48The key itself had projections which matched the holes on the bolt.
15:53Turning it pushed tumblers out of the bolt, securing the door.
15:57You didn't have to worry about losing your key either.
16:00Security was very fashionable in ancient Rome.
16:03Many Romans wore their keys as rings, like this one.
16:07But locks could be picked.
16:09All it took was enough time and determination.
16:13A simple buttonhole pick made out of a bent nail could push the tumblers out of bolts
16:18almost as easily as the key.
16:21So what if a thief managed to pick the lock or break down the door?
16:25Well, he wasn't exactly home free.
16:28A Roman townhouse would almost always have some sort of doorkeeper.
16:32The purpose of this doorkeeper would be to really to vet who could come in and who could
16:36come out.
16:37And, you know, after dark, it was really invitation only, I should think.
16:42Armed with a staff, sometimes a sword, the doorman, called a janitor from the Latin word
16:47janua, for door, stood guard day and night.
16:52He had to.
16:53He was a slave and often chained to his post.
16:57For backup, he typically had a dog.
17:00The Romans favored a heavyset breed they called the molossus.
17:04Bred for ferocity, these ancestors of modern mastiffs and rottweilers also fought in the
17:10Colosseum.
17:11When you travel around Rome or Pompeii where you see a lot of ruins, you will often see
17:16a mosaic in the floor of a home with a picture of a dog and the Latin cave canem, beware
17:21the dog.
17:22Vicious dogs, locked gates, and armed guards, Roman home security was enough to keep most
17:28burglars at bay, even if the technology wasn't all that sophisticated.
17:34But in the biggest house in Rome, the threat wasn't from burglars, it was from assassins.
17:41And if a killer played his cards right, he could make the biggest score of all, Rome
17:47itself.
17:48When Criminal History Returns.
17:53In ancient Rome, murder wasn't just something that happened in muddy back alleys or on cobblestone
18:01streets.
18:02Marble floors saw their share of blood too.
18:08And for an ambitious politician, a sharp knife was often a good substitute for a silver tongue.
18:18You have to think of it as essentially a society which is run by mafiosi.
18:24For hundreds of years, very powerful families have been in charge of Rome.
18:28And they have built up many ties between the families, within the families.
18:33The struggle to run the families could be bloody.
18:36Take Rome's most famous Don, Julius Caesar.
18:41In January of 44 BC, after five years of bloody fighting, Caesar declared himself dictator
18:47for life.
18:48Unfortunately for Caesar, his time at the top would be short, just 30 days.
18:55As Caesar walked into the Senate chamber on March 15th, the hit went down.
19:02Sixty-some members of the Senate decided it was a personal insult because he put himself
19:07above them, and that they were going to assassinate him.
19:11Caesar was murdered by groups of people, including members of his own party, which shows how
19:17alienating his behavior had been.
19:19Roman sources say Caesar was stabbed 23 times, but only one wound, a knife to the heart,
19:25was fatal.
19:27The weapon?
19:28The pugio, a short, straight, double-edged dagger with a nine-inch blade.
19:34Easy to conceal, it was a common weapon on the streets of Rome, and a deadly tool in
19:39the hands of anyone with the proper training, men like Caesar's killers.
19:44All those men had some military training that was necessary to become a senator.
19:49So the murder weapons, per se, were probably military pugios that those men possessed when
19:55they were campaigning in earlier years.
19:59Caesar's killers' campaigning years were behind them, though.
20:02After the hit, justice was swift.
20:07Caesar's murderers were hunted down, tried.
20:09They were tried in absentia and convicted, and none of them survived for very long after
20:16the death of Caesar.
20:17To make sure that he didn't suffer Caesar's fate, his heir Augustus created an elite police
20:22force to protect him from assassins, the Praetorian Guard.
20:28The secret service meets the special forces.
20:31The Praetorians were an elite army within the Roman army.
20:36Unlike the secret service, the Praetorians' working uniform wasn't that different from
20:40a normal upper-class Roman.
20:43They wore white tunics and red cloaks.
20:47Of course, unlike a normal Roman, they also carried a gladius, not to mention the distinctive
20:52scorpion on their shields.
20:54They also carried the assault rifle of its day, the deadly pilum.
21:04Known for throwing, it had devastating armor-piercing abilities.
21:10If the opponent had a shield and brought his shield up, the pilum would strike it.
21:17And with this barbed point, it's almost impossible to remove.
21:20The shields would then be useless, and for those enemy troops to fight, they would have
21:25to drop their shield, which is their defense.
21:29Under Augustus, they were 9,000 strong, organized into cohorts of 1,000 men.
21:35Each cohort was divided into companies of 80 men, commanded by a centurion.
21:42The Praetorians were housed in a special barracks on the east side of Rome.
21:47One cohort of 1,000 men was always on duty at the imperial palace, which sure beat patrolling
21:53some remote piece of imperial frontier.
21:56To be a member of the Praetorian Guard was a privilege.
22:00It was a pretty cushy situation.
22:02They got better pay, and they didn't face the dangers of fighting up on the Danubian
22:08frontier.
22:09Like any politician coming into office, a new emperor often rewarded friends with plum
22:14assignments in the Guard.
22:17They bring in their own guys to make sure they have a Praetorian Guard that's loyal
22:21to them.
22:22For good reason.
22:23As the largest, best armed force in the city, the Praetorians didn't just guard the throne,
22:29they were often the power behind it.
22:33The Guard has a disproportionate amount of power in the imperial succession, because
22:39they are the only heavily armed body of troops with access to the emperor.
22:46The Praetorians could be a vicious hit squad when they put their minds to it.
22:52On January 24th, 41 AD, three Praetorian officers attacked their boss, the infamous Emperor
22:59Caligula, in a palace corridor, stabbing him to death.
23:03And they were just warming up.
23:05They also murdered Caligula's wife and baby.
23:12Murderous senators and bad guards weren't the only things to fear in the palace corridors
23:16of ancient Rome.
23:19Sometimes the threat was much more subtle, but just as deadly.
23:26Poison is a very useful way of killing somebody in Roman society, because of the lack of medical
23:32knowledge.
23:34The Romans may not have been great doctors, but they were great killers.
23:39They extracted deadly toxins from many plants.
23:42There was aconite, better known as monk's hood, sumac, and various species of hellebore.
23:48But the premier Roman poison was arsenic.
23:53Arsenic could be acutely lethal, and if it was in a beverage or if it was in food, the
23:58person could die from an acute dose of arsenic within a matter of hours.
24:04Death would be quick, but far from painless.
24:08After cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, the victim usually dies in shock.
24:14In AD 54, Claudius' second wife, Agrippina, was angling to get her son Nero on the throne.
24:20To get rid of Claudius, Agrippina turned to a hitman, actually, hitwoman, named Lacusta.
24:28Agrippina contracted the services of a poisoner called Lacusta, who poisoned a mushroom, which
24:37was one of Claudius' favorite foods.
24:40On a tray which was handed to Claudius during a dinner party, he consumed the mushroom and
24:44then perished from the poison.
24:50So Nero got his throne, and the streets of Rome got a little bit more dangerous.
24:56Nero, in his early years as emperor, when he would be about 19 years of age or so, used
25:02to go out on mugging parties.
25:04He and his riotous friends would dress up as slaves and go out onto the street and mug
25:09people, even murder them and throw their bodies down the sewers.
25:14Nero also kept Lacusta on the payroll.
25:17She became the wealthiest assassin in Rome, on hand to knock off the emperor's enemies.
25:25Lacusta's career as a professional killer ended in a hurry when Nero committed suicide
25:30in 68 AD, with her patron and protector dead.
25:34The senate put her on trial for her crimes and had her strangled to death.
25:44But Roman justice wasn't always so simple.
25:47Next, we'll see what a perp could expect in the courts of Roman law and the pits of Roman
25:53prisons, when Criminal History returns.
26:06The vigilis, urban cohorts, and praetorians were the cops that policed Rome and guarded
26:11Caesar's palace.
26:13That was law, but then came order.
26:16Once you were accused of a crime, the Romans had a whole arsenal of laws to decide how
26:21you'd be punished.
26:22But the law wasn't written in stone on the street.
26:25A low-class criminal's fate was in the hands of a magistrate, or prefect, who had the power
26:31to interpret the laws for himself.
26:36Petty crooks would get hauled in front of the prefectus vigilum, commander of the vigilis.
26:42He heard cases like burglary, robbery, and arson.
26:46For a burglar, the punishment usually meant a beating followed by forced labor.
26:50A repeat offender might be sent to the mines, a virtual death sentence.
26:57More serious offenses, assault, rape, or murder, went before the prefectus urbi, commander
27:03of the urban cohorts.
27:06Hearings were quick, and justice even quicker.
27:09You could be stripped of your citizenship, executed on the spot, or become part of a
27:14brutal halftime show.
27:17This prefect of the city had pretty much run uptown.
27:22And so if he convicted you, then he could sell you, basically, to the arena.
27:28And you had very little recourse there.
27:31In the Roman justice system, it paid to be rich.
27:35Instead of a quick hearing before the prefect, followed by a brutal death in the Colosseum,
27:40a man from the upper class was entitled to a jury trial.
27:45If you were a criminal, and you were of a very high rank, you absolutely had what we
27:52could call rich man's justice.
27:54And you would not be going to any mines, and you would not be thrown in front of beasts.
28:01Take the case of the murder of Sextus Ruscius in 80 B.C.
28:06Sextus, a wealthy farmer from out in the provinces, went into Rome one weekend in search of a
28:12wild time.
28:14And he found it.
28:20He was probably seeing a prostitute, so he was out at night, late, with no guards.
28:27It was no crime to visit a prostitute.
28:29In fact, it was such a booming business that the Emperor Caligula charged prostitutes an
28:33income tax, equal to the fee for one favor.
28:39But even in Rome, murder was a crime, especially if the victim was rich.
28:45In a modern city, the case would land on a homicide detective's desk, then head to the
28:49DA's office.
28:51But not in ancient Rome.
28:56The government wasn't going to go out and look to prosecute crimes in the absence of
29:01somebody bringing an accusation.
29:04Justice wasn't about solving a crime or finding the truth.
29:07It was about vengeance, which meant that someone had to bring the charge personally.
29:15It's like that opening scene of The Godfather, where the man whose daughter has been outraged
29:19comes to The Godfather and asks for retribution.
29:23And since anyone could bring a charge in the Roman system, being a snitch was potentially
29:28a lucrative profession.
29:31If you brought a charge against someone, it's called being a deletor, okay?
29:34If that charge went through, you got a reward.
29:36You got a portion of the condemned person's estate.
29:40These professional snitches were feared and hated all over Rome.
29:45You were careful what you said in public, you were careful what you said at the baths,
29:49you were careful what you said in the brothel or the wine house, because you just didn't
29:56know if somebody nearby might figure, I'll turn this guy in, maybe I'll get rich.
30:01Grotius owned a lot of real estate.
30:04A snitch hoping to make a buck accused his son of sticking a knife into the old man.
30:10There was no formal arraignment, grand jury, or preliminary hearing.
30:14Someone made an accusation to a magistrate, he scheduled a trial, and accuser and accused
30:19just showed up at the appointed time.
30:22In general, people are not arrested in ancient Rome for these trials.
30:26They're simply notified.
30:28So the social pressures are going to make them show up for the trial.
30:32Although if the accused was a no-show, the judge could send an armed guard to bring him in.
30:38It was history's original perp walk.
30:41The guards were often court bailiffs called lictors.
30:46Lictors were a Roman judge or magistrate's bodyguards.
30:49They were a status symbol.
30:51The more powerful the man, the bigger his entourage of lictors.
30:56They also carried his badge of rank, a bundle of rods with an axe head attached called fascis.
31:03It was symbolic in that the axe, which was at its core, was a weapon that could be used
31:10for execution.
31:11Or the victim, rather than being beheaded, might only be flogged with the rods, which
31:21formed the bundle around the axe.
31:24For Sextus's son, also named Sextus, a flogging was out of the question.
31:29In his case, the lictors would have carried an axe.
31:32If convicted of killing his father, he faced a death sentence.
31:36Lucky for him, he had a good lawyer, an up-and-coming young hotshot named Cicero.
31:44The final showdown happened in the center of the city, the Forum.
31:48It was the court TV of its day, and it was a damn popular way for the public to pass
31:53an afternoon.
31:56They were held in public, and they are not sitting there quietly, as we would do in a
32:01modern court, but they're hissing and booing, they're chanting their support, or they're
32:07chanting their hatred of the defendant or the accuser or whatever.
32:14Evidence wasn't too important to Romans.
32:16Instead, a man's fate rested on the skill of his fast-talking lawyer.
32:21Not that different from today, really.
32:23The arguments of the lawyers were supposed to sway the jury.
32:27But instead of 12 jurors, a Roman trial could have as many as 80.
32:33And they arrived at the verdict a little differently, too.
32:36There's no deliberation by the jury.
32:38As soon as the two sides are finished, they vote immediately.
32:42They don't discuss it among themselves.
32:45And the majority wins, so you don't have to try to convince everyone.
32:50Like a modern defense attorney, Cicero built Sextus' defense around reasonable doubt.
32:55And it worked.
32:57Sextus was acquitted.
33:00The case launched Cicero on his way to becoming a prominent figure in Roman history.
33:05It's actually the case that makes him the top lawyer in Rome.
33:09Being a lawyer in Rome is really a way to just advance yourself as a politician.
33:14How else will people see you?
33:15How will they know that you're a great speaker?
33:18You do it in the law courts.
33:19The two courts may not have worked too hard on the rules of evidence,
33:23but they were really good at giving witness testimony,
33:26especially if that witness was a slave.
33:31Not only is it allowed to torture slaves when they're giving testimony,
33:35it is required that you torture them.
33:38The general idea is that a slave will lie if he likes his master, and lie if he doesn't.
33:45In extreme cases, a slave might be put on the rack or tortured with hot irons.
33:50But the easiest way to get a slave to talk was to beat it out of him.
33:54And the Romans had a variety of tools to do it.
33:58Rods, whips, and this, a flagrum.
34:02A simple looking tool, it was a wooden haft topped with leather strips.
34:07But the business end carried a nasty surprise, sharpened bits of metal.
34:13The flagrum, which was later to become known as a cat-of-nine-tails,
34:18was one weapon of administering corporal punishment.
34:24These are reported to have been studded with bits of metal,
34:28which would tear into the flesh of the victim much more severely than only the leather straps alone.
34:37If you were slapped around with one of these,
34:39the barbs could easily sever a major vein or artery,
34:43and transform a flogging into a death sentence.
34:47A little cruel and unusual punishment by today's standard, sure.
34:52But in ancient Rome, the more cruel and unusual, the better.
35:04If his lawyer hadn't been the tops in the business, Sextus might have ended up here.
35:09The Carcer, Rome's city jail.
35:12A dark, tiny ten by ten foot room lined with brick.
35:16A narrow grate in the ceiling would have been his only light.
35:19Luckily, his stay wouldn't have been long.
35:23Imprisonment in the Carcer was generally reserved for important state prisoners,
35:28who were held there briefly while they awaited their punishment.
35:31The Romans did not really believe in imprisonment as a punishment in and of itself.
35:36The prisons were holding places while the convicted waited for the actual punishment to be carried out on them.
35:47When that holding period was over,
35:50a Roman convict could expect to meet his fate in broad daylight,
35:54with the whole city watching.
35:59A death sentence on the sands of the arena when criminal history returns.
36:07Whether the vigilees or cohorts caught you in the act, or you had your day in court,
36:13Roman justice was a swift and brutal affair.
36:17Roman courts took special pride in all the different ways they could sentence a person to death.
36:23Being planted in the ground and set on fire,
36:26having your body torn apart by chariots driven in opposite directions,
36:30being buried alive,
36:32those are just a few of the more creative ways the Romans dealt out justice for capital crimes.
36:40Then there was a ruthless Roman favorite, crucifixion.
36:45The crucifixion, which is a Persian form of execution that the Romans took to,
36:50was certainly meant to be spectacular,
36:54so it would be certainly a sign that Roman law means business in this neighborhood.
37:01And some punishments were just plain bizarre.
37:04For example, if Sextus Rossius had been found guilty of murdering his father,
37:09his punishment would have been one of Rome's cruelest and most unusual.
37:13The ancestral penalty for that was to be sewn up in a sack with a bunch of animals,
37:20a rooster, a monkey, a snake, and then be thrown into the river.
37:29But with money and influence, most upper-class criminals were able to avoid the harshest penalties.
37:35For upper-class perpetrators who are convicted, they had the opportunity to go into exile,
37:42and so to avoid the very harsh kinds of punishments that some criminals would have received.
37:49The lower classes weren't given an easy way out, and the lowest of the low were slaves.
37:56Roman law said that if a slave murdered his master, every slave in the household got the death penalty.
38:03When an urban praetor called Pedanius Secundus was knocked off by one of his slaves,
38:08the other 400 slaves in Secundus' household, women and children included, were handed a death sentence.
38:17The argument was made that this slave could not have acted alone,
38:22that even if he did act alone, he must have told somebody what he was going to do,
38:26and because they did not stop the murder, they were accessories, and all 400 were put to death.
38:32Public outcry was so great that the emperor had to call out the urban cohorts to escort the slaves to their execution.
38:41In general, as far as the public was concerned, slave executions made for a good afternoon's entertainment.
38:48Slaves, along with other low-class death row criminals, typically wound up here, the Colosseum.
38:57And it wasn't easy to keep a bloodthirsty crowd happy.
39:01This is the same old, same old every time they go.
39:04In the execution phase, people would be bored, and you don't want a bored and unhappy crowd of spectators,
39:11so you must keep their interest alive and always looking for new ways and interesting ways to keep the eye occupied.
39:18At first, criminals were simply beheaded or tossed to the lions,
39:23but as the audience got more jaded, executions became more dramatic, like plays, only the blood wasn't fake.
39:33Stage sets are constructed, scaffolding, landscaping and so on,
39:38and what you have is a theatrical, spectacular form of execution.
39:43But the criminals who were the real headline attraction were the gladiators.
39:49Magistrates were put on notice to look out for defendants who had the right kind of physique, worthy of exhibition in Rome.
39:59One suspects that it wouldn't be a very good thing to be in good shape, having worked out, and be accused of a crime,
40:07because magistrates were looking for people who might make good gladiators, and you could be condemned then to train as a gladiator.
40:20But being a gladiator was a lot different from just being a street thug.
40:25A convict would spend months training. There were six types, or classes, of gladiators.
40:32After initial training, a convict would be assigned the tools of the trade and taught their special uses.
40:39The Samnite, Hoplomachus, Myrmelo and Secutor were the heavies, armed with short swords, large shields and heavy helmets.
40:55But the best fighters battled as light gladiators, the Thracian and the Rhaetarius.
41:02They were the crowd favorites. The Thracian carried a tiny shield and a wickedly curved sword.
41:14The Rhaetarius, or net fighter, wore no armor and was armed with a net and trident.
41:22It was dangerous work, but made for a great show.
41:37In the arena, they tried to pair mismatched guys.
41:40So if you paired a Rhaetarius with this net and trident against someone who's a heavily armed, what they call a Secutor,
41:47a guy with a smooth helmet so it wasn't easy to catch him in the net, then you had an interesting fight.
41:54If a gladiator survived three years of fighting in the arena, he was sent back to the school.
42:18There, like a trustee in a modern jail, he helped supervise the other inmates.
42:24But he also passed on the tricks that had kept him alive, teaching the new gladiators how to fight and win.
42:31Then, after two years as an instructor, the gladiator was a free man.
42:40And sometimes a wealthy one.
42:42The gladiator Spiculus was so popular that upon winning his freedom, the Emperor Nero gave him his own palace.
42:51Most ex-gladiators had to look for work, though.
42:57And while the Romans didn't really think in terms of rehabilitation,
43:00a gladiator's combat experience was excellent vocational training for a new career as a private bodyguard on the mean streets of ancient Rome.
43:10If you wanted to hire particularly good bodyguards, you would probably go looking for ex-gladiators, or even still serving gladiators.
43:18But bodyguards were just one of the tools in the Roman system of law and order, crime and punishment.
43:25Roman justice was as tough as the men who enforced it.
43:29But it got the job done.
43:31For the vigilantes and urban cohorts, the beat cops pounding the pavement on the narrow alleys of the world's biggest, baddest city,
43:39the job was always about the simple things.
43:42Fires, muggings, theft, and murder.
43:45And they had simple tools to help do the job.
43:48The pickaxe and pugio, the gladius and hamata.
43:52Even in the marble-covered corridors at the top of the Palatine Hill, the job was about crime.
43:58About keeping order.
44:05Whether it was the torture chamber or the floor of the Senate, the Roman justice system kept the city going for hundreds of years.
44:13Empires rise and fall, but the fight against crime doesn't end.
44:20Today the tools and methods have changed, but there are still cops on the busy streets of Rome.
44:28And somewhere in the ruins of the Forum, or a dark alley on the edge of the city, there's still something bad about to go down.