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Civilisations Rise and Fall Season 1 Episode 1
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Short filmTranscript
00:00The 24th of August, 410 A.D.
00:12The magnificent city of Rome is under attack.
00:19The ancient capital of the mightiest empire on earth
00:24is at the mercy of a barbarian leader
00:28thirsting for revenge.
00:32The rich scramble to hide their wealth.
00:37The poor run for their lives.
00:40No one saw this coming.
00:43The sack of Rome is one of the iconic events of Western history.
00:49Imagine thousands of men pouring into your city
00:53and rushing into your house.
00:55The fear must have been extraordinary.
00:59Rome believes it had an immortal imperial destiny.
01:06This empire dominated Europe for 500 years.
01:11How did it come to collapse?
01:13This is the story of three men
01:17and how their fateful decisions brought the mighty Roman civilization to its knees.
01:25A refugee treated with cruelty and prejudice,
01:30driven to violence.
01:31A weak emperor, blind to the reality beyond his palace walls.
01:38And a wily general, caught between two worlds and trusted by no one.
01:46They have gambled with Rome's future.
01:50Now the eternal city is running out of time.
01:54Ancient Egypt.
02:10The Roman Empire.
02:14The Aztecs of Mexico.
02:17And the samurai of Japan.
02:25Four great civilizations.
02:28Each a pinnacle of human ingenuity and achievement.
02:33Each lasted for centuries.
02:35Their people thought they would endure forever.
02:43Until suddenly...
02:44Everything changed.
02:51These civilizations faced challenges that are all too familiar today.
03:01Climate catastrophe.
03:03Pandemic.
03:12War.
03:15Challenges for which ancient societies had few solutions.
03:26But what if there was a place that had the answers to what went wrong?
03:31A place full of secrets and stories.
03:36A repository of memory stretching back through time.
03:40The British Museum, home to more than eight million artefacts,
03:49is a record of how and why
03:52the greatest civilizations rose to power
03:56and then spectacularly fell.
03:59It's treasures are the human traces that survived disaster.
04:07But might they also hold lessons for our own future?
04:14Every civilization throughout history has had an expiry date.
04:18With great societies, the seeds of their destruction are sown within the society.
04:26They're already there.
04:27No civilization ever thinks it's going to fall.
04:33But the question is, what can we learn from the past?
04:38都是 Hackers and tribal dead...
04:39And it's still the world that's most common yes used by the past.
04:39We are looking at two GEORGE.
04:40The human inhabitants of the Whitefounder
04:41is a global joint.
04:42The words and the youngerte would take responsibility for their children's lives
04:42evanescence Natal
04:43He's been
05:03Rome is the largest city in the world, home to over 700,000 people, traders and artisans,
05:21senators and slaves.
05:25Arriving to Rome and entering from one of the gates of its wall in the late 4th century,
05:32we would see a city at the height of its splendour.
05:44Rome is still this monumental city.
05:46It has this history of emperors building things.
05:50You would still have seen things like temples, the forum and the curia, the senate house,
05:56the colosseum.
06:00Rome's magnificence is built on the spoils of empire.
06:07800 years earlier, Roman armies began to carve out a growing territory, that by the 4th century
06:15stretches across 1.7 million square miles, from Britain to North Africa and the Middle East.
06:24The empire is so vast, it's now split into two halves, east and west, each ruled by its
06:32own emperor.
06:39Rome.
06:40Around 40 million people, a fifth of the world's population, now live under Roman rule, in a
06:49heady mix of cultures and languages.
06:52Rome.
06:53Rome.
06:54Rome.
06:55Rome.
06:56Rome.
06:57Rome.
06:58Rome.
06:59Rome.
07:00Rome.
07:01Rome.
07:02Rome.
07:03Rome.
07:04Rome.
07:05Rome.
07:06Rome.
07:07Rome.
07:08Rome.
07:10Rome.
07:11Rome.
07:12Rome.
07:14Rome.
07:15Rome.
07:16Rome.
07:17易 Age.
07:18Rome.
07:19Jane.
07:20Rome.
07:21One.
07:22Rome.
07:23Rome.
07:25Rome.
07:26Rome.
07:27hört.
07:28кая elegantly.
07:30profited more than most from Rome's imperial success.
07:36They need a strong emperor to keep the status quo.
07:42But their new ruler is a major cause for concern.
07:54Emperor Honorius is young and inexperienced.
08:00Honorius was not from Rome.
08:04He is not even born in Rome.
08:06He's born in the east.
08:09He really spends most of his youth living amongst the other courtiers.
08:14He's made a few visits west to see his father, the previous emperor.
08:21But his first big trip is the one that ends up being permanent.
08:26He comes over and shortly thereafter, his father dies.
08:34The accession of a child like Honorius is extremely odd.
08:41In fact, in previous eras, Roman politics had never tolerated child emperors.
08:47The personal leadership of the emperor in earlier eras is just too important.
08:53You can't have a child on the throne.
08:54By 395, it is common practice for Romans to prostrate themselves, literally crawl on all fours in front of the emperor.
09:09This was an act of humility and homage.
09:19It was required as part of the imperial ritual.
09:22Imagine how tough that would have been if you were an extremely wealthy, successful senator, and here you are crawling before a child.
09:42Honorius is remembered as an indifferent, foolish, self-absorbed emperor.
09:50Honorius is completely at sea.
09:55Left to his own devices, I think Honorius would have lasted no more than ten minutes.
10:03It's inevitable that someone else is pulling the strings.
10:09General Stilicho.
10:10Stilicho is this really interesting combination of loyal servant to the empire, but also perhaps a little bit of a conniving opportunist.
10:24Stilicho is commander of Rome's western armies.
10:33Under the previous emperor, he had become a trusted advisor.
10:37Then he married into the imperial family, consolidating his power.
10:43Now, no one has greater influence over the young Honorius.
10:47Stilicho is competent militarily, politically astute.
10:54He knew the type of alliances that you had to make with the key civilian and military leaders, how to appoint people who were loyal to him.
11:04He absolutely has his eyes on protecting Honorius, doing what he can to keep Honorius in power.
11:17Of course, if Honorius isn't in power, neither is he.
11:21Honorius needs to persuade Rome's elite that he can project absolute power across his domains.
11:42He's not the only Roman emperor to face such a challenge.
11:46This is the very first emperor, Augustus.
12:01Augustus was one of the most brilliant minds.
12:06A real game changer, someone who changed forever the path of history.
12:16The head of a bronze statue of Augustus is a really extraordinary object that we have from the first century BCE.
12:33Partly extraordinary because it still has its eyes.
12:36We're not used to seeing these eyes.
12:39We're used to very vacant sort of eye sockets of our Roman figures, but it still has its eyes, which make it a really fascinating object to see and a really evocative object.
12:52When this statue was cast, Augustus had just defeated his rivals in a brutal civil war to lead Rome.
13:00It was the first time one man ruled alone, and Augustus used this image to cement his reign.
13:10What we see with Augustus is actually a bit of a change in the way that Roman politicians, Roman statesmen, were presented.
13:23Previously, age was seen as a sort of way of communicating wisdom.
13:27So statues and busts of wrinkles and, you know, signs of age on a face was something that you would have been used to seeing.
13:36Augustus doesn't do this.
13:39Rather, he wants to put forward the sort of youthfulness, I guess, of a ruler and the vitality of a ruler.
13:50This is a young kind of a movie star.
13:54He's going to attract everyone with his magnetic beauty and make everybody want to follow him.
14:01So in that sense, it's a real shift of gears from the traditional way of representing authority.
14:11The scale is larger than life, giving Augustus the appearance of a god.
14:18And yet, this object is also a cautionary tale for future rulers like Honorius.
14:25Look closely, and you can see microscopic grains of sand embedded in the bronze.
14:37They tell a story of the dangers of imperial ambition.
14:42The reason why the head is so well preserved is because it was purposely buried.
14:47In 30 BC, Augustus' army invaded Egypt and expanded into Cush to the south.
15:02But the Cushites resisted and pushed back.
15:06They looted Roman treasures, pulling the head of Augustus' statue from its body.
15:20They carried their prize back to their capital, Meroe, where they buried it under the steps of a temple.
15:29Cushites could now literally rub their feet in the face of Augustus.
15:35So in a very disrespectful and insulting way, every time someone went on pilgrimage to this temple,
15:48what they did was ultimately walking on the head of the emperor,
15:52the most powerful leader of the world of that time.
15:57It was a sign that aggressive empire building comes at a cost.
16:05The downside to invading your neighbours is that often you don't just create new frontiers,
16:11but also new enemies.
16:14In the US military, there's a term for this, blowback.
16:18Rome suffered from blowback again and again.
16:20Augustus had been an ambitious young emperor who presided over a fragile peace.
16:32Now, four centuries later, the young Honorius needs to persuade the people that he too can successfully unite his fractious empire.
16:42His advisor, Stilicho, embarks on a campaign to construct a new image for Honorius.
16:52One of power, stability and authority.
16:57The start of a new regime was always marked by a ceremonial payout to the military of gold coins.
17:06These coins aren't just sent out as spending money, but as propaganda.
17:30Passed from hand to hand, they can reach all corners of a sprawling empire.
17:40These early coins slapped with the head of Honorius, a part of a meet and greet campaign.
17:54You wouldn't know from the coin that this is somebody who's underage for being a full-fledged Roman emperor.
18:01It's the way he's shown in profile with a diadem and this sort of slightly 1980s hairstyle.
18:12But something that I think is particularly interesting on this coin is if you turn it over and you look at the back.
18:19You have Honorius standing with his foot on the neck of a soldier and Victory is just up in the corner holding her crown as if she's going to crown him.
18:38And it's a very brazen military image for him to choose, given that he is not yet battle-tested.
18:49Victory is the crucial characteristic of a legitimate emperor.
18:58This is the claim that's being made on that coin, that Honorius is a legitimate emperor.
19:05But Honorius and General Stilicho will soon discover that success requires more than mere propaganda.
19:13Little does this regime know that in just a few short years, their world would be turned upside down.
19:25The empire would be shook at its very foundations and one of them would end up in his grave.
19:31The man destined to become Rome's nemesis is leading a rebellion in the Balkans.
19:49His name is Alaric.
20:02Alaric is a legend.
20:04We know he's an experienced soldier and an admired and feared one.
20:08Unlike a traditional monarchy, or indeed the Roman Empire, he's not holding power because his father held power.
20:18He is the one they are following because they choose to follow him.
20:22Alaric is charismatic, intelligent and very capable.
20:26He's also a bitter man.
20:29A man who has good reasons to be going rogue.
20:32The root of Alaric's anger stretches back to his childhood.
20:39Soldiers manning Rome's northern border, along the river Danube, begin to see large crowds of people gathering and asking for help.
21:07If a huge number of people end up on your border, it means that something has gone really, really wrong.
21:18My experience is that people really don't want to move.
21:22They don't want to leave their countries.
21:24And with the kinds of numbers we're talking about, I think it means that there was conflict raging and they had to come.
21:33These are Alaric's people.
21:36The Goths.
21:37Their homeland lies north-east of Rome, stretching from present-day Romania to Ukraine.
21:47For generations, they've lived as warriors and farmers.
21:51But now, a rival people, the Huns, attack.
21:56Forcing the Goths to flee south.
21:59Something like 100,000 Gothic men, women and children come towards the Danube River.
22:08It's a migration on a scale the Romans have not encountered.
22:17Even today, 100,000 people is a lot of people.
22:22And any government would look at 100,000 people and see a problem.
22:29In Roman times, they will have been looking at their own resources and thinking about how can they look after people who need to be fed, who need to be housed, so they don't become a problem further down the line.
22:45Despite the diverse populations within their empire, the Romans are uneasy about such a vast influx of people.
23:00And it plays into deep-seated prejudices.
23:05And it plays into deep-seated prejudices.
23:06Racial stereotypes are so enduring because they're ubiquitous in ancient culture, just like they are in ours.
23:18This mask is meant to evoke somebody from the north, a barbarian.
23:39The word barbarian comes from a Greek, barbaros, and the Greeks invented it because to them, it sounded like the bar-bar-bar-bar-bar-bar, the babbling of peoples whose languages they could not understand.
23:58The Romans, like the Greeks, conceptualized race as being essentially environmental.
24:10The further you get away from the Mediterranean, the further you get away from that environment that was so familiar to them, the more likely you are to be a barbarian.
24:21The Roman stereotype of the barbarian was always defined by certain traits.
24:32Clothing, hairstyle, customs.
24:36They're savage.
24:38They're less cultured.
24:40They always have looser hair.
24:43A theatre mask designed to depict a barbarian has to convey that.
24:47A giveaway is the ponytail.
24:52You might notice that the man's hair is pulled back.
24:56It looks like a kind of man bun.
24:59That man bun is the dead giveaway.
25:01Romans don't wear man buns.
25:04These were the kinds of stereotypes that Romans would have absorbed by going to the theatre and really internalized them.
25:12And that can be weaponized in all sorts of ways.
25:18It's a stereotype you can appeal to, to rally other people to support you.
25:23The 20th, early 21st century has seen more examples of that than one can easily count.
25:31Reducing people to a stereotype means you don't have to regard them as full human beings, usually with tragic results.
25:40Romans may see the Goths as primitive savages, but they have their uses.
25:51Working in the fields or as conscripts in the army.
25:56Under orders to remove their weapons, the soldiers at the border begin to let the Goths in, in increasing numbers.
26:04The problem is not migration.
26:08The problem is not displaced peoples.
26:11Moving is fundamental to being human.
26:14It is the reason why we survived through the Ice Age.
26:18The problem is how governments respond to displaced people.
26:21You can choose to take them into your society or to make them into an enemy.
26:25A number of the local Roman officials see these refugees and think, right, how can I profit from the situation?
26:46Only give food to those that are willing to pay?
26:49Why actually give them the good food when you can send them anything else that you might have, like dog meat?
26:57Can you take away some of the Goths?
27:00Sell them off into slavery?
27:01If I was giving advice to the Roman government, I would say, be careful.
27:08These people are competent soldiers.
27:12You know, the last thing you want to do is create a situation where people feel that they're being treated cruelly and that they owe you nothing.
27:21Enraged by their humiliation at the hands of the Romans, 30,000 Goths stage a fight back.
27:36The battle is a catastrophic defeat for the Roman Empire.
27:41The larger estimates think that 20,000 Roman soldiers are killed on this battlefield in one afternoon.
27:48It means the Goths are now inside the Empire.
27:53There's no way that they can be driven out again.
27:58The crushing defeat forces the Romans to do a deal.
28:03They give the Goths land to settle in the wilder regions of the Balkans.
28:09In return, the Goths supply warriors for the Roman army.
28:13It's not actually a long-term solution to the problem.
28:19Effectively, it buys time.
28:21Another decade or so of relative peace.
28:24And then we come to Alaric.
28:26Alaric has followed the path of many Goth refugees and served in the Roman army.
28:48He has been a loyal commander for four years, until the Romans betray him.
28:58At a battle in the Alps, Alaric and his fellow Goths are sacrificed as cannon fodder for the Roman Empire.
29:06The Goths were put in the front line.
29:12After all, there'll be effective shock troops, and they are effectively abandoned there.
29:1710,000 Goths were killed.
29:19Alaric was there.
29:20He's a survivor.
29:22He cannot possibly have forgotten.
29:25What we have is a two-tier society.
29:31Promises have been broken to them time and time again.
29:34No respect is given to them.
29:37And at the end of the day, they feel they have to rise up and fight for their rights.
29:43Alaric takes the opportunity to mount a major rebellion at the head of these Gothic soldiers who'd fought on that campaign.
29:59I think certainly responding to the level of casualties that they'd suffered on it.
30:05But for the Emperor Honorius and General Stilicho, an uprising is something they can ill afford.
30:25Because while there is plenty of money swilling around the Roman Empire, less and less of it is going into the imperial coffers.
30:35And more into those of Rome's super-rich.
30:54This casket is for a very elite woman.
30:59One of the one percent.
31:05The lid contains a portrait with a man and a woman standing shoulder to shoulder.
31:24This is a classic marriage scene.
31:27We do know for sure it belonged to a woman named Praiecta because there's an inscription on the edge of it.
31:37The inscription refers to Praiecta as well as a man named Secundus.
31:42And we believe that this casket was given to them as a wedding present.
31:47These are two incredibly wealthy people.
31:57This would have been the wedding of the year.
32:04It's elaborately carved with scenes all over on almost every side of it.
32:11There's a beautiful image of Venus sort of stepping up out of a bath, mostly naked.
32:26There's a scene of a procession of an elite woman to the Roman bathhouse, which is the place of glamour and luxury in the Roman world.
32:37A lot of objects like the casket are really about showing off ostentatious wealth, making it very clear that you are in that very small strata of society where you can spend most of your time doing very little, engaged in pleasurable activities.
32:59This celebration of luxury is part of a worrying trend, the 1% hoovering up the wealth of the wider empire.
33:15There are estimations that 20 families owned all of southern France and Italy, for example.
33:23Recent excavations in different areas of Rome have uncovered absolutely luxurious urban residencies that date precisely to this period.
33:39They were really living La Dolce Vita.
33:41The wealthy of late antique Rome are a lot like the super wealthy billionaire class of today.
33:52They live in these enormous houses that they created by cobbling together a bunch of pre-existent buildings, just like we see today in cities like New York and London.
34:11This is a family getting richer by the day.
34:18And yet the emperor is not seeing the benefit of this boom time for the wealthy elite.
34:28The rich, in principle, are supposed to pay taxes, but things don't really change in history.
34:35And yesterday, as it happens today, those who have connections find more or less legal and more or less a conventional way not to pay taxes.
34:53This kind of tax avoidance is squeezing the emperor's finances, forcing the regime to lean instead on those who can least afford it.
35:05The burden seems to be falling on the lower classes.
35:08The vast majority of Romans are living in tenement blocks, in crowded, shared spaces, rat and cockroach infested.
35:24They are living very different lives to the lives that the wealthy are leading.
35:28Growing wealth inequality is the most common and crucial ailment in societal collapse.
35:40It corrodes the social fabric.
35:45Wealth inequality, in short, hollows out societies, leaving them to be a brittle shell which can be cracked asunder by numerous different shocks, such as disease, climate change and invaders.
35:57For the last seven years, Alaric and his army have been plundering what they can in the Balkans.
36:22Now he marches his massed forces towards Italy.
36:28Alaric is in search of a deal, and that is a more recognised position within the Roman imperial structure, payments for his dependents and recognition for himself as an imperial general.
36:43Alaric doesn't want to destroy the Roman Empire.
36:44Alaric doesn't want to destroy the Roman Empire.
36:50He wants to be a part of it, if he can overcome Roman prejudice against the Goths.
36:56His great problem, Stilicho is in the way.
37:03Stilicho and Alaric may be on opposing sides, but the two men have more in common than Stilicho would like to admit.
37:11Stilicho is actually half barbarian, half Roman on his mother's side, and half Vandal on his father's.
37:23The Vandals were close neighbours of the Goths beyond the northern frontier.
37:30Stilicho followed his barbarian father into the army and rose on merit.
37:36He is an example of how Rome could assimilate outsiders when it chose to.
37:45The Roman Empire has controlled a vast region for 400 years.
37:50And one of the secrets is integrating people.
37:54You don't actually treat the peoples you've absorbed as barbarians if you learnt the right languages.
38:01If you became part of the Roman system, you got all the benefits.
38:05Roman law, Roman trade networks.
38:12Stilicho has also committed to a Roman way of life.
38:16But his journey to the top has not been easy.
38:21If you were born in a country where you're a minority, very often you have to show more resilience,
38:31you have to work harder, you have to prove yourself.
38:34Because some of the, you know, the narrative around who you are and what you're about
38:39and what your community about is extremely negative.
38:45Stilicho was a Roman by upbringing, by culture.
38:51He didn't identify himself as something separate from the Roman Empire.
38:55Unfortunately, there is a strong faction within Italy, within the Imperial Court,
39:02who've never liked the prominence of a half-Vandal soldier dominating affairs.
39:08If Alaric hopes Stilicho, a fellow barbarian, will help him cut a deal, he's much mistaken.
39:26Stilicho is the top general. His job is to quell the rebellion.
39:30I don't think that he's busy thinking, oh, I have a little bit of sympathy for this guy.
39:36Rome is a great military power at that stage.
39:40You use your power.
39:48Alaric and Stilicho finally meet at the Battle of Palentia.
39:53According to our main source, Stilicho strikes the barbarians like a thunderbolt.
40:00Alaric is defeated, his wife is taken, plunder is taken, his people are scattered.
40:12But crucially, Stilicho fails to capture Alaric himself.
40:17It will prove a costly mistake.
40:23Alaric begins to hear rumours that his most trusted general has allowed Alaric to slip through his fingers on purpose,
40:38in a barbarian master plan to overthrow him.
40:42As soon as his regime is looking a bit shaky, when other people are getting in Honorius's ear,
40:50then the barbarian card is the obvious one to play.
40:55You can use it both to disparage Stilicho and also to say that he's secretly in league with Alaric and always has been.
41:06For Honorius, tales of a palace plot would be all too familiar.
41:11As a child, he had been brought up on stories of emperors being overthrown or murdered.
41:20As well as myths of how the powerful punish those who betray them.
41:25He may even have held one such myth in his hands.
41:40The Lycurgus cup, perhaps the greatest single surviving example of magnificent late Roman glassware,
41:55a cup crafted so beautifully that it does indeed reflect light in different colours,
42:15from green to red, depending on where the light comes from.
42:20If people are drinking by candlelight or the wine is being poured in and that's changing the colour as well,
42:29so it's making these marvellous effects.
42:34This cup must have belonged to someone with extraordinary wealth,
42:38perhaps a member of the imperial court, even the emperor himself.
42:50The cup shows the myth of the king Lycurgus who offended the god of wine Bacchus
43:02and as punishment was entrapped in the grapevine,
43:06had stones hurled at him by Bacchus' followers.
43:11The god punishes the upstart Lycurgus by putting him to death.
43:16Probably the message of that cup was, don't get too big for your britches.
43:23For Honorius, the myth offers some stark advice.
43:40Get rid of those who are a threat to you.
43:43He becomes increasingly paranoid.
43:48As society becomes top-heavy,
43:51you suddenly have more elites, generals, wannabe emperors,
43:55competing for a small, limited number of high-status positions.
43:59We see this again and again in Rome.
44:01It was always a game of thrones.
44:04And it leads to worse decisions.
44:06The emperor has heard news of multiple barbarian incursions into Roman territory.
44:28Incursions General Stilicho has failed to repel.
44:39Palace insiders spin these failures as proof of Stilicho's treachery,
44:46pushing Honorius' paranoia to breaking point.
44:50A figure of the imperial court finally convinced Honorius that Stilicho,
44:59being half-vandal, was a barbarian after all.
45:03And therefore, he would have inevitably conspired with other barbarian
45:09to take over the imperial throne.
45:11Honorius reaches a fateful decision and orders Stilicho's arrest.
45:30Honorius is growing up.
45:32Stilicho's been the dominant figure at his court for over 13 years.
45:36It's pretty normal for this kind of child emperor to start kicking over the traces as they get older.
45:49It certainly was a decision that had really serious consequences.
45:54Stilicho is faced with a choice.
46:00Some of his colleagues are urging him to take the choice of actually going into rebellion against the ruling regime.
46:09He says, no, I'm not going to cause mayhem at the heart of the Western Empire at a moment of stress.
46:16That's an extraordinary testament to his loyalty to the basic Roman system.
46:26Stilicho has given Rome his allegiance.
46:30Rome has repaid him with suspicion and a death sentence.
46:36History will judge it a catastrophic error.
46:51Stilicho's execution means disaster for the Western Empire.
46:56It is a chronically misguided, short-sighted action.
46:59Honorius has just removed the one man who could either do a deal with the barbarians or defeat them in battle.
47:10He's also unleashed dark forces that will bring carnage to Italy.
47:23As violence against immigrants erupts.
47:34Stilicho's execution triggers a bloodbath.
47:37The opposition to Stilicho flows into a major assault on anybody of barbarian descent or related to the barbarians in Italy.
47:49There's no question that the level of severity, the ferocity of this massacre going after not just the men, but going after their wives and children.
48:04This went way beyond the kind of political purge that you would normally expect to see following the death of somebody who's a major leader.
48:12The extent to this suggests that there was some layer of prejudice at work here.
48:20But if the massacre is meant to terrify the barbarians into submission, it does exactly the opposite.
48:28You can't appeal to the emperor. You can't appeal to the local population.
48:44Who might protect you?
48:45There is one very obvious candidate, Alaric.
48:50And so a lot of these soldiers who had been loyal to Stilicho now flood to join Alaric.
48:57Estimates are perhaps 10,000 soldiers now swell Alaric's forces.
49:04Not only is his greatest opponent dead and the Western military is in chaos, but Alaric's own following has been greatly strengthened.
49:12Alaric goes for the jugular.
49:18He marches unopposed through Italy to Rome.
49:23His forces surround the city and cut off the food supply.
49:29Rome is still the single most prestigious city in the Empire.
49:36And so Alaric is threatening to sack that city.
49:40As leverage for the things he actually most wants.
49:45So what does he demand?
49:47Gold, silver, both in thousands of pounds of quantity.
49:52He wants somewhere to settle.
49:57And he wants an official Roman title, the one Stilicho held, commander-in-chief of the Western Army.
50:05Our sources about the siege of Rome are quite unanimous in its severity.
50:19People are starving. Our sources even talk about cannibalism.
50:22The citizens of Rome are suffering, but their emperor is not suffering with them.
50:33He has retreated to the relative safety of Ravenna, over 200 miles away on Italy's Adriatic coast.
50:41Numerous people go up to beg Honorius to help, to send an army, to make a deal with Alaric.
50:52Our sources report that Honorius declares that he will never do a deal with one of Alaric's race.
51:00What it's suggesting is an unwillingness on Honorius' part to wake up and smell the coffee.
51:09The Goths are here as a permanent structure within the Western Empire, and you have to find a way of living with them.
51:16You can see why he might resist that.
51:19Honorius has grown up in a world of total Roman dominance.
51:25He doesn't realize that the world has changed.
51:30Alaric gets tired of waiting, and he decides it's time to just sack Rome.
51:50The Romans stereotype Alaric and his people, and in a way force him to become the thing that they're fearful of.
52:07Alaric's followers are targeting the noble houses.
52:11They're targeting everything they can basically gather together and carry off.
52:15Amazingly, some of Rome's treasures from that time survive.
52:30They offer a glimpse of the riches the Goths discovered, and bear witness to the violence they unleashed.
52:37The Proacta casket is part of a hoard of objects, almost all silver, nearly 60 of them, discovered in the ruins of a Roman house in the city of Rome.
52:52What's particularly interesting is the dating of the objects align very, very, very attractively with the sack of Rome.
53:05It's pretty likely that this hoard was created precisely at the moment when Alaric was at the gates of the city.
53:16And this is one family's attempt to preserve its wealth, its heirlooms.
53:21Why would no one come back for such a very expensive, luxury collection of treasures?
53:30It's possible that some of the family members fled the city.
53:40It is, of course, entirely possible that these were people who did indeed fall victim to the Goths.
53:46The Goths are primarily interested in taking every single thing they can carry and bringing it out with them.
54:05But it also, importantly, includes people.
54:07Human trafficking, captive taking, was one of the primary forms of booty in the ancient world.
54:20And this was a major goal of the army when they came through.
54:25Honorius, inexperienced, isolated, is entirely unable to comprehend what has happened.
54:41Honorius was told that Rome had just fallen and the reaction of the emperor was an immediate expression of grief and desperation.
54:52But what he said was,
54:56But I had fed her with my own hands just a few hours ago.
55:01Because Honorius had a hen house and one of the hens was called Rome.
55:09Such was the idea that Rome could not fall.
55:13After three long days of violence and plunder, the Goths finally leave Rome.
55:24As a psychological event, the sack of Rome sends a shockwave across the Roman Empire.
55:31It is one of those events where, when you heard about it, you remember where you were when news reached you.
55:38Like 9-11.
55:42Events that trigger a spark across a consciousness.
55:50Nobody could accept the idea that the most powerful city of all times had eventually capitulated.
55:58Alaric and the Goths have forged a path that others will follow.
56:09The Gothic migration, the refugee crisis of the 370s, effectively marks the beginning of the so-called decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
56:22The Goths will eventually form their own kingdoms on Roman territory.
56:38It becomes the model for other barbarian peoples.
56:42One by one, the territories of the former Western Roman Empire fall away from imperial control.
56:55Rome lost its grip on Western Europe over 1,500 years ago.
57:00With a weak, inexperienced leader, blinded by paranoia.
57:10What the Romans got wrong was refusing to understand the political moment.
57:18The instability, the fragility of the government.
57:23No leader rising to the top who could calm the situation and end the standoff.
57:31This didn't have to happen.
57:35It was a two-tier society that favoured the rich, while failing to solve the challenges of mass migration.
57:44This story is a refugee crisis gone wrong.
57:51It is something we are now very familiar with in our modern world.
57:59The fall of Rome for many people was a liberation from a predatory autocracy which overtaxed citizens,
58:06mistreated immigrants and persisted through conquest.
58:10Do not mourn the empire.
58:11The Romans did not believe their empire was about to collapse.
58:18But it did.
58:20Our world order will change.
58:23That will always be the great lesson of history.
58:26Egypt, a civilisation that has thrived for 3,000 years, is torn apart by a toxic dynasty, forcing the great Cleopatra to face civil war, famine and foreign invasion, threatening to end the age of the pharaohs.
58:52The pharaohs.
58:53That will always work, the great selon the age of the pharaohs.
58:54The pharaohs.
58:55The pharaohs.
58:56The pharaohs.
59:00Transcription by CastingWords
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