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00:033,000 years ago, an extraordinary people rose from humble beginnings to force their will on
00:12the world. They created the greatest empire mankind had ever seen. An empire that stretched
00:23from Britain to the Middle East. It lasted a thousand years and shaped the way we live
00:31today. I'm Larry Lamb, actor, radio presenter, and history fanatic.
00:39I feel like a kid at Christmas. In this series, I'm going to travel back beyond the marble
00:46monuments to ask who these people were and why they were so successful.
00:55From the empire's earliest ruins to her first conquests in Africa, from kingdom to
01:05republic, from Romulus and Remus to Julius Caesar, I want to uncover the extraordinary
01:11story of how Rome became the world's first superpower.
01:25400 BC. Rome is now 300 years old and a powerful city-state.
01:35General Camillus has destroyed the neighbouring city of Vey and conquered Rome's bitter enemies,
01:42the Etruscans.
01:46Roman army seemed invincible, and the world there's for the taking.
01:54But just six years later, disaster. When Rome faced a cataclysmic event that turned everything
02:03on its head. Now I'm tracking down a clue to this devastating episode. It's not a statue or a temple.
02:17In fact, it's in the last place you'd ever expect. Deep in the heart of Rome's Termini train station.
02:27Not exactly what you'd expect to find in the middle of, say, King's Cross station. Large piece of architectural remains.
02:39But this great big chunk of masonry is only a small piece of the puzzle. It's just one of a
02:45number of fragments dotted around the city.
02:50Sticking out of a house here. In the middle of a traffic island there.
02:56A roundabout in the middle of Rome. Fantastic.
03:00And when I say around the city, that's exactly what I mean. They're all part of one gigantic monument called
03:07the Servian Walls.
03:0911 miles of colossal defences that surround ancient Rome. These enormous protective walls were built in a hurry,
03:17centuries after the city was founded. So the question is, why?
03:22The main circuit that we see and appreciate today, the Servian Walls, are mostly built in the 4th century BC.
03:29That's after the famous sack in 390.
03:31The sack by whom?
03:32The sack by the Gauls. And what happens is a large nomadic tribe of Gauls descends down into the peninsula
03:39of Italy.
03:40The Romans ultimately go out to meet them and they're crushed. And then the Gauls have a free pass to
03:45come into the city.
03:46They're razing and pillaging and plundering. This is an infamous moment in Roman history.
03:51The only people that came in in antiquity and just went right through and razed the city to the ground.
03:56Where was the army during all of this?
03:58That's a great question. This is like the epitome of defeat.
04:02The Roman army was caught off guard and completely failed to stop the barbarians who attacked Rome with a vengeance.
04:09They ransacked the city, burnt homes and businesses, murdered its citizens and left Rome on the brink of collapse.
04:17Frightened survivors fled the city and, incredibly, so did terrified soldiers.
04:24Only when the Gauls demanded payment of a ransom did General Camillus, conqueror of Vey, finally step forward.
04:32With a last minute display of some true Roman grit, instead of gold, he offered the Gauls the cold steel
04:40of his sword.
04:41On that heroic queue, his soldiers at last rose up and drove out the barbarians.
05:00I never realized that Rome had come so close to destruction and that the citizens were about ready to desert
05:06the city.
05:07But when you see the size of those new walls that they built, you really understand just how psychologically battered
05:15they'd been.
05:18With these imposing walls, the Romans cried never again, but Rome needed more than walls.
05:26Next, they turned to the army that had failed them, with a plan to turn it into the ancient world's
05:32ultimate fighting machine.
05:37But finding direct evidence of this transformation isn't easy, which is why I'm travelling five hours north of Rome to
05:45Cremona.
05:47Very little military evidence has survived from the Roman Republic.
05:51That makes it difficult to picture what the army was like.
05:55So, I've come here to see one particular artifact that evidently has a story to tell.
06:06It's housed at Cremona's museum, but not on display to the general public.
06:12This rare and precious piece of Roman history is kept securely locked in the depths of the museum's archives,
06:18and I've been given the chance to see it at close hand.
06:24I feel like a kid at Christmas.
06:29They're even letting me remove the final layers of wrapping to reveal.
06:33This is a Roman soldier's helmet.
06:41It's inscribed as well.
06:46The owner of the helmet inscribed it himself.
06:49It has his name, M, which is an initial for Marcus, and then there's AR, which is Aruntus.
06:58It's the name, in fact, of his owner.
07:01He was a slave, a freed slave.
07:04I was eight.
07:05And then we have a P, which means pound, and the numeral eight.
07:11So, what he's telling us is this helmet belongs to Marcus, Patrolius, the freed slave of Aruntus,
07:19and this helmet weighs eight pounds.
07:22Can I pick it up?
07:23Oh, sure.
07:24Can I?
07:24Just to get a sense.
07:29It's not too bad, do you know what I mean?
07:32It's not too bad.
07:32I mean, you wouldn't want to be in the hot sun with it all day long.
07:35You'd know you'd been wearing it.
07:37That would be just about bearable, I think.
07:42The point is, this helmet dates from the third century BC,
07:46which means it was one of the very last to be handmade
07:50by a slow and laborious process of casting and hammering.
07:53This is old pre-transformation technology.
08:01If Rome was going to radically increase the size of its army,
08:05they needed something far more efficient than this cottage industry approach.
08:10So, they turned to the lathe.
08:14The Roman version would have been animal or slave powered,
08:17but it still allowed a skilled craftsman to transform a bronze disc
08:21into a basic helmet shape in a fraction of the time.
08:25Are the Romans actually doing this on an industrial scale?
08:30Probably, yes.
08:32To standardize and to speed up the production of great number.
08:39Right.
08:45Thank you, senor.
08:46Thank you, senor.
08:48Thank you, senor.
08:48A few skilled cuts with the tin snips later, and we're almost done.
08:53They would start to leave the helmet this way.
08:57When they were making a lot of them, they wouldn't finish them off.
09:01Yes.
09:02Just put them on people's heads and get them off the war, yeah?
09:06That's it.
09:08Here it is, mass-produced helmets, Roman style.
09:12Meanwhile, the push was on, they needed more,
09:14and making them in forges and banging them with hammers wasn't enough.
09:21Weapons, armour and battle tactics all received the same dramatic overhaul,
09:26as Rome's army was geared up for a century of expansion throughout Italy,
09:31which would bring it face to face with its greatest and deadliest foe.
10:11of course if we just touched on the Topаноl � arch syndrome,
10:12Rome had almost been destroyed by the Gauls in 390 BC
10:16and was determined never to allow such a defeat again.
10:21They built new, impregnable city walls
10:24and transformed the army into a professional fighting force
10:28with no room for cowardice.
10:32Reading Polybius here about the Roman military system,
10:35you get a good understanding of what the discipline was like.
10:38I mean, desertion, for example, a single man was punished
10:44by what they called decimation,
10:45when every tenth man in the coward's cohort
10:49was beaten to death by nine of his comrades.
10:54And if you fell asleep on sentry duty,
10:59the punishment was being stoned to death.
11:02So they really didn't mess around, did they?
11:07Fueled by the humiliation of defeat,
11:10the Romans decided the best form of defence was attack.
11:13They embarked on a century of aggressive expansion,
11:16conquering and assimilating city after city, tribe after tribe.
11:21By 265 BC, their 300,000-strong army had bullied
11:25and fought its way south to reach the very toe of Italy.
11:28Any further advance would bring it into direct conflict
11:33with an even older civilisation, the Carthaginians.
11:42The city of Carthage, now in modern Tunis,
11:45was the Rome of North Africa,
11:47with origins reaching all the way back to the 9th century BC.
11:51The city began as a small port,
11:54founded by Phoenician or Punic traders.
11:57But it quickly grew in size and wealth
12:00to become the centre of power in the Mediterranean,
12:02long before Rome had even begun
12:05to conquer its closest neighbours.
12:07At its peak in the 3rd century BC,
12:10the Carthaginian Empire stretched from modern Tunisia
12:13all the way to Spain
12:15and controlled all sea trade in the western Mediterranean.
12:20But who exactly were the Carthaginians?
12:26For a rare insight into the sheer sophistication
12:29of Rome's great Punic rivals,
12:31I'm making my way to the remarkably well-preserved ruins
12:35of a coastal town called Kerquan.
12:42This is Kerquan, right?
12:44And we're, what, it's about 100 miles from Tunis?
12:47That's right, yes.
12:49It's really a microcosm of what Carthage would have been like.
12:53This is basically a fishing village.
12:55This is a really small place,
12:57but it still has these incredibly grand houses.
13:01These houses had courtyards, wells, intricate mosaics,
13:05all in a seaside town.
13:08And wait till you see the luxuries on offer.
13:10This is the wet room, basically, and the bathroom area.
13:14You've got a sort of hip bath for two people.
13:19I've got to have a sit in there.
13:26I'll get in the...
13:27There we go.
13:28There's very nice.
13:29I'm rather liking this.
13:31Get the slaves to bring a little bit of...
13:34Well, maybe some acid's milk.
13:36Yeah, yeah.
13:36We've got a little holder here.
13:38It could be a soap holder.
13:40It's filled with warm water.
13:42It'd be absolutely lovely.
13:43And you also have public baths here,
13:45and you can have sacred areas with pools in.
13:59Very neat, isn't it?
14:01It's very neat.
14:02And that's the real difference between Carthage and Rome.
14:05In this period, Rome is a kind of tangled mess of little streets.
14:11It's hidden inland up a river,
14:14whereas Carthage is this magnificent seaport
14:17laid out on a grid full of great public architecture.
14:22Incredibly cosmopolitan city.
14:24This is something the Romans won't have for a couple of hundred years.
14:27So they're way ahead, aren't they, at this point, the Carthaginians?
14:30You could put it like that,
14:31and perhaps that would have occurred to some Romans as well.
14:35But for all the Carthaginians' sophistication and wealth,
14:39what the Romans really envied was their mastery of the sea.
14:43They had extraordinary expertise in navigation, commerce,
14:49and this incredible strategic position controlling the Straits of Sicily.
14:54All of east-west shipping in the Mediterranean has to pass by Carthage.
14:58And this is at the same time as Rome is beginning to build up its land empire,
15:03and they're getting closer and closer together from south and north.
15:07So immense competition between them.
15:10As they're getting closer together, a clash is becoming inevitable.
15:14The Romans had come face to face with their greatest adversary yet.
15:19Now it was just a matter of when they would clash and where.
15:30I've come to the island of Sicily,
15:33caught midway between these two opposing forces.
15:37This became the flashpoint for an epic conflict known as the Punic Wars.
15:42It would rage for a hundred years.
15:49This central position of Sicily, within the influence of both cities,
15:54meant things here were certainly going to come to a head.
15:57And in 264 BC, they very definitely did.
16:09A local dispute gave the Romans the excuse they needed.
16:13In a deliberately provocative move,
16:15they sent supplies and troops to support one side,
16:19forcing the Carthaginians to support the other.
16:22The clash for supremacy in the western Mediterranean had begun.
16:28But in confronting this new enemy, Rome faced a significant problem.
16:35The Carthaginian Empire had been built on the strength of its navy.
16:39So, to achieve an undisputed victory,
16:42Rome needed to defeat them out there, at sea.
16:46But with no navy and no naval tradition,
16:49how could the land-based Romans challenge this established maritime power
16:53and expect to win?
16:56The answer to that was revealed in an astonishing archaeological discovery.
17:01In the 1970s, the timbers of a Carthaginian warship
17:05were recovered from the depths.
17:07They suggest that these master craftsmen
17:10might have scored a spectacular own goal.
17:14It was a very important moment for the Romans.
17:18We found a ship.
17:20It was a Punic warship.
17:23We found in the planks Punic writings
17:26that were done by the carpenter
17:29to join the different pieces.
17:31So, each piece had a number or a figure...
17:34A number or a figure.
17:34...and that fitted into that piece.
17:36These Punic symbols were basically assembly instructions
17:39for a sort of flat-packed navy,
17:42telling Carthaginian shipbuilders which piece fitted where.
17:46Trouble was, if they could read them, so could the Romans.
17:50These, I think, that helped so much the Romans.
17:53They were taking some boats, some ships.
17:57They were taking to their docks.
18:01Then they were dismantling, dismantling,
18:03and studying how they were built.
18:06They took them to pieces, yeah?
18:08And then looked at each piece and how that fitted together.
18:12They understood little by little how to build a ship.
18:15The Romans immediately set to work
18:18and built a fleet of 120 warships in just 60 days.
18:23But with no tradition of navigation or fighting at sea,
18:27they still needed to rely on their skills as a land army.
18:30But how?
18:31Their solution was sheer genius.
18:35It was a secret weapon
18:36that would take the Carthaginians completely by surprise.
18:40It was known as the corvus, the crow.
18:44It was a hinged wooden bridge
18:46that swung out over the bow of the ship
18:48and dropped onto the enemy vessel.
18:50Giant spikes on the underside smashed into the timbers
18:54and pinned the two ships together,
18:56allowing the Romans to board the enemy ship.
19:01The corvus had its first outing at the Battle of Milai
19:05off northern Sicily in 260 BC,
19:08and it took the Carthaginians completely off guard.
19:11The corvus effectively turned the battle
19:14into a fight on land,
19:16giving the Romans the advantage they needed.
19:20They sank or captured 50 enemy ships
19:24and lost just 11 of their own.
19:26But the war raged on for another 20 years,
19:30allowing Rome to sharpen their seafaring skills
19:33until they could take on the Carthaginians at their own game.
19:37Nowhere was this demonstrated more clearly than in 241 BC,
19:42in the biggest sea battle of the First Punic War,
19:46the one that would decide the outcome.
19:50Everything we know about this battle
19:51comes from histories written at least 60 years after the event,
19:55so we can't be sure how reliable they are.
19:57But now, state-of-the-art underwater archaeology
20:01is providing hard evidence
20:03and turning myths into reality
20:06and revealing the first ancient naval battle site.
20:10And I'm going to get to go and see it firsthand.
20:18I'm aboard the scientific research vessel Hercules
20:21and heading to the waters off the northwest coast of Sicily.
20:26Legend has it,
20:27this pivotal encounter took place here,
20:29near the Egadi Islands.
20:33Polybius describes how ships,
20:35fitted with metal battering rams,
20:37attacked each other head-on,
20:38manoeuvring an entire warship into position
20:41for a precision attack like this
20:43requires the very highest level of seamanship.
20:49So, for centuries,
20:51historians took these grand claims with a pinch of salt.
20:54But since 2005,
20:55Dr Geoff Royal and his team
20:57have used echo-sounding and robotic cameras
21:00to search these waters for evidence
21:02to support Polybius' account.
21:05Let's just spin a little and see what's...
21:07Panther right or spin-through right?
21:08It's been just spin the whole...
21:12Recently, Dr Royal's team struck pure archaeological gold,
21:16or more accurately, bronze.
21:18Breaking the surface for the first time
21:20in nearly two and a half thousand years,
21:23this is one of those actual battering rams.
21:30But it's only the latest of 11 rams
21:32discovered here since 2008,
21:34all of which have amazing stories to tell
21:37about the epic battle that took place here.
21:41Having studied the artefacts,
21:43we see rams that have frontal damage.
21:45No other damage on the rams,
21:46except in frontal damage,
21:48where it appears they've struck something
21:51that was equally as hard,
21:53and in one case,
21:53actually dented it in a V-shape
21:56that matches the front end of other rams.
22:03It must have been an incredible sight.
22:05450 warships jostling for position,
22:09trying to smash and tear holes in the enemy,
22:11all fuelled by a bitter mutual hatred.
22:14And just how bitter is revealed
22:16in a message to the gods
22:17etched on one of those battering rams.
22:23This is a Punic one,
22:24because we know from the inscription
22:26that is written,
22:27it says that Baal,
22:29that was the most important Punic god,
22:33that Baal could let penetrate
22:37this object into the body of the enemy ship.
22:42In the same way that they used to paint inscriptions
22:44on bombs in the Second World War, yeah?
22:47Send this one to Hitler or something, yeah?
22:52Even though they outnumber the Romans by 50 vessels,
22:55the Carthaginians' prayers fell on deaf ears.
23:00Their losses ran to 120 warships,
23:04four times the Roman casualties.
23:06And for me,
23:07that says exactly why the Romans
23:09would always rise above the rest.
23:12I mean, who else would challenge Carthage at sea,
23:15expecting to win,
23:16and even at those odds,
23:18come out on top?
23:23Defeating the Punic navy meant the war was over,
23:26leaving Rome the master of the known world
23:29for the moment.
24:08241 BC, Rome had won the First Punic War by seizing control
24:14of the Western Mediterranean and leaving Carthage a broken empire.
24:20The Republic's victory in Sicily had come with a price.
24:24It had won them the war,
24:25but it had triggered a hatred of Rome and the Carthaginians
24:28that will be passed from father to son for generations to come.
24:33One son in particular would grow up to test the Romans' strength to the limit.
24:39At the age of nine,
24:41his hatred was sealed in sacrificial blood by his father,
24:45who made him swear an oath of vengeance against the Republic.
24:49That boy's name was Hannibal.
24:54Within 20 years,
24:55his burning ambition to restore his lost empire
24:58would put the two rival powers back on a collision course
25:01as he began Carthage's second war on Rome.
25:06The Romans had defeated Carthage at sea.
25:10Now Hannibal would challenge them on land.
25:13It was the one move Rome least expected
25:15because it meant a 1,500-mile detour
25:18via a seemingly impossible route.
25:24Hannibal's legendary crossing of the Alps in 218 BC
25:27is one of the great achievements of this or any other conflict.
25:3350,000 men and 67 war elephants
25:37entered this foreign landscape
25:39of perpetual winter, avalanches and hazardous crevasses.
25:43Hunger, fatigue and bitter cold
25:46made each step harder than the last.
25:49Sixteen gruelling days later,
25:52the mountains were behind them.
25:56With half his men and most of his elephants dead,
25:59Hannibal had finally crossed the Alps into Italy.
26:02An amazing feat, but that was never the real challenge.
26:07That would come next, last far longer
26:09and cost many, many more lives.
26:14Hannibal's endgame was nothing less
26:17than taking the city of Rome itself.
26:19But first, he had to defeat its armies on their own soil
26:24in a series of battles
26:25that would lead to his ultimate victory at Cannae.
26:30The exact location of these battles remains a mystery,
26:33but I want to know
26:35how he was able to defeat the Roman army.
26:39Historian Richard Miles
26:40has made a study of this legendary campaign.
26:45Hannibal is a fantastic general,
26:48a brilliant strategist,
26:49and the Romans are no match for him.
26:51And so in the first two battles,
26:53he wins easily and destroys much of their army.
26:56But at Cannae, in 216, this was the big one.
27:00To steal his spectacular victory,
27:03Hannibal cunningly outwitted the Romans
27:05with tactics they'd never seen before.
27:09And what he did is this,
27:10is he realised that the Romans
27:13were tending to bunch all their best troops in the middle.
27:16As you would do,
27:17you put your best troops right in the heart of your army.
27:21Knowing that the Romans expected him to do the same,
27:25Hannibal placed his weakest troops in the centre
27:28with his finest men on the wings.
27:32And so the Romans get drawn in and they get sucked in.
27:35And they think, this is easy,
27:36as they push forward.
27:37And what they don't realise
27:38is those strong Carthaginian troops
27:41come round the side of them
27:42and basically surround them.
27:45And then it's like a killing zone,
27:47like a total massacre.
27:50In one of the bloodiest battles in ancient history,
27:52the Roman army was decisively
27:55and humiliatingly cut down at Cannae.
27:5870,000 soldiers slaughtered,
28:0110,000 more taken prisoner,
28:03and worse still,
28:05Rome lost 80 of its greatest commanders.
28:09He'd destroyed the Roman military.
28:12And now Hannibal marched straight to the capital.
28:15In 216 BC,
28:17the Romans witnessed a terrifying sight,
28:20a deadly enemy camped outside the city.
28:23Not the Gauls this time.
28:25But the Carthaginians.
28:27Exactly what they don't want, right?
28:29This whole sort of,
28:30this freaky old fear
28:31that they've carried for 150 odd years, right?
28:33It's all happening again.
28:34A very nice piece of understatement
28:36of exactly what they don't want.
28:37What's going on inside,
28:39you know, between the Senate and the people?
28:41Inside Rome,
28:41there's all sorts of finger jabbing
28:43and finger pointing
28:44and recriminations going on
28:46of people blaming each other.
28:49This was Rome's worst nightmare.
28:52Surely nothing could stop Hannibal
28:54fulfilling his father's wish.
28:56Rome's destruction seemed inevitable.
28:59What happened next?
29:01Well, it's a complete anti-climax.
29:03Damn squib.
29:04Everyone's waiting for him to attack.
29:05Everyone's panicking.
29:07Then he goes away again.
29:08Marches off.
29:09And the thing that I find really puzzling
29:11is after all this great big campaign
29:13and he's finally arrived at the gates of Rome,
29:16why didn't he attack?
29:17Well, I think the first thing is that,
29:19I mean, attacking a city
29:20with huge great walls around it
29:22is not an easy thing to do.
29:24It takes time.
29:25You know, you have to sit out there
29:26for God knows how long.
29:28What he really wants to do
29:29is he wants to get them
29:30to the negotiating tables.
29:31Right.
29:32You have to think about the way
29:33that wars have been fought
29:34in this period in the ancient world.
29:37You fight
29:39and then when one side
29:40are beginning to lose badly,
29:41you come to the table
29:43and you negotiate
29:44and you work out a deal.
29:46The Romans break all the rules
29:48of diplomacy and war
29:49because the Romans
29:50don't have any kind of reverse gear.
29:53So they will not negotiate with you.
29:55Even if you've got them like that
29:56by the juggler,
29:57they will not negotiate with you.
30:00They say, no, bring it on.
30:01Bring it on.
30:02And so how do you negotiate
30:03with somebody who won't negotiate with you?
30:06And so I think he's flummoxed.
30:08The mighty Servian walls
30:10had done their job
30:11by making a full frontal attack impossible
30:14and Hannibal simply couldn't afford
30:17a ten-year siege.
30:18What had really beaten him, though,
30:21was the intractable Roman mindset.
30:23It left Hannibal no choice but to retreat.
30:32Typically, the Romans' first thought
30:34was vengeance.
30:36This was especially true of one general
30:39who'd lost his father and uncle
30:41in the fight with Hannibal.
30:43His name was Scipio Africanus.
30:47Just as Hannibal hated Rome,
30:49Scipio hated Carthage.
30:51All he needed was an opportunity for revenge.
30:56His chance came 14 years later in 202 B.C.
31:02As consul, Scipio took an invasion force
31:05of 35,000 men to North Africa,
31:08vowing to defeat Hannibal once and for all.
31:11But Hannibal's army boasted even greater numbers,
31:1540,000 soldiers and 80 war elephants.
31:18These two opposing forces came together at Zama,
31:23somewhere out there on the African plains.
31:26On the eve of battle,
31:27Hannibal and Scipio stepped forward
31:30to meet face to face.
31:33Between these two men,
31:35control of the whole Mediterranean world
31:38was hanging in the balance.
31:41According to Polybius,
31:43Hannibal was the first to speak.
31:46Our rival claims on Sicily
31:48first made us enemies.
31:50I wish Rome had never coveted lands
31:53outside Italy,
31:54nor Carthage any outside Africa.
31:57All that remains for us now
31:59is to put an end to this obstinate hostility.
32:02I, for one, am ready to do this.
32:05To sweeten the deal,
32:07Hannibal even offered to relinquish
32:09the Carthaginians' claim to Sicily,
32:11Sardinia and Spain,
32:12which would leave Rome
32:14the master of the Mediterranean.
32:18Hannibal's offer seems to be quite reasonable.
32:21What does that tell us about the position
32:22the Carthaginians were in at the time?
32:25Well, the problem is,
32:26he's got nothing to offer.
32:28He's offering to vacate these possessions
32:30outside Africa,
32:31but the Romans have already taken
32:33all these possessions.
32:34So, it's a reasonable offer,
32:36but in the position he's in,
32:37it's a silly one,
32:38as Scipio points out to him.
32:41If you had left Italy voluntarily,
32:43you would not have been disappointed
32:44in your request.
32:46But, as we have conquered your land,
32:48things are very different.
32:51What is my conclusion?
32:53That you must submit yourself
32:55and your country to Rome unconditionally,
32:58or else conquer us on this battlefield.
33:01How does Hannibal respond?
33:02Well, the conversation's over at that point.
33:05Hannibal can't,
33:06he can't unconditionally surrender
33:09on behalf of the Carthaginians.
33:11So, the battle's on.
33:13The Carthaginians had almost double
33:16the number of infantry,
33:17plus Hannibal's 80 war elephants.
33:20But Scipio had the advantage.
33:24The Romans have finally learned
33:25how to deal with elephants by this stage.
33:27So, as soon as the battle starts,
33:30the Romans start blowing their trumpets
33:32right at the elephants,
33:33which panics the poor animals.
33:35Half of them turn around
33:36and trample their own forces.
33:39The other half carry on into the Roman ranks,
33:42but the Romans are ready for them,
33:43and they simply part,
33:45open up huge corridors among the infantry,
33:48and they simply pass through the Roman troops.
33:51Scipio then shrewdly deployed the tactics
33:54he'd learned from studying Hannibal's campaigns.
33:57The Roman cavalry easily routes the Carthaginian cavalry,
34:02then comes round the back,
34:04outflanks the Carthaginian army,
34:06and basically it's a massacre.
34:08Right.
34:0820,000 Carthaginian dead,
34:1020,000 enslaved,
34:12against 1,500 Romans killed.
34:17But these losses were only part of the price
34:20the Carthaginians would pay
34:22for their failure at Zama.
34:25As well as a financially crippling indemnity
34:28of 10,000 silver talents,
34:31Scipio made sure he hit Carthage
34:33where it really hurt.
34:37With the exception of 10 warships,
34:39their entire fleet was sailed out into the bay
34:42and burnt in front of the city.
34:43So brutal, isn't it?
34:46Burned all their ships,
34:47I mean, the source of all their wealth.
34:49Yeah.
34:50It was an important statement for the Romans to make.
34:52Yeah, yeah.
34:56The reparations alone were intended
34:58to put Carthage out of commission once and for all.
35:01But the Carthaginians had survived
35:03Rome's hard-nosed peace settlements before,
35:06and managed to pull themselves back from the brink.
35:08So it sort of leaves me wondering,
35:10despite Scipio's tough talk,
35:13if Rome had actually done enough.
35:54the Carthage was a very random episode.
35:58and of course the Carthage was a good time.
35:58And it was a great time for the years.
35:58But these are the three parts of the story
35:59that they wanted us to be able to have
35:59which is to go for the time.
36:00So the Carthage was a pretty важный one.
36:12By 202 BC, Rome had smashed the Carthaginian army for the second time
36:18and imposed brutal trade sanctions, but would this be enough?
36:23More convinced than anyone that Carthage was a real threat,
36:27capable of rising again, was Senator Cato, the elder.
36:31A veteran of the Second Punic War,
36:34whose hatred of the Carthaginians had only intensified over the years.
36:47I've come to Tunis, site of the old city of Carthage.
36:51I'm retracing the journey Cato made in 157 BC when he led a diplomatic mission here.
36:58This gave him the perfect opportunity to assess the level of threat for himself.
37:08Cato was expecting to see a city on its knees, but what he found here absolutely appalled him.
37:14Carthage was obviously prospering, which convinced Cato that it must also be rearming.
37:21But was he right?
37:26He would indeed have found a really thriving city here.
37:31And Polybius tells us that Carthage was the richest city in the world.
37:35The first thing he would have seen when he was coming into the harbour
37:39would have been the incredible sea walls that were plastered in white
37:43so they would look like marble, really spectacular entrance to the city.
37:47And then when he got inside, he'd have found this thriving city full of wealth,
37:52full of weapons, full of young men of military age, he says.
37:56And it's a real danger to roam.
37:58They found a lot of timber, which could be used to build boats,
38:02but they didn't find the boats.
38:04But that might be because they didn't actually come into this part of the harbour,
38:08because this was behind an extra wall.
38:10Really?
38:11Yeah.
38:11So it was a hidden...
38:12This was a hidden part of the harbour.
38:14Right.
38:15And behind it was something extraordinary,
38:17a massive naval shipyard where the Carthaginians were building a secret navy.
38:23This looks to me like something of a slipway, yeah?
38:27Right.
38:27And it's not the only one.
38:28This entire island in the middle of this circular port is a ship-shag complex.
38:33You could probably fit 50 or 60 ships all in slipways like this.
38:37And around the edge of the port, there was a whole other set of slipways.
38:41Altogether, you could probably fit 170, 180 ships in here.
38:46And we're talking large ships.
38:47We're talking the kind of ships that you could take to war.
38:49So what we seem to see here is probably some kind of military complex.
38:56This model of the original shipyard reveals an astonishing piece of military engineering.
39:02Cato may never have laid eyes on it,
39:04but he'd already seen enough to confirm his suspicions.
39:10He rushed back to Rome and louder than ever repeated his battle cry,
39:15Carthago de Lenda Est.
39:18Carthage must be destroyed.
39:21The Senate took him seriously and the Romans instantly attacked,
39:26catching the Carthaginians by surprise.
39:28They surrounded the city and discovered the Carthaginians' secret armada.
39:32They now had their most bitter enemy by the throat.
39:37The Romans forced them to disarm.
39:40They completely disarmed.
39:41And then the Romans told them,
39:42we will only make peace with you if you move 10 miles inland and we destroy your city.
39:48And naturally, the Carthaginians couldn't accept that,
39:51so they decided to stay and fight.
39:55In 146 BC, the Romans launched their final attack on Carthage.
40:01Nothing would be spared.
40:07Were they under orders to destroy everything?
40:10They seem to have been.
40:11They seem to be under orders to kill everyone they met.
40:14And when the soldiers were cleared, they burnt.
40:18It's easy to destroy the lower city.
40:21It was much more difficult to destroy the Bersa Hill, the citadel,
40:25and so that was the very last point that they attacked.
40:28With the lower city in flames,
40:31Bersa Hill became the last refuge of the Carthaginian people.
40:35These few ruined houses are all that remain of this once magnificent city,
40:41the site of a final, desperate struggle for survival.
40:46What the people who live here are doing
40:48is they're going up to the roofs of these houses.
40:51So these are the lowest, this is the lowest section here.
40:54These are the stone sections.
40:56Above there would have been six stories of wood.
40:58And what happens is that they're raining missiles and torches down on the Romans,
41:03trying to come up the hill towards the summit.
41:07Eventually, what the Romans realise they have to do
41:09is they start taking the houses systematically from the bottom,
41:12and then they come up to the top.
41:14They throw the inhabitants down six stories into the street below them.
41:18Down into where we're standing now.
41:19Down into where we're standing now.
41:22They start putting gangplanks across the roofs.
41:24You see the houses are really close together.
41:26Right.
41:27So then you've got Romans moving along at street level,
41:29and you've got Romans coming six stories above them across the roofs
41:33and killing everything they see.
41:37And they have to keep the way clear for the soldiers to keep coming up.
41:41They keep getting reinforcements.
41:42So they organise this cleaning party.
41:45And, of course, what they're clearing isn't just the debris from the buildings and so on.
41:49It's the people.
41:51The people who are falling from the roofs, all the children,
41:55the old people who have taken refuge in the houses,
41:58are burning to death, screaming.
42:00Some of them were just thrown into the drains head first,
42:03and then the Roman cavalry come up and just cross their skulls on the way up.
42:07Just run over them, yeah?
42:07Just completely ride over them.
42:10It's absolute destruction.
42:12This goes on for six days.
42:14Six days of it?
42:15It's days of the hill burning, really trying to kill every living thing on the hill.
42:24Most chilling of all, the evidence is still visible today.
42:29This looks like it's a sign of fire, is it?
42:32No, absolutely.
42:33These are the marks, the scorch marks from these fires,
42:37and you can see them all along.
42:39All the uprights have been scorched by the fires, scorched red and black.
42:42So it's not surprising that we can see these scorch marks still today,
42:47because the city burnt for 17 days.
42:56The clash of civilisations was over.
43:00With this ruthless act of destruction and genocide,
43:04Rome had won its world war.
43:09Carthage fell.
43:10And, of course, that didn't just spell the end for it as a city.
43:15What it really meant was that it was finished as a political power.
43:24I set out to understand what set the Romans apart
43:27from all the other tribes, nations and civilisations that they conquered.
43:32They borrowed tactics and weapons.
43:34They absorbed their defeated enemies.
43:37And they even learned from their own disasters.
43:41But that wasn't all.
43:44I think my old friend Polybius will sum it up best.
43:52The Romans, knowing themselves to be fighting for their country and their children,
44:01can never weaken in the fury of their struggle,
44:03but continue to fight with all their heart and soul until the enemy is overcome.
44:10The Mediterranean was theirs.
44:13They named it Mare Nostrum, our sea.
44:17Rome was now master, not just of a republic, but of an empire.
44:24Next time, I learn how Rome turned its back on its own citizens
44:28and discover the unlikely hero who fought for justice for the people
44:33but paid for it with his own life.
44:47To be continued...
45:06You
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