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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. I feel like a kid at Christmas.
00:42In this series, I'm going to travel back beyond the marble monuments to ask who these people
00:49were and why they were so successful. Wow. From the empire's earliest ruins to her first
01:00conquests in Africa. From kingdom to republic, from Romulus and Remus to Julius Caesar. I
01:09want to uncover the extraordinary story of how Rome became the world's first superpower.
01:38Rome may be ancient, but round here, history lives. It's the 21st of April, the date Romans
01:47celebrate the birth of their city.
01:51So here we are for Rome's 2767th birthday. Doesn't look a day over 2,000 to me.
02:01It's a street party. It's a street party, Roman style, where all the icons of the city's history
02:07are on show. Gladiators. Centurions. Senators. Vestal virgins.
02:20But they all come later in Rome's story. I want to start 1,000 years earlier. This is one
02:29of my favourite cities. I spend as much time as I can here.
02:39So, I want to start at the beginning, by finding out how Rome was founded.
02:56The story I've heard begins with the iconic legend of two orphaned twin brothers. Today,
03:03their names are on the lips of every Roman.
03:08Who founded Rome, started Rome?
03:11With Rome and Rome.
03:15Rome and Rome.
03:16Rome and Rome.
03:18So, ladies and gentlemen, this is 10?
03:21Yes, 10 euros.
03:2210 euros.
03:24Perfect. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
03:26Well, there it is, right? This image is everywhere. The very symbol of Rome herself.
03:35According to legend, Romulus and Remus were the semi-divine sons of Mars, the god of war,
03:41thrown into the Tiber by a jealous uncle, only to be saved and suckled by a she-wolf.
03:53But what happened next?
03:58I'm turning to the earliest accounts I can find. The histories written by the ancient Romans themselves.
04:04But even these have their problems.
04:08This book is the work of the Roman historian Livy. It was born in 59 BC.
04:15Now, evidently, it's the best surviving account of early Rome that we have.
04:19But, of course, the founding of Rome that he describes happened 700 years before he was born.
04:26I mean, by the time he wrote it, Rome was already an ancient city.
04:30Still, I'm intrigued by Livy's description of what happened.
04:37So, I've come to the Circus Maximus.
04:45Once, the valley floor beneath Rome's seven hills.
04:51Livy writes that it was here, in 753 BC, that it all began.
04:57When Romulus and Remus decided to build a city, but ended up in a deadly struggle.
05:07According to Livy, the twins couldn't agree on a location for their city.
05:11Remus wanted a build on the Aventine over there.
05:15Whereas Romulus wanted a build on the Palatine over there.
05:20Livy then goes on to tell us how they settled it.
05:24Since the brothers were twins and respect for their age could not determine between them,
05:29it was agreed that the gods should choose by augury who should give the new city its name,
05:35who should govern it when built.
05:39Augury is basically the art of reading signs from the gods.
05:42So, they both camped out on their respective hills and waited.
05:53First, Remus sees six vultures circling the sky above him.
05:58For him, it's the sign the gods have chosen him to build the city and to govern it.
06:05But then Romulus sees 12 vultures and is convinced he is the Anointed One.
06:12Both brothers claimed victory.
06:15One, because he'd seen the birds first.
06:17The other, because he saw more of them.
06:20Livy goes on.
06:21They then engaged in a battle of words and angry taunts leading to bloodshed.
06:27Remus was struck down in the affray.
06:30Thus, Romulus acquired sole power and the city, thus founded, was called by its founder's name.
06:45Rome, founded on murder, but not yet a city.
06:52And Romulus needed more than a plot of land and a handful of followers to turn it into one.
06:59What he needed was people.
07:04To boost the population, Romulus threw open the gates of his city.
07:09Basically saying, bring me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.
07:13As a result of which, he was inundated with what Livy called an obscure and lowly multitude.
07:19But, of course, there was a problem.
07:22They were nearly all men.
07:24There was a very chronic shortage of womenfolk.
07:27So, what did these ever resourceful Romans do?
07:30They threw a party.
07:34On the guest list, chieftains from a neighbouring tribe called the Sabines, along with their wives and daughters.
07:41But the Romans didn't invite them out of the goodness of their hearts.
07:45As the festivities reached fever pitch, Romulus gave a sudden signal.
07:51His men rushed forward, grabbed the Sabine womenfolk and carried them off to make them their wives.
08:03This has gone down in history as the rape of the Sabine women.
08:10They were a tough bunch, these Romans.
08:12I mean, they just grabbed anything they wanted.
08:16But I suppose what I'm beginning to realise already is that if you want to start a superpower,
08:21that's the way you've got to be.
08:26So, there we have it.
08:28Rome was founded by a murderer.
08:31And its first citizens were vagabonds and kidnapped women.
08:36It's a great story.
08:37But is it true?
09:07I'm on a mission to dig deep into Rome's history, back beyond the marble city of the Caesars,
09:14to this civilisation's very beginnings.
09:18I want to find out how Rome's earliest citizens grew this city into the greatest power the world had ever
09:25seen.
09:29I've discovered the ancient legend of Rome's founder and first king, Romulus.
09:36Now, I want to find physical evidence of the settlement he's supposed to have founded,
09:42that could show where and how it all began.
09:46It's what archaeologists have been searching for in Rome for decades.
09:51Then, in 2007, in the heart of the city, they found this.
09:59These are post holes of an ancient dwelling.
10:03Not much to you and me.
10:05But the amazing thing is, these date to 750 BC,
10:11almost the very year Livy said that Romulus founded the city.
10:19Now, could this be the site where he and his followers first set up shop?
10:24And if so, what would their settlement have looked like?
10:39Not quite what I'd imagine Rome to look like in the very early days.
10:48So, who would have lived in a house like this? What was their life about?
10:51Well, you see, it's a very simple space.
10:53All you needed was a fireplace to cook food and for heating.
10:57Yeah.
10:57A place to sleep, a place for storing foods.
11:03Rome's mud huts might look basic to you and me,
11:06but Paolo tells me all the elements were in place here for a sophisticated culture.
11:13Society living in this kind of structures was not so simple.
11:17They had writings, they had politics, they had religions,
11:20they had an aristocracy, very powerful aristocracy.
11:23They had trade, they had agriculture.
11:27Right.
11:27And from this, it went to that. Extraordinary.
11:32Now I can imagine early Rome.
11:36A few hundred huts on a hillside, home to 2,000 or 3,000 people.
11:42A modest beginning for Europe's greatest civilisation,
11:45but that would soon change.
11:50By 550 BC, 200 years after the foundation, Rome's population was around 30,000 people,
11:59spread over seven hills along the Tiber.
12:02It could now call itself a proper city.
12:06But there was a problem.
12:08A wide area of uninhabitable stagnant marshland choked the city's expansion.
12:14Rome needed a solution.
12:19To find out what, I'm going to a part of Rome most people never get to see.
12:25Underneath the city.
12:31Here I go.
12:34I'm going down into Rome's sewer network.
12:51Parts of it are over 2,500 years old.
12:57But still in use today.
12:59These tunnels carry rainwater and sewage into the river Tiber.
13:08They were built by Rome's earliest kings, the successors to Romulus himself.
13:17So, Adriana, can you tell me, how did this extraordinary system of sewage start?
13:24There was a need of clearing of the marshy waters around the Capitolium and the other hills.
13:30So, what happened was, first of all, to make an open-air channel.
13:35Yeah.
13:35And to channel all this water to the Tiber.
13:42For 200 years, Rome's kings extended, repaired and improved the entire system.
13:49Until what started out as open channels grew into this complex network of arched tunnels.
14:03Today, no-one knows the full extent of the tunnel network.
14:07But Adriana and his team of archaeologists are at last exploring it.
14:12Walking through these sewers is like travelling back in time.
14:21This cover here, they can tell by the stone, it was put on in the time of Hadrian.
14:29So, roughly the same period that they were building the war in Britain.
14:34They were vacuuming and running, putting roots on sewers.
14:39Nice, ordinary people.
14:43The deeper we go, the older the tunnels get.
14:47We pass through a section built at the time of Jesus Christ.
14:52Then another, even older, constructed under Julius Caesar.
14:58Then, at last, the oldest stretch of tunnel.
15:03From the sixth century BC.
15:06This is it, here we are, right here, the oldest part of the system.
15:10And it's absolutely unique and it's never been seen before on television.
15:15So there, you're on a first.
15:17This tunnel is one of the oldest examples of what became an essential feature of Roman engineering.
15:24The arch.
15:25If you just see this here, it's this way that they stepped the stones.
15:31So that it steps, and they're cut, so that it's one, and then it comes out, then it comes out
15:38like that.
15:39So you've got the same, boom, boom, boom, and then they were covered.
15:42So that about this height would have been the floor, the basic floor level of the ancient forum.
15:51Without this ancient engineering, Rome might never have become a city.
15:56But these sewers were built at a terrible human cost, by slaves.
16:03Enemy soldiers spared on the battlefield, but marched to Rome to die, building the new stone city.
16:13Reading in Livy, what we're told is that this would have involved the work of about a million slaves.
16:20And some of them preferred, in the end, to commit suicide rather than work on this project.
16:32The Romans were resourceful and ruthless.
16:36They borrowed the best their neighbours had to offer and stole what couldn't be borrowed.
16:42They let nothing stand in the way of the city's ambition.
16:49One of the key architects of the new Rome became a notorious figure in the city's history.
16:56His name, Tarquinius Superbus, Tarquin the Proud.
17:02He was a brilliant engineer, but a ruthless political operator.
17:08Now, I'm heading for the very spot where, in 535 BC, he made a bloody grasp for power.
17:17Tarquin and his wife, who I'm told would have given Lady Macbeth a run for her money,
17:22staged an outrageous coup against the ruling king, her father.
17:27And he was killed in a brutal assassination.
17:30And I'm told that she drove her chariot right across his body as he lay in the street somewhere around
17:35here.
17:36And ever since, this has been known as the Vicus Sceleratus, the street of wickedness.
17:45Tarquin seized the throne.
17:48He was now Rome's seventh and most ambitious king.
17:52And began to transform Rome from a settlement of mud huts into a city of stone.
17:59Tarquin built one of the biggest buildings in Roman history, dedicated to their supreme god.
18:05It was the Temple of Jupiter.
18:12Remarkably, parts of it still survive, and I am going to see them.
18:19Well, we've certainly come a long way from simple houses made of mud and wood to this.
18:25And I suppose this has to be the beginning of the monumental city of Rome.
18:32The temple was as big as a football pitch.
18:36Ordinary Roman citizens were forced not just to pay for it, some had to labour on it.
18:42Thousands were worked to death, turning Tarquin into a figure of hatred.
18:47But the signs were that with his giant temple, he'd won the favour of the gods.
18:53The story goes that while they were digging the foundations, they came upon a perfectly preserved human head.
19:00And they took it as a sign that Rome would become the head of the world.
19:05Well, that much may be true, but it wouldn't be ruled by Tarquin, or any other king for that matter.
19:14Tarquin was a tyrant.
19:16He intimidated Rome's nobles, bullied its workers and murdered those who disagreed with him.
19:22I want to meet the man who finally gave him his marching orders.
19:31This is thought to be the face of Brutus.
19:34He is the nephew of King Tarquin.
19:37And he, he would bring an end to the rule of the kings,
19:40and he would start a revolution right at the heart of Rome.
19:44But for now, he was biding his time.
19:49His brother had already died at King Tarquin's hands.
19:53Brutus wanted to avoid the same fate and spent much of his life keeping a low profile,
19:59until he saw something that filled him with fury.
20:04It concerns a beautiful and virtuous noblewoman named Lucretia,
20:08and the tearful confession she made to her father, her husband, and to Brutus.
20:16Lucretia described how Tarquin's son, Sextus, forced himself upon her.
20:22Lucretia refused his advances.
20:25But then Sextus threatened to kill her and her male slave.
20:29He said he would leave their naked bodies beside each other,
20:33making it appear Lucretia had committed adultery.
20:37Rather than bring shame on her husband and family,
20:40Lucretia relented and let Sextus have his way.
20:45Brutus listened, horrified.
20:47But worse was to come.
20:50Wracked with shame and guilt, she suddenly produces a dagger,
20:54and before Brutus and the others can stop her,
20:56she plunges it deep into her chest, piercing her heart,
20:59and ending her life instantly.
21:02Now, this is how Livy describes what happened next.
21:06Brutus drew out the knife from Lucretia's wound,
21:09and holding it up, dripping with gore,
21:12he exclaimed, by this blood most chaste until a prince wronged it,
21:17I swear that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
21:21and his wicked wife and all his children with sword, with fire,
21:25I, with whatsoever violence I may,
21:28and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome.
21:38Brutus was as good as his word.
21:40He and his followers drove Tarquin and his supporters out of Rome
21:45and together gave birth to a new ideal,
21:49that no king would ever rule Rome again.
21:53It became every Roman's duty to defend this founding principle.
21:58But, as I'm about to discover,
22:01it wasn't long until Brutus himself was forced to choose
22:04between his instincts as a father
22:06and his duty as a citizen of the Roman Republic.
22:13So thank you very much for watching.
23:06509 BC, Rome is 250 years old.
23:11Home to 50,000 people and on a knife edge.
23:17Brutus has overthrown the tyrannical king Tarquin
23:20and declared that never again would one man rule Rome.
23:32We take away the king. What happens next?
23:36Well, Larry, they clear away the whole political board to start with.
23:40All of them? All of them.
23:41Now, unlike in the game of chess, we need to start with two kings.
23:46And these guys are called consuls, and these are like the CEOs of Rome.
23:51And together they're going to rule, so the council each time they're out.
23:55And each year they're elected by popular election.
23:59So this means that they're accountable to the people
24:01and also to their fellow aristocrats.
24:04These twin consuls would govern a new Rome, known as the Republic,
24:11from the Latin res publica, the concern of the people.
24:15At its heart was an ideal that over the next 500 years
24:19would propel Rome from new republic to global superpower.
24:24So this was to stop one person having all the power,
24:27but presumably within those two there would have been
24:30a lot of competition set up, wouldn't there?
24:33Within the Roman political system, within its DNA, is competition.
24:37So the elites, right from the time when they're very small,
24:40when they're just young boys, are trained to compete with one another.
24:43And that's one of the things that makes Rome great,
24:45is that all of these guys are striving to do better
24:48than their fellow, you know, their fellow aristocrats.
24:51Yeah.
24:52So is there any one thing you think that kind of typifies
24:55Roman political mentality?
24:58I think in terms of the collective psyche of the Roman people,
25:02it's this, a hatred and fear of this man, the king.
25:07There could never be another king in the Roman Republic.
25:10They would never allow us.
25:13This was the republican ideal that had to be defended
25:17at all costs.
25:19And it turned out it was Brutus himself
25:22whose loyalty to the new ideal was first to be tested.
25:27Within months, the exiled king Tarquin
25:30is plotting to seize back power in Rome.
25:33Among his fellow conspirators are Brutus' own two sons.
25:38When the plot is discovered,
25:40the two brothers are brought before him.
25:44Brutus is consul of Rome.
25:46Will he pardon his sons or execute them
25:50in the name of the Republic?
25:52Brutus was in no doubt.
25:56The culprits were stripped,
25:58scourged with rods and beheaded.
26:01While through it all,
26:03men gazed at the expression on the father's face
26:05where they might clearly read a father's anguish
26:08as he administered the nation's retribution.
26:13I mean, if this is true,
26:16and I have to say as a father,
26:17I find it very difficult to believe,
26:19it would at least explain the ruthlessness
26:22and the absolute conviction at the core
26:24of the new republic.
26:29By executing his sons,
26:31Brutus made it clear that duty to the republics
26:34found in principle
26:35was more important than his own flesh and blood.
26:45This new republic was supposed to be a more inclusive place,
26:50but there was a legacy from Rome's earliest days
26:53still to be grappled with,
26:55the rift between rich patricians and poor plebeians.
27:01I'm heading south
27:03to one of the most iconic sites of Roman history.
27:09Pompeii.
27:12Captured in time by the ash from a volcanic eruption.
27:17Today, this is as close as we can get
27:21to how Rome was at the time of the Republic.
27:28The buildings here reveal a society deeply divided.
27:33Vast villas like this one
27:35were home to Rome's rich nobility,
27:38the patricians.
27:44So, Paolo,
27:46would there have been houses
27:47just like this in Rome in the early republic?
27:52The shape of the room is the same
27:54as an early republican house in Rome.
27:56Right.
27:57That was a standard design, yeah?
27:58It was a standard design,
28:00a very old-fashioned and standard design.
28:02It was what the Romans called the domus.
28:04Domus.
28:04It was a private house.
28:06Yeah.
28:06This was the focus of the house?
28:08This is the centre of the house,
28:10the most important room.
28:11It's called the atrium.
28:13And there were bedrooms all around,
28:15the small rooms here.
28:16So, who would have been the owner of a home like this?
28:19What sort of level in society?
28:21A very high level, of course.
28:23It would, yeah?
28:23Yes, the noblest part
28:24and the wealthiest part of this,
28:26what they call the patrician.
28:27Right.
28:28And he would have lived here with just his family?
28:32With his family.
28:33Yeah.
28:33With his family and slaves.
28:34And how many slaves would it have taken
28:36to run a house like this?
28:37A slave family could count up to 50 members.
28:40Really?
28:40Yes.
28:41It was very huge.
28:44But not everyone enjoyed the luxury of a Roman domus.
28:48Right next door, you can see how the other half lived.
28:52This family was plebeian
28:54and had to make do with life in a single room
28:57at the back of their business.
28:59In this case, a bar.
29:02So, Paolo, would there have been bars like this
29:04along all the streets in Rome?
29:06Of course.
29:06Rome was crowded with places like this.
29:09You have a second room inside,
29:12which was actually the house of the family
29:14who worked in this bar.
29:16Right.
29:17So, these were the living quarters, yeah?
29:19Quite a change from the patrician's house.
29:22Yes.
29:23So, in the big house, there's a family,
29:25maybe five, six people,
29:26and 50 slaves to look after them.
29:29What would this household have composed?
29:32Well, maybe the same family,
29:34five or six people.
29:35Yeah.
29:35No slave.
29:36All living in one room.
29:38Yeah.
29:39And working up there.
29:41These two houses show just how divided Roman society was,
29:45and this division was not just a cultural one.
29:49It was enshrined in law.
29:53Obviously, Republican Rome is a very complicated society,
29:56but just can you explain the difference effectively
29:59between a patrician and a plebeian?
30:02The patrician were the aristocracy of Rome.
30:05They were the members of the noblest families,
30:09and the plebeians were not.
30:10The plebeians, they could not marry a patrician.
30:14They could not have commerce with a patrician.
30:17They could not be elected, neither magistrate nor judge.
30:20They had to vote, but their political influence was nothing.
30:25They had to vote, yeah?
30:26They had to vote, yes.
30:26Right.
30:27So they, as a plebeian, had to vote for a patrician...
30:30Yes.
30:30..to run their lives.
30:33Patrician, plebeian, rich, poor.
30:36Call them what you like.
30:38Ancient Rome was as unequal as any modern city.
30:42And as a Londoner myself,
30:44I have no trouble imagining struggling families
30:47living cheek by jowl with the well-to-do.
30:51I'm beginning to realise that the noble principles of Brutus
30:55and the founders of the Republic were just that.
30:57Noble.
30:59Designed by the nobility for the nobility.
31:02And, of course, now we have an underclass
31:04with no say in the way things are run,
31:06and I reckon that something's going to have to give.
31:13The plebeians had no real power,
31:16yet represented over 80% of the population
31:19and were the lifeblood of the Roman Republic.
31:25They farmed the land.
31:28And, in times of war,
31:30were expected to abandon their farms and fight.
31:34But many battle-weary plebs returned to find their land
31:38taken over by rich patricians.
31:42Finally, one indignant farmer shook Rome to its foundations.
31:48In 494 BC, an old man appeared at the Forum.
31:52He was thin, dirty and dressed in tattered rags.
31:55He was soon recognised as a former soldier renowned for his bravery
31:59who'd returned to find his home ransacked.
32:02As he began to tell his story, a crowd gathered around him.
32:07As a soldier, the man had fought hard for the Republic,
32:11but now his farm was destroyed, he was broke.
32:14He could no longer pay his taxes
32:15and was forced to borrow money he couldn't afford to repay.
32:21He'd been carried off by his creditor,
32:23not to slavery, but to the prison and the torture chamber.
32:27He then showed them his back,
32:29disfigured with the welts of recent scourging.
32:32Now, this single incident sparked off a shockwave of outrage
32:36that spread through the city like wildfire.
32:39Very soon, the entire working class was threatening to leave Rome
32:42and establish a city of their own.
32:47It was more than a general strike.
32:50Plebeian workers and tradesmen actually shut up shop
32:53and abandoned Rome.
32:55The patrician nobility watched in horror
32:58as their workforce and army deserted them.
33:04Something had to be done.
33:06And as you'd expect from the practical Romans, it was done.
33:11Their solution was a revolutionary new set of laws
33:15called the Twelve Tables.
33:19They were engraved on bronze,
33:22put up in a public space so you could see them,
33:24which would have given the Romans a first legal code.
33:28So it's a sort of Bill of Rights, is it?
33:31The critical thing is that what it's doing is writing down
33:35and setting out very publicly what your position in law is,
33:41what the rules are for society.
33:44The laws were written by a council of patrician senators
33:47around 450 BC.
33:50Plebeians were invited to study the laws,
33:53discuss them with their families,
33:55and to suggest refinements.
33:58So, Christopher, could you give us just a sort of an idea
34:00of the range of things that these covered?
34:04So one of the things that is protected here
34:06is not being defrauded,
34:08not being taken advantage of
34:11by somebody that you're in a relationship with.
34:13And we recognise that.
34:15If you're employed by somebody,
34:16that shouldn't tip over into an exploitative relationship.
34:20Some of them are about crimes
34:22that are perhaps a little more unusual to us.
34:24So, for instance,
34:25what happens if I cast a magic charm on your crops
34:29and your crops all die?
34:30Good question.
34:32So in terms of the struggle between the rich and the poor,
34:35what sort of a solution did this present?
34:38It's a really important moment
34:40in regularising relations
34:42between two groups in society
34:44which had managed to become defying themselves
34:47in opposition to each other.
34:49And this is one of the ways
34:51in which that opposition begins to dissolve.
34:54Because it gives a very clear statement
34:56of process, of penalty,
34:59which can't be tampered with by a rich person.
35:03These are fixed,
35:03so that you know what to expect
35:05if you get into trouble.
35:08Within weeks,
35:09the twelve tables ended the strike in Rome
35:12and the plebeians marched back into the city.
35:15This newly united Rome
35:17was represented by four iconic letters.
35:24Senatus Populusque Romanus,
35:27the Senate and the people of Rome.
35:29You see that sign all over the city.
35:32It was the brand of Rome
35:34that united the city's rich and poor
35:38under one common cause,
35:40the Republic.
35:42Rome's internal conflict was resolved
35:45when the senators and people of Rome
35:47now looked beyond their city.
35:49They eyed up their enemies
35:51and prepared to take their first decisive steps
35:55towards building an empire.
36:05They weren't all off to the council,
36:08they were in charge of the Supreme City.
36:09The CEO
36:09joined the siendo ofowed royal
37:09SPQR, the Senate and the People of Rome.
37:14I've discovered how 300 years after its foundation,
37:19these four letters unified Rome,
37:22so that by around 450 BC,
37:25the Republic's power and influence rivaled that of the Etruscans,
37:29their greatest foe.
37:32The Etruscans predated the Romans
37:35and controlled a large area of Italy.
37:38They were also ambitious,
37:40and the two sides had fought running battles for centuries.
37:44But now Rome was spoiling for a fight.
37:47There was only the river Tiber separating these two civilisations,
37:52with Rome and the Latins controlling the east
37:54and the Etruscans controlling the west.
37:56So a flashpoint was bound to occur.
37:59It was inevitable.
38:00But where would it happen?
38:01And more importantly, who would make the decisive move?
38:06For hundreds of years, the Romans had been asking that question.
38:10Or rather, they'd been asking the heavens.
38:13Which is why I want to explore the ancient Roman tradition of augury,
38:18the art of reading signs from the gods.
38:22It was key to every decision made in Rome,
38:25the city first founded on a divine blessing.
38:30Historian Darius Aria is taking me to the Auguraculum,
38:34a holy site where Romans practiced the mysterious art of augury,
38:40which, as well as bird spotting,
38:43included sacrificing animals to study their internal organs.
38:48Rome is on the brink of war.
38:50They need divine approval.
38:52How do they know they've got it?
38:53Well, that's a great question.
38:54Now, of course, they had their experts
38:56that were well-versed in the knowledge
38:59of the various lobes and components of a liver.
39:01But, of course, you also have this little bit of a guide.
39:04And this is a schematic of a bronze liver
39:07from Piacenza that was found.
39:09So, basically, it's sectioned off.
39:11So, you've got all the major gods going around the edges.
39:16And then you've got a further subdivision with lesser gods.
39:19You open up the animal, and they step in,
39:22and they take the liver, and they kind of parse it out.
39:25And if there's any kind of, say, deviation from the standard...
39:28Oh, my God, that's a really huge gallbladder.
39:31Well, that could be a kind of clue to you
39:33what a particular god is feeling or thinking
39:35and who you have to then further appease.
39:38Now, if you don't get the answer
39:40or you don't like the results,
39:42you can't sacrifice another animal.
39:45You kill another animal.
39:46So, the Romans are very...
39:48Pragmatic?
39:49Yes.
39:54Then, in 450 B.C.,
39:56the gods told the Romans to go for it.
39:59And the city geared up for total war against the Etruscans.
40:04But pragmatic Rome didn't rely on the will of the gods alone.
40:09To guarantee victory,
40:11the Republic turned to the policy they'd designed
40:13for just such a situation.
40:15They would nominate a dictator.
40:17For a power founded on the principle
40:19that no one man should ever rule,
40:22it seems remarkable now to appoint a dictator.
40:25But this was an extraordinary measure
40:27for use in extraordinary circumstances.
40:31The man they chose was Marcus Furius Camillus,
40:35a trusted statesman given a daunting task
40:39to destroy the Etruscans' major stronghold,
40:43the city of Vey.
40:45In 396 B.C., Camillus led a great army across the Tiber
40:50to lay siege to the city.
40:562,500 years later,
40:58I've travelled to the same spot
41:00in the hill country outside Rome
41:02to discover what happened to Camillus and his army.
41:07The archaeology shows one thing clearly.
41:11The battle was huge.
41:16All these artefacts were found here on the site, yes?
41:20Yes, they were,
41:21and most of them are evidence
41:23can be related to the battle itself.
41:26Yeah.
41:27There's wonderful projectiles.
41:29They're so heavy.
41:30They're so heavy, they're in lead.
41:31They're lead?
41:32They're lead, yes.
41:32So what, would these have been fired
41:34like bullets from a sling or something?
41:36Yeah, exactly.
41:36They were thrown.
41:37We do have different types of arrowheads,
41:40and they are in bronze,
41:42and they were probably used during the battle.
41:44They are much more than this.
41:45This is just a small selection.
41:47All these elements are the typical finds
41:51that we found during the course of the excavation.
41:56Spent ammunition covers nearly 500 acres,
42:00the sign of a massive drawn-out campaign,
42:03during which Camillus needed to keep his troops motivated.
42:08Up until now,
42:10every Roman male was expected to serve in the army
42:13as a matter of duty.
42:15Camillus was the first to offer a financial incentive to his men
42:18as well as a share of the spoils.
42:21And after a decade,
42:22his radical plan finally paid off.
42:27The dictator saw that victory was at last within his grasp,
42:31and that a city of great wealth
42:33was on the point of being taken,
42:34with booty more than if all previous wars had been put together.
42:39So, not only were they getting wages for the first time,
42:43but Camillus was offering his men a share
42:45in the greatest hall-of-war booty Rome had ever seen.
42:48Now, that was certainly going to get the boys fired up.
42:52If only they could find a way in.
42:55But ten years after they'd arrived at Vey,
42:58Camillus' army was still outside the walls,
43:00laying siege to the city.
43:02Until, according to Livy,
43:05they made an extraordinary breakthrough.
43:07And this could be a clue to it.
43:11This is an underground structure
43:13which the University of Rome discovered three years ago.
43:18This tunnel could prove an ancient myth is true.
43:23Livy describes how Camillus' men desperately searched
43:26for a way into the city
43:27and got lucky when they found a tunnel
43:31all the way to the city's temple.
43:34Hundreds of Roman soldiers scrambled in and lay in wait.
43:41Then, out of the blue,
43:43a sign from the gods,
43:45the sound of the Etruscans making a sacrifice.
43:49As they were hiding there,
43:51they heard a priest talking to the king of the Etruscans.
43:54As the king of the Veyentes was sacrificing,
43:57the Roman soldiers in the mine overheard the soothsayer
44:00declare that to him who should cut up the innards
44:03of that victim would be given the victory.
44:08The Romans in the tunnel grabbed their chance,
44:11burst into the temple,
44:13seized the sacrificial innards,
44:15and carried them off to their dictator Camillus.
44:18He took this as the blessing Rome needed.
44:22Camillus ordered a full-scale assault
44:25and obliterated their oldest foe.
44:29The Etruscan civilisation was doomed
44:32and Rome left them a forgotten people
44:36whilst the Republic marched on.
44:40Over the five centuries that followed,
44:43the Roman army and their gods
44:45would impose divine will all over the known world
44:49as they became the world's first superpower.
44:56Next time, my journey continues to Africa
44:59as I discover how the Republic took to the waves
45:03to build an empire,
45:06face down its greatest enemy, Hannibal,
45:09and wipe out an entire civilisation.
45:35The Etruscan
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