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Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts - Season 1 - Episode 03: What Have the Etruscans Ever Done for Us?
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00:03I'm on another train and another adventure into the past, but this is my most ambitious
00:10journey to date. I'm going in search of the Roman Empire.
00:20Taking the train, I'll be travelling 1,300 miles through Italy, France and Spain to discover
00:28its origins and the secrets of its success. I'll be exploring some well-known Roman sites.
00:35This is where you can hear Pompeii.
00:37And some unfamiliar ones.
00:40There is nobody here.
00:42From the massive.
00:43It's curved.
00:45Yeah.
00:45To the miniature.
00:46It's like a fourth century Barbie doll.
00:49I want to know how a single city comes to control such a vast territory.
00:55Experts from around the world will help me bring to life Roman culture.
00:59The sands of Capua become the jungles of India.
01:02And provide insights into why this empire was so successful.
01:07Who said the time machine does not exist? We got it.
01:12In this episode, I'm invited to descend into an ancient tomb.
01:17Even though the tomb looks empty, there might be some information here.
01:21Yeah.
01:21There could be.
01:22I swapped the train for a less comfortable ride.
01:25OK, some bumps coming up.
01:26You ready for this?
01:32And discover that the Roman Empire looted more than material wealth.
01:37It's all feeling as though the Romans have kind of stolen Etruscan culture.
01:49This time, I'm in the very beating heart of the empire.
01:57Italy's mesmerising capital city of Rome.
02:02Just setting foot on these streets is both exhilarating and slightly overwhelming.
02:10It's a bustling and vibrant modern city,
02:13home to the Catholic Church and Europe's biggest university.
02:17But it's also a dazzling living monument to the power once wielded by the Roman Empire
02:24and home to some of the world's most celebrated ancient sites.
02:29At its peak early in the second century CE,
02:33Rome was the jewel in the crown of an empire stretching 1.9 million square miles.
02:39The ancient city had a population of over a million people,
02:44larger than any other in Europe until the 19th century.
02:49It was the global centre for architecture, science, medicine and engineering.
03:09It's my first time back in Rome since around 25 years ago,
03:14when I spent all of two hours here, but I'm planning to make up for that now.
03:19Rome are 24 hours. That is, I think, what I need.
03:26Hello. This is my ticket to Rome.
03:33The Rome Metro is Italy's first rapid transit system, dating back to 1955.
03:41With 73 stations and 37 miles of track,
03:45it carries over 800,000 commuters and a significant number of tourists every day.
03:55I want to get a flavour of what life is like for a local in one of Europe's most visited
04:00cities,
04:00so I'm heading towards one of Rome's premier tourist destinations
04:04to meet tour guide and resident Edwin Salnitro.
04:11Edwin.
04:12Hello.
04:13Buongiorno.
04:14Buongiorno.
04:15Oh, we're Italian.
04:16How are you?
04:17Very good.
04:18Great.
04:19So we're just on the edge of the forum here.
04:22That's amazing.
04:23You're living in this 21st century city, which has got all this very obvious history.
04:30Amazing, upstanding archaeology.
04:32What does that mean to you as a Roman today?
04:35Um, OK, I think you are like a tourist.
04:39So you just walk, you enjoy the city and you say, wow, I'm here.
04:44Yeah.
04:44But when you are working in Rome, you must park your car in Rome.
04:49It's a little bit different.
04:51So sometimes as a Roman, you must do like, you must live like a tourist just to enjoy it.
04:57Enjoy it, yeah.
04:57Because you have the, OK, all the Romans.
05:00So the foundation, the seven kings, the republic age, the emperors.
05:04After you have the pope's kingdom, the church.
05:07Yeah.
05:08So 900 churches, a lot of fountains.
05:12900 churches in Rome.
05:13900 churches and also 1,500 fountains.
05:19So that's why it was called back in time, but also still now, Regina Aquarum, the queen of the water.
05:26The queen of the water.
05:29Ancient Rome's crowning glory was a system of elevated aqueducts that, fueled only by gravity,
05:37delivered water to over a thousand drinking fountains.
05:41These fountains came to symbolize Roman prosperity and engineering prowess.
05:47Two millennia later, water is piped directly into the homes of the city's three million residents,
05:52but there are still public fountains.
05:56So you've got fountains throughout the city which are still fresh drinking water today.
06:00Yes, you can drink from each one.
06:02That's why we have that small fountains called Nazone.
06:07Nazone means big nose.
06:09Big nose.
06:10Because of the shape.
06:11Because of the spout.
06:12Yeah.
06:13Yeah.
06:14We love nickname.
06:17Oh.
06:18This Nazone you can find all over the city.
06:22OK.
06:22Two thousand and five hundred.
06:25Oh, really?
06:26And you must know how to drink from this fountain.
06:28So, can you show me?
06:30Let me see.
06:30I would have to get down here, I think.
06:32OK.
06:32And maybe do that.
06:34Wrong way.
06:35No.
06:35Sorry.
06:36Wrong way.
06:36Can I show you?
06:37Yes, please.
06:38OK.
06:39Ah.
06:39OK.
06:41Get ready.
06:42Get ready.
06:44Ole.
06:44Oh, brilliant.
06:46Oh, I didn't spot that hole.
06:48Yeah.
06:49And this for two reasons.
06:51The first one.
06:52Here, dogs.
06:55Yes.
06:56Second one, we are lazy.
06:58So, we can't do, ah, no.
07:00Yeah, yeah.
07:01We are lazy, so just like this.
07:02Ah.
07:03Mmm.
07:05That's so much easier.
07:07Well, you made it look easy.
07:09I don't know if it is that easy.
07:10Let's try it.
07:10Yeah.
07:11Oh, hang on.
07:12Perfect.
07:14Great.
07:15Lovely.
07:16Yeah.
07:16That's refreshing.
07:17Yeah.
07:17And now you know how to drink, so you can enjoy.
07:20Fantastic.
07:20From the big noses.
07:28Oh, it's so picturesque, isn't it?
07:29Every time you turn a corner and you just get this beautiful view.
07:32Yeah.
07:32It's everywhere.
07:33Yeah.
07:33Every, everywhere.
07:38I've only been to Rome once before.
07:41A long time ago.
07:43Yeah.
07:43And I was only here for two hours.
07:45And I came into the centre.
07:47I looked at Trader's Column.
07:49I looked at the Colosseum.
07:50And then I left.
07:52Oh.
07:52Knowing that I'd have to come back.
07:54Yeah.
07:56Edwin thinks that a return to one of these sites might help me better understand what fired
08:01this city's hunger for power.
08:05The most beautiful thing here and interesting is the first Instagram story in the world,
08:13the Column of Trajan.
08:16By a spiral way, they record the wars, the battles that he won.
08:22Yeah.
08:22So that's why we can say an old Instagram story.
08:25Yeah.
08:26It is, isn't it?
08:26It's public display.
08:28Yeah.
08:28Look what I've done.
08:29The Emperor Trajan commissioned this column to mark his triumph over the mighty Dacian Empire
08:36of Eastern Europe.
08:38A war that lasted six years.
08:40Building this column took seven.
08:44It is huge.
08:45How tall is it?
08:46Yeah, it's like 30 metres.
08:48Yeah.
08:49Like an ancient comic strip, the column features 155 scenes carved in a spiral frieze on 20 drums
08:58of finest Carrara marble, ensuring Romans far and wide could revel in their latest conquest.
09:06Trajan was not born in Rome, but outside the city.
09:10Where did he come from?
09:11In the actual Spain.
09:13It was Spanish, we can say.
09:14Okay.
09:14And was also the first emperor not elected by family, like the dynasty Flavius.
09:20Yeah.
09:21But was elected because he was a great man.
09:24So that's why he had this column.
09:27How did Trajan become emperor then?
09:29He's not in the dynasty.
09:30He's not born into it.
09:32Is he coming from a military background?
09:34Yes.
09:35Perfect.
09:35Because it just, step by step, we can say in Italy, we say Gavetta.
09:40When you start from down and step by step you become powerful, powerful, powerful.
09:45It was like a star.
09:47Yeah.
09:50Trajan knew that he could ensure his popularity by plundering fresh riches for the glory of Rome,
09:57making sure, of course, that everyone knew about it.
10:00During his rule, the empire reached its largest extent, and he marked that by building the fifth
10:06and grandest of all Rome's forums.
10:09A huge town square in front of a massive new basilica, Rome's biggest ever city hall,
10:16of which only the columns remain today.
10:18Should we walk down here then, round the edge of the forum?
10:21Yeah.
10:22Having outshone the previous grandiose efforts of Julius Caesar and Augustus,
10:28this was also the last imperial forum.
10:31The density of Rome's buildings made clearing space for such lavish projects impossible.
10:38As this current construction site illustrates, Rome remains a city literally buried in its own history.
10:46Before, over there, there was like a little square.
10:49Yeah.
10:49Now, work in progress, a metro stop, a metro station.
10:54So, they went underneath and they discovered something, everything.
10:58Yeah.
10:58Like a big laundry coming from the second century after Christ.
11:03Everywhere you dig, you're going to find archaeology here.
11:06Everywhere.
11:06Everywhere.
11:06Yeah.
11:07In fact, to understand a little bit the city, you must think lasagna.
11:12Yeah.
11:13Because different layers.
11:14Because underneath, we have the ancient Rome.
11:17We discover less than the 20% of the ancient city.
11:22Yeah, of course.
11:23So, nothing.
11:24Just nothing.
11:25Yeah, yeah.
11:25Because some of it's, well, most of it is underneath existing buildings.
11:28Underneath, yeah.
11:29The first layer of our lasagna.
11:31Yeah.
11:31Yeah.
11:32So, looking around here, you've got Rome through the ages.
11:36Yeah.
11:36You've got 20th century Rome.
11:38Yeah.
11:39All the way back to nearly 2,000 years ago.
11:42Yeah.
11:42It's everything, isn't it?
11:43Here, you can find something that you will never find in another place.
11:48Only here.
11:49Thank you so much, Edmund.
11:50It's been brilliant.
11:51It's lovely to look at Rome with a Roman and to think about that lasagna-like layering
11:59of all that history.
12:01Absolutely brilliant.
12:01It was a pleasure.
12:02It was a real pleasure.
12:09Rome's unique lasagna of historical treasures is well documented.
12:13But I'm heading to Roman roads less travelled to see for myself the single biggest driver
12:21of Roman expansion.
12:30I've travelled south of the historical centre of Rome to see a monumental feat of engineering
12:36that many consider the driving force behind the spread of the Roman Empire.
12:44Jason.
12:45Hello, Alice.
12:47Welcome to the Appian Way.
12:49Thank you so much.
12:50And an American historian called Jason Spieler knows all about this most celebrated of Roman roads.
12:59So, this is actually the Appian Way, is it?
13:02This is the Appian Way.
13:03You have these modern paving stones that we call the Sampietrini.
13:09Underneath that, is the original Roman road down there?
13:12It is indeed.
13:13If we tore these up, we would find the stratum, right, the layers of the ancient road,
13:18still supporting the modern road.
13:20They went roughly five feet down.
13:23They did different layers, the layers of chunky stone, finer stone, finer stone,
13:28a layer of concrete, then the paving stones, and they built this thing to last.
13:35And it really has lasted, still carrying traffic today.
13:40Look out, you're going to get run over on the Appian Way.
13:42Come here, come here.
13:46Construction began in 312 BCE,
13:48and the road eventually stretched 350 miles to the port city of Brindisi on Italy's southeast coast.
13:58And the purpose of this road, then, is this about Rome expanding its power base?
14:03Indeed.
14:04The primary purpose was militarily.
14:07They were trying to conquer and subjugate the Samnite people down in the south of Italy.
14:13Yeah.
14:13And they were sort of a difficult group to subjugate.
14:16But by building this road, you're able to resupply the army from the city of Rome.
14:23And Appian relates to the man who ordered it to be built.
14:27Claudius Appius.
14:28Yeah.
14:28And who is he?
14:29He was a censor.
14:31So, he's the one who orders the construction of this road.
14:34Yeah.
14:34And he is also the one who orders the construction of the first aqueduct.
14:37Ah.
14:38So, very forward-looking gentlemen,
14:41realising if the Romans had infrastructural advantages.
14:45Yeah, yeah.
14:45They would have, well, you know, they would have an advantage over their rivals.
14:49And then once the Romans get this taste for building roads, they don't stop.
14:53They end up building hundreds of highways that crisscrossed and interconnected the entire empire.
14:59At its peak, 373 great roads formed a network stretching 250,000 miles, connecting every corner of the vast empire.
15:12And I think the logistics of this are what is really mind-blowing to think that in the 4th century
15:17BCE,
15:17you've got somebody who is basically in charge of logistics for the Roman Republic.
15:23And he has this vision of a road which is going to underpin the latest success of the Republic and
15:31then the Empire.
15:32Indeed.
15:33Spurring military advantages, trade advantages, commercial advantages for all of Rome.
15:38And it really starts right here, on this road here.
15:44With little room left for construction in central Rome,
15:47one emperor identified the outskirts along the Appian Way as the happening new place to immortalise himself.
15:55So remember, it would have been incredibly expensive to have even just a small plot of land on the Appian
16:01Way.
16:01And here, the emperor takes this massive space.
16:04So this is a statement, right, that he has arrived.
16:09On becoming emperor in 306 CE, Maxentius snapped up this 80-acre plot of land two miles along the original
16:18road.
16:21There are so few tourists here.
16:23Very few tourists here.
16:24Yeah.
16:25This is one of these, you know, kind of off-the-beaten-track sites in the city.
16:29This is a wonderful place.
16:33Maxentius' tilts at immortality saw him commission a grand residence, a mausoleum and his own personal sporting arena.
16:45So is this the circus?
16:47This is it.
16:48Oh, wow.
16:50So the precedent for this is the Circus Maximus.
16:53The Circus Maximus also had two towers at the entrance.
16:57Yeah.
16:57They don't survive any longer.
16:59This circus is much better preserved than the Circus Maximus.
17:04The Circus Maximus, the great circus, was the home of chariot racing in Rome, regularly attracting 250,000 spectators.
17:15Maxentius wanted something almost as large for himself.
17:18It's not quite as big as the Circus Maximus, but it's not considerably smaller either.
17:24The length of this is a little over 500 metres.
17:27Circus Maximus was just a little bit over 600 metres.
17:30Yeah.
17:30So it's not much smaller.
17:32Not much smaller.
17:32Yeah.
17:33So you can imagine chariots tearing around here.
17:37Now I've heard in Capua, looking at the amphitheatre there, about the fame and fortune that the gladiators could achieve.
17:45Was it the same for charioteers?
17:47Absolutely.
17:47Absolutely.
17:48These were the rock star athletes of the ancient world.
17:51Yeah.
17:51Remember as well that chariot racing is more popular even than the games of the amphitheatre.
17:55Is it really?
17:56They were, the games were cheaper to put on.
17:58Yeah.
17:58They were more frequent.
17:59Okay.
18:00And the capacity of these circuses, all right, are much bigger than the capacities of the amphitheatres.
18:06Yeah.
18:06So the number one spectator sport for the ancient Romans was the chariot racing.
18:12But not much racing was seen here.
18:16Just six years into his reign, Maxentius was killed in battle by his successor Constantine,
18:22who later left Rome to establish a new imperial capital in modern day Turkey, leaving this estate to fall into
18:31ruin.
18:33Well, I'm going to leave the circus of Maxentius, imagining the thunder of the chariots,
18:38and I'm going to go and thunder my way down the Appian Way and check out some of these other
18:42archaeological sites.
18:44That's a good idea.
18:59Okay, some bumps coming up.
19:00You ready for this?
19:09Yeah, I wouldn't recommend doing the Via Appian Antica on a bicycle that doesn't have front shocks.
19:18I've got front shocks.
19:19I quite like to have back shocks as well, actually.
19:24Gonna have a sore bum.
19:29But how amazing to be making my way along the first Roman road.
19:41Everywhere you go along this road, of course, there are Roman monuments.
19:46There's a bit over there.
19:48Headless statue.
19:51There's another bit over there.
19:54And this runs through this fantastic archaeological park.
20:00And then somewhere along here, there's a really beautifully preserved villa.
20:09The villa of the Quintilli.
20:13And when this was discovered, it was called Roma Vecchia, Old Rome.
20:20Because it was so enormous, they thought they had literally found the original city of Rome.
20:24But it is just an enormous villa.
20:30Here we go.
20:38The villa complex sprawls over 60 acres, almost 40 football pitches.
20:49It was built around the year 150 CE by high-ranking public officials, the Quintilli brothers.
20:56And we know this because of a piece of lead.
21:00Having internal plumbing was so prestigious in Roman times that those who could afford it often stamped their pipes.
21:11Oh, look at this.
21:12It's absolutely palatial.
21:16I mean, it's a ruin, but what?
21:18What a palace.
21:19What a pile.
21:20was a castle in life.
21:27Are the princess all
21:28what wereKitous, given a secret villa.
21:33Despite the lofty status of the Quintiles, in the year 182, the Emperor Commodus had thewr
21:40brothers arrested on trumped-up charges and executed.
21:46leaving Commodus free to commandeer this sumptuous villa for himself
21:50and all its ground-breaking gizmos.
21:54There's another classic bit of Roman engineering here.
21:58I mean, we've seen the wonders of the road, the Appian Way.
22:02Here are the wonders of underfloor heating
22:05and what we've got are these towers of thick tiles, these pili,
22:11and the floor, which is this, is supported on these
22:15and it would have stretched right the way across this rather enormous banqueting hall.
22:20And this is the winter dining room,
22:23so in wintertime you'd have slaves stoking a furnace
22:26and the hot air circulating under the floor.
22:30So underfloor heating, the Romans worked that out first.
22:48Oh my goodness me, this is enormous.
22:50This is such a huge palace.
22:52And you're getting an impression of the incredible wealth
22:57that Rome was amassing.
23:00You know, as this project grew to encompass the whole of Italy
23:06and then of course most of Southern Europe
23:10and the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa
23:15and the money was pouring in
23:18and it all comes back to Rome.
23:43So believe it or not, I'm still following the Via Appia Antica,
23:48the old Appian Way.
23:50It's down here, running right underneath the floor of McDonald's.
23:55Oh, it's just fantastic.
23:58While constructing the restaurant in 2014,
24:02builders uncovered this offshoot of the Appian Way,
24:05which McDonald's decided to integrate into their design,
24:10bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase,
24:12when in Rome.
24:18Next, an old friend has managed to get access
24:21to an active archaeological dig
24:23that's shedding new light
24:25on where the Romans got some of their best ideas.
24:35My old friend, archaeologist Emma Bentley,
24:38just happens to be in Italy.
24:39Emma!
24:40I can't believe you're in Rome.
24:42I cannot believe this.
24:43This is amazing.
24:44Yay!
24:45Amazing, amazing.
24:47Emma has secured exclusive access to a dig going on right now,
24:51which is uncovering staggering new details about the Etruscans,
24:56who ruled much of Italy before Rome's rise.
25:00The site's up in the hills of Barbarano Romano,
25:04about 40 miles north of Rome.
25:07It's really exciting to go to a dig that's actually happening.
25:11And I do want to know more about how the Etruscans relate
25:17to the ancient Romans.
25:20This must be 1st millennium BCE, or even earlier.
25:25Yeah, much earlier, 9th century BCE.
25:27Wow, so this goes back to the kind of foundation myths of Rome,
25:31doesn't it?
25:32Yes, and before.
25:33I think it was meant to be founded in the 8th century BCE,
25:37and then you've got seven kind of legendary kings,
25:42but they've got Etruscan names.
25:48Etruscan culture flourished around central Italy
25:52from the 8th to the 4th centuries BCE,
25:55with a federation of 12 cities
25:58becoming the first superpower of the Western Mediterranean.
26:03I'm hoping this site might shed some light
26:06on what Italy was like
26:07before Rome began its meteoric rise to power.
26:13So this is a lovely picnic spot.
26:16Yeah.
26:16Where's the archaeological site?
26:18It's just down here.
26:22We're greeted by Professor David Zori, the site director.
26:26Hi, David.
26:27Lovely to meet you.
26:28This is Professor Alice Roberts.
26:30Hi, Alice.
26:30Alice, nice to meet you.
26:31Hi, nice to meet you, too.
26:35So you've got a team of students digging here over the summer?
26:38Yes.
26:38Two teams of about 15 people at each site.
26:44Around half of the students are busy on the hill
26:47exploring the Hightown, or Acropolis,
26:52while the rest are down here
26:54working under the watchful eye of archaeologist Dr Jamie Aprile
26:58on the cemetery or necropolis.
27:01This is the necropolis here, is it?
27:03This is the necropolis area,
27:04and if we go around to the other side,
27:06you can see a little bit better
27:07the giant bedrock feature that we're digging.
27:11It's a huge burial tumulus.
27:15Recently excavated Etruscan tombs here
27:17resemble lavishly decorated homes
27:20filled with pottery, ornaments, weapons and jewellery,
27:24a reflection of the Etruscan belief
27:27that the afterlife is merely an extension of life.
27:31And when does this date to?
27:32About the 7th century BC,
27:34the end of the 7th century BC.
27:36Wow.
27:38This tomb dates from around the same time
27:41as the legendary foundation of Rome
27:43by the brothers Romulus and Remus.
27:48Is this a tomb for one individual or several?
27:51What was the funerary ritual at the time?
27:53It was most likely several individuals,
27:56but unfortunately the soil in this area
27:58is a very dense, acidic clay,
28:00and it dissolves the bones.
28:03And over the centuries, they've just dissolved.
28:06We found a couple of dog teeth,
28:08and we sent those with some soil samples
28:11to our ancient DNA specialist
28:12who's working on a process
28:14to extract DNA from soil deposits.
28:16And so we're going to see if she can come up
28:18with any human DNA from that soil as well
28:20since we didn't find any obviously human bones
28:23that were testable.
28:24It's always worth trying, isn't it?
28:26It is worth trying.
28:26Because you've got these really important questions
28:28about who the Etruscans were
28:29and where they came from
28:31and what their connections were
28:32that are interesting culturally,
28:34but also biologically as well.
28:36Are you going to try to climb in?
28:38Go on then.
28:42I'm wishing I'd worn trousers today
28:44rather than my dress, but...
28:45Touching the rock over on the side.
28:46There we go.
28:54All right, come on in.
28:58Oh, it's quite big.
29:00Do you know what?
29:00This reminds me of the ancient Greek beehive tombs,
29:04in a way.
29:06Etruscan culture is linked with Greece,
29:09but recent genetic studies have shown
29:11that it was homegrown in Italy.
29:14And the mud here might hold further clues
29:16to Etruscan identity.
29:18So this is sedimentary ancient DNA.
29:21You're looking at trying to extract DNA from mud.
29:23From mud, yes.
29:24I was shocked when she told me about it.
29:27I was like, here are some samples.
29:28See what you can do.
29:29Yeah, that would be amazing.
29:31So even though the tomb looks empty,
29:32there might be some information here.
29:34Yeah, there could be.
29:35Did you find anything else in here?
29:36During X-Wing?
29:38Yeah, there was a lance point in that little niche right there.
29:41Oh.
29:42There would have been stone platforms over these.
29:45We have them fragmentary outside.
29:46We took them out.
29:48So these rocks had slabs on top, did they?
29:51Yes, yes.
29:51Forming a sort of bench.
29:53And this is probably about the level
29:55where the bench would have been.
29:57Yeah, yeah.
29:58And so this is more like a platform
29:59where they would have placed offerings
30:01or an ossuary for past burials,
30:03and then they would have interred the dead
30:05in an inhumation style on these platforms.
30:08And then when the tomb would be reopened and reused,
30:11they could gather up the remains if they wanted to,
30:13place them in a secondary container,
30:15and place a new person in there.
30:17And this is a period of time
30:19when legendarily Rome is starting,
30:22when we've got the kind of the kingdom of Rome.
30:25Yes, the history of Rome
30:26is the same as the history of the Etruscan cities.
30:29It's just that Rome,
30:31through its interest in martial activities,
30:33ended up creating this sequence of alliances
30:35that brought them into greater dominion, right,
30:38through the sort of foreign policy
30:40of all these communities.
30:41So do you think if Rome hadn't developed
30:43in the way that it did
30:44and been built on over the centuries,
30:47they would have seen a city of the living
30:49and an acropolis of the dead,
30:51if we go back this far?
30:52Yes, probably.
30:54And the difference is that this place
30:55became abandoned in Rome.
30:57It grew bigger and bigger and bigger.
31:00Do you think there are more Etruscan settlements
31:02that have been...
31:03Oh, certainly.
31:03...that are lying out there yet to be discovered?
31:05Yeah.
31:06The local people know where they are.
31:07Do they?
31:08We just have to make friends enough for them to tell us.
31:10Yeah.
31:10Local knowledge.
31:11Yeah.
31:12You have to use the local knowledge when it's there.
31:15Yeah.
31:16So, should we move out to the city of the living?
31:19Yeah.
31:23Oh, that's just incredible.
31:24I wasn't expecting that.
31:28Thanks, Emma.
31:30Oh, pleasure.
31:31I just wanted to go second.
31:33Yes!
31:38Professor Zori now leads me and Emma
31:41to the land of the Etruscan living,
31:43a town mysteriously abandoned in the 3rd century
31:47and just as mysteriously reoccupied in medieval times.
31:54We're on top of the Acropolis now
31:57and we've got a team excavating here
32:00inside a medieval castle,
32:01but we're reaching Etruscan levels.
32:03Hello.
32:04Hello, everybody.
32:05Hi.
32:06We're landing on you to film your dig.
32:10Oh.
32:10Colleen, do you want to come say hello?
32:13Hi there.
32:13Hello, hello.
32:14I'm Alice.
32:15I'm Colleen.
32:16Hello.
32:17This is a family affair.
32:19David is the husband of archaeologist Dr. Colleen Zori,
32:23who's also leading this project.
32:26It's amazing to come somewhere
32:28that's still being investigated.
32:30Sure, very active, exactly.
32:31Yeah.
32:32You know, the Etruscans were incredible managers
32:35of the landscape
32:36and one of the biggest things you have to contend with
32:38in this area is water.
32:41Yeah, yeah.
32:41Too much water in the winter,
32:43too little water in the summer.
32:44And so, in order to drain these plateau tops
32:49and reduce erosion,
32:50they put in these cuniculi.
32:52They have a tube that goes down
32:54and then a shaft and then horizontal tubes.
32:57Yeah.
32:57A drain pipe.
32:59A drain pipe, exactly.
33:00Sewage system.
33:00Sewage system.
33:02This is something that actually was expanded
33:04and then maintained by the medieval people.
33:08Yeah, yeah.
33:08And we think about the Romans being masters
33:10of water management,
33:13also of roads
33:14and moving things around the landscape.
33:17I mean, how were the Etruscans doing
33:18back in the first millennium BCE?
33:21They were sort of pathfinders in some ways
33:24for the Romans
33:25and harbingers of things the Romans would do.
33:28So, both for roads and water management,
33:30I think the Etruscans had a lot to teach the Romans.
33:32So, we think about the Romans being innovators,
33:36inventing raids,
33:37inventing water management and aqueducts.
33:39The Etruscans got there first.
33:40They did.
33:41They did.
33:42Arches, supposedly, too.
33:43And togas.
33:44Okay.
33:45So, it's all feeling as though
33:48the Romans have kind of stolen Etruscan culture.
33:52I think if you were in the 700s or 600s
33:55and looking at the central Italian landscape
33:58and the civilisation here,
33:59the Etruscans would be the civilised peoples.
34:02Yeah.
34:02And the Romans would be the kind of upstart
34:05group of villages.
34:06So, this culture's permeating southwards
34:09towards what becomes Rome.
34:11And then eventually the Romans turn around
34:13and go, actually, we're in charge now.
34:15We're in charge now.
34:17Yeah.
34:18Yeah, things changed.
34:19Oh, it's really interesting, isn't it?
34:21The best thing to do as an empire
34:23is to take advantage of the wisdom
34:25of the areas that you conquer.
34:27So, sometimes, you conquer people
34:29that are actually more sophisticated politically
34:32than you are,
34:33but who just couldn't field a big enough army
34:35to turn you back.
34:36And in that way, then, you come and you say,
34:38oh, here are the things.
34:40We'll take your water management specialists
34:42and we'll use them to do what we need to have done
34:46now in our lands.
34:48And, you know, that's what you get to do as an empire.
34:54What an incredible sight.
34:57Nestled away, tucked away like a secret in the landscape here
35:01and barely investigated until now.
35:06And what's really astonishing to think about
35:08is that if we go back to the 7th, 8th century BCE,
35:13this would have been exactly what Rome would have been like,
35:17a hilltop settlement,
35:19but instead of here on the Palatine Hill,
35:23probably surrounded by a necropolis
35:25in exactly the same way.
35:27But whereas this site was abandoned,
35:33Rome would grow and grow and grow.
35:43I'm leaving one Etruscan settlement
35:45that didn't develop into a Roman town
35:48and travelling north to see one that did.
35:53At this stage, I feel as though I've got a really rich understanding
35:59of what Roman culture and civilisation was about,
36:03the militaristic nature of the society,
36:06the importance of engineering,
36:08of road building and aqueducts.
36:12All of that is crucial, I think, to Rome's success.
36:18But what I really want to understand now
36:20is what happens as we get towards the end of the first millennium BCE.
36:25And what had been a very successful republic
36:29transforms itself into an empire.
36:33How does that happen?
36:35As I continue my journey,
36:37that's the crucial question
36:39that I want to find the answer to.
37:05I'm passing through the beautiful Tuscan countryside.
37:11I might actually get to see some of it now.
37:14Oh, and it is gorgeous.
37:18It's a very different landscape here.
37:20You know, I started my journey
37:22down on the flanks of Vesuvius around Naples
37:28and that landscape had its own character.
37:31And then moving up to Rome and the plain of Latium,
37:34and now I'm well into the hills of Tuscany.
37:39And it's beautiful.
37:41Look at that.
37:45I'm travelling to a town close to the city of Florence
37:48to further explore the role Etruscan ideas played
37:52in the rise of the Roman Empire.
37:56The small town of Fiesole was Etruscan
38:00until taken over by the Romans in the first century BCE.
38:05Archaeologist Francesco Tanganelli is my guide
38:08and keen to show me physical evidence
38:11of how Roman culture evolved out of local Etruscan traditions.
38:17Francesco, hi, Alice.
38:19Hi, buongiorno.
38:21Buongiorno.
38:22I'm very happy to meet you here.
38:25Oh, my goodness.
38:25In the archaeological area of Fiesole.
38:28Isn't this beautiful?
38:30Yes.
38:30It's a very beautiful and wide archaeological park.
38:34Can we get down into the site and have a look around?
38:37Yes, yes.
38:37We can go to see first the Etruscan Roman temple.
38:40Yeah.
38:40OK.
38:40That would be lovely.
38:45This is the staircase of the Roman temple.
38:50But if you come with me and you give a look beyond,
38:56you can see another staircase to the central room
39:00of the ancient Etruscan temple, where the archaeologists
39:04started to dig under the Etruscan cella.
39:08There was a small howl.
39:11And do you know the howl was the symbol of Minerva?
39:15Yes.
39:15The ancient Greek Athena, so the goddess of wisdom.
39:19And so probably in this temple, the ancient inhabitants
39:23of Fiesole worshipped the goddess Minerva,
39:27or in Etruscan, if you want, Menerva.
39:30So you know that there was an Etruscan goddess called?
39:33Yes, yes.
39:33What's the difference?
39:35Menerva.
39:36Menerva.
39:36Menerva.
39:42Menerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, whose symbol was the owl.
39:47But like so many things Roman, they inherited her from the Etruscans,
39:53who, while trading with the Greeks in the 8th century,
39:56had helped themselves to their goddess of wisdom, Athena.
40:02I love all these cultural connections between the Etruscans and the Greeks and the Romans.
40:07Yes, yes.
40:09That's a bit more than just a plunge pool there.
40:12Yes, this was one swimming pool in open air, one, and there is also a second one swimming pool.
40:19A lido.
40:21It had its own lido.
40:23Oh, my goodness.
40:24Oh, my goodness.
40:25But as well as this open air pool, there's a whole bathhouse here, including a version of something I saw
40:32at the Villa of the Quintilli.
40:34And presumably this would have been slaves here, stoking these furnaces, keeping them going.
40:39Yes, yes, yes, this was work for slaves, yes.
40:40Yeah.
40:41But the slaves here weren't heating a dining room floor.
40:46Inspired by the Etruscan fondness for bathing in natural thermal springs, the Romans of Fiesole decided to create their own.
40:56Where there was no thermal springs, so they heated the water and the air to create an artificial thermal bath.
41:05Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? So you think the idea came from natural thermal waters to begin with?
41:10And then other people thought, hang on a minute, we can do this, we can actually heat the water ourselves,
41:15we can engineer this.
41:17Yes, they were great engineers.
41:19Yeah, yeah.
41:21But there's one piece of Roman political engineering I'm still trying to fathom.
41:29I want to know how, in 27 BCE, Augustus managed to elect himself the Emperor of Rome,
41:37bringing down the curtain on 500 years of democracy.
41:43I wanted to talk to you about the Roman Republic and how it turns into an empire.
41:50Suddenly, it switches from being a republic to being an empire with one man in charge.
41:57How on earth does that happen?
41:59Consider that in the age of Augustus, the inhabitants of Rome saw at least three civil wars.
42:08He presented himself as the saviour.
42:11So he's basically saying, you know, we've had this dreadful period of civil war and I'm the person who can
42:18stop this.
42:19Yes.
42:20But I can only do it if I'm your emperor and I stay put and I have all the power
42:25myself.
42:25Yes.
42:26The image of a saviour and the image of a man who can bring the peace in the whole of
42:33the empire.
42:34So people admired him and wanted to be ruled by him.
42:39But Augustus was so clever that he was able to gain more and more power, giving them the impression that
42:49nothing has changed.
42:51And then after Augustus, that's it. I mean, it is an empire after that.
42:55It doesn't go back to being a republic at all.
42:58No, no, no, no. It remained an empire until the end of that world.
43:04Yeah.
43:05It's almost by stealth, isn't it?
43:08Yeah.
43:08Without people noticing.
43:10You wake up the next morning and go, ah, we seem to have an emperor.
43:17It's a very persistent bell.
43:19Yes.
43:20I wonder why.
43:21What's happening?
43:22I don't know.
43:23But it's nice to hear the campanile in action.
43:27As the bell tolls on my trip to Fiesole, I head to nearby Florence.
43:32The cradle of the Renaissance.
43:36To take in the splendour of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and its renowned dome.
43:43Just as the Romans built on the legacies of the Etruscans, so the Medici borrowed heavily from two certain empires.
43:53What an absolutely amazing building.
43:56It is mind-blowing.
43:58I mean, what a feat of architecture and engineering.
44:02And the man whose job it was to engineer that dome up there, the Duomo, was Brunelleschi.
44:13And it's thought that he'd travelled to Rome and looked at Roman domes.
44:19And basically that's how he came up with his engineering solution to spanning the enormous width of the octagonal end
44:27of this cathedral with a dome.
44:31A dome that's actually made of two shells.
44:33And this was, of course, the Renaissance.
44:36The rebirth.
44:38What's it, the rebirth of?
44:40The classical world.
44:42All things Greek and Roman.
44:51After a long day, I enjoy a little Renaissance of my own.
44:57All in the name of historical research, of course.
45:02Whoa, that's strong.
45:04I'm in Florence, so I have to have a Negroni.
45:07It was invented here, apparently, in 1919 by Count Camillo Negroni.
45:11He was drinking something called an Americano, which had Campari and vermouth and soda water, but he wanted it a
45:18bit stronger.
45:18So he asked the bartender to switch the soda water for gin.
45:23Cheers.
45:28It's nice though.
45:34Next time.
45:36Right, where are we now?
45:38This is Parma.
45:40I get a taste of Northern Italy.
45:43God damn it.
45:44Italy is a bastion of bread culture that has been unchanged for millennia.
45:49And I travel across the Alps to the city they call the Rome of France.
45:55It's not what you expect to find going on in a Roman temple.
46:03Sun, sea and seriously smart savings with bargain holiday secrets.
46:08Stream now ahead of your next lot of holiday hacks this Tuesday at eight.
46:12Next, Steven Spielberg casts Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen in The Fablemans.
46:18This based October year what!
46:28New clan and Seth Rogen in The Fable repo
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