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00:00:02Just imagine you had all the money in the world, while your poor neighbor down the road is struggling to
00:00:09make ends meet.
00:00:12In this series, I'm teaming up with historian Ruth Goodman to discover how some of history's most famous events were
00:00:19experienced by the rich.
00:00:21And by the poor.
00:00:24Will your fortunes be down to luck, resilience, or cold hard cash?
00:00:30This time, we're jumping back almost 2,000 years to 122 AD, when Rome ruled Britain.
00:00:38I'm ready for my toga.
00:00:39And the most powerful man on earth was about to pay a visit.
00:00:44Emperor Hadrian.
00:00:46I'll be following the people at the top, enjoying a taste of Roman high life here in Britain.
00:00:51And I'll be looking at the sharp end.
00:00:55Discovering what life was like for ordinary workers and for slaves.
00:00:59But when Emperor Hadrian arrived, anyone's fortunes could change in an instant.
00:01:05Just with a click of his fingers, could have them set to the lions.
00:01:09Rich or poor, your neck was on the line.
00:01:32London, 122 AD.
00:01:35Or as the Romans called it, Londinium.
00:01:39The city was booming.
00:01:42Around 26,000 people lived here in half a square mile.
00:01:46And it was all ruled from Rome by one man.
00:01:5146-year-old Emperor Hadrian.
00:01:55Hadrian was the most important person in the Western world.
00:01:58He wasn't just hugely powerful and worshipped as a god.
00:02:02He was also something of a control freak.
00:02:04And he was about to pay a visit to one of the furthest flung corners of his empire.
00:02:10Britannia.
00:02:11The rumour is running through the streets.
00:02:15The emperor is coming to Britain.
00:02:18Hadrian.
00:02:19The man in charge of the biggest empire on the planet at that date.
00:02:25One that runs from Northern Africa to Southern Scotland.
00:02:30This is massive news, whether you're rich or poor.
00:02:36The country was on tenterhooks.
00:02:40No-one knew what Hadrian would do when he got here.
00:02:42What he might want to change.
00:02:45You know, I reckon it must have been both thrilling and pretty nerve-wracking at the same time.
00:02:50There was one person who would have felt the heat more than anyone.
00:02:54The middle-aged governor of Britain, Quintus Pompeius Falco.
00:03:02Falco had been hand-picked by Hadrian to run the show in Britannia.
00:03:07He was from sunny Sicily.
00:03:09But for the last few years, he'd had to leave his wife and young son behind to work in Britain.
00:03:15But it wasn't all bad.
00:03:17Falco did get to live in the lap of luxury,
00:03:20in a huge villa with fine wines and an army of slaves.
00:03:25He was basically, well, Hadrian's man on the ground.
00:03:29Responsible for keeping order, collecting taxes and basically making sure everyone jolly well behaved.
00:03:38The problem was, not everyone was behaving.
00:03:42Britannia had been a troublesome place under Roman rule.
00:03:4660 years earlier, the legendary British Queen Boudicca had led a rebellion across parts of England, destroying Londinium in the
00:03:55process.
00:03:55The Romans rebuilt the city and got back control.
00:03:59But in the north, tribes kept on rebelling.
00:04:03And Hadrian had tasked Falco with keeping them under control.
00:04:08Falco had been in the job for about four years, which meant it was time for him to move on
00:04:12elsewhere.
00:04:14Britannia was no cushy job, to say the very least.
00:04:19But he was in his fifties by now.
00:04:21I'm sure he'd rather have been, well, anywhere else in the empire.
00:04:24Perhaps sunning himself in Sicily or sipping wine in the south of France.
00:04:29Somewhere where there was less trouble with the locals.
00:04:32Especially those pesky barbarians up north.
00:04:36If he could impress Hadrian with his control of the northern rebels, the future would be rosy for Governor Falco.
00:04:43And with his incredibly powerful boss coming to check things out, Falco felt he should be where the action was.
00:04:51Londinium.
00:04:56Work was in full swing, getting the city ready for the big visit.
00:05:00You might think, looking at modern London 2,000 years later, that no trace of the Romans could possibly survive.
00:05:07But you just have to know where to look.
00:05:12Well, you will not believe it, but you're in the middle of Roman London and some of it is still
00:05:19visible right down here.
00:05:22And... Down where?
00:05:23Beneath your feet. Right beneath your feet.
00:05:27In fact, very randomly, it's beneath a modern eatery.
00:05:32Beneath the empanada shop.
00:05:35So...
00:05:35There's a bit of Roman London underneath an empanada shop.
00:05:38There is. Let me show you.
00:05:39Yeah. Excuse me.
00:05:40Can I squeeze past?
00:05:44Right down here, Rob.
00:05:48Blowing out.
00:05:49So we're going beneath the modern ground level of London.
00:05:54Are you sure?
00:05:54Right round the corner here, Rob.
00:05:59Gosh!
00:06:01This masonry is Roman.
00:06:04That's absolutely bonkers.
00:06:06This wall was part of the Basilica of Roman London.
00:06:09So it's part of the largest stone-built building north of the Alps.
00:06:13It would have been absolutely enormous.
00:06:16The thing I love about it, Rob...
00:06:19Yes.
00:06:19...is that it's built from tiles.
00:06:21Yeah.
00:06:22A Roman person made that tile and a Roman person made that cement.
00:06:29It's right there. That's what I just love.
00:06:31And it's beneath the modern streets.
00:06:32So I was just under a shop.
00:06:34How did they find this, then?
00:06:37Well, this was found during the reign of Queen Victoria,
00:06:39when Leadnall Market, which is above us, was being built.
00:06:43So you know what?
00:06:44It makes me wonder how much they actually destroyed when they were building Leadnall Market.
00:06:49So you're a bit like Rome itself.
00:06:50London's in lots of different layers of history.
00:06:53And at the bottom layer, you've got Roman London.
00:06:56Very few people, Rob, know this is here.
00:06:59That's bonkers.
00:07:02The Basilica was the nerve centre of Londinium.
00:07:05The Roman equivalent of Parliament and the law courts rolled into one.
00:07:10And when Governor Falco was in town, it was where he'd be calling the shots.
00:07:15So it has stood exactly where we're standing.
00:07:17What's the sort of life like around where we're standing now?
00:07:21You've got the people running the province here.
00:07:23So the people who are the lawyers, the people who are the administrators.
00:07:26Yeah.
00:07:27You've got specific military officers who are seconded to work for the governor.
00:07:31And they work here.
00:07:32So this is the posh people.
00:07:34Right.
00:07:35And then coming off it, you've got the forum, which has got the colonnades.
00:07:39And the forum is the official market.
00:07:42So you've got all the hoi polloi.
00:07:46It's buzzing every single day.
00:07:47People are doing business.
00:07:49It's where you come and meet people.
00:07:51But the actual beating heart of the whole province.
00:07:55Falco would have been aware that if the emperor was visiting Britain,
00:07:58the basilica could be his first stop.
00:08:01This man, Hadrian, is about to arrive.
00:08:04What would the preparations be like?
00:08:06Firstly, it's absolutely terrifying for everybody involved here
00:08:09to know that the most important man in their known world,
00:08:12just with a click of his fingers, could have them sent to the lions.
00:08:15There are Roman senators who are executed out of hand by Roman emperors.
00:08:20So Falco would have been, to say the least, absolutely,
00:08:25to use contemporary parlance, sort of, well, breaking it,
00:08:30really worried that if the emperor comes and he's not happy with his work,
00:08:34that could be the end of it.
00:08:35I think you can expect that everything is as clean and spick and span
00:08:40as it possibly could be.
00:08:42But, of course, wealthy Falco didn't have to dirty his hands with any of that.
00:08:47He had slaves to do it for him.
00:08:51Men like Falco relied on enslaved people for almost everything.
00:08:55They did their paperwork, carried their messages,
00:08:58and, of course, cooked and cleaned for them.
00:09:02Thanks to them, Roman Britain ran 24-7.
00:09:06But until recently, we knew almost nothing about Londinium's slaves.
00:09:13Then archaeologists made an amazing discovery,
00:09:16just a stone's throw from where the basilica once stood.
00:09:23Astoundingly, a Roman waxed writing tablet was found with the writing still on it.
00:09:29I mean, most of the wax, to be fair, had gone.
00:09:32There is still a little bit of black on the tablet.
00:09:35But, nonetheless, the message that had been written on it
00:09:38has sort of got scratched into the wood underneath.
00:09:41And after a lot of peering at it through microscopes, using infrared, etc., etc.,
00:09:47people have been able to decipher what it said.
00:09:51And it turns out to be a receipt.
00:09:54Not just a receipt for goods, but that very rarest of things.
00:09:59A receipt for a person.
00:10:02The sale of a slave.
00:10:05The tablet records the purchase of a girl called Fortunata.
00:10:13She was actually bought by another enslaved person,
00:10:17a trusted official working for the Roman elite,
00:10:20so for men like Governor Falco,
00:10:22making her an imperial slave.
00:10:25And the tablet reveals a few more things about her.
00:10:29She is from an area of northern France.
00:10:33She's purchased for 600 denarii.
00:10:36Well, that's quite a big sum of money.
00:10:37That's two years' pay for a Roman soldier.
00:10:41And the fact that she's got quite a high purchase price
00:10:45really tells you how useful her work and her body are to somebody else.
00:10:51I mean, at the very least,
00:10:53any child that she bears will automatically belong to her master.
00:10:57It will be a slave from birth.
00:11:02Fortunata may have lived among the richest people in London,
00:11:06but as a slave, she owned nothing.
00:11:09She couldn't legally marry.
00:11:11She didn't even have a proper place to sleep.
00:11:16Many slaves would have had to have been in the house with their masters,
00:11:20so they must be in the sort of in-between spaces,
00:11:24in the work spaces,
00:11:25perhaps in places like the kitchens or under the stairs.
00:11:29I shouldn't think that many slaves actually had their own dedicated space like this,
00:11:34with a bed frame.
00:11:37Possibly this is Fortunata's master's bed,
00:11:41a slave himself.
00:11:44And for herself?
00:11:45Well...
00:11:48I suspect it was probably just on the floor.
00:11:52Falco's entire government relied on slave labour,
00:11:56and with the emperor on his way,
00:11:59Fortunata would have been up before dawn working flat out
00:12:02to get everything ready for his arrival.
00:12:06Because if the emperor wasn't happy,
00:12:08Nex would be on the line.
00:12:17Lundinium was buzzing.
00:12:19Within weeks, Emperor Hadrian would arrive in Britannia for the very first time,
00:12:24bringing an entourage of around 3,000 people with him.
00:12:28The city was scrambling to get ready,
00:12:31and at the helm was the governor of Roman Britain, Falco,
00:12:35who was preparing to host the most important man in the world.
00:12:39The pressure was on.
00:12:41As people waited for him to arrive,
00:12:43this was a man considered by some to be a living god.
00:12:47I'd imagine they were feeling pretty nervous.
00:12:52London's rich were desperate to impress the emperor.
00:12:56And life was about to get an awful lot busier for the city's poor,
00:13:00running shops, taverns and market stalls around the Forum.
00:13:05If you'd been here 2,000 years ago,
00:13:08you'd have found the place packed with lots of little shops
00:13:10selling everything you could think of,
00:13:12from jewellery to shoes to cups.
00:13:15There were fishmongers, bakeries, butchers,
00:13:18and, of course, lots of bars.
00:13:21Each of those has a shopkeeper trying to lure you in,
00:13:25and I like to imagine one, let's call him Marcus,
00:13:28which was a really popular name at the time,
00:13:31running a small popina,
00:13:34which is what the Romans called a bar.
00:13:38Marcus lived above the popina with his wife and kids,
00:13:41and despite working long days,
00:13:43he earned just enough to keep their heads above water.
00:13:48With thousands of soldiers heading for Londinium with the emperor,
00:13:53this was a golden opportunity for Marcus to cash in.
00:14:00I want to know what his bar might have looked like back then,
00:14:04so I've come to the Roman villa at the Newt in Somerset to find out.
00:14:10So here we are in Marcus's popina, and it smells good.
00:14:13It's very much like a bar out onto the street.
00:14:15There's no internal seating. This is, like, takeaway food.
00:14:18Yeah, which is very important, because in a Roman town or a Roman city,
00:14:22the only people who are going to eat indoors are the rich.
00:14:25Everybody below that can come and eat anywhere they want to,
00:14:30but they would choose to eat outside
00:14:32because they don't have cooking facilities in their houses.
00:14:35Oh, right. So you've got to eat takeaways.
00:14:40This is a real moment of opportunity.
00:14:44So you're going to get people coming to London from all over the Empire
00:14:49to celebrate Hadrian coming.
00:14:51So the opportunity for Marcus is amazing.
00:14:53Yeah, all these mouths to feed, all with money in their pockets.
00:14:55Yeah. If the emperor's coming and the demands are there,
00:14:58what do you do? You raise the price.
00:15:00Well, of course you do.
00:15:01There you go, sir, there you go. So that'll be 20 denarii,
00:15:05which is probably up from the 10 denarii it normally was,
00:15:07because, frankly, they don't have the real price.
00:15:09They don't have the local prices.
00:15:12In Roman Britain, workers like Marcus could actually be worse off than some slaves,
00:15:17who at least had food and a roof over their head guaranteed.
00:15:20So he needed to please his customers to survive.
00:15:24It would be the cheap end of the market,
00:15:26so it would be bread, maybe a very simple stew, and cheap wine.
00:15:32So I hope you don't mind. I've served you the work-a-day wine, if that's okay.
00:15:37It's really just smell like vinegar.
00:15:39The grapes have been pressed at least three times.
00:15:42So what's coming out is not very nice, and the key thing is it's not very sweet.
00:15:46So you're putting things in there to make it sweeter.
00:15:48But honey was often boiled in lead pots and added to the wine.
00:15:53Lead.
00:15:54Lead. That's good for you, isn't it?
00:15:56So you can poison yourself as well as turn yourself into an alcoholic.
00:16:01So who exactly would be coming to Marcus's Popina?
00:16:05Well, the Popina is near the Forum, so you're going to get sailors coming up from the port,
00:16:10because this is a really busy, thriving port.
00:16:13You're going to get administrators coming from the Basilica, because that's next to the Forum.
00:16:17So Marcus must have been a really important member of the community.
00:16:21I mean, he's providing pretty much all the food for a section of the population.
00:16:25And everyone would know him as well. He's got his regular customers, etc.
00:16:27All the gossip's taking place there.
00:16:30You know, the Emperor's coming. My goodness, better at my game if the Emperor's coming.
00:16:33It was all happening around the Popina.
00:16:36Marcus was used to grafting to get by, but Hadrian's visit was about to turn things up a notch.
00:16:43The hustle and bustle must have been exciting.
00:16:46And Hadrian was going to be bringing thousands of people with him,
00:16:50which meant good business for Marcus.
00:16:53But it also meant a huge amount of work preparing for that influx of people.
00:16:58And he must have been wondering quite what was going to happen when Hadrian actually got here.
00:17:08Of course, Hadrian himself wouldn't be going anywhere near Marcus's Popina.
00:17:15Governor Falco would be hosting the Emperor at a posh townhouse instead.
00:17:21And he'd have his work cut out to impress him.
00:17:24Hadrian had just built a sprawling palace at Tivoli near Rome.
00:17:28Almost the size of Roman London itself.
00:17:32Which meant Falco needed to ensure his smaller pad looked flawless.
00:17:37And slaves like Fortunata would have been rushed off their feet.
00:17:42I can imagine Fortunata getting the guest rooms ready.
00:17:47That would have been a lot of work.
00:17:49It's all the sweeping, cleaning, scrubbing.
00:17:55Sand, ash.
00:17:58It does give you a good clean.
00:18:01There's no shortage of work.
00:18:03The water, however, might be a bit easier.
00:18:07In Roman London, all the best houses actually had piped water.
00:18:14So, I might have been able to get some from a tap.
00:18:20If not, then of course it's down to the well and back.
00:18:24Besides Fortunata, Falco would have had dozens of people working for him.
00:18:29Cooking elaborate meals, dressing him and waiting on him hand and foot.
00:18:33Without enslaved workers, Falco's household simply wouldn't function.
00:18:38And there was one luxury only the super rich like him could afford in Roman Britain.
00:18:45Someone to control their very own central heating.
00:18:51Falco came from Sicily, so I should imagine the British weather was a bit of a shock.
00:18:56However, at least his home doesn't have to be cold.
00:19:01This is the hypercourse, the underfloor heating.
00:19:06Those network of passages go right underneath this side of the villa.
00:19:11And then, even more excitingly, the gases move out from under the floor and start to go up flues inside
00:19:19the walls.
00:19:23So, here we go.
00:19:27If you're used to having a thermostat on the wall, this is the Roman equivalent.
00:19:31These plates are how you sort of like open and close the flues to change the way the hot gases
00:19:38moves around the building.
00:19:41If Falco wanted to warm up a room, his slaves opened the vent to draw the hot air up through
00:19:48the hollow walls.
00:19:49To turn it down, they shut the vents.
00:19:52So they literally can choose the temperature just like you can in a modern central heating system.
00:19:58And it's toasty warm in there.
00:20:03By June 122 AD, Londinium was holding its breath.
00:20:11News had arrived.
00:20:13Hadrian was very close.
00:20:16He'd been spotted crossing the English Channel.
00:20:24Thank goodness you're here.
00:20:27Hello.
00:20:27It turns out that Falco's got the emperor coming.
00:20:29Hadrian, he's on his way.
00:20:30I've just heard from one of the messengers.
00:20:31I can't wear this old thing.
00:20:33No, you certainly can't. No.
00:20:34Absolutely not.
00:20:35That is a tunic.
00:20:36The basic garment that pretty much all Romans would have worn.
00:20:42What separated the haves from the have-nots was what you wore over the top of your tunic.
00:20:47And for rich Romans like Falco, that meant the toga.
00:20:53It's very complicated.
00:20:54How many slaves would I have to do this for me?
00:20:56Well, I mean, really, we probably need someone to help us.
00:21:01Servant? Where's Miss Ruthie?
00:21:03Ruth, we need help with the toga.
00:21:04Coming!
00:21:04Thank you.
00:21:05So if we spread it out, you can see just how big a toga was.
00:21:11This is enormous.
00:21:14Well, right. I'm ready for my toga.
00:21:18All right, we start here.
00:21:20Okay.
00:21:20I'll tell you what.
00:21:22I do hope that Hadrian likes my toga.
00:21:25Oh.
00:21:25You'll probably hear all about it if he doesn't.
00:21:28Will I?
00:21:28Yes.
00:21:29I'll probably be talking about it.
00:21:31Back in rhyme.
00:21:32What a nice bloke, that Falco.
00:21:34Good at his job, but...
00:21:36Well.
00:21:36The toga.
00:21:38Tokas were made from wool, and because of their huge length, they cost a small fortune.
00:21:44Only the seriously wealthy, people like Falco, could afford one.
00:21:48And they weren't exactly easy to put on, which was the point.
00:21:53This isn't about practical clothing then, is it?
00:21:55It really is not.
00:21:57And it was very difficult to put on.
00:21:59It was very difficult to wear.
00:22:01And that was part of what it said about the wearer.
00:22:05Obviously, you can't plough a field wearing this.
00:22:08So it's part of its status.
00:22:10This is the version of the modern suit?
00:22:12This is the version of the modern suit.
00:22:13So some people would have worn it every day.
00:22:16Lawyers, politicians, clerks, people doing sort of desk jobs, I guess.
00:22:22And other people would only have worn it for special occasions.
00:22:25I feel like it needs, I don't know, something to hold it together or maybe a bit of bling.
00:22:29No.
00:22:30No.
00:22:30Wouldn't there be some jewellery?
00:22:32No.
00:22:33Not even a brooch.
00:22:33Nothing.
00:22:34Not the toga.
00:22:35The toga did not have any pins.
00:22:36So this is it.
00:22:43Totally changes the way you walk.
00:22:45As Roman governor, you are walking with your shoulders back.
00:22:49Giving out that sense of ownership of everything you survey.
00:22:54I mean, it forces you into the type of poise that's going to govern Britannia and build a big old
00:23:00war.
00:23:01It's like a power suit, really.
00:23:03You know, think Roman Margaret Thatcher.
00:23:09Falko could polish his image all he liked.
00:23:11But with Hadrian almost on British shores, one question must have been keeping him awake.
00:23:18What would Hadrian think of how Falko had been running things in Britain?
00:23:25What was certain was if Hadrian wasn't impressed, Falko knew exactly who'd get the blame.
00:23:34It's the summer of 122 A.D.
00:23:39Emperor Hadrian has just landed in Britain, setting foot here for the first time ever.
00:23:49Over the next five days, Hadrian and his vast entourage of around 3,000 people marched to Londinium from the
00:23:57coast.
00:23:59Most likely, they travelled 70 miles from Kent along the great Roman road of Watling Street, through Canterbury, Rochester and
00:24:08Dartford.
00:24:10And with every stop along the way, people watched on in awe.
00:24:17The Emperor was here.
00:24:22In Londinium, Governor Falko was no doubt feeling the heat.
00:24:26He was about to welcome the most powerful man in the known world.
00:24:34And if anything went wrong, everyone in the city, from the poor all the way up to the mega rich,
00:24:40would suffer.
00:24:41And one person was most likely to get the blame.
00:24:46Falko.
00:24:49We don't have an account of Hadrian's arrival here.
00:24:52There's no diary saying he showed up at 2.30.
00:24:55But we do know what it might have looked like from his trips elsewhere around his empire.
00:25:02After around five days on the road, Hadrian reached the outskirts of London.
00:25:08As crowds gathered, Governor Falko, dressed in his finest toga, would have made his way towards London Bridge to greet
00:25:16him.
00:25:28There were trumpets blaring, guards on horseback clearing a path through the crush of people.
00:25:34And somewhere in the middle of all of that hullabaloo, the man himself, Hadrian, standing proud in his purple robes,
00:25:43leaving no doubt at all that he was a man in charge.
00:25:48But he wasn't in a golden chariot or anything fancy.
00:25:51Just on foot, flanked by his huge entourage.
00:26:01Across Londinium, ordinary people dropped everything to catch a glimpse of greatness.
00:26:08I can imagine Marcus leaves his bar to be here and maybe Fortunata too got permission to come down and
00:26:15watch.
00:26:15This would have been such an event in people's lives, like a bank holiday and a coronation all sort of
00:26:22rolled into one.
00:26:28Hadrian was in town.
00:26:33After months of preparations, the moment had come.
00:26:37Now, everyone had to hope.
00:26:39It had all been enough.
00:26:50For the next few days, the Emperor was in Londinium and the stakes could not have been higher.
00:26:57If Falco impressed him, he was one step closer to the posting he really wanted.
00:27:03In the sun.
00:27:05If he didn't, well, who knew what might happen?
00:27:10For the British governor, Falco, this was a career-defining moment.
00:27:15He needed this to go well.
00:27:17So, how to make sure the Emperor was suitably entertained.
00:27:21Not an easy gig.
00:27:23A nice dinner probably wasn't going to cut it.
00:27:27Falco needed to put on a show.
00:27:29And that meant just one thing.
00:27:32The games.
00:27:34What sort of entertainment would Falco have put on for Hadrian?
00:27:37You're going to start off with a sacrifice of an animal.
00:27:40Probably quite as solemn.
00:27:42And then you'd probably lead into things like cockfighting, boxing.
00:27:46And they might even have had some metal studs on them.
00:27:48But, you know, so it's getting a bit gorier all the time.
00:27:51And then, as the day would go on, what were we talking?
00:27:54Well, normally criminal executions over lunchtime.
00:27:57Because you need something to do during your lunch break, right?
00:27:59Sure.
00:28:00And then, on a really, really fancy occasion.
00:28:02Yeah.
00:28:03It's probably quite rare that it happened.
00:28:05Yeah.
00:28:05Gladiators.
00:28:06But you'd normally get a pair of gladiators fighting,
00:28:08pitched against each other.
00:28:10So, it's possible that when Hadrian arrived,
00:28:12Halco, wanting to put his best foot forward,
00:28:14might have got hold of some gladiators.
00:28:17Probably.
00:28:18We know that troops of gladiators often did tours
00:28:20around the sort of provinces of Rome.
00:28:22Yeah.
00:28:22And we do have evidence for gladiators in Roman Britain generally.
00:28:27Buried beneath London's Guildhall are extraordinary traces
00:28:32of a brutal Roman spectacle laid on for Hadrian himself.
00:28:38London's very own homage to Rome's Colosseum.
00:28:43There was an amphitheatre here.
00:28:44Where would I find it?
00:28:46Here.
00:28:46If you look at these black stones, these mark the wall
00:28:50probably around 25, 26 feet below.
00:28:53That would have been the arena.
00:28:55What, here?
00:28:56This...
00:28:56Yep.
00:28:57This black mark here?
00:28:59Absolutely.
00:28:59You can see it stretching all the way round,
00:29:02all the way underneath where it says the Guildhall Art Gallery.
00:29:05So, we're standing on top of the amphitheatre
00:29:08that would have been around in Falco's time
00:29:09when Hadrian actually came.
00:29:12This is where the games would have happened.
00:29:15We reckon this would have held around 7,000 spectators.
00:29:20Not a huge amount compared to 50,000-ish in the Colosseum.
00:29:25This would have been the epicentre of fun for Roman London.
00:29:28So, who's allowed to come?
00:29:30I mean, is it a bit like nowadays where, you know,
00:29:32the posh people are in the boxes with the food
00:29:34and the proles are sort of somewhere hopefully getting to the front?
00:29:37It is a bit like that.
00:29:38The dignitaries, say when Hadrian came or the governors,
00:29:42they would have sat in a nice awning, a covered box,
00:29:45shielded from the weather,
00:29:46but the rest of the people, they'd have been on tiered wooden benches
00:29:48that would have just surrounded the amphitheatre.
00:29:51So, is there anything left?
00:29:53Any ruins of the actual amphitheatre?
00:29:55Yeah, absolutely, just inside.
00:29:56Come and have a look.
00:29:57What in here?
00:29:58Just in here.
00:30:00Right under our feet
00:30:01lie some incredible clues to what Falco and Hadrian
00:30:05may have witnessed in London's amphitheatre.
00:30:07So, here we are.
00:30:10We are now walking through the eastern entrance to the amphitheatre.
00:30:16I mean, you've stumbled on a moment where I'm actually speechless.
00:30:20I'm imagining Hadrian arriving.
00:30:25My favourite bit.
00:30:26Yeah.
00:30:26Is this slab just here.
00:30:29It doesn't look much.
00:30:30No, it does not look much.
00:30:31What is it?
00:30:32See, those grooves, those dents, they were wooden posts.
00:30:36Yeah.
00:30:37For basically a vertical trapdoor functioning a bit like a garage door
00:30:41to keep the wild beasts.
00:30:44And they would have been kept in that room ready to be released.
00:30:47Out, they would come running.
00:30:48What sort of animals?
00:30:49Well, very often we see examples of bears or wolves,
00:30:53but we've also got evidence for things a little bit scarier, like lions.
00:30:59The criminal executions, the ones that took place over lunchtime,
00:31:03would have had something called the damnatio ad bestias,
00:31:06the condemnation to the beasts where part of the punishment might have been to be tied to a stake
00:31:12whilst a beast would jump at you.
00:31:18And if you're Falco and you want to put on a really good show for your emperor,
00:31:22is it plausible that you might have just made sure that that lion was going to be there for when
00:31:27the emperor showed up?
00:31:28Yeah.
00:31:29But if you can bring those animals over to the furthest provinces, you're really making a wow.
00:31:34And for the crowds as well.
00:31:36Although we'll never know exactly what entertainments Falco managed to get hold of to impress the emperor,
00:31:43one thing's for certain, he would have pulled out all the stocks.
00:31:49And while Hadrian and his wealthy inner circle were being wowed in the amphitheatre,
00:31:54thousands of soldiers poured into the forum in search of food, drinking and good time.
00:32:00For Marcus and the other bar owners, it was their golden opportunity to make money.
00:32:06One thing's for certain, the emperor's visit was good for business.
00:32:09He and his entourage brought with them bags of cash, each one stamped with the emperor's own face.
00:32:18He was making his mark.
00:32:20And Marcus, well, he'd have been only too well aware that he needed to make money whilst he could.
00:32:28Marcus will have been able to hear half the empire in here.
00:32:33Different accents, different languages.
00:32:35Latin, of course, Ambrythonic, the Celtic language of the local population,
00:32:40but also Gaulish from northern France and Belgium.
00:32:44Germanic dialects and Greek, a great hodgepodge of people.
00:32:50The ordinary soldiers wouldn't have had much cash, but that didn't stop them having a flutter.
00:32:56Over at the back of the bar, you might have seen a little group of soldiers
00:33:00all hunched round a table playing a board game with dice.
00:33:04The first dice had been brought over by the Romans,
00:33:07and round here, archaeologists are forever finding them made out of either glass or bone like this one.
00:33:14They were also using dice for gambling.
00:33:18Everybody, ordinary workers, slaves, soldiers, enjoyed dice-based gambling games,
00:33:25even though it was frowned on.
00:33:30While the poor packed into Londinium's bars for cheap stews, bread and watered-down wine,
00:33:36Falco had planned a very different kind of evening for the emperor.
00:33:41After the games, Hadrian would have been escorted back to a lavish London villa for an official banquet,
00:33:48where the very best Roman cuisine money could buy.
00:33:53So, presumably, there must have been, like, information, like,
00:33:56what is the fashionable banqueting dish this week?
00:33:59We're so lucky we've still got the book written in the day with over 400 recipes in it.
00:34:06How many ways can you cook a flamingo?
00:34:09Flamingo?
00:34:09Well, he can show you several.
00:34:11We're presumably not serving flamingos to rob today.
00:34:15No.
00:34:16I mean, how would you get a flamingo in Britain?
00:34:19That was the problem.
00:34:21For wealthy Romans, food wasn't just about eating.
00:34:25It was about showing off.
00:34:27The richer you were, the more exotic your ingredients needed to be.
00:34:30Olives shipped from the Mediterranean, almonds, even artichokes.
00:34:36Trouble was, getting your hands on all of that in Britain wasn't exactly easy.
00:34:42They definitely wanted Roman style, but they're going to have to source locally,
00:34:47because without refrigeration, and then it's an awful long journey from all of the countries of the Empire,
00:34:53so they cannot get the foods that they've been used to, say, in Rome.
00:34:58So, we're looking at a sort of British-Roman fusion?
00:35:01Yes, the first fusion food, absolutely.
00:35:04We've got a lovely few tastes for Rob, anyway, because I'm...
00:35:07It's been smelling good.
00:35:09We've got a liver dish, which I can smell beautiful.
00:35:12Yep, okay.
00:35:13I just hope he likes his offal.
00:35:15Okay.
00:35:15And we've got honey mustard, we've got a cabbage dish, and, like, a tapenade olive dish.
00:35:22And it's all very little.
00:35:24Lots of little dishes of separate things, or tapas.
00:35:26A tapas is exactly the way they liked it.
00:35:29But surely not everybody in Roman Britain is moving over to this new Roman food?
00:35:34No, not everybody.
00:35:35This was really for the bigger, high-status households, or moderate status.
00:35:39Okay.
00:35:40If you live in the country, you're just living off the land.
00:35:43So, we're thinking about a very basic diet for the poor.
00:35:46We're thinking a lot of bread, or a lot of porridge.
00:35:50Falco could have entertained Hadrian and his VIP guests in the triclinium, his very posh dining room.
00:35:57This was full-on Roman luxury.
00:36:01Diners sprawled across couches, eating rich foods for hours, whilst enslaved workers kept the drinks topped up.
00:36:09I think I could get used to this.
00:36:12So, what have we got here?
00:36:14Well, lots of different things.
00:36:16So, we have a salad of cabbage, for example.
00:36:19Nice.
00:36:20And this is an olive, a bit like an olive tapenade.
00:36:23Fabulous.
00:36:24My God.
00:36:25So, starters and main course all together?
00:36:28All at once, is it?
00:36:29All at once, yes.
00:36:31This is like a middle-class dinner party in Islington.
00:36:35This is quite similar to kind of Mediterranean dining today, really.
00:36:39It is.
00:36:41Falco had done his best to wow the emperor.
00:36:44But the real reason Hadrian had come to Britannia was far more serious.
00:36:51In the north, tribes were fighting back against Roman rule.
00:36:56All the wine, banquets and gladiators in Nundinium would count for nothing.
00:37:03Because if Hadrian decided Falco had lost control of Britain, his career could be over in an instant.
00:37:16Since he'd arrived, Governor Falco had made sure Emperor Hadrian had a luxurious welcome to Londinium.
00:37:22But Hadrian wasn't here for a holiday.
00:37:25And he wasn't the sort of emperor who stayed safely inside the palace walls.
00:37:31Beyond Londinium, Britain was still dangerous.
00:37:34And parts of the province were slipping out of Rome's control.
00:37:39Falco's number one responsibility here was keeping order.
00:37:43After all, not everyone wanted to be part of the Roman Empire.
00:37:47A lot of southern Britain was firmly Roman by now.
00:37:50But further north, well, that was a different story.
00:37:55There had been constant trouble on the northern frontier.
00:37:58And it was proving a real headache for Rome.
00:38:01Unlike earlier emperors, Hadrian wasn't obsessed with conquering more countries.
00:38:06Instead, he preferred holding on to what Rome already had.
00:38:10And keeping the locals in line if they dared to fight back.
00:38:15So for Britain, Hadrian had come up with a plan to keep the barbarians out.
00:38:20And to show that the Romans really meant business.
00:38:23His plan was to build something extraordinary.
00:38:26Yeah, you guessed it. A wall.
00:38:28But not just any wall.
00:38:30This was Roman muscle on a colossal scale.
00:38:33A barrier stretching 73 miles right across Britain.
00:38:38Hadrian had tasked Governor Falco to oversee its construction.
00:38:43And now the emperor wanted to inspect the project for himself.
00:38:48He would not be travelling alone.
00:38:51He brought one of his most trusted friends, Nepos.
00:38:56Nepos had already made a name for himself governing Germany.
00:39:00He'd be taking over from Falco as governor of Britain.
00:39:04So in July 122 AD, Hadrian, Nepos and thousands of soldiers headed north along Ermine Street.
00:39:12The great Roman road that linked Londinium to York and the wild frontier beyond.
00:39:19If you were rich in Roman times, you might travel in a horse-drawn carriage.
00:39:23Or even be carried by slaves if you're an emperor.
00:39:27Sometimes Hadrian made a point of marching with his soldiers to show he was just one of the gang.
00:39:32And he did it all in a pair of these.
00:39:34His feet must have been killing him.
00:39:36Well, I mean, let's hope it wasn't in winter.
00:39:39Because he'd be wearing socks and sandals.
00:39:43When Hadrian travelled, it was like an entire city on the move.
00:39:47Alongside soldiers came cooks, doctors, engineers and baggage handlers.
00:39:54Thousands of people keeping the imperial show quite literally on the road.
00:39:59And as they marched through Britain, people poured out to watch the endless stream of soldiers passing by.
00:40:14Finally, this is a Roman milestone.
00:40:17And they were placed, you've guessed it, at every mile along these Roman roads.
00:40:22Although actually, it was a thousand Roman military paces, which is just under our modern mile.
00:40:28And in a world without sat-navs, this was the only way Hadrian's army knew where they were.
00:40:33Now, the surface of this one has worn away.
00:40:36But each one would tell you the name of the nearest town and the name of the emperor who'd built
00:40:41the road.
00:40:41Just to remind you who was in charge.
00:40:44Come on then, only another thousand paces to go before the next one.
00:40:48Off we go.
00:40:51Roman soldiers could cover about 20 miles a day.
00:40:54And in fact, the word mile comes straight from the Latin mile passes, meaning a thousand paces.
00:41:03As Hadrian and his entourage continued their long journey north, life in Londinium began to quieten down again.
00:41:11But for enslaved workers like Fortunata, there was no chance to put their feet up.
00:41:21Farco's guests have finally gone, leaving a mountain of laundry.
00:41:26Now, in the cities, you might just take your laundry along to a commercial laundry, a felonica.
00:41:32Or you might have to do it at home.
00:41:34Either way, it was going to be a lot of hard work.
00:41:40But alongside the water and elbow grease, they used, believe it or not, urine.
00:41:48For rich Romans, keeping your whites whiter than white was really important.
00:41:54And that's why they wanted to use the urine.
00:41:57As you probably know, if you let urine ferment, it turns into ammonia.
00:42:03And ammonia is a really effective bleach.
00:42:07So this is both a cleaning and a bleaching process.
00:42:12The work, as you can imagine, is very much slaves' work.
00:42:21Your feet are providing the power.
00:42:24I mean, essentially, they're doing what your washing machine does,
00:42:26which is bash stuff around in water.
00:42:32Now, the urine itself, well, the felonicas would often make sure that they collected it from, well, outside their own
00:42:40premises.
00:42:40They'd put a jar outside.
00:42:43After you've stomped for long enough and you think the stains have come out,
00:42:50you're then going to have to rinse it well.
00:42:55For Fortunata, the work never ended.
00:42:58And even with Hadrian gone from Londinium, she'd need to be ready in case he returned to the city.
00:43:06Meanwhile, after about ten days travelling at full military pace,
00:43:11Hadrian finally rolled into York, Rome's northern stronghold in Britain.
00:43:16And after marching 20 miles a day,
00:43:18the emperor and his vast travelling operation needed somewhere to bed down for the night.
00:43:25For ordinary soldiers, there were no luxury villas waiting at the end of the road.
00:43:30Instead, they built enormous camps each night,
00:43:33with rows of leather tents arranged with trademark Roman efficiency.
00:43:38But if you're an emperor, you aren't going to slum it.
00:43:41So Hadrian could have stayed in a mansio,
00:43:43which is the equivalent of a boutique hotel with spacious rooms and ornately painted walls and even mosaic-tiled floors.
00:43:51Or he could have stopped off in a specially built luxury wing of a local villa.
00:44:09Finally, after around fifteen long days,
00:44:13Hadrian and Nepos reached their destination.
00:44:35This is it. The edge of Hadrian's empire and the furthest north he'd ever been.
00:44:42I mean, to me, it is overwhelmingly beautiful. It's spectacular.
00:44:47But to Hadrian, you know, I wonder what he would have made of it.
00:44:50Compared to London, it's just barren and green.
00:44:54But to my eyes, it's just a mega wow.
00:45:01Back in Londinium,
00:45:02Falco was hoping he'd impressed Hadrian enough for a better posting.
00:45:07Out on the frontier, the emperor was judging Falco's grip on the troublesome north and his progress on the wall.
00:45:14If he'd got it right, Falco's career would take off.
00:45:18If Hadrian wasn't happy, his head would be on the block.
00:45:28It's August, 122 AD.
00:45:31Emperor Hadrian has made his trusted friend Nepos governor of Britain.
00:45:36And after weeks on the road, has reached the far north of the country.
00:45:41Hadrian is there to check up on his ambitious new project.
00:45:44A gigantic wall to separate Roman Britain from the so-called barbarians to the north.
00:45:52Thousands of men were now racing to build it.
00:45:55But they had the British climate to contend with.
00:45:59Now, I can only imagine what it would have been like to work in all weathers,
00:46:03this far from home, in really gruelling conditions.
00:46:07Now, I know they were paid pretty well.
00:46:09But I know I couldn't have done it.
00:46:13Even Hadrian himself must have been impressed with the scale of the task he'd set.
00:46:17A wall that stretched all the way from near Newcastle in the east, past Carlisle, and onto the Solway Firth
00:46:25in the west.
00:46:28It's unbelievable.
00:46:30Absolutely mind-blowing in terms of manpower and size.
00:46:33This is going to cleave, going to cut off the whole of the north of England from the barbarians beyond.
00:46:39Yeah.
00:46:40So Nepos arrives with his boss, Hadrian, the emperor.
00:46:43It must have been pretty cold and wild like it is today.
00:46:47What would Hadrian have seen, do you think?
00:46:50They'd probably see sections of the wall, at least a foundation level.
00:46:55You would get some notice of an emperor visiting.
00:46:57It's not like today, they just hop on a plane.
00:46:59It would have been planned.
00:47:00He's going to come and probably nitpick, and also maybe make changes to the plan.
00:47:04And so, you know, is it when Hadrian comes that he realises we need the forts up here?
00:47:08You know, because they need more men to man the wall.
00:47:12Hadrian's wall may have been built to control the so-called barbarians in the north.
00:47:15But it wasn't simply a giant keep out sign across Britain.
00:47:20The Romans had added ways to cross the frontier.
00:47:25Every mile, there's a gate through.
00:47:27So people could come and go if they wanted.
00:47:29Yeah.
00:47:29But only under Roman...
00:47:31Under Roman permission.
00:47:32Yeah.
00:47:34So it's pretty much like some places on our world today
00:47:37where there are checkpoints governing who can come and go.
00:47:40Yes, exactly.
00:47:41And, you know, trade was allowed.
00:47:43How do we know trade happened between, you know, north and south?
00:47:48What do we know about how the locals responded or felt about this huge thing,
00:47:56separating presumably not just from, well, the community that existed,
00:48:00but maybe families beyond the wall?
00:48:02There'd be a lot of people who would be upset,
00:48:04but, you know, that probably passes after a generation or two.
00:48:07And then there's a lot more people who are pragmatic and think,
00:48:09well, they're here, we might as well get on, make some money.
00:48:14The emperor spent days trudging from fort to fort along the frontier,
00:48:19inspecting defences, grilling officers,
00:48:22and obsessing over every last detail.
00:48:25Classic Hadrian.
00:48:30By now he'd been away from Londinium for more than three weeks,
00:48:34where he'd left behind one very important person.
00:48:38His wife, the Empress Vibhia Sabina.
00:48:45Hadrian and Sabina tied the knot when they were young in an arranged marriage,
00:48:50and she usually travelled with him, much to his annoyance.
00:48:53It wasn't a happy match.
00:48:58Apparently he hated her.
00:49:00It said she was bad-tempered and irritable.
00:49:03Although I'm sure she'd have a few things to say about him as well.
00:49:08While the emperor's wife waited for her husband down south,
00:49:11she kept a surprisingly low profile.
00:49:13Roman women, rich Roman women, whatever wealth and social status they had,
00:49:21had much less personal freedom than the men.
00:49:25So whatever influence she had had to be exerted behind closed doors.
00:49:31But Sabina did have her own imperial job to do too.
00:49:35She was expected to be charmed by Britain's elite,
00:49:39whilst looking absolutely flawless, of course.
00:49:43Looking this good didn't happen by accident.
00:49:46Behind every wealthy Roman woman was a horde of workers helping her get ready.
00:49:53For a fashionable wealthy lady,
00:49:55she's expected to spend hours each day working on her appearance.
00:49:59For working women and especially for enslaved women,
00:50:04they simply didn't have the time to spend much time on their appearance.
00:50:07So Fortunata is more likely to be spending her time doing the makeup for her mistress.
00:50:12Exactly.
00:50:14As an imperial slave,
00:50:16Fortunata may have helped to transform the empress into the picture of Roman glamour.
00:50:21And incredibly, we even know what may have been sitting on Sabina's makeup table.
00:50:26So I cannot stress how rare it is to find even a trace of the kind of cosmetics that women
00:50:33were using.
00:50:34So this is a really special find.
00:50:36It's a small tin container from Southwark.
00:50:39And it's still got some face cream in it.
00:50:44It's still got the finger marks from whoever last took out a dollop of cream.
00:50:50And scientific testing has given us the ingredients.
00:50:54So it's made with some animal fat, some vegetable starch, and a little bit of tin oxide, which gives it
00:51:01this nice white colour.
00:51:02I mean, tin oxide is still today used as a pigment by painters, isn't it, to make a white?
00:51:07Exactly, yes.
00:51:08So yeah, this is probably being used as a foundation to give a nice pale complexion.
00:51:15It's quite extraordinary.
00:51:17But back in Roman times, you might not go to the local chemist to buy your makeup.
00:51:22It could be made at home for you by your slaves.
00:51:27If Fortunata's working in that sort of a household, she'll be grinding the makeup ingredients, particularly the pigments, the colours.
00:51:35Exactly, yes.
00:51:36And she'd need the tools of the trade.
00:51:38So these are a peculiarly British thing.
00:51:42So you have the mortar.
00:51:45Yeah.
00:51:46And then the pestle.
00:51:48So you take your dry ingredients, mix them with a little oil, make them ready to put onto the face.
00:51:56So you put one inside the other and sort of grind like that.
00:51:59So if you're grinding your own pigment and then you've got a little mixing stone, you are actually doing bespoke
00:52:05makeup.
00:52:05You're doing exactly the right colour tone for your mistress's complexion.
00:52:09It's not just a standard off-the-shelf red.
00:52:12It is actually really quite careful choice.
00:52:16Yes.
00:52:17The wealthier people who can afford enslaved people in their house, those enslaved people would have quite specialist skills.
00:52:25So Sabina's look is going to be very carefully curated.
00:52:29Every little bit is sort of carefully modified and arranged and painted and shaped and moulded.
00:52:38While Sabina's face was being polished to perfection, 250 miles away, life couldn't have been more different.
00:52:45Hadrian was personally inspecting the windswept northern limits of his empire.
00:52:52As he and Nepos travelled along the frontier, they stayed in forts beside the soldiers tasked with defending Roman Britain.
00:52:59And remarkably, one of those places still survives today.
00:53:05It's called Vindolanda.
00:53:07Today, just the foundations remain.
00:53:10But almost 2,000 years ago, this was a bustling military town packed with soldiers and their families.
00:53:17The way they put these forts and they lay them out is they really accentuate your rank, your wealth, your
00:53:24status.
00:53:25You know where the important people are when you come to a place like Vindolanda.
00:53:29Wherever he went, the emperor would be given the VIP treatment in a place just like this.
00:53:37This is it. We've actually just come in through the dining room.
00:53:41Sorry, everybody.
00:53:43Excuse us.
00:53:44This is a private courtyard.
00:53:46I mean, look at the space already.
00:53:49And would you have Hadrian and Nepos sitting here together? Would they be on their own? Would they have servants
00:53:57here? Who would be in this space with them?
00:53:58They have the imperial entourage with them. So he takes over a house like this and it becomes, for a
00:54:03moment in time, his palace. So all the trappings of course.
00:54:08If you add all this together, he's got the same amount of private space of about 200, 250 of his
00:54:14soldiers.
00:54:15That's pretty luxurious. Aren't the soldiers sort of slightly envious of their leader?
00:54:19This is what you aspire to. They're envious, but of course, they know that for most of them, this is
00:54:25an impossible dream.
00:54:27This luxury mansion by the side of Hadrian's wall was fit for an emperor and it had all the mod
00:54:33cons, including central heating and sewers.
00:54:38So this place has public drains well over a thousand years before some of the local towns in the valley
00:54:44have public drains.
00:54:45In Hadrian's day, this place was buzzing. A muddy, noisy town next to his new wall, jammed with soldiers, families,
00:54:56traders, blacksmiths, cooks and the crews building the wall itself.
00:55:02Squeezed inside these barrack blocks were around a thousand ordinary soldiers.
00:55:08I mean, a room like this, a barrack room, has eight Roman soldiers and their families and their slaves and
00:55:15their pets.
00:55:16And it's about the sort of half the size of a modern terrace house footprint.
00:55:20They're all crammed into the space.
00:55:22We're sort of in the sleeping quarters at the back.
00:55:25We've got a little dining room at the front with a built-in hearth.
00:55:29I mean, we could technically get 25 people in, we'd have to sleep standing up.
00:55:32So bunk beds, sleeping in shifts.
00:55:38If the bedrooms were a tight squeeze, the loos took things to a whole new level.
00:55:45So where are we now then?
00:55:47So we're on a less than salubrious 14-seater toilet block latrine on the edge of the fort.
00:55:52What do you mean 14-seater?
00:55:53We can squeeze 14 bums on benches in a U-shape on benches coming around us here,
00:55:59with the main drain behind us taking all the bits out into the stream in the bottom of the valley
00:56:05down there behind us.
00:56:06So this would be a very public loo, men and women or just men?
00:56:09Men and women, children, slaves, because of course everybody's got to use the loo.
00:56:13You come in the door, you lower your robes to a certain extent,
00:56:17you take a seat on a wooden bench and you have a chat to your neighbour.
00:56:20We've got toilet capacity here for about 35, 40 people.
00:56:24There are two and a half thousand people here living at this site.
00:56:27That's a heck of a queue.
00:56:28Yeah, it's like going ropey camping.
00:56:30It is a little bit.
00:56:32And it's sort of appropriate that we've got moss on the walls around about us like this.
00:56:36Yeah.
00:56:37Here they don't use sponges to wipe their bums, they use moss.
00:56:42Are you serious?
00:56:42Yeah.
00:56:43Very thoroughly absorbent, slightly antiseptic.
00:56:46Quite good for you.
00:56:47Well, that's the posh loo paper of its day.
00:56:49Yeah.
00:56:52By September 122 AD, after a few weeks up north,
00:56:57Hadrian and Nepos had wrapped up their whistle-stop tour of the Wall
00:57:01and were already heading back to Londinium.
00:57:04One person was particularly keen to know how it had gone.
00:57:08Governor Falco.
00:57:14After weeks on Britain's northern frontier, Emperor Hadrian, his friend Nepos and the Imperial Party arrived back in Londinium.
00:57:29Hadrian had made Nepos the new official governor of Britain, replacing Falco, who'd been in the job for four years.
00:57:36But where would the emperor send Falco next?
00:57:41Everything hinged on how well Hadrian thought Falco had controlled the rebels in the north, who'd been threatening Roman Britain.
00:57:49I've got this document here and it sheds light on what happened to Governor Falco after Nepos to cover and
00:57:55after Hadrian had visited.
00:57:57Was he going to be moved to a better position?
00:58:00Or would he be sidelined?
00:58:02Given this was ancient Rome, could it have been worse?
00:58:06It says here that Falco obtained the pro-consulship of Asia.
00:58:11That sounds important.
00:58:12It is.
00:58:14It's similar to Governor so he has got another great role.
00:58:17That's brilliant news.
00:58:19He's not been totally ousted.
00:58:21Falco had impressed the emperor and had hit the jackpot.
00:58:25Goodbye, rainy Britain.
00:58:27Hello, sunny Turkey.
00:58:30Where life was, well, a lot less stressful.
00:58:34So going to rule this part of the world was a luxury governorship.
00:58:38This is effectively a massive promotion.
00:58:41A big pat on the back from Hadrian to Falco saying,
00:58:44well done, good job.
00:58:46I can finally see some sunshine and relax with his wife in a beautiful villa in his old age.
00:58:53And the tricky bit, the hard job of actually finishing the wall,
00:58:57well, that could just be palmed off to Nepos now.
00:59:00And good luck to him.
00:59:05For Hadrian back in London, there was a small matter of a reunion with his wife Sabina.
00:59:13But it soon transpired she may have been enjoying her social life just a little too much.
00:59:22This is the Historia Augusta.
00:59:24It's a collection of biographies from some of the Roman emperors, including Hadrian.
00:59:29There's an interesting line here about Hadrian's time in Britain.
00:59:33It says this.
00:59:34He removed from office Septicius Clarus, the prefect of the guard,
00:59:40and Suetonius Tranquillus, the imperial secretary, and many others besides,
00:59:44because without his consent, they'd been conducting themselves towards his wife Sabina
00:59:49in a more informal fashion than the etiquette of the court demanded.
00:59:54Now, goodness knows what they've been up to.
00:59:57It sounds like something naughty was happening whilst he was inspecting the frontier.
01:00:01It just goes to show you that even if you were rich and powerful,
01:00:05you still had to watch your step, especially if it came to the emperor's wife.
01:00:11Hadrian was one to talk.
01:00:13Like many wealthy Roman men, he had male lovers and was hardly known for being faithful.
01:00:26The emperor had been in Britain for a few months now, and with the weather turning chilly and worked it
01:00:31to elsewhere,
01:00:32it was time to move on.
01:00:35Travelling by sea back then was risky at the best of times,
01:00:39but once winter storms rolled in, it was downright dangerous, especially in the Channel.
01:00:43Most ships simply stopped sailing altogether between November and March,
01:00:48so if Hadrian wanted to leave, he couldn't hang around for very much longer.
01:00:54Hadrian, Sabina, and their massive imperial circus finally swept out of Londinium.
01:01:02And suddenly it must have felt like a ghost town.
01:01:05For months, the emperor's gigantic entourage had poured money into the city,
01:01:10but once the emperor moved on, so did the money.
01:01:16That was just a reality of life in a city like this.
01:01:20It could suddenly swell with an influx of soldiers, sailors, traders, but just as suddenly, it could empty out.
01:01:27And Marcus, well, he just had to roll with the flow.
01:01:31Lots of business, no business, as a drop of a hat.
01:01:36For Marcus, the daily grind carried on.
01:01:39Long hours trying to keep his business afloat, and food on the table for his family.
01:01:46But while Marcus at least had his freedom, Fortunata's future remained far less certain.
01:01:54Still, for a lucky few enslaved people, there were options.
01:01:59And one remarkable Roman tombstone hints at the kind of life Fortunata might perhaps have dreamed of.
01:02:07It shows a woman, well, rather elegantly dressed, with jewellery.
01:02:13And she's clearly a woman of some status.
01:02:16But if you read the inscription, here's her name, Regina,
01:02:20it says that she was once a slave, and that she was freed and then married her ex-master.
01:02:27And it's clear that she went on to live a life of considerable wealth and some social status.
01:02:36Life as a slave in Roman Britain could be brutal.
01:02:40But it wasn't always the end of the story.
01:02:43Some managed to gain their freedom, and every now and then, they even ended up rich and powerful themselves.
01:02:53I do like to think that maybe one day Fortunata did get freed.
01:02:59I like to imagine her having the opportunity to get married, to live a good life.
01:03:11Hadrian's visit may only have lasted a few months, but it was a momentous event in Roman Britain's history.
01:03:17And for rich and poor, its impact would be felt for centuries to come.
01:03:27Hadrian, you've got to give it to him. He did leave his mark quite literally on Britain.
01:03:33Isn't it also that this great influx of ordinary people come with their ideas from different parts of the Empire?
01:03:40It transforms this country in many ways.
01:03:44The whole idea of the rich and the poor, it doesn't feel quite the same in the Roman period, does
01:03:49it?
01:03:49The divide is not so much between the rich and the poor as between the free and the unfree.
01:03:54And of course it's terrible being a slave, and you certainly have less choice.
01:03:59But Ruth, rich or poor, ultimately, you are all subject to the control of the big man.
01:04:05If things had gone horribly wrong, Falco would have met his pretty unhappy end.
01:04:12And I think it's one of the things, even when you're really rich, you can still lose it all at
01:04:18any moment,
01:04:19if the emperor decides that you're no longer in his favour.
01:04:52You're very happy that you can see Sam Whitewater.
01:04:52He's still looking for a different part of the sea of the sea of the sea of the sea of
01:04:52the sea.
01:04:53But we know it's been a very highly common Dominoes,
01:05:11Legenda Adriana Zanotto
01:05:23Legenda Adriana Zanotto
01:05:31Going back 200 years as Britain prepared for a coronation, The Georgians with Rob Rinder
01:05:36and Ruth Goodman is brand new next Tuesday at 9. The reason a young mum mysteriously
01:05:41collapses leaves the team shocked so can they save her life? 999, critical condition
01:05:46is new tomorrow at 9. Next, the bomb on the boat, the murder of Lord Mountbatten.
01:05:53Legenda Adriana Zanotto
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