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Caesar: General, he nearly doubled the size of the roman empire.
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As a politician, he engineered a stunning rise to power.
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But now, this battle-scarred warrior had been slain in Rome and
by romans.
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His name was gaius Julius Caesar.
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He seemed to want too much power for himself.
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He did not share power with others, and this was what led
directly to his assassination.
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>> Narrator: Decades earlier, as an ambitious young
general, Caesar had recognized that the road to glory in Rome began on
battlefields far from it.
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His thirst for military conquest would spawn the construction of
one of Rome's most intimidating feats of engineering.
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Julius Caesar is leading eight roman legions, a total of 40,000
men, north through Gaul, a roman province encompassing modern France, Belgium
and Switzerland.
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>> Boatwright: He wants to go to Germania--to Germany and
cross the Rhine because no roman commander has yet done so.
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He wants to be as great a conqueror as Alexander the great and
go beyond what is known.
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>> Narrator: The Rhine
river lies on the edge of what is known.
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For centuries, it has been a buffer protecting germanic tribes
from roman expansion.
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No previous army could cross it with the might needed for
conquest.
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But Caesar is unlike any previous warrior.
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>> Man #3: He could have gone by boat.
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But what is that for Julius Caesar to go by boat, man?
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Row boat?
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You know, put eight legions in a row boat and row across?
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No, man, they gotta march across.
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They gotta be on horseback.
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>> Man #4: Crossing
the rhine was a completely new engineering feat as far as its scope.
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The river is 1,000 feet across, possibly more, 25 to 30 feet
deep with unknown currents.
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Caesar and his engineers had to come up with a plan for a bridge
that would be not only immensely strong but immensely stable and be large
enough to be able to march a legion across.
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>> Narrator: The bridge would need to be four football
fields long and sustain the weight of 40,000 soldiers.
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Despite the rhine's width, depth and strong currents, Julius Caesar
is determined to succeed.
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>> Man #5: To cross a river that size with a bridge is
something which plays well with with an audience back at home.
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But, of course, it's something that plays extremely well with
the audience standing on the other side of the river who are going to be
awestruck when they see this happening.
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>> Narrator: With the speed and efficiency of a well-oiled
machine, Caesar's soldiers methodically transform local timber into an
expanding bridge.
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With every hour, an engineering miracle inches closer to the Rhine's
elusive northern bank.
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>> Peachin: It's almost as if a spaceship were to come
down nowadays the size, let's say, of half of Manhattan capable of--of--with
some magnetic device that is, like, lifting buildings up into the air.
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That would be a pretty frightening thing, something that we
couldn't really grasp at all.
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>> Narrator: The foundation of the bridge was a series of
wooden piles driven into the bedrock of the river.
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Each pile was a foot and a half thick.
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Toward the middle of the bridge, they had to be up to 30 feet
tall to reach from the surface to the bottom.
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By driving the piles in diagonally, Caesar's engineers added
extra stability to the bridge.
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>> Nelson: When they drove the pilings in at an angle and
then connected them, in many ways they were doing what carpenters do when
they build a sawhorse.
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With the legs angled, it utilizes forces to keep it from being
pushed over and makes it a stable work space.
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>> Man #6: The sloping power gives them a lot more
strength against the force of the river and the flooding of the river, and so
on, but it's much more difficult to drive them into the riverbed then it is
to drive a vertical pile.
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So they would have to work very carefully with wooden frames to
push them into the riverbed.
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>> Narrator: On the upstream side, the piles leaned in the
direction of the current.
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40 Feet downstream, the corresponding piles leaned against the
current.
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Each set of piles was joined by a long connecting beam 2 feet
thick.
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Lengths of timber were then laid across the beams, and the
surface was finished with tightly wrapped bundles of sticks.
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The design of the bridge itself was innovative.
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But what made this engineering feat even more astounding is the
speed with which it was built.
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Just ten days after ordering its construction, Caesar marched
across his bridge and toward his destiny.
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Man #7: If we tried to do that today, we would never be able to
build something like that in so few days with that kind of technology.
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We could match that feat today if we had thousands of loyal,
sweating soldiers totally dedicated to Caesar and the objective of getting
across that rhine river to terrorize the Germans beyond.
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>> Narrator: Caesar had estimated the size of the Germanic
forces at 430,000, more than ten times the size of his own army.
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But when the germans saw the roman legions rolling over the
rhine, they quickly fled to higher ground.
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For the next 18 days, Caesar freely explored the territory north
of the rhine, encountering no resistance.
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Then he crossed back over his bridge and dismantled it, having
made an unmistakable point.
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>> Weller: It is
symbolic of this--Rome can go anywhere.
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There's nothing going to hold Rome back.
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And to distill it even farther, Julius Caesar can go anywhere.
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>> Narrator: Caesar's bridge was an early indication of
his single-minded ambition.
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A decade later, that ambition would propel him to unprecedented
power.
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But it would also prove to be his downfall.
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When he was declared Rome's first dictator for life at ,
whispers of assassination began to echo through the halls of the roman
senate.
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>> Norena: He makes certain moves that suggest that he
might want to have been worshipped as a god, that his ambition really goes so
far beyond the limits of what the romans themselves and, in particular, roman
senators felt to be acceptable, that he was assassinated.
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>> Narrator: In life, Julius Caesar forever altered Rome's
political landscape.
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In death, he would embody both the potential and the peril of
absolute power.
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>> Boatwright: When Caesar was assassinated, there was no
guarantee that anything would happen except that Rome would fall apart
completely.
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>> Narrator: Caesar's reign was a major turning point in Rome's
political history.
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His conquest of Gaul greatly expanded the reach of roman
influence.
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His consolidation of power marked the death of the roman
republic, ruled by democratically elected senators and consuls, and the birth
of an empire in which tyrannical emperors could rule with absolute authority.
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Some would use their power to build magnificent engineering
marvels.
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The vanity, excess and ignorance of others would push the empire
to the brink of destruction.
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Through it all, Rome would grow into the most powerful and
technologically advanced civilization the world had ever seen.
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>> Narrator: Today, Rome is a 21st-CENTURY CITY WHERE THE
Ancient and modern collide.
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>> Nelson: Anyone who has visited the city of Rome is
immediately struck by this immense mixture of--of time periods spanning from
prehistory all the way up through the modern age.
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And the wonderful thing about Rome is that you're living in the
midst of the history of one of the greatest civilizations that's ever been a
part of humanity's history.
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>> Narrator: Roman
legend says the city was founded in 753 b.c.
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By romulus and remus--two brothers who were abandoned as infants
and raised by a she-wolf.
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The two brothers set out to build their own city on the banks of
the tiber river, but a disagreement over who would rule it ended in murder.
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Remus was killed at the hands of romulus, for whom the city of Rome
is named.
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It would not be the last time bloodshed produced a new roman
ruler.
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>> Norena: Civil war actually is one of the very defining
features of the growth of the roman state.
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The story, the tradition of romulus and remus is one that
reverberates and echoes throughout roman history.
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>> Narrator: Initially, Rome was one of countless small
kingdoms jockeying for power in central italy.
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But unlike many of its neighbors who were suspicious of
outsiders, Rome was a safe haven for ambitious outcasts.
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>> Arya: Romulus, he said, "given the fact that we
don't have any population, I'll create an asylum.
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I will create a sort of a free zone for anybody--runaway slaves,
brigands, pirates, whoever.
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Come and be part of this great " that's a very unique
attitude.
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And so from the very beginning, it seemed that the romans were
very open.
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>> Narrator: This openness encouraged a free exchange of
ideas.
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Among them were engineering theories imported from other
cultures.
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By borrowing the technology of neighbors like the etruscans, Rome
expanded into a regional power.
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>> Man #8: The romans had an extraordinary ability to take
from technological past and adapt it to their own purposes and to refine it
and to improve upon it.
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They were able to take from these etruscans the technology of
road building, of moving water systems through tunnels, of building large,
extraordinary walls and produce something which was based on etruscan
technology.
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>> Narrator: The city's first major engineering
achievement was the CLOACA MAXIMA (The very big sewer) an extensive sewer
system which still functions today 2,500 years after it was constructed.
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The CLOACA MAXIMA flushed runoff from Rome's
city streets into the tiber river.
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Engineers also used the sewer's underground pipeline to drain
the marshland between Rome's hilltop villages.
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There they built the
forum, ancient Rome's downtown district.
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>> Schlimgen: The construction of the cloaca maxima is the
key event in transforming Rome from a series of tribes living on disparate
hills around a swampy marsh into a kind of centralized, unified culture.
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The new roman forum that resulted from the draining with the CLOACA MAXIMA really allowed that
culture to consolidate in one central place.
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>> Narrator: While Rome's culture was consolidating, the
influence the city had over its neighbors began to grow.
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, Rome controlled most of central italy.
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And its engineers were called on to develop a transportation
infrastructure that would connect the expanding empire.
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>> Hartswick: In antiquity, there were basically two modes
of transportation.
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There was transportation through the countryside, either on
horseback but probably walking or in carts, or that there was travel by ship.
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Roads as we understand them today basically didn't exist before
the roman empire.
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>> Narrator: That all changed , when THE VIA APPIA was
built.
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Rome's first national highway stretched 132 miles from the
capital to its southern province of campania.
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To plot the straightest and fastest route down the coast, roman
engineers used a specialized surveying instrument.
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>> Steedman: The romans relied on the tool called A GROMA, which was a vertical
pole that stood in the ground with a cross on the top.
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And you could sight along this cross to line up two points in a
straight line.
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The big difference with roman roads and modern roads is that the
romans couldn't survey a corner.
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So they were all dead straight and then they would turn a sharp
angle and then go dead straight in another direction.
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The challenge, of course, with building a dead straight road in
any direction is that you come to hills and valleys and you have to cross
them.
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So if they had to, then they would cut through the mountains in
order to take the road straight through.
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>> Narrator: Once the ideal path was cleared, a broad
trench was dug and filled in with sand and boulders to form a solid
foundation.
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Next went a layer of gravel compacted with clay or mortar.
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The top surface was a layer of thick paving stones angled to
allow the water to drain off to the side.
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>> Weller: The roads were incredibly intimidating.
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You could look at a road and say, "i wonder how long it
takes to get a couple of legions, 10,000 guys, down this road, you know,
right into my backyard.
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I think I'll think twice about starting any nonsense with "
>> Narrator: By the time of Julius Caesar's assassination , Rome
controlled most of western europe and north africa.
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It had defeated CARTHAGE a century earlier, making it the
mediterranean world's lone superpower.
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Caesar's eventual successor was his great nephew OCTAVIAN, who
was renamed AUGUSTUS and crowned Rome's first imperator, or emperor.
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Under AUGUSTUS, the roman road network expanded to reach the
farthest corners of the empire.
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And with the highways paved, it was time to build new
destinations.
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>> Norena: Under AUGUSTUS, we can see popping up
everywhere roman-style cities equipped with a forum, with a theater, with an
amphitheater, with a basilica and all of the other markers of--of what made a
roman city.
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>> Narrator: To the recently conquered natives of the
provinces, the new cities were a powerful endorsement of the roman way of
life.
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>> Arya: People would flock to the new cities, these urban
centers, which were symbols of civilization, a higher standard of living,
incredible jobs.
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That's where the money resided, and people would go, as today--
will go where the jobs are.
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And, ultimately, uh, the--the people in these conquered nations
would--would really embrace these roman ideas.
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>> Schlimgen: The roman city itself was the greatest, uh,
image-creating device I believe that the romans had.
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And those cities survive today.
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LONDON, BONN, PARIS are all testaments to Rome's, uh, expansion
of its culture through its cities.
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>> NARRATOR: ROME'S
ENGINEERS HAD A SECRET WEAPON THAT ENABLED THEM TO BUILD BIGGER, STRONGER AND
FASTER THAN ANYONE ELSE-- WATERPROOF CONCRETE MIXED WITH A VOLCANIC SAND
CALLED POZZOLANA.
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>> Steedman: Early concretes were just a simple
lime/mortar mix which, although they would set, weren't very strong and
indeed, the particles in the early concrete could easily break apart.
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But in roman concrete, the POZZOLANA SAND reacted with the lime,
and it makes a concrete quite like a modern concrete, much, much stronger.
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>> Hartswick: They realized pretty early on that by using
this substance that they could build literally underwater, an extraordinary
invention which would allow them then to create enormous piers literally
within the water itself, revolutionizing travel.
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That is, bridges could be built that would be permanent bridges
rather than wooden bridges.
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>> Narrator: During the age of augustus, this concrete
solidified Rome's chokehold on western europe, allowing roman builders to
dominate the landscape with massive manmade monoliths.
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One in particular would revolutionize daily life in Rome for
centuries to come.
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( rock music playing ) ( whimpers ) >> Narrator: By the
first , Rome had emerged as europe's sole superpower.
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And as the romans expanded their empire outward, they also
looked inward and used their superior engineering skills to improve the
quality of life within the walls of the capital city.
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OF ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ROME'S ENGINEERS, NONE WERE AS
LIFE-ALTERING AS RUNNING WATER.
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>> SCHLIMGEN: ROME'S SYSTEM OF WATER DISTRIBUTION WAS A
QUANTUM LEAP TO ANYTHING WHICH HAD COME BEFORE IT.
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>> NARRATOR: IN THE CAPITAL CITY, ELEVEN AQUEDUCT LINES GUIDED A STEADY STREAM OF FRESH WATER TO
ITS CITIZENS, CARRYING A COMBINED 200 MILLION GALLONS A DAY INTO THE CITY
FROM MOUNTAIN SPRINGS MILES AWAY.
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>> ARYA: WHAT THE
AQUEDUCTS DID WAS REALLY REVOLUTIONIZE THE DAILY LIFE OF ROMAN CITIZENS,
NOT JUST THE GARDENS AND THE VILLAS OF THE WEALTHY OR THE PALACES OF THE EMPERORS,
BUT THE AVERAGE ROMAN.
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SO MUCH WATER WAS AVAILABLE IN THE CITY OF ROME, AND THIS
SUSTAINED AN ENORMOUS POPULATION.
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>> NARRATOR: THE AQUEDUCTS FOSTERED THE GROWTH OF A NEW
URBAN CULTURE.
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With a constant stream of water, up to a million people were
able to live cleanly and comfortably in the capital city.
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>> Arya: It's the water from the aqueducts which can flush
out the human filth and keep your city clean.
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This is another reason why the romans think that they're
superior is because they're cleaner than everybody else.
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>> Narrator: No single emperor can claim credit for the
success of the aqueducts.
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They were built over the course of several centuries.
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But IT WAS THE DISFIGURED, STUTTERING EMPEROR CLAUDIUS WHO arguably
had the greatest impact on Rome's water supply.
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Before he assumed power, CLAUDIUS had been a royal laughingstock
who was considered an invalid and even hidden from the public eye.
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>> Boatwright: Claudius had a stutter, we hear.
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He had a little bit of a limp.
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He was hard of hearing.
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So people didn't really know what to do with Claudius.
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>> Narrator: In spite of his shortcomings, Claudius was
cunning enough to seize power when an unlikely opportunity presented itself.
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, most of the royal family was murdered to avenge the bloody
reign of Claudius's nephew, caligula.
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But Claudius was spared after he was found cowering behind a
curtain.
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With his life hanging in the balance, he managed to bribe Rome's
praetorian guards into proclaiming him emperor.
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His timely bribe would change the course of roman history.
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>> Peachin: Once he became emperor, he seems to have ruled
in many ways, at least by our standards, well.
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He clearly was not a stupid man.
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>> Narrator: During the reign of Claudius, the empire took
several surprising steps forward.
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On the frontier, his legions conquered BRITANNIA, something even
Julius Caesar failed to do.
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And back home, he built two major aqueducts, theaqua claudiaand
theanio novus, which dramatically increased the amount of water flowing into Rome.
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>> Hartswick: Aqueducts are not that complicated in
theory.
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That is, that water seeks its lowest level, and therefore that
you can run water down a slope from any area to another area.
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So that that's a pretty simple premise that everybody would've
known.
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But the practice of creating an aqueduct is another thing.
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>> Narrator: The romans engineered their aqueducts to
approach the city on a gradual declining angle, or gradient.
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That gradient was just several inches every 100 feet.
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>> Hartswick: The slope of the aqueduct had to be
calculated from great distances--20, 30, sometimes even 40 miles from the
source in the mountains to the cities themselves.
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That had to be consistent.
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They couldn't deviate from it, regardless of what the terrain
was.
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>> Narrator: To maintain the water's precise descent
through high mountains, roman engineers dug perfectly angled tunnels through
them.
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When the pipelines reached low valleys, they were elevated on
stone walls.
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IF THE WALLS NEEDED TO BE HIGHER THAN 6 1/2 FEET OFF THE GROUND,
THE ROMANS SAVED BUILDING MATERIALS WHILE STILL ADDING STRENGTH BY PERFECTING
AN ANCIENT ENGINEERING CONCEPT-- THE ARCH.
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>> SCHLIMGEN: THE ARCH REVOLUTIONIZED ARCHITECTURE IN THE
ANCIENT WORLD BY PERMITTING FAR GREATER SPANS THAN HAD BEEN ALLOWABLE BEFORE.
|
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THEY BASICALLY CHANGED THE SPATIAL CONCEPTION TOTALLY OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.
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>> Narrator: Arches were built around a temporary wooden
framework that held each stone in place until the keystone was laid in the
center.
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|
|
The keystone evenly distributed weight down each side of the
arch, allowing builders to stack addition stones above it.
|
|
|
>> NELSON: ARCHES ARE AN IMPROVEMENT UPON BUILDING JUST A
STRAIGHT WALL IN A VARIETY OF MEANS, BOTH IN TERMS OF THEIR EFFICIENCY AND IN
TERMS OF THEIR STRENGTH.
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|
|
THE ARCH, OF COURSE, TAKES MUCH MUCH LESS MATERIAL TO BUILD.
|
|
|
ARCHES ARE VERY STRONG AT SUPPORTING THINGS LIKE ROOFS AND
AQUEDUCTS AND WHATEVER YOU WANT TO PUT ON TOP OF THEM.
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|
>> Narrator: A 6-mile column of arches carried the AQUA CLAUDIA
across the valleys on its way to Rome.
|
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>> Steedman: The aqueducts would have had a covered roof.
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|
|
But, of course, if you could take the roof off, you could see
the water like an open river coming down towards the city.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: After reaching the city, each aqueduct
emptied into three holding tanks-- one for the public drinking fountains, a
second for the public baths and a third reserved for the emperor and other
wealthy romans who paid for their own running water, a concept that was well
ahead of its time.
|
|
|
>> Weller: Basically every home by the first or second of
any means had running water.
|
|
|
This is astounding, because the entire span of the middle ages,
they didn't have this.
|
|
|
>> Narration: With the construction of the AQUA CLAUDIA and
the ANIO NOVUS,emperor CLAUDIUS had revitalized Rome's system of water
distribution.
|
|
|
His public record was one of success.
|
|
|
But the choices he made in his private life would ultimately
lead to his downfall.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: The tradition about CLAUDIUS is that he was
uxorious, that he loved his women, and
his wives in particular, too much and was subservient to them.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: He sent shockwaves through the empire when he
married his own niece, AGRIPPINA, the conniving sister of CALIGULA.
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|
>> Nelson: Agrippina came from a line of ambitious,
popular and powerful women.
|
|
|
She was kind of, in some ways, THE CLEOPATRA of her age.
|
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|
>> Boatwright: She was headstrong, she was proud and she
was ambitious.
|
|
|
She was terribly ambitious.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: After having been surrounded by emperors her
whole life, AGRIPPINA was hungry for her own taste of power.
|
|
|
She used all of her physical and political charm to attain it.
|
|
|
And once the AGING CLAUDIUS was under her spell, she used her
only son as a means to perpetuate it.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: Agrippina's main intent in seducing CLAUDIUS
and becoming the empress was to ensure that her son would accede to the
throne.
|
|
|
>> Narrator:, agrippina convinced Claudius to name her son
from a previous ..instead of his own biological son.
|
|
|
Four years later, emperor Claudius was dead, poisoned by a
mushroom and his wife's ambition.
|
|
|
Overnight, agrippina had gone from being the wife of one emperor
to the mother of another.
|
|
|
His name was Nero, a 16-year-old tyrant-in-training who would
engineer disaster.
|
|
|
Th2 - hr) >> Narrator:--a small fire spreads into a
week-long inferno that reduces huge swaths of Rome to ashes and leaves
thousands homeless and walking the streets.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: The fire of '64 was one of the most
devastating fires that Rome ever had.
|
|
|
And we hear that of the 14 regions of Rome, at least ten were
affected, some completely destroyed.
|
|
|
That must've been a huge number of individuals who were killed
in the panic and just being killed by smoke or by the fire itself.
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|
|
>> Narrator: Number one on the list of arson suspects is
the emperor himself.
|
|
|
Nero was supposedly seen playing his lyre at the top of a nearby
tower as the fire raged.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: He's said to have looked at the fire as
though it were a spectacle and to have gone to the tower of maecenas and
recited the fall of troy.
|
|
|
The tradition is that Nero was fiddling while Rome burned.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: His actions after the blaze were just as
incriminating.
|
|
|
Nero confiscated a third of the charred city as his own personal
property and set out to build the empire's most extravagant monument to
self-indulgence--a palace complex covering some 200 acres of downtown Rome.
|
|
|
>> Peachin: Rumor starts to spread that he had set the
fire intentionally so as to clear a portion of the city where he could build
this palace.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Nero blamed the fire on a new religious cult
called the christians and had hundreds of them strung up and burned to death
in the streets of Rome.
|
|
|
This was just the latest in a string of horrifying acts that
solidified Nero's dysfunctional legacy.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: He served up the head of one of his ex-wives to
his new wife as a present on her request.
|
|
|
And then later kicked her to death when she was pregnant in a
fit of rage.
|
|
|
Most of the acts for which NERO is most infamous come after one
of the most heinous acts one can commit--the killing of one's own mother.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Agrippina, who had orchestrated NERO'S RISE
TO POWER by killing her husband Claudius, was antiquity's most overbearing
mother.
|
|
|
She expected to share power equally with her son.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: She wasn't going to accept a subservient
role, not to Claudius, not to her son.
|
|
|
And that, of course, did her in ultimately.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Agrippina's thirst for control gradually
infuriated Nero.
|
|
|
, five years after he became emperor, the 21-year-old sent his
guards to kill his own mother.
|
|
|
As they closed in, agrippina symbolically ordered the guards to
stab her in the womb.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: She said, "strike here first.
|
|
|
" very dramatic.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Nero was haunted by visions of his mother's
ghost for the rest of his life, visions which pushed him further into
madness.
|
|
|
>> MAN: NERO, AS TIME GOES ON, BECOMES MORE AND MORE
LONELY.
|
|
|
AND AT THE SAME TIME, PERHAPS ALSO, THEREFORE, MORE AND MORE
PARANOID AND MORE AND MORE CRUEL.
|
|
|
>> NARRATOR: IT WAS IN THE MIDST OF HIS DEEPENING
DELUSIONS THAT NERO BEGAN BUILDING THE EMPIRE'S MOST LAVISH PLEASURE PALACE
ON PUBLIC LAND AND WITH PUBLIC MONEY.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: You'd have to imagine the whole of central park
is transformed into bill gates' personal estate and pleasure palace.
|
|
|
And this is in the heart of the city where the rich and the
affluent and the people who have a part of the city itself once had their
homes.
|
|
|
It--it--it was shocking.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: Nero bled the provinces dry to get money
for that.
|
|
|
And also in Rome, he demanded money from the rich.
|
|
|
They had to bequeath him their money, and then they would be
offed.
|
|
|
It must've been a very scary time to be alive.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: NERO'S GOLDEN HOUSE was built on the pain and
sweat of forced labor.
|
|
|
In ancient Rome, slavery was a common and acceptable practice.
|
|
|
ONE IN EVERY THREE PEOPLE LIVING IN THE CITY WAS A SLAVE.
|
|
|
>> Norena: Rome's achievements would be unthinkable
without slave labor.
|
|
|
This slave labor was part of what generated the profits
necessary to maintain and to expand an empire.
|
|
|
THERE'S NO QUESTION THAT SLAVE LABOR WAS ALSO VERY SIGNIFICANT
FOR THE BUILDING OF THESE GRAND PROJECTS THAT REALLY DEFINED THE ESSENCE OF
IMPERIAL ROME.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Nero's new palace would reflect his god-like
perception of himself.
|
|
|
It was designed to evoke a sprawling seaside villa in the heart
of the city.
|
|
|
Vineyards, gardens and pastures for wild animals would cover
what had once been Rome's downtown crossroads.
|
|
|
The center of the complex would be a man-made lake and a
pavilion with covered walkways a mile long.
|
|
|
A VAST 150-ROOM WING OF THAT PAVILION STILL SURVIVES TODAY,
BURIED BENEATH MODERN ROME.
|
|
|
ITS CAVERNOUS INTERIOR DEMONSTRATES ROMAN MASTERY OF ANOTHER
ENGINEERING INNOVATION-- THE VAULTED CEILING.
|
|
|
>> SCHLIMGEN: A VAULT IS NOTHING MORE OR LESS THAN AN ARCH
WHICH HAS BEEN EXTENDED ALONG AN AXIS.
|
|
|
Once you've built that framing one time and built one arch, move
the framing, build another, move the framing, build another, you have a long
vault--a very efficient way to build for the romans.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: When the DOMUS AUREA was completed after just
four years, emperor Nero exclaimed, "finally, I can begin to live in a
house worthy of a " a surviving remnant is a dank shell of the decadent
palace he inhabited.
|
|
|
These brick and concrete CHAMBERS were once trimmed in gold and
covered with colorful frescoes and priceless gems.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: There were semi-precious and precious
stones embedded in the ceiling.
|
|
|
So that there's lapis lazuli and rock crystal and rose crystal
that were just put up to catch the light.
|
|
|
>> Norena: And in building the DOMUS AUREA ,NERO is
showing that he is not, like good emperors, geNerous with his personal
resources.
|
|
|
And I think this is one of the things that leads to his
downfall.
|
|
|
His behavior was so far off the scale in terms of what senators
and people in Rome expected out of their emperor that I think he ultimately
paid the price.
|
|
|
>> Narrator:, just months after he moved into the DOMUS
AUREA, NERO was overthrown by a tidal wave of opposition.
|
|
|
He was declared a public enemy by the senate and hunted like a
fugitive by his own guards.
|
|
|
As they closed in on him, NERO slit his throat with the help of
a loyal slave.
|
|
|
His last words were, "what an " >> Nelson: Nero
died like the grand eloquent actor he always wanted to be, a kind of tragic
actor upon a tragic stage.
|
|
|
So his final words really do complete a picture of somebody who
saw themself not as an emperor but as a star.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: After Nero's death, the romans sought to bury
any memory of him and his oppressive reign.
|
|
|
his golden house was filled in and covered with dirt and rubble.
|
|
|
It would form the foundation of a bath complex built above it by
the EMPEROR TRAJAN.
|
|
|
For the next 1,300 years, it lay buried and forgotten beneath a
changing city.
|
|
|
THEN IN THE 1500s, A SINKHOLE Led explorers back into the belly
of the ancient beast.
|
|
|
Inside, renaissance artists drew inspiration from its bizarre
frescoes.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: The very word "grotesque" that we
use today is actually an artistic term to describe these strange creatures
that they saw down there that were part human, part beast, part architecture,
part decoration.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The DOMUS AUREA is an enduring testament to NERO'S
chilling reign--one marred by madness, mass murder and extreme
self-indulgence.
|
|
|
When that reign ended the roman empire faced an uncertain
future.
|
|
|
Every emperor from Julius Caesar through Nero had been a
descendant of a single bloodline.
|
|
|
Now for the first time, rule of the empire was left up for
grabs.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: No one was sure really what was going to happen
next except that it was going to bloody and it wasn't going to be very good
until it was over.
|
|
|
>> Narrator:--emperor Nero lays dead, killed by his own
hand.
|
|
|
FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE MURDER OF JULIUS CAESAR, ROME IS
LEFT WITHOUT AN HEIR TO THE THRONE.
|
|
|
[SOLDIERS SHOUTING] A POWER STRUGGLE ERUPTS BETWEEN THE EMPIRE'S
TOP GENERALS, WHO TURN THEIR ARMIES ON EACH OTHER IN A BLOODY BID FOR POWER.
|
|
|
THE ULTIMATE VICTOR IS VESPASIAN,
A SIMPLE, STRAIGHT-TALKING GENERAL WHO HAD COMMANDED ROME'S LEGIONS IN THE
VOLATILE JEWISH OUTPOST OF JUDEA.
|
|
|
He is not of royal blood, and he is nothing like his tyrannical
predecessor.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: Vespasian was the anti-Nero.
|
|
|
He was as different from Nero as one could possibly get.
|
|
|
He had come up through the ranks.
|
|
|
And he was a practical kind of hard-bitten man who was averse to
pretension and proud of it.
|
|
|
Vespasian's the kind of guy that would much rather watch a
football game than an opera.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Unlike Nero, who exploited the skills of his
engineers for his own colossal vanity projects, VESPASIAN would put Rome's
greatest architectural minds to work for the people.
|
|
|
He would start by draining the massive lake that Nero had built
on his palace grounds.
|
|
|
On that site would rise Rome's most famous engineering marvel--
a place where all the chaos that had consumed the city could be channeled.
|
|
|
It would be called THE FLAVIAN
AMPHITHEATER, though we know it as the COLOSSEUM.
|
|
|
>> Arya: So the statement THAT VESPASIAN made was, "i
am taking a space which was only for the private use of a bad emperor.
|
|
|
And now I am transforming that area into a public space, which
will be then used for the enjoyment of all the people " so that was a
very bold piece of propaganda.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: GLADIATORS had been spilling blood in the
name of entertainment for centuries.
|
|
|
But the people of Rome were hungry for bigger, bolder
spectacles.
|
|
|
The colosseum would give the gladiators a permanent,
state-of-the-art killing field.
|
|
|
And the games would take on a level of carnage never before seen
in the empire's history.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: This was the big venue.
|
|
|
This was the superdome.
|
|
|
The entertainment came to you.
|
|
|
Everything from animals from the farthest corners of the known
world to captives from faraway lands could be brought to your central
location, to your favorite box seat and right in in the center of the city.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: CONSTRUCTION ON THE
COLOSSEUM BEGAN IN 72 A.D.
|
|
|
It was financed by the sale of precious relics taken from the
jewish temple during vespasian's sacking of Jerusalem.
|
|
|
12,000 JEWISH CAPTIVES WERE BROUGHT BACK FROM THAT CAMPAIGN TO
BUILD THE AMPHITHEATER.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: They would've worked under tremendously harsh
conditions and been worked long and hard and to the end.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: They poured more than 6,000 tons of concrete
and hauled huge travertine building blocks to the site from a quarry 20 miles
away.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: As the building progressed up higher, they
would use less of the strong, expensive and heavy limestone and more of the
cheaper ingredients, which were lighter in weight.
|
|
|
THE ROMANS HAD QUITE SOPHISTICATED WOODEN CRANES AND DEVICES FOR
LIFTING STONES.
|
|
|
AND THEY'D BE ABLE TO DO THAT QUITE EASILY FROM THE GROUND AND
UP TO GREAT HEIGHTS.
|
|
|
>> NARRATOR: IN JUST EIGHT YEARS, THE IMPOSING STRUCTURE
GREW TO 160 FEET TALL, DWARFING ALL THAT SURROUNDED IT.
|
|
|
>> Arya: It's the tallest ancient roman structure ever
built.
|
|
|
This is the amphitheater of the capital.
|
|
|
So what was Rome?
|
|
|
Rome was a city that was so much larger than any other city.
|
|
|
It was so much richer.
|
|
|
So that came to symbolize the power, the engineering, the wealth
of ancient Rome.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Roman amphitheaters were constructed from a
surprisingly simple framework, incorporating two greek theaters back-to-back
to form one 360-degree theater in the round.
|
|
|
The colosseum set a new standard for roman amphitheater design.
|
|
|
It contained an intricate network of corridors and staircases
that could shuffle 70,000 romans in and out in record time.
|
|
|
As with stadiums today, everyone who entered the colosseum had a
ticket corresponding to the number above one of the entry gates.
|
|
|
THE COMPLEX WAS DESIGNED NOT ONLY TO CONTROL THE CROWDS, BUT TO
KEEP THEM COMFORTABLE.
|
|
|
It had 110 drinking fountains and two restrooms large enough to
accommodate a packed house.
|
|
|
The colosseum even had a retractable roof.
|
|
|
On hot days, an awning called a VELARIUM was unfurled above the upper deck to shade spectators
from the sun.
|
|
|
It was operated by sailors from the roman navy who were
stationed around the top of the colosseum's arcade.
|
|
|
>> Weller: They could move it according to the sun and
according to the wind.
|
|
|
And subsequently, the colosseum was amazingly air-conditioned,
shaded, and they would stand on top of the arcade and work these poles, the
holes of which we can see in the external side, that would hold this immense
canvas that would cover the place.
|
|
|
>> Narrator:, the COLOSSEUM
was complete.
|
|
|
But vespasian didn't live to see the grand opening of his
greatest monument.
|
|
|
He had died of natural causes the previous year.
|
|
|
So his son and successor,
TITUS, led the inaugural celebration.
|
|
|
For 100 straight days, romans flocked to the colosseum to soak
in every kind of carnage imaginable.
|
|
|
5,000 Animals were slaughtered in a single day.
|
|
|
Thousands of gladiators and prisoners left as corpses.
|
|
|
Outside the arena, bloodshed on this scale was known only in
war.
|
|
|
But inside, it was pure entertainment.
|
|
|
>> Arya: They go for the entire day, and in the morning
they watch men kill or be killed by, uh, animals.
|
|
|
And around noontime, they're watching the execution of
prisoners.
|
|
|
[crowd cheering] And then finally, in the afternoons the main
event, prime time tv kind of experience, is is the best for last, and that's
going to be gladiators, man against man.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Gladiatorial fights were a big draw at the colosseum.
|
|
|
But they weren't always the main event.
|
|
|
SEVERAL ANCIENT WRITERS DESCRIBE LIVE NAVAL BATTLES RECREATED
RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ARENA WITH BATTLESHIPS ON WATER.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: It would have been entirely possible to have
diverted water from one of the aqueducts and brought it to the colosseum in
order to flood the floor to a shallow depth.
|
|
|
>> Arya: We do have evidence due to recent studies of the
colosseum that show there are plenty of channels--water channels, for
flooding the substructures of the colosseum.
|
|
|
So, yes, it was possible.
|
|
|
And, yes, it happened.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Cristiano ranieri is the first modern
archaeologist to explore the labyrinth of water channels beneath the
colosseum.
|
|
|
He believes he has found conclusive evidence of a plumbing
system that was used to flood the arena for naval battles.
|
|
|
>> Translator: We have found underneath the arena floor
some tunnels that are very ancient, even more ancient than the colosseum that
date from the time of Nero.
|
|
|
Therefore, contemporary to the the domus aurea.
|
|
|
[men speaking Italian] >> Narrator: The original water
channels built beneath Nero's artificial lake were left intact when the
colosseum was built above it.
|
|
|
They could have been reconfigured to flood and drain the arena.
|
|
|
In this never-before-seen footage, cristiano leads his dive team
inside those ancient channels and through water polluted with the debris of
two millennia.
|
|
|
Beneath the colosseum, he uncovers a holding tank with a direct
line to a nearby aqueduct.
|
|
|
Cristiano believes water was diverted from that aqueduct into
the arena.
|
|
|
[men speaking Italian] He also finds evidence of drainpipes that
connected to the city sewer system, which could've been used to drain the
flood waters from the arena into the tiber river.
|
|
|
>> Translator: There was a proper plumbing system.
|
|
|
At one point, the tunnels were used to flood the arena floor to
create navy battle scenes.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The colosseum's naval battles were an
astounding engineering triumph.
|
|
|
But they proved to be a fleeting trend in the world's most
famous arena.
|
|
|
Within a decade, flooding operations were abandoned in favor of
a renovation that would revolutionize the games--a
new two-story substructure beneath
the arena called the HYPOGEUM.
|
|
|
Within it were a system of elevators and trapdoors that enabled
tigers and armed gladiators to suddenly pop up through the floor and
slaughter their unsuspecting victims.
|
|
|
>> Weller: Although the real spectacle happened up here in
the arena, the backbone, the nerve center, the real support system of the
arena was down ..
|
|
|
Where there were lion runs, cages for wild animals being
taunted, gladiators sharpening their swords preparing for death, condemned criminals
in cages.
|
|
|
[crowd cheering] As the games begin, a trapdoor in the arena
floor will open.
|
|
|
And by a system of pulleys, an elevator will hoist another lion
or a panther up into the arena.
|
|
|
When the trapdoor opens, we're bathed in light.
|
|
|
We hear the yells of the throng enjoying the games, and then the
trapdoor will close again, leaving us contemplating our own demise amongst
the screams and lamentations and stench of blood, beasts and men.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Violent, bloody, exploitative, thrilling--
the games in the colosseum were the ultimate roman spectacle.
|
|
|
And all those who entered were awed by the engineering prowess
of the world's most advanced civilization.
|
|
|
After a decade of strength and stability under vespasian, that
civilization was reaching the height of its power.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: By the end of the , the roman empire extended
from england to egypt and from portugal to persia.
|
|
|
As many as 50 million people of every race and language were
loyal subjects of one emperor.
|
|
|
That emperor was always an Italian , when an outsider emerged to
take over the empire.
|
|
|
His name was trajan, an ambitious warrior from the province of
spain, whose battlefield triumphs had caught the eye of the ailing emperor
nerva.
|
|
|
Having no sons of his own, nerva adopted trajan as his son and
heir.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: There is a widening of the idea of what it
meant to be roman and who could help the state and who would participate in
the state.
|
|
|
And trajan is a very good example of that.
|
|
|
Trajan is the first of a whole series of emperors who come from
outside of italy.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: When nerva died, trajan inherited the roman
world.
|
|
|
He immediately set out to prove his loyalty to the citizens of
the capital.
|
|
|
He knew the best way to do this was to appeal to their
unyielding sense of supremacy.
|
|
|
>> Norena: The romans thought on a grand scale.
|
|
|
The size of their empire, the size of their buildings and the
ambitions of its leading individuals must be one of the things that we point
to as defining what it meant to be a roman.
|
|
|
They were driven by--by a kind of collective cultural ego.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Trajan launched a massive building campaign
that began with the empire's infrastructure.
|
|
|
He made urgently needed repairs on roads, harbors and public
buildings.
|
|
|
He commissioned one of the last great aqueducts and built new
public baths on the crumbling foundations of Nero's golden house.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: All of this building required a tremendous
amount of money.
|
|
|
And in order to really complete and fulfill his own kind of
plans, he was going to have to come up with a great deal more of it.
|
|
|
And in roman terms, this means conquest.
|
|
|
He set out to conquer dacia, an elusive region encompassing
modern romania and hungary that had fended off the romans for centuries.
|
|
|
After years of bitter combat, the dacians surrendered in 107
a.d.
|
|
|
The conquering emperor plundered hundreds of tons of gold and
silver from his new province.
|
|
|
>> Arya: Trajan is the emperor that extended the
boundaries of the empire to its greatest extent.
|
|
|
So trajan really pushed the envelope, and in doing so, he
brought back more money, more goods, more spoils than any other emperor,
which meant that he had so much money at his disposal.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The emperor spent his new capital on a
sprawling public space that would alleviate the congestion in Rome's
overcrowded downtown district.
|
|
|
Since the beginning of the republic, the old roman forum had
been the center of government, commerce and culture.
|
|
|
There, temples to gods like SATURN AND VESTA sat beside law
courts and libraries.
|
|
|
But as Rome grew into the capital of the world, development
began to sprawl out from its original crossroads.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: THE
FORUM was a critical part of roman life, but the success of the city and
the pressure of the population was such that they had to keep building new
extensions time after time.
|
|
|
And each emperor in turn had to build a new part of the forum
for their own people.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: BY THE TIME OF TRAJAN, ROME WAS A DENSELY POPULATED METROPOLIS
OF ONE MILLION PEOPLE AND GROWING.
|
|
|
So he commissioned his own new forum, one larger than those of
all his predecessors combined.
|
|
|
>> Arya: Trajan didn't just have so much money but the
skills of the engineers, the people who poured concrete and so on.
|
|
|
They were at a high point.
|
|
|
They could achieve and create better and faster than any
previous time.
|
|
|
APOLLODORUS WAS A GREEK ARCHITECT WHO HAD DESIGNED MILITARY
BRIDGES FOR TRAJAN DURING HIS BATTLES WITH DACIA.
|
|
|
During that war, he had proven to be an architectural
mastermind.
|
|
|
NOW APOLLODORUS was faced with a new challenge--a lack of real
estate to house trajan's grand vision.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: And of course, as in modern-day buildings,
location is absolutely critical.
|
|
|
So if an emperor wanted to build a structure in a particular
location and they had to level the site, then they would just have to do
that.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: To create a flat plain large enough to
develop in downtown Rome, apollodorus ordered his builders to carve out a
huge chunk of the QUIRINAL HILL adjacent
to the old forum.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: We're living in a time thousands of years
before dynamite.
|
|
|
The romans had to achieve these great feats of terraforming and
clearing the landscape through SHEER
MANPOWER, THE FORCE OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SLAVES WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK
WITH SHOVELS AND PICKAXES.
|
|
|
Imagine an army of ants carrying away a loaf of bread.
|
|
|
They're not going to do it all at once.
|
|
|
They're going to break it apart into small pieces and take it
apart one at a time.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: An army of roman slaves methodically leveled
the stone hillside, chipping away 125 feet of elevation and generating over
600,000 square feet of prime real estate in the heart of Rome.
|
|
|
THERE, A CITY OF MARBLE BEGAN TO RISE FROM THE SOIL AS A SPANISH
EMPEROR AND A GREEK ARCHITECT REMADE THE CAPITAL.
|
|
|
The finished product was unveiled in 112 a.d.
|
|
|
>> GADEYNE: TO GO TO THE FORUM OF TRAJAN WOULD HAVE BEEN A
MASSIVE EXPERIENCE FOR ANY ROMAN.
|
|
|
YOU WOULD HAVE ENTERED THE BASILICA, THE LARGEST EVER BUILT IN ROME
OF THAT TIME.
|
|
|
THE BASILICA WAS RIVETED WITH MARBLE, FLOODED WITH LIGHT.
|
|
|
AFTER THAT, YOU WOULD HAVE ARRIVED IN THE SQUARE.
|
|
|
YOU WOULD HAVE LOOKED AROUND AND SEEN THE MONUMENTAL EQUESTRIAN
STATUE OF TRAJAN.
|
|
|
IT REALLY MUST HAVE BEEN AN AWESOME SIGHT.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The forum's centerpiece was a 125-FOOT MARBLE
COLUMN that towered above the new construction.
|
|
|
THAT COLUMN STILL SURVIVES TODAY.
|
|
|
AROUND ITS FACADE, A SPIRALING RELIEF IS CARVED THAT TELLS THE
STORY OF TRAJAN'S INVASION OF DACIA.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: Trajan appears over and over and over and over
again, always involved in every aspect of the campaign from its initial
planning all the way through final conquest.
|
|
|
And in this way, the column serves as a kind of propaganda film.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The column's exact height holds a more subtle
significance.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: The height of TRAJAN'S COLUMN itself, 100
feet with the addition of the base and the statue on top of that, marked the
height of the side of the quirinal hill which was removed to create the forum
at that spot.
|
|
|
Therefore, it becomes a marker not only of the battles of TRAJAN
but also the battles of APOLLODORUS To clear the land and create this
monumental urban space.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Trajan's forum stood for 700 years.
|
|
|
Most of it was reduced to rubble BY A 9th-CENTURY EARTHQUAKE.
|
|
|
But there is one surviving section that leaves no doubt about
its imposing scale, a vast complex known as trajan's market.
|
|
|
Apollodorus shored up the 125-foot cliff face he had created by
form-fitting a 6-story roman shopping mall directly into the hillside.
|
|
|
He ingeniously shaped the first three levels in a hemicycle--a
semicircular structure with long, curved corridors of storefronts.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: The markets functioned to reinforce the
hillside, which had just been carved out.
|
|
|
And it's probably not by chance that the form that's used
against that hillside is concave, therefore much stronger form.
|
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|
Again, the form of an arch turned on its side to resist the
pressure of the hill beside that.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Above the hemicycle were three more levels
with units ranging from small ..to great 3-storied halls.
|
|
|
Trajan's market contained over 150 individual storefronts that
might have supplied everything from footwear to fine art.
|
|
|
>> Hartswick: These markets must have sold enormous
quantities of materials from all parts of the roman world and perhaps even beyond.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: While trajan's forum next door was a lavish
..
|
|
|
His market was engineered as a main street for the masses.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: The market together with the forum represent
two sides of roman culture.
|
|
|
The opulence of the forum, its colonnaded forecourt, its gilded
decorations represented a tremendous formal center for the city.
|
|
|
Right next to that, the brick architecture of the marketplace,
very commonplace in the city for the daily lives of the roman citizenry.
|
|
|
>> NARRATOR: TRAJAN'S ENGINEERING FEATS AT HOME AND
CONQUESTS ABROAD MADE HIM ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR EMPERORS IN ROMAN HISTORY.
|
|
|
But defending more territory would prove problematic for
trajan's successor.
|
|
|
SO TO STABILIZE THE EMPIRE'S BORDERS, ROME'S NEXT EMPEROR WOULD
BUILD A MASSIVE BARRICADE TO SEAL OFF THE ROMAN WORLD FROM THE BARBARIANS
BEYOND.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: By the time he died , emperor trajan had
propelled the roman empire to the height of its size and wealth.
|
|
|
But the drawbacks of such a widespread dominion would soon
become evident.
|
|
|
Trajan had no biological sons.
|
|
|
So upon his death, control of the empire passed to his adoptive
son, hadrian.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: Hadrian, like trajan, was a military man and an
accomplished one.
|
|
|
Hadrian saw that the empire would be unable to maintain its
expanded borders.
|
|
|
The longer the borders are extended, of course, the more money
it takes to be able to maintain border defenses, so he wasn't looking for
more things to conquer but how to hold onto what they already had.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Concrete evidence of hadrian's defensive
policy shift can be found today in a remote section of northern england 1,500
miles from Rome.
|
|
|
When HADRIAN came to
power in 117, the northern half OF BRITANNIA remained an untamed frontier,
where roman soldiers confronted the dual threats of freezing winters and
barbarian incursion.
|
|
|
HADRIAN paid a personal
visit to the front lines.
|
|
|
The emperor quickly concluded that the only way to TAME
BRITANNIA was to tame his own soldiers first.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: The romans always believed you have this
group of men who are serving the roman state, make them work.
|
|
|
If you're not disciplined, the thought is these roman soldiers
are just gonna start frittering away their time and gambling and not doing
the right thing.
|
|
|
>> NARRATOR: HADRIAN PUT HIS LEGIONS TO WORK ON THE MOST
AMBITIOUS FORTIFICATION EVER CONCEIVED BY A ROMAN--A TOWERING 73-MILE
DEFENSIVE WALL ACROSS THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.
|
|
|
TODAY, THE PILFERING OF TIME HAS REDUCED HADRIAN'S WALL TO ITS
FOUNDATIONS.
|
|
|
BUT IT ONCE TOWERED 15 FEET HIGH WITH PARAPETS RISING AN
ADDITIONAL 6 FEET ABOVE THAT.
|
|
|
A 9-foot ditch was dug at its base, forcing potential invaders
to make a 30-foot climb before coming face-to-face with the roman legions on
the other side.
|
|
|
And if invaders did miraculously make it over the wall and past
the roman guards, they had one last obstacle to slow their advance, the
vallum--a 120-foot-wide ditch that ran behind the wall from coast to coast.
|
|
|
Hadrian's wall was as much a psychological barrier as a physical
one.
|
|
|
Its monstrous, unending facade served as an unnerving reminder OF
ROME'S INDISPUTABLE DOMINANCE.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: In some ways, you might be able to COMPARE
HADRIAN'S WALL TO THE BERLIN WALL, that is, a wall that's intended both to
keep people out and to keep people in and to prevent a kind of mixing that
goes uncontrolled.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Hadrian's great divide would be the roman
world's largest stone fortification, one made all the more challenging and
effective by northern britannia's jagged terrain.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: The engineers positioned the wall in as
strategic a location as possible.
|
|
|
It's often running along cliff edge just above a drop to the
north.
|
|
|
And in principle, the natural geology of the landscape would
help them build a bigger defensive structure.
|
|
|
The main problem with that, from an engineering point of view,
is the difficulty of getting materials to that site to build the wall.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Three legions, totaling between 15,000 and
25,000 men were needed to undertake the backbreaking task of moving heavy
stone blocks to the construction site.
|
|
|
BUT THE WALL WAS ONLY ONE COMPONENT OF HADRIAN'S GRAND DESIGN.
|
|
|
Every roman mile, the legions built a guard post into the wall
called A MILE CASTLE, which housed up to 60 troops at a time.
|
|
|
Between each mile castle stood two smaller watchtowers where
sentries kept a constant eye on the borderland.
|
|
|
And along the length of the wall, seventeen enormous super forts
were built that could house 1,000 roman soldiers.
|
|
|
>> Nelson: What this in effect did was kind of create a
military zone that allowed the romans to maintain enough military strength
right along the wall to go out in force, patrol along the front, conduct
maintenance and still maintain the kind of military presence that was
effective as well as impressive.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Each super fort covered three to five acres
and included an assembly hall, a temple, barracks, hospital and
bathhouse--everything needed to sustain an army.
|
|
|
Around these forts, towns sprung up to satisfy the army's
constant demand for food and supplies.
|
|
|
>> BOATWRIGHT: THESE ROMAN TROOPS WANTED ROMAN SHOES, THEY
WANTED ROMAN NEEDLES, THEY WANTED ALL THE THINGS THAT THEY COULD HAVE
ELSEWHERE IN THE ROMAN WORLD.
|
|
|
SO TRADE TENDS TO FOLLOW THEM.
|
|
|
BARS TEND TO FOLLOW THEM.
|
|
|
WOMEN TEND TO FOLLOW THEM AND END UP CHANGING, FUNDAMENTALLY,
THE AREAS IN WHICH THEY ARE SETTLED.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: In just five years, hadrian's vast barrier
across britain was complete.
|
|
|
The emperor had secured Rome's northwest border, improved
discipline within his ranks, and created an unmis testament to the vast reach
of roman power.
|
|
|
HADRIAN RETURNED TO ROME.
|
|
|
There he would commission one of Rome's most celebrated ..and
eliminate its most celebrated engineer.
|
|
|
>> Narrator:, emperor hadrian returned to Rome after a
5-year military inspection tour on the roman frontier.
|
|
|
While he was away, his builders had been working feverishly to
carry out his architectural vision in the capital city.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: Hadrian certainly wanted to leave an
imprint on Rome.
|
|
|
He wanted to revive augustan building and show that he could do
better.
|
|
|
>> NARRATOR: 150 YEARS EARLIER, EMPEROR AUGUSTUS HAD
FAMOUSLY TRANSFORMED ROME FROM A CITY OF BRICK INTO A CITY OF MARBLE.
|
|
|
HADRIAN WANTED HIS OWN BUILDING LEGACY TO BE EQUALLY MEMORABLE.
|
|
|
And the crown jewel in that legacy would have a direct link to
the reign of his legendary predecessor.
|
|
|
Soon after he became emperor, he set his sights on rebuilding a
burned-out temple complex dating from the time of augustus.
|
|
|
In the rubble of the old ruin, he commissioned his most famous
structure--THE PANTHEON, A MAJESTIC TEMPLE TO THE ROMAN GODS.
|
|
|
>> ARYA: THE PANTHEON IS ARGUABLY THE MOST AMAZING
STRUCTURE EVER BUILT BY THE ROMANS.
|
|
|
Why?
|
|
|
The ROTUNDA.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The rotunda, a huge interior space capped by
a magnificent dome ceiling, was the heart of the pantheon's design.
|
|
|
At its center, the concrete dome rises nearly 150 feet.
|
|
|
It spans exactly the same length across without any support from
columns or buttresses.
|
|
|
>> Arya: 150 Feet is a great distance to span.
|
|
|
The guts that they had to attempt something so wide, to span
something so wide, this is the one of the grand achievements.
|
|
|
>> NARRATOR: THE PANTHEON'S DOME WOULD REMAIN THE LARGEST
UNSUPPORTED CONCRETE SPAN IN THE WORLD FOR 18 CENTURIES.
|
|
|
Before HADRIAN's engineers could start pouring the dome's
concrete ceiling, they needed to figure out how to direct its weight away
from its center.
|
|
|
Otherwise, when they removed the wooden framework holding the
ceiling in place, 3,000 tons of concrete would collapse under its own weight.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: Today when we build in concrete, we
introduce a steel tension rod, which picks up half of the stresses in the
concrete.
|
|
|
The romans couldn't do this.
|
|
|
Therefore the dome of the pantheon was constantly pushing
outward towards its base.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: THE PANTHEON'S ENGINEERS DEVELOPED SEVERAL
RADICAL SOLUTIONS TO MAKE SURE ITS CEILING AND THE EMPEROR'S REPUTATION
WOULDN'T COME CRASHING DOWN.
|
|
|
First, they built a solid base of walls 20 feet thick to act as
a foundation for the ceiling.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: They used the vertical walls on either side
to help support the weight of the dome from pushing outwards.
|
|
|
They used the walls to buttress the dome itself.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Next, as the ceiling rose toward its apex,
they mixed in lighter materials with the cement and poured a progressively
thinner layer of it.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: Roman concrete, like concrete today, used
aggregate, usually stones, to bond the concrete together.
|
|
|
In the PANTHEON'S DOME, romans used a common technique at that
time of actually inserting hollow amphorae, or jugs, inside of the concrete
to displace some of the concrete and lighten the load.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: To make the ceiling even lighter, the
builders molded recessed panels called coffers into the ceiling, which served
two ingenious purposes.
|
|
|
>> Hartswick: THESE COFFERS are meant, obviously, for an
aesthetic, uh, purpose.
|
|
|
That is that they allow the surface of the domed area to be decorated.
|
|
|
But at the same time, they reduce the amount of concrete which
is necessary for the dome itself.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: A final weight-shedding alteration
immediately became the pantheon's most distinctive feature--the oculus, a 30-foot-wide
hole in the center of the ceiling.
|
|
|
The oculus eliminates the stress of heavy concrete at the dome's
weakest point.
|
|
|
And it lights up the interior like the sun does the earth.
|
|
|
>> Hartswick: Imagine as a ancient never having been in
this kind of interior space before because no other interior space had ever
looked like it before, feeling the religious aspect of the interior itself, a
building which was dedicated to all the gods.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: THE PANTHEON'S ENGINEERS STROVE FOR
PERFECTION AND ALMOST ACHIEVED IT.
|
|
|
But there is one mysterious flaw in the design that still
baffles modern observers.
|
|
|
The pantheon's front PORTICO, the colonnaded gateway to the
interior, is about 10 feet too short.
|
|
|
It doesn't connect with the rotunda where it should.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: Why 50-foot columns were not used instead OF
THE 40s THAT WERE THERE Can only be held as speculation at this point.
|
|
|
Did they sink in the mediterranean?
|
|
|
Were the romans not able to acquire the stone to achieve those
kind of columns in the time necessary for HADRIAN to inaugurate the building?
|
|
|
We can't say for sure.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: For centuries, the pantheon has stood as a
confounding engineering enigma.
|
|
|
But the way it was built is just part of the puzzle.
|
|
|
The bigger mystery is who designed it.
|
|
|
There are no surviving records to reveal the architect's identity.
|
|
|
But modern speculation centers on emperor HADRIAN himself.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: He was a very versatile individual and
painted and wrote poetry and loved architecture.
|
|
|
So many OF HADRIAN'S other buildings were domes.
|
|
|
So it seems to me that HADRIAN may have had a hand in the
design.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Another potential candidate is apollodorus of
damascus, the genius behind the forum built by hadrian's predecessor, trajan.
|
|
|
Apollodorus was skeptical OF HADRIAN'S architectural skills and
bold enough to declare it publicly.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: Apollodorus, at one point, sneers at HADRIAN,
says, "go off and design your " after a certain point, HADRIAN just
gets so upset with aPOLLODORUs because APOLLODORUS criticized HADRIAN's
designs that he had him commit suicide.
|
|
|
>> Narrator:, eight years after ordering the death of Rome's
greatest architect, HADRIAN himself died of natural causes at the age of 62.
|
|
|
His two decades in power had been one of the most prolific
periods of construction in roman history.
|
|
|
By the time of his death, harbors, temples, bridges and
basilicas in every corner of the empire bore his name.
|
|
|
It would be nearly a century before another emperor would
commission one of Rome's last great engineering achievements and send the
empire spiraling toward self-destruction.
|
|
|
() 2 >> Narration: In the decades FOLLOWING HADRIAN'S
DEATH, the roman empire remained the dominant force in europe, north africa
and the middle east.
|
|
|
Its emperors maintained absolute authority, its armies remained
invincible and its architects continued to inspire jaw-dropping awe.
|
|
|
Their crowning achievement, a behemoth complex of roman baths,
by a corrupt power monger NAMED CARACALLA.
|
|
|
He rose to power the old-fashioned way--through murder.
|
|
|
CARACALLA's late father, emperor SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, had wanted
his two sons to rule the roman empire together.
|
|
|
But CARACALLA and his brother GETA hated each other.
|
|
|
After their father's death, it was only a matter of time before
one eliminated the other.
|
|
|
Caracalla struck first.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: Caracalla had him killed right in front of
his mother, which seems to me a horrible, horrible thing.
|
|
|
Geta's name was erased from memory not only from inscriptions, BUT
GETA'S image was chiseled out.
|
|
|
They erase the name, but they leave the erasure.
|
|
|
We know that the state has taken steps to eradicate him, and we
should remember that lesson.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: During the reign OF CARACALLA, blood once
again flowed through the imperial chambers, and the empire was back in the
hands of a tyrant who ruled by fear.
|
|
|
>> Gadeyne: THE RULE OF CARACALLA IS CHARACTERIZED BY THAT
OF A MAN, EMPEROR, WHO PLACES HIMSELF ABOVE MAN WITHIN THE SPHERE OF THE GODS.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: CARACALLA WANTED TO LEAVE A LEGACY THAT WOULD
SECURE HIS FAME FOR THE AGES AS THE COLOSSEUM HAD FOR VESPASIAN, THE FORUM
FOR TRAJAN AND THE PANTHEON FOR HADRIAN.
|
|
|
>> Boatwright: He had to prove himself as worthy of the
imperial power.
|
|
|
He had to show that he was even better than his father.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The new emperor would attempt to cleanse his
past sins by building a bath complex.
|
|
|
For centuries, BATHS had been an integral part of daily life in Rome.
|
|
|
They centered around an arrangement of hot and cold pools.
|
|
|
But the baths were more than just a place to bathe.
|
|
|
They were country clubs open to people of every class.
|
|
|
>> Arya: After you finished work, you were going to go to
the baths for a couple of hours to unwind, to listen to politics, to--to get
a rub down, to have a manicure, to have a haircut.
|
|
|
There were places to work out.
|
|
|
You could wrestle.
|
|
|
And then, of course, you could go to the baths themselves and go
to the hot rooms, sweat a lot.
|
|
|
And you were surrounded by magnificent structures that were
sheathed in marble and decorated with statues.
|
|
|
And they were for the benefit of the average person.
|
|
|
This was not just a structure for the rich.
|
|
|
THIS WAS FOR THE AVERAGE ROMAN CITIZEN.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Baths had always been a popular construction
project among roman emperors.
|
|
|
Previous rulers like NERO, TITUS AND TRAJAN had each built
extravagant baths in their own name.
|
|
|
And CARACALLA was determined to trump them all with the most
massive bath complex ever built.
|
|
|
The imposing shell that remains today is a testament to his
success.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: As you can see from what remains all around
us, there was a series of giant rooms in which there were swimming pools the
size of OLYMPIC POOLS.
|
|
|
There were bathing pools at different temperatures, private
bathing rooms and areas where people could mix and mingle.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The central building was larger than peter's
basilica and trimmed from stem to stern in gold and marble.
|
|
|
Its floors were covered with intricate mosaics, fragments of
which still remain.
|
|
|
Surrounding the main building were open spaces for track and
field events.
|
|
|
Separate buildings containing libraries, shops, restaurants and
even brothels lined the perimeter.
|
|
|
The complex could comfortably accommodate nearly 2,000 romans at
a time.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: This small town would have been heaving with
people every day.
|
|
|
These enormous rooms are a testament to the engineering and
skill of the people who built it.
|
|
|
They surpassed any of the baths that had been built previously.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: Caracalla's laborers worked overtime to
complete his baths quickly.
|
|
|
>> Arya: To build such a magnificent bathing facility in
five years, there would have been between 5,000 and 10,000 people working
daily for five years straight.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The buildings seen aboveground were just half
of the story.
|
|
|
Beneath the complex, a water channel tunneled from a nearby
aqueduct diverted five million gallons of fresh water into the baths every
day.
|
|
|
Water for the hot pools was diverted to furnaces, where it was
heated over wood fires.
|
|
|
As many as 50 such furnaces were built directly beneath the
floor.
|
|
|
>> Steedman: This floor literally divided the world of the
wealthy and successful roman citizen from the underworld of slaves and
laborers who were toiling away in furnace-like conditions-- stoking fires and--and
choked with smoke and fumes and so on.
|
|
|
Up here, in these beautifully decorated chambers with marbles
and mosaics and decorated tiled ceilings, it must have seemed like paradise.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: The baths of caracalla opened in 216 a.d.
|
|
|
They were one of the last great feats of roman engineering,
combining all the skills the romans had perfected over the centuries.
|
|
|
>> Gadeyne: In a bath complex like that of caracalla, a
lot of great achievements of roman engineering come together--the production
of bricks, masonry, the import of marble.
|
|
|
You have the long tradition that the romans have in building
water systems, aqueducts, but also drainage and sewer systems.
|
|
|
You have also their long experience in the use of concrete,
which allows them to create big spaces that they can cover with vast,
spanning domes and vaults.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: CARACALLA'S BATHS WERE AN AMAZING SUCCESS,
BUT THE SAME COULDN'T BE SAID FOR HIS REIGN.
|
|
|
While his pet project strained the roman economy, CARACALLA
hemorrhaged more cash on costly invasions of parthia and armenia, eastern
regions not controlled by a roman emperor since TRAJAN a century earlier.
|
|
|
LIKE TRAJAN, CARACALLA HAD HOPED TO CEMENT HIS LEGACY THROUGH
CONQUEST.
|
|
|
INSTEAD, HE SEALED HIS OWN FATE.
|
|
|
after a 6-year reign of cruelty and intimidation, CARACALLA was
stabbed to death by his own guards during an eastern military campaign.
|
|
|
THAT SAME YEAR, A DEVASTATING FIRE GUTTED THE COLOSSEUM AND THE
SOUL OF THE CAPITAL.
|
|
|
THE AMPHITHEATER WOULD BE REBUILT 20 YEARS LATER, BUT THE EMPIRE
ITSELF WOULD NEVER RECOVER.
|
|
|
THE GLORY DAYS OF AUGUSTUS, VESPASIAN AND TRAJAN WERE LONG GONE,
AND THEY WOULD NEVER RETURN.
|
|
|
OVER THE NEXT THREE CENTURIES, THE EMPIRE THAT HAD ONCE BURNED
SO BRIGHTLY SLOWLY BURNED OUT.
|
|
|
THE THEORIES AS TO WHY FILL VOLUMES.
|
|
|
>> Weller: Some people say it is the metallurgy that
poisoned them.
|
|
|
Some people say it is the decadence and the inbreeding in the
upper class.
|
|
|
Some people say it is the lack of a trained army and
subsequently no defense.
|
|
|
>> Norena: I think the ROMAN EMPIRE was simply too large
to be governed effectively, to be administered and to create any kind of real
sense of community.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: In the fifth and sixth centuries, GERMANIC
WARRIOR TRIBES REPEATEDLY SACKED ROME, demanding land and money.
|
|
|
IN 537, AN INVADING TRIBE WENT RIGHT FOR THE JUGULAR, DESTROYING
THE CITY'S MOST VITAL LIFE SUSTAINING ARTERIES, ITS AQUEDUCTS.
|
|
|
Without the running water its citizens had come to rely on, the
once great capital crumbled.
|
|
|
>> Schlimgen: People without water couldn't live in the
city center.
|
|
|
The gardens and farmlands could not be watered.
|
|
|
2 MILLION PEOPLE QUICKLY DWINDLED TO 12,000.
|
|
|
That's a 99% decrease.
|
|
|
>> Narrator: 1,500 Years after the fall of Rome, its
engineering legacy still inspires and confounds modern builders.
|
|
|
>> SCHLIMGEN: SO MANY OF THE THINGS THAT THE ROMANS WERE
ABLE TO DO IN THEIR TIME, WE WERE NOT ABLE TO DO AGAIN UNTIL WE DEVELOPED NEW
TECHNOLOGIES.
|
|
|
WE WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH A DOME LIKE THE PANTHEON
WITHOUT THE USE OF A COMPUTER, CERTAINLY.
|
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WE WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO MOVE A HILLSIDE WITHOUT MECHANIZED
EQUIPMENT.
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GIVEN THEIR TOOLS, WE WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH THOSE
SAME THINGS.
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>> Narrator: Maybe the most important lesson the romans
taught us is one THAT JULIUS CAESAR, NERO AND CARACALLA NEVER
UNDERSTOOD--THAT THE SAME BLIND AMBITION THAT DRIVES OUR PROGRESS CAN ALSO
BRING ABOUT OUR DEMISE.
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>> Nelson: These people lived out their ambitions and
their kind of appetites in such a way that we both admire them and kind of
abhor them at the same time.
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>> Narrator: The ancient romans were often violent,
vindictive, greedy and egocentric.
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But the imposing structures they left behind stand as evidence
not only of the power of one civilization but of the unlimited potential of
humankind.
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Captioned by Elrom, Inc.www.elrom.tv
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Engineering Empire - Transcript
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