How Rome Forged an Epic Empire | Engineering an Empire | Full Episode | History

ambition Conquest lust murder and the power of unrivaled Technology these are the cornerstones in the foundation of the Roman Empire they were driven by a kind of collective cultural ego Rome's colossal building projects stadiums palaces roads aqueducts span three continents and Unleash the Power and promise of the world's most advanced civilization these structures became symbols of that idea of Rome but while the Romans dominated the landscape with massive Feats of construction [Music] were ultimately powerless to prevent their own self-destruction [Music] March 15 44 BC the most powerful man in the world lay lifeless on the

floor of the Roman senate as a general he nearly doubled the size of the Roman Empire as a politician he engineered a stunning rise to power but now this battle scarred Warrior had been to Rome and by Romans his name was Gaius Julius Caesar Caesar's rise to power was predicated on him wanting to have the best standing in the Roman State he seemed to want too much power for himself he did not share power with others and this was what led directly to his assassination thank you decades earlier as an ambitious young General Caesar had

recognized that the road to glory in Rome began on battlefields far from it s thirst for military conquest would spawn the construction of one of Rome's most intimidating Feats of engineering 55 BC Julius Caesar is leading eight Roman Legions a total of 40 000 men nor through Gaul Roman province encompassing modern France Belgium and Switzerland he wants to go to Germania to Germany and cross rhyme because no Roman Commander has yet done so [Music] he wants to be as great a conqueror as Alexander the Great and go beyond what is known [Music] the Rhine River

lies on the edge of what is known for centuries it has been a buffer protecting Germanic tribes from Roman expansion no previous Army could cross it with the might needed for Conquest but Caesar is unlike any previous Warrior he could have gone by boat but what is that for Julius Caesar to go by Boatman row boat you know you know put eight Legions in a rowboat and roll across no man they gotta march across they're gonna be on horseback crossing the Rhine was a completely new engineering feat as far as its scope the uh river

is a thousand feet across possibly more 25 to 30 feet deep with unknown currents 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 the bridge would need to be four football fields long and sustain the weight of 40 000 soldiers [Music] despite the rhine's width depth and strong currents Julius Caesar is determined to succeed to cross a river that size with a bridge is something which plays well with an

audience back at home 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 with the speed and efficiency of a well-oiled machine soldiers methodically transform local Timber into an expanding Bridge with every hour an engineering Miracle inches closer to the rhine's elusive Northern Bank it's almost as if a spaceship were to come down nowadays the the size let's say of half of Manhattan capable of of of with some magnetic device or like lifting buildings up

into the air that would be a pretty frightening thing something that we couldn't really grasp at all the foundation of the bridge was a series of wooden piles driven into the Bedrock of the river each pile was a foot and a half thick toward the middle of the bridge they had to be up to 30 feet tall to reach from the surface to the bottom by driving the piles in diagonally Caesar's Engineers added extra stability to the bridge when they drove the pilings in at an angle and then connected them in many ways they were

doing what the Carpenters do when they build a sawhorse with the legs angled it utilizes forces to keep it from being pushed over and makes it a stable workspace sloping power gives him a lot more strength against the force of the river flooding of the river and so on but it's much more difficult to drive them into the riverbed than it is to drive a vertical Palm so they would have had to work very carefully with wooden frames to push them into the riverbed [Music] on the Upstream side the piles leaned in the direction of

the current 40 feet Downstream the corresponding piles leaned against the current each set of piles was joined by a long connecting beam two feet thick lengths of Timber were then laid across the beams and the surface was finished with tightly wrapped bundles of sticks design of the bridge itself was Innovative but what made this engineering feat even more astounding is the speed with which it was built just 10 days after ordering its construction Caesar marched across his bridge and toward his destiny 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 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 Caesar had estimated the size of the Germanic forces at 430 000. more than 10 times the size of his own Army when the Germans saw the Roman Legions rolling over the Rhine they quickly fled to Higher Ground [Music] for the next 18 days Caesar freely explored the territory north of the Rhine encountering no

resistance then he crossed back over his bridge and dismantled it having made an unmistakable point symbolic of this Rome can go anywhere there's nothing going to hold her own back and to distill it even farther Julius Caesar can go anywhere [Music] Caesar's Bridge was an early indication of his single-minded ambition a decade later that ambition would Propel him to unprecedented power but it would also prove to be his downfall when he was declared Rome's first dictator for life at the age of 55 in 44 BC Whispers of assassination began to echo through the halls of

the Roman senate he makes her make certain that suggests that he might want to have been worshiped 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 in life Julius Caesar forever altered Rome's political landscape in death he would embody both the potential and the Peril of absolute power when Caesar was assassinated there was no guarantee that anything would happen except that Rome would fall apart completely easer's Reign was a major turning point in Rome's

political history his conquest of Gaul greatly expanded the reach of Roman influence his consolidation of power marked the death of the Roman Republic ruled by democratically elected senators and consuls the birth of an Empire in which tyrannical Emperors could rule with absolute Authority some would use their power to build magnificent engineering Marvels [Music] vanity excess and ignorance of others would push the Empire to the brink of Destruction through it all Rome would grow into the most powerful and technologically advanced civilization the world had ever seen [Music] today Rome is a 21st century city where the

ancient and modern collide anyone has visited the city of Rome is immediately struck by this immense mixture of time period spanning from pre-history all the way up through the Modern Age 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 foreign Legend says the city was founded in 753 BC by Romulus and Remus two brothers who were abandoned as infants and raised by a she-wolf the two brothers set out to build their own City on the

banks of the Tiber River at a disagreement over who would rule it ended in vert Remus was killed at the hands of Romulus For Whom the city of Rome is named it would not be the last time Bloodshed produced a new Roman ruler the war actually is one of the very defining features of the growth of the Roman State the story the tradition of Romulus and Remus is one that reverberates and Echoes throughout Roman history initially Rome was one of countless small kingdoms jocking for power in central Italy unlike many of its neighbors who were

suspicious of Outsiders Rome was a safe haven for ambitious outcasts Ryan as he said given the fact that we don't have any population I'll create an asylum I will create a sort of a free zone for anybody runaway slaves brigands Pirates whoever come and be part of this great idea which is Rome that's a very unique attitude and said from the very beginning it seemed that the Romans were very open this openness encouraged a free exchange of ideas among them were engineering theories imported from other cultures by borrowing the technology of neighbors like the Etruscans

Rome expanded into a regional power the Romans had an extraordinary ability to take from a technological past and adapt it to their own purposes and to refine it and to improve upon it 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 a trust in technology City's first major engineering achievement was the cloaca Maxima an extensive sewer system which still functions today 2500 years after it was constructed the cloaca Maxima flushed runoff from Rome city

streets into the Tiber River Engineers also used the sewers underground pipeline to drain the Marshland between Rome's Hilltop villages [Music] there they built the Forum ancient Rome's downtown district of the kalikamasama is the key event in transforming Rome from a series of tribes living on disparate hills around a Swampy Marsh into kind of centralized unified culture the new Roman Forum that resulted from the draining but the Chloe kamasama really allowed that culture to consolidate in one central place while Rome's culture was consolidating the influence the city had over its neighbors began to grow by the

4th Century BC Rome controlled most of central Italy and its Engineers were called on to develop a transportation infrastructure that would connect the expanding Empire in Antiquity there were basically two modes of transportation there was Transportation through the countryside either on Horseback but probably walking or in carts or that there was travel by ship the roads as we understand them today it basically didn't exist before the Roman Empire foreign that all changed in 312 BC when the Via apia was built Rome's first national highway stretched 132 miles from the capitol to its Southern province of

Campania to plot the straightest and fastest route down the coast Roman Engineers used a specialized surveying instrument the Romans relied on a tool called a groma which was a vertical pole that stood in the ground with a cross on the top and you could sight along this cross to line up two points in a straight line the big difference with Roman roads and modern roads is that the Romans couldn't survey a corner so they were all dead straight and then they would turn a sharp angle and then go dead straight into that direction 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 so if they had to then they would cut through the mountains in order to take the road straight through once the ideal path was cleared a broad trench was dug and filled in with sand and boulders to form a solid foundation next went a layer of gravel compacted with clay or mortar the top surface was a layer of thick paving stones angled to allow the water to drain off to the side

the roads were incredibly intimidating 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 I think I'll think twice about starting any nonsense with Rome [Music] by the time of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC Rome controlled most of Western Europe and North Africa it had defeated Carthage a century earlier making it the Mediterranean world's loan superpower [Music] Caesar's eventual successor was his great nephew Octavian who was renamed Augustus and crowned Rome's first imperator

or Emperor [Music] under Augustus the Roman Road Network expanded to reach the farthest corners of the Empire and with the highways paved it was time to build new destinations [Music] 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 to the recently conquered natives of the provinces the new cities were a powerful endorsement of the Roman way of life people would flock to the new cities these Urban centers which

were symbols of civilization a higher standard of living incredible jobs that's where the money resided and people would go as today will go where the jobs are and and ultimately the the people in these conquered nations would would really Embrace these Roman ideas the Roman city itself was the greatest image creating device I believe that the Romans had and those cities survived today London Bonn Paris are all Testaments to Rome's expansion of its culture through its cities 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 patsalama 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 but in Roman concrete the posilan sand reacted with the lime and it makes a concrete quite like a modern concrete much much stronger they realized pretty early on that by using the substance that they could build literally underwater an extraordinary invention which would allow them then to create enormous peers literally within the water itself revolutionizing travel that is Bridges could

be built that would be permanent Bridges rather than wooden bridges during the age of Augustus this concrete solidified Rome's Chokehold on Western Europe allowing Roman Builders to dominate the landscape with massive man-made monoliths one in particular would revolutionize daily life in Rome for centuries to come [Music] by the First Century A.D Rome had emerged as Europe's sole superpower 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 of all the achievements of Rome's Engineers none

were as life-altering as running water the water distribution was a Quantum Leap to anything which had come before it in the capital city 11 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 what the aqueducts did was really revolutionized the daily life of Roman citizens not just the gardens and the Villas of the wealthy or the the Palaces of the Emperors but the the average Roman so much water was available in the city of Rome and this

sustained an enormous population the aqueducts fostered the growth of a new Urban culture with a constant stream of water up to a million people were able to live cleanly uncomfortably in the capital city as the water from the aqueducts which can flush out the human filth and keep your city clean this is another reason why the Romans think that they're Superior is because they're cleaner than everybody else no single Emperor can claim credit for the success of the aqueducts they were built over the course of several centuries it was the disfigured stuttering Emperor Claudius who

arguably had the greatest impact on Rome's water supply [Music] before he assumed power Claudius had been a royal laughingstock who was considered an invalid and even hidden from the public eye Claudius had a stutter we hear he had a little bit of a limp he was hard of hearing so people didn't really know what to do with Claudius in spite of his shortcomings Claudius was cunning enough to seize power when an unlikely opportunity presented itself in 41 A.D most of the royal family was murdered to avenge the bloody reign of claudius's nephew Caligula but Claudius

was spared after he was found cowering behind a curtain with his life hanging in the balance he managed to bribe Rome's praetorian guards into proclaiming him Emperor his timely bribe would change the course of Roman history once he became emperor he seems to have ruled in many ways at least by our standards well he clearly was not a stupid man [Music] during the reign of Claudius the Empire took several surprising steps forward on the frontier his Legions conquered Britannia something even Julius Caesar failed to do and back home he built two major aqueducts the aqua

Claudia and the anionovus which dramatically increased the amount of water flowing into Rome aqueducts are not that complicated in theory that is that water seeks its lowest level and therefore that you can run water down a slope from any area to another area so that that's a pretty simple premise that everybody would have known but that the practice of creating an aqueduct is another thing the Romans engineered their aqueducts to approach the city on a gradual declining angle or gradient that gradient was just several inches every 100 feet the slope of the aqueduct had to

be calculated from great distances of 2030 sometimes even 40 miles from The Source in the mountains to the cities themselves that had to be consistent they couldn't deviate from it regardless of what the terrain was to maintain the water's precise descent through high mountains Roman Engineers dug perfectly angled tunnels through them when the pipelines reached low valleys they were elevated on stone walls if the walls needed to be higher than six and a half feet off the ground the Romans saved building materials while still adding strength by perfecting an ancient engineering concept the arch the

arch revolutionized architecture in the ancient world by permitting far greater spans and had been allowable before they basically changed the spatial conception totally of Roman architecture arches were built around a temporary wooden framework that held each Stone in place until the Keystone was laid in the center the Keystone evenly distributed weight down each side of the arch allowing Builders to stack additional Stones above it oranges are Improvement upon building just a stray wall in a variety of means both in terms of their efficiency and in terms of their strength the arch of course takes 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 [Music] a six-mile column of arches carried the aqua Claudia Across The Valleys on its way to Rome the aqueducts could have had a covered roof but of course if you could take the roof off you could see the water like an open River coming down towards the city 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 reserve for the emperor and other wealthy Romans who paid for their own running water a concept that was well ahead of its time foreign basically every home by the first or second Century A.D of any means had running water this is astounding because the entire fan of the Middle Ages they didn't have this with the construction of the aqua Claudia and the anionovas 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 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 he sent shock waves through the Empire when he married his own niece agrapina the conniving sister of Caligula the peanut came from a line of ambitious popular and Powerful women she was kind of in some ways the Cleopatra of her age she was headstrong she was proud and she was ambitious she was terribly ambitious after having been surrounded by Emperors her whole life agropina 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 agropena's main intent in seducing Claudius and becoming the empress was to ensure that her son would uh accede to the throne in 50 A.D agropina convinced Claudius to name her son from a previous marriage as his heir instead of his own biological son four years later Emperor Claudius was dead poisoned by a mushroom and his wife's ambition overnight agrapina 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 had engineered disaster 64 A.D 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 the fire 64 was one of the most devastating fires that Rome ever had and we hear that of the 14 regions of Rome at least 10 were affected some completely destroyed that must have been a huge number of individuals who were killed in the panic in in just being killed

by smoke or by the fire itself [Music] number one on the list of arson suspects is the Emperor himself Nero was supposedly seen playing his liar at the top of a nearby Tower as the fire raged [Music] said to have the fire as though it were a spectacle and two have gone to the Tower of mycinus and recited the fall of Troy the tradition is that Nero was fiddling while Rome burnt 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 the 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 oh 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 foreign this was just the latest in a string of horrifying acts that solidified Nero's dysfunctional Legacy yeah 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 and the 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 [Music] agrippina who had orchestrated Nero's rise to power by killing her husband Claudius was Antiquities most overbearing mother she expected to share power equally with her son she wasn't going to accept a subservient role not to Claudius not to her son and that

of course did her in ultimately thank you agropina's thirst for control gradually infuriated Nero in 59 A.D five years after he became emperor 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 she said strike here first this born Nero very dramatic Nero was haunted by visions of his mother's ghost for the rest of his life Visions which pushed him further into madness hero 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 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 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 was shocking Nero bled the province's 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 have been a very scary time to be alive 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 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 Define the essence of Imperial Rome 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 center of the complex would be a man-made lake and the 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 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 very efficient way to build for the Romans when the domus Aria was completed after just four years Emperor Nero exclaimed finally I can begin to live in a house worthy of a human being the surviving Remnant is a dank shell of the decadent Palace he inhabited [Music] these brick and concrete

Chambers were once trimmed in gold and covered with colorful frescoes and Priceless gems there were semi-precious and precious stones embedded in the ceiling so that there's lapis lazuli and rock crystal and Rose crystal that would just put up to catch the Light and in building the domus Aria 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 in 68 A.D 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 [Music] his last words were what an artist dies in me Nero died like the grand eloquent actor he always wanted to be a kind of tragic actor upon a tragic stage so his uh

final words really do complete a picture of somebody who saw themself not as an emperor but as a star after Nero's death the Romans sought to bury any memory of him and his oppressive reign by 104 A.D 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 [Music] for the next 1300 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 [Music] inside

Renaissance artists Drew inspiration from its bizarre frescoes 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 the domus Aria is an enduring Testament to Nero's chilling reign one marred by Madness mass murder and extreme self-indulgence when that rain 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 no one was sure really what was going to happen next except that it was going to be bloody and it wasn't going to be very good until it was over 69 A.D 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 [Music] a power struggle erupts between the Empire's top generals who turn their armies on each other in a bloody bid for power [Music] 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 the station was the anti-niro 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 this patient's the kind of guy that would much rather watch a football game than an opera 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 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 Coliseum so the statement that this patient made was I am taking a space which is only for the private use of a bad Emperor and now I'm transforming that area into a public space which will be then used for

the enjoyment of all the people of Rome that was a very bold uh piece of propaganda creators have been spilling blood in the name of entertainment for centuries but the people of Rome were hungry for bigger Bolder spectacles the Coliseum would give the Gladiators a permanent state-of-the-art killing field the games would take on a level of Carnage never before seen in the Empire's history [Music] but this was the big venue this was the Superdome the entertainment came to you everything from animals from the farthest quarters of the known world to captives from far away lands

could be brought to your central location to your favorite box seat and right in the center of the city construction on the Coliseum began in 72 A.D [Music] it was financed by the sale of precious relics taken from the Jewish temple during Vespasian sacking of Jerusalem twelve thousand Jewish captives were brought back from that campaign to build the amphitheater they would have worked under tremendously harsh conditions and been worked long and hard and to the end they poured more than six thousand tons of concrete and hauled huge travertine building blocks to the site from a

quarry 20 miles away 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 in just eight years the imposing structure grew to 160 feet tall dwarfing all that surrounded it 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 and amphitheaters were constructed from a surprisingly simple framework incorporating two Greek theaters back to back to form One 360 degree theater in the round foreign 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 [Music] as with stadiums today everyone who entered the Coliseum 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 [Music] it had 110 drinking fountains and two restrooms large enough to accommodate a packed house the Coliseum even had a retractable roof but hot days and Awning called a valerium 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 coliseum's arcade [Music] they could move it according to the Sun and according to the wind and subsequently Coliseum

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 an external side that would hold this immense canvas that would cover the place [Music] by 80 A.D the Coliseum 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 100 straight days Romans flocked to the Coliseum to soak in every kind of Carnage imaginable five thousand 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 they go for the entire day and in the morning they watch men kill or be killed by animals around noon time they're watching the execution of prisoners and finally in the afternoons from the main event Primetime TV kind of experience is the best for last and that's going to be Gladiators man against men [Applause] [Music] foreign fights were a big draw at the Coliseum but they weren't always

the main event several ancient writers described live Naval battles recreated right in the middle of the Arena with battleships on water it would have been entirely possible to have diverted water from one of the aqueducts and brought it to the coliseum in order to flood the floor to a shallow depth we do have evidence due to recent studies of the Coliseum that show there are plenty of channels water channels for flooding and the substructures of the Coliseum so yes it was possible and yes it happened Cristiano Ranieri is the first modern archaeologist to explore the

Labyrinth of water channels beneath the Coliseum he believes he has found conclusive evidence of a plumbing system that was used to flood the arena for Naval battles we have found underneath the Arena floor some tunnels that are very ancient even more ancient than the Coliseum that date from the time of Nero therefore contemporary to the domusory the original water channels built beneath Nero's artificial Lake were left intact when the Coliseum 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 Coliseum he uncovers a holding tank with a direct line to a nearby aqueduct Cristiano believes water was diverted from that Aqueduct into the arena he also finds evidence of drain pipes that connected to the city sewer system which could have been used to drain the flood waters from the arena into the Tiber River it was a proper plumbing system at one point the tunnels were used to flood The Arena floor to create Navy battle seats the coliseum'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 trap doors that enabled tigers and armed Gladiators to suddenly pop up through the floor and slaughter their unsuspecting victims although the real spectacle happened up here in the arena the backbone the nerve center the real support system of the Arena was down below and they put Jam

[Music] but there were lion runs cages for wild animals being haunted Gladiators sharpening The Source preparing for death condemned criminals in cages [Applause] as the games begin a trap door and the Arena floor would open and by a system of pulleys an elevator will hoist another line of Panther up into the arena when the trap door opens we're bathed in light we hear the yells the strong enjoying the games and then the trap door will close again leaving us contemplating our own demise amongst the screams and Lamentations and stench of blood beasts and Men violent

bloody exploitative thrilling the games in the Coliseum 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 and its next generation of rulers would use that power to build ever bigger ever Bolder man-made miracles [Music] by the end of the First Century A.D 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 until 98 A.D 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 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 [Music] 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 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 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 build new public Baths on the crumbling foundations of Nero's Golden House 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 in his third year

as Emperor trajan launched a military offensive to raise revenue for the construction of more magnificent monuments foreign [Music] 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 conquering Emperor plundered hundreds of tons of gold and silver from his new province 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 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 their 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 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 when each emperor in turn had to build a new part of the forum for their own people 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 trajan didn't just have so much money but the skills of the engineers the people who pour concrete and so on they were at a height they could achieve and create a better

and faster than any previous time the man called on to design trajan's Forum was another Outsider apollodorus of Damascus 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 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 to create a flat plane large enough to develop in downtown Rome apollodorus ordered his Builders to carve out a huge chunk of the quirino Hill adjacent to the old forum 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 in once they're going to break

it apart into small pieces and take it apart one at a time 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 they're 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 trajan's Forum was a magnificent marble network of Greek and Latin libraries colossal statues an enormous Central Piazza and a two-story Basilica where laws were

made and cases tried to go to the form of trajan would have been a massive experience for any Roman you would have entered the Basilica the largest ever building Rome of that type 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 The Forum 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 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 uh propaganda film the column's exact height holds a more subtle significance the height of trajan's column itself a hundred feet with the addition of the base and the statue on top of that marked the height of the side of the Cardinal 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 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 apollodora shored up The 125-foot Cliff face he had created by form-fitting a six-story Roman shopping mall directly into the hillside he ingeniously shaped the first three levels in a hemicircle

a semicircular structure with long curved corridors of storefronts the markets function 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 forming in the form of an arch turned on its side to resist the pressure of the Hill beside that above the hemicircle were three more levels with units ranging from small shops to Great three-storied Halls trajan's Market contained over 150 individual storefronts that might have supplied everything from Footwear to Fine Art these markets must have sold

enormous quantities of materials from all parts of the Roman world and perhaps even Beyond while trajan's Forum next door was a lavish Haven for the city's Elite his Market was engineered as a main street for the masses the market together with the Forum represent two sides of Roman culture the opulence of the Forum its collinated four Court 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 trajan's engineering Feats at home and

conquests abroad made him one of the most popular Emperors in Roman history by the end of his reign in 117 A.D the Empire had reached its greatest size stretching across the Middle East to the Persian Gulf a 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 [Music] by the time he died in 117 A.D 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 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 on to what they already had concrete evidence of Hadrian's defensive policy shift can be found

today in a remote section of northern England 1500 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 so in 122 A.D 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 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 going to start frittering away their time and gambling and not doing the right thing and 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 six feet above that a nine-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 in some ways you might be able to compare Hadrian's Wall to the Berlin Wall has 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 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 the engineers positioned the wall in a strategic allocation as possible it's often running along Cliff Edge just above a drop to the north but in principle the natural geology of the landscape would 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 three Legions totaling between 15

and 25 000 men were needed to undertake the back-breaking 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 centuries kept a constant eye on the Borderland [Music] and along the length of the wall 17 enormous super forts were built that could house a thousand Roman soldiers what doesn't 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 and force Patrol along the front conduct maintenance and still maintain the kind of military presence that was effective as well as impressive each super Fort covered three to five acres and included an assembly hall a temple Barracks hospital and bath house everything needed to sustain an army around these forts towns sprung up to satisfy the Army's constant demand for food and supplies 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 in just five years Hadrian's vast barrier across Britain was complete Emperor had secured Rome's Northwest border proved discipline within his ranks and created an unmistakable Testament to the vast reach of Roman power E6 A.D Hadrian returned to Rome there he would commission one of Rome's most celebrated engineering Marvels and eliminate its most celebrated engineer in 126 A.D Emperor

Hadrian returned to Rome after a five-year military inspection Tour on the Roman Frontier [Music] the way its Builders had been working feverishly to carry out his architectural Vision in the capital city Hadrian certainly wanted to leave an imprint on Rome he wanted to um revive Augustine building and show that he could do better 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 Pantheon Majestic Temple to the Roman gods if they own is arguably the most amazing structure ever vote by the Romans why the Rotunda the Rotunda a huge interior space capped by a magnificent Dome ceiling was the heart of the Pantheon's design [Music] at its Center the concrete Dome Rises nearly 150 feet it spans exactly the same length across

without any support from columns or buttresses 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 one of the grand achievements the Pantheon's Dome would remain the largest unsupported concrete Span in the world for 18 centuries 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 three thousand tons of concrete would collapse under its own weight today when

we build and 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 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 build a solid base of walls 20 feet thick to act as a foundation for the ceiling they used the vertical walls on either side to help support the weight of the Dome from pushing outwards they use the walls

to buttress the Dome itself next is the ceiling Rose toward its apex they mixed in lighter materials with the cement and poured a progressively thinner layer of it 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 amphra or jugs inside of the concrete to displace some of the concrete and lighten the load to make the ceiling even lighter the builders molded recessed panels called coffers into the ceiling which serve two ingenious purposes These coffers Are

Meant obviously for an aesthetic 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 a final weight shedding alteration immediately became the Pantheon's most distinctive feature Oculus a 30-foot wide hole in the center of the ceiling 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 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 a feeling the religious aspect of the Interior itself a building which was dedicated to all the gods [Music] Pantheon's Engineers drove 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 collinated gateway to the interior is about 10 feet too short it doesn't connect with a rotunda where it should why 50-foot columns were not used instead of the 40s that were there can only be held to speculation at this point did

they sink in the Mediterranean where 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 [Music] for centuries the pantheon has stood as a confounding engineering enigma but the way it was built is just part of the puzzle 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 it was a very versatile individual and painted and wrote poetry and 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 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 to Paula Doris at one point sneer said Hadrian says go off and design your pumpkin domes after a certain point Hadrian just gets so upset with apollodorus because apollodorus criticized Hadrian's designs that he had him commit suicide [Music] in 138 A.D eight years after ordering the

death of Rome's greatest architect Hadrian himself died of natural causes at the age of 62. [Music] 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 the nearly a century before another Emperor would commission one of Rome's last great engineering achievements and send the Empire spiraling towards self-destruction [Music] 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 foreign achievement a behemoth complex of Roman baths was commissioned in 212 A.D by a corrupt power Monger named caracawa he rose to power the old-fashioned way through murder karakala's late father Emperor septimius Severus had wanted his two sons to rule the Roman empire together but karakala and his brother Gaeta hated each other after their father's death it was only a matter of time before one eliminated the other caracala struck first caracola had him killed right in front of his mother

which seems to me horrible horrible thing gada's name was erased from memory not only from inscriptions but geda's image was chiseled out they erased the name but they leave the Erasure we know that the state has taken um steps to eradicate him and we should remember that lesson [Music] during the reign of caracala blood once again flowed through the Imperial Chambers and the empire was back in the hands of a tyrant who ruled by fear [Music] the rule of caracala is characterized by that of a man emperor who laces himself above man within the sphere

of the Gods [Music] caracala wanted to leave a legacy that would secure his Fame for the ages as the Coliseum had for Vespasian the forum for trajan and the pantheon for Hadrian had to prove himself as worthy of the Imperial power he had to show that he was even better than his father [Music] 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 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 [Music] finished work you're 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 I go to the hot rooms sweat a lot and you're surrounded by magnificent structures that were achieved in marble and decorated with statues and they were for the benefit

of the average person this was not just the structure for the rich this is for the average Roman citizen baths had always been a popular construction project among Roman emperors previous rulers like Nero Titus and trajan had each built extravagant paths in their own name and karakawa 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 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 the building was larger than Saint Peter's Basilica and trimmed from stem to stern in gold and marble [Music] 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 line the perimeter the complex could comfortably accommodate nearly 2 000 Romans at a time 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 have been built previously foreign 's laborers worked overtime to complete his baths quickly [Music] to build such a magnificent bathing facility in five years that would have been between five and ten thousand people working daily for five years straight the buildings seen above ground 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 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 choked with smoke and fumes and and so on up here in these beautifully decorated Chambers with marbles and mosaics and decorated tiled ceilings it must have seen like paradise 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 in a bath complex like that of karakala 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 forms foreign [Music] were an amazing success but the same couldn't be said for

his reign while his pet project strained the Roman economy caracala 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 karakala had hoped to cement his legacy through Conquest instead he sealed his own fate in 217 A.D after a six-year reign of Cruelty and intimidation caracala was stabbed to death by his own guards during an Eastern military campaign that same year a devastating fire gutted the Coliseum 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 the spazian and trajan were long gone and they would never return [Music] over the next three centuries the Empire that had once burned so brightly slowly burned out the theories as to why fill volumes 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 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 in the fifth and sixth centuries Germanic Warrior tribes repeatedly sacked Rome demanding land and money 537 an invading tribe went right for the jugular destroying the city's most vital life-sustaining arteries it's aqueducts without the running water its citizens had come to rely on the once great Capital crumbled people without water couldn't live in the city center The Gardens and farmlands could not be watered the population of 1.2 million people quickly dwindled to twelve thousand that's a 99 decrease 500 years after the fall of

Rome its engineering Legacy still inspires and confounds Modern Builders 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 and be able to accomplish a dome like the pantheon without the use of a computer certainly we wouldn't be able to move a hillside without mechanized equipment given their tools we would never be able to accomplish those same things maybe the most important lesson the Romans taught us is one that Julius Caesar Nero and caracala never understood that the same

blind ambition that drives our progress can also bring about our demise [Music] 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 ancient Romans were often violent vindictive [Music] but the imposing structures they left behind stand as evidence not only of the power of one civilization limited potential of humankind [Music]