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00:00:00The story of Roman vice is one of epic debauchery, monstrous cruelty, and breathtaking extravagance.
00:00:12The unrestrained pursuit of sensual pleasure went alongside Rome's ascent to superpower
00:00:18status.
00:00:20Romans liked to combine their pleasures.
00:00:23Baths, wine, and sex were three things that went together.
00:00:29At the top of the popularity stakes was a day at the races.
00:00:33Roman chariot racing was a demolition derby for Rolls Royces.
00:00:37Luxury not necessity was often the mother of Roman invention.
00:00:42Luxury makes the Roman world go round.
00:00:45Despite the monstrous behavior of emperors like Nero and Caligula, the Roman empire lasted
00:00:50a thousand years.
00:00:52In fact, Roman power was the perfect partner for Roman vice.
00:01:06The year is 18 BC.
00:01:14The upright Augustus is the first of the Julio-Claudian family of emperors.
00:01:19Their 95-year reign will see a descent into utter depravity.
00:01:25Augustus comes to power after a damaging civil war.
00:01:30A brilliant commander, he will establish Rome's supremacy over lands from the Atlantic to
00:01:35the Black Sea, from the Sahara to the English Channel.
00:01:41This expansion generates a tide of decadence the austere Augustus fights against all his
00:01:47life.
00:01:56One particular feast given by a rich financier, Vettius Palio, for his patron Augustus, represents
00:02:02this conflict.
00:02:04Contemporary historians Seneca and Pliny, who detailed the meal, saw it as a morality
00:02:08tale revealing the vices of gluttony and cruelty.
00:02:14To the newly rich of Rome, the extravagant excess of your feast table is proof you'd
00:02:18made it into the big time.
00:02:22Tasty tidbits might include roasted dormice, snails fattened on raw meat, even a flamingo
00:02:29was on the menu.
00:02:31But fish is the prize dish of the day.
00:02:35Man usually eats fish, but this is the story of a feast with a difference.
00:02:41One in which a man is to be fed to the fishes, deadly man-eating eels.
00:02:50The feast took place at Vettius Palio's luxury beachfront home, the Villa Pasilipo, two days'
00:02:57journey south of Rome.
00:02:59The Bay of Naples, the Romans considered to be the most beautiful spot on the west coast
00:03:04of the peninsula, and so everyone wanted to have a villa there.
00:03:11Preparations for the feast start early in the morning.
00:03:13Mosaic floors depicting both the riches of the empire and the affluence of the household
00:03:18are swept clean.
00:03:23The crystal glasses that will play a key part in the day's unfolding drama are polished.
00:03:31Vettius Palio had known Augustus a long time, and he counted as one of the real friends
00:03:38of the emperor.
00:03:40But if Augustus went for a meal with him, it's not just like dropping in on an old friend
00:03:46because the emperor to dinner is always a big deal.
00:03:51So the choice of food for the feast is critical.
00:03:56Seneca notes that Vettius Palio pulled out all the stops for his imperial guest.
00:04:03The financier needs hundreds of slaves to run his estates.
00:04:08For two of his household servants, the day will start with a shopping trip.
00:04:15For one of them, Cato, it will end with a life or death struggle.
00:04:22The market is the empire in microcosm.
00:04:27The key to having a great feast, if you were a rich Roman, was to spread on your table
00:04:32all the fruits of empire.
00:04:35Figs and peaches from Africa, oysters from the northern seas, wine from Greece.
00:04:42The freshly baked bread is made from grain imported from North Africa.
00:04:47By mid-morning, Cato is carrying a new amphora full of the local virgin olive oil and a full
00:04:53shopping basket back to the Villa Persillipo.
00:04:57Today is a big day for another household slave.
00:05:01In a sense, the key slave of the Roman meal is the chef.
00:05:05The chef isn't just the guy in the background.
00:05:09He's as much a celebrity as the modern celebrity chef.
00:05:15The Romans complained that you had to pay more for a good chef than for any other kind
00:05:19of slave.
00:05:23Tonight's menu includes some delicacies that are familiar.
00:05:26Fresh oysters, spit-roasted lamb infused with the smoke of fresh rosemary.
00:05:35But other dishes are a little more unusual.
00:05:39One cookery rider is currently the toast of Rome.
00:05:43The signature dish of master chef Apicius is stuffed dormice.
00:05:51Most Roman kitchens keep a cage full to be fattened up on scraps.
00:05:57The maestro is quite precise in his instructions.
00:05:59The mice should be stuffed with pork mincemeat, pepper and nuts.
00:06:03They should then be roasted.
00:06:05Two per person is reckoned good for a starter.
00:06:11Another recipe calls for snails, which can be fed on fresh milk but taste even better,
00:06:16according to Apicius, when gorged on raw meat.
00:06:21When fattened to the point of being unable to fit back in their shells, the snails should
00:06:25be lightly fried in oil and served with a dressing of anchovy essence and dry white
00:06:30wine.
00:06:34For newly rich Vettius Pollio, the correct presentation of food at a feast is vital.
00:06:40So slaves like Cato know that any mistakes could lead to severe punishment.
00:06:46There is a moral contradiction running through the feast day which reflects the conflict
00:06:50between traditional and nouveau riche Roman values.
00:06:55The Romans begin as a peasant people.
00:06:57They are supposed to subsist on plain, solid country fare.
00:07:03Obviously, people who subsist on plain, solid country fare start to get cravings for something
00:07:08more.
00:07:10And for the Roman food snob, what happens is that the essence of luxury becomes soft
00:07:17meat that is just on the cusp of putrescence but still retains its primal succulence.
00:07:28Exotic sea fish cultivated in artificial pools are the perfect demonstration of newfound
00:07:34wealth.
00:07:36The ideal is to have a fish pond right below your villa.
00:07:42And in the case of the glorious villa at Sperlonga, you find a dining room right in
00:07:48the middle of the fish pond, fresher than that you can't get.
00:07:54Close to the villa Pasilipo, the archaeological remains in Sperlonga demonstrate the Roman
00:07:59obsession with fish farming.
00:08:04Vettius' favorite is the lamprey, an eel-like scavenger, not only good to eat but trained
00:08:10by him to devour human flesh.
00:08:15Instead of a toothed jaw, it has a round-mouthed sucker which it applies to the skin of its
00:08:20prey while it shreds off the flesh with its toothed tongue.
00:08:26In the walls of the fish ponds, there are the little nests made out of bits of pot set
00:08:33into the wall where they can breed and where the lamprey, a lamprey, needs to hide in the
00:08:40dark.
00:08:41It can coil its body inside the pot and its head just pop out.
00:08:49To be eaten or to eat, a vicious watery grave is waiting for any slave who offends his master.
00:09:00The imperial arrival at the villa Pasilipo is the cause of a certain nervousness.
00:09:08Despite being accompanied by his wife, Augustus has a reputation for asserting his authority
00:09:13in the bedroom as well as on the battlefield.
00:09:18When the emperor came to dinner or to stay with you, one of the things that you had to
00:09:22worry about if you were his host was whether or not he would try to flirt with your wife
00:09:25because it created a great tension in the household.
00:09:28What would you do?
00:09:31If you're Vettius, you really have no choice.
00:09:34You smile and you put up with it.
00:09:39The right protocol at the feast is essential.
00:09:42A good banquet has good choreography.
00:09:46The first and most important part of etiquette at the banquet is who sits where because according
00:09:52to your place around the table, you know your status the minute you're seated.
00:10:02So there's the state guest area which is called the locus consularis and this person
00:10:09has the best view of the whole room and next to him at his right is the host.
00:10:17Vintage wine is being drunk from Vettius' latest exquisitely expensive domestic purchase.
00:10:25Crystal wine glasses are a brand new technology only seen in the most refined households.
00:10:33These were fabulously expensive.
00:10:36They were collector's items.
00:10:38He's really showing off his best recent luxury acquisition.
00:10:46To break one would be a calamity.
00:10:52The glasses take to the floor, the wine flows.
00:10:57There was some dinner party banter between Augustus and Vettius.
00:11:02Are these two mice fresh?
00:11:08Are you drunk again?
00:11:15Wine enabled that conviviality so crucial to Roman culture, to the dinner party.
00:11:20It made you friendly.
00:11:21It made you able to get along with everyone.
00:11:24It contributed to the sense of conviviality and friendship that was integral to having
00:11:29a good party.
00:11:32To make room for yet more food and wine, it is not unusual for a guest to leave the room
00:11:37to be sick.
00:11:40Excusing yourself in the middle of dinner to go and vomit to us may seem, in fact does
00:11:45seem repugnant, but for the ancient Romans it certainly didn't carry the same social
00:11:50stigma and was widely practiced.
00:11:52And when you take a look at a list of some of the menus from the feast that they put
00:11:57on for themselves, well it's in fact all the more understandable.
00:12:01With the party in full swing, there is even the possibility of a young slave girl satisfying
00:12:06the emperor's notoriously overactive libido.
00:12:10For a Roman aristocrat, the perfect end to a perfect feast.
00:12:15As events are about to demonstrate, Augustus dominates the scene.
00:12:23There's a crash.
00:12:24All the guests look to a slave standing over the shards of a broken crystal goblet.
00:12:29The slave is terrified because he knows his owner, his master, is the kind of master who
00:12:36punishes slaves by throwing them into a pool full of man-eating lampreys, eels, a horrifying
00:12:43death.
00:12:44A feeding frenzy is about to begin.
00:12:54For dropping a priceless crystal glass, the clumsy slave Cato faces a terrifying death,
00:13:01to be eaten alive by killer eels.
00:13:05To the feast's host, Vettius Pollio, the glass is more valuable than the man.
00:13:12Only his guest, Emperor Augustus, can prevent the eels from tearing apart their next victim.
00:13:21Augustus himself stops this happening.
00:13:24He's horrified by Pollio's behavior.
00:13:29He has the fish pool filled in and the rest of the service of goblets smashed to teach
00:13:37his friend a lesson.
00:13:39Cato survives.
00:13:41The glasses don't.
00:13:43The story represents a clash of moral cultures.
00:13:47Augustus is trying to turn back the tide of opulence and cruelty that is sweeping through
00:13:51the newly rich empire.
00:13:54By the time of the feast, Augustus was clearly feeling that morality was what needed to be
00:14:01stressed.
00:14:02And Ovid has a moving couplet about this, how wonderful it was that Augustus set an
00:14:07example and did himself what he wanted other people to do.
00:14:12The endorsement from the leading poet of the day, Ovid, is initially welcomed by Augustus.
00:14:20Despite being himself a serial philanderer, the emperor introduces new moral edicts covering
00:14:25marriage and adultery.
00:14:27The new laws only apply to the senatorial or ruling class.
00:14:32The lower classes are left to their own devices.
00:14:36Augustus fastened on the moral legislation as a way of making people think that they
00:14:41were getting back on the rails, that this was going to be Rome as it was, they were
00:14:45going to reclaim their heritage and go on to greater things.
00:14:52Historians are unsure of the effect of the code on the prevailing moral climate at street
00:14:56level.
00:14:57For the sort of average person in Rome, they aren't really affected by the moral crusade
00:15:03towards the aristocracy.
00:15:04They may see it as a good thing, they may see it as a bad thing, but we simply won't
00:15:08know.
00:15:10This new regime receives an immediate setback from an unlikely quarter, a poem.
00:15:16It is written by Ovid and called The Art of Love.
00:15:20It has practical advice on seduction techniques and even sex positions and puts Rome's leading
00:15:26poet on a direct collision course with the emperor.
00:15:36Then as now, romance and love were central to the pursuit of pleasure.
00:15:43The love lives of mythological gods like Venus, Mars and Diana were at the heart of Roman
00:15:49art and decoration.
00:15:53They were often cautionary tales of deception and sadistic power plays.
00:16:00To help mere mortals find true romance, Roman writers penned uplifting poetry praising traditional
00:16:06virtues, fidelity, hope and beauty.
00:16:12In his Ars Amatoria, written in 1 BC, Ovid is altogether more practical.
00:16:19Ovid's Art of Love was the sex manual of its day.
00:16:22It was read, we think, by every aristocrat who could get his or her hands on it.
00:16:26It taught men how to attract and keep and deceive women.
00:16:30It taught women how to attract and keep and deceive men.
00:16:35This is a breakthrough work.
00:16:38Ovid's advice is voraciously read by the emperor's own granddaughter, Julia, whose ride his love
00:16:44life flagrantly breaches the new moral order.
00:16:49In bed, Ovid advises the girl, who has youthful thighs and faultless breasts, to stretch out
00:16:56with her body downwards.
00:16:59For her lover, he says, when you've reached a place where a girl loves to be touched,
00:17:05don't let modesty prevent you stroking her.
00:17:10The popularity of the manual clearly demonstrates that young Romans are resistant to the virtuous
00:17:15tone the emperor is trying to reestablish.
00:17:20As Augustus got older, he became more and more and more conservative.
00:17:24And at the same time, as he seemed to live forever, the young people of Rome began to
00:17:30find these endless moral strictures from Augustus, who, in his younger days, was anything
00:17:37but pure, extremely tedious.
00:17:41Ovid is sort of a symbol of this set.
00:17:45It is even rumored the poet is taking his own advice by having an affair with Julia,
00:17:51in total secrecy, of course.
00:17:54Roman poets commonly represent the scene of the dinner as a prelude to the assignation,
00:18:01the rendezvous that would happen afterwards.
00:18:03And they represent the lovers drinking wine together, exchanging kissing cups.
00:18:10The kissing cup was the goblet of wine that one lover would take from a slave, take one
00:18:17sip from it, and then tell the slave to bring the cup over to her lover, who would then
00:18:25sip from the same place where the first lover's lips had met the cup.
00:18:32To fan the flames of love even harder, Ovid suggests the use of aphrodisiacs.
00:18:39The Romans did believe in love potions, aphrodisiacs, and other methods for getting what they wanted
00:18:46sexually.
00:18:48Ovid's patent recipe for Roman Viagra starts with crushed pine cones.
00:18:53Other ingredients classically include white mustard and pepper, and even cooked onions.
00:18:59The entire business is fraught with complications.
00:19:03Foods that cause flatulence are believed to be natural aphrodisiacs.
00:19:10The most powerful love potion a woman can take is the sweat of a gladiator.
00:19:15This incredibly expensive commodity goes into luxury lotions for desperate Roman housewives.
00:19:25For Julia, makeup is an essential part of preparing for a big night out.
00:19:31Pigeon droppings are good for disguising spots and blemishes on the face.
00:19:37Crocodile dung, a highly prized commodity, removes freckles.
00:19:43By now, Ovid is on to his third wife.
00:19:46So if the poet and Julia are having an affair, it is clandestine.
00:19:52Romantic love is by definition not within marriage, it's pure pleasure.
00:19:58So taking precautions to avoid pregnancy are important.
00:20:02The condoms of the day are made from sheep's entrails, a practical if not altogether attractive
00:20:08proposition.
00:20:11The art of love details favorite love techniques.
00:20:16For instance, Ovid tells women with a long torso that looks quite nice to always take
00:20:23the position so a man can see her long back and admire that.
00:20:27And so what he does is he takes the sex manuals, which were around, we have fragments of them,
00:20:33and he creates hilarious scenarios on the various positions that they describe.
00:20:42But Emperor Augustus does not see the joke.
00:20:47His moral reforms are being destabilized by the Ars Amatoria.
00:20:54The poem recommends the monuments of Augustan Rome as the best place to seduce a woman.
00:21:01In a society at a time when the monuments were supposed to represent the martial, the
00:21:06military success of Augustus and Augustus' program of restoring Roman family values,
00:21:13there's nothing that could be more insulting.
00:21:18With tragic consequences for Ovid, Augustus finally takes action.
00:21:26Ovid's racy bestseller, Ars Amatoria, The Art of Love, is clearly undermining the Emperor
00:21:36Augustus' attempt to restore family values.
00:21:41The imperial household has itself got a reputation for debauchery.
00:21:46First Augustus exiles his daughter for immoral practices.
00:21:51Seven years later, his granddaughter Julia is also banished from Rome.
00:21:56As gossip has linked Ovid to Julia, the poet's fate is sealed.
00:22:02A few months after her exile, he is banished to the Black Sea.
00:22:10Ovid writes impassioned pleas to Augustus for forgiveness and is ignored.
00:22:17We're never going to know the full truth behind Ovid's exile, but he tells us it was
00:22:21because of a poem and an error. The poem was pretty clearly The Art of Love. The error,
00:22:27we don't know, but we do know that he was exiled about the same time as Augustus exiled
00:22:31his granddaughter Julia for immorality.
00:22:36A broken man, Ovid dies in exile a miserable nine years later.
00:22:44But the elderly Augustus is swimming against the amoral tide.
00:22:57When archaeologists started digging the town of Pompeii out of the volcanic dust that had
00:23:01buried it for 2,000 years, they were amazed by the beauty and sophistication of the frescoes
00:23:07they discovered. They were also amazed by the erotica on display.
00:23:16Was Pompeii really full of brothels? Or was Roman vice quite different to vice today?
00:23:24By looking at the evidence of life in Pompeii, scholars have pieced together the answer.
00:23:31The story they unraveled of Roman attitudes towards sex is both enlightening and shocking.
00:23:38For the Romans, Pompeii wasn't a special place. It's much more special for us because it survived
00:23:44so well.
00:23:46The Bay of Naples was a holiday destination, a place where Romans liked to party.
00:23:53The Roman elite, when they looked around for a suitable place for a spot of relaxation,
00:23:58they wanted somewhere that was beautiful and it was increasingly transformed into,
00:24:04I suppose, a cross between Monaco, Las Vegas, Beverly Hills. It was the place to go, it
00:24:10was the place to be seen, it was the place to taste pleasure.
00:24:15Owners of these villas in Pompeii paid a fortune for the very best artist to decorate the walls.
00:24:21Their frescoes showcase Roman luxury.
00:24:27They're pretty stunned by the degree of wealth and luxury that we see in the Pompeii we excavate.
00:24:36At its very best, in a wonderful villa like the Villa of the Mysteries, it probably reached
00:24:41levels comparable to the levels in Rome.
00:24:44One of the really interesting things about Pompeii is that what you're seeing is what
00:24:50you can call a trickle-down effect. That's to say, you're seeing the luxury of the great
00:24:55elite in Rome as it percolates through to a much broader scale of society.
00:25:04The goldsmiths, the jewelers, down to the underarm hair pluckers. We actually have gravestones
00:25:13of underarm hair pluckers. So, luxury creates enormous employment.
00:25:21You celebrate your good fortune by displaying whatever gives you pleasure. And that includes,
00:25:27in contrast to our own society, graphic images of sex.
00:25:35These pictures are in a parlor just off the kitchen, a room that women, children and visitors
00:25:40use every day.
00:25:45The Roman use of sexual imagery often shocks us and we think, oh, this is pornographic.
00:25:51But in fact, to the Romans, the representation of beautiful sex between two people was a
00:25:57wonderful thing to look at and something that you should enjoy.
00:26:03A proper picture collection of an elite person included Kama Sutra-like paintings that showed
00:26:09all the sexual positions as well as the gods often engaged in sexual activity.
00:26:16What we think of as pornographic was in every home.
00:26:22One of the most infamous frescoes is by the front door of the House of the Veti. The god
00:26:27Priapus is a favorite Roman deity. His image often greets guests when they first enter
00:26:33a house.
00:26:35The representations of Priapus seem to be obscene to us. To the Romans, they actually
00:26:42represented a way of keeping away evil spirits. They had a different purpose. And so they
00:26:48might laugh and they liked to laugh at Priapus, he was a comic phallic deity, but that laughter
00:26:53had a purpose.
00:26:58Romans not only have a different attitude towards depictions of sensuality, but also
00:27:02to the act of love itself. This is a patriarchal society where the desires of men count and
00:27:09those of women don't. Roman alpha males rule the world and the bedroom.
00:27:18When we consider Roman sexual morality, it's as though we're seeing Roman ideas about domination
00:27:24and power in action. The key to Roman sexual morals is that the Roman male head of house
00:27:33could do whatever he liked, whenever he liked, with whomever he liked. Could be boys, could
00:27:38be women, could be slaves.
00:27:41The crucial distinction is not between gender or age, but who was the active and who was
00:27:47the passive participant.
00:27:52This attitude is illustrated by the mass rape of the Sabine women. Roman mythology suggested
00:27:58that 800 years earlier, the city-state had quite literally been founded on an act of
00:28:03sex and violence.
00:28:05The rape of the Sabines is a perfect story for the Romans as they look back to their
00:28:09beginnings.
00:28:11To propagate the new Roman state, there being a shortage of fertile women, Roman men raped
00:28:17the women from a neighboring city.
00:28:20The women, at the end of the story, submit, they call the men who raped them husbands.
00:28:27The Roman state, the Roman family, founded on an act of rape that turns into an act of
00:28:33willing submission on the part of the women who are raped.
00:28:38To most Roman men, sex is simply a pleasure to be seized and enjoyed.
00:28:45Sexually the notion is to pursue a life that creates pleasure as much as possible and pain
00:28:51as little as possible.
00:28:53To have great sex was a blessing, not a kind of thing that you did guiltily, not anything
00:29:02associated with sin. In fact, sexual sin as a concept doesn't come in at all in the Roman
00:29:08mentality.
00:29:12Prostitution is legal. The Latin for arch is fornix, from which the word fornication,
00:29:18meaning sex between unmarried partners, is derived.
00:29:22Prostitutes often perform under the arches.
00:29:28The Romans didn't ban prostitution. Prostitutes were found right there on the high street.
00:29:34Brothels could be found right next to some of the grandest buildings in Rome.
00:29:39And this was a way to maximize profits, a percentage of which went to the state in the
00:29:45form of the prostitute tax, and also to channel sexual energies away from respectable women
00:29:51and toward these women for hire.
00:29:55Augustine Rome has 32,000 registered prostitutes and twice as many unregistered, about one
00:30:01in ten of the population.
00:30:03Augustine doesn't have a view on prostitution, really. His marriage laws, if a man has sex
00:30:09with a prostitute, it's not adultery. And it's almost as though prostitution is the
00:30:14sort of pressure valve to keep the adultery law in place.
00:30:20When we look at, for instance, the prostitutes' graffiti at Pompeii, we find that a turn with
00:30:27a prostitute would cost you something like two asses. Two asses would get you a cup of
00:30:33common wine. And the most expensive price we find is 16, which would be a cup of very
00:30:38good wine, let's say, Falernum.
00:30:42Brothel in Pompeii has frescoes that leave nothing to the client's imagination. Special
00:30:49tokens used for payment have similar engravings on them. The oldest profession in Rome is
00:30:55not restricted to brothels.
00:30:58I think it's very likely that prostitution was very often associated with popinae, with
00:31:06public houses, places of drinking and gambling, which is also important for them.
00:31:15Despite laws to restrict gambling, these Wild West-style dens of vice thrive all over Rome.
00:31:22The games corresponded to ours, dice playing and the like. And it was really only considered
00:31:29disgraceful when you gambled away your entire inheritance or your son's inheritance.
00:31:37If caught, the penalties for gambling are severe, up to four times the wager on the
00:31:42table. Popinae are blue-collar establishments frequented by low-class prostitutes. High
00:31:49rollers like their carnal pleasures to be a little more exclusive.
00:31:54The elite man could have, and usually did, buy very beautiful male and female slaves
00:32:02to use sexually.
00:32:06Pompeii, like any other town in the area, has its own slave market. It's center of the
00:32:11city next to the Forum. The elite can also buy household slaves by watching them parade
00:32:19the other side of a window. Sex slaves can be expensive.
00:32:25We can just tell that there was a tremendous amount of sex that was going on between masters
00:32:30and slaves, and also that folks weren't exactly sheepish about it, because one would have
00:32:35to buy these slaves in a public context.
00:32:40These transactions are all perfectly legal. So before deciding whether to proceed with
00:32:45the purchase, it is not unreasonable for the head of the household to examine the goods.
00:32:53In popular parlance these days, people talk of sex slaves. They weren't specifically sex
00:32:58slaves because all slaves were open to sexual advances and could not refuse them. However,
00:33:06buying a beautiful slave and not using him or her for sex would be like buying a Mercedes
00:33:11and never driving it. It just didn't make any sense. One uses one's property as one
00:33:17wishes.
00:33:20The object of desire could be of either sex. There is a Roman tradition of close physical
00:33:26friendships between older and younger men.
00:33:30Were a Roman to take a time machine trip to the modern world, he or she would be shocked,
00:33:37I think, to find that we divide sexuality up into two groups according to the gender
00:33:43of the object of desire. So we divide people up into homosexual and heterosexual. The Romans
00:33:49had no such division.
00:33:52The beauty of the love interest is more important than his or her gender.
00:33:59There's this period of really great license in society for young men between adolescence
00:34:05and marriage in which they're considered properly to be exploring sex with both male
00:34:12and female partners.
00:34:15The silver Warren cup in the British Museum clearly depicts on both sides a close relationship
00:34:21between two males.
00:34:25You see two men, one with a beard on the bottom, the other without a beard on the top. Now
00:34:33this to us might seem kind of shocking, but to the Romans, who valued images of lovemaking
00:34:40as a gift of the gods, would have seen this as a beautiful representation of young men
00:34:49enjoying themselves.
00:34:53Even more shocking to some was a discovery made in Pompeii in 1986. Excavations in the
00:35:00town had been going on for a century. A certain amount of erotica had already been found.
00:35:06But on a cold February day, a workman cut through the debris to reveal pictures that
00:35:11would change our view of Roman sex forever.
00:35:15He found the set of barrel-vaulted rooms that comprised the suburban baths, a public swimming
00:35:21pool and bath complex. Mosaics depicting Neptune and other aquatic gods decorated the site.
00:35:30But a changing room just off the main baths had a very different story to tell, one of
00:35:36sexual taboos.
00:35:39When the erotic frescoes emerged in the suburban baths in Pompeii, they caused a considerable
00:35:45ripple of surprise and astonishment. And one of the big surprises is that these incredibly
00:35:52explicit scenes of sex are painted in a room that appears to be a very public room, one
00:35:59of the suite of rooms that you find in a standard Roman baths, the changing room that
00:36:04leads to the cold room that leads to the warm room that leads to the hot room.
00:36:09And there's no surprise to find pornography in Pompeii. We knew about it from brothels.
00:36:15We knew about it from many private rooms. But this seems to be a very public display.
00:36:23The baths graphically illustrate deviant sexual practices that were absolutely forbidden by
00:36:31the Romans. The reasons why are surprising.
00:36:43The sexually explicit frescoes in the suburban baths in Pompeii have only been open to the
00:36:49public since 2001. Many find them shocking, but their original purpose may have been to
00:36:56make people laugh.
00:36:59You really shouldn't think of these as having a pornographic character at all. It's more
00:37:06a form of humor, because these scenes are painted above boxes with numbers, as if they
00:37:13were the boxes in which you would put your clothes. And you would remember just where
00:37:19you'd left your clothes, because you'd remember the Kama Sutra position that it corresponded
00:37:24to.
00:37:25These locker room pictures are memorable, even for a Roman, because they illustrate
00:37:30taboo sexual practices. Any use of the mouth, for instance, is forbidden.
00:37:37The mouth must not be used for any sexual activity, and it's for an unusual reason.
00:37:42The reason is that the mouth is considered to be not just the mouth, but also the countenance
00:37:47of the person, and by extension, this is the social face of the Roman Empire.
00:37:54The Roman reaction to these changing room images was probably different to our own.
00:38:01Because they show what Romans would consider to be depraved behavior, I think they're meant
00:38:06to be laughed at.
00:38:09There could also be another explanation.
00:38:13It may well be that the baths doubled as a brothel. And in Roman thought, there's a very
00:38:21close connection between bathing and sex.
00:38:31By the time of Augustus' successor, Tiberius, baths had become the perfect symbol of Roman
00:38:37affluence.
00:38:41History historian Tacitus described Tiberius as being, like his predecessor, a cautious
00:38:47and intelligent ruler, under whom Rome and her dominions prospered.
00:38:53The first century A.D. was a remarkably wealthy period in Roman history. It was a period where
00:38:58the first time, after a century of warfare, Rome was actually at peace.
00:39:04But with peace and prosperity comes increasing moral laxity.
00:39:10Probably a benevolent autocrat, when Tiberius reaches his seventies, he sets an example
00:39:15of depravity that punches a gaping hole through Augustus' moral regime. It marks the beginning
00:39:22of an imperial slide into total degeneracy.
00:39:28The millionaire's playground, just south of Rome, is the scene of his crime, and the birthplace
00:39:33of a new bathing craze.
00:39:36The Bay of Naples really comes of age as a pleasure destination under the aegis of an
00:39:42entrepreneur called Sergius Arata.
00:39:46To cater for the Roman elite's love of shellfish, he creates the world's first artificial oyster
00:39:52beds.
00:39:52And then with the proceeds he makes from this, he starts investing it in real estate, starts
00:39:58flogging off villas to the Roman elite. And to really try and grab their attention, he
00:40:06comes up with a spectacular invention, heated swimming pools. It was a large bath under
00:40:14which flames would be lit, and then the Roman aristocrat could, in the depths of winter
00:40:19perhaps, or if it was getting chilly in spring, could have a pleasant swim in these warm waters.
00:40:25And what Arata did was to turn these balnei pensiles, these hanging baths, into the must-have
00:40:30accessory that any villa had to have.
00:40:34Discovery, not necessity, was the mother of Roman invention.
00:40:40As well as creating major construction projects using the new Roman discovery concrete, giant
00:40:45aqueducts were built to transport water.
00:40:49The bathing craze was a major boost to the whole Roman economy.
00:40:54To bathe was to be Roman. To take care of the body was to be Roman. And every town got
00:41:02a theater, a bath, and a temple whenever the Romans conquered it.
00:41:09Britain had been conquered by Julius Caesar, and the best-preserved Roman baths are at
00:41:14Bath, in the west of England.
00:41:18The water in most baths was warmed by Arata's system of underfloor heating. Here, hot water
00:41:24comes from a natural spring at 114 degrees. The entire pool was covered by an enormous
00:41:31100-foot high barrow vaulted roof.
00:41:35The baths are a paradigm of the best of Roman culture, that is, that you can do the plumbing
00:41:42and the engineering and the comfort and also the elegance.
00:41:50This particular luxury might have signaled a softening of Rome's fabled hard man image.
00:41:56The baths are set up more like a sports club, good places to work out and meet friends.
00:42:03Bathing was a cultural event. It was the center of the day. You had your business early in
00:42:10the morning, starting at sunrise, and you broke off around two in the afternoon and
00:42:15you went to the bath.
00:42:18Games are believed to be intellectually stimulating. A variety of backgammon, ludus duodecum scriptura,
00:42:27literally the game of 12 lines, is popular. Baths represent the victory of health, cleanliness
00:42:36and civilization over barbarity.
00:42:42Hair is important. The barbarian has long matted hair. The civilized Roman has short
00:42:48hair. He even has it plucked out.
00:42:55Baths are also associated with vice. Bath employees are usually slaves employed not
00:43:03only to serve wine and hand out towels, but also to provide much more personal services.
00:43:11Baths, wine and sex for the Romans were three things that went together. The process of
00:43:19bathing is to put your body in a good, relaxed condition. Sex is the next thing.
00:43:30So although some massages are an invigorating part of a visit to the bath, others are more
00:43:39recreational. These are public baths. The rich and famous, like Tiberius, have their
00:43:45own private baths. The better to indulge in their own private fantasies.
00:43:53To escape the pressure and intrigue of court life, in 26 AD, the elderly Tiberius withdraws
00:44:00to his private island, Capri. He will rule the empire for another 11 years without ever
00:44:06returning to Rome itself.
00:44:10I think you have to envisage an old Tiberius who is getting increasingly, he is an old
00:44:16man, he's in his 70s, he's getting very weary with the business of empire.
00:44:22He builds no less than 12 villas. This is the remains of one, the Villa Jovis. Despite
00:44:30being on top of a hill, it features a large private bathing complex.
00:44:37Rumors about what is going on here get back to Rome. The whisper is the elderly emperor
00:44:43enjoys bizarre and strangely perverted sexual practices. Even for a Roman, Tiberius has
00:44:52gone too far.
00:45:00The baths in ancient Rome represent luxury and progress. But the emperor Tiberius is
00:45:07using his private baths on the island of Capri to fulfill his own perverted fantasies with
00:45:13small children.
00:45:19According to his biographer, Suetonius, Tiberius encourages them to excite his flagging libido
00:45:26underwater.
00:45:29One of the things that I think is constantly shocking to us about the Romans is that they
00:45:34had no problem with pedophilia. Sex with children was absolutely standard, particularly because
00:45:44slaves are bought as children.
00:45:48But it is not the conduct expected of an emperor, especially with such small children. The degrading
00:45:55behavior appalls his critics.
00:45:58One way they criticize Tiberius is by mentioning quite specific terms, his sexual perversions.
00:46:07And one is his use of minnows. And these minnows are small children who swim around in the
00:46:15baths with him in order to attend to him, like little fish nibbling at this old rock.
00:46:23But the harrowing story of the Villa Jovis gets even worse, according to historian Tacitus.
00:46:32Extraordinary depravity becomes breathtaking cruelty. This cliff right next to the villa
00:46:40is a thousand feet high. At the bottom are jagged rocks.
00:46:48When bored with abusing his minnows, the emperor has them thrown off this very cliff.
00:47:01This savagery will have unforeseen consequences for all of Rome through his successor, Caligula.
00:47:09Tiberius' nephew may even have played a part in the elderly emperor's death.
00:47:19It's suggested that Tiberius' death is helped along by the prefect of the Praetorian Guard
00:47:24with a young Caligula in place in the room, and he's smothered with a pillow.
00:47:32For the next 30 years, starting with Caligula, the emperors will themselves be the epitome
00:47:38of vice in Rome. Initially, though, the new emperor is a breath of fresh air.
00:47:46When Caligula, Gaius, assumed the throne in AD 37, he was an extremely popular leader
00:47:54after the dower Tiberius, originally welcomed by the people with open arms.
00:47:59He made a number of gestures to pacify the senate and to please the people
00:48:03in ways that his unpopular uncle had failed to do.
00:48:08But it takes only a matter of months for him to succumb to the enticements of absolute power.
00:48:15For an emperor, the supreme ruler of the entire world, temptations were almost limitless,
00:48:20and Caligula is really the first Roman to push the temptations of the people
00:48:27and to push the temptations and the opportunities that his supreme power give him
00:48:32to extremes that will become legendary.
00:48:37He has incestuous relations with his sister, Jusilla.
00:48:41He forces himself on any woman of rank that takes his fancy.
00:48:45He watches opponents being beheaded over dinner.
00:48:49He even threatens to make his horse a consul.
00:48:53Caligula is mad, bad and very dangerous to know.
00:48:58A few of Tiberius' minnows survive his death.
00:49:02They could be freed, but Caligula has other ideas.
00:49:07He gets rid of Tiberius' minnows, not by giving them freedom,
00:49:12not by letting them off their sex, but by drowning them.
00:49:16They're killed for having been sexual performers.
00:49:23Caligula's adult perversions, historians believe,
00:49:26may stem in part from his own childhood experiences.
00:49:31Caligula grew up in very difficult circumstances.
00:49:34He spent his adolescence largely with his great uncle Tiberius,
00:49:38who was anything but fun, on the island of Capri.
00:49:44Caligula had himself been one of the minnows.
00:49:48The legacy of the Villa Jovis will have dreadful repercussions.
00:49:56The traumatized young emperor trusts no one.
00:50:00All three sisters become his lovers, Jusilla his favorite.
00:50:05The incest that Caligula is supposed to have engaged in with his sister
00:50:10could have two explanations.
00:50:12On the one hand, that he was acting like a divinity,
00:50:15and a divinity could do anything.
00:50:18On the other hand, that he was acting like a pharaoh,
00:50:21because the Egyptians generally married pharaoh to sister.
00:50:29Already deeply disturbed, a year into his reign,
00:50:32Caligula becomes severely ill.
00:50:36He emerges from the illness completely deranged.
00:50:40People have said epilepsy, schizophrenia, encephalitis,
00:50:44or any combination of the above.
00:50:47But there is no doubt that after the first few months of his reign,
00:50:51things took a very, very bad turn.
00:50:54Caligula quite literally went off the rails.
00:50:59According to Suetonius, when his adored Drusilla becomes pregnant,
00:51:03he disembowels her to pluck the god child from her womb.
00:51:07She dies in agony.
00:51:15His orgiastic excess then begins in earnest.
00:51:21Caligula had the wives of aristocrats and wealthy Romans
00:51:24paraded past their table, saying,
00:51:27yes, no, I'll take her, I won't take her.
00:51:33These are not mere slaves.
00:51:39There are few in the world who have been able to
00:51:43There are few sexual taboos for the dominant Roman male,
00:51:47but forcing the wife of a patrician invited to dinner
00:51:51to commit adultery during the dinner is definitely one of them.
00:52:00After Caligula has had his way with the unfortunate woman,
00:52:04he then reports back to her husband the graphic details of the encounter.
00:52:10Caligula mixes sex with violence.
00:52:13In quick succession, he kills his adopted son, Gemellus,
00:52:17his father-in-law, Silenus, and his praetorian prefect, Macro.
00:52:22The effect of this depravity on ordinary people is not recorded.
00:52:27Historians talk about Caligula's private life,
00:52:30but what they don't talk about is the prevailing moral climate in Rome.
00:52:36They don't include popular opinion from the streets of Rome at all.
00:52:40We do know that Caligula, like the mob, loves chariot racing.
00:52:45He becomes very attached to his favorite horse.
00:52:49Incitatus was one of the famed horses of Rome,
00:52:54and he had his special stables.
00:52:58He makes Incitatus a priest,
00:53:00gives him a villa, complete with marble stall and ivory manger,
00:53:04to avoid disturbing the animal,
00:53:06the neighborhood round the stables is sworn to silence.
00:53:10Caligula then threatens to make Incitatus a Roman consul.
00:53:15Making your horse consul, even if it's a joke,
00:53:19even if it's just a bad joke,
00:53:21is a demonstration that you can do what the hell you like.
00:53:27That was, for the Romans, almost a definition of bad power, uncontrolled power.
00:53:35Caligula likes to watch miscreants get their just desserts over dessert.
00:53:43Executions while he was dining seems to have been also one of his predilections.
00:53:47But I think what he was trying to do in all of this
00:53:50was to foster a sort of atmosphere of fear and unpredictability to his reign.
00:53:55This was part of his management technique.
00:53:58The technique involves colorful brutality.
00:54:01One of the many stories which his biographer Suetonius tells
00:54:05is of a man who is caught stealing
00:54:10and has his hands chopped off and put on a piece of string,
00:54:15strung around his neck,
00:54:16and he's made to wander around the amphitheater
00:54:20with a notice around his neck
00:54:23to say this is what happens to thieves.
00:54:27The inscription SPQR,
00:54:30Senatus Populus Quae Romanus,
00:54:33on Roman monuments signifies the centrality of the Senate and the Roman people.
00:54:38Senators see themselves as the moral guardians of Rome.
00:54:42They may disapprove,
00:54:44but there is nothing they or ordinary Romans can do
00:54:47to stop Caligula's atrocities.
00:54:51After four years in power,
00:54:53a chance provocation of one of his personal guards
00:54:56leads to his assassination.
00:54:58Caligula's end is caused by a member of the Praetorian Guard
00:55:02through an insult made by Caligula about the sexuality of this person,
00:55:07and this person then basically just simply kills him.
00:55:13Caligula is replaced by his uncle Claudius,
00:55:17who suffers from physical as well as mental deformities.
00:55:22He had a good deal of trouble walking.
00:55:24He had a very pronounced limp,
00:55:26and Claudius also had a very nasty tendency
00:55:30when he became angry to begin drooling.
00:55:32Now, these are qualities which are absolutely the opposite
00:55:36of what is expected of an elite Roman male in public life
00:55:40who's supposed to be in complete control of himself at every moment.
00:55:44Already ill-suited to leadership,
00:55:47Claudius is also a heavy drinker.
00:55:50Claudius had a great reputation for overeating and overdrinking,
00:55:53some overindulgence in sex,
00:55:55but he's the only completely heterosexual emperor, I think.
00:55:59All the rest of them seem to be bisexual,
00:56:02but nothing of that kind is attributed.
00:56:04Women is what he seems to have liked.
00:56:08They are to be his downfall.
00:56:11His third wife, Messalina, is also his niece.
00:56:15The female side of the dynasty is as debauched as the male.
00:56:20According to Suetonius,
00:56:22she first works her way through the 1,000-strong Praetorian Guard.
00:56:27Messalina is a nymphomaniac with a voracious sexual appetite.
00:56:33Messalina, the emperor's wife in particular,
00:56:36becomes the object of gossip about her sexual exploits,
00:56:39about the way she raises her children,
00:56:41the possibility that she aborts children
00:56:43so that she can have more sex and enjoy more pleasure
00:56:47as she would have been able to do,
00:56:49given her position at the very top of the pinnacle of Roman political society.
00:56:55She becomes the object of intense gossip,
00:56:57intense examination, intense speculation.
00:57:01What actually was going on in the Roman household?
00:57:03How did she live her life?
00:57:05The questions that we ask about celebrities today.
00:57:09Messalina is 35 years younger than the daughter in Claudius.
00:57:13Behind his back, she sleeps with the handsomest men of Rome
00:57:17and occasionally, just for laughs, the ugliest.
00:57:25To contemporary Roman moralists,
00:57:27her sordid exploits demonstrate the unacceptability
00:57:30of women taking an active role in sexual affairs.
00:57:37One particular episode ensures her place in the annals of Roman vice.
00:57:44Messalina visits a brothel where she acts as a prostitute
00:57:48and takes on all comers.
00:57:50In fact, engages in a contest with the head prostitute at that brothel,
00:57:54whose name seems to be Scylla, a whirlpool.
00:57:59Messalina has a contest with this prostitute
00:58:02to see how many men each woman can take on.
00:58:05It will be the most infamous carnal competition in Roman history.
00:58:14This is the story of the most notorious nymphomaniac in Roman history.
00:58:21The Empress Messalina demonstrates
00:58:23that absolute imperial power corrupts absolutely.
00:58:28She challenges Rome's champion prostitute to a competition.
00:58:33Who can satisfy the most men in a single night?
00:58:38As a married woman, she should be faithful, passive and submissive.
00:58:43Messalina is clearly out of control,
00:58:46a major vice for the Roman elite.
00:58:50Throughout the night, clients come and go.
00:58:53The working prostitute and the Empress keep pace with each other.
00:58:59At dawn, with the score at 25 men each,
00:59:03Scylla, the professional prostitute, retires defeated.
00:59:07The Empress is, according to historian Juvenal,
00:59:10lasata viris nectum satiata,
00:59:14tired but still unsatisfied.
00:59:19And at the end of the night, so our sources say,
00:59:22Messalina is still eager for more men
00:59:25and she goes home to the imperial palace,
00:59:27reeking of scent and sex, still her desires unfulfilled.
00:59:32What a perfect metaphor in Roman terms
00:59:35for what happens to a woman who has absolute power.
00:59:38She uses that power to fill her most base desires,
00:59:41her desires for sex.
00:59:45There are even limits to Roman lechery.
00:59:48Like Caligula before her,
00:59:50Messalina pays the ultimate price for her epic depravity.
00:59:55For promoting a lover as rival to Claudius, she is executed.
01:00:03In contrast to his tangled private life,
01:00:06the Emperor is a successful statesman.
01:00:10Claudius takes the Roman Empire to a new level in a way.
01:00:14He takes the Roman Empire across the ocean to conquer Britain
01:00:18and this is a great achievement which is seen in Rome,
01:00:21it's celebrated in Rome with a triumph,
01:00:24it's seen as sort of a huge achievement for the new Emperor.
01:00:28In Rome there is no interest in a moral agenda.
01:00:33Fifty years after their introduction,
01:00:35Augustus' edicts have been quietly forgotten.
01:00:41Rome is becoming a melting pot of international culture
01:00:45with new cults arriving from the East
01:00:47promising a world of secret pleasure and depravity.
01:00:51Participation in cults is very much of a private pleasure
01:00:55in the Roman world.
01:00:57A number of cults developed reputations
01:01:00for all manner of reprehensible behavior
01:01:03at least in the eyes of Roman society.
01:01:06They very often had a reputation for promoting sexual excess.
01:01:11The connection between cults and sexual excess was nothing new.
01:01:18The followers of the god Bacchus
01:01:20believed in drinking hard and partying even harder.
01:01:23Bacchus is the god of wine
01:01:25but his name in Latin is also liber, which means free
01:01:28and that name really encapsulates the Roman attitude
01:01:31towards Bacchus and towards wine, that it made you free.
01:01:36As Pliny wrote at the time in Vino Veritas,
01:01:39in wine is truth.
01:01:42Spirits like brandy and whiskey had yet to be invented.
01:01:47Wine was the strongest liquor on offer.
01:01:50The cult of Bacchus encouraged such licentious behavior
01:01:53it was even banned at one point.
01:01:56So it went underground.
01:01:58It became a secret society.
01:02:02The cult of Bacchus, they formed themselves into sort of cells,
01:02:07little groups who would meet regularly, meet at night,
01:02:11meet in groups of men and women mixed.
01:02:14This caused enormous anxiety.
01:02:17In order to worship Bacchus.
01:02:20At a Bacchanalian feast, too much wine
01:02:23inevitably led to a loss of self-control,
01:02:26a cardinal vice in ancient Rome.
01:02:31Some of the most vivid moments in Roman satire
01:02:34are images of people who let Bacchus take them over
01:02:37to an excessive amount,
01:02:39who find themselves vomiting under their chairs,
01:02:42who force their slaves to clean up after themselves,
01:02:45who find themselves vomiting under their chairs,
01:02:47who force their slaves to clean up after them
01:02:49because they can't control their own bodily functions.
01:02:54Equally repellent to modern religious followers,
01:02:57devotees of traditional Roman cults
01:02:59frequently practiced animal sacrifice.
01:03:03The emperor presided over major state ceremonies.
01:03:07Claudius would be there,
01:03:09but as a Roman offering sacrifice,
01:03:12he would stand aside and demonstrate
01:03:15the calm expected of a person of his standing
01:03:18and let other people do the actual slaughtering of the animals.
01:03:22Animal sacrifices in the ancient world
01:03:24signified the connection between the gods and mortals
01:03:27because the gods were going to participate
01:03:30in the sacrifice with the human.
01:03:32They would also be participating in the feast afterward.
01:03:37If the gods are satisfied,
01:03:39then a second battle and a good harvest should follow.
01:03:45Claudius also promoted a cult from the east
01:03:48that had until his reign been practiced only furtively.
01:03:54The goddess Cybele was an earth mother
01:03:56who promised fertility, but at a price.
01:04:01What was remarkable to the Romans
01:04:03as well as to us about this cult
01:04:05was that it involved the use of a priest
01:04:08who had to castrate themselves to become a priest.
01:04:13There is evidence of the cult around the empire.
01:04:16This is a genuine castration clamp found in London.
01:04:21To become a priest of Cybele,
01:04:23you had to perform a ritual self-castration
01:04:28using a pottery sherd.
01:04:31A terrifying thought.
01:04:34The now suitably qualified priest
01:04:37can officiate at a Torabolium.
01:04:43The traditional Cybele initiation ceremony for cult members
01:04:47involves the slaughtering of a bull
01:04:50and the ritual bathing in its blood.
01:04:58A pit is dug
01:05:00and the initiate descends into the pit
01:05:03and boards are put over the top.
01:05:07According to historian Prudentius,
01:05:09a huge bull, fierce and shaggy in appearance,
01:05:12is led, bound with flowery garlands about its flanks
01:05:16and with its horns sheathed onto the planks.
01:05:26The initiate waits in anticipation.
01:05:31Then the beast is slain.
01:05:33The gaping wound emits a smoking river of hot blood.
01:05:37The initiate throws back his face.
01:05:40He puts his cheeks in the way of the blood.
01:05:43He moistens his tongue until he actually drinks the dark gore.
01:05:50After which there was a sense that literally covered
01:05:53with the offering to the god
01:05:55that the initiate himself was somehow more sacred
01:05:58and more beloved to the divinity.
01:06:01The use of blood is central to these cults.
01:06:05In the prevailing moral climate,
01:06:07when practiced in private, they are tolerated.
01:06:13In public, in the arena, bloodlust is celebrated.
01:06:20Nothing better illustrates the gulf
01:06:22between the modern and Roman interpretation of vice
01:06:25than death in the arena.
01:06:29Roman games are the symbol of the pursuit of pleasure
01:06:32or the centrality of pleasure and luxury
01:06:35to the Roman state in the first century.
01:06:37This is a period when we see
01:06:39the great spread of entertainment buildings,
01:06:41amphitheaters and theatres throughout Western Europe
01:06:44as Roman tastes spread around their empire.
01:06:47It's a symbol of a world that comes together
01:06:50around its entertainments.
01:06:53The mob relish the cruelty of the games.
01:06:56Women fantasize about the gladiators.
01:06:59But under Claudius, the spectacle of carnage in the arena
01:07:02will have an added twist.
01:07:09The year is 47 AD.
01:07:12To commemorate Rome's 800th birthday,
01:07:15Emperor Claudius stages a three-day spectacular,
01:07:19The Secular Games.
01:07:21It is a celebration of the superpower that is Rome.
01:07:27With peace abroad and prosperity at home,
01:07:30Romans feel confident that all is well with their world.
01:07:35The crowd anticipate a gore fest.
01:07:38Nothing better represents the Roman passion for pleasure,
01:07:41whatever the cost, than the cruelty acted out in the arena.
01:07:45For the elite, there is method in the mayhem.
01:07:48As the Roman Empire expands,
01:07:50so the ruling class has become increasingly anxious
01:07:53that the Roman people are becoming softened
01:07:57because they are being removed
01:07:59from the violence and bloodshed and savagery
01:08:02that had made Rome great.
01:08:04And so they increasingly start staging gladiatorial combats.
01:08:08They say to educate the Roman people
01:08:12and to remind them of their origins and of their duties.
01:08:16Hunting is part of traditional Roman history,
01:08:20reminding the crowd of simple country pleasures.
01:08:24So the day starts with a hunt,
01:08:27then moves on to animals fighting each other.
01:08:31The big cats are popular,
01:08:34but elephants, rhinos, wild boar and antelope
01:08:37But elephants, rhinos, wild boar and antelope
01:08:40imported from Africa at vast cost
01:08:43also feed the thirst for blood.
01:08:47Savage creatures are then pitted against human victims.
01:08:51In tune with the mob, the more bizarre the cruelty,
01:08:55the more the sadistic emperor loves it.
01:08:58Claudius seemed to enjoy watching public punishment.
01:09:02We're told that he particularly tended to condemn people
01:09:05to death by the beasts,
01:09:07to have them torn apart by wild animals in the amphitheater.
01:09:11And this was one of the cruelest of all penalties.
01:09:15At lunchtime, condemned men are killed in imaginative ways.
01:09:19Being whipped to death is always popular, as is beheading.
01:09:24Combining capital punishment with entertainment
01:09:27is the ultimate Roman power trip.
01:09:30Ordinary convicts with no fighting skills
01:09:33are made to battle it out.
01:09:36Criminals are fighting each other
01:09:39without any protective covering,
01:09:42and the point is to kill each other.
01:09:44It's a sort of form of capital punishment.
01:09:47Claudius particularly enjoyed these things.
01:09:49He would often send the crowd off at lunch, and he would stay.
01:09:54After lunch, the main event.
01:10:04The Gladiator has iconic status.
01:10:08Champions are major celebrities,
01:10:11part sports star, part rock legend.
01:10:16For the crowd, the games combine the thrill of a Super Bowl
01:10:19with the adrenaline rush of warfare.
01:10:25We need to imagine people buying peanuts and hot dogs.
01:10:29They were perfectly comfortable with the idea
01:10:31of not just sitting and eating and watching this,
01:10:33but spurring on the death, spurring on the killing.
01:10:39The fight is between a Retiarius with his net and trident
01:10:43and a Thracian with his short sword.
01:10:49Success as a Gladiator is also linked to sexual prowess,
01:10:53a particular thrill for the women in the crowd.
01:10:56It's sexually exciting for women,
01:10:59Gladiators always are extremely desirable.
01:11:03Having a highly trained killer as a lover
01:11:06is a fantasy for many Roman women.
01:11:10Gladiators were undoubtedly sex objects in the Roman Empire,
01:11:13and it's not hard to imagine why.
01:11:15These are guys who performed in front of tens of thousands of people
01:11:19without very many clothes on, had incredibly fit bodies.
01:11:25It's notorious that the women in the crowd
01:11:28It's notorious that the wealthy women of Roman society
01:11:31were always looking for Gladiators to go to bed with.
01:11:36The Romans were fascinated by sex and death.
01:11:45Most Gladiators have been expensively trained,
01:11:48and their survival rate is much better than in popular mythology.
01:11:52But at these secular games,
01:11:54the odds are stacked against the loser coming out alive.
01:11:58Most of the time, Roman Gladiators did not fight to the death.
01:12:02Claudius was very different, however.
01:12:04He imposed a very difficult and dangerous term
01:12:08on gladiatorial combat,
01:12:10a very rare one where fights to the death would be required,
01:12:13and he is especially said to have liked to watch retiarii,
01:12:17men who fought with a net and a trident,
01:12:20die because they had no helmets on
01:12:22and you could see their faces as they faced their death.
01:12:33Traditionally, the life or death decision is in the hands of the crowd.
01:12:37The signal for life is a thumbs down,
01:12:40indicating the sword should be buried harmlessly in the sand.
01:12:46Death is denoted by a thumb to the throat.
01:12:52In these games, death for the loser is guaranteed by the emperor.
01:13:11Even more imaginative cruelty is about to appear.
01:13:15It will involve human torches.
01:13:22History traditionally suggests Claudius' reign
01:13:25was ended by a plate of poisoned mushrooms
01:13:28fed to him by his fourth wife, Agrippina.
01:13:33An ambitious mother, she was lining up her own son Nero for the top job.
01:13:39A much more ingenious explanation of his death
01:13:42is that it wasn't the mushroom that killed him, but the doctor.
01:13:48First he eats a mushroom, he feels a bit unwell,
01:13:51the doctor comes and to help him vomit,
01:13:54he puts a feather down his throat.
01:13:57And on the feather is the poison.
01:14:03With Claudius dead, the powerful Agrippina installs Nero on the throne.
01:14:12The year is 54 AD.
01:14:15The 16-year-old Nero inherits an empire at the height of its power.
01:14:21The Julio-Claudians from Augustus to Nero
01:14:24created a uniquely prosperous society in the ancient Mediterranean world
01:14:28where the average person did not have to fear
01:14:31that an army would come marching through his or her city,
01:14:34where people could get on with their business.
01:14:37We see cities growing and trade expanding.
01:14:41Whatever the oddities, the personal eccentricities of individual emperors,
01:14:45the system as a whole flourished.
01:14:49The beautiful villa at Eplantis near Pompeii
01:14:52is a good example of the opulent art and architecture
01:14:55commissioned in this period.
01:14:59Belonging to Nero's wife, Pompeia,
01:15:01the luxurious house even boasts a gigantic swimming pool.
01:15:07If Roman aristocrats had it, they flaunted it.
01:15:13Nero's life is Roman vice personified.
01:15:18He and his mother, Agrippina, are so close,
01:15:21it is believed they are lovers.
01:15:26In matters of personal morality,
01:15:28Nero takes his inspiration from the Greeks,
01:15:31a culture renowned by Romans for its sophistication,
01:15:34but also its degeneracy.
01:15:38He likes watching Greek wrestlers grapple in the noon.
01:15:42But homoerotic voyeurism is not the conduct expected of an emperor.
01:15:47Nero liked Greek athletics.
01:15:49Greek athletics are usually done in the nude.
01:15:53And the Romans thought that this led to debauchery,
01:15:57generally didn't fit with their manly image.
01:16:02The emperor's bisexuality is not itself a major vice.
01:16:07His lack of discretion is.
01:16:10When he has himself ravished by his Greek male lover, Pythagoras, in public,
01:16:15he has clearly gone too far.
01:16:19We actually see that Nero is leading a very public private life.
01:16:23His private life has become public,
01:16:26and what he does sexually is a public event.
01:16:29So the idea of where is the moral legislation gone,
01:16:33it's almost gone because you have the example of the emperor doing exactly the opposite,
01:16:38but doing it publicly, whereas Augustus would have done it privately.
01:16:43Nero's unfettered hedonism takes precedence over affairs of state,
01:16:48alienating the most vital element of Roman power.
01:16:52Nero failed throughout his entire reign to pay attention to the most important persons
01:16:57for maintaining his power, namely the troops.
01:16:59He was the first general to make not even a pretense of leading the army,
01:17:04of showing them any respect.
01:17:07Nero is more interested in showbiz.
01:17:10His mistake will have devastating consequences.
01:17:16Romans loved the theater.
01:17:18Venues like the Theater of Marcellus, built during Augustus' reign,
01:17:22hold up to 14,000 spectators.
01:17:28Women mime artists, although considered not much better than prostitutes,
01:17:31regularly bring the house down.
01:17:35But waiting in the wings is the emperor himself.
01:17:39A slave to his art, he is always nervous before taking the stage.
01:17:45Nero is a natural star.
01:17:47He has a showman's eye for the spotlight.
01:17:57This obviously plays tremendously well with the mobs in Rome,
01:18:01the masses, because the emperor who is able to project himself in a spectacular manner
01:18:05is an emperor who can reach out and be seen by them.
01:18:09Nero believes himself an inspired professional.
01:18:12He has metal plates laid on his chest to strengthen his diaphragm.
01:18:17He's even on a strict diet.
01:18:19But performing in the theater at all is a shocking breach of imperial protocol.
01:18:24Nero, in affecting the airs and the attitudes of an actor,
01:18:27is really, really pushing against the edges of Roman taboos.
01:18:32Actors are disqualified from public life.
01:18:35To be an actor is to be one of the lowest forms of life.
01:18:39Nero's showmanship is deeply offensive to the political classes of Rome.
01:18:45Unfazed by their disapproval, and in an effort not to be seen by the public,
01:18:50Unfazed by their disapproval, and in an effort to boost ratings,
01:18:54the emperor promotes a form of theater he knows to be a real crowd-pleaser.
01:19:01There was a phenomenon which has been called fatal charades,
01:19:04and these are spectacles which would lead to the death of someone on stage.
01:19:09And Nero is particularly notorious for this,
01:19:12and we hear of, for example, Hercules being burnt on the pyre on stage.
01:19:17And this may have been part of his image as a showman,
01:19:20to bring this type of verite, this type of realism,
01:19:23to a, no doubt, appreciative public.
01:19:27That's entertainment Nero style.
01:19:32By far the biggest spectacle in Rome is chariot racing,
01:19:35here at the Circus Maximus.
01:19:38250,000 people pack the stands for a day of thrills and spills.
01:19:44Chariot racing is the big sport in the Giulio-Claudian era,
01:19:48attracting far bigger crowds even than the arena.
01:19:53These tracks were 600 yards long.
01:19:56Up to 12 chariots would need to negotiate 13 sharp left-hand turns for victory.
01:20:04Not content with sponsoring the races, Nero drives his own chariot.
01:20:08To see the emperor himself in a chariot,
01:20:11that would have been a remarkable sight.
01:20:16The crowds love Nero's eccentric antics,
01:20:18but once again he is breaking social taboos.
01:20:22Though racing is a rich man's game,
01:20:24charioteers themselves are usually slaves.
01:20:30One way to look at Roman chariot racing,
01:20:32it was a demolition derby for Rolls-Royces.
01:20:34These were tremendously expensive vehicles,
01:20:36driven by highly trained charioteers,
01:20:39and there was a pretty good chance that you would not finish the day's races.
01:20:44The one thing about chariot racing is it goes hand-in-hand with gambling.
01:20:47There were plenty of wagers that would exchange hands,
01:20:50and some of them would be very, very expensive indeed.
01:20:52But this was a big part of the fun of the race,
01:20:55and no doubt there were fortunes won and lost as a result.
01:20:59Nero is so obsessed with winning,
01:21:02Nero is so obsessed with the sport,
01:21:04he races in Greece at the Olympic Games.
01:21:07There is only one possible winner.
01:21:10When Nero participated in the chariot race at the Olympics,
01:21:13he had a ten-horse chariot.
01:21:15Nero couldn't control it, and he fell out.
01:21:18But the judges gave him the crown anyway.
01:21:22The psychopathic Nero loves the spotlight,
01:21:24but is a dangerous man to cross.
01:21:28His reign of terror is about to begin.
01:21:39The Julio-Claudian dynasty, starting with the upright Augustus,
01:21:43through to his successors, the perverted Tiberius,
01:21:49the sex-crazed madman Caligula,
01:21:52and his uncle, the vicious Claudius,
01:21:55represents the Roman age of debauchery, decadence,
01:21:59and breathtaking cruelty in all its infamous glory.
01:22:04With Nero, that age reaches the height of excess.
01:22:15The master showman has a particularly vicious streak,
01:22:19especially when it comes to his own family.
01:22:26Nero was an extremely dangerous person to be related to.
01:22:29He murdered his half-brother Britannicus, he said, to have poisoned him.
01:22:33He sent his wife Octavia off to execution.
01:22:37He famously arranged the murder of his mother Agrippina,
01:22:40who he first tried to drown,
01:22:42and when that failed, he had her killed by the imperial guard.
01:22:45And finally, he murdered his beloved wife Poppaea,
01:22:48who he said to have kicked in the stomach while she was pregnant.
01:22:53Nero's appetite for brutality extends beyond his family circle,
01:22:58into the public arena.
01:23:00Beheadings and crucifixions are always popular,
01:23:03as is watching convicts thrown from the notorious Tarpaean Rock.
01:23:11The people love watching executions in arenas like the one at Pompeii.
01:23:17The public humiliation of victims is fascinating and frightening,
01:23:21but also exhilarating.
01:23:26The emperor's most savage spate of executions
01:23:29is provoked by the 64 AD fire that devastates central Rome.
01:23:36Nero's fiddling, or at least playing the liar,
01:23:39but was also 50 miles away at the time.
01:23:43After the fire in Rome, Nero needed somebody to blame it on.
01:23:49And he picked upon a group of people that very few knew anything about.
01:23:53They were called the Christians.
01:23:55Christianity at this point was just emerging
01:23:58from the fringes of Judaism to become its own faith.
01:24:03Nero sees an opportunity to curry favor with the ordinary people of Rome
01:24:07by rounding up the Christians in the city.
01:24:11The Christians were unpopular
01:24:13because they wouldn't take any part in the religious festivals
01:24:17or rites that other people did,
01:24:19and they kept very much to themselves,
01:24:21and their meetings were rather secret,
01:24:24and people gossiped about what they got up to there.
01:24:29The persecution will have unexpected consequences,
01:24:32ones that will change the course of Roman history.
01:24:37The little that people knew about Christians
01:24:40made them sound like they were very strange.
01:24:43They worshipped a man who'd been crucified by a Roman magistrate as a god,
01:24:48they believed that he'd risen from the dead,
01:24:51and they shared a meal which was supposed to represent
01:24:55the body and blood of this deceased criminal.
01:24:58There isn't a lot here for the Romans to love.
01:25:02It looked like an easy group of people for Nero to go after.
01:25:07The problem is that Nero overdid it.
01:25:11His fiendish imagination goes into overdrive.
01:25:15Christians are fed to lions in the arena.
01:25:20It clearly is regarded as a form of entertainment.
01:25:23Sometimes they're tied to stakes,
01:25:26and you have a man who actually incites the animals against you.
01:25:29Very often animals have to be trained to eat human flesh,
01:25:32but these animals are.
01:25:36Nero's sadism is out of control.
01:25:40Nero seemed to be enjoying the death sentences
01:25:43that he was imposing on people.
01:25:45It looked all too much like entertainment for the emperor,
01:25:49and entertainment of the worst sort.
01:25:52There is worse to come.
01:25:54Nero blames the Christians for starting the fire.
01:25:58To make the punishment fit the crime,
01:26:01he has some covered in tar and set alight.
01:26:05They are used as human torches in the arena
01:26:08and to light a party in his private gardens.
01:26:11Barbaric behavior even for Romans.
01:26:16They were burnt alive.
01:26:18They were used as torches to light the night around the Vatican Hill.
01:26:23To the Roman people, this was too cruel.
01:26:27The penalties were felt to go beyond the realm of brutal.
01:26:32To avoid death, Christians only have to recant their faith.
01:26:36Their refusal to do so impresses many.
01:26:40The fortitude that the Christians showed in the arena
01:26:43was so impressive that it often made converts.
01:26:47We're told the blood of martyrs is the seat of the church,
01:26:50and that is effectively what happened.
01:26:53That the spectacle of people who are prepared to endure so much for their faith
01:26:58was so inspiring that it made more converts than it lost adherents.
01:27:05The Vatican Hill today.
01:27:08St. Peter's, spiritual home to a billion Catholics,
01:27:12stands right where Nero set fire to those early martyrs.
01:27:17Some historians believe St. Peter was one of his victims.
01:27:23Nero's perverted quest for entertainment played a crucial part
01:27:27in the early days of Christianity.
01:27:33It also signaled the beginning of the end for the whole Julio-Claudian dynasty.
01:27:40Nero loses support after the great fire with the people of Rome.
01:27:44After the great fire with the people of Rome,
01:27:46because he's not rebuilding the city as quickly as they might like.
01:27:50By refusing to engage in the most basic affairs of state,
01:27:54he also alienates both the Senate and the army.
01:27:58So there are a lot of problems coming together
01:28:01and an emperor who seems to be pursuing chariot racing, lyre playing, acting,
01:28:06so this loses him popularity.
01:28:10The bitter feeling against him was increased, according to historian Suetonius.
01:28:15With the people suffering from hunger,
01:28:18a ship arrived from Alexandria bringing not grain as anticipated,
01:28:22but sand for Nero's Greek wrestlers.
01:28:26By promoting his own selfish pleasures over the public good,
01:28:30Nero is losing his grip on power.
01:28:34He also was putting to death various army commanders
01:28:38and it's partly the nervous army commanders who, in the end,
01:28:42take things into their own hands and are plotting rebellion.
01:28:48Faced with plots abroad and conspiracies in Rome,
01:28:52Nero effectively abdicates by going into hiding.
01:28:57The Senate, believing he is now a complete liability,
01:29:00decree that he is to be led naked through the streets,
01:29:03beaten to death with rods, his body thrown from the Tarpaian rock.
01:29:09Hearing his captors' horses approaching, Nero commits suicide.
01:29:16It is the end of an era.
01:29:22The period from Augustus to Nero saw Roman civilization at its best and worst.
01:29:28Outstanding depravity and amazing brutality
01:29:32next to world-class opulence and a constantly expanding empire.
01:29:37For the Romans there was no contradiction.
01:29:40Their concept of virtue and vice was very different to our own.
01:29:46One could be a virtuous Roman
01:29:48and have sex with all the slaves in one's house.
01:29:51One could be a virtuous Roman and eat peacock's tails
01:29:54and dormice rolled in poppy seeds.
01:29:57And one could be a virtuous Roman
01:29:59and oppress and dominate others
01:30:02in a way that I think is difficult for us to imagine in the modern world.
01:30:06It may seem to us that these excesses represent Roman vice,
01:30:10but to Roman eyes they were consistent with Roman virtue.
01:30:16Nero's death caused temporary chaos.
01:30:19Rome had four emperors in a year.
01:30:23But under Vespasian it soon recovered
01:30:25and with an appetite for vice undiminished,
01:30:28the empire went on to thrive for another 300 years.