Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Rome, 2,000 years ago, was the world's first ancient megacity.
00:15In a world where few towns had more than 10,000 inhabitants, more than a million people lived
00:21in Rome.
00:28It would take almost 1,800 years for any other city in the West to achieve the same population.
00:41How did they manage without all the technologies our modern cities rely on?
00:46Technologies of transport, communication, energy.
00:51How did they get enough food and drink to the population?
00:55How did they house them?
00:57How did they maintain law and order?
01:01How did they make this great city work?
01:08I'll show you how Rome surpassed all the cities that had gone before and rose to many of the
01:14challenges faced by megacities today.
01:20By taking you on a journey up ancient tower blocks.
01:24What I love is that this isn't just a bit of archaeology.
01:27It's a bit of living history.
01:31Incredible infrastructure.
01:39And some very proud people.
01:43Fantastico.
02:00Making a city of a million work in ancient conditions was an enormous challenge.
02:06But in 31 BC, one man who would become the Emperor Augustus became Rome's undisputed ruler.
02:13His role was to maintain peace across all his imperial territories.
02:19But if Augustus couldn't run his capital, he couldn't run an empire.
02:23So in rising to the challenge, he set new standards for how a city could be organised.
02:37So historians are always chucking around numbers for how many inhabitants there were in cities.
02:42How do they know?
02:44And to be honest, a lot of the time they're bluffing.
02:47But with the case of Rome under Augustus, we've got an amazing bit of evidence here.
02:51This is Augustus' own account of all his achievements.
02:56Augustus was obsessed with numbers.
02:58How many victories did he win?
03:00How many cities did he found?
03:02How many laws did he pass?
03:06And he loved counting the citizens.
03:10Censum populi.
03:11I did a census of the people.
03:15That is, of course, the citizens in all the empire.
03:17Luckily, in the case of Rome, he also counted the number of inhabitants of the city.
03:23Because they were very privileged citizens, he gave them cash handouts.
03:28And he says, on no single occasion did I give the money to less than 250,000 people.
03:35And on one occasion, I gave it to 320,000 people.
03:40Nearly a third of a million people.
03:42And that is just adult male citizens.
03:47Where are the women?
03:48Where are the children?
03:50Where are the slaves?
03:51And where are the immigrants?
03:53It's clear you've got to multiply up.
03:55A million is the figure people chuck around as the population of Rome.
03:59To be honest, that's a minimum.
04:01In my view, you could be talking about 1.5 million people.
04:05It is an absolutely enormous number for antiquity.
04:13There had been other great capitals before Rome.
04:16Now, how was this city able to achieve what they could not?
04:21Perhaps the most obvious competitor should have been Athens.
04:24And indeed, early Rome was developing at the same time.
04:29They both embraced one common and powerful idea.
04:34The citizen.
04:36SPQR.
04:38Senatus Populus Quae Romanus, the Senate and People of Rome.
04:43Those were the initials of authority of the citizen body itself.
04:49Populus Romanus, the citizens of Rome.
04:52In antiquity, that was their symbol of their authority and civic pride.
04:57It was picked up in the Renaissance, when Rome became an independent city.
05:03Rome became an independent city, and it has continued to this day,
05:08the symbol of a city run by its citizens for its citizens.
05:18But in ancient Rome, as the population increased,
05:21this way of running a city-state was no longer enough to make the capital work.
05:26When Rome was founded, 753 BC, and probably for the next 500 years,
05:32Rome was a city-state, just like hundreds of city-states in the Greek world,
05:38a polis, a polis run by its politi, its citizens.
05:44Rome had its kives, it was a kivitas,
05:47and just as Greek has given us the word politics and everything related to it,
05:52Latin has given us citizen, city, civic, civil, even civilise.
05:59So, Rome was run by its kives, its citizens,
06:03meeting down there in the forum, in the central open space.
06:07But by 200 BC, Rome was expanding very rapidly,
06:11and as it acquired an empire,
06:14it became harder and harder to run as a city-state,
06:18it became harder and harder to run as a city-state.
06:21And to cut a complicated story very short,
06:24the answer was a new form of military power, the emperor,
06:28and the emperors built their palace up there on the Palatine,
06:32and from now on, they ran Rome.
06:35But they couldn't do without their citizens,
06:37they can't ignore their citizens,
06:39and one of the major concern of the emperors
06:41is to keep the citizen population happy.
06:45How can they get them enough food?
06:47How can they make sure there's a good water supply?
06:50How can they maintain law and order?
06:55It's much easier to see how Rome worked for its citizens than Athens,
07:00because more of the old infrastructure has survived.
07:05No ancient map exists of the Greek capital.
07:09But by contrast, there's an extraordinary piece of evidence
07:13that reveals just how the Romans designed their city
07:16to accommodate a vast and growing population.
07:25Today, this great wall is the outside wall of a church,
07:29the Church of St Cosmas and Damian.
07:32In antiquity, it was the inside wall of a vast imperial building.
07:38And on it, there was a fantastic thing, a map of the city of Rome.
07:44It was on marble slabs.
07:45You can still see the fixing holes for those slabs.
07:49And the map spread over the whole wall.
07:55On it was depicted the city of Rome in great detail.
07:59Alas, those slabs are terribly damaged and broken today.
08:03We've only got about a tenth of them.
08:07But it's enough to be able to reconstruct in a lot of detail
08:11the street plan of ancient Rome.
08:14One of the fascinating things we can see from that
08:17is that the street plan of the city of Rome, in many points,
08:22corresponded precisely to the street plan that survives today.
08:45The modern Via Cavour is six or seven metres above the older street level.
08:49And here, we're in the Subura,
08:51famed in ancient Rome as being the slum district.
08:54But though it was a slum district, here we have the Via Urbana,
08:59and it follows exactly the course of the ancient Roman Vicus Patricius,
09:04which was, in fact, one of the most snobbish streets in town.
09:08The surviving fragments were rediscovered as far back as 1562.
09:16But four centuries later, scholars are still trying to puzzle out
09:20where each piece of this vast jigsaw belongs.
09:30What enables us to place the fragments of the marble plan
09:33in this area of the city of Rome
09:35and the fragments of the marble plan in this area of town
09:38is this road, the Via delle Zoccolette.
09:41Its long curve is created by the curve of the Tiber River just beyond us.
09:48And on the fragments, we find a street with a long curve, and it fits.
09:57What it reveals is an area nearly three miles long and two miles wide,
10:03including many landmarks that we know today.
10:11Though the streets are mapped and monitored by the authorities
10:14far more closely in our era,
10:16it's still a struggle to make densely populated cities work,
10:20with all the challenges we have today, like terrible traffic.
10:25In one place at least, it's taken 2,000 years to catch up,
10:30as the current mayor of Rome,
10:32who's just pedestrianised the area around the Colosseum, explains.
10:39It was black for the pollution that we had.
10:43And, you know, it cost about 25 million euros to clean it up.
10:49And now you can see the stones as they were 2,000 years ago.
10:53For us, one of the interesting things
10:56is that already the ancient Romans had the same problems.
11:01Julius Caesar closed the Forum to traffic, didn't he?
11:04Exactly.
11:05Do you think of yourself as the new Julius Caesar?
11:08No, no, no.
11:11Ancient Rome, like modern Rome, was densely populated.
11:15This was reflected not just in its traffic,
11:19but in every aspect of life.
11:22It had its Forum.
11:25It had piazzas with shops.
11:29And, of course, it had its housing.
11:37To help me fill in the gaps about how and where ancient Romans lived,
11:41I've been joined by my colleague from Cambridge, Tiziano D'Angelo.
11:45So I guess we have Mussolini to thank for clearing the space.
11:51Without trains and buses,
11:52Rome's population had to live centrally.
11:55To solve the problem of housing a million-plus people,
11:59the Romans built upwards.
12:01This is an ancient apartment block, or insula.
12:06I think it's amazing because below the modern ground level,
12:11we've got two entire floors.
12:13And don't forget the three floors up there. Yeah.
12:17Five floors in all of ancient Roman apartment blocks.
12:202,000 years old.
12:22It shows how you can do dense housing in the heart of a city, doesn't it?
12:29We may reckon that this apartment block was home to up to 200 people,
12:34one of thousands of complexes housing Rome's burgeoning population.
12:42What I love is that this isn't just a bit of archaeology.
12:45It's a bit of living history.
12:47There have been people living here right up to the middle ages.
12:51Right up till 1932.
12:55Insulae are often portrayed as dark, miserable, cramped slums.
13:00But is that really true?
13:03So this looks like one unit of an apartment.
13:06Yeah.
13:08Well, there are quite a few of them. There's actually about four.
13:11OK, we've got four units. Yes.
13:13And we've got them on five floors, so this is just one standard unit.
13:19Not bad in terms of size, is it?
13:21It's not small. No, no. It's quite spacious.
13:24We've got, what is it, four metres by nine, 36 square metres.
13:30It's much bigger than the average apartment nowadays.
13:33People have this image of how Romans lived in apartment buildings
13:37in complete squalor in tiny little pokey apartments.
13:42You've got filth on the floors, you've got bare walls.
13:46Is this life in a Roman apartment?
13:48Well, you have to use a little bit of imagination.
13:51There is no reason why these walls or this ceiling
13:55could not be decorated when they were built.
13:58So, for example, look at the ceiling.
14:00We do have traces of plaster,
14:01so probably the whole ceiling and all the walls were plastered.
14:05But we could do something more for you if you're difficult.
14:09So we could decorate it a bit... I'm a demanding client here.
14:12We could decorate it a bit further.
14:13For example, that back wall, that main wall,
14:17second century, we could paint it.
14:19Those red and yellow panels that were so stylish.
14:23What are you going to do with the floors?
14:25Well, we'll clean it up a bit.
14:27And then we could have something like what we have in the corridor outside,
14:32that opus picatum, so the herringbone pattern,
14:35which is very resistant on the one hand,
14:36and it looks relatively pretty.
14:38OK, suppose I'm the tenant, I'm moving in,
14:41and I say, excuse me, landlord, I really don't like this floor at all.
14:46I want a proper mosaic floor.
14:54Not far away, there are remains of decoration.
14:57It looks like a modern building.
15:00This is a kids' library.
15:02It's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful.
15:05Oh, my God. OK, so what is going on here?
15:08I think we've got some serious Roman bricks.
15:10Yeah, it's much more regular.
15:12Houses in Rome, like any city, were continually changing,
15:16with new owners doing their own makeovers.
15:20Look at these mosaics.
15:22Yes, it's sort of psychedelic, isn't it?
15:26It's as if someone's been trying to balance ostrich eggs
15:30on top of each other and they're all taking a tumble.
15:33Well, in the second century AD,
15:36this would have been quite fashionable, actually.
15:39It's a black and white mosaic,
15:40and, yes, you're right, the pattern is not a masterpiece,
15:43and you can also see that from the size of the tesserae.
15:46They're quite big. It's over one centimetre.
15:49But still, the mosaics were taking a long time to make this work,
15:53and they were paid quite well.
15:55They were paid 60, 65 denarii per day.
15:58That's quite a bit. That's an enormous amount.
15:59That's way over a legionary's pay.
16:02Well, it's an excellent floor, though.
16:04Great work if you can get it.
16:05And you need more than a mosaicist statue.
16:08You need a plumber. Yes, that's important.
16:10I do want running water in my apartment, please.
16:13And, lo and behold... Yes?
16:16..we have a pipe running through.
16:18So, presumably, this means that, at least in some rooms,
16:21there is piped water.
16:26It's a remarkable thought that, by the first century AD,
16:29there were individual flats in Roman apartment blocks
16:33which were being supplied direct with running water.
16:39Something that even today isn't available
16:41in many parts of the world.
16:47There's nothing so important for the health of a great city
16:50as clean water.
16:51Clean water to drink, clean water to wash in.
16:55One of the joys of Rome is that there are fountains
16:58with lovely fresh water everywhere.
17:02And that's down to the Renaissance popes,
17:04who filled Rome with fountains like this one
17:07outside the Palazzo Farnese.
17:12Oddly enough, this particular fountain is made from...
17:16apart from a Roman bath, the Baths of Caracalla.
17:20This ornamental bath was brought in to make a fountain.
17:24Because the Romans too, the ancient Romans,
17:28really understood the importance of fresh water,
17:30and they brought it in in vast quantities.
17:33We all know that the Romans had big baths,
17:35but don't forget the fundamental thing
17:39was they had a fresh supply of drinking water.
17:44This was no mean feat.
17:46It required perhaps the greatest public infrastructure project
17:50ever attempted in the ancient world.
18:00Aqueducts are one of the most vivid signs
18:02of the growth of the population of Rome.
18:05The first ones built as early as 312 BC,
18:08and one after another are added,
18:11until in the end there are 11 separate aqueducts providing water.
18:15They got their water from the south of the city on the whole.
18:19The Alban hills immediately to the south were volcanic,
18:21and that's not such good water.
18:23So they went further south to the limestone hills of the Apennines,
18:27and that meant pushing their technology,
18:31building enormously long aqueducts.
18:33This particular aqueduct, built by the Emperor Claudius,
18:36went 45 miles back,
18:38and it's an extraordinary feat of engineering
18:40to bring water 45 miles without the use of pumps.
18:45It means you have to keep it gently, gently, gently sloping down.
18:49That means building great arches across the valleys.
18:53Sometimes you build tunnels under mountains.
18:56It's not just an extraordinary engineering feat,
18:59it's also an extraordinary feat of organisation.
19:02We happen to have a treatise by a chap called Frontinus.
19:06He was a Roman general.
19:07Indeed, he was the Roman general who conquered Wales.
19:10And when he'd finished beating up a few barbarians,
19:13he came back to Rome and organised the aqueducts.
19:17And he wrote down, being an extraordinarily efficient man,
19:20in absolute detail about each aqueduct,
19:23exactly how long it is,
19:25how many litres of water it carried,
19:28how many men it had in their maintenance teams,
19:30and so on and so on.
19:31And you can see the enormous administrative machine
19:36that lies behind keeping the people of Rome supplied with fresh water.
19:46After the fall of Rome in the 5th century,
19:48the aqueducts fell into disrepair.
19:52The Renaissance popes tried to rebuild them,
19:55but even 1,000 years later,
19:57couldn't match their ancient predecessors.
20:02So, the Acqua Marcia is a fantastic bit of Roman construction,
20:07running at quite a high level.
20:09And here we have the Acqua Felice.
20:12A sort of concrete tube was the best that the popes could manage.
20:17Here we have its name, Acqua Felice.
20:19They're really rather proud of it.
20:20They've put a little plaque in marble.
20:23But let's not pretend it's at the same level of engineering expertise
20:27as the Roman aqueducts of antiquity.
20:32In fact, it was only reviving the ancient Roman aqueduct system
20:37that made the spectacular fountains of Renaissance Rome possible.
21:01ACQUA FELICE
21:31The Campo dei Fiori here.
21:33In the morning, it's a flower and vegetable market.
21:35In the evening, it's where everyone comes for a drink.
21:38In antiquity, it's where the great Theatre of Pompey was.
21:43And you can see it very clearly on the marble plan of Rome.
21:49There's one more thing that really interests me about this place,
21:52and it's the best salami shop in Rome.
21:55And, in fact, I'm going there right now.
22:01It was of enormous importance to emperors to keep the citizens fed.
22:06A quarter of a million citizens got free grain under Augustus.
22:10But, gradually, emperors added other offers.
22:14They got free oil.
22:16In 270, the emperor Aurelian,
22:18he's the guy who built the great walls around Rome,
22:21he added a pork ration.
22:25Five pounds of pork a head per month they got.
22:29In total, three million pounds of pork per annum
22:34were consumed at the emperor's expense.
22:37And Rome, ancient Rome, was full of pork butchers, suarii.
22:42And that tradition has lingered on.
22:51The ancient Romans loved sausages.
22:53Me too.
22:54I often used to come here when I lived in Rome,
22:57and Benedetto's always up for a bit of banter.
23:27Ah, benissimo!
23:58Just five minutes' walk from here,
24:00a market on the marble map were the riverside docks of the ancient city.
24:05It was an area of warehouses, shops and private dwellings,
24:09as it is today.
24:11Often, the modern houses and businesses, like this restaurant,
24:14are built on top of ancient ones.
24:19Buona sera, benvenuta all'Osteria Romana.
24:22Oh, Roberto!
24:24Welcome to the ancient city.
24:27Che piacere!
24:29Che cosa mi hai portato?
24:31A little prosecco.
24:33Fantastic!
24:35Gli antichi Romani...
24:37Su questa strada, se non mi sbaglio,
24:39ci sono tantissime tracce di loro.
24:41Sì, sì, questa è la verità .
24:43Anche qui?
24:45Anche qua sotto abbiamo molte cose belle.
24:47Oh!
24:49Nella cantina.
24:51Sono cose simpaticissime.
24:54I suspected as much,
24:56because every place I've ever been into here
24:58has got yet another bit of ancient rub.
25:00Dove andiamo?
25:02C'è un po' di disordine qua.
25:04This restaurant is built 20 feet above the ancient ground level.
25:08So, who knows what treasures lie below?
25:12This is what I was hoping for,
25:14a little door down to the cellar.
25:20Questo è un vecchio pavimento.
25:23We have...
25:31You can smell the antiquity.
25:33But this is amazing.
25:35Oh, my God!
25:37There's a wee beastie down there.
25:39I think it's a horse.
25:41No?
25:43No? Is it a horse?
25:45It's a hippocamp.
25:47And there's someone...
25:49That's a nymph riding a seahorse.
25:52Absolutely fantastic!
25:54That is a better piece of mosaic
25:56than in the official excavations just behind.
26:08Fantastic one.
26:10He's saying that's not all there is
26:12because there are three further levels down below it.
26:15And that's Rome.
26:17That's the heart of Rome.
26:20You will find antiquity,
26:22and you find it at many levels.
26:26The population of Rome was so vast
26:29that even 2,000 years of history
26:31couldn't bury it all below ground level.
26:41Well, here I am, standing on top of a ginormous Roman rubbish heap,
26:46an ancient Roman rubbish heap.
26:48It is 50 metres and more above the modern street level.
26:52That means, as we look around,
26:54there's not a single rooftop
26:56that even comes up near the height of this.
26:59And it's enormous going around it.
27:01It's more than a kilometre in circumference.
27:04That means it's the equivalent of something like six urban blocks.
27:09And it's not any old rubbish.
27:11This is quite specialised rubbish.
27:14Let's have a look at it.
27:17It's composed of these things,
27:19terracotta fragments from pots called amphorae.
27:26It's been estimated that this hill is composed of 50 million amphorae.
27:33So we know an enormous amount about Roman amphorae.
27:36They're terribly distinctive.
27:38They all come in different shapes and sizes
27:40from all the corners of the Mediterranean.
27:42And the archaeologists have studied these
27:47to find out what to do.
27:49That's a bit of the bottom.
27:51But it's much better to get one of these.
27:53Now, that is a rim.
27:55And that gives you the dimensions of the amphorae.
27:58Or you look for a handle.
28:00There's a nice handle.
28:02And you can pin them down.
28:04And the archaeologists say that these are all from Spain,
28:08from South Spain, from Beatica,
28:10and they all contained olive oil.
28:14Now, what do you need this prodigious amount of olive oil for?
28:17After all, there's a limit to how many salads you can eat.
28:20But it's not just for cooking.
28:22It's also for illumination.
28:24They don't have any electricity.
28:26They have little lamps which they fill up with olive oil.
28:31And it's also for washing.
28:33There's no soap.
28:35So for cleaning, you cover your body with olive oil and scrape it down.
28:39So they get through enormous quantities of this olive oil.
28:44So our rubbish heap is on a great bend in the Tiber River.
28:49You can just about make it out down there,
28:51that line of trees,
28:53and it goes right round us and round there.
28:57And this whole area down below us was full of warehouses.
29:02And round the corner, this particular stuff,
29:05these olive oil amphorae,
29:07probably came from the Horia Galbana, Galba's warehouses,
29:11marked on the map of Rome.
29:15The Tiber flows through the heart of modern Rome
29:18just as it did in ancient times.
29:22But there were big differences between the river then and now.
29:30Today, the Tiber is flanked on both sides by massive embankments.
29:35These were built in the late 19th century
29:38to stop the city from flooding.
29:41In antiquity, there were no embankments
29:43and they had terrible problems with flooding,
29:45but they used the river.
29:47In antiquity, the river was buzzing with activity.
29:50There were boats coming up and down.
29:52You don't see a single boat on the Tiber today.
29:54There were hundreds of boats,
29:56bringing up merchandise, grain, wine, oil,
30:00and luxury goods, of course,
30:02to the hundreds of warehouses that lined the banks of the river.
30:11But for Rome to function for a million people,
30:14the Tiber could only work as part of a much bigger transport system.
30:22With Rome expanding its trade links
30:24to cater for an increasing population,
30:27centres were established to handle the huge amount
30:30of imported produce heading to the capital.
30:34One of the places you get the most vivid idea
30:37of the sheer scale and complexity of the trade
30:41that supplies Rome with food is here in Ostia.
30:44What we have is an enormous piazza
30:47with a sort of covered walkway here
30:50and behind it a series of offices.
30:53And this is where the shippers and traders do their business.
30:57And they put up sort of publicity signs
31:01This is a picture of the River Nile and its delta.
31:05Egypt and Alexandria were one of the most important sources
31:09of trade in the Empire.
31:11Here we have a rather nice picture of how you do the shipping.
31:16You come into harbour with a big ship
31:19and there's a guy on the gangplank
31:22bringing over an amphora,
31:24which he's moving on to a smaller ship,
31:26which is then going to go on the river.
31:30He's then going to go upriver to the warehouses in Rome.
31:34Then over here...
31:37..we've got a rather nice scene of the lighthouse.
31:41Of course, when you're coming across the Mediterranean
31:44and you see the great lighthouse, you know you've made it at last.
31:49And there are a couple of ships, dolphins and so on.
31:52And here we can see just where they come from.
31:55Here we have the navicolari, the shippers,
31:59and here we have Giotiantes,
32:01the businessman of Keralis, that's Cagliari, in Sardinia.
32:05And remember, it's not just one trade.
32:08Some people own the ships,
32:10some people do the negotiation, do the business,
32:13because there is a lot of money,
32:16both to make and to lose, in shipping.
32:19And you can just imagine,
32:21this place would be full of hundreds of traders
32:24trying to do a little deal.
32:27And one of the interesting things is they're all private.
32:30They're doing it for the state.
32:32They're doing it because Rome needs corn,
32:35but individuals can make a packet out of it.
32:38Here are the people... Isn't this wonderful?
32:40This elephant saying,
32:42you are in North Africa and they are from Sabratha in Libya.
32:47That whole coast of North Africa supplying Rome with corn,
32:52but also with other goods.
32:55This is the place where trade happens.
32:58This is the place you come and make a fortune.
33:03Ostia was such a lucrative hub for trade
33:06that it flourished as a town in its own right.
33:09And you can still see the trappings of wealth
33:12in the buildings and decoration.
33:15The wealth and global trade coming into Rome by the 1st century
33:19meant Ostia couldn't cope.
33:23Ancient Rome had to adapt and expand further.
33:29And two miles north of Ostia,
33:31it embarked upon a monumental piece of infrastructure
33:35to sustain its economy.
33:38And two miles north of Ostia,
33:40it embarked upon a monumental piece of infrastructure
33:44to sustain its burgeoning city,
33:46at the very site of modern Italy's greatest transport hub.
33:56Well, here we are, right by the hurly-burly
33:59of Rome's Fiumicino Airport.
34:01Traffic whizzing past all the time,
34:04low-flying planes whizzing overhead,
34:07sometimes hard to make yourself heard.
34:09And yet, this is one of the least well-known
34:12but most important of Roman sites.
34:14It's the great port of Rome
34:16that the Romans simply called Portus, the port.
34:20Now, Rome didn't have a natural harbour.
34:23The Tiber comes out into the sea
34:25and it doesn't have a bay around it.
34:27Think of Athens.
34:29They had the Piraeus, a natural harbour.
34:32Rome had to make a harbour artificially,
34:36to avoid natural obstacles.
34:38And that took the resources of empire.
34:41It took the Emperor Claudius,
34:44and these columns are very typical of constructions
34:47by the Emperor Claudius, who cared about infrastructure.
34:50He cared about chunky, practical building.
34:54And he made a vast artificial harbour at the mouth of the Tiber.
35:01Along with the harbour
35:04there are many buildings and warehouses.
35:08To get a sense of the scale of this place,
35:10I've come to meet my old friend, Simon Kaye,
35:13who's made a remarkable discovery.
35:18Oh, my, Simon, you've been busy bees.
35:20We certainly have.
35:22It's quite a hole you've made in this poor beauty spot.
35:25What Simon has excavated is just a tiny element
35:28in a whole network of ship installations.
35:30This trench represents just part of one bay
35:34and the length of this bay would originally have been
35:37just under 60 metres long.
35:39So that's actually three of these.
35:41You have to imagine them stacked against one another.
35:43So it goes way, way down there.
35:45And it's just under 12 metres wide.
35:47Height? Height? Well, are you prepared for it?
35:50This is a building which stands to at least,
35:53a maximum of 18 metres, which is somewhere up there.
35:57At the top of the trees?
35:59So this is truly massive.
36:02It's not just a scene, it's a statement
36:04about what the Romans are able to do
36:06in creating a façade that reflects Roman power
36:09and has a great functional use and so on.
36:15What we're seeing is just a third of one ship bay.
36:19Imagine, this 18-metre-high construction
36:22would have been a tiny part of a complex
36:25that could berth at least 500 ships.
36:29It's a glimpse of that remarkable scale
36:32the port was built on.
36:35The site occupies a staggering 860 acres,
36:39part of which is now the stately home
36:42of Duke Sforza Cesarini,
36:44who feels a strong connection with his Roman past.
36:59Well, a lot.
37:02The sense of history and the habit of living
37:05with things from the past...
37:09You're born in it.
37:11So I feel absolutely obligated
37:14to protect, preserve and value what I can.
37:19To maintain.
37:21I think so, yes, I have it.
37:23It's very strong, it's very strong for me.
37:29Claudius built Portus
37:31because Ostia became too small for Rome.
37:34But trade grew so fast
37:36that the harbour had to be enlarged again
37:39in the 2nd century by Trajan.
37:42A new 80-acre basin was constructed.
37:48It was recorded that it was formed in the shape
37:51of a huge hexagon to maximise the berthing space for ships.
37:56You get little idea of this from the ground.
38:00There's only one way to find out.
38:15Wow! Fantastic!
38:18That's what we wanted.
38:21Wow!
38:24From 500 metres in the air,
38:26you can clearly make out the sides of Trajan's hexagon.
38:32Luckily enough, the Emperor Claudius left his mark
38:35in the shape of this inscription here,
38:37which explains a bit about what he thought he was doing
38:40in making his great port.
38:42Like all imperial inscriptions,
38:44it starts with his name in enormous letters.
38:48Tiberius, Claudius, son of Drusus, Caesar,
38:51and then a whole load of titles that go on for a couple of lines.
38:55And then he explains what he's up to.
38:58Fossis ductis.
39:00I dug canals from the Tiber
39:03in order to support my works on the port.
39:07And by doing so, he says, letting them out into the sea,
39:11I saved the city of Rome from the danger of flooding.
39:16His engineering works as a whole package.
39:18It's not just that he creates a port,
39:20he links the port to the city by the canals,
39:23and the canals save the city from the danger of flooding.
39:30Like this one, known as Fiumicino, or Little River,
39:34it gives its name to Rome's airport nearby.
39:37And though it dates from the time of Claudius,
39:40it's still fully functioning.
39:43And even 400 years before these canals were completed,
39:47the Romans had grasped the importance of drainage in their city.
39:55One of the vital steps of turning Rome into a city
39:59from just a cluster of villages
40:01was to create a great drain, the Cloaca Maxima.
40:04The original settlements were on hilltops,
40:07the Palatine Hill, the Capitoline Hill,
40:09and between them was an enormous swamp,
40:12a river flowing down and spreading out.
40:15To get from one hilltop to another, you had to use a boat.
40:19And it's one of the first kings of Rome,
40:22you could call him a tyrant, Tarquin,
40:25who famously created the Cloaca Maxima, the great drain of Rome.
40:30And what that great drain does is get rid of the swamp
40:35and create a dry area,
40:37which was to become the forum, the heart of the city.
40:41But the Cloaca Maxima served other purposes too.
40:44And progressively, all sorts of stuff was sent down
40:48into the great drain and it turned into a great sewer.
40:52So, what's all this? OK.
40:58Crikey. Right.
41:00Another arm. That's another arm.
41:04It's rather small.
41:08Right.
41:10That'll keep the shit out.
41:14The Cloaca runs nearly a mile from north to south,
41:17traversing ancient and modern Rome underground.
41:21The Greek writer Strabo said the sewer was wide enough
41:24to drive a cart loaded with hay.
41:26And I can't argue with that.
41:28It is huge.
41:31I've come to meet the head of the archaeological team
41:34looking at the Cloaca, Dr Luca Antonioli.
42:01And you can see the wooden shattering on which it was poured.
42:07What I love about Roman cement
42:11is this was poured in AD 100 or so
42:15and it's still as solid and serviceable.
42:19It works for the sewers of Rome today.
42:22It doesn't need any form of repair.
42:26It's remarkable that the Cloaca Maxima
42:30survived whilst the rest of Rome was crumbling.
42:35Over time, as the greatness of the city began to fade
42:38and the forum above was built over with the houses of a later Rome,
42:42the Cloaca was forgotten.
43:00HE SPEAKS ITALIAN
43:05They build new drains because they don't even realise
43:08this drain is running underneath.
43:10And it's not until the 19th century,
43:15when Rome becomes a capital city,
43:18that they rediscover and reactivate
43:21the great sewers of ancient Rome.
43:25Rome's sewers, like its aqueducts,
43:29were an attempt to tackle the public health of a city
43:32which had topped a million people.
43:38But daily life was not the only challenge.
43:42So was death and the problem of burial.
43:48This may look like a park shed,
43:50but there's more to it than meets the eye.
43:54From the 2nd century BC onwards,
43:57cremation had become increasingly popular at funerals.
44:01Little wonder, with a rising urban population
44:04and space at a premium.
44:09I have to say, this is one of my favourite Roman tombs.
44:13It's called the Columbarium of Pomponius Hillas.
44:17Well, as we discovered as we were coming down the stairs,
44:22but Pomponius, was he the owner of this tomb?
44:25He wasn't, right?
44:26No, he's clearly not.
44:27There's a beautiful mosaic with his name
44:30and griffins around a lyre.
44:33It's charming, but it's quite clear
44:35he was one of the last people to be buried in here.
44:38The first guy's got to be this guy, hasn't it?
44:41Or the first couple, because there's the man and his wife.
44:44And they got a most prominent location as well,
44:47probably not by the stairway, but on the main wall,
44:51and they built themselves this really nice and large niche.
44:55And you've got him and his wife depicted on the wall.
45:00And look at the material, they look like alabaster ash urns,
45:04which was very expensive.
45:05Yeah, you pay a lot.
45:06Yeah, because they probably actually paid for this whole thing.
45:09They took care of the entire decoration on this ceiling
45:12and here in the axis, you can see similar stuff.
45:14So I think we have to assume these are people who've...
45:18He's made a packet, and yet he's not one of the Roman nobles, is he?
45:23The whole Roman fashion for having grand, ostentatious tombs
45:28starts with the Roman nobility,
45:30but by the time we're here in the 1st century AD,
45:33the sort of people who are being buried are actually ex-slaves.
45:39This guy is Granius Nestor.
45:43Nestor, a sort of Greek mythological name.
45:47A free-born man could have it, but it's very improbable.
45:51And his wife's called Heidone, which means...
45:54It's a different name.
45:56..Mrs Pleasure.
45:58That is a very characteristic slave name, isn't it?
46:01They also present themselves in a very Roman way.
46:05Look at him, they are wearing a toga, holding a scroll.
46:08It could be the sort of image that they want to project of themselves,
46:12of good Roman citizens.
46:15They made it in a way, they made it in their circle.
46:18And look at it, look at what they got.
46:20The use of colour is fantastic, isn't it?
46:22I mean, that was Egyptian blue, one of the most expensive pigments
46:25that you could possibly get in antiquity.
46:27So that already tells us something.
46:29It's not like the other niches, they are just yellow and red,
46:33which are natural colours, so way less expensive.
46:37You want to project the same values that you have in real life also here.
46:41You want to be able to see it in the commemorations
46:45that are held here every year.
46:47So that's what you want the living to see and to commemorate you for.
46:54This tomb has over 100 niches for the ashes of those laid to rest.
47:00The word columbarium comes from the Latin meaning dovecut.
47:05They come from a city that's densely populated.
47:10There are tens of thousands of other people like them
47:13and they don't even dream of having a tomb all to themselves.
47:17They build it with lots and lots of slots for lots of other people.
47:21It's a bit like an insular block, isn't it?
47:24You can see them stacking up and they're all packed in like sardines
47:29because in a really crowded city,
47:33you live stacked up in apartment blocks
47:35and you die stacked up in columbarium.
47:48Every great city depends on immigration.
47:52It needs it for numbers, it needs it for cheap labour,
47:56it needs it for specialist services.
48:00Modern Rome, and here we are near the station
48:03in an area full of immigrants,
48:05Bangladeshis, Chinese, Africans, Romanians, all sorts.
48:10Modern Rome couldn't function without its immigrants
48:13and it's just the same in ancient Rome.
48:16Unlike modern Europe, in ancient Rome,
48:19there's no limitation on immigration
48:22and, indeed, there is compulsory immigration.
48:27Slavery means that tens, even hundreds of thousands of people
48:31are brought from all over the world to Rome.
48:35And then there are plenty who come voluntarily,
48:38free men, citizens, they come to Rome to make their fortune.
48:43The city had a massive draw.
48:46Unlike the provinces, Rome was a tax-free zone
48:50and its citizens received free handouts of food and services.
48:56It was also a place of trade.
48:59Under the emperor Augustus,
49:01Rome became the biggest place of employment in the ancient world,
49:05with public services which wouldn't be matched
49:08for another 1,800 years.
49:11Amazingly, this even included a professional fire service
49:15of 7,000 men.
49:17The most important thing that Augustus did to protect Rome from fire
49:21was to set up a fire brigade.
49:25It was an organisation with seven cohorts.
49:28This is an inscription put up by the fifth cohort.
49:32In each cohort, there are 1,000 men.
49:35Those seven cohorts controlled the 14 regions of Rome.
49:40So each cohort is split in two and does two regions.
49:44Here we have an inscription from cohort number five.
49:48And these three guys at the top in the biggest letters
49:53are the prefect, Gaius Julius Quintilianus,
49:56the sub-prefect, Marcus Firmius Amintianus.
50:01And then there's a tribune.
50:03And then these guys are the centurions.
50:06And one of the intriguing things about them
50:09is each of them gives where they came from.
50:12Now, you'd expect the fire brigade of Rome to be locally recruited,
50:16but no.
50:19This guy comes from a place called Berva, which is near Venice.
50:23This guy comes from Severia, which is in Hungary.
50:27This one from Rattiaria, which is in Bulgaria.
50:32This one from Poetovio in Slovenia.
50:36And this one from Aquincum, which is Budapest in Hungary.
50:40So they come from way, way east of Rome.
50:45That's not all.
50:48Then you get all the names of the ordinary Vigiles,
50:52all thousand of them in teeny little letters, column after column.
51:01Under the Emperor Nero in 64 AD,
51:04the Vigiles were put to the test when a great fire swept Rome.
51:10It was a disaster.
51:13Notoriously, the Emperor was blamed for fiddling
51:17with the fire and burned.
51:20What the cause of the fire was can be debated,
51:23but what's certain is how Nero responded afterwards.
51:30We're underneath the street level of modern Rome
51:33and under a multiplex cinema.
51:36When they were constructing this,
51:38they were trying to go further down to add extra rooms,
51:41and what they found was they were blocked
51:45What we have here is two entire urban blocks
51:50back to back with each other.
51:52There were at least three floors in this insula.
51:56We know from the brick stamps,
51:58Romans liked to stamp their bricks with their names,
52:01we know from those that it was built under the Emperor Nero.
52:05What we can see here are the dividing walls of the two blocks.
52:09And Nero said, you're not allowed to use party walls.
52:13You can't build one block against another.
52:16You've got to have separate walls,
52:18because that stops the fire spreading.
52:22During the great fire,
52:24the Vigiles had complained of a lack of water to fight the flames.
52:30Nero decreed that every insula must have access to a cistern
52:34with an abundant water supply.
52:36Despite his reforms, the myth about Nero lives on to this day.
52:44The modern fire service takes its name from the Vigiles,
52:48and their ancient counterparts are still celebrated.
52:52Well, here is a fine-looking group of Vigiles,
52:57the standard bearer, and a pretty tough lot they look.
53:02I don't think I would want to mess with them.
53:06And we have here the centurion, Simone.
53:09Grandi piacere.
53:11Complimenti.
53:13And we have here the centurion, Simone.
53:17Grandi piacere.
53:20Complimenti.
53:22Mi puoi fare capire,
53:24quale era l'attrezzatura che serviva per loro?
53:27L'attrezzatura dei Vigili,
53:29diciamo che da allora adesso non è cambiata molto.
53:33Avevano degli attrezzi che servivano soprattutto
53:36per la demolizione degli edifici.
53:40Nel caso del rischio che il fuoco si estende.
53:44Certo, certo.
53:47Allora, per demolire utilizzavano questi martelli
53:52oppure l'ascia romana.
53:55Ah, a Roman axe.
53:57Wow, wow, this is one scary bit of kit.
54:00This would be through the woodwork in no time.
54:03Per spegnere il fuoco, come lo fate?
54:06Utilizzavano queste.
54:08Questi sono i centones.
54:10Sono pezzi di stoffa fatti con il residuato
54:15della lavorazione della lana.
54:17Senti com'è dura.
54:19Fabulous.
54:21A Roman fire blanket,
54:23which you make of a patchwork of wool.
54:37So this you dip in water,
54:39but also vinegar,
54:42which has an important fire-retardant effect.
54:45Water was transported from the cisterns using amphorae.
54:49Bravissimo.
54:51Yes, I can imagine it might be a bit hard to extinguish a fire
54:55just chucking it straight from the amphorae.
54:58But the Vigiles had a secret weapon,
55:01a hydraulic pump called a siphon.
55:12Veniva inserita l'acqua e pressurizzata l'aria.
55:15Ecco che l'acqua andava in pressione.
55:18So you have two tubes.
55:20One sucks the water in,
55:22then it passes into the piston,
55:25and as the water goes in,
55:28the air is under pressure
55:30and then as you send the valves up and down,
55:34the water squirts out both sides.
55:38Mm, bravissimo.
55:40Grazie.
55:58Nero's Vigiles were a semi-military organisation
56:02and also had a policing role.
56:05Together with other paramilitary forces,
56:08there were no less than 20,000 men
56:11dedicated to keeping Rome's citizens safe.
56:18The principles of policing have remained the same in modern Rome,
56:22though the technology has changed.
56:25CCTV performs many of the surveillance duties
56:28done by the Vigiles.
56:30But though the Romans didn't possess digital mapping,
56:35they did understand that planning,
56:37just as in so many spheres of Roman life,
56:40was the key to making their city work.
56:46The only private house marked on the former urbis
56:50is the residence of the urban prefect, Fabius Caelo,
56:54the man responsible for Rome's forces of law and order.
56:58It seems very possible that the document
57:02that helped us understand the plan of ancient Rome
57:05was in fact displayed in the office of their chief of police.
57:11Already under Augustus,
57:13the population of Rome had reached a million
57:16and it probably stayed at more or less the same level
57:19for the next three, even 400 years.
57:22It's not until the imperial power of Rome implodes
57:26that the population also collapses.
57:30By the middle of the 6th century,
57:32it may have shrunk to as few as 30,000 people.
57:36And no city in Europe was again to reach the figure of a million
57:42until the beginning of the 19th century.
57:47You're looking at it now.
57:49By no coincidence, London too was capital of a world empire
57:54and made no disguise of the act it was following.
58:00Yet Rome had achieved a million
58:03when the world population was a fraction of its modern size
58:07and without motor transport, gas or electricity.
58:12Today, we live in a world of megacities,
58:16but Rome remains the inspiration for them all.
58:30Bettany Hughes' series on ancient philosophy is well worth a look.
58:34It's available now on BBC iPlayer.
58:37Next year, India season continues.
58:40We consider what the future holds for the world's busiest railway.