He is appealing directly to the mob. The old guard find it disturbing. ibid.
He plans to run for Consul – the most senior office of state. ibid.
Before Caesar, Pompey had dominated. ibid.
What he does in Gaul – modern day France – is the stuff of legend. Whether the threat to Rome is real or imagined, Caesar needs no encouragement to begin a vast campaign of conquest. He will defeat three hundred different tribes, he will destroy eight hundred cities, he will kill one million people. ibid.
Caesar has increased the size of the empire by almost a third. His achievement is a match for Pompey’s. ibid.
A power-struggle that will determine the course of history ... It’s battles are fought in every Roman territory. ibid.
When Caesar returns to Rome after some four year’s absence there is no-one left to oppose him. This is power of a kind that no Roman has enjoyed for 40 years. He promises a new era of peace and stability. The battles are supposedly over ... The Senate votes him a new office ... dictator. ibid.
He doesn’t need the Senate any more. ibid.
To make himself king would be to kill the Republic. ibid.
This is a city addicted to glory. ibid.
The group’s figurehead is Brutus. His relationship to Caesar is particularly complex. ibid.
He even moves through Rome without a bodyguard. ibid.
They gather in the meeting-house of Pompey’s theatre. ibid.
The last blow is struck by Brutus – Caesar’s one-time friend. ibid.
This was perhaps Octavian’s greatest tribute – completing the job that Caesar had begun. In 27 B.C. he was crowned Emperor. He was crowned Caesar Augustus. ibid.
This is the story of the city that ruled the world. For five hundred years over as much as two million square miles Rome fought and reigned and got rich. Today experts are still trying to understand how. For Trajan, for his Empire, conquest is an economic necessity. Rome Revealed s1e2: Ancient Superpower
Their civilisation stands at its absolute peak. ibid.
Slavery like conquest was one of the pillars on which the Roman Superpower stood. ibid.
Trajan’s time was boom time in Rome. ibid.
With its tower blocks and public entertainment it’s a recognisably modern city. And its problems are modern. ibid.
Across the empire Roman communities take root. ibid.
The overwhelming concern is to keep the money rolling in. ibid.
Trajan was born here: he was Spanish. ibid.
Hadrian’s reign marks the beginning of a time of great peace. ibid.
His [Hadrian] Pantheon – arguably the most perfect of all Roman buildings – is just one of the fruits of his reign. ibid.
It’s been two hundred years since Romans fought a major battle on Italian soil. ibid.
Rome’s long decline has begun. In the 3rd century the Roman empire comes close to collapse ... A number of crises all hit at once, all on a grand scale. The borders of the empire are struggling to fend off hostile incursions; inside the Roman empire there is bloodshed and in-fighting. ibid.
In 410 A.D. a Visigoth army reaches the walls of Rome and lays siege. ibid.
The Roman empire will never recover from this attack. ibid.
This is the story of a disaster like no other. When Mount Vesuvius erupted it rained seven a half million tons of debris onto Pompeii. It sealed the fate of more than a thousand people. But it also sealed the city in. Preserved it. Protected it. Like nowhere else on Earth the rediscovered Pompeii gives us access to the ancient world. And now with new findings and new insights we can tell the story of the ordinary people caught up in this disaster. Rome Revealed s1e3: Doomsday Pompeii
The People of Pompeii do the opposite: they try to appease their gods by re-making the temples of the fallen. Clad in white marble on the eve of the eruption it must have appeared indestructible. ibid.
Slaves: this building suggests a part of the Roman world that’s been largely invisible. Slaves are everywhere in ancient Rome. Households, businesses, even government. They make up 30% of Italy’s population. And yet because the Romans treat them like a commodity rather than people we have very little written record of their lives. ibid.
Rome was the largest empire, the mightiest military force, the greatest civilisation, on Earth. Rome Revealed s1e4: Heart of the Empire
Only traces remain and most of its ruin lie beneath modern streets. ibid.
Centuries of innovation, endurance and ambition. ibid.
Major construction begins around 600 B.C. ibid.
Brilliant white Carrara marble becomes the face of imperial Rome. ibid.
As many as a hundred fires break out every year … some are catastrophic. ibid.
Two thousand years old. An engineering miracle. A stadium for fifty thousand people. Here stars were made. Lives were ended. It revealed the glory of Rome, but also its ugly heart ... Rome built the Colosseum and the entertainment industry. Rome Revealed s1e5: Blood in the Sand
It takes three and a half million cubic feet of stone. Marble cladding. Statues. Evidence suggests that water is piped to drinking fountains – as many as forty-four per level. ibid.
Naturally Titus has the best seat in the house. After all these were his games. ibid.
Betting is a huge part of the games’ attraction. ibid.
This is the story of the power that made Rome great. The most disciplined and deadly force in the ancient world. The Roman Legions. Rome Revealed s1e6: Power of the Legion
They are about to face their bitterest defeat: it happens in the Teutoburg Forest, northern Germany. A simple military operation turns into a massacre. ibid.
It all but destroys the great emperor Augustus. ibid.
Segmented armour is a leap forward. The Romans have learnt the hard way. A legionary should be ready to fight at a moment’s notice. ibid.
At this time a Roman soldier signs up for a minimum of twenty years. He endures harsh discipline and physical hardness. But service brings him good pay, a good pension, and an honoured place in Roman society. ibid.
Britain is Rome’s newest province. A force of only 40,000 has marched through and conquered an entire country. ibid.
The entire British force is wiped out; it is said that Boudica commits suicide. The Romans have taken just hours to achieve their victory, but they take weeks to exact their revenge. ibid.
It is followed by some three hundred and fifty years of Roman rule as the men who came to conquer set up home. Slowly the legionary camps in Britain change from being military bases to being peacetime settlements. ibid.
Rome’s armies were never driven from Britain; they simply slipped away. ibid.
This is the story of the man who brought hell to Rome. He inherited a vast empire, unimaginable wealth and a love of his people. He threw them all away. He butchered his enemies and his closest friends. According to the ancient texts his reign descended into paranoia, depravity and full-blown insanity. Rome Revealed s1e7: Madness of Caligula
He suddenly disappears from view. It’s suggested he falls dangerously ill. Nobody knows exactly what happened. But the accounts suggest that Caligula was transformed. One simply says he emerges a monster. ibid.
It’s said he gives the most powerful job in the Senate – the role of Consul – to his favourite horse. ibid.
In everything he does there is extraordinary energy, a frenzy of activity ... It’s a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. ibid.
It’s said that he’s particularly devoted to a sister – Drusilla. ibid.
Tiberius – a serious sexual predator ... Everything that happened on the island was geared toward his pleasure. Caligula had spent his early adulthood in a world where the normal rules did not apply. ibid.
It may be his affliction doomed him from the start. Few men in history have reaped as much havoc as Caligula did. But few men have had such opportunity. Rome’s Senators suffered at his hands. But they’d made it. They took a damaged ill-equipped boy and gave him power without limits. They couldn’t rein him in. They couldn’t guide him. In the end they had to kill him. They had endured years of fear and yet within hours of his death they had again handed the state to the control of a single man. Caligula was cruel, misguided and sick. But so was the world from which he came. ibid.
A mysterious pacifist cult born on its further fringes. Christianity should never have survived. Rome Revealed s1e8: Christianity Rising
Roman justice is about humiliation and maximum cruelty. ibid.
Up to one thousand Christians died in Rome. ibid.
Another grand spectacle in ancient Rome was the circus games. In Rome 55,000 people, men and women together, crowd into the largest Colosseum of antiquity. The Roman Empire: Grandeur and Decadence
Evidence detected by the archaeologists showed these men trained hard in order to survive. ibid.