Rome Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome


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Rome, 2,000 years ago, was the world's first ancient megacity.

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In a world where few towns had more than 10,000 inhabitants,

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more than a million people lived in Rome.

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It would take almost 1,800 years for any other city in the West

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to achieve the same population.

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How did they manage, without all the technologies our modern cities

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rely on, technologies of transport, communication, energy?

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How did they get enough food and drink to the population,

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how did they house them?

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How did they maintain law and order?

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How did they make this great city work?

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I'll show you how Rome surpassed all the cities that had gone before

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and rose to many of the challenges faced by megacities today.

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By taking you on a journey up ancient tower blocks...

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What I love is that this isn't just a bit of archaeology,

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it's a bit of living history.

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'..incredible infrastructure...

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'..and some very proud people.'

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MEN SHOUT IN LATIN

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Fantastico!

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Making a city of a million work in ancient conditions

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was an enormous challenge.

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But in 31 BC one man, who would become

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the Emperor Augustus, became Rome's undisputed ruler.

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His role was to maintain peace across all his imperial territories,

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but if Augustus couldn't run his capital

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he couldn't run an empire, so in rising to the challenge

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he set new standards for how a city could be organised.

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So, historians are always chucking around numbers for how many

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inhabitants there were in cities.

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How do they know?

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And, to be honest, a lot of the time they're bluffing.

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But with the case of Rome under Augustus

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we've got an amazing bit of evidence here.

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This is Augustus's own account of all his achievements.

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Augustus was obsessed with numbers -

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how many victories did he win, how many cities did he found,

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how many laws did he pass.

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And he loved counting the citizens.

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Censum populi. "I did a census of the people."

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That is of course the citizens in all the Empire.

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Luckily in the case of Rome he also counted

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the number of inhabitants of the city.

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Because they were very privileged citizens,

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he gave them cash handouts.

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And he says, "On no single occasion did

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"I give the money to less than 250,000 people,

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"and on one occasion I gave it to 320,000 people" -

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nearly a third of a million people.

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And that is just adult male citizens.

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Where are the women?

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Where are the children? Where are the slaves?

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And where are the immigrants? It's clear you've got to multiply up.

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A million is the figure people chuck around as the population of Rome.

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To be honest, that's a minimum.

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In my view you could be talking about one and a half million people.

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It is an absolutely enormous number for antiquity.

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There had been other great capitals before Rome.

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So how was this city able to achieve what they could not?

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Perhaps the most obvious competitor should have been Athens,

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and indeed early Rome was developing at the same time.

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They both embraced one common and powerful idea.

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The citizen.

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SPQR.

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Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and people of Rome.

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Those were the initials of authority of the citizen body itself.

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Populus Romanus, the citizens of Rome.

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In antiquity, that was their symbol of their authority and civic pride.

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It was picked up in the Renaissance, when Rome became

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an independent city, and it has continued to this day.

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The symbol of a city run by its citizens for its citizens.

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But in ancient Rome, as the population increased, this way

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of running a city-state was no longer enough

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to make the capital work.

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When Rome was founded, 753 BC,

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and probably for the next 500 years, Rome was a city-state,

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just like hundreds of city-states in the Greek world, a polis.

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A polis run by its politai, its citizens.

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Rome had its cives, it was a civitas,

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and, just as Greek has given us the word politics

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and everything related to it,

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Latin has given us citizen, city, civic, civil, even civilise.

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So Rome was run by its cives, its citizens,

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meeting down there in the Forum in the central open space.

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But by 200 BC Rome was expanding very rapidly

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and as it acquired an empire

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it became harder and harder to run as a city-state.

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And, to cut a complicated story very short, the answer was a new

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form of military power, the emperor, and the emperors built their palace

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up there on the Palatine, and from now on they ran Rome.

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But they couldn't do without their citizens,

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they can't ignore their citizens.

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And one of the major concerns of the emperors is to keep

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the citizen population happy.

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How can they get them enough food?

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How can they make sure there's a good water supply?

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How can they maintain law and order?

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It's much easier to see how Rome worked for its citizens than Athens,

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because more of the old infrastructure has survived.

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No ancient map exists of the Greek capital.

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But, by contrast, there's an extraordinary piece of evidence

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that reveals just how the Romans

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designed their city to accommodate a vast and growing population.

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Today, this great wall is the outside wall of a church,

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the Church of St Cosmas and Damian.

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In antiquity it was the inside wall of a vast imperial building

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and on it there was a fantastic thing, a map of the city of Rome.

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It was on marble slabs -

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you can still see the fixing holes for those slabs.

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And the map spread over the whole wall.

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On it was depicted the city of Rome in great detail.

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Alas, those slabs are terribly damaged and broken today.

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We've only got about a tenth of them.

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But it's enough to be able to reconstruct in a lot of detail

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the street plan of ancient Rome.

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One of the fascinating things we can see from that

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is that the street plan of the city of Rome in many points corresponded

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precisely to the street plan that survives today.

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The modern Via Cavour is six or seven metres above the older

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street level and here we're in the Suburra,

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famed in ancient Rome as being the slum district.

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But though it was a slum district here we have the Via Urbana,

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and it follows exactly the course of the ancient-Roman Vicus Patricius,

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which was in fact one of the most snobbish streets in town.

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The surviving fragments were rediscovered as far back as 1562.

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But four centuries later scholars are still trying to puzzle out

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where each piece of this vast jigsaw belongs.

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What enables us to place the fragments of the marble plan

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in this area of town is this road, the Via Delle Zoccolette.

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Its long curve is created by the curve of the Tiber River,

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just beyond us,

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and on the fragments we find a street with a long curve,

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and it fits.

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What it reveals is an area nearly three miles long

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and two miles wide, including many landmarks that we know today.

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Though the streets are mapped and monitored by the authorities

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far more closely in our era,

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it's still a struggle to make densely populated cities work,

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with all the challenges we have today, like terrible traffic.

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In one place at least, it's taken 2,000 years to catch up,

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as the current mayor of Rome,

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who's just pedestrianised the area around the Colosseum, explains.

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-It was black for the pollution that we had.

-Yes.

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And, you know, it cost about 25 million euros to clean it up,

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and now you can see the stones as they were 2,000 years ago.

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For us one of the interesting things

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is that already the ancient Romans had the same problems.

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-Julius Caesar closed the Forum to traffic, didn't he?

-Exactly, and...

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-Do you think of yourself as the new Julius Caesar?

-No, no, no!

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Ancient Rome, like modern Rome, was densely populated.

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This was reflected not just in its traffic but in every aspect of life.

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It had its Forum.

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It had piazzas with shops.

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And of course it had its housing.

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To help me fill in the gaps about how and where ancient Romans lived,

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I've been joined by my colleague from Cambridge, Tiziana D'Angelo.

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So I guess we have Mussolini to thank for clearing this space.

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'Without trains and buses, Rome's population had to live centrally.

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'To solve the problem of housing a million-plus people,

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'the Romans built upwards.

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'This is an ancient apartment block, or insula.'

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I think it's amazing,

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because below the modern ground level we've got two entire floors.

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-And don't forget the three floors up there, so...

-Yeah.

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-Five floors in all of ancient-Roman apartment block.

-2,000 years old.

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It shows how you can do dense housing

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in the heart of a city, doesn't it?

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'We may reckon that this apartment block was home to

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'up to 200 people, one of thousands of complexes

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'housing Rome's burgeoning population.'

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What I love is that this isn't just a bit of archaeology,

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it's a bit of living history.

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There have been people living here right up till 1932.

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'Insulae are often portrayed as dark, miserable, cramped slums.

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'But is that really true?'

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-So this looks like one unit of an apartment.

-Yeah.

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Well, there are quite a few of them. There's actually a row of four.

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-OK, we've got four...

-Yes.

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And we've got them on five floors, so this is just one standard unit.

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-It's not bad in terms of size, is it?

-It's not small.

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-It's quite spacious.

-We've got, what is it, four metres by nine...

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-36 square metres?

-It's much bigger than the average apartment nowadays.

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People have this image of how Romans lived in apartment buildings,

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in complete squalor, in tiny little pokey apartments.

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You've got filth on the floors, you've got bare walls.

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Is this life in a Roman apartment?

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Well, you have to use a little bit of imagination.

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There is no reason why these walls or this ceiling could not be

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decorated when they were built. So, for example, look at the ceiling.

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We do have traces of plaster, so probably the whole ceiling

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-and all the walls were plastered.

-Yeah.

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But we can do something more for you if you're difficult. So we can...

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-I am a demanding client here.

-We can decorate a bit further.

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For example, that back wall, that main wall, second century,

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we could paint it those red and yellow panels that were so stylish.

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Yeah. What are you going to do with the floors?

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Well, we'll clean it up a bit!

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And then we could have something like what we have in the corridor

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outside, that opus spicatum, so the herringbone pattern, which is

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very resistant on the one hand, and it looks relatively pretty.

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OK, suppose I'm the tenant, I'm moving in, and I say,

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"Excuse me, landlord, I really don't like this floor at all.

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"I want a proper mosaic floor."

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'Not far away there are remains of decoration.

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'It looks like a modern building.'

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Biblioteca Centrale per i Ragazzi.

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This is a kids' library. It's wonderful.

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It's absolutely wonderful.

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Oh, my God. OK, so what is going on here?

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I think we've got some serious Roman bricks.

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Yeah, it's much more regular.

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'Houses in Rome, like any city, were continually changing,

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'with new owners doing their own makeovers.'

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Look at these mosaics.

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Yes, it's, erm, sort of psychedelic, isn't it?

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Or it's as if someone's been trying to balance ostrich eggs

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on top of each other and they're all taking a tumble.

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Well, in the second century AD

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this would have been quite fashionable actually.

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It's a black-and-white mosaic and, yes, you're right, the pattern is not

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a masterpiece, and you can also see that from the size of the tesserae.

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They're quite big, it's over one centimetre.

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But still the mosaicists were taking a long time to make these works

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and they were paid quite well, they were paid 60, 65 denarii per day.

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That's quite a bit.

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That's an enormous amount, that's way over a legionary's pay.

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-Well, it's an excellent floor, though.

-Great work if you can get it.

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And you need more than a mosaicist, don't you? You need a plumber.

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-Yes, that's important.

-I want running water in my apartment, please.

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-And, lo and behold...

-Yes.

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We have a pipe running through.

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So presumably this means that at least in some rooms

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there is piped water.

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'It's a remarkable thought that by the first century AD

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'there were individual flats in Roman apartment blocks

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'which were being supplied direct with running water.

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'Something that even today isn't available

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'in many parts of the world.'

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There's nothing so important

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for the health of a great city as clean water.

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Clean water to drink, clean water to wash in.

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One of the joys of Rome is that there are fountains

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with lovely fresh water everywhere.

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And that's down to the Renaissance Popes, who filled Rome with

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fountains like this one, outside the Palazzo Farnese.

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Oddly enough, this particular fountain is

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made from a part from a Roman bath, the Baths of Caracalla.

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This ornamental bath was brought in to make a fountain.

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Because the Romans, too, the ancient Romans,

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really understood the importance of fresh water,

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and they brought it in in vast quantities.

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We all know that the Romans had big baths, but don't forget,

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the fundamental thing was they had a fresh supply of drinking water.

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This was no mean feat.

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It required perhaps the greatest public infrastructure project

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ever attempted in the ancient world.

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Aqueducts are one of the most vivid signs of the growth

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of the population of Rome.

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The first ones built as early as 312 BC

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and one after another are added,

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until in the end there are 11 separate aqueducts providing water.

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They got their water from the south of the city on the whole.

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The Alban Hills immediately to the south were volcanic,

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and that's not such good water,

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so they went further south, to the limestone hills of the Apennines.

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And that meant pushing their technology,

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building enormously long aqueducts.

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This particular aqueduct, built by the Emperor Claudius,

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went 45 miles back, and it's an extraordinary

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feat of engineering to bring water 45 miles without the use of pumps.

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It means you have to keep it gently, gently, gently sloping down.

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That means building great arches across the valleys.

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Sometimes you build tunnels under mountains.

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It's not just an extraordinary engineering feat,

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it's also an extraordinary feat of organisation.

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We happen to have a treatise by a chap called Frontinus.

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He was a Roman general,

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indeed he was the Roman general who conquered Wales.

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And when he'd finished beating up a few barbarians

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he came back to Rome and organised the aqueducts.

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And he wrote down, being an extraordinarily efficient man,

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in absolute detail about each aqueduct,

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exactly how long it is, how many litres of water it carried,

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how many men it had in the maintenance teams,

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and so on and so on, and you can see the enormous administrative machine

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that lies behind keeping the people of Rome supplied with fresh water.

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After the fall of Rome in the fifth century,

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the aqueducts fell into disrepair.

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The Renaissance Popes tried to rebuild them

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but even a thousand years later

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couldn't match their ancient predecessors.

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So the Aqua Marcia is a fantastic bit of Roman construction,

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running at quite a high level, and here we have the Acqua Felice.

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A sort of concrete tube was the best that the Popes could manage.

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Here we have its name, Acqua Felice.

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They're really rather proud of it,

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they've put a little plaque in marble,

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but let's not pretend it's at the same level of engineering expertise

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as the Roman aqueducts of antiquity.

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In fact, it was only reviving the ancient-Roman aqueduct system

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that made the spectacular fountains of Renaissance Rome possible.

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The Campo de' Fiori here, in the morning it's a flower and vegetable

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market, in the evening it's where everyone comes for a drink.

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In antiquity it's where the great Theatre of Pompey was,

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and you can see it very clearly on the marble plan of Rome.

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There's one more thing that really interests me about this place,

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and it's the best salami shop in Rome,

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and in fact I'm going there right now.

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It was of enormous important to emperors to keep the citizens fed.

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Quarter of a million citizens got free grain under Augustus,

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but gradually emperors added other offers.

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They got free oil.

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In 270, the Emperor Aurelian - he's the guy who built the great

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walls around Rome - he added a pork ration.

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Five pounds of pork a head per month, they got.

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In total, three million pounds of pork per annum

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were consumed at the Emperor's expense.

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And Rome, ancient Rome, was full of pork butchers, suarii.

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And that tradition has lingered on.

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Ooh, Andrea, buona sera!

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'The ancient Romans loved sausages. Me, too.

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'I often used to come here when I lived in Rome,

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'and Benedetto's always up for a bit of banter.'

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Ah, bellissimo!

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Ciao, Andrea. Ciao.

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Just five minutes' walk from here, and marked on the marble map,

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were the riverside docks of the ancient city.

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It was an area of warehouses, shops and private dwellings,

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as it is today.

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Often the modern houses and businesses, like this restaurant,

0:24:140:24:17

are built on top of ancient ones.

0:24:170:24:20

-Buona sera. How are you?

-Oh, Roberto!

-Welcome.

0:24:220:24:27

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

0:24:270:24:29

-A little Prosecco.

-A little Prosecco, fantastic.

0:24:290:24:34

I suspected as much.

0:24:530:24:55

Every place I've ever been into here

0:24:550:24:57

has got yet another bit of ancient Rome.

0:24:570:24:59

'This restaurant is built 20 feet above the ancient ground level.

0:25:030:25:08

'So, who knows what treasures lie below?'

0:25:080:25:11

This is what I was hoping for, a little door down to the cellar!

0:25:110:25:14

What do we have?

0:25:210:25:22

You can smell the antiquity!

0:25:300:25:32

But this is amazing!

0:25:330:25:35

Oh, my God, there's a wee beastie down there.

0:25:350:25:40

I think it's a horse. No, no, is it a horse?

0:25:400:25:44

It's a hippocamp.

0:25:440:25:46

And there's someone on... That's a nymph riding a seahorse.

0:25:460:25:51

Absolutely fantastic!

0:25:510:25:53

That is a better piece of mosaic

0:25:530:25:55

than in the official excavations just behind.

0:25:550:25:59

Fantastico.

0:26:070:26:08

He says that's not all there is

0:26:080:26:10

because there are three further levels down below it.

0:26:100:26:13

And that's Rome. That's the heart of Rome.

0:26:140:26:17

Dig down and you will find antiquity,

0:26:170:26:20

and you find it at many levels.

0:26:200:26:23

The population of Rome was so vast that

0:26:250:26:28

even 2,000 years of history couldn't bury it all below ground level.

0:26:280:26:33

Well, here I am, standing on top of a ginormous Roman rubbish...

0:26:390:26:44

an ancient-Roman rubbish heap.

0:26:440:26:47

This is 50 metres and more above the modern street level.

0:26:470:26:51

That means that as we look around there's not a single rooftop

0:26:510:26:55

that even comes up near the height of this.

0:26:550:26:58

And it's enormous -

0:26:580:27:00

going around it, it's more than a kilometre in circumference.

0:27:000:27:03

That means it's the equivalent of something like six urban blocks.

0:27:030:27:09

And it's not any old rubbish. This is quite specialised rubbish.

0:27:090:27:13

Let's have a look at it.

0:27:130:27:15

It is entirely composed of these things,

0:27:150:27:18

terracotta fragments from...pots called amphorae.

0:27:180:27:24

It's been estimated that this hill is composed of 50 million amphorae.

0:27:260:27:30

So we know an enormous amount about Roman amphorae.

0:27:320:27:35

They're terribly distinctive, and they all come in different

0:27:350:27:37

shapes and sizes from all the corners of the Mediterranean.

0:27:370:27:41

And the archaeologists have studied these and what you need to do...

0:27:410:27:47

That's a bit of the bottom. But it's much better to get one of these.

0:27:470:27:52

Now, that is a rim and that gives you the dimensions of the amphora.

0:27:520:27:56

Erm, or you look for a handle. There's a nice handle.

0:27:560:28:00

And you can pin them down

0:28:000:28:03

and the archaeologists say that these are all from Spain,

0:28:030:28:07

from south Spain, from Baetica, and they all contained olive oil.

0:28:070:28:13

And what do they need this prodigious amount of olive oil for?

0:28:130:28:16

After all, there's a limit to how many salads you can eat.

0:28:160:28:19

But it's not just for cooking. It's also for illumination.

0:28:190:28:23

They don't have any electricity,

0:28:230:28:26

they have little lamps which they fill up with olive oil.

0:28:260:28:31

And it's also for washing.

0:28:310:28:32

There's no soap, so for cleaning you cover your body with olive oil

0:28:320:28:36

and scrape it down.

0:28:360:28:38

So they get through enormous quantities of this olive oil.

0:28:380:28:42

So our rubbish heap is on a great bend in the Tiber River.

0:28:440:28:49

You can just about make it out down there, that line of trees,

0:28:490:28:52

and it goes right round us and round there.

0:28:520:28:57

And this whole area down below us was full of warehouses.

0:28:570:29:01

And round the corner.

0:29:010:29:03

This particular stuff, these olive oil amphorae,

0:29:030:29:06

probably came from the Horrea Galbana, Galba's warehouses,

0:29:060:29:10

which is actually marked on the map of Rome.

0:29:100:29:13

The Tiber flows through the heart of modern Rome,

0:29:150:29:18

just as it did in ancient times.

0:29:180:29:21

But there were big differences between the river then and now.

0:29:230:29:27

Today, the Tiber is flanked on both sides by massive embankments.

0:29:310:29:36

These were built in the late 19th century

0:29:360:29:38

to stop the city from flooding.

0:29:380:29:41

In antiquity there were no embankments

0:29:410:29:43

and they had terrible problems with flooding, but they USED the river.

0:29:430:29:47

In antiquity the river was buzzing with activity,

0:29:470:29:50

there were boats coming up and down.

0:29:500:29:52

You don't see a single boat on the Tiber today.

0:29:520:29:54

There were hundreds of boats, bringing up merchandise -

0:29:540:29:58

grain, wine, oil, and luxury goods of course -

0:29:580:30:02

to the hundreds of warehouses that lined the banks of the river.

0:30:020:30:07

But for Rome to function for a million people

0:30:120:30:15

the Tiber could only work as part of a much bigger transport system.

0:30:150:30:20

With Rome expanding its trade links

0:30:220:30:25

to cater for an increasing population,

0:30:250:30:27

centres were established to handle the huge

0:30:270:30:30

amount of imported produce heading to the capital.

0:30:300:30:34

One of the places you get the most vivid idea of the sheer scale

0:30:390:30:43

and complexity of the trade that supplies Rome with food

0:30:430:30:47

is here in Ostia.

0:30:470:30:49

What we have is an enormous piazza with a sort of covered walkway here

0:30:490:30:53

and, behind it, a series of offices.

0:30:530:30:56

And this is where the shippers and traders do their business.

0:30:560:31:00

And they put up sort of publicity signs.

0:31:000:31:04

This is a picture of the River Nile and its delta.

0:31:040:31:08

Egypt and Alexandria were one of the most important

0:31:080:31:12

sources of trade in the Empire.

0:31:120:31:14

Here we have a rather nice picture of how you do the shipping.

0:31:140:31:19

You come into harbour with a big ship

0:31:190:31:22

and there's a guy on the gangplank, bringing over an amphora,

0:31:220:31:26

which is moving onto a smaller ship,

0:31:260:31:29

which is then going to go upriver to the warehouses in Rome.

0:31:290:31:34

Then over here...

0:31:340:31:36

..we've got a rather nice scene of the lighthouse.

0:31:370:31:41

Of course, when you're coming across the Mediterranean

0:31:410:31:45

and you see the great lighthouse, you know you've made it at last.

0:31:450:31:49

And there are a couple of ships, dolphins and so on.

0:31:490:31:53

And here we can see just where they come from.

0:31:530:31:55

Here we have the navicularii, the shippers,

0:31:550:31:58

and the negotiantes, the businessmen,

0:31:580:32:01

of Karalis - that's Cagliari in Sardinia.

0:32:010:32:04

And remember it's not just one trade.

0:32:040:32:08

Some people owned the ships, some people do the negotiation,

0:32:080:32:12

do the business, because there is a lot of money, both to make

0:32:120:32:16

and to lose, in shipping.

0:32:160:32:19

And you can just imagine, this place would be

0:32:190:32:22

full of hundreds of traders trying to do a little deal.

0:32:220:32:25

One of the interesting things is they're all private,

0:32:250:32:28

they're doing it for the state,

0:32:280:32:30

they're doing it because Rome needs corn,

0:32:300:32:33

but individuals can make a packet out of it.

0:32:330:32:36

Here are the people... Isn't this wonderful?

0:32:360:32:38

This elephant, saying you are in North Africa,

0:32:380:32:42

and they are from Sabratha in Libya.

0:32:420:32:45

That whole coast of North Africa supplying Rome with corn

0:32:450:32:51

but also with other goods.

0:32:510:32:53

And this is the place where trade happens,

0:32:530:32:58

this is the place you come and make a fortune.

0:32:580:33:01

Ostia was such a lucrative hub for trade

0:33:020:33:05

that it flourished as a town in its own right.

0:33:050:33:08

And you can still see the trappings of wealth

0:33:080:33:11

in the buildings and decoration.

0:33:110:33:13

The wealth and global trade coming into Rome by the first century

0:33:240:33:28

meant Ostia couldn't cope.

0:33:280:33:30

Ancient Rome had to adapt and expand further.

0:33:310:33:35

And, two miles north of Ostia,

0:33:370:33:39

it embarked upon a monumental piece of infrastructure

0:33:390:33:43

to sustain its burgeoning city,

0:33:430:33:45

at the very site of modern Italy's greatest transport hub.

0:33:450:33:50

Well, here we are,

0:33:550:33:57

right by the hurly-burly of Rome's Fiumicino airport,

0:33:570:34:01

traffic whizzing past all the time, low-flying planes

0:34:010:34:05

whistling overhead. Sometimes hard to make yourself heard.

0:34:050:34:08

And yet this is one of the least well-known

0:34:080:34:11

but most important of Roman sites.

0:34:110:34:13

It's the great port of Rome

0:34:130:34:15

that the Romans simply called Portus, the port.

0:34:150:34:19

Now, Rome didn't have a natural harbour.

0:34:190:34:22

The Tiber comes out into the sea and it doesn't have a bay around it.

0:34:220:34:27

Think of Athens. They had the Piraeus, a natural harbour.

0:34:270:34:31

Rome had to make a harbour artificially,

0:34:310:34:34

overcoming natural obstacles.

0:34:340:34:37

And that took the resources of empire.

0:34:370:34:40

It took the Emperor Claudius,

0:34:400:34:43

and these columns are very typical of constructions

0:34:430:34:46

by the Emperor Claudius, who cared about infrastructure.

0:34:460:34:49

He cared about chunky, practical building,

0:34:490:34:53

and he made a vast artificial harbour at the mouth of the Tiber.

0:34:530:34:59

Along with the harbour

0:35:000:35:01

came all the surrounding buildings and warehouses.

0:35:010:35:04

To get a sense of the scale of this place,

0:35:060:35:09

I've come to meet my old friend Simon Keay,

0:35:090:35:12

who's made a remarkable discovery.

0:35:120:35:14

-Oh, my, Simon. You've been busy bees.

-We certainly have.

0:35:160:35:20

It's quite a hole you've made in this poor beauty spot.

0:35:200:35:23

'What Simon has excavated is just a tiny element

0:35:230:35:26

'in a whole network of ship installations.

0:35:260:35:28

'This trench represents just part of one bay

0:35:280:35:31

'in what was a massive complex.'

0:35:310:35:33

This bay would originally have been just under 60 metres long,

0:35:330:35:37

so that's actually three of these.

0:35:370:35:39

-Imagine them stacked against one another.

-So it goes way down there!

0:35:390:35:43

-And it's just under 12 metres wide.

-Height?

0:35:430:35:46

Height, well... Are you prepared for it?

0:35:460:35:48

This is a building which stands to at least, well, a maximum of 18 metres,

0:35:480:35:53

-which is somewhere up there.

-At the top of the trees? OK.

0:35:530:35:57

So this is truly massive.

0:35:570:36:00

And it's meant to be seen, it's a statement

0:36:000:36:03

about what the Romans are able to do, in creating a facade

0:36:030:36:06

that reflects Roman power and has a great functional use and so on.

0:36:060:36:10

What we're seeing is just a third of one ship bay.

0:36:130:36:18

Imagine, this 18-metre-high construction would have been

0:36:180:36:22

a tiny part of a complex that could berth at least 500 ships.

0:36:220:36:27

It gives us a glimpse of the remarkable scale

0:36:270:36:31

the port was built on.

0:36:310:36:33

The site occupies a staggering 860 acres.

0:36:330:36:38

Part of which is now the stately home of Duke Sforza Cesarini,

0:36:380:36:43

who feels a strong connection with his Roman past.

0:36:430:36:47

Claudius built Portus because Ostia became too small for Rome.

0:37:290:37:33

But trade grew so fast that the harbour had to be enlarged again,

0:37:340:37:38

in the second century, by Trajan.

0:37:380:37:40

A new, 80-acre basin was constructed.

0:37:420:37:45

'It was recorded that it was formed in the shape of a huge hexagon,

0:37:470:37:52

'to maximise the berthing space for ships.

0:37:520:37:54

'You get little idea of this from the ground.

0:37:560:37:59

'There's only one way to find out.'

0:38:000:38:02

-Ohhh.

-Oh, wow. Fantastic.

0:38:140:38:17

Yeah, that's what we wanted.

0:38:170:38:19

'From 500 metres in the air,

0:38:240:38:26

'you can clearly make out the sides of Trajan's hexagon.'

0:38:260:38:30

Luckily enough, the Emperor Claudius left his mark in the shape

0:38:320:38:36

of this inscription here, which explains a bit about

0:38:360:38:39

what he thought he was doing in making his great port.

0:38:390:38:42

Like all imperial inscriptions

0:38:420:38:44

it starts with his name in enormous letters.

0:38:440:38:47

Tiberius Claudius son of Drusus Caesar,

0:38:470:38:50

and then a whole load of titles that go on for a couple of lines.

0:38:500:38:53

And then he explains what he's up to.

0:38:530:38:57

Fossis ductis - "I dug canals from the Tiber

0:38:570:39:02

"in order to support my works on the port.

0:39:020:39:06

"And by doing so," he says, "letting them out into the sea,

0:39:060:39:09

"I saved the city of Rome from the danger of flooding."

0:39:090:39:13

So he sees his engineering works as a whole package.

0:39:130:39:16

It's not just that he creates a port,

0:39:160:39:19

he links the port to the city by the canals

0:39:190:39:22

and the canals save the city from the danger of flooding.

0:39:220:39:26

Like this one.

0:39:290:39:30

Known as Fiumicino, or little river,

0:39:300:39:33

it gives its name to Rome's airport nearby.

0:39:330:39:35

And though it dates from the time of Claudius

0:39:350:39:38

it's still fully functioning.

0:39:380:39:40

And, even 400 years before these canals were completed, the Romans

0:39:440:39:49

had grasped the importance of drainage in their city.

0:39:490:39:52

One of the vital steps of turning Rome into a city

0:39:560:39:59

from just a cluster of villages

0:39:590:40:02

was to create a great drain, the Cloaca Maxima.

0:40:020:40:06

The original settlements were on hilltops, the Palatine Hill,

0:40:060:40:09

the Capitoline Hill, and between them was an enormous swamp,

0:40:090:40:12

a river flowing down and spreading out.

0:40:120:40:16

To get from one hilltop to another you had to use a boat.

0:40:160:40:20

And it's one of the first kings of Rome - you could call him

0:40:200:40:24

a tyrant, Tarquin - who famously created the Cloaca Maxima,

0:40:240:40:29

the great drain of Rome.

0:40:290:40:31

And what that great drain does is get rid of the swamp and create

0:40:310:40:36

a dry area which was to become the Forum, the heart of the city.

0:40:360:40:41

But the Cloaca Maxima served other purposes, too,

0:40:410:40:44

and progressively all sorts of stuff was sent down into the great drain

0:40:440:40:49

and it turned into a great sewer.

0:40:490:40:51

So, what's all this? OK.

0:40:520:40:54

Oh, crikey. Right. Another arm... That's another arm.

0:40:570:41:01

Ooh, it's rather small.

0:41:030:41:05

Right.

0:41:070:41:10

That'll keep the shit out.

0:41:100:41:12

The Cloaca runs nearly a mile from North to South,

0:41:140:41:17

traversing ancient and modern Rome underground.

0:41:170:41:21

The Greek writer Strabo said the sewer was wide enough to

0:41:210:41:24

drive a cart loaded with hay, and I can't argue with that.

0:41:240:41:28

It is huge.

0:41:280:41:29

I've come to meet the head of the archaeological team

0:41:310:41:34

looking at the Cloaca, Dr Luca Antonioli.

0:41:340:41:38

And you can see the wooden shuttering on which it was poured.

0:42:030:42:07

What I love about Roman cement

0:42:090:42:13

is this was poured in AD 100 or so

0:42:130:42:17

and it's still as solid and serviceable,

0:42:170:42:21

it works for the sewers of Rome today.

0:42:210:42:24

It doesn't need any form of repair.

0:42:240:42:27

It's remarkable that the Cloaca Maxima survived

0:42:280:42:32

whilst the rest of Rome was crumbling.

0:42:320:42:35

Over time, as the greatness of the city began to fade

0:42:360:42:39

and the Forum above was built over with the houses of a later Rome,

0:42:390:42:43

the Cloaca was forgotten.

0:42:430:42:45

They build new drains

0:43:060:43:08

because they don't even realise this drain is running underneath.

0:43:080:43:11

And it's not until... the 19th century,

0:43:110:43:16

when Rome becomes a capital city,

0:43:160:43:18

that they rediscover and reactivate the great sewers of ancient Rome.

0:43:180:43:25

Rome's sewers, like its aqueducts, were an attempt to tackle

0:43:250:43:30

the public health of a city which had topped a million people.

0:43:300:43:34

But daily life was not the only challenge.

0:43:380:43:40

So was death, and the problem of burial.

0:43:410:43:45

This may look like a park shed

0:43:480:43:50

but there's more to it than meets the eye.

0:43:500:43:53

From the second century BC onwards,

0:43:560:43:59

cremation had become increasingly popular at funerals.

0:43:590:44:02

Little wonder, with a rising urban population and space at a premium.

0:44:030:44:09

I have to say, this is one of my favourite Roman tombs.

0:44:110:44:15

It's called the Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas.

0:44:150:44:20

Well, as we discovered as we were coming down the stairs.

0:44:200:44:23

But Pomponius, was he the owner of this tomb? He wasn't, right?

0:44:230:44:26

No, he's clearly not.

0:44:260:44:28

There's a beautiful mosaic with his name and griffins around a lyre.

0:44:280:44:33

It's charming.

0:44:330:44:35

But it's quite clear he was one of the last people to be buried here.

0:44:350:44:38

The first guy's got to be this guy, hasn't it?

0:44:380:44:41

Or the first couple, because there's the man and his wife.

0:44:410:44:45

And they got a most prominent location as well,

0:44:450:44:48

probably not by the stairway but on the main wall,

0:44:480:44:50

and they built themself this really large and nice niche.

0:44:500:44:55

And you've got him and his wife depicted on them all.

0:44:550:45:00

And look at the material, they look like alabaster ash urns,

0:45:000:45:04

-which was very expensive.

-Yeah, you pay a lot.

0:45:040:45:06

Yeah, because they probably actually paid for this whole thing.

0:45:060:45:09

They took care of the entire decoration on this ceiling

0:45:090:45:11

and here in the recess, you can see a similar style.

0:45:110:45:14

So I think we have to assume these are people who...

0:45:140:45:17

He's made a packet and yet, he's not one of the Roman nobles, is he?

0:45:170:45:22

The whole Roman fashion for having grand, ostentatious tombs

0:45:220:45:27

starts with the Roman nobility, but by the time we are here

0:45:270:45:31

in the 1st century AD, the sort of people who are being buried

0:45:310:45:35

are actually ex-slaves.

0:45:350:45:38

This guy is Granius Nestor.

0:45:380:45:41

Nestor, a sort of Greek mythological name,

0:45:410:45:45

a freeborn man could have it.

0:45:450:45:48

But it's very improbable.

0:45:480:45:50

-And his wife's called Hedone, meaning...

-Different name.

0:45:500:45:54

Hedone, Mrs Pleasure.

0:45:540:45:56

That is a very characteristic slave name, isn't it?

0:45:560:46:00

They also present themselves, you know, in a very Roman way.

0:46:000:46:04

Look at him there, wearing a toga, holding a scroll.

0:46:040:46:07

It could be the sort of image that they want to project of themselves,

0:46:070:46:11

of good Roman citizens.

0:46:110:46:13

They're really showing that they made it, in a way,

0:46:130:46:16

they made it in their circle and look at it. Look at what they got.

0:46:160:46:19

The use of colour is fantastic, isn't it?

0:46:190:46:22

I mean, that was Egyptian blue, one of the most expensive pigments

0:46:220:46:25

that you could possibly get in antiquity.

0:46:250:46:27

So that already tells us something.

0:46:270:46:30

It's not like the other niches.

0:46:300:46:31

They are just yellow and red, which...

0:46:310:46:34

Your natural colours are way less expensive.

0:46:340:46:37

You want to project the same values that you have in real life

0:46:370:46:40

also here, you want to be able to see it in the commemorations

0:46:400:46:43

that perhaps were held here every year.

0:46:430:46:46

So that's what you want the living to see and to commemorate you for.

0:46:460:46:50

This tomb has over 100 niches for the ashes of those laid to rest.

0:46:520:46:57

The word "columbarium" comes from the Latin meaning "dovecote".

0:46:590:47:03

They come from a city that's densely populated.

0:47:090:47:13

There are tens of thousands of other people like them

0:47:130:47:16

and they don't even dream of having a tomb all to themselves.

0:47:160:47:20

They build it with lots and lots of slots for lots of other people.

0:47:200:47:24

It's a bit like a insula block, isn't it?

0:47:240:47:27

You can see them stacking up and they're all packed in like sardines.

0:47:270:47:32

Because, in a really crowded city,

0:47:320:47:35

you live stacked up in apartment blocks

0:47:350:47:38

and you die stacked up in columbaria.

0:47:380:47:41

Every great city depends on immigration.

0:47:520:47:56

It needs it for numbers, it needs it for cheap labour,

0:47:560:47:59

it needs it for specialist services.

0:47:590:48:02

Modern Rome, and here we are near the station, in an area

0:48:020:48:07

full of immigrants, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Africans,

0:48:070:48:12

Romanians, all sorts.

0:48:120:48:14

Modern Rome couldn't function without its immigrants.

0:48:140:48:17

And it's just the same in ancient Rome.

0:48:170:48:20

Unlike modern Europe, in ancient Rome, there's no limitation

0:48:200:48:25

on immigration and, indeed, there is compulsory immigration.

0:48:250:48:29

Slavery means that tens, even hundreds, of thousands of people

0:48:290:48:34

are brought from all over the world to Rome.

0:48:340:48:38

And then there are plenty who come voluntarily, free men,

0:48:380:48:41

citizens, they come to Rome to make their fortune.

0:48:410:48:44

The city had a massive draw.

0:48:460:48:48

Unlike the provinces, Rome was a tax-free zone and its citizens

0:48:480:48:53

received free hand-outs of food and sometimes even money.

0:48:530:48:58

Under the Emperor Augustus,

0:48:580:49:00

Rome became the biggest place of employment in the ancient world,

0:49:000:49:04

with public services which wouldn't be matched for another 1,800 years.

0:49:040:49:09

Amazingly, this even included a professional fire service

0:49:090:49:13

of 7,000 men.

0:49:130:49:15

The most important thing that Augustus did to protect Rome

0:49:150:49:18

from fire was to set up a fire brigade.

0:49:180:49:22

It was a quasi-military organization with seven cohorts.

0:49:220:49:27

This is an inscription put up by the fifth cohort.

0:49:270:49:30

In each cohort, there are 1,000 men.

0:49:300:49:34

Those seven cohorts controlled the 14 regions of Rome,

0:49:340:49:38

so each cohort is split in two and does two regions.

0:49:380:49:42

Here we have an inscription from Cohort Number Five.

0:49:420:49:47

And these three guys at the top in the biggest letters

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are the most important.

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The prefect, Gaius Julius Quintilianus.

0:49:520:49:55

The sub-prefect, Marcus Firmius Amyntianus.

0:49:550:50:00

And then there's a tribune

0:50:000:50:02

and then these guys are the centurions.

0:50:020:50:05

And one of the intriguing things about them is each of them

0:50:050:50:09

gives where they came from.

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Now, you'd expect the fire brigade of Rome to be locally recruited,

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but no.

0:50:150:50:16

This guy comes from a place called Berva, which is near Venice.

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This guy comes from Savaria, which is in Hungary.

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This one from Ratiaria, which is in Bulgaria.

0:50:260:50:31

This one from Poetovio, in Slovenia.

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And this one from Aquincum, which is Budapest in Hungary.

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So they come from way, way east of Rome.

0:50:380:50:43

That's not all.

0:50:430:50:45

You then flip round the other side and then you get all of the names

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of the ordinary Vigiles, all 1,000 of them,

0:50:480:50:52

in teeny little letters, column after column.

0:50:520:50:56

Under the Emperor Nero in 64 AD,

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the Vigiles were put to the test when a great fire swept Rome.

0:51:030:51:07

It was a disaster.

0:51:090:51:11

Notoriously, the Emperor was blamed for fiddling whilst Rome burned.

0:51:110:51:16

What the cause of the fire was can be debated,

0:51:180:51:21

but what's certain is how Nero responded afterwards.

0:51:210:51:25

We're underneath the street level of modern Rome

0:51:280:51:30

and under a multiplex cinema.

0:51:300:51:34

When they were constructed this,

0:51:340:51:36

they were trying to go further down to add extra rooms and what

0:51:360:51:39

they found was they were blocked by a massive bit of Roman building.

0:51:390:51:44

What we have here...

0:51:440:51:47

is two entire urban blocks, back-to-back with each other,

0:51:470:51:51

that were at least three floors in this insula.

0:51:510:51:54

We know from the brick stamps...

0:51:560:51:57

Romans liked to stamp their bricks with their names.

0:51:570:52:00

We know from those that it was built under the Emperor Nero.

0:52:000:52:04

What we can see here are the dividing walls of the two blocks.

0:52:040:52:09

And Nero said, "You're not allowed to use party walls,

0:52:090:52:12

"you can't build one block against another.

0:52:120:52:15

"You've got to have separate walls,

0:52:150:52:17

"because that stops the fire spreading."

0:52:170:52:19

During the great fire,

0:52:220:52:23

the Vigiles had complained of a lack of water to fight the flames.

0:52:230:52:27

Nero decreed that every insula must have access to a cistern

0:52:300:52:33

with an abundant water supply.

0:52:330:52:35

Despite his reforms, the myth about Nero lives on to this day.

0:52:380:52:43

The modern fire service takes its name from the Vigiles

0:52:460:52:49

and their ancient counterparts are still celebrated.

0:52:490:52:52

FIRE SIREN BLARES

0:52:520:52:54

MEN YELL IN LATIN

0:52:540:52:58

Wow, here is a fine-looking group of Vigiles.

0:53:020:53:07

The standard-bearer...

0:53:070:53:09

And a pretty tough lot they look.

0:53:090:53:11

I don't think I would want to mess with them.

0:53:110:53:14

And we have here the centurion.

0:53:150:53:19

THEY SPEAK IN ITALIAN

0:53:190:53:22

Certo, certo.

0:53:460:53:47

A Roman axe.

0:53:560:53:58

Well, well, this is one scary bit of kit.

0:53:580:54:00

This would be through the woodwork in no time.

0:54:000:54:03

Fabulous.

0:54:190:54:20

A Roman fire blanket, which you make of a patchwork of wool.

0:54:200:54:26

So this you dip in water but also vinegar,

0:54:370:54:40

because vinegar has an important fire retardant effect.

0:54:400:54:44

'Water was transported from the systems using amphorae.'

0:54:440:54:48

Yes, I can imagine it might be a bit hard to extinguish a fire

0:54:500:54:55

just chucking it straight from the amphorae.

0:54:550:54:58

But the Vigiles had a secret weapon...

0:54:580:55:00

a hydraulic pump called a siphon.

0:55:000:55:03

So you have two tubes, one sucks the water in,

0:55:180:55:22

then it passes into the piston and, as the water goes in,

0:55:220:55:27

the air is under pressure and then,

0:55:270:55:31

as you send the valves up and down, the water squirts out both sides.

0:55:310:55:37

-Bravissimo.

-Grazie.

0:55:400:55:42

Fantastico.

0:55:550:55:56

Nero's Vigiles were a semi-military organization

0:56:000:56:02

and also had a policing role.

0:56:020:56:05

Together with other paramilitary forces, there were no less

0:56:050:56:09

than 20,000 man dedicated to keeping Rome's citizens safe.

0:56:090:56:15

The principles of policing have remained the same in modern Rome,

0:56:190:56:22

though the technology has changed.

0:56:220:56:25

CCTV performs many of the surveillance duties

0:56:250:56:28

done by the Vigiles.

0:56:280:56:30

But though the Romans didn't possess digital mapping,

0:56:300:56:34

they did understand that planning, just as in so many spheres

0:56:340:56:38

of Roman life, was the key to making their city work.

0:56:380:56:41

The only private house marked on the Forma Urbis

0:56:450:56:49

is the residence of the urban prefect, Fabius Cilo,

0:56:490:56:53

the man responsible for Rome's forces of law and order.

0:56:530:56:57

It seems very possible that the document that has helped us

0:56:580:57:01

understand the plan of ancient Rome was in fact

0:57:010:57:05

displayed in the office of their Chief of Police.

0:57:050:57:09

Already under Augustus, the population of Rome

0:57:110:57:14

had reached a million and it probably stayed at more or less

0:57:140:57:18

the same level for the next 300, even 400 years.

0:57:180:57:21

It's not until the imperial power of Rome implodes

0:57:220:57:26

that the population also collapses.

0:57:260:57:29

By the middle of the 6th century,

0:57:290:57:31

it may have shrunk to as few as 30,000 people.

0:57:310:57:35

And no city in Europe was again to reach the figure of a million

0:57:360:57:41

until the beginning of the 19th century.

0:57:410:57:44

You're looking at it now.

0:57:460:57:48

By no coincidence, London, too, was capital of a world empire,

0:57:490:57:54

and made no disguise of the act it was following.

0:57:540:57:57

Yet, Rome had achieved a million when the world population

0:58:030:58:06

was a fraction of its modern size

0:58:060:58:09

and without motor transport, gas or electricity.

0:58:090:58:14

Today, we live in a world of megacities,

0:58:140:58:17

but Rome remains the inspiration for them all.

0:58:170:58:22

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