The Empire Strikes Back Treasures of Ancient Rome

I'm on the third and final leg of my mission

to dispel a 2,000-year-old myth.

That the Romans were great conquerors and engineers,

but when it came to art, they were second-rate.

Around the turn of the third century AD, Roman art began to change,

edging imperceptibly away from the classical tradition

which had sustained it for hundreds of years.

As a result, later Roman art often gets it in the neck.

It's derided as being a symptom of a civilisation in decline.

Now, whether or not you think that's true,

and I'm not particularly sure that it is,

why it did change has always been a bit of a mystery.

One solution to the problem may lie here on the coast of Libya,

where a magnificent Roman city is being preserved

just on the other side of these sand dunes.

And for centuries, Rome had subjugated the lands

all around the Mediterranean, including North Africa.

But as far-flung provinces like this one started gaining power

and flexing their muscles, the Empire began to strike back.

Ultimately of course, that would spell disaster for Rome.

But it benefited Roman art,

enriching and invigorating it with exotic new styles and ideas.

After the demise of the so-called good emperors of the second century,

Rome was in meltdown.

But her art remained resilient, as our ten treasures,

many of them discovered in surprisingly distant provinces, will prove.

She's really beautiful.

We'll encounter never before seen masterpieces of unparalleled refinement,

as well as several often overlooked works of art

imbued with a robust and rugged magic.

This method of painting didn't occur again

until the Italian renaissance.

Finally, we'll see how an obscure cult from the near east triumphed,

signalling the end of the Roman Empire

and setting the template for western art for nearly two millennia.

Libya may be around 600 miles from Rome as the imperial eagle flies,

but this, I believe, is the best place

to start my exploration of later Roman art.

There had been a city on this site

in the Roman province of Tripolitania

since at least the time of Augustus,

but Leptis Magna, as it was called,

really came into its own at the beginning of the third century AD

when it rapidly expanded into a gleaming metropolis

bedecked with marble and all manner of wonderful works of art.

It rivalled the great classical African cities

of Carthage and Alexandria.

What makes Leptis Magna so special today,

is that it's remarkably well preserved.

You can still get a sense of its grandeur during its heyday.

When it had a population of 100,000

living off its lucrative olive oil trade.

The fascinating thing about this upsurge in the city's prosperity

is that it was heavily linked to the fortunes of a single man.

Born to an aristocratic family here in Leptis,

this was a local boy done very, very good

and his name was Septimius Severus.

Severus was a military man who forced his way to power

and was proclaimed emperor in AD 193.

As Roman emperors go, he wasn't really all that Roman,

he came from Africa, and he married a Syrian.

So Severus embodies a shift in the history of the Empire,

as the focus widened from the centre, to the periphery.

And you could even say that this place is the cradle

of later Roman art.

On the surface,

Leptis Magna may appear to be a miniature version of Rome,

but take a closer look and it is Roman, but with a twist.

An African twist.

What could be more Roman than a triumphal arch, you might ask.

This one was dedicated to Septimius Severus around AD 204.

Over in Rome, another one was dedicated to him

about the same time, in the Forum.

It's a classic piece of imperial tub-thumping.

This one, though, is quite different.

It's a strange fusion, this arch, between the classical,

the Roman, and then the indigenous, the new, the later Roman art.

You can see on either side of the arch, these winged victories,

quite sensuous bodies, quite old-fashioned,

quite old Roman iconography, but also,

you can see above these Corinthian columns on either side of the arch,

these very distinctive quite strange, angled pediments.

Now, some people think that these elements

are actually not really Roman at all,

potentially quite indigenous to Northern Africa.

And so these could be an allusion to local building practices.

The top of the arch, the attic, is decorated with four reliefs,

each of which depicts the emperor himself, Septimius.

There's no sense of space and depth

as earlier classical artists try to achieve.

Instead you can see the bystanders have been arranged

in these two sort of rows, so the ones who are further away

appear rather awkwardly to be standing on a platform

just behind the near ones.

And the way that the drapery has been created is very distinctive.

So you see lots and lots of grooves and folds,

none of which really look the way they would look in reality.

Instead they're quite interestingly creating a linear effect,

a sense of patterning.

Have a look at the emperor himself in the chariot.

He's not facing in the direction of travel, he's completely frontal.

He's facing the viewer full on.

And this is something that would become

increasingly common in Roman art. From this point on,

the emperor could be considered as divine within his own lifetime.

Situated at a crossroads, the arch at Leptis Magna

points in the direction of the future of Roman art.

It is a recognisably Roman monument for sure,

but its vision of Rome is viewed through the prism of the provinces,

so that the art of Rome was starting to become

the art of the Roman world.

As I explore this wonderful place,

it becomes clear that the story of late Roman art

isn't one of cultural decline,

but of crossing exciting new aesthetic frontiers.

I feel very lucky

because I've basically got this whole site to myself.

And this section of Leptis is really stunning.

Septimius Severus created one huge new complex,

involving a temple to his family, a big forum,

and also, through here, the basilica.

Originally covered by a roof,

the basilica was one of the most important buildings in the city.

It was where citizens met or did business

and it also served as a court house.

And you can see it's one enormous rectangular space.

Part of the reason why this is an exciting place

to think about later Roman art, is at either end,

you have these pilasters on either side of the apse,

sculpted out of white Proconnesian marble,

and what you see, are these peopled scrolls, as they're called.

With very lush foliage, bursting up from the bottom,

covering each side of the pilaster.

It's a really extravagant, luscious work of art.

Whereas lots of earlier Roman reliefs were fairly shallow,

and quite elegant, these reliefs are very different.

They're much more robust, they're more vigorous.

Part of that is because whoever made them, as you can see,

has used a drill.

And it doesn't sound like the biggest exciting sort of aspect

of later Roman art, but this drill work

became a hallmark of the later Roman period in terms of art.

If you actually look up close, you can see

the small cylinders where the drill would have gone in initially.

You then chiselled in between those holes

and you created a very deep effect.

And of course, this was really useful here in Africa,

where the sun when it's high is very, very sharp,

because it creates this strong quite black and white effect.

The brightness of the white stone,

and then the dark blackness of the deep shadow,

which is created by that recess.

And the effect is stunning.

There's such a beautiful sense of profusion, of abundance, to that.

That's why I think it really does feel extravagant,

as a sense of fertility, rampantly exploding up that pillar.

Rome lasted as long as it did

not by tyrannically insisting that everybody think,

behave and see the world in the same way.

As long as the people were loyal to Rome,

they could celebrate their indigenous culture and beliefs

in a surprisingly open fashion.

Leptis was full of really top quality, top-notch art.

But it was also full of art which belonged to a different tradition,

the plebeian tradition, the popular tradition.

And here's a good example, which is really quite strange.

It's a centaur, with an extremely large penis,

who also has a phallic nose, and he's carrying a trident,

and with the trident, he's poking at this, the evil eye,

and a snake and a scorpion.

So he's warding off evil.

It's hardly high culture, but images like this show

how by allowing locals to express themselves,

the Romans paved the way for a new art, for the post-classical world.

The eclecticism of styles also signals the Romans' political savvy.

Leptis is living proof of how the Romans used art and culture

to rule the provinces.

Libyan archaeologist, Hafed Walda, who's excavated Leptis Magna,

joins me on an outing to the theatre.

This is magnificent.

They didn't spare anything to make it really impressive.

This is one big monument to a nouveau-riche regime.

Septimius was a big show-off.

He is a big show-off, and he tarted it up so well.

And, of course, entertainment is what emperors do to be loved.

I noticed on coming in that above these sort of doorways to the sides,

there are very long inscriptions.

What do they tell us?

They tell us rich benefactors contributed a lot

to the renovation of the theatre.

They themselves have their names half-Libyan, half-Roman.

So, these inscriptions tell us very clearly

that there were many different cultures coalescing in this space?

Yes, there were a lot of people here,

who felt strongly about their religion and culture.

And what about works of art -

would there have been works of art here in the theatre?

It's full of art. There there's no doubt about it.

Classical works of art, statues of deities,

statues of emperors' families.

I think it's a cultural place, it's a focus for the city.

What Severus achieved here placed Leptis on a par with Rome.

More than that, one extraordinary recent discovery

reveals how artists here raised an old art form to new heights.

The treasure I'm about to see

has only just been reassembled in the Leptis Museum,

and is yet to be unveiled to the world.

In terms of Roman art, this is something of a scoop.

I'm looking at an epic expanse of mosaic,

which was discovered not far from here,

in a villa just outside Leptis Magna.

What we see in each of the five panels

is a scene connected with the arena.

This is a work of art which dramatises Roman bloodlust.

In the middle, we have a scene set in the hippodrome, the circus.

It's a chariot race.

It's quite painful to look at - one horse is actually upside down,

another horse seems to be crushing underneath the wheels,

as the wheels of the chariot seem to almost be coming off.

And then on either side, you have two sets,

of two scenes which mirror each other.

You see beasts in the arena, being taunted,

baited for the enjoyment of the Roman public.

But the piece de resistance for me are the panels at either end,

which are gladiator scenes.

One of the first things that's immediately obvious

is that the figures in them are practically life-sized.

There's a great poignancy and sympathy to these gladiator scenes.

In each one, we see the moment

where one gladiator has prevailed over the other.

I think this top panel is extraordinary

for a number of reasons.

Take one, the figure to the right,

look at the way that's been composed.

It is a complicated trick to pull off.

We're not seeing the man stretching out horizontally,

this is an example of foreshortening,

where a sense of depth is created

because what's in front is bigger than what's behind.

Very few artists, even in the rest of the history of western art,

attempt something like this.

There's a sense of realism here,

an immensity of scale,

and a sense of psychology,

which is really fascinating and sophisticated,

and completely surprising.

It's a very subtle and affecting, melancholy work of art.

The mosaic wasn't a North African invention,

but it is an art form at which they excelled.

I head out of Leptis

to go and see what I'm told is one of the most remarkable

collections of mosaics still in situ.

Everywhere you go in Libya, there's a reminder of the violent revolution

that recently overthrew the tyrant, Gaddafi.

There's a sense of jubilation...

CAR HORNS BEEP AND MEN SHOUT

..but I can't help but feel that the peace is a little precarious.

Policed, as it is, by rival militias.

What I'm about to witness is also testament

to the precarious state of Libya's Roman heritage.

Adele Aturke is showing me around a seaside villa

in what feels a bit like the Roman version

of Location, Location, Location.

The previous owners of the villa were a family of wealthy merchants,

exporting olive oil and tuna from Tripolitania to Rome.

As you can see, this is the back garden.

Comprises of the two main mosaics.

One is the geometry as you can see it, on that side,

and then is a nice scene.

Well, these are really quite delightful.

This is a continuation of this Nile scene,

and we know it's the Nile scene, cos there's a big crocodile in it.

One has been eaten by the crocodile,

and the other one's tried to pull out.

This is the path.

And who's this?

You want to have a shower here?

I don't really want to shower with these two men.

There is two type of materials here,

we have the frescoes, and we have the mosaics.

And this is in situ, where it was painted,

-almost two millennia ago.

-Yeah.

This is very interesting, this is the baby room.

This is the baby room?

Yes, as you can see, beautiful frescoes.

-This is great! So we've got a series of cherubs.

-Yeah.

And here he is with a spear and a bow.

It's all very, very delicate, isn't it?

-This is the dining room.

-What a spectacular place for a banquet.

-Yeah, this is the...

-Looking at the waves.

-..the waves.

Something is very interesting here, I'll show you.

Oh, wow!

-So this is like a kind of centrepiece.

-Yes.

This has just been under a piece of crate!

That's what we need to do, this is the way we protect it.

What do you mean, protect it? It's just a piece of old wood!

She's really beautiful.

Yes, she is.

I mean, again, look how sort of delicate this is.

Every time I come to see this, I feel really ashamed,

I feel that we haven't done anything in this,

not only in this site, it's everywhere.

All this site has been neglected like this during the Gaddafi regime,

and if you come another year or so,

maybe this will be disappear and vanish completely.

If we don't look after them very urgently.

I'm really angry.

This one piece.

These beautiful mosaics have been criminally neglected.

And it upsets me to see them decaying like rotten teeth.

It's thought there are dozens of villas like this,

buried under the sand along the Libyan coast.

And however much I'm intrigued to see what treasures lie within,

for now, they're probably better off left where they are.

I've been quite surprised by my reaction to Leptis Magna,

because this really is a city that rivalled parts of Rome

in terms of its magnificence.

And it's situated on the North African coast.

It's nowhere near, in a sense, the Italian peninsula.

So it really contains, it embodies, that story of the Roman Empire,

as this one city state, expanded and expanded and expanded,

until the peripheries of the Empire

almost became more important than the centre itself.

I can understand why Gaddafi, in a sense, neglected a place like this,

because it's so extravagantly monumental.

And there's so much waste everywhere,

that if you were a power-mad, brutal dictator,

a place like this could only be a reminder

that before long, inevitably, your time would be up.

Libya wasn't the only province

to enjoy a political and cultural renaissance.

Egypt also exerted a powerfully exotic hold over Rome's imagination,

and some of the most stunning finds of Roman art

were discovered in Antonopoulos and the Faiyum region south of Cairo.

They unearthed mummies, but no ordinary mummies.

The mummies had faces, painted on wooden panels.

They're so realistic, it's hard to believe they're 2,000 years old.

You really sense that you're coming face to face

with people who inhabited the Roman Empire.

This reconstruction, based on the skull of the mummy,

proves just how lifelike the painting is.

If you ever needed a visual symbol of the great melting pot

that was the Roman Empire, then this is it.

It dates from the early second century, and we know who's inside,

thanks to this misspelt inscription on the breast.

Apparently it reads, "Farewell, Artemidorus."

There he is, you can see,

very realistic portrait of the deceased man,

done on this wooden panel, using the encaustic technique

which mixes pigment, essentially with beeswax.

And beneath, you've got a whole selection

of traditional Egyptian funerary motifs, done in gold leaf.

So what you have is this great melange

of different styles and cultures.

There's a Greek inscription,

there are these traditional Egyptian motifs,

and there's this realistic portrait done in the Roman style.

This is one of the chief defining characteristics of Roman art.

Roman artists loved nothing more

than embracing and employing a whole panoply of different approaches.

'John O'Carroll is a contemporary painter who works in Egypt,

'using the same encaustic techniques as the Romans.'

This is animal glue with just pure pigment, so that's called distemper.

And that's what the artist would have taken,

and started his portrait with, just to give him a brief guideline.

I'm applying this wax now.

They would have worked from dark to light.

And this preparation, this sort of background,

is called a propalasmas, because that is,

you're putting layers of very thin wax and pigment

to start to create a moulded face.

You get a beautiful texture,

but you have to be careful to eliminate the bumps and lumps,

so you get quite a smooth surface.

Just sort of putting in the features,

this is based on one of the portraits, just applying this white.

Also has a little bit of skin tone.

I'm using it in a very loose sort of contemporary way,

however, it's the same process.

I'll go and scrape.

And really, it's just the process of repeating, applying, scraping.

The thing with the matt wax method is that it's very malleable,

and you can go and work into it repeatedly,

so it gives you quite a lot of freedom.

You can get a nice depth of colour.

This method of painting

didn't occur again until the Italian Renaissance.

I'm amazed by the Romans' ability

to assimilate radically different cultures into the imperial brand.

To appreciate the full diversity of their art,

you have to leap from Africa to the opposite end of the Empire -

to the far north.

The city of Bath was known as Aquae Sulis to the Romans.

They built magnificent baths around the sacred hot springs,

and a great temple to worship Sulis Minerva,

a Romano-Celtic hybrid goddess.

Her gilded bronze head

is one of Roman Britain's most beautiful treasures.

The influence of Celtic art is clearly visible here.

These 14 pieces of carved stone

were once part of a brightly painted temple facade.

The centrepiece is a bearded face with snakes for hair.

Could be a Gorgon,

or even Sol, a Celtic god.

Look, the art here is quite basic, almost naive,

but it speaks powerfully to both the Roman and the indigenous people

in this corner of the Empire.

But there's another surprise

about the art found in Rome's northern outposts -

some of the finest decorative silverwork from the ancient world.

This exquisite hoard from Kaiseraugst in Switzerland

dates back to the fourth century.

The silver was given by the Emperor Constans to one of his generals.

Lavish imperial gifts like this

helped hold the late Empire together,

and kept its leading subjects loyal.

And for a conquered people, such art had an ambassadorial function,

a glimpse of the civilised values that joining the Empire would bring.

'With art playing such a key role on the military front line,

'it's no surprise that two of the best examples of Roman silverware

'have been found in Britain.'

Well, Alex, I've brought you here to see this,

which is the Corbridge Lanx.

It was found in the 18th century up in Northumberland,

I think near Hadrian's wall.

I mean, it's quite impressive to me, as a layman,

not knowing anything about how it could be made.

But for you as a silversmith, how do you feel looking at it?

It is a very impressive piece of silversmithing.

Once you've got the flat tray,

you would then proceed to emboss the surface of it,

using a small hardened metal chisel to hammer the surface.

If you look at the vine motif around the edge,

you can actually make out little chatter marks,

-and they are in fact hammered lines.

-So it must take forever to do it?

It's not a fast piece to make, that's for sure.

I wonder how you feel the technique of this

compares to maybe the most famous piece of silver

in the collection at the British Museum, which is just over here.

This comes from a big hoard of treasure

known as the Mildenhall Hoard,

that was discovered in Suffolk during the Second World War,

and the jewel in the crown is this dish.

It's highly classical,

the way that the figures have actually been created.

Here, the proportions feel much more elegant and correct,

-if you like...

-Mmm.

-..but beautifully sinuous and lithe.

To me, this suddenly looks like

it's a different order of skill altogether.

It's a beautifully rendered composition,

apart from anything else.

The drawing of the piece is quite remarkable.

Definitely more subtle in the legs.

It looks very much as if it could have been engraved,

which is, you know, using a very sharp, pointed tool

to paint the little lines across the body.

I mean, it's a combination of techniques of chasing and engraving,

and engraving is really very fine, neat and small lines.

Has the artistry that's visible in this dish

been surpassed by silversmiths since the time of ancient Rome?

In terms of the grace of composition, pretty hard to beat.

ALASTAIR CHUCKLES

Decorative works like these

suggest that, contrary to the traditional art historical argument,

the political decline of the later Roman Empire was not matched

by a creative tailing-off in its art.

Take the Portland Vase, a cameo glass vessel from the early Empire,

widely regarded, rightly so, as one of the greatest Roman treasures.

Without doubt, it's a smooth and sinuous masterpiece.

But as far as glassware goes, I think it's surpassed

by a work of vigorous poetry from the later Roman period.

So just describe a little bit, because if you look up close,

-it looks like it's one piece of glass.

-Yes.

-And what, has it been carved on the outer layer?

-Yeah.

Initially it was a much thicker vessel and then it was cut down.

And then undercut in some places

so that the figures could stand out from the vessel itself.

That seems completely extraordinary because when you look up close,

I mean, practically, some of these figures

-are floating off the base of the glass altogether.

-Yes.

How virtuoso would the person who made this have had to have been?

Incredibly. They were probably used to making cameos or cutting gems

and that kind of thing.

So this is really incredible -

and to be able to do it in such fragile material as well is amazing.

-Do we know who they are?

-Yeah, it's Lycurgus.

Hence the name is at the front of the vessel

and then there's Dionysus, he's the god of wine and wine making.

And then a few of his friends, I suppose?

Who were supposed to be making fun of Lycurgus, once he'd been trapped in the vines.

"Making fun," I think it's more than that, they're about to kill him!

I mean, this guy is about to cast a rock at poor old Lycurgus.

There is one other aspect, one CHIEF characteristic of this cup,

which we haven't talked about yet.

If you block the light from behind the cup there's a dark green colour,

which is reflected off the surface,

and then when you allow the light through, it becomes red.

This is caused by tiny particles of gold

alloyed with silver, within the cup,

that allow the red light only to be transmitted through it

but, yet, at the same time scatter green light from the surface.

So this is a conscious effect

-that whoever made this was trying to use?

-Yeah.

-It's COMPLETELY stunning.

-Yeah, it's absolutely incredible.

And it's hard to imagine how they worked out how to do it.

Which gives the whole piece a kind of magic.

I've returned to the imperial capital.

During the third century,

Rome's provinces had more power and influence than ever before

and that was because Rome herself

was stumbling from one crisis to another.

If you were a Roman emperor during the third century,

then life could be really quite nasty, brutish and very short.

It was the age of anarchy, it was a time of real crisis -

economic turmoil, the beginnings of the decline of the Empire

and all of that would have an extraordinary impact

upon the art that was being produced in Rome.

The chaos was caused by the increased power of the army

as it fought Rome's enemies on the frontiers.

And the legions tended to proclaim their commanders as emperors.

This is the Hall of the Emperors in the Capitoline Museum

and almost every single one is here. There's Hadrian...

Antoninus Pius...

there's a scowling Caracalla just over there...

but I particularly like this contrast between these two busts.

It shows how the sea change between the so-called soldier emperors

of the third century AD and their predecessors

was played out very graphically in Roman art.

Here you have a bust of someone called Alexander Severus.

He's a bit of a milk sop and well-educated mummy's boy.

You can see that he's got very boyish features,

very gentle, he was a pious man

and the style of the bust harks back to that youthful idealising style

that was favoured by those Julio-Claudian emperors

of the first century AD.

Sad thing was he was assassinated by the army,

erm, and this man took over in AD 235

with the brilliantly wicked nefarious name, of Maximinus Thrax,

he'd make a good Bond villain.

It's completely different style, a much more hard-boiled realism.

He's a terrifying thug, really -

you wouldn't want to pick a fight with him -

and the contrast between them is that of a predator and his prey.

It's a bit like seeing a killer whale locked onto a wide-eyed seal.

The importance of the Roman general in the third century

is reflected in a new vogue in Roman art -

the sumptuously carved sarcophagus.

Traditionally, the Romans had cremated their dead

but burial became more fashionable in the second century AD

It gave the great and the good a novel way

of preserving their memory for posterity

and artists a chance to experiment.

This is the Portonaccio sarcophagus,

it was named after the area in Rome where it was found

and it dates from roundabout AD 180

and it's extraordinarily dynamic.

You have to think that friezes on marble sarcophagi like this one

surely represent a pinnacle of Roman art.

The detail and the execution are so breathtaking.

The thing that never ceases to amaze me

is the skill of the stone carvers who made this

out of a single slab of marble.

Like the artists in Leptis Magna,

they used drills to cut deep into the stone

before carving the details.

Here at the centre of this melee you have a warrior on horseback

who's got this very resplendent plume on top of his helmet,

signifying his rank and authority.

He's probably the deceased general for whom this would have been commissioned,

even though his face wasn't actually carved for some reason.

And you can see him blasting his way through this tumultuous vision of warfare, really,

as the Romans, an unstoppable force,

relentlessly crush the barbarians underfoot.

Strangely, though, the sculptor's chosen to book-end the frieze

with these two really distinctive eye-catching figures -

very careworn but very dignified barbarians.

It might seem strange that a Roman sculptor's almost asking us

to mentally identify with the enemy

but the thing about the sarcophagus is that it's broadcasting messages

about how to be a good Roman.

And the Romans celebrated clemency

as much as they celebrated ruthless blood-letting.

That's the message of the whole piece -

how to be a decent, upstanding Roman.

At the top you have this panel,

which commemorates and records the blissful domestic life

of the deceased general.

And it is almost as though the sculptor's saying -

oblivious to the fact that the general's day job was actually quite gruesome,

it involved hacking poor barbarians to bits,

crushing them underfoot -

kind of didn't matter cos at the end, right up until the very last,

he remained a good and faithful Roman husband.

By the end of the third century,

Rome's leadership crisis threatened to derail the whole Empire.

Desperate measures were needed.

I've come to Venice to see artistic evidence

of a remarkable moment in Roman history.

'The inauguration in AD 293 of the so-called Tetrarchs.

'These were four generals, each given one corner of the Empire to rule -

'the idea being that power-sharing would prevent civil war.'

-Grazie mille!

-Bye-bye.

You stopped at St Mark's Square, thanks. Thank you.

Great. Right, erm, I tell you, that is how to travel.

Now, let's go find some Tetrarchs.

And I think if we go to St Mark's Square, we'll find them.

Can't believe I've been to Venice before

and I missed these Tetrarchs, because, well, here they are.

They're in the corner of the Basilica di San Marco.

They probably originally came from Istanbul

and they're carved from this hard, reddish stone, called porphyry,

carved round about AD 300.

You can tell that they're military men cos they're clasping swords.

You can see their armoured breastplate, their cuirass.

There isn't a great deal to tell them apart -

except for one very significant detail.

Two of them have beards, two are clean-shaven.

The beards signify the more senior emperors,

who were each known as Augustus.

The clean-shaven colleagues they are the junior emperors,

known as the Caesars.

The sculptor who has made these,

has been taking great pains to suppress any individual trait whatsoever,

instead, there's a kind of tendency, much more towards abstraction.

It's a style of art that looks right forward to the Middle Ages.

There's a sense that rather than depicting individuals,

this is a symbol -

a symbol of solidarity, of the group,

the togetherness of the Tetrarchs, their brotherhood,

their power as four rather than one individual emperor.

Certainly, they're supposed to be forbidding and distant.

I actually don't really think they look that forbidding at all.

I think they look quite cute, a bit like those aliens,

you know, in the Toy Story films,

who are very lovable, all exactly the same,

all worshiping The Claw, The Claw.

And here are these, kind of, similar extraterrestrial figures,

hugging one another for moral support.

So, I ask you this, who would you rather be ruled by -

Augustus, immortalised for ever

in that mighty, famous statue from Prima Porta,

or these four Tetrarchs who almost look inhuman?

I know who I'd rather choose.

Contemporary artist Stephen Cox,

is the only sculptor since antiquity,

to work with porphyry from the Roman imperial quarry

in the Red Sea mountains of Egypt.

The piece of porphyry he's using for his sculpture, called Dreadnought,

has chisel marks, left by Roman sculptors.

It's amazing to be able to work on a piece of stone

that was worked on by Romans

probably towards the middle of the fourth century.

The importance of porphyry,

its colour...and its hardness,

was very attractive to the symbolism of power

that was obviously constantly needing to be represented

by the emperors

whose rule spread so wide

through the ancient world.

Purple objects, purple sculptures,

with emperors dressed in imperial purple,

were sent out to establish a symbol of authority

and it is extraordinary, really, that they chose this purple stone,

which is the hardest stone in the world,

to, if you like,

outlast any other material

that might otherwise be abused by people of descent.

For me, the significance of porphyry

is something to do with its intractability.

I suppose, in my nature, it's to work with things

that are very difficult.

The amount of energy it requires to transform something into something

that transcends its parts,

that's something to do with what it is to make an object of sculpture.

In particular, for it to resonate is something that leads me forward

to try and achieve things that maybe weren't done in Roman times.

The Tetrarch experiment was short-lived

because it relied upon a spirit of collaboration -

unsurprisingly absent in most Roman generals.

Soon the four Tetrarchs were at war.

One of the great turning points in the history of the Roman Empire,

was the Battle of Milvian Bridge outside Rome in AD 312.

An imposing arch was built next to the Coliseum

to commemorate the victory of this man, Constantine.

Constantine would go on to reunite the Empire under his rule

and become one of the most influential emperors in Roman history

but that wasn't all.

Quite a lot of what you encounter in Rome

still has the power to overwhelm you, just in terms of sheer scale,

but...there are a few works of art

that bludgeon you into submission like this one.

This is the Colossus of Constantine the Great...

and you can see fragments... "fragment" is not quite the word,

of what would have been this colossal seated sculpture of Constantine.

There's his arm, you can see the throbbing bicep

and veins that are as thick as a rope

and then the head itself,

the most impressive, overpowering element of all.

It's two and a half metres high

and it would have been the apex of a sculpture of Constantine seated,

enthroned as a god - and this is a pagan sculpture.

He would have been presented as Jupiter, holding an orb in one hand,

like a symbol of his power over the globe.

He's got the features, the visage of a god -

those eyes bulging out, far too big for the face,

stare off into infinity well above our heads.

This is art that feels, in a funny way, almost fascistic.

It's a little bit repellent.

All of these scraps of sculpture, have the subtlety, if you like,

of a big old avalanche.

There's nothing about this statue that gives any hint

of what he's known for -

his conversion to an obscure cult called Christianity.

And the consequences this had for western civilisation and its art

are still with us today.

'I've come to the outskirts of Rome for a glimpse of the faith

'as Constantine would have first encountered it.'

Oh, there's a stampede of sheep!

This is the most beautiful thing.

I've woken up this morning, near St Peter's in Rome,

come down the Appian Way

and I feel like I've walked back thousands of years

and stumbled upon this bucolic wonderland.

The world of Theocritus and Virgil,

with all of these sheep suddenly appearing from nowhere

and somewhere there's a good shepherd beating something.

It's really quite beautiful!

'At the start of the fourth century

'Christianity was still a fringe religion,

'imported from the eastern corner of the Empire.

'Only a fraction of Rome's population was Christian...

'..and they were shunned as outsiders and suffered regular persecution.'

I really don't know where I am at all but let's try and go down here.

It's really gloomy and spooky,

particularly as you go deeper and deeper -

I want to be back outside in the sunshine!

Ah, hello.

MAN MURMURS

-Hi. Oh, sorry.

-OK.

(He didn't want to talk.)

(That was a bit eerie.) Shall we carry on?

I've now descended into this murky netherworld...

..which is part of this huge complex of the catacombs outside Rome.

The cemeteries for the Christian dead.

This one in particular is the catacomb of St Callistus

who was an early Pope, martyred in AD 222.

He was decapitated and then chucked down a well.

And, of course, as you go around the catacombs you see pieces of art.

Now, this is quite interesting.

We've got a couple of sarcophagi here

and rather than being full of pagan imagery, they are Christian.

This one is roughly, I think it's fourth century AD.

It dates from the era of Constantine

and it's decorated with these motifs of the Good Shepherd.

It's quite interesting,

we think of Jesus Christ today as a bearded figure on a cross.

Early Christians thought about him in this way, as a youth,

clean-shaven, bearing a sheep on his shoulders.

You can actually see there's the grisly remains

of the Christian who actually was interred.

And it's quite interesting because if you look at the carvings -

and this is not good art, in my opinion, at all -

you know, this is a far cry from the elegance,

the grandeur of earlier pagan Roman art.

I mean, you compare it to this, a stubby figure, very simply done.

It feels childlike, it feels naive.

So, in a sense, you can understand why, for some people,

late Roman art has a really bad rep but it does have a message,

a heart, and that's what redeems it, perhaps, as a work of art

and makes it a treasure.

It's not materially wonderful to look at

but it has an immaterial message that's quite beautiful.

There's something quite robust and simple and humble in itself -

the simple Christian doctrine,

which completely changed the Roman Empire for ever.

From its humble origins, Christian art really took off,

once it was established as the imperial religion of Rome.

Constantine may have steered clear of overt expressions of his Christian faith in art...

..but later emperors were not so coy.

This bronze colossus,

in the southeastern Italian city of Barletta,

is more than five metres tall.

It's thought to be a late Roman emperor.

One thing is for sure -

he's not hiding his Christianity under a bushel!

One theory is that the colossus originally stood in Ravenna,

on the Adriatic coast of Italy.

Ravenna today is a charming provincial town...

..but during the fifth century,

it was the capital of the western Roman Empire

and a bastion of the Christian faith.

One woman presided over the creation of this vision of heaven on earth -

Galla Placidia.

She was one of the most extraordinary women in Roman history,

daughter, wife and mother of a line of emperors -

she even had a kid with a Goth!

This modest cross-shaped building takes her name...

and contains our final treasure.

CHORAL MUSIC

'These beautiful mosaics from the 420s

'reveal the way that Christian art

'evolved from a very Roman tradition.'

Claudia, this place is genuinely stunning,

it's really, really amazing,

and I can see that, obviously, the imagery is overtly Christian,

there are crosses everywhere, but really the DNA of it is pagan,

all of these motifs, are borrowed from Roman art history.

SHE SPEAKS ITALIAN

But that is really interesting

because, I think, in many people's minds, the Romans, the Christians, they're at odds.

The popular image is of Romans feeding Christians to the lions

but what you're saying and what we see here,

-is the two worlds meshed together.

-Absolutely.

What's behind the door that says forbidden access? Can we go inside?

-You are welcome!

-Oh, good, thanks.

Is this... Are you working on the other side of this door?

Is this where you're doing the restoration? Presumably.

This is quite special! You don't normally see it like this, do you?

The colours are SO bright and intense.

I feel so delighted that I visited the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

because the mosaics are astonishing...

..not least because almost every element -

the vines, the beautiful scrolling acanthus plants...

..EVEN the stars swirling,

swarming up against that rich blue background of the dome,

they're all recognisable motifs from the pagan Roman world...

..adapted, recycled to a Christian context.

It just goes to show that we should be wary

whenever people arbitrarily try and tidy away history

into these fussy little boxes because life is never that simple.

The history books tell us that Ravenna's heyday,

coincided with the demise of the Roman Empire.

Rome supposedly was laid to rest in the year AD 476,

when a Germanic chieftain deposed the last emperor,

but that doesn't mean that Roman art stopped overnight.

And visiting Ravenna does remind you of this

because here you've got a Roman monument.

It's indelibly associated with the fifth century after Christ,

i.e. before Rome supposedly fell in 476,

but just over here, a stone's throw away, is a resplendent church,

the church of San Vitale, which scholars usually assign

to a completely different period of art history altogether.

Thing is, I bet you - I haven't been inside yet -

but I bet you, that the story of how the ancients got from there to there,

is as much about continuity as it is about dramatic change.

The mosaics in San Vitale were made in the century after Rome's fall.

They celebrate Justinian the Great,

who'd reclaimed Ravenna from the Goths,

for the so-called eastern Roman Empire.

Of course, as splendid as, obviously, this is,

it's no longer Roman art, it's Byzantine,

but just as the Romans supposedly copied and looted

the art of the Greeks hundreds of years earlier,

so what we see here emerged out of the Roman world.

It's part of one vast continuum that stretches back almost a millennium.

And I should keep my voice down because I'm in a church

but that's partly why I get so irritated

when people are sniffy about Roman art.

I mean, it's even been questioned whether or not it existed at all,

which is completely ridiculous.

Despite that, though, I think it would be wrong

to avoid the big question marks that still hang over Roman art, even today.

As Monty Python almost put it, "What has Roman art ever done for us?"

Well, the answer is, considerably more than most people imagine.

The Romans gave us the warts-and-all portrait bust...

..and a passion for realism...

..they pioneered monumental art...

..but also celebrated the intimate...

and the sensual...

In terms of technique,

they set standards that wouldn't be matched again for centuries...

..and in the end they gave us the look of a faith,

that has dominated western art ever since.

I've really felt two things very strongly, sort of, overall.

One is just that the idea that the Romans were

these incompetent, clodhopping philistines when it came to art,

is just total nonsense.

You just have to look around

and you're confronted by example after example

of really sophisticated, top-notch, beautiful art.

The other thing I've felt

is a tremendous sense of humility and modesty,

and I've just felt quite little,

like this dwarf kind of wandering in amongst the world of giants.

And it's almost humbling to see that nothing lasts for ever, at all.

Although, on the other hand, a building like the Pantheon, behind me,

is doing a pretty good job at making a stab for immortality.

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