Roma era una ciudad cosmopolita con griegos, sirios, judíos, norafricanos, españoles, galos y britones, y como cualquier otra sociedad, el ciudadano Romano promedio se levantaba cada mañana, trabajaba, se relajaba y comía, y aunque su vida diaria con frecuencia era agitada, el o ella, siempre sobervivía.
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00:00This is the Via Appia, one of the footpaths that thousands of Romans took to get in and out of their capital every day.
00:29Young and old, rich and poor, clean and dirty.
00:36And here I want to start with a question that really interests me.
00:41Who were the ancient Romans?
00:45Outside the city, there was a line of thousands and thousands of tombs.
00:50So before you came to the city of Rome, you had already met the Romans, the dead ones, of course.
00:56And the lives of many of them began or ended far from Rome.
01:05This is just a fragment of the tomb of someone called Esquinus.
01:12Oquisus is in Lusitania.
01:17He was murdered in Hispania.
01:21This lady's name was Usia Prima, priestess of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
01:27And there's her little sacred sonneteer.
01:30She's almost looking at you.
01:33I feel like saying, lovely cousin.
01:40They came from all the social conditions and all the corners of the empire.
01:45And many of them had been slaves.
01:48They're not the kind of people we usually think of when we think of Romans.
01:58All these Romans lived in the center of a vast empire that extended from present-day Spain to Syria.
02:05It dominated the Western world for more than 700 years.
02:11Like it or not, ancient Rome is still present in our roads, laws and architecture.
02:19We continue to recreate it in cinema and fiction.
02:22And every year, thousands of us come here to see its monuments up close,
02:26to imagine the emperors, the armies, the gladiators.
02:31And let's be honest, also the blood.
02:33Hidden throughout the modern city, in its walls, behind the facades, even in its streets,
02:38there's something much more difficult to find, but just as captivating.
02:43The forgotten voices of ordinary people are still there, if we know where to look.
02:49Callidius eroticus means Mr. Hot Sex.
02:54This is a Roman menage a trois.
02:57This wasn't just a robbery, this was a mass murder.
03:02The Romans didn't just engrave their names and dates on their tombstones.
03:06They didn't want to be forgotten, so they left their thoughts, their achievements,
03:11and even the history of their lives, chiseled in stone.
03:15An exceptional chronicle of the life of the Romans.
03:18I've spent almost all my life with the ancient Romans, but not just with the greatest.
03:23The emperors, the politicians, the generals, the most distinguished.
03:28The people I've always wanted to get to know the most have been the ordinary people,
03:33who had their own part to play in the history of this city.
03:37And what intrigues me the most is that we can still have a conversation with them,
03:42even 2,000 years later.
03:45In this series, I'll give you a voice again to reconstruct a very different story
03:50of life in ancient Rome.
03:53I'll go through the doors of their homes to meet ordinary Roman families
03:57whose lives and possessions can reflect ours in a surprising way.
04:03This is a bit special.
04:05It's not just a simple Barbie, it's the Empress Barbie.
04:10I'll go down the streets where society, crime, sex, and humor in their daily lives
04:16show us what it was like to live in an ancient city of a million people.
04:22The bathrooms, the wine, and the sex, I said, ruin the body.
04:27True, but they make life really worth it.
04:34But I'll start by telling the true story of imperial Rome,
04:38looking beyond violence and show to find a global city
04:42that sought talent and treasures in remote corners of the earth,
04:46a place where everything and everyone came from elsewhere.
04:50These are the Romans I'm interested in. Welcome to Rome.
04:55IMPERIAL ROME
05:19When you arrived in Rome in its imperial heyday 2,000 years ago,
05:23you were in a new kind of city.
05:28Rome had been a small city-state, but conquest after conquest,
05:32it became the capital of a vast empire,
05:35a place where, for the first time in history,
05:38a million people from three different continents tried to live together.
05:42One thing we know about Rome is that it was not just a city, but an empire,
05:47and for us that means looting armies, generals, conquerors,
05:52bloodthirsty dictators and emperors.
05:55We tend not to forget the ordinary people who lived here
05:59at the heart of it all.
06:02For them, the empire put them in contact with the whole world,
06:06from present-day Scotland to Afghanistan,
06:10and made this city a more cosmopolitan place
06:14than any other would have been or ever be for centuries.
06:18But we ask ourselves, what did the Romans do for us?
06:22I think we should ask ourselves,
06:25what did the empire do for the Romans?
06:28And who were the Romans really?
06:33In the city, we find more evidence than we would expect
06:37for the impact that the Roman conquest had on the lives of the people on foot.
06:42It is enough to look at it from a slightly different angle.
06:49One of the most famous monuments in the Forum
06:53celebrates the moment when an army of conquerors returned home.
06:58In 71 AD, the city stopped its activity
07:03on the day of the triumphant return of Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus,
07:08who had ended a rebellion in Judea.
07:12Here we have the triumphant general Titus
07:15strolling through the streets of Rome
07:18with his squad to celebrate his victory.
07:24And on the other side, we've got the booty that he brought home with him.
07:29Titus had destroyed the rebellion,
07:33and here we can see the booty he brought from the Temple of Jerusalem.
07:37It's a grand display.
07:39But what I want to do is try and pump up that pomposity a little bit
07:44and ask myself, how would the people, the ordinary Romans who came to see it,
07:49who left their homes and came to see the show, live?
07:58A triumph like this could be the first vision of the Roman people
08:02of all the things that the armies would bring back after their distant victories.
08:07The boots, the maps of the conquered territory,
08:10the models of the battles, even the trees,
08:13they would tear them down and bring them back to Rome.
08:17How would the people react?
08:20Some would be left breathless and others would be drawn to the captives,
08:24or perhaps their minds were elsewhere.
08:27One Roman poet recommends triumphal parades as a place to play with the girls.
08:33How would you do it?
08:35Well, he says, if you watched the parade,
08:38you would give a little nod and say,
08:41I think that over there is the Euphrates and that over there is the Tigris.
08:45There was no need to know anything,
08:47you just had to sound convincing and you ended up doing your own conquest.
08:53It's funny, but it also reflects the way in which Roman lives
08:57could change because of the booty obtained by the Empire.
09:01Those girls would not only see that as something quite strange,
09:05but also exciting.
09:10But what did the Roman armies of the Empire bring?
09:14The import that had the greatest impact
09:17was one in which we do not usually think, that of human beings.
09:24They are forgotten people, but if we take the time to listen,
09:28we can still hear the voices of some of the millions
09:32who followed the Roman armies in the city for all kinds of reasons.
09:40This is for my brother, Javiviano de Palmira.
09:44I am Germanus, heir of Regulus.
09:49This is for Diocles, champion of the races of the squadrons of Hispania.
09:54Here we have a young slave of 17 years,
09:58Frine, slave of African turtle, natural of Africa.
10:04This was chosen by a soldier for his wife, Carnuntila,
10:08born near Vienna, in ancient Pannonia.
10:12The strange thing is that Carnuntila is not really a real name.
10:17It comes from the name of a town in Pannonia, Carnuntum,
10:22and means, more or less, my girl from Carnuntum.
10:26So my guess is, maybe he bought her as a slave,
10:30freed her, brought her to Rome and married her.
10:35But sadly, his girl from Carnuntum died at only 19 years old.
10:45Touching stories like this await us in every corner of the city,
10:49and remind us of the different ways
10:52you could be born abroad and end up in Rome.
10:56But they tell us something else.
10:58These people were not only brought to serve the Romans,
11:02they were becoming Romans.
11:06One of the tombs of the Via Appia shows us another face
11:09of the history of the Arch of Titus.
11:13It's a tombstone of three men,
11:17one called Barica, one called Zabda, and one called Akiva.
11:23Typical Jewish names.
11:26So the question is, what is the story of Barica, Zabda and Akiva?
11:32How did they get here?
11:34If they did start out life in Judea,
11:36how did they end up as Roman citizens in Rome?
11:40It's more surprising than we think.
11:43Judging by the letters and how they're written on this stone,
11:47they were carved in the 1st century AD.
11:50And knowing that, we can add two plus two.
11:56I'm almost certain that these three men
11:59participated in the Jewish rebellion
12:02against the Romans in the late 60s AD.
12:07These men entered Rome with the army of Titus,
12:11as prisoners of war.
12:13It must have seemed the worst moment of their lives,
12:17being stabbed, beaten, people throwing things at them.
12:21But perhaps the worst was yet to come.
12:25They were subdued as slaves,
12:27and acquired by a man called Lucius Valerius.
12:31We don't know what slavery was like,
12:34but he freed them and they became new Roman citizens.
12:39His name, Lucius Valerius,
12:43their Jewish names, their Jewish identity.
12:48This is one of the ways in which the Roman conquest worked.
12:53It did bring slaves,
12:55but it also brought new Roman citizens.
13:01It's a fairy tale with a happy ending,
13:04and a typical Roman story.
13:07When men like these were freed,
13:10they didn't return to their old Jewish lives.
13:13They stayed in their new home,
13:15and in fact, they became Roman,
13:18with all the rights and privileges
13:21that Roman citizenship implied.
13:24But what kept them in Rome?
13:26How many of them were there?
13:28How many of them were there?
13:30And where did all those new Romans live?
13:33To try and make sense of this,
13:35I meet up with a colleague in the Trastevere,
13:38which literally means the other side of the Tiber,
13:41from the old center of the city.
13:43It's famous for being the nucleus of immigrants in Rome, even now.
13:48In this area, the Trastevere, the other side of the Tiber,
13:52was where the old city of Rome was located.
13:55And it's here that we find the greatest evidence of immigrant communities.
13:59Jews, Assyrians.
14:01I guess if you asked an old Roman,
14:04where is the biggest area of immigrants in Rome,
14:07he'd say...
14:08By the river.
14:09By the river.
14:10The other side.
14:12Part of the answer to why an area like this could be so cosmopolitan
14:17lies in the history of slaves like Varica, Shabda, and Akiva.
14:22The Greeks thought that the Romans were quite rare to free so many slaves.
14:26And make them citizens.
14:28Yes, even if it was brutal,
14:30being a slave could be a kind of stage in your life,
14:33like learning.
14:34You arrived as a German, they gave you a Roman name,
14:37you learned Latin, you learned some kind of useful trade for your master,
14:41he freed you, and there you were.
14:43You were a Roman citizen with a profession, a Roman name,
14:46and a lot of powerful contacts.
14:48It was your entry into Roman society.
14:50Now, if we multiply that by the hundreds or thousands of slaves
14:55who were freed,
14:57we see that the ethnic nature of the people
15:00who were considered citizens of Rome
15:03was changing very quickly.
15:06Being Roman was a kind of vocation,
15:08a movement that attracted other people.
15:11This was a completely new idea,
15:13and in many ways the secret to the success of the empire.
15:17The word Roman no longer referred to the city where you came from,
15:21but to something that you could become.
15:24Almost everyone in Rome was a descendant of someone who came from abroad,
15:29and not just ex-slaves.
15:32People who worked at the docks,
15:34builders, prostitutes, peasants,
15:36who had come to Rome because they believed that here they could eat
15:40what they couldn't eat on their land.
15:42So it was a great and chaotic mix of people who came without knowing anyone.
15:46They headed for the unknown,
15:48to a place where nothing guaranteed your survival.
15:52And curiously, that was one of the reasons
15:54why Rome allowed these people to enter.
15:57Any city the size of Rome needed immigration
16:01because the number of dead exceeded the number of born.
16:04Rome was a malarious city in ancient times,
16:07so those who came here did not enjoy any immunity.
16:10They caught the disease and in a few years they had died.
16:13So just to keep Rome's size,
16:15it needed more and more people.
16:18Rome swallowed people.
16:21It was a city that consumed people and spat them out dead.
16:29Perhaps we should stop thinking of the Romans
16:32as a nation or superior race that conquered the world,
16:35and instead think of a babel of people
16:39who were devastated and piled up very far from their land.
16:43And with the hope of a better future.
16:46Because for foreigners, Rome was not all pessimism.
16:51I guess sometimes people came to Rome just to seek their fortunes.
16:57This is an epitaph written in Greek,
17:00of a man who is said to be always laughing,
17:03always having a joke and talent for music.
17:08He might have come from a band, right?
17:13And actually, what this stone does tell us,
17:17is that he came to the Italic lands,
17:20ex-Asiaes, from Asia.
17:24That's modern Turkey.
17:27It says he died here when he was young.
17:30And it ends up saying,
17:33Toinoma Menopholos, in Greek.
17:36Menopholos is the name.
17:40Now, Rome might have consumed people,
17:43and it might have been a dangerous place.
17:46It might have been a place full of disease.
17:49But I guess, to a man like Menopholos,
17:52the streets seemed to be paved with gold.
18:02Not all immigrants from Rome belonged to the lower classes.
18:07The Senate and the Imperial Palace were full of foreigners,
18:11just like the streets of Trastevere.
18:14Rome was international, from the base to the top.
18:18Rome, the City of Menopholos
18:27Little by little, this city was filling up with Menopholos.
18:36With the arrival of new people,
18:38the population of Rome doubled,
18:40and it doubled again, until it exceeded a million.
18:44No other place in Europe was as populated as London in the Victorian era.
18:50We think of Rome as a very old city.
18:54But 2,000 years ago,
18:57this place was brand new.
19:01It must have been full of works,
19:04new temporary housing.
19:07It must have felt a bit like Dubai.
19:10But there's a big question mark.
19:13If you've got a million people everywhere,
19:16how do you keep them alive?
19:19How do you feed them?
19:21How do you keep the vast Roman multicultural show on the road?
19:28Feeding a million people was an unprecedented challenge.
19:35In the center of the modern city,
19:37there's a place that gives us an idea of the colossal consumption in ancient Rome.
19:44The locals call it Mount Testaccio,
19:47the Mount of Broken Vases.
19:50I consider it one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in the world.
19:59I've got it.
20:02This is absolutely extraordinary.
20:07Each of these fragments was once part of a large,
20:11ancient Roman vase.
20:15What is amazing about this is that we can prove
20:18that it is a mountain of broken vases.
20:21There's no earth that's been mixed with other things.
20:25So you see how, in a very clear way,
20:28these fragments of pottery have been piled up.
20:31It's a mountain, not a heap.
20:34It's a mountain, not a heap.
20:38It's a real hill, but there's nothing natural about it.
20:42It's an ancient, huge dump of garbage
20:45made up entirely of discarded vases,
20:48of amphorae that contained only one of the products consumed by Rome,
20:53olive oil, which was filtered into the tins and turned them into rancid.
20:59And these were the only containers that couldn't be recycled.
21:03Poor old amphorae.
21:05They were taken out to break them with the pick and throw them into the mountain.
21:10And the olive oil that they contained was present everywhere.
21:14It was key to Roman life.
21:16They used it in the kitchen to create perfumes.
21:20And those who exercised,
21:22they used it in the bathrooms to rub themselves and wash themselves well.
21:27And it was also what the poor old lady
21:30who had just got a ceramic lamp used to use.
21:34What came in this amphora was her only source of light at night.
21:43It's no exaggeration to say that Rome worked with olive oil.
21:47This place offers archaeologists the great opportunity
21:51to find out how it got here.
21:53It got here in huge quantities.
21:56This must have been originally...
21:59Even bigger.
22:00Even bigger?
22:01Yes, and very heavy.
22:02Yeah.
22:0330 kilos when they were empty?
22:05Empty, yes.
22:06My suitcase, when it's full,
22:08weighs the same as this empty amphora.
22:10Empty, yes.
22:11And the amazing thing is that you can often find out
22:14where the oil came from exactly.
22:16We know that it says A-R-V-A.
22:19Arva is the name of a city on the shores of the Guadalquivir.
22:25So that's linked to a city in the south of Spain.
22:31A Roman city in the south of Spain.
22:34And the guy who made this amphora
22:36stamped it with the name of his city,
22:38saying, this is a product of Arva.
22:41Yes.
22:43According to these commercial brands,
22:45almost all the oil from this mountain came from Spain
22:48and a little from North Africa.
22:51Today, Italy is famous for its olive oil,
22:54but in ancient times, most of it was imported from elsewhere.
22:59The fascinating thing about this mountain
23:02is the way that you can reconstruct
23:04the everyday stories of these vessels and their contents.
23:10In the Spanish coast, they were loaded on boats,
23:13and if they were lucky, they would be able to bring them.
23:16But there were many shipwrecks in the Mediterranean at the time.
23:20They arrived at the coast, they were unloaded,
23:22they were placed on boats,
23:24they were taken up the Tiber to the same city of Rome,
23:27they were unloaded again, they were placed in warehouses,
23:30they were poured into small containers,
23:33and the amphoras ended up here.
23:36Although it may not seem like it at first glance,
23:38this is one of the most impressive monuments in Rome
23:41as a consumer imperialist city
23:43that brought the food that it needed through the Mediterranean.
23:52And not just olive oil.
23:55After a short trip along the Tiber River,
23:57you arrived at the port of Ostia.
24:05Today, Ostia is one of the best-kept secrets of Rome,
24:09and it helps us discover what was important to Rome and from where.
24:20Martin Millet has been excavating near here,
24:23and together we are going to explore a fascinating square
24:26next to the theater, which we call the Square of Corporations.
24:31Well, Martin, this is where I do my homework.
24:35I'll never forget it.
24:37If we sweep the pine needles,
24:39we find mosaics everywhere,
24:41announcing corporations that import products from abroad.
24:47Cordels.
24:48Cordels.
24:49Cordels.
24:52This is the organization of leather merchants.
24:55Yes.
24:56The Naviculariorum Lignariorum.
24:59These were wood merchants.
25:01So, so far we have...
25:03Rope,
25:04pelts,
25:06and wood.
25:08We find at least 50 of these mosaics.
25:11Most of them indicate both a place and a product.
25:14And they lead us to a conclusion.
25:16Rome was being supplied from all corners of the Mediterranean.
25:21The Italian peninsula was not big enough to support the city of Rome.
25:25It was a city that demanded resources from everywhere.
25:29This was a great novelty in Western history.
25:32Rome had become what we now call a large-scale consumer city.
25:37These were not luxury goods, but first-need goods.
25:41Wood, leather, oil, wine, and mainly grain.
25:46They say that Rome was a consumer city
25:49with a population that amounted to a million.
25:51And that implied 150,000 tons of grain a year.
25:56I don't know how big their ships would be,
25:59but they would need a lot of ships to carry 150,000 tons of grain.
26:05As the city grew, the present-day lands of Sicily, Libya, and then Egypt
26:10would produce wheat for the people of Rome.
26:15When the grain ships arrived in the Italian peninsula,
26:18the voice was heard in Rome.
26:20The food had arrived.
26:22This was something that the empire did for Rome, to keep it alive.
26:27But it did more than that.
26:30Let's pay attention to life in that consumer city.
26:34Who were the winners and who were the losers?
26:37A very interesting aspect is how they used this imported grain.
26:41And that leads us to think about bread.
26:44Not just about eating it, but about making it.
26:47I'm the second in command here.
26:50Like this.
26:51Okay.
26:52Yes.
26:53They trusted me to knead it.
26:57200,000 Roman citizens who lived in the city of Rome
27:02received the so-called grain subsidy every month.
27:07A free ration that ranged between 35 and 40 kilos of grain.
27:14And it was enough to make bread for a month for two people.
27:20This was an extraordinary privilege for the citizens of Rome.
27:24200,000 of them received free rations from the state.
27:28But how did it work?
27:30Many of them lived in a single room without a kitchen.
27:34So they depended on the baker to make bread.
27:37But how did it work?
27:39Many of them lived in a single room without a kitchen.
27:42So they depended on the baker to make bread.
27:48Are you going to try it?
27:49Yes.
27:50Let's try it.
27:54It's good.
27:55It's not bad for a first attempt.
27:58It's not bad.
28:00Also, it's the wonderful food of the people.
28:06This is tearing and sharing the bread.
28:10You don't even have to use a bread knife to eat it.
28:14It's good.
28:16We should get rid of the idea that this was a kind of
28:20proto-state of well-being.
28:25Of course, some of the poor would benefit from the grain.
28:30But charity wasn't a priority for the emperor
28:35when it came to investing all that time and money
28:39to distribute this grain.
28:42What he was concerned about was the idea
28:45that a hungry populace was a dissatisfied populace,
28:49and a dissatisfied populace was dangerous.
28:54The grain wasn't distributed to the poorest of Rome,
28:59it was only for Roman citizens.
29:03You had to be a citizen to receive that grain,
29:07and that made it a great advantage to be a full Roman citizen.
29:13In a way, this reveals to us that being a Roman citizen
29:17was a privilege that foreigners could aspire to,
29:21and advantages like the grain subsidy
29:24helped to understand why people wanted to be Roman.
29:28But we also see that all these things, the empire,
29:32imports, new citizens, were part of the cycle.
29:36The more Rome grew, the more it consumed
29:39and the more the empire had to grow to sustain it.
29:43So, how did this massive consumption change life in Rome?
29:47Well, this was one of the best moments in history to be a baker.
29:52And it was a baker who left one of the strangest monuments in Rome,
29:57now hidden under one of the city's doors.
30:01It's the tomb monument of a man called Marcus Virgilius Eurysace.
30:07He's almost certainly a slave,
30:11and he was a baker and a contractor.
30:15He must have made quite a lot of money out of his work,
30:19otherwise he wouldn't have been able to afford a tomb like this.
30:27What Eurysace did was give himself a themed tomb.
30:32At the very top of the monument,
30:35there were scenes from the life of the bakery.
30:39Kneading, putting it in the oven, weighing the stuff out.
30:45And even these strange circles and columns below
30:49would be recognized by the Romans as bakery equipment.
30:53The circles were probably the kneading machines,
30:57and the columns, the containers in which the dough was kneaded.
31:02The writing in Latin says,
31:04this is the tomb of Eurysace, baker and contractor.
31:09Aparet, it's obvious.
31:11We can interpret this as, this is the monument of a baker.
31:15Do you get it?
31:17And I really like the way we're still getting it 2000 years later.
31:21Do we get that this is the tomb of a baker?
31:24Yeah, of course.
31:26Eurysace could joke because he was doing quite well.
31:30His name sounds Greek,
31:32so it's likely he came from abroad
31:34and ended up being one of those people
31:36who made a lot of money out of the empire.
31:39I've got a tremendous weakness for Eurysace,
31:42but I doubt that all the Romans would feel the same way.
31:46My guess is that when some old Roman
31:49would pass through this tomb all his life,
31:52he'd think it was a little bit tacky,
31:55like I'd think if any football player
31:58designed his tomb in the shape of a giant football boot.
32:04The joke of Eurysace reminds us
32:07that the empire had a direct effect
32:10on how people made a living in Rome.
32:13It was becoming a city of urban professionals.
32:17One of the reasons why the ancient Rome
32:20is still familiar to us
32:22is that people did a wide variety of trades like us,
32:27but it's important not to forget
32:30that while this is at sea,
32:33this was one of the ways
32:36that Rome was radically new and different.
32:41In the traditional, small city,
32:44the idea was that the inhabitants
32:47were polyphathetic people,
32:50the same men who fought in the wars,
32:54ploughed the fields and produced the food of the city.
32:59But in imperial Rome,
33:01due to the enormous size of the city,
33:04such labour was externalised.
33:07The food now came from abroad,
33:10it wasn't produced by local farmers.
33:13And the armed forces that were stationed
33:16throughout the Roman Empire
33:18were no longer just citizens providing military services,
33:22but military professionals.
33:25The empire allowed, or rather forced,
33:28the Romans to earn a living by specialising.
33:32Whether that was being a pearl merchant,
33:35a warehouse manager,
33:37or even a hairdresser for the rich and famous.
33:41What this did was to differentiate
33:44people in a completely new way.
33:48If you asked an Egyptian or a Greek
33:51who they were,
33:53they would give you the name of their father or their hometown.
33:57But if you asked an average Roman,
34:00I'm sure they'd tell you how to earn a living,
34:03and we have proof in their tombstones.
34:06These guys worked in the Piperataria,
34:10that is, in the pepper market.
34:14These were warehouse men,
34:17or reoreorun.
34:20And this man was Sagarius,
34:23a great fabricator of coats.
34:26A saga is the ancient equivalent of a woolen coat.
34:30An accountant?
34:34Oh, she's great.
34:36She's a piscatrix.
34:38She's a female fish.
34:40And he was a gold broker.
34:44And here is a cashman
34:48for a lady called Celia Epire.
34:53And she was an aurybestrix.
34:57She was a very, very sophisticated garment maker.
35:03It's very striking how each of these people
35:07tell in their tombstones what they did.
35:11Now, I think we have to relate that
35:15to the sheer size of the population
35:18and the great anonymity of a great imperial metropolis.
35:22In a world without identity cards,
35:25without passports,
35:27without birth certificates,
35:29how did you know what you were or who you were?
35:32You knew it because of your job.
35:35I am Celia Epire,
35:38a luxury garment maker.
35:41How did you make your identity clear?
35:44By saying, this is what I do.
35:50This is where Imperial Rome is really fascinating to me.
35:53This is not just the story of a city
35:56that becomes rich at the expense of other places.
35:59It's the story of a place where people were trying
36:02a new way of living.
36:04They came from all over the world
36:06and became a small piece of this great gear.
36:09You may not know your neighbors
36:11and they may not know you,
36:13but everyone was looking for new ways
36:16to leave their mark and stand out.
36:19The empire not only helped people to rise in the world,
36:22but it also helped those who did it
36:25to show them that they had succeeded.
36:28New opportunities for visible consumption were created.
36:32The empire offered the majority of people in Western Europe
36:35their first experience with pepper, lemons and cherries.
36:38An open-minded Roman complained
36:41that the kitchen had gone from being a mere function
36:44to a great art.
36:47The empire transformed the sensory experience of the city.
36:50There were new ways of living,
36:53new ways of thinking,
36:56new ways of thinking,
36:59and a new way of living.
37:02There were new smells, new flavors, new colors,
37:05and nowhere is clearer than in the elaborate paintings
37:08with which many wealthy Romans decorated their walls.
37:11In Pompeii there is perhaps the most famous Roman painting.
37:14It's a pretty strange scene
37:17with what looks like a phallus
37:20and a woman breastfeeding a goat.
37:23But the colors would have amazed an ancient visitor
37:27apart from the daring thematic.
37:30Of course, we should not make the mistake of thinking
37:33that the poor Romans lived in black and white
37:36until they began to conquer the Mediterranean
37:39because they had all kinds of local minerals and plants
37:42that offered them pigments to paint.
37:45But as time went on,
37:48they became more and more interested
37:51in the unusual bright colors
37:54of their territories.
37:57Well, this one here is one of the best versions
38:00that exist of authentic red,
38:03the Spanish Vermilion,
38:06a beautiful and bright red.
38:09We imagine that if you came to dinner here
38:12and the generous host began to show you everything,
38:15he could say,
38:18this woman here is flirting with this other one for this and the other,
38:21and he could also tell you,
38:24it's a beautiful red, isn't it?
38:27In fact, it's Spanish Vermilion,
38:30imported especially from Spain.
38:33I paid for it myself as an improvement.
38:36We live in a world of synthetic colors,
38:39bright and cheap,
38:42but the Romans don't.
38:45In Rome, bright colors were a luxury
38:48for foreigners,
38:51but the desire for them created an even bigger job niche
38:54for the Romans.
38:57This is a guy who was really passionate about what he was doing.
39:00He put up this tombstone when he was alive,
39:03vivos fequis,
39:06for himself and for his family,
39:09and he put on it the tools of his trade.
39:12Now, he worked as a painter
39:16and here we have the little flasks
39:19in which his ink came,
39:22the scales in which he measured his ingredients
39:25and the skeins of the material he had.
39:28But he wasn't just any inkweller.
39:31At the top, it says his name,
39:34Caius Pupius Amicus Purpurarius.
39:37He was a purple inkweller.
39:41In Rome, purple was special.
39:44It came from the eastern Mediterranean
39:47and was extracted from small seabeds.
39:50It was spectacular,
39:53and it wasn't just expensive,
39:56but its use was regulated by the law.
39:59If you saw a man on the street
40:02with a toga with a wide purple band,
40:05he must have been a senator,
40:08part of the political elite.
40:11And the only person in the empire
40:14who was allowed to wear purple clothes
40:17was the Roman emperor himself.
40:20The use of color was monitored.
40:23It's as if Queen Elizabeth II
40:26was the only person in the United Kingdom
40:29who could wear pink.
40:32But that says a lot about Rome
40:36and the Roman Empire,
40:39that the most visible marker
40:42of political and social status
40:45should have been the product
40:48from the eastern part of the Mediterranean.
40:51No wonder that Caius Pupius Amicus
40:54was proud to be a Purpurarius.
40:57The history of color
41:00is not just a history of luxury,
41:03but of identity,
41:06of the power that visible consumption had
41:09to mark you as someone special,
41:12both if you supplied and if you consumed.
41:15All those imports helped you stand out.
41:18Like people and products,
41:21new gods also came
41:25from the remote borders of the empire.
41:28You could have your own style,
41:31your own tastes and your own beliefs.
41:34But let's not get carried away
41:37by the exoticism that the empire offered.
41:40What the foreign purple
41:43of the senator's robe tells us
41:46is that you could be completely foreign
41:49and Roman at the same time.
41:52Romans had a way of thinking
41:55about other cultures
41:58that was very different from ours.
42:01We really mustn't fall into the mistake
42:04of imagining Rome as a sort of
42:07cultural melting pot.
42:10Yes, and if you wore inappropriate clothes,
42:13they laughed at you.
42:16If you spoke in a strange way,
42:19they laughed at you.
42:22Yes, because they don't eat pork.
42:25What nonsense.
42:28The poet Martial spoke about the puela,
42:31who had never tasted a Roman mentula.
42:34The Roman girl who had never tasted a Roman penis.
42:37It was something rude and quite unpleasant too.
42:40The ironic thing is that the man
42:43who wrote this came from Spain.
42:46He didn't come from Spain,
42:49but from those who didn't do things in the Roman style.
42:52Although people from all over the world came to this city,
42:55they didn't end up in a Chinatown or a Little Italy
42:58like we have in the major metropolises today.
43:01These people ruled the world.
43:04They were senators who ruled Portugal, Egypt,
43:07ruled throughout the Danube,
43:10and they never came back and said,
43:13I don't agree with them, that kitchen as such
43:16had to end up being part of the Roman kitchen.
43:19They had a city that didn't look like anything that had existed before.
43:22It had a much greater diversity of people,
43:25of customs, of languages, lots of them.
43:28Probably hundreds of languages,
43:31at least, were spoken in the city of Rome.
43:34But they generally only wrote in Greek and Latin,
43:37and a little in Hebrew.
43:41We're talking about the most diverse,
43:44cultural, ethnic, and religious city
43:47that had ever existed.
43:50But their form of multiculturalism
43:53is quite different from ours.
43:58Yes, there was cultural diversity,
44:01but there was no diversity of cultures.
44:05That makes a lot of sense.
44:08Like all Roman culture,
44:11it was an amalgam.
44:14They didn't see the need for alternative,
44:17parallel cultures, and even less respect for them.
44:20In Rome, diversity was not based on separation.
44:23There wasn't a Chinatown,
44:26or even a Jewish neighborhood.
44:29In fact, the average Roman would be amazed
44:32at the way we try to respect and preserve
44:36Here, the people came from everywhere.
44:39The food came from everywhere.
44:42The gods were from everywhere.
44:45But they all went into the mixer,
44:48and the result was Roman.
44:51The empire was doing two things to Rome.
44:54It displayed all the exotic and luxurious rarities
44:57of the outside world.
45:00But at the same time,
45:03the division between the Romans and the oppressed
45:06was dissolving over time.
45:09Finally, all the free men and adults of the empire
45:12were considered Roman citizens.
45:17For me, there is a place
45:20that captures the contradictions of imperial Rome.
45:23The Colosseum
45:32If the people had a palace here,
45:35it was the Colosseum.
45:38It was built and financed with the loot of the Jewish war
45:41as a gift to the Roman people,
45:44and there is no doubt about that.
45:47Some had to climb a lot of stairs.
45:54I'm in the only part of the Colosseum
45:57that I was allowed to be in.
46:00Women, slaves,
46:03and other undesirables in the Roman world
46:06had to be up on the gods.
46:14So what does it look like
46:17from the perspective of the undesirables?
46:20At the moment, let's not think of blood and guts,
46:23although there is a lot of that.
46:26Let's think in imperial terms.
46:29What you had on display in front of you
46:32was the best and the greatest
46:35that the empire could offer.
46:41People often compare it to football games,
46:44but in that case, this would not be the first division,
46:47but the World Cup.
46:50They were fantastic fights
46:53with strange and exotic creatures,
46:56animals that you could only imagine in dreams.
46:59When this place opened,
47:02you even had rhinos running around.
47:10This is a place where we can see the empire
47:13from the point of view of ordinary people.
47:17This guy is watching the show
47:20and during the break or while he was watching it,
47:23he was drawing the scene.
47:26The scene, yes.
47:29What I saw on the sand.
47:32What do we have here?
47:35We can see wild animals, like a panther.
47:38And two bears.
47:41Right, and a fighter, a bestiarius.
47:44A very muscular man.
47:47This is great, because not only does it show us
47:50the point of view of a spectator,
47:53but it also captures the feeling of being here.
47:56But he was not alone.
47:59The Romans loved to draw the beasts
48:02with which the Colosseum amazed them.
48:05Seeing those exotic animals for the first time
48:08must have been impressive.
48:11And the same thing happened
48:14with the other stars of the show,
48:17the gladiators.
48:20This is a fantastic surprise for me,
48:23because it's a real-life gladiator's helmet,
48:26the dead gladiator's helmet from Pompeii.
48:29It's very heavy.
48:32And when you pick it up,
48:35you see that it has a big crest
48:39and a bust of Hercules in front
48:42to scare the opponent.
48:45I can't put it on,
48:48but I can get an idea
48:51of what it would be like to wear it.
48:54But what it makes you see
48:57is that it's very heavy
49:00and you get a very reduced view
49:03because everything is kind of shaded off
49:06both by the visor
49:09and by the protective grid.
49:12I don't quite see how you knew
49:15where your damn opponent was.
49:18The other thing about it
49:21is it's just incredibly rare
49:24and I think the Romans would agree with that.
49:27The conclusion about these gladiators
49:30is that they didn't dress like Roman soldiers.
49:33They didn't dress like Roman soldiers
49:36that you would see if you were going to fight the barbarians.
49:39They were exotic,
49:42rare and extravagant clothes
49:45designed to symbolize the mysterious outside world
49:48and the violence that could be in it.
49:51In a way,
49:54I think what we have here
49:57is a kind of costume.
50:00I think it would give them the feeling
50:03that people came to see the costumes
50:06in addition to seeing them.
50:09Where do I go now?
50:12I can't see.
50:15So, when I think about gladiator fights,
50:18I know that some of them were to death.
50:21They ended up dying,
50:24but more and more frequently
50:27it was theater.
50:30For me, it was more like a free fight farce
50:33than a real boxing fight.
50:36And part of the reasons
50:39were purely economic.
50:42You could have hundreds of gladiators
50:45and since they were so expensive
50:48you didn't want them to be killed very often.
50:51There's a bit of a disparity in size here
50:55but I'm afraid that the Thracian
50:58is going to be defeated.
51:01Well, the Murmillo has won.
51:04Congratulations.
51:07For the Romans,
51:10gladiators represented a violent fantasy
51:13of the outside world around them.
51:16But we find a fascinating irony
51:19in the origins of men
51:22behind the masks.
51:25Here I have a wonderful drawing,
51:28an old drawing of a tombstone
51:31that was lost a long time ago.
51:34It belonged to a man called Marcus Antonius Exocus
51:37who tells us he came from Alexandria
51:40to fight in some gladiator games
51:43organized by the emperor Trajan.
51:46And here's another text of a tombstone
51:49erected by a man called Fuscinus
51:52who was a provocator,
51:55that's another sort of gladiator.
51:58His tombstone is in Greek
52:01and he tells us that he was Egyptian.
52:04The origins of these gladiators
52:07were as disparate as those of the whole world in Rome
52:10but their real stories were much more mundane
52:13than the exotic roles
52:16that they were forced to play in the arena.
52:19This reveals the deceitful appearance of all this
52:22because underneath that paraphernalia
52:25some gladiators were quite homely
52:28or they ended up being.
52:31They ended up retiring with a long life,
52:34wife and children.
52:37One of the nicest tombstones
52:40is this man's
52:43who lived to the age of 45.
52:46He had come from Tungria,
52:49he was Belgian
52:52but the tombstone was erected by his wife
52:55and little Justus, his son.
52:58Even Exocus,
53:01as exotic as he looked
53:04seemed to have ended his life
53:07judging by his name as a Roman citizen.
53:10He probably retired
53:13and lived his life in some place in the Roman Empire
53:16as Marcus Antonius Exocus.
53:23An Egyptian who represents the role of a warrior
53:26to later settle as a father
53:29of a Roman family
53:32symbolizes for me all of Imperial Rome.
53:35The Colosseum dramatized the terrifying
53:38and exciting Roman idea
53:41that outside everything was violence,
53:44confrontation and rarity.
53:47The truth is that the Imperial Empire
53:50was not only fighting in the sand
53:53but also sitting in the seats.
53:56There were areas in the Colosseum
53:59reserved for the gaditani,
54:02the gaditanos, for a senator from Africa
54:06In reality, the terrifying barbarians
54:09had become Romans
54:12who were watching the show like everyone else.
54:20So what did the Colosseum do?
54:23In appearance it showed the people
54:26what they got from the Empire
54:29but in a deeper sense
54:32it showed how they fit into it.
54:35If those who killed each other in the sand
54:38were stereotyped foreigners
54:41that implied that if you were going to see them
54:44you were Roman.
54:47It tried to organize everything
54:50in a way that made sense.
54:55The conclusion about the Colosseum
54:58is that it was both a microcosm of the city of Rome
55:01and the microcosm of the Roman Empire
55:04and it helps to show how the boundaries
55:07between the Roman and the foreign
55:10were becoming more and more diffuse.
55:15In Rome, for the first time in history
55:18Asians, Africans and Europeans
55:21could sit together as citizens of the same state.
55:25Rome was the first global city
55:28and it contained all the contradictions
55:31that global cities have had since then.
55:34It was diverse, but not tolerant.
55:37Foreign enemies were crucified
55:40enslaved and forced to fight in the sand
55:43but others could become emperors.
55:46The conclusion is that the Empire
55:49did not distinguish between Romans and Africans
55:52but between those who resisted
55:55and those who united.
55:59The key question in our history
56:02is how it would be to live in the main city in the world
56:05where almost everyone came from somewhere else.
56:08Many had to feel far from their home
56:11from their roots
56:14but for others there were benefits
56:17and successes to be made
56:21and an exciting but disconcerting mix
56:24of new ideas and different cultures and religions.
56:28Whatever you'd been back in your place of origin
56:31in Rome you could reinvent yourself.
56:34It's not hard to imagine the fears
56:37and worries of those ordinary Romans
56:40wherever they were from.
56:43How do I fit in here?
56:46Who knows who I am?
56:50Perhaps it was because of their desire
56:53to write their stories on their tombstones.
56:58They are deliberately speaking to all of us.
57:03This man is giving us a conversation.
57:06Unknown, he says.
57:09Hospice. Hang on a minute.
57:12Resist. Stop.
57:15Take a look down your left.
57:18That's where my bones are buried.
57:21My ossa.
57:24I was a good man.
57:27I was a kind man.
57:30And I was a lover of the poor.
57:33Amantis pauperis.
57:36Please, traveller.
57:39Please, viator. I beg you.
57:42Don't mess with me.
57:45The name of this man was Gaius Attilus Euhodus.
57:50Ex-slave of a man called Serranus.
57:53Euhodus sounds Greek to me
57:56and tells us what he did.
57:59He was a margaritarius.
58:02He was a pearl seller.
58:05That's who's buried in this tomb.
58:08Traveller, he says, viator.
58:11Adios. Vale?
58:14Vale.
58:21In the next episode, I'll go down the streets of the city
58:25to explore the houses of the neighbours,
58:28the neighbourhoods with the highest crime rate,
58:31and the life in bars and baths.
58:34And we'll hear some of the most peculiar Roman voices
58:37born from the simplicity of the communal life of the city.
58:40This is how we have to imagine the old city.
58:43Everyone defecating together.
58:46Tunics up, togas up.
58:49Trousers down, and a chat in the meantime.
59:07.