All language subtitles for 07 - Rome Rise Fall - Rebellion and Betrayal

Previously on "Rome: Rise and fall of an empire,"

Emperor Trajan scales new heights of glory,
defeating the treacherous dacians,

reaping a fortune in barbarian gold, and
pushing the imperial borders to their limit.

It is the zenith of the empire.

Now:

After 3 centuries of relentless war,

Rome stands at the center of the world,
a lone superpower without rival.

But peace makes the empire soft.

Wrapped in luxury,
distracted by elaborate games in the arena,

the romans are slow to recognize
the threat of a new barbarian horde

bent on the empire's utter destruction.

ROME
RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE

REBELLION AND BETRAYAL

In the 200 years following
Julius Caesar's death, the empire blossoms.

Peace and prosperity usher in
Rome's golden and silver ages.

But it may be too much of a good thing.

The peace had, of course,
allowed Rome to concentrate

their economic energies inward,
away from military affairs.

And it's this that may have produced the sort
of general air of prosperity and a flourishing of arts.

It may also, however, have had
various pernicious side effects.

The people, as they became used to not fighting,
found themselves subsequently reluctant to fight.

They may have left themselves somewhat
less prepared than they otherwise would have been.

But barbarians along the frontier,
ever restless,

continued to probe and raid, seeking weak
spots on the empire's immense borders.

By 160 a.D.,
the border stretches across 3 continents,

and 400,000 soldiers protect the 50 million
people lucky enough to live inside.

Back in Rome, the young heirs to the imperial throne
live a comfortable life in their father's palace.

Their names are Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

Plucked from separate aristocratic families while still boys,
both are adopted by emperor Antoninus Pius

who has no sons of his own.

The princes could not be more different,
according to third-century historian Cassius Dio.

"Marcus was often frail of health and devoted
the greater part of his time to letters.

Verus, on the other hand,
was a vigorous man of younger years."

A free spirit, Verus' rowdy exploits frequently shock Rome.

In contrast, intellectual Marcus Aurelius
takes his position seriously.

Marcus Aurelius had been groomed for rule longer
than just about anyone else in the history of the empire.

Between his 2 sons, emperor Antoninus
has a clear favorite, the scholarly Marcus.

To him, he gives his prize possession,
his daughter Faustina, making Marcus the senior heir.

In 161, when the emperor Antoninus dies,

Marcus and Verus claim the throne,

supported and approved of by the emperor's
personal army, the praetorian guard.

It would have been easy for the Praetorians
to accept these 2 young men as their emperors.

Of all the troops of the empire,
the Praetorians would have known them,

because they were stationed in Rome, and they
would therefore have been guarding the palace,

and they would have had interactions
with these 2 princes over many years.

They cement their bond to the
Praetorians with a generous kickback,

a bonus equal to several years
of regular guardsman's salary.

Marcus and Verus will need the loyalty of the Roman army,
as war looms large on the horizon.

To the east,
the parthians invade Rome's ally Armenia,

making Syria vulnerable to attack.

Classical historian Cassius Dio:

"The parthian general hemmed
in the romans on all sides,

striking them down and destroying
the whole force, leaders and all."

The fighting is savage, and Roman forces
cannot hold against the parthian assault.

In 162, Rome has no choice
but to send its troops to war.

For the first time in 2 generations,
an emperor leads the way- Lucius Verus.

His brother, Marcus Aurelius, remains in Rome.

Both men really were inexperienced militarily.

Marcus, who is the senior of the 2 emperors,
sends Lucius Verus to the east to deal with this threat.

Verus marches from Rome to a comfortable
headquarters in antioch, far from the battle front.

He's constantly in communication, or at least his bureaucracy
is constantly in communication with leaders on the front,

but mostly this is a leadership "in abstentia".

And it worked.

It works as long as you've got good leaders up front.

Fortunately, on the front, verus has one
of the best leaders of his generation,

Avidius Cassius,
the commander of Syria's legions.

Avidius has been a longtime
player in imperial politics,

but war proves to be his real talent.

He was an experienced general.
He was himself Syrian.

He had connections with
the nobility of the east.

Verus had just stayed in Antioch and partied basically,
while Avidius had run the campaign on the ground.

Avidius masterminds a string of victories

that take the romans into the parthian
heartland, face to face with their enemy.

The real killing that Roman soldiers
did came at arm's length.

That frightened everybody.

To keep fighting at arm's length when
your enemy is there with a sword or an ax

and you can't tell what's going on behind you or
to the side of you because you're wearing a helmet,

you can hardly hear,
and you can only see straight ahead.

It required courage and dedication and overcoming
your fear to an overwhelmingly amazing degree.

Over the next 3 years, Avidius and his troops
make a brutal sweep across Parthia.

In 165 a.D., they reach the capital Ctesiphon,
which lies near modern Baghdad.

The romans cruelly ravage the ancient city.

Classical historian Cassius Dio:

"When the parthian king was deserted by his allies,
Avidius pursued him into Ctesiphon and razed his palace to the ground."

The looting gets out of hand.

While plundering the temples of the local gods, the
soldiers steal sacred vessels and other treasures.

It's an abomination to violate temples.

Divine punishment for the crime comes swift and furious.

The soldiers contract a deadly disease from
their parthian victims, possibly bubonic plague.

The romans leave Ctesiphon swollen on success
and unwittingly carrying contagion.

Having conquered Parthia and secured the eastern empire,
Avidius and emperor Verus return to Italy.

The city honors the glorious
victory with a magnificent parade,

public feasts, and games that
pit gladiators against captives,

all part of an extraordinary
exhibition known as a triumph.

Tons of thousands of people
would be coming out to watch.

They'd be waving flags, throwing things,
and cheering as the army went by,

and then behind that would be just
a massive display of captured loot,

captives, heaps of arms that have been captured.

So it was really an enormous public occasion.

Months in the making, at the cost of a small fortune,
the triumph is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Verus celebrates with his new bride Lucilla,
the daughter of his brother and co-emperor Marcus.

When Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus
celebrated this triumph in the 160's,

a whole generation had been born and had
reached middle age and had never seen a triumph.

So it was a huge event.
It would have been a major event.

But emperor Marcus is unable to enjoy the festivities.

He knows that the campaign in the east
has greatly depleted Rome's army.

And even as Rome parties,
savage barbarians prepare to attack

the reduced defenses on the
empire's northern frontier.

Along the northern border,

the legionaries left to guard the
fortifications are seriously undermanned.

Too few troops have returned from the war in the east.

The guards make an easy target for barbarian tribesmen
who creep out of the dense woods to prey on the romans.

The fighting abilities of the Germans in the second
century had grown proportionately astronomically

compared to the initial encounter between Germans and romans
that went all the way back into the second century B.C.,

and these were tribes that could
field very large armies, for a start,

so they were really formidable. Already by
the second century, they were very formidable.

Out on the edges of the empire,
soldiers are mercilessly cut down.

The dark forests of Germania become their tomb.

While the brothers Marcus and
Verus share the title of emperor,

their general, Avidius Cassius, successfully conquers
the great parthian empire, but at a terrible price.

The soldiers carry back a great pestilence to Rome.

The parthian war of Marcus' adopted brother
Lucius Verus seems to have been responsible

for bringing back some form of
plague into the Mediterranean basin,

which led to simply untold devastation
of the population of the empire.

Some very, very large percentage of the Roman
world died off in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

Estimates vary from 10% to 25%.

And it will have been very,
very much worse in major population centers,

because the people were piled
one on top of each other.

Charlatans prey on the people's fears,
selling bogus herbal charms to ward off disease.

They say the plague is the gods' revenge
for raiding parthian temples.

Emperor Marcus must atone for their sin with a sacrifice.

The only rational response for a Roman emperor in
the face of a giant natural disaster like a plague

was to try to restore our peace with
the gods by increasing sacrifices,

by increasing public manifestations of devotion to
the gods, because in a case of a natural disaster,

the emperor had the responsibility of preserving
the people by winning back the goodwill of the gods.

Despite 7 days of sacrifice, the gods are still hungry.

The death toll continues to rise,
especially among the troops in the army camps.

So a lot of experienced soldiers would have been lost,
and large numbers of the civilian population.

So it was hard to rebound quickly.

Wounded and sick, the empire is weak.

Its enemies swoop in for the kill.

In 167, 6,000 German barbarians cross the Danube river
and burst into the Roman province of Pannonia.

They ravage the unprotected provincials at will,
plundering villages and taking hundreds of hostages.

Some barbarians even claim land.

We don't know whether they're just
raiding or whether they want to migrate.

A lot of the tribes see the advantages of Roman
civilization and would like to have a piece of the action.

So raids become frequent, and it's hard for
Marcus to mobilize the troops to keep them out.

For several agonizing days,
the barbarians attacked the defenseless Pannonia.

The Roman legions are too far away,
strung out along the vast frontier.

When the legionaries arrive at last,
the ferocity of the Germans nearly overwhelms them.

I suspect that a lot of them would have had imitation-style
or even captured Roman equipment.

So I think a German army of the time of Marcus Aurelius
would have presented quite a formidable facade.

Just as the first wave falters,
more Roman troops arrive from other points along the border.

Their well-timed cavalry assault, coupled with fresh infantry
forces the barbarians to retreat.

Showing incredible confidence, the German warlord
Ballomarius of the powerful marcomanni tribe

ventures into the Roman camp
to negotiate a peace treaty.

Surprisingly, he represents not only his own people,
but 10 other tribes as well.

This unified front spells a new type of danger for the empire.

The German threat that Marcus faced was different
from the one that had been faced my earlier emperors.

They've become more organized.

Their societies have changed, probably
by influence and exposure to the romans.

There's a great irony there.

Alarmed by the growing barbarian menace,
emperor Marcus heads for Pannonia.

With no experience in battle, emperor Marcus
must rely on his chief military officer,

Pompeianus, to help him earn his glory.

German raids had gone across the Danube, stealing cattle,
stealing slaves, stealing goods for centuries.

Why now does Rome actually decide
it's going to lead an expedition,

a punitive expedition against these Germans?

In my estimation, Marcus Aurelius
is simply building that into a case

for more military activity in order to
give himself more legitimacy in Rome.

Though Marcus' brother, emperor Verus,
also joins the campaign, he is drunk and unwell.

Before they can even reach the border, Verus succumbs to plague,
forcing the entire expedition to turn back.

Marcus has no choice but to return
to Rome with his brother's body,

abandoning the northern border to
the ever-growing barbarian threat.

He returns to a court facing its own crisis.

The empire's many wars have exhausted the royal treasury.

There is nothing left to fund a new expedition against the Germans.

Most officials probably were wealthy
enough that a missed payday wouldn't matter much.

But a soldier, who was basically living hand to mouth and
supplementing that living by gathering booty from conquests,

those things begin to matter.

Unable to pay his soldiers, Marcus resorts
to extreme measures, according to the "Augustan history."

"Marcus held a public sale of his own imperial furnishings.

He sold goblets of gold and crystal and
even his wife's silken gold-embroidered robes."

It's sort of as if the royal
family in England ran out of money

and had to put a lot of...You know, had to put the
crown jewels on e-bay or something to raise money.

I call this a public-relations scheme because you
couldn't possibly raise enough money to manage a war

by selling off your second and even your third set
of China which is more or less what the emperor did.

But it amounted to an attempt to show

that even the emperor was going to make a
personal sacrifice in favor of the common good,

the sort of sacrifice that Americans once made
in the buying of war bonds in world war II.

Marcus' recruiters hope the money
will help lure new soldiers for the German war.

But the call to arms gets few takers.

The Roman empire was suffering a huge
drain in manpower and economic power,

and this may well have made people
reluctant to sign up and left families

terribly, terribly reluctant to send
off healthy young males to war.

Resurgent attacks of plague also stretched
the empire's resources to the limit.

Scandalously, Pompeianus,
emperor Marcus' chief military advisor,

turns to the dregs of society,
as the "Augustan history" reports.

They armed gladiators and turned
the bandits of Dalmatia into soldiers.

They even trained slaves for military service.

Pompeianus is appalled by the quality of recruits.

But before he can prepare this ragtag army for war,
disaster strikes on the empire's border.

In 169, swarms of German warrior bands
attack Roman provinces on the Danube.

Marcus and Pompeianus must lead their
new legions north to Germania, ready or not.

Fighting on the barbarians' home turf,
the inexperienced Roman army is clearly outmatched.

When Germans were able to draw
the romans across the Danube

and fight in forested terrain where the Roman soldiers
were not able to develop their military lines,

not able to use their artilleries effectively,
the Germans had the advantage, and they often won.

In the spring of 170,
the greatest of the German tribes,

the marcomanni and the quadi, square
off against the romans and crush them.

Marcus Aurelius is definitely something special,
but does that mean that he's a good leader?

How effectively can he lead the troops into battle?

The fact is that Marcus Aurelius' record there is not good.

Marcus' first major battle results
in the massacre of 20,000 romans.

It is the worst Roman defeat in a century.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius leads his first army
to battle against the Germans and fails utterly.

Then disaster strikes behind him.

While Marcus is bogged down on the Danube,
other Germans push into Italy itself.

In 170 a.D., they pounce upon the rich port town of Aquileia,
near modern-day Venice, and ravage it at will.

It is the first time in 3 centuries that
barbarians raid the Italian heartland.

They're fierce, they're cruel,
they're barbarian,

and they probably conjure up in the romans' mind images
of the gauls coming into Rome in the fourth century B.C.,

the threats of the cimbri and the
teutones in the late second century B.C.

The romans particularly fear these
individuals coming to Italy.

With Rome in the grips of terror, emperor Marcus Aurelius
must act quickly to vanquish the enemy once and for all.

He moves with his army north along the Danube
and prepares to invade the lands of the powerful marcomanni tribe.

The cold green forests of the north
are alien to the Roman emperor.

Alone and far from the only home he has ever known,
Marcus adjusts poorly to the rugged life of an army officer.

His health declines.

We know that the famous ancient doctor Galen
was Marcus' personal physician for a time,

and we know that Galen prepared a
medicine for him to take everyday,

both to treat current illnesses
and to stave off future ones.

In particular, plague, which continues
to devastate his troops.

With death constantly on his mind,

Marcus records his innermost thoughts in
a journal known as "the meditations."

It is still in print today and
reveals a man grappling with his fate.

"Do not act as if you were going to live 10,000 years.
Death hangs over you.

While you live, while it is in your power,
be a decent man."

Philosophy gives him a way
of dealing with the crises,

of dealing with the unpleasant things he has
to face on a daily basis along the Danube.

The solitude of the deep German woods is a far cry
from the chaos and bloodshed Marcus will meet on the battlefield.

He launches a series of military strikes
on the lands of the most dangerous tribes

the sarmatians, the quadi,
and the marcomanni.

The barbarians have defeated Marcus before
and remain confident as they set up camp along the river.

But Marcus is learning from his enemy.

He abandons the established Roman line formation in
favor of smaller, more mobile units called vexillations.

These give his army greater flexibility
as they maneuver through the trees.

It was a new war. It was a different war.

And it was a war that
was far different

from some of these veterans who
had just fought the parthians

in very straight lines and using
conventional tactics in the middle east.

This was a war where ambushes were going to be the norm.

When the barbarians least suspect it,
the romans swoop in.

In the heat of battle, a Roman soldier
was on a very dangerous tightrope.

He had to balance this incredible adrenaline
rush that would lead him to attack.

He had to stay calm even though
his hormones are overcoming him.

He had to set aside the natural
panic that affects anybody

when you're going to be only 2 feet away in a killing
zone that's just as dangerous to you as to your enemy.

At last, the ailing and inexperienced emperor Marcus
can claim a victory on German soil.

The romans build on their triumph by erecting
a line of garrisons in marcomanni and quadi territory.

The annexation of Germania begins in earnest.

But the Germans respond
aggressively against the fortifications.

Like hornets whose nest has been violated,

the barbarians swarm the imperial
headquarters in coordinated attacks.

The Germans that came out of the
forests against Marcus aurelius

are not howling savages dressed in bear skins with
wooden shields and big axes like we see in Hollywood.

They had been dealing with the romans now for 2 centuries.

They had learned their techniques,

they had observed their equipment,
so they knew how the romans fought.

If they breach the fortress,
the romans know they will destroy everyone inside.

Inside the fortress, Marcus Aurelius moves among his men,
restoring their spirits and exposing himself to danger.

He may well have felt, out of some sense of personal responsibility,
of which we would entirely approve,

that if he was going to send
men to their death in war,

that he ought, in fact, to be present to
take an interest, to manage those campaigns.

As the situation becomes most critical,

Marcus turns to his pagan gods, sacrificing and
asking for their help against the German hordes.

They answer him with a miracle, according
to the fourth-century "Augustan history."

Standing his ground, he prayed to the gods and
summoned a thunderbolt from heaven against the enemy."

The barbarians, of course, would have seen
a thunderbolt as a very negative thing.

It seemed that the gods were favoring the romans
in this case, and that's not a good thing.

So presumably, they would have to deal with that.

At the very gates of the fortress,
the terrified barbarians break and run.

The romans are delivered.

Thrilled, the romans hail Marcus by a new title-
Germanicus, the conqueror of the Germans.

Through perseverance, discipline,
and some say miracles,

emperor Marcus Aurelius takes the upper
hand in his brutal conquest of Germania.

Even the peaceful German farming
communities are not safe from Marcus' wrath.

The romans prove their mastery
by the edge of their swords.

A lot of these wars against the
Germans were genocidal kinds of wars,

the romans attacking villages and wiping everyone
out, carrying the women and children off into slavery.

You see soldiers bringing heads
of defeated enemies to get rewards.

The romans record the ugliness of
the conflict on a towering monument

which commemorates Marcus' German campaigns.
It is known as the Aurelian column.

The Marcus Aurelius column is saying,

"this is a brutal, nasty business that your emperor
is doing for your safety, and this is the cost of it.

You know, it's not pleasant"

In the German tribal lands, Marcus carves out
two new Roman provinces-Marcomannia and Sarmatia-

but just as they seem to be stabilizing,
disturbing news comes from an unexpected quarter, Egypt.

Egypt was one of the most important territories
in the Roman empire because it was so rich.

There were fears that somebody who controlled
Egypt might threaten the entire empire.

These fears proved well-founded, when Egyptian rebels
lead a bloody revolt against their Roman leaders.

The terror in the desert only increases.

It was definitely a worrying thing.
You have to respond to that promptly.

Egypt was a huge supplier
of grain for Rome itself,

so a person who controlled Egypt could
put the squeeze on the food supply

for the plebes and the
populace in the city of Rome,

and they would in turn obviously put pressure
on the emperor to do something about it.

In 174, Marcus sends to Syria where he has 3 legions stationed.

He directs them to Alexandria, Egypt.

At the head of the avenging army rides
one of Marcus' oldest and most trusted friends, Avidius Cassius.

Marcus Aurelius designated a famous and
successful general under his command, Avidius Cassius

to have an overarching
command in the eastern half of the empire.

Superordinate to provincial governors.

The hero of the parthian campaign does not disappoint.

Avidius puts down the rebellion swiftly,
securing the Egyptian territory and its wealth for the empire.

But along the empire's northern border
in Germania, the enemy is much more elusive.

The German campaign seems to go on without end.

I mean, he is making progress,
but when you drive back one tribe,

another one might appear 50 miles up the
river, and you have to deal with that.

For 7 years, Marcus has battled the
barbarians in the dense northern forests,

to the wretched decline of his own health.

In 175, he falls ill on the German frontier.

Whether it is plague or ulcers, his death seems imminent.

His nurse and wife, the empress Faustina,
has stood by him for 20 years.

Now she worries about her own future.

If you're an empress or a Princess,
it's very clear what happens

if the male that you're attached to
dies or falls from grace or is usurped.

Then your life expectancy can be reckoned
in minutes, along with that of your children.

You want to be sure that your husband is
doing well and is healthy and is supported,

and if he's not, then you need to
be thinking about contingencies.

Grief overwhelms Faustina.

Who will protect her if he dies?

She offers her hand and the
empire to another noble,

Avidius Cassius, the popular
commander of the armies in Egypt.

Eager to gain the glory he knows he deserves,
Avidius leaps at the chance to become emperor.

The "Augustan history."

"While Marcus still breathed, Avidius Cassius
spread false rumors of his death.

Indeed, he told his army that the senate
had already decreed Marcus a god.

Then he declared himself emperor".

Avidius may also have felt that
it was for the benefit of the people.

Marcus Aurelius is considered
to be a good emperor,

but he was not a strong emperor in many ways-
not necessarily so good in a military arena.

Yet just as Avidius claims the throne,

Marcus recovers from his illness,
putting both men in an impossible position.

What do you do? You can't say, "Listen, I'm
sorry about that claim on the throne business.

"It was a bit of a mistake, you know,
rush of blood to the head. Can we move on?"

Once you had staked your claim, you had
declared your intention to be emperor,

you'd always be suspected
from that point on.

This was threatening to Marcus Aurelius
for a number of reasons.

Avidius Cassius was a major military commander
in charge of a significant number of troops.

And now he intends to take those troops
to Rome itself and assert his claim.

175 a.D.
- Embroiled in his German campaign,

emperor Marcus Aurelius is betrayed
by a close friend, Avidius Cassius.

Shockingly, Avidius is encouraged by
Marcus' own wife to claim the throne.

Marcus must crush the revolt of Avidius Cassius.

He must deal with the betrayal by his wife.

But knowing he may die in the struggle to come,
he proclaims his own son Commodus, as his heir.

Commodus was not then old enough
to be a significant power broker in his own right.

Marcus Aurelius does not ever seem to have
considered anyone other than his son to succeed him.

Having been spoiled in the
indulgences of his royal youth,

the boy has yet to prove his character or
worth as a soldier, but he is Marcus' only son.

The choice will not be a good one for Rome.

Why did he appoint Commodus?

Well, because Commodus was his natural son, and this was
the normal way for Roman aristocratic families to think.

It had always been the case that Roman
upper-class senators and aristocrats

had promoted themselves
over many generations.

With his son's position secured,
Marcus turns now to the wife who betrayed him to Avidius Cassius.

Astonishingly, he forgives her.

Marcus did not punish Faustina afterwards.

He was a very intelligent
man and understood,

perhaps after a heart-to-heart with her,
what her motives were,

and he didn't in any way put her aside or
divorce her or in any way dishonor her.

As his troops prepare to march against
the armies of Avidius Cassius,

a messenger approaches,
sent by Avidius' soldiers.

They have ousted the usurper,
hoping to avoid the true emperor's revenge.

They know the price of treason.

The usual course of action would
be for rounds of denunciations,

interrogations, tortures, exiles,
executions, forced suicides.

The messenger bears a grisly gift-
- the head of Avidius Cassius, once his great friend.

Historian Cassius Dio:

"Marcus was so greatly grieved at Avidius'
death

that he could not bring himself to even
look at the severed head of his enemy."

The rebellion is finished, and Marcus can
turn again to the great project of his life,

conquering the German
barbarians once and for all.

The rebellion interrupts his campaign.

He has to divert resources, divert troops, shift
money, and that causes a disruption in his plan.

The barbarians take advantage of such distractions.

In 178, Marcus sends in troops to face down
a violent band of rebels on the Danube river.

Their savagery has only increased.

It was so overwhelming to
face these barbarians,

tall or loud or smelling,
looking different,

that sometimes you'd have to drink before
you went into battle to calm your nerves.

Marcus must subdue this enemy,
or his years of hard work on the frontier will come to nothing.

The aging Marcus isolates the rebel leaders
and has them brutally put to death.

He believes that just one more season
of campaigning will bring the conflict to an end.

The German wars of Marcus Aurelius would turn
out to be extraordinarily long and protracted,

but it was not clear that it was obvious to Marcus or
to anyone else that they would be so from the start.

Now almost 60, Marcus hopes
that his son and heir, Commodus,

will carry on his battle against the Germans, a
struggle that has taken the best years of his life.

Marcus Aurelius had trained Commodus,
took him with him on his campaigns, but he was just too young.

I don't think Marcus Aurelius fully realized
what kind of emperor Commodus would have become.

But in his role as co-emperor,
the boy has become lazy,

with no interest in hard-won victories,
as unlike Marcus as a man could be.

Still, he is by his father's side when
emperor Marcus Aurelius succumbs at last,

probably to the same ruinous
plague that claimed his brother.

Just 19, Commodus has no patience
for warfare and longs for the good life in Rome.

He doesn't have the leadership or
the vision that his father had,

and he pretty much backs off of
the campaigns along the Danube.

Long-term, it's a very negative thing for Rome.

With weak treaties and reduced garrisons,
the new emperor, Commodus, abandons Germania,

squandering 13 years of struggle and
bloodshed to return to the comfort of Rome.

Without the vigilance of
emperor Marcus Aurelius,

the great Roman empire fights a losing
battle against the barbarian swarm.

And when you have a perfect storm of bad
leadership, bad luck and foreign threats,

you're in really very deep trouble.

What they would discover,
not least in the reign of Marcus Aurelius,

is that they could not withstand
challenges across...across more than, say,

a certain number of points along
that border at any given time.

The tide is turning for Rome.

There will never be an emperor like Marcus Aurelius again.

According to Dio, it is the beginning of the end.

"Our history now descends from a kingdom
of gold and silver to one of iron and rust."

Next on "Rome: Rise and fall of an empire,"

Just when the empire needs them most,
Rome's ancient gods are threatened by a new religion, christianity.

As plague strikes and barbarians attack,
emperor Decius must find a way to quell the gods' wrath.