Original subtitles

Rome.

From a small Republic it grows into the greatest empire ever known,

lasting for over 600 years.

At its height, it stretches from London to Baghdad,

projecting its power with the first professional Army

and creating the model of Western Civilization.

And yet when the Empire begins to falter, it collapses with shocking speed.

It takes only a 100 years for the Imperial edifice of Rome to vanish like smoke,

swept away by the Barbarian invasions.

How did it happen?

ROME RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE

THE FIRST BARBARIAN WAR

It is late in the 2nd Century B.C.

100 years before the crucifixion of Christ.

A decade before the birth of Julius Caesar.

Rome is facing a transition,

one that will change its fundamental character forever.

It comes at a time of conquest.

Rome has come off 150 years of really successful foreign expansion.

They've defeated Carthage, their great enemy across the Mediterranean Sea, in Africa

and they've begun to expand to the north

and they've made big conquests that are hard to keep in Spain.

But even as the Romans are carving out their place in the world through brutal conquest

the Republic faces a cataclysmic event

that will eventually force the Romans to abandon the rule of the senate

for the absolute dictatorship of an emperor.

It begins with the first Barbarian War.

By 113 BC Rome has become master of the entire Mediterranean basin,

but with new lands come new enemies.

The Romans know that there are more people farther away especially to the north

and that these people are if anything, even more formidable than the armies they've defeated before

and they're worried about those people coming into Italy.

Beyond the borders of Roman civilization, the soldiers face an unfamiliar breed of warrior

They call them "barbarians"

a word meaning foreign and crude.

Anybody that didn't follow classical Customs speak Classical Languages Latin or Greek

was considered to be very different, other, Barbarian

and Rome simply regarded them as much less capable, much less civilized than themselves.

Only the rugged Alpine mountain range keeps the northern barbarians at bay.

The Alps mountain chain at the top of Italy is like the cork in the bottle

that keeps the bad guys away from the Roman point of view

and the Romans don't control that cork.

So they know that it could pop out at any time and the enemy could come pouring into Italy or at least that's their fear.

Against this growing Barbarian menace stands the Roman army,

a volunteer militia which prides itself on being well ordered, well trained and well armed.

An individual Roman soldier would be wearing metal and leather armor, a helmet, something to protect his chest

all of this armor together could weigh as much as 60 or 70 lbs, half his body weight.

The burden of Rome's expansion falls squarely on the shoulders of these battle hardened men.

But back in the capital it's the wealthy government officials who reap the benefits.

Rome is not an Empire yet, but a republic ruled by the Senate.

At the top of the political ladder are two elected officers known as consules.

They were the highest civilian and military officials in Rome.

Above all, their responsibility was to lead the Army because National Security came first.

But they were also, because of their tremendous prominence, very important

in setting the agenda for politics, for legislation, for reform.

Though the Roman Republic embraces democratic ideals, all men are not created equal.

Soldiers may win the battles for Rome, but they dare not hope to achieve the position of console.

The highest office is reserved for members of Rome's most important families

like Gnaeus Papirius Carbo.

A very small number of families dominated the elections to become Consul.

This is part of the belief that Rome really needed the kind of honor that came from a long distinguished family history.

Now as Rome expands this honor is no longer based on merit, but on money.

What's happening in Rome is as Rome conquers more territory, more wealth is going to flow into the City

and there's a sense that wealth is going to demoralize the citizen body and the aristocracy both.

that as wealth becomes more and more powerful in roman society, more and more enticing

that this is going to infiltrate its way into the political process.

By spreading around his wealth Carbo can buy his place as console.

In terms of campaigning, one of the things that you'll find as you go on later in the Republic

is the system becomes extremely corrupt.

You have people bestowing all sorts of largesse, any sort of little kind of gifts or remuneration in order to get your vote.

But in the north a dangerous new tribe, the Cimbri is on the move.

From their home in northern Europe, they journey south toward Roman territory.

Completely uncivilized, the Cimbri radiate terror according to the famous ancient biographer Plutarh.

They were believed to be German tribes based on their great size,

the light blue color of their eyes and the fact that their name "cimbri" is the German nickname for plunderers.

Led by the great warlord Boiorix, the hord leaves a smoking trail of destruction in its wake.

They were characteristic Iron Age peoples we don't really know exactly what it is they were after.

They may have been moving in order to attack and invade provinces, that were becoming wealthy through trade with Rome.

They may have simply been coming to seek their fortunes in what they perceived as a richer land near the Mediterranean.

The Cimbri aren't the only ones lured by Rome's growing wealth.

On the way South two more Barbarian tribes join them: the teutones and ambrones.

The combined Barbarian armies are heading straight for an Alpine pass into Roman territory,

guarded by the simple villagers of Noricum.

Noricum is not a Roman territory.

Its proximity to the Roman border ties its people closely to The Republic.

Noricum is the area that we would say today is essentially Austria.

the people who lived there were noriki and therefore the territory is named after them.

The people there, the noriki controlled the Alpine passes.

Romans also rely on the noricans for trade, as their skills working in precious metals and iron are well known.

What the noricans actually have available in the way of raw materials is gold, silver and salt.

Minable salt in the Alps is a major industry,

there so the Romans truly needed large quantities of salt for preservative and they had to have that.

And they had to have it all the time.

The Norican villages provide an irresistible target to the merciless Cimbri warriors.

Hungry for loot, they are rapacious and heavily armed for the raid.

By the period we're talking about the 2nd and 1 century BC,

the Cimbri had very effective swords, spears, shields, helmets are rarer but they were fully equipped with very able kinds of weapons.

But the barbarians are after more than the Noricum's wealth.

The northern barbarians who were migrating what they wanted above all was land.

They weren't there to raid and leave they wanted to live next to the Romans.

The craftsmen of Noricum stand no chance against the warriors of the north.

The noricans send an emissary to their allies in the Roman senate, begging for help against the vicious Cimbri invaders.

They seek out the aristocrat Carbo, whose politicking has finally paid off.

He now holds the post of consul, the most prestigious office in Rome.

Carbo orders his aid to begin preparations for war.

He has just one year to win the glory and riches that come from battle.

We're talking about needing to show the qualities of leadership through a display of manliness,

and a display of manliness meant success on the battlefield.

Generals not only feathered the nest of themselves and their families, but of all their supporters.

Carbo takes the challenge, leading his troops to Noricum.

Despite in utter lack of experience in the ways of war, he is eager to prove that he is more than just a wealthy senator.

He arrives in Noricum, backed by the men of the Roman army.

After a century of victories they exude confidence.

The Cimbri claimed they didn't know that they were in territory that they shouldn't have been in,

they sent ambassadors.

The Barbarians have never seen such a well equipped and disciplined force.

The warlord Boiorix tells Carbo his people only wish to return home peacefully.

Carbo agrees to let them go,

but there is little glory in a truce.

The Roman general devises a plan to force the victory he so badly needs.

Carbo pretended that he was going to negotiate

and then he sent his troops on a shortcut to attack the Cimbri before the ambassadors could get back

thinking that his sneak attack would work.

Carbo's plan backfires.

The Roman commander Carbo outfoxed this group called the Cimbri

but he did it in a way that smelled of disgrace.

A few of the Cimbrian ambassadors survived to carry a tale of treachery back to the Barbarian Camp.

Furious, the barbarians swear they will never leave until they exact bloody revenge.

In 113 b.C., the Roman general Carbo parlays for peace with violent barbarians, the Cimbri.

Then he turns around and murders their ambassadors.

His treachery enrages the barbarians, who value honor above all else.

Vowing to avenge their fallen comrades, the cimbri strike back with swift and sudden fury.

Classical biographer Plutarh;

Their courage and daring were irresistible

they rushed into battle with the speed of a raging fire, nothing could stand up to them

Led by two warlords, Boirix of the Cimbri and Teutobod of the Teutones,

the Barbarians advanced in inexhaustible waves.

The archaeology tells us that they had very good weapons, not inferior to Romans'

it tells us that they had real military organization with infantry troops with officer corps

So we can tell quite a bit.

Certainly, we can tell much more than the Romans seemed to understand until it was too late.

Consul Carbo suddenly finds himself far from the comfort and privilege of Roman politics.

Here, the language of power is spoken in steel and blood.

As Consul, - chief war magistrate- he fails miserably.

Because the chief war magistrate is only out there for a year

it's very frequently amateur hour out there on the field of battle

so you end up with very frequently inept leadership in a very important position

and on occasion results in disaster for the Romans.

The battle for Noricum is such a disaster.

The Romans were in the end saved from being pushed over the cliff into the hell of utter destruction

only by a giant storm lightning thunder and rain.

Knocked from his horse, Carbo struggles to flee from the deadly chaos. He escapes the battle only to commit suicide,

for he has disgraced himself and Rome in the eyes of the Gods.

God saved the Romans but only just and only after many, many had been killed.

What did that mean?

It meant the gods were unhappy at the way the Romans behaved.

And yet, the Romans cling to the notion that only the aristocrats can lead them to victory.

The Romans believe that old meant good, new meant dangerous.

So they, for their politicians and their leaders, they preferred people with a long distinguished family history.

Over the next decade a string of nobles all armed with more arrogance than skill lead armies North to protect Rome's province in Gaul.

They meet the Barbarians at Tolosa, Burdigala and finally Aurasio, present day Toulouse, Bordeaux and Orange, France.

In each instance, the barbarians completely rout Rome's heralded Legions

The Romans had their particular formal ways of fighting.

If we think of the beginning of the film "Gladiator," that's a perfect representation of how Rome liked to fight.

take hours to set up everything in the battle order and then launch the attack.

In contrast, the barbarians' counter attack is unpredictable and devastating to the roman lines.

You have these lines of men, and if the person next to you goes down, the person behind will step into that gap.

and death would be much, much more intimate.

The death toll is staggering.

At Aurasio alone, 80,000 romans are massacred in a single afternoon.

When an army lost its cohesiveness, then the men were literally like fish in a barrel, to be picked off at leisure by the other side.

So when a side has been defeated, then the victors, they just slaughter them one by one.

With no danger to the people doing the slaughtering. It's not a battle anymore. It's a mass execution.

By 105 B.C., the cimbri and their allies desired much more than roman blood and booty.

Some members of the clan want to set down roots.

They were farming peoples. They engaged in trade. They lived in small villages.

People were growing wheat and barley, rye, oats, millet, a whole variety of different kinds of cereals.

They were raising lentils and peas and beans and other kinds of garden crops.

Cattle were extremely important; pigs, sheep and goat were all being raised.

This new domesticity alarms the romans.

To their minds, the only thing more threatening than a barbarian warrior is a barbarian woman.

The presence of women is a standard roman way of communicating that this is an invasion for settlement.

In other words, this is a group that's coming in to significantly alter the way we live, to threaten our basic values.

If it's just a raid, it's just a bunch of teenage guys, we can deal with that.

but, see, when we throw women into the description, we have the migratory feature

and there is a permanency. it requires a sterner and long-term solution.

It requires a general who can beat the barbarians back once and for all.

The hero Rome so desperately needs emerges on another hotly contested borderland

nearly a thousand miles away in Numidia-part of present-day Algeria.

For 8 long years, the romans have tasted only defeat here until now.

The name of their savior is Marius.

With guts and cunning, he crushes the numidian armies of the rogue king, Jugurtha.

Rome needed great soldiers, and Marius was the greatest Rome had yet seen,

both because he was a great commander - Marius could pick the right time and the right place for a battle-

but also because he won his soldiers' loyalty and affection by getting down and digging ditches with them,

by eating the same rough food, by being in better shape than even they were, and they were the best-conditioned soldiers in the world.

He comes by his common touch naturally, for Marius is no aristocrat.

Still, he speaks of his humble background with pride.

I cannot point to my ancestors, but I can show medals and other military honors,

to say nothing of the scars on my body, all of them in front.

These are my title of nobility."

Now, as the northern barbarians close in, the romans turn to Marius, their last and best hope.

At the end of the 2nd century B.C.

a violent barbarian tribe, the Cimbri

allong with their allies, the Teutones and Ambrones

lay waste to the northern frontier.

A horrified Rome turns to its greatest general and new consul, Marius.

He's a proven military commander, and you don't want to fool around when you have teutones and cimbri

who have defeated army after army.

You really want to take care of the problem urgently, and so you want to send a capable leader out on the field.

But even the great Marius cannot lead without men to follow him.

Devastated by a decade of war, Rome faces critical troop shortages.

If you have as many men lost to the german tribes in 113 and 109 and 107 and 106 and 105 as the romans did

that's going to traumatize roman society pretty severely.

Despite a vigorous recruitment campaign,

Marius cannot find enough qualified men-landholders-who are willing to serve.

to be in the roman army in the high republic, you had to have a property qualification.

You had to be a person of means, and this causes some problems for the roman army because there's a problem with manpower.

Marius' solution is as simple as it is radical.

He sends his recruiters out to seek soldiers among the landless poor.

You don't have to be a property holder to be a roman citizen, so why should you have to be a property owner to be a legionnaire?

Many people wish to be soldiers. It's a good job, and it's probably an exciting job.

Opportunities for booty, wine, women and song, chance to see the world at government expense, etc.

The same things that we see on our recruitment posters.

Marius said anybody can be in the army.

This then gave the romans a much greater pool of men on which to draw to strengthen their legions,

because in roman society, there were many, many, many more poor than there were middle-class.

The old guard judges recruits by their income.

Marius judges his by their fighting potential.

Stand up against a legionary, and you can stand up to the barbarians.

By extending the search for legionnaires down into the proletariat,

what that rather quickly does is it makes the ordinary soldier even more dependent upon the success of the commander.

The general is expected to provide for his men and to provide for them as soon as he can and to be generous.

Lured by the promise of wealth, a new breed of roman soldier marches to war.

Marius pledges to give them all the tools and skills they need.

"I will teach you to strike down an enemy, fear nothing but disgrace,

to sleep on bare ground and work hard on an empty stomach."

In 104 B.C., Marius and his army set off for Gaul to meet the cimbri.

In a stroke of good fortune for the romans, the barbarians choose that very moment to leave Gaul and raid Hispania instead

It is a tactical mistake that buys Marius valuable time.

Marius molds his new army from the ground up.

He not only hardens them to the rigors of a soldier's life, he makes them love it.

Marius made lots of innovations in the army, for example, he gave each legion an eagle, a silver eagle, as its standard.

He trained his men to carry what they needed on campaigns so they could move faster,

but he weighed them down so much that they called themselves Marius' mules.

Marius didn't need pack animals for his army to go on campaign. He already had his mules, and they only had two legs.

But they were more effective, they were more flexible,

and it's the flexibility of the legions that is enhanced by Marius' military reforms, including the standardization of equipment.

Well-equipped and unified in spirit, Marius' mules are transformed, but untested.

Two years passed with no sign of the barbarians.

Still, the fear they inspire remains.

Panicked, the romans ignore their own ancient traditions about term limits

and re-elect Marius consul, the chief magistrate of war.

I think part of the problem is, to deal with the threat from the north, you have to give Marius this extraordinary command,

where in 104, 103, 102, 101, 100, he's consul-boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

At last, in 102 B.C., the phantom menace becomes real.

The cimbri, teutones and ambrones sweep out of the north and west on a collision course with Rome.

Marius builds a fortress near Aurasio. He sends another army to guard Noricum.

For above all else, the alpine passes into Italy must be protected.

Within weeks, half of the horde-the teutones and ambrones- swarm around Marius' fort.

A terrifying sight, according to Plutarch.

"Their numbers appeared to be infinite. They were hideous to look at.

Their speech and their shouting were unlike anything that anyone had ever heard before."

And yet, Marius forces his men to look and learn.

Marius was a brilliant military man.

He understood the life and the thoughts and the psychology of the soldier.

What Marius gave to the Roman republic was confidence that romans could defeat the fiercest barbarians in the world.

The fortress holds.

The teutones and ambrones cannot pass.

150,000 strong, they headed south, seeking another alpine pass.

The romans pursue them at a distance, in no hurry to engage till the right time and place,

for marius has already picked out the perfect battlefield where he will at last unleash the power of his unconventional army.

In 102 B.C., hundreds of thousands of barbarians swarm towards Italy.

The great Roman general Marius pursues the teutones and the ambrones as they seek a pass over the Alps.

He moves his troops from his fortress at Aurasio to Aquae Sextae, modern-day Aix-en-Provence, France.

There, Marius orders his men to set up camp.

He chooses his position carefully.

The Roman camp is a singular military piece of machinery.

It would preferably be on high ground in order to see any kind of enemy maneuvers.

It's going to be laid out on a grid pattern.

You're going to surround it with a deep ditch and you're going to have a rampart dug heaped up above that ditch-what's known as an ager

- and everyone would have their place.

There is one more feature that most camps have, but this particular camp is lacking.

Classical biographer Plutarch:

"Marius chose a place that was not very well-supplied with water.

They said he did this deliberately so as to encourage his soldiers to fight.

When people complained they were thirsty, Marius pointed to a river running close by the barbarian camp.

"There is some drinking water for you," he said. "But you have to pay for it with blood."

On the banks of the Rhone river, settled side by side in two great camps,

the ambrones and teutones have plenty of fresh drinking water.

Confident that the romans are no match for them, the ambrones lose themselves in feasting and making merry.

The romans, especially the ordinary soldiers, were afraid of the northern barbarians,

the ones from the farthest north from the coldest climates.

Tough climates made for tough men.

They were much bigger than the romans, they were much louder than the romans,

and from the Roman point of view, they were smelly.

Not because they didn't bathe- they probably bathed more than the Roman soldiers-

but they used, shall we say, a different Cologne-bear fat.

The romans were used to the scent of olive oil.

They never suspect the danger lurking in the forest as a small but desperate contingent of Marius' troops

creep up on the barbarian camp.

Roman soldiers were always afraid because they weren't fools.

They knew that they were going to be in danger of being killed just as easily as the enemy

because Roman soldiers didn't do their real killing from a distance.

Marius' mules throw themselves into the skirmish, but the barbarians swiftly rally in overwhelming numbers.

Just as defeat closes in on the romans, Marius orders reinforcements into the fray.

Re-energized, the romans push the ambrones back to their camp.

There the battle takes a strange turn, as Plutarch reports.

"The women came out armed with swords and axes and making the most horrible shrieking.

They threw themselves into the thick of the fighting,

and though their bodies were gashed and wounded, they endured it to the end with unbroken spirits."

The barbarian women always came to the battlefield.

Sometimes the women would pull the wagons up right behind the men so that they couldn't retreat from battle.

They'd block them in.

The women were so aware of their sense of honor and liberty that they thought death was better than retreat.

The romans thought that these women were unbelievably brave, unbelievably courageous.

They thought these barbarians were the ultimate risk takers.

By bringing their family to the battlefield, they're putting everything on that one roll of the dice:

"We win or we die, and that means all of us -men, women, children, babies."

But the romans also have something to protect- their honor and homeland.

With the skills that Marius has taught them,

they earn their first victory over the German invaders in more than a decade.

Back at camp, Marius prepares for the revenge attack that will certainly be launched by Teutobod, king of the teutones.

In Aquae Sextiae, he faced a really difficult tactical situation.

As usual, the enemy far outnumbered the romans.

But Marius, always able to choose the right time and the right place, carefully selected the terrain.

He lays a trap with his trusted captain, Claudius Marcellus.

Marius sends Marcellus with 3,000 men into the woods, behind the teutones camp.

He instructs them to lay low until the fighting begins.

The barbarians, spoiling for vengeance, charge up the hill to the Roman camp, just as Marius has planned.

They meet a wall of swords, according to Plutarch.

"Marius himself fought in the front rank, putting into practice the orders he'd given his soldiers,

for he was in as good training as anyone, and in daring he far surpassed them all."

This battle was a real test of Marius' philosophy in creating his mules

that were strong enough to stand up with all of their armor and to stay in position

and to hold their discipline even when the enemy was yelling and charging with this fantastic fierceness,

and then in full armor rush them with their swords so that they could be

like a flying wedge coming downhill and smashing the enemy.

As Marius and his men force the barbarians back,

Marcellus and his cohorts burst from the woods.

Together they snuff out any hope of retreat for king Teutobod and his warriors.

The body count defies imagination.

The romans slaughter more than 100,000 teutones.

The rest they take as slaves, spoils of war that will make Marius's mules and all of his supporters rich.

His patronage is not just to the soldiers. He is very generous to all romans of all ranks.

Marius, by monopolizing power at the very top,

in reality becomes the patron of even members of the senatorial class.

Swept up by the barbarian fever, the romans once again elect Marius to Rome's most important office.

He will serve as consul for an unprecedented fifth term.

There was such an immense fear that the barbarians would come pouring in

through the gateway of the alps, which the romans didn't control,

and lay waste to Italy and sack Rome, politics has to take the hindmost.

For Rome is not out of danger.

Marius has only crushed half of the barbarian horde.

The cimbri, the most fearsome barbarians of all, are still on the loose.

While Marius is in Rome, the cimbri break through the Roman fortifications at Noricum.

The enemy has at last breached Italy's borders and is ravaging the Po plain.

Clearly only one man has the courage and cunning to meet this new crisis-consul Marius.

In 102 B.C., Marius' mules massacre the violent barbarian tribe - the teutones-in southern Gaul,

destroying half of the barbarian force.

But the terrifying cimbri tribe slips through the Austrian alps.

From Rome, Marius rushes north to the Po plain, vowing to eliminate the barbarians once and for all.

When Marius arrives in the Roman camp, the cimbri send him an envoy.

They come not to attack, but to make demands.

The cimbri come to him and say, "we want land. That's what we want. We don't want to fight."

We want land, just like the land you gave our neighboring tribe there across the mountains in France."

The cimbri apparently haven't heard about the disaster that has befallen their teutone comrades.

So Marius, with a crooked smile on his face-a smirk, maybe-says to them, "oh, you don't have to worry.

Your brothers, they already have their land. We'd be happy to give the same land to you,"

meaning "your graves in the earth."

In disbelief, the cimbri demand proof, according to Plutarch.

Marius mocked, "But your friend is right here. Please, don't go without saying hello to him."

And he ordered Teutobod, king of the teutones, to be brought forward in chains.

Marius will cut no deal with the cimbri.

Their envoy leaves, swearing to take revenge for their fallen allies.

Despite Marius' recent victory over the barbarians,

the romans are still vastly outnumbered by the fierce northern warriors.

With battle looming, the great general calls for an animal sacrifice.

The romans would always have a sacrifice before going into battle

to see if the gods would send them the message, "there's nothing wrong with your plan."

It didn't guarantee victory, but it meant you had a chance,

and the romans took that very seriously.

The romans' faith is their only shield in the face of overwhelming odds.

By the end of tomorrow, a tidal wave of blood will flow;

Whose blood remains in the hands of the gods.

Marius searches the goat entrails for a sign and finds that the heavens are with him.

In 101 B.C., all Rome holds its breath as two mortal enemies meet outside the hamlet of Vercellae, Italy.

15,000 strong, the cimbri cavalry rides onto the field of battle.

Right behind them come the fearsome infantry, like a cloud of locusts on the move.

As the Roman line is set, Marius makes a final appeal to the gods.

Classical biographer Plutarch:

"Marius washed his hands and, lifting them up to heaven,

vowed to make a sacrifice of a hundred beasts should victory be his."

Altogether, the romans numbered a little more than 50,000 men.

They face at least twice as many cimbri.

It's the romans' worst nightmare, but Marius outsmarts the enemy.

He gets his troops in position first, so that the sun will rise behind the Roman soldiers.

When the sun gets to its full power, it reflects off the romans' shiny armor

and the barbarians think that the sky is on fire, like the gods have sent lightning bolts to help their enemies.

Sensing the cimbris' sudden anxiety, the romans attack.

The romans do have slingers and they do have archers, but the foot infantry is the mainstay of the battle.

You're going to get blood on you. You're going to hear the groans of the person you're killing,

the person who's getting killed next to you.

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 overwhelming and amazing degree.

At vercellae,(Vercelli) the romans wipe out 120,000 cimbri.

More importantly, they cast out the shadow of fear that has terrorized Rome for 13 years.

Marius returns home from the cimbrian war a hero.

Adoring crowds hail him as the savior of Rome.

Despite their own longstanding rule that no one should serve consecutive consulships,

they clamor for him to once again run for consul.

As Marius is doing this, he's moving little by little toward becoming in the eyes of the people a permanent head of this enterprise,

so that we're approaching having an emperor.

It is exactly what the aristocracy has worried about all along.

Now that the barbarian danger has passed, many nobles are openly hostile to Marius.

To stay in power, Marius must find support elsewhere.

He seeks out corrupt politicians whose tools include bribery and murder.

As a politician, marius was not good at choosing who should be his allies.

The battlefield of politics was one in which Marius was not decisive

and wasn't insightful the way he was on the battlefield of javelins and swords.

Jealous of other rising military stars, Marius orders the assassination of many of his rivals.

Under Marius' leadership violence, not debate, becomes the currency used to settle political differences.

He has saved Rome only to cut out the heart of the republic.

Yet Marius never loses the love of the people.

In 86 B.C., shortly before his death, they elect him to an extraordinary seventh consulship.

He left a legacy of power in the hands of the military.

He left a legacy of popular support for one man in power.

It's a hinge event because the balance of power will shift.

Instead of 10 or 20 ruling families controlling the consulship, you'll start to have just these grand warlords.

The power of money, the power of having all of those men behind their back,

whether through actually in the form of giving them political support

or actually using it as a potential threat to go against their political enemies,

it's going to really be a problem for the Roman government down the road.

As the empire starts a long, slow slide into dictatorship, Rome is launched

into an apocalypse of political injustice and endless war from which there is no return.

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

As Roman conquest continues, captives from the conquered lands pour into the slave pens and arenas.

Out of these, one man rises up, launching a violent rebellion.

His name rings like a call to freedom: Spartacus.