Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

- This day will decide everything!

[all chanting]

I order you now.

Advance!

- Over the centuries, Rome grew from a tiny kingdom

to an empire driven by conquest.

- The fact is, it was the sword.

It was fear.

It was blood that conquered the Roman Empire.

- And the ambition of its leaders.

- Let the dice fly high!

- Now the old republic

has been replaced by a dictatorship.

- Now! [whip cracks]

[lion roars]

[crowd cheering]

- Its emperors are out of control.

♪

- You have put Rome in more danger.

♪

- The empire is faced with disaster and change.

- The city is plagued by famine, fires, earthquakes.

♪

The empire's nearly broke.

♪

- Its enemies close in.

- This Attila, is he the devil?

- No. Much worse.

♪

- The people of Rome are starting to think

perhaps this city is not eternal after all.

- Rome is ultimately a cautionary tale to us.

You are never too big to fail.

- It's all there:

the blood, the glory, the magnificence,

and the flaws that made Rome

the greatest empire that Europe has ever seen.

- The story of Rome is ultimately the story of us.

♪

- 107 C.E., Rome.

[horn fanfare]

[crowd cheering]

The great emperor Trajan has been on the throne

for seven years.

His empire thrives as he celebrates

one of his many triumphs.

- [grunting]

[crowd cheering]

♪

- When Trajan succeeds the Roman Empire,

Rome is at its greatest.

It's vast, it's successful, it's rich,

and Trajan really personifies that,

the energy, the success, and the sophistication

of this extraordinary institution.

♪

- Trajan had an interesting self-image.

Best emperor.

That was his self-image-- the best.

And he saw himself as Rome's emperor par excellence.

He took all the best qualities of his predecessors,

but also expanded Rome's empire to an unprecedented level.

- During his 19-year reign,

Trajan pushes the boundaries of the empire

to encompass more territory than ever before,

adding Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia,

and Dacia in Eastern Europe.

It now covers 2 million square miles,

over half the size of the United States today.

- The conquest of Dacia was one of the Roman Empire's

very last major conquests,

one of the very last extensions of the border.

♪

- Trajan is all about investing as much money

into the public as possible.

This is through the creation of aqueducts, of roads,

of public edifices.

He believes in that ideology.

You know, being Roman is almost like, today,

you could say it's the American dream of its time.

They believed that Rome truly was the light.

- Trajan's conquests meant that

there was a massive delivery

to the Roman people of slaves, of spoils, of new buildings,

of new baths, of new temples.

♪

He puts up this massive column showing his conquest,

showing his conquests of Dacia,

and basically advertising himself

as an amazing conqueror.

♪

- To complete the celebrations,

Trajan gives the Roman people

123 days of games with over 9,000 gladiators,

including a fight to the death

between a free Roman woman and Dacian prisoners.

♪

- Women are fairly low on the social strata

of the Roman citizenry.

A woman's role was primarily constricted

to the domestic sphere.

She was expected to be a wife and mother,

to be loyal, frugal, and obedient.

[both grunting]

[crowd shouting]

- Trajan might have looked at a female gladiator

as yet another sign of his greatness, and his ability

to bring ever-new and more exotic spectacle

to the people of Rome.

♪

[crowd cheering]

- But the games also feature more typical entertainment

for this period in Rome's history--

the slaughter of criminals and Christians.

♪

- The number of Christians is growing.

And what started as a very small movement

based around Jerusalem has now spread across the empire.

[crowd chanting]

- Christians.

When they see a few of their high priests eaten by lions,

they'll turn to our gods.

♪

- In 107 C.E., Ignatius, a prominent Christian leader,

is accused of disrupting the Roman order.

♪

- Ignatius of Antioch, he is clearly

the target of Trajan's anger, because he is arrested,

brought to Rome to be executed by being fed to lions.

[crowd cheering]

[lion roars]

- So we have the expression in English,

"being thrown to the lions."

We use it sort of metaphorically, right?

But it was very literal in the Roman Empire.

People actually were thrown to the lions.

♪

- However much we talk about civilization and baths

and all the things that we think of as rather Roman,

the fact is, it was the sword, it was fear,

it was blood that conquered the Roman Empire

and kept it under control.

♪

- At this time, most Romans are polytheistic,

worshipping multiple gods.

Christianity is a small but growing faith,

especially among Rome's poor,

and the elites are growing suspicious of it.

♪

- The Romans were beginning to see the Christians

as troublemakers.

Why?

Because when groups start to assemble together,

they start to grow.

They start to spread new ideas.

And Rome doesn't want any new ideas.

They don't want anybody challenging

the Roman power structure, the Roman ethic.

♪

- Under Trajan, the Christians are among those

getting hit with the violence.

But those harsh tactics can backfire.

- While Ignatius is on his way to Rome,

he's able to write seven letters,

and it's because of these letters that we know who he is.

- These are first-person accounts

of what happened to him and how he feels about it,

why he thinks it matters or might make a difference.

♪

- Ignatius would have traveled

along a major east-west thoroughfare,

which is known now as the Via Egnatia,

and that connected the cities

in the eastern half of the empire with Rome.

♪

- The Via Egnatia is one of 372 major roads,

a network totaling a quarter of a million miles

that connect the empire's 40 provinces to Rome,

allowing armies and trade to move.

♪

- Ironically, it was this very system of roads

that allowed Ignatius to write letters ahead

that actually helped the spread of Christianity.

[lion roars]

[crowd cheering]

- Ignatius's execution is supposed to send

a message to Christians.

[lion growls]

But Ignatius uses it to send a message to the Romans.

♪

- Ignatius is convinced that he's going to die violently.

And this is okay with him because Ignatius wants

to follow the model of Christ.

♪

- There's no touching him.

- There are great stories of Christians

being thrown before the beast, before the lions,

and instead of the lions devouring them,

the lions lie down at their feet.

[lion roars]

- Our Lord is protecting him.

- Who doesn't like that idea of a lion,

who's supposed to tear you apart, instead

rolling over to get a belly rub instead of eating you?

[lion growls]

♪

[lion roaring]

♪

- He held to his beliefs.

And died for it.

Why?

For something he believed in.

And that must have been astounding to the Romans.

♪

- Well, I think our point was made clear enough.

- I'm not sure.

♪

I'm not sure at all.

♪

- At the time that Ignatius dies,

nobody would expect Christianity

to become what it is today.

Little by little, these figures like Ignatius

were the pieces that were building a mighty wall.

Because it was his belief system that would prevail.

It was his belief system that was

going to take over the empire.

♪

- By the end of Trajan's reign,

there are an estimated 40,000 Christians in the empire.

♪

But in the years to come, that number skyrockets,

upending ancient Roman values

and remaking Roman society.

♪

- Romans believed that the greatness of Rome was founded

on the old gods, and that that was threatened

by the conversion to this new-fangled sect, Christianity.

♪

- Under Trajan's heirs, Rome will soar to new heights.

Until its rivals go on the attack.

- The northern frontier was crumbling.

There were very serious incursions.

- And an invisible enemy

brings the empire to its knees.

- Panic spreads, and it paralyzes Roman power.

- As despots seize the imperial throne,

betrayal and backstabbing follow.

- Do you wish power for yourself?

- Setting in motion Rome's decline...

- [grunts]

- And fall.

♪

[dramatic music]

- The 2nd century C.E., Rome's Golden Age.

For decades, the imperial throne passes peacefully

from one emperor to the next.

The Roman Empire flourishes, and its population

is hitting its peak-- around 75 million people,

double that of California today.

♪

The empire stops expanding

and focuses on securing its borders:

Hadrian's Wall in Britain,

the Rhine and Danube Frontiers,

and the deserts of Africa and Arabia,

all protecting its beating heart,

the city of Rome itself.

♪

- Rome is really the cultural center of the universe

in this moment.

Authors, doctors, architects, philosophers flock to the city

because they are enticed by Rome itself.

- Among the new arrivals is Galen of Pergamon,

a brilliant medical scientist.

The first to describe heart valves and cranial nerves,

he's a symbol of the empire's sophistication at this time.

- Galen is probably the single most influential figure

in the history of medicine.

[both grunting]

- He was an author, philosopher,

a scientist, a doctor,

and an incredibly ambitious man.

[both grunting]

[crowd cheering]

- For Galen and others, the capital city

is the place to be, in part because of its emperor.

- Marcus Aurelius comes at the tail end

of the Five Good Emperors.

These were the emperors who ruled during what's known

as the Pax Romana, during the very height

of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century A.D.

♪

- He was an extraordinary character.

He'd been chosen as a very young man

and trained to be emperor.

And for once, they got it absolutely right.

♪

- But Marcus Aurelius does not rule alone.

For the first time in Roman history,

two emperors govern side by side.

♪

- Marcus Aurelius's adopted brother, Lucius Verus,

they were almost opposites.

They reigned together perfectly because

they were two sides of a coin.

♪

- Under their enlightened rule,

the city of Rome, on its seven hills,

has grown into the world's first megacity.

♪

- Rome had a population of a million people.

That is the largest population in any city

anywhere in the world for 1,500 years.

The next city to be that size population is Victorian London.

♪

- But as the Romans reap the rewards of empire,

others are stirring.

♪

In the 160 C.E., entire nations are on the move

in the uncharted lands to the empire's north,

pushing against the Danube frontier.

For once, Rome's army can't drive them back.

- The northern frontier was crumbling.

There were very serious incursions

threatening Roman interests, especially by a very dangerous

tribe called the Marcomanni.

- What starts as what might seem a fairly small invasion

turns into what are known as the Marcomannic Wars,

and they occupy Marcus for the rest of his reign.

♪

- The Marcomannic Wars on the northern frontier

may be seen as the first of the barbarian invasions

from the north that will chip away

at the very foundations of the Roman Empire.

- In response, Rome's two emperors

travel 350 miles north

to reach their military headquarters at Aquileia,

on the border of Italy and modern-day Slovenia.

- Marcus Aurelius had a very strong sense of duty.

And also, he was a political realist.

And as much as he would have preferred

to leave the fighting to his subordinates,

or even to his co-emperor, Verus,

he realized that this required his personal intervention.

♪

- But when they arrive at the camp,

an even bigger threat to Rome's empire

is running rampant through the cramped legions:

a new disease that the men in Aquileia

haven't experienced before.

♪

- By all accounts, the plague was

a horrible, horrible disease.

I mean, in addition to the expected diarrhea and vomiting

and fevers, scabs would form and then fall off,

leaving horrible lesions.

- It was devastating in its effects

and killed a large percentage of the people that it infected.

♪

- The emperors summon the physician Galen,

the only man they believe can tackle this.

What we know about the plague comes from his writings.

He arrives at Rome's military headquarters

to find an army in crisis.

- The situation that Galen found

when he reached Aquileia was more severe than anything

he could have imagined.

♪

- Galen gives us some pretty detailed description

of symptoms, and based on those symptoms,

we think it was likely smallpox.

It might have been the first appearance of smallpox

in the Mediterranean world.

♪

- This crisis becomes, in many ways for the empire,

the defining challenge.

More than perhaps at any point in human memory,

disease had become an existential threat

to Rome itself.

♪

- The Roman Empire has never been free of disease,

but epidemics like the one

that's running rampant through his army, that's something new.

This is the first of a whole series of diseases

that are going to strike the Roman Empire

over the next couple of centuries.

♪

- As the plague continues to wipe out their troops,

the two emperors return to Rome

to replenish their diminished legions.

They leave the army under Galen's care.

♪

But during the emperor's journey home,

Lucius Verus dies.

♪

- Verus didn't make it very far--

only 50 miles from Aquileia.

For Marcus Aurelius, he is left on his own

to rule an empire that's stricken by plague,

has enemies at the borders, an army that's been

devastated by this disease.

He knows that the responsibility is his

to rule the Roman Empire by himself.

♪

- It doesn't take very long for the plague

to ravage all of Italy, and to spread from the legions

to the civilian population itself.

♪

- There was nowhere in the world

that was more conducive to the spread

of a highly transmissible and lethal disease

than the city of Rome.

You have tons of people who are living

in cramped quarters.

Sanitary conditions are often poor.

This is a population that is going to drop like flies

as smallpox starts to spread among them.

♪

Perhaps as much as 10% of the Roman Empire's population,

or even more, dies in this one plague

over the course of the next several years.

- And, of course, panic spreads.

And it's actually-- for a moment,

it paralyzes Roman power.

The plague is a huge crisis for the Roman state.

♪

- With enemies at the border and a depleted army,

the emperor turns to an unlikely group for help.

- Help me to protect the citizens of Rome,

and you will win your freedom!

[all cheering]

- But Rome's worst enemy is much closer to him.

♪

- If you're looking for a dividing line

between the glory that was Rome and its long decline,

Commodus is it.

♪

- In 169, the Roman Empire's Golden Age faces two threats--

invasion and a deadly plague.

- Galen returns to Rome,

and he finds a transformed city.

And, in fact, Galen's family itself is not spared.

♪

Almost everyone in his own household dies.

And it's the scale of this plague, of this disease,

is just overwhelming.

And of course, no one knew for how long it would go on.

♪

- His observations of an understanding

of what was happening were ahead of many other doctors.

And of course, that brings him close to Marcus Aurelius, who,

first of all, doesn't want to become a victim

of the plague himself, but is also desperate

to understand how to stop it.

♪

- Galen's mission is to keep Marcus Aurelius alive.

♪

- Added cinnamon this time.

♪

- While on one hand, the reign of Marcus Aurelius

marks something of a high point in the Roman Empire...

- It didn't help.

- It also marks the point when the seeds were planted

that were going to define the next couple of centuries

of Rome's existence.

♪

- To face down the invaders,

Rome needs fresh fighters to replenish

its plague-ravaged army.

So Marcus Aurelius makes a daring move

to recruit the fittest men in Rome...

♪

Whoever they may be.

- The gladiators live in a sheltered community.

They don't have any connection to the outside world.

They're exceptionally healthy.

They're getting three square meals a day.

They've got great medical care.

So, they're probably the fittest people

in Rome at that moment.

- We have to remember, of course,

that what the gladiators were trained to do was fight.

That is what Marcus Aurelius needed.

♪

- But gladiators are convicts and slaves.

♪

- How could these degenerates and criminals

defend the honor of Rome?

Could they be trusted on the battlefield?

♪

- The gladiators were often drawn from, in the Roman view,

the lowest-born peoples of the empire

and engaged in a sordid occupation.

To have them vaulted into a kind of prestige role

of soldiers on behalf of the empire itself

was a startling transformation.

♪

- This obviously causes a great amount

of furor throughout the city, mainly because

gladiators are entertainers.

They are people who fight for money,

they're mercenaries,

and they're the lowest of the low.

♪

- Line up for the emperor!

♪

- Take up these arms.

You are now Roman soldiers.

♪

When I look at you, I don't see prisoners.

I don't see criminals.

Or slaves.

I don't even see gladiators.

I see legionaries

dedicated to protecting this great empire.

Help me to protect the citizens of Rome,

and you will win your freedom!

[all cheering]

- History often throws up these moments

where those who are on the fringes of society

ultimately come to save that society,

and this is certainly the case here.

The gladiators make sense.

They're trained combatants,

and so they know the art of war.

♪

- Marcus Aurelius goes north once again...

♪

And his new legions clash with the barbarian armies.

♪

After months of fierce fighting,

Rome's ad hoc army turns back the invasion.

It's a triumphant moment, but the war continues,

and the threat on the empire's border never really goes away.

♪

- This marks a turning point in Roman imperial history.

What Marcus Aurelius was seeing was really

the future of the Roman Empire.

There's going to be waves of incursions

from Goths and Vandals and many northern tribes

all out to vanquish Italy.

♪

- As a buffer against its enemies,

the empire creates new provinces on the frontier

and allows friendlier Germanic tribes to settle there

in return for a promise to defend the land,

a decision with far-reaching consequences.

♪

As for Marcus Aurelius, he knows he needs to plan

his succession carefully.

But his son, Commodus, is far from the ideal heir.

[swords clanging]

[crowd shouting]

♪

[crowd cheering]

- Marcus Aurelius can't have been unaware

of the character defects

that were going to plague Commodus later in life.

- Halt!

♪

- The apple really did fall pretty far from the tree,

because Commodus went in exactly the opposite direction

as his father.

♪

- In 177, Marcus Aurelius decides

to name his son as co-emperor and the heir to the throne.

You know, one of the questions that historians ask is that,

how could someone as wise as Marcus Aurelius choose his son?

- One of the things that makes the high point

of the Roman Empire so remarkable

is the fact that the emperors chose their successors.

They adopted sons to serve as their successors, as emperors.

So really, this is a fairly meritocratic process.

Marcus Aurelius departed from this.

♪

- Three years after naming Commodus

his co-emperor and heir apparent,

Marcus Aurelius falls ill.

♪

- Caesar.

Caesar?

- What? - It's your father.

It's time.

♪

[somber music]

♪

- It's the 17th of March, 180.

And Marcus Aurelius dies.

Very possibly of the plague that had dogged his army.

♪

- Commodus becomes the most powerful man

in all the Roman Empire.

And it doesn't take very long for Commodus

to show that this is going to be a very different reign

from the one of his father.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Commodus turns out to be one of the worst emperors

in the history of the Roman Empire.

If you're looking for a dividing line

between the glory that was Rome and its long decline,

Commodus is it.

♪

- Commodus grabs the reins of power...

- Bring me his head.

- And drives Rome down a dangerous course.

- How dare you?

♪

- 180 C.E., Commodus, the new emperor,

is in command of the Roman army

as it fights German tribes on its north.

200 years after Augustus, the first emperor,

the Roman Empire is still

the ancient world's superpower.

♪

Then Commodus makes the first in a series

of decisions that sets Rome on a downward trajectory.

- Caesar, where are you going?

- I'm going to Rome.

- Commodus does not want to be out in the freezing mud,

fighting, living in a camp or in a tent.

He wants to be back in Rome, in the luxury,

enjoy the fruits of being an emperor.

♪

- Rather than pursuing the war with the Germani

to its conclusion, which, in Roman eyes,

would have to be a victory, Commodus decided

to make peace with them.

This was a huge departure because

in the Roman imagination, Romans didn't make peace.

They won.

♪

- Almost immediately, the relationship

between Commodus and the Senate is off to a bad start.

There's a wedge driven between them

right from the very beginning.

♪

- We were at war!

- And now we're not, Cassius.

- You have put Rome in more danger.

- Tell me, how is peace more dangerous than war?

- From the Senate's position,

it's just storing up trouble ahead,

that they know these tribes will come back in the future

where they'll probably pose an even bigger threat.

♪

- Cassius Dio is privy to the inner workings of the empire.

He's in close proximity to the emperor himself.

And so his studies, his observations, his writings

are the incredible source to go to the knowledge of Commodus.

- Even under the emperors, the Senate

counted for a great deal.

They were an important go-between the emperor

and the Roman people.

It was very important for the emperor to have

the senators on his side.

♪

- The history of Rome's emperor shows that

it's pretty dangerous to cross the Senate.

But Commodus had a plan,

and it really was to ignore the Senate

and to appeal directly to the people.

- To win the people over, Commodus has

an incredible tool at his disposal.

He has the games.

- Appealing to the people is a strategy that goes

all the way back to Julius Caesar.

Commodus throws lavish games

to celebrate the end of the war,

which means free food and entertainment...

[crowd chanting]

Even though years of conflict and plague

have drained the empire's finances.

♪

[grunting]

[cheers and boos]

- For the Senate, they understand

that this is an absolute joke.

Triumphal games were put on at the end

of great wars fought for many years,

wars that established the power of Rome.

This was the opposite of that, and yet here he was,

parading himself as some sort of triumphant general.

♪

[crowd chanting]

♪

[crowd cheering]

♪

- Do you hear that, Cassius?

People love it.

- But the treasury can only stretch so far.

- I'll find the money.

- Every single day of games

costs an enormous amount of money.

You have to fund the import of sometimes

tens of thousands of wild animals.

You have to hire gladiators, some of whom

are extremely high-priced help.

- In today's terms, we'd be talking about an event

that would cost millions of dollars per day,

and these games could last for months.

The cost of the games were unbelievable.

- Throughout history, taxes have been a way

to generate more revenue for the state,

and Commodus sees them as a way to pay for the games,

curry favor with the people, and stick it to the rich.

- Commodus directs his attention

toward the 1%, the senatorial class,

and he imposes a new tax on them

to finance his games in the Colosseum.

♪

- The Senate were never going to just lie down and take this.

♪

- From the Senate's perspective,

Commodus was becoming a real threat.

It was enough to prompt them to act.

Commodus had to be dealt with.

♪

- Within the first years of Commodus's reign,

there's an attempt on his life.

- Who sent you?

Who sent you?

- He later finds out that it's his own sister,

Lucilla, who's involved, and a handful of senators.

- The idea, apparently, was that she

would substitute her own husband

and eliminate her brother in order

to make room for her husband.

♪

- Bring me his head.

- There is no possible way that a plot

on the emperor's life did not include the Senate.

They viewed him as dangerous, they viewed him as somebody

that should have been gotten rid of a long time ago,

and they were going to try their best to do it.

♪

- His relations with the Senate

have always been tense.

Now they've become intolerable.

♪

- It's fair to say that any semblance of a normal person

that remained in Commodus left

the moment that the assassination plot took place.

♪

- How dare you?

♪

[grunts]

♪

- He was already a very unstable and violent

and cruel person, and I think this, in many ways,

validated his behavior and sent him

on a complete mental downward spiral.

♪

Commodus unleashes nothing short of pure bloody vengeance

on the Senate.

Anyone he suspects that was involved,

that will be involved,

that poses even a minor threat to him,

in his eyes, absolutely has to go.

The praetorians round up senators

and systematically torture each and every one of them,

at which point, of course, they give up more names.

The web becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.

A huge amount of Rome's political class is wiped out.

Of course, one of the side effects of this

is that they, being wealthy men,

they have lost all their rights to all their wealth,

their villas, their businesses,

and quite conveniently,

Commodus takes it all for himself.

- Cassius Dio and a handful of other senators

escape the carnage by fleeing the city.

- You can understand that this shook the Senate to its core,

seeing members of the Senate being put to death

as nothing more than common criminals.

They knew that Commodus was not somebody

who was mentally stable or someone that you would

want to mess with at all.

♪

- Commodus's sister, Lucilla, isn't spared.

She's exiled to the Island of Capri,

then murdered by her imperial guards.

♪

As the emperor descends into violence and madness...

- Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

- He drives his empire closer to ruin.

- Rome is at a moment of disaster.

- Commodus, this is madness!

- The highlight of these new games

is going to be something which the Roman people

have never seen before.

♪

- In the late 2nd century, the Roman Empire is still

the most powerful of its time.

But cracks have formed.

♪

- Commodus decides that Rome is no longer

a safe place for him to be, and so he leaves the city

for his own safety.

- Caesar--

- I'm leaving Rome.

- I'll have our things packed to--

- Not this time, Cleander.

You're staying.

I'm leaving you in charge while I'm gone.

- Really, Caesar, but I--

- Dear Cleander, I'm relying on you.

- He delegates the running of the city and the day-to-day

affairs of Rome to one of his former slaves,

a freed man called Cleander.

♪

- Cleander, being a freed slave,

is basically from the bottom of society.

Now he's been imbued with this power and responsibility

from the emperor himself.

It's putting him above the Senate, and that, of course,

is going to ruffle feathers in the Senate.

♪

- Whenever you look at the bad emperors,

I always think of the famous maxim of "Power corrupts;

absolute power corrupts absolutely."

So many Roman emperors fell prey to paranoia

and increasing megalomania.

Caligula and Nero are two perfect examples

of emperors who simply lost their minds,

and the disintegration of their reign

because of their own cruel behavior,

because of their megalomania,

and because of their systematic fighting

with the other powerful figures in Rome, the Roman Senate.

♪

- Commodus, at the time of his birth, had it all.

However, perhaps no other human being in history

has squandered so much.

He was cruel, he was power hungry,

but with no sense of responsibility.

He had no serious interest in governing

or even being emperor.

♪

- While all of this is going on,

Commodus stays safely in his villa outside Rome.

Commodus's villa contains its own mini-amphitheater.

And while he's there, he decides

to train as a gladiator.

- There's no record of why Commodus decided to do this,

but we might say that it had

something to do with his insecurity,

the desire to associate himself with a symbol

of masculine virility.

- He becomes even more paranoid.

And paradoxically, he felt safer

surrounded by these trained killers

than he did with the Senate.

- As Commodus plays gladiator,

Rome slips toward financial collapse.

♪

- The economy is failing.

There's unrest amongst the people.

There is death in the streets.

Rome is at a moment of disaster.

And there was a very serious threat at that point

that Rome itself could be finished,

all because of the actions of one very selfish individual.

♪

- There's a famine of the kind that Rome hasn't suffered

for hundreds of years.

And this is joined by a resurgence

of the Antonine Plague.

So a major pestilence strikes the city as well.

It is mayhem in the city, and thousands of people a day

are dying from hunger or from disease.

♪

- He debases the coinage, which means that

he lowered the silver content in each coin,

therefore meaning that the same amount of silver

could go further.

Now, superficially, it gave him more money to buy his food

and spend it on games, but in reality,

it will have generated inflation.

It would be a disaster for the city's finances.

♪

- Commodus knew, with all the pressures on the Roman system,

he was losing the goodwill of the Roman people,

and he had to do something big.

[crowd chanting]

- Commodus thought to himself,

I'll just give them more circuses.

♪

- This time, Commodus has a surprise.

♪

- The highlight of these new games

is going to be something which the Roman people

have never seen before.

The emperor himself is going to take center stage

and fight as a gladiator.

- Commodus, this is madness!

You are not some slave.

You are the emperor of Rome.

♪

- One of the big draws of becoming a gladiator is,

we forget how much power, how much adulation,

how much excitement they caused.

♪

But the Romans were elitists.

So the fact that someone born of nobility,

one of the emperors,

would degrade himself to that degree,

that he's going to present himself

in the same profession of infamia, the infamous,

the scum of the scum, it wasn't just shocking,

it was absolutely disgusting to them.

♪

- Commodus charges the bankrupt Roman treasury

1 million sesterces to appear, $10 million in today's money.

And he's not finished.

[both grunting]

♪

[crowd booing]

♪

[crowd cheering]

♪

- After the games, Commodus embarks

on a still-grander project.

He intends to rebuild Rome with himself at the center.

♪

- He renames Rome Colonia Commodiana,

the Colony of Commodus.

And we wouldn't believe that this was true

if it were not for the fact that the coins

of Commodus's era show that this was the case.

He really did name it after himself.

- That could not be tolerated,

even by Commodus's world-weary contemporaries.

♪

- When Commodus announces yet another set of games,

with himself as the star again,

the Senate know they must act.

- [grunting, groaning]

♪

- Commodus meets his end at the hands

of his gladiatorial trainer, at the hands of Narcissus,

acting on the orders of the Senate.

♪

- There's a sort of poetic irony that in the end,

it was the very figure that he so admired, so wanted to be,

that put an end to his life--

the gladiator.

- But for Rome, the Senate's actions come too late.

The death of Commodus

marks a tipping point in Roman history.

♪

- The barbarians he'd settled inside the Roman Empire

turned and invaded Italy once again.

And the Roman Empire, which had been drained

financially by Commodus's expenditures,

could do very little about it.

♪

- Commodus, after his death, suffers what's known

as the damnatio memoriae.

This means that every reference to Commodus

was literally wiped out.

So inscriptions with Commodus's name

were rubbed out.

Documents with his name

and about him were destroyed.

♪

- The reign of Commodus is probably best summed up

by Cassius Dio when he says that

Commodus was a greater curse to the Romans

than any pestilence and any crime.

♪

[all shouting]

- Now the Roman Empire teeters on the edge...

- No! Stop!

- As new enemies close in.

♪

- Attila the Hun stands as one of the most ruthless,

if not the most ruthless, military leaders of all time.

♪

- Following the death of Commodus in 192 C.E.,

Rome enters an extended period of turbulence.

- This is now a new era of Roman history.

Rome is no longer what it was. Rome is in decline.

♪

- Over the next 200 years, its frontiers

are often under attack.

- The empire was beset on all sides

by barbarian invaders who sensed Rome's weakness.

There were Saxons in the north,

there were Goths along the Danube frontier,

Franks along the Rhine, Persians in the east.

Rome was under threat.

[horse neighs]

- The once-invincible Roman army struggles

to hold back the tide of enemies on multiple fronts.

♪

The empire spends all its resources on defense.

And military leadership becomes the key quality

for any Roman emperor.

♪

In 330 C.E., Emperor Constantine the Great

founds a new capital, closer to the legions

on the northern frontiers, Constantinople.

But his rule triggers upheavals

of a different order.

♪

- There's a kind of a watershed moment

with the emperor Constantine.

So Constantine is born a pagan, but he's the first emperor

to convert to Christianity.

And it sets the stage for everything to change.

For Christianity to be legal.

For churches to be built.

For the new religion to become legitimized,

to become imperialized,

and to grow like it has never done before.

♪

- By the end of the 4th century C.E.,

we think possibly as many as 50% of the population

had become Christian.

- And the values that drove Rome's expansion

are turned upside down.

- With the rise of Christianity,

you have a lot of hostility toward the ancient practices.

Not just toward the ancient gods,

but toward the recognition that much of Roman culture

is suffused with conquest and violence,

and that goes against the principles of Jesus.

♪

- We moved from a situation in which the Christians

had been persecuted towards a situation in which

the Christian emperors moved with greater

and greater certainty and strength against paganism.

- Under the emperor Theodosius,

there's a whole set of anti-pagan legislation

that gets set into place.

The shutting down of pagan

religious rituals and holidays.

The banning of sacrifice.

And closure of pagan temples and the withdrawal

of their funding.

[crowd chanting]

[both grunting]

- Such is the revolution in values

that even the cornerstone of Roman culture,

the gladiatorial spectacle, finds itself under attack.

♪

- In the name of the one true God!

- For Christians, what's happening in the amphitheater

had to be stopped.

- In the name of the one true God!

[crowd cheering]

- The Colosseum has been standing

for close on 350 years.

It was built as an extraordinary statement of PR

that Rome was succeeding.

♪

But at the end of the Colosseum's life,

it really represents the divided nature

of the end of the Roman world.

There are people who are saying,

we have to have a new way of being.

♪

- In the name of our true God, stop!

♪

This is against God's teachings!

♪

Leave or face his wrath!

♪

- This was a turning point in history.

It sounded the death knell of the Colosseum,

and things were never going to be the same.

♪

- The deep change creates tensions within Roman society,

pitting Christians against pagans.

♪

- You'd have seen the changes on the streets.

People were taking down pagan monuments,

which were now regarded as idolatrous.

Statues, for example, of gods

or men who were regarded as gods were being taken down,

were being disfigured, were being dismantled.

[all shouting]

- The city of Rome is filled with statues,

and to Christians, these statues present a huge affront

because they violate two of the Commandments,

"Thou shalt make no graven images,"

and "Thou shalt have no gods aside from me."

♪

- No!

No! Stop!

Stop! Stop!

♪

[crowd cheering]

- For pagans, watching a Christian mob

destroy a statue, that was a tremendous affront,

and it was deeply offensive to this traditionalist worldview.

- Amidst all this, in 395 C.E.,

Rome's rulers decide

to split the empire into two to survive,

an eastern and western half.

- It was simply too big for any one person to handle.

So each half of the Roman Empire

is ruled by one of the sons of Theodosius,

the last man to rule a united Roman Empire.

18-year-old Arcadius

rules from Constantinople in the east,

and the 15-year-old Honorius rules from Milan in the west.

- They are very young, they're very inexperienced,

and they're clearly not up to the job.

- Neither of them ever visits Rome.

This means that the city that is

the ideological and spiritual heart of the empire

is something of a backwater.

[horse neighs]

- Rome, at this period,

is almost completely unrecognizable

from the way that it was in its heyday.

♪

The city is plagued by all kinds of problems,

like famines and fires, earthquakes.

And the buildings stand in ruins.

The empire is nearly broke.

♪

People leave in droves,

and they're not coming back in.

It's a pretty dark time.

♪

- With the empire divided and vulnerable,

more and more barbarian tribes press down on its borders.

♪

- This is a major threat to the empire.

They have to act.

♪

- There is chaos.

There is confusion.

And there is a sense of desperation.

♪

♪

- The Roman Empire, recently divided

between the young brothers Honorius and Arcadius,

is facing existential threats,

but its leaders are falling short of the challenge.

- The contrast between Arcadius and Honorius and, say,

the Five Good Emperors like Trajan or Hadrian,

could not be stronger.

They are too young and too inexperienced

to make any kind of sound judgments.

They are entirely ruled by the people around them.

♪

- Honorius and Arcadius are symptomatic

of a much larger disease that we associate

with hereditary systems.

From the Chinese emperors to medieval kings

to the Russian tsars, systems that are based on heredity

and not on skill often yield rulers who are born into power

but unable to wield it effectively.

♪

- And as the empire grows weaker,

its rivals grow bolder--

among them, the Visigoths.

- The Visigoths are a barbarian group

that has been settled inside the Roman Empire

for a little less than a generation.

They're a source of recruits for the Roman army,

but in the past, they have fought against the Romans.

And in the future, they could just as easily do so again.

♪

- In 395 C.E., the same year Honorius and Arcadius

come to the throne, the Visigoths unite

under a king of their own--

Alaric.

- Alaric is just 25 years old.

He has been around the limes, the fringes of the empire,

all his life.

He's actually fought for the Roman army before.

And so he understands the psychology

of both the Romans and the barbarians very well.

♪

- Within a year, Alaric's Visigoths

storm across Eastern Roman provinces,

sacking Athens and other large cities.

- This is a major threat to the empire.

They have to act.

They have to deal with Alaric now.

♪

- Then, in 402 C.E., Alaric attacks Italy.

♪

Then Western emperor Honorius retreats with his court

to Ravenna, leaving the defense of Italy

to his magister militum, or commander-in-chief,

a man named Stilicho.

♪

- Stilicho is a brilliant general.

He's of mixed barbarian,

possibly Vandal, and Roman ancestry.

He's risen high through his talents

within this Roman system.

In fact, he occupies the kind of position

that someone like Alaric is aspiring to.

♪

- When Stilicho meets Alaric,

he chooses to talk rather than fight.

♪

- Stilicho is the most powerful general,

and therefore, politician in the Roman world.

If you're looking for a Roman to negotiate with,

Stilicho is your man.

- There is no need for us to be at war.

♪

- You have power.

We have none.

There'll be no peace until my people

have a land to call their own.

- I can give you that.

Help me fight our enemies, and I promise you,

you'll have your land.

You have my word.

♪

- To spare Italy from war,

Stilicho offers Alaric lands in the Balkans.

♪

But Stilicho knows he is merely buying time.

♪

Over the next few years, Stilicho struggles to cope

with crisis after crisis.

Groups of barbarians from outside the empire

and rebels within it all chip away at his hold on power.

♪

Then, in 407, Alaric returns, demanding more gold for peace.

And Emperor Honorius makes a disastrous mistake.

- [shouts]

♪

- The Roman Empire is watching as the central part

of its territory is being taken over

and held by non-Roman peoples.

A rising tide of anti-barbarianism

is growing and leads to suspicion of Stilicho.

- Stilicho becomes a victim of a whisper campaign

that paints him as disloyal,

in large part due to his barbarian background,

and that's enough for the emperor Honorius

to turn against him.

[bell tolling]

♪

- The immediate consequence for Alaric

of the assassination of Stilicho

is that the deal is dead in the water.

♪

- It was a colossally stupid move

to have Stilicho executed.

It eventually led to the defection

of huge numbers of barbarian troops over to Alaric's side.

♪

- Alaric wanted his homeland.

The Romans constantly took it away from him.

So what he decides to do is that he'll take away

the homeland from the Romans.

He's going to go and sack Rome.

♪

- Thousands of Visigoths, and thousands more

of Stilicho's men, who now pledge loyalty to Alaric,

march on Rome.

♪

For the first time in 800 years,

the barbarians surround the city,

cutting off supply lines,

trying to starve Rome into surrender.

But the war of attrition takes its toll

on Roman and barbarian alike.

♪

- You get dire consequences on both sides.

At Rome, there's plague and famine.

There are calls to legalize cannibalism.

On the Gothic side, there's plague in their army.

So they really need to come to a resolution.

- Eventually, Alaric sends an offer of peace

to the Roman Senate.

- Unwen, send them a message.

If they grant us this last night

to prepare our dead for burial,

I'll make a gift to the senators of Rome.

- A gift, my lord?

- 300 of our best men as slaves.

♪

- The Senate agrees to the deal,

but Alaric does not intend to retreat.

♪

- The brilliant and really rather ironic thing

is that the Romans trace their ancestry back

to the Trojans, and what Alaric has given them

is effectively a Trojan horse.

These slaves are not any old slaves.

They're actually 300 of his finest warriors.

♪

Rome essentially undergoes the Sack of Troy again.

The slaves have completely infiltrated the city.

They go on the rampage.

And they open the gates to the waiting Goths who are outside.

[all shouting]

♪

- The sack of Rome is Alaric's greatest victory--

a strike so devastating that the empire never recovers.

- The tide has really turned now.

Essentially, once upon a time,

the barbarians were at the mercy of Rome,

but now, Rome is at the mercy of the barbarians.

Its days are numbered.

- There is chaos, there is confusion,

and there is a sense of desperation.

When he hears the news,

the Roman Christian writer Jerome says,

"If Rome can perish, what can be safe?"

♪

- Rome recovers from its sack

only for new dangers to appear.

- Who are you?

- I'm Atilla, the Whip of God.

- [groaning]

♪

- For the first time in generations,

the Roman Empire is no longer fighting for domination;

it's fighting for survival.

♪

While the imperial family struggles

to hold on to Italy and North Africa,

Germanic peoples carve up

the rest of the Western Empire.

The Visigoths settle in Southwestern Gaul,

while Southern Spain falls to the Vandals.

♪

Their unlikely leader

is the illegitimate son of a king.

His name is Gaiseric.

- The Roman sources report that Gaiseric

had a physical disability, but apart from that,

what they emphasize is his intelligence.

- Gaiseric was an almost uniquely perceptive statesman.

♪

He was ruthless in negotiations,

and ruthless when he chose to put his army into action.

- Gaiseric, of all the late Roman

barbarian leaders, is the only one who really

seeks to create a kingdom.

He wants to control his own agenda for the long run.

- In 439, Gaiseric strikes at the jewel

in the empire's crown...

♪

Carthage, a crucial territory that Rome has held

since its defeat of Hannibal nearly 600 years earlier.

♪

- North Africa is the breadbasket

of the Roman Empire, and Carthage is

the gateway to North Africa.

There's an extraordinary symmetry

between the construction of the Roman Empire

on the basis of taking Carthage

and its effective fall as a viable superpower

through the Vandals' capture of Carthage.

♪

- Gaiseric's capture of Carthage

is the single most devastating blow to the Roman Empire.

Gaiseric now controls the food supply

to the armies of the Western Empire,

the food supply to Rome.

He is in complete control.

- With the Vandals now controlling the Mediterranean,

Italy cannot feed itself.

Rome is about to go through decades

of famine, of decline,

of loss, of permanent fall.

♪

- And as Rome's enemies circle,

its politics weaken it from within.

♪

The Eastern emperor Theodosius II

rules from Constantinople.

His empire is mostly intact.

But in Ravenna, his young cousin, Valentinian III,

rules a much reduced Western Empire.

- The Emperor Valentinian came to the throne as a child.

He was young, he was weak, he was not taught the politics

that earlier Roman emperors had been taught,

and he was not a soldier.

He was also very much under the thumb of his mother,

the imperial princess, Galla.

- Galla is an astonishing woman.

Not only is she the sister of one emperor,

she's married to another,

and then she's the mother of a third.

And she exercises a great deal of personal power

within the imperial political circles.

♪

- She and her son turn to the only man capable of saving

their crumbling empire, General Flavius Aetius,

who's replaced Stilicho as the commander-in-chief

of the Western armies.

- The problem Aetius faces is that he's

distrusted by the royal family, basically because

he becomes too powerful.

He manages to take over complete control

of Roman military forces in the Western Empire himself.

♪

- Aetius,

Magister Militum of the Western Army,

patriarch...

of my empire.

♪

Give this to my cousin Theodosius.

♪

I have decided to petition the Eastern Empire

to ally their armies and their fleet

for you to drive the Vandal king from Carthage.

♪

This Attila.

Is he the devil, as they say?

- No.

♪

Much worse.

♪

- Even as the Romans make plans to face

the Vandals in Carthage, they know other barbarians

are growing in power.

None more than the Huns, who appeared from the steppes

of Eurasia in the 4th century.

♪

- Who are you?

- I'm Attila, the Whip of God.

- [groaning]

- Attila the Hun stands as one of the most ruthless,

if not the most ruthless, military leaders of all time.

He would slaughter thousands, tens of thousands,

to send a very strong message to those that stood in his path

about the fate that awaited them.

♪

- While Attila's Huns menace Rome's eastern borders,

the Western and Eastern Empire

launch their combined operation against the Vandals.

♪

Rome's combined forces, numbering 100,000 men,

meet in Sicily, ready to sail to Carthage.

It's the largest invasion force

the empire has ever assembled,

but it leaves the eastern border virtually undefended.

♪

- Attila sees this, he seizes the moment

to unleash his Hunnic hordes, while the rest of the Romans

are over there 600 miles away in Sicily.

♪

- Attila turns Roman tactics and technology against them.

Using towers, catapults, and battering rams,

the Huns can take a fortified city in a matter of days.

♪

- This is a seismic shift in the strategic balance of power.

Earlier enemies rampaging through the Balkans

like the Goths couldn't take defended cities.

They never conducted successful sieges.

The fact that the Huns can do it,

and they can take really major Roman bases,

that changes everything.

♪

- As the end game approaches,

Rome's defenders have no easy options.

♪

To act against one

means letting the other grow stronger.

- The Western and Eastern Empires

come together to push back their enemies,

but as the Huns advance in Eastern Europe,

in Sicily, the combined Roman forces charged

with defeating Gaiseric's Vandals

find themselves grappling with the fallout.

[dramatic music]

- We have orders to withdraw.

Emperor Theodosius has called back

the entire Eastern Army

to defend Constantinople from the Huns.

We leave at dawn.

I'm sorry, my friend.

♪

- Without the Eastern fleet, we're done.

We cannot sail alone.

What do you suggest?

- We leave Carthage to Gaiseric for now.

Agree terms with the Vandals to let grain into the empire.

- If and when we defeat Attila,

I will return and remove that traitor's head.

♪

- By turning its invasion force north

to confront Attila,

Rome grants Gaiseric a crucial window of opportunity,

one the empire will come to regret.

- The fact that the expedition never sails from Sicily

means everything to Gaiseric.

It allows him to start to build

a real kingdom in North Africa.

It basically secures his existence

as an independent power.

- Gaiseric is possibly the most underestimated factor

in the decline of the Roman Empire.

He's a famously effective military strategist,

but he's also infamously cunning.

♪

- Western Emperor Valentinian is forced to grant Gaiseric

a treaty in 442 C.E., recognizing an independent

Vandal Kingdom on lands that were once Rome's.

♪

And to cap it all off, Emperor Valentinian

agrees to marry his daughter to Gaiseric's son...

♪

Giving the Vandal king a fateful claim

on the imperial family.

♪

- The Romans have no choice but to turn back.

This is the ever-present nightmare of a two-front war,

and the Romans respond accordingly.

They have to keep the Vandals on their side,

but the treaty leaves them seriously weakened.

♪

- While on the Danube frontier,

the situation only becomes more desperate

as Attila plunders city after city,

moving closer to the Eastern Roman capital.

♪

- Attila was fundamentally predatory.

He did not have a massive taxation system

set up in order to extract revenue from his subjects.

Instead, his goal was to use the Roman Empire

as a sort of bank from which he could draw whenever he needed

more money in order to supply, above all, those people who

were his leaders with gold.

♪

- Eastern Emperor Theodosius

knows he must keep Attila away from his capital,

Constantinople, now almost equal in size and wealth

to the city of Rome.

But he's not prepared to pay the ransom, 1 ton in gold,

that Attila demands in return for leaving the city alone.

♪

- Theodosius has grown bold.

He has refused the Huns' peace terms.

Attila is apocalyptic.

Asks that his army moves on the east as we speak.

♪

- They say Attila has found the Sword of Mars in Scythia.

They say it has magical powers,

that it proves his divine right to lead.

- It's nothing but folklore, superstition.

- I know that!

♪

But his armies don't.

♪

They believe it.

They think they are following a god.

♪

- Attila escalates his attacks,

sweeping through the Eastern Empire towards Constantinople.

- He took over most of the cities

in what is today Bulgaria and Serbia.

Something on the order of 80 cities were captured.

Probably on the order of 100,000 people

were taken into captivity.

♪

- In 443, with the Eastern Empire

on the verge of collapse, Theodosius surrenders.

♪

Attila now demands 3 tons of gold,

plus another ton to be paid every year.

♪

The settlement causes a crisis within the Eastern economy

and turns the Huns towards Valentinian in the west.

♪

- I have no doubt that Attila rides on us.

- Then send the legions to reinforce the northern borders.

Hunt him down.

- With all due respect, we do not have enough men.

If and when he attacks, we will not be able to hold him.

We cannot defend our borders.

We cannot rely on the East for reinforcements.

It leaves us with just one option.

We must send word to the barbarian tribes

to form a coalition.

If we unite together, we may hold.

If we fight alone, us and every other tribe will fall.

♪

- To call the Roman Empire at this point

a husk of its former self is, frankly, being too generous.

Huge areas have fallen out of its effective control.

Its resources are dramatically diminished.

Even assembling an army is extraordinarily difficult.

If you wanted soldiers, you were going

to have to turn to the Goths.

- The Goths are the best military force,

apart from the Roman army,

that's available on Western territories.

♪

Up to this point, the whole of the strategy of the empire

has been to try and keep the Goths in line.

Now the empire has to go cap-in-hand to the Goths

to keep itself in being.

♪

- Theodoric, my old friend, you have two choices.

Fight alongside us or face the Hun alone.

And watch the Goths being driven into oblivion.

♪

I'll await your answer.

♪

- The unnatural alliance is made just in time.

♪

Attila's horde, as many as 100,000 warriors,

cross the Rhine into Roman Gaul,

attacking city after city.

Aetius scrambles his forces to confront them.

♪

Romans and Visigoths will meet the Huns in Gaul

in one of the bloodiest battles of the Roman age.

♪

Its outcome will decide the fate of the empire.

♪

- In its 1,000-year history, Rome has survived invasions,

uprisings, and disease.

Now it unites with its old enemies, the Visigoths,

to fight an even more terrifying one,

Attila and his Huns.

- This is the most powerful Hunnic army

there has ever been.

This is confrontation on a colossal scale.

♪

- Aetius commands a combined force of Romans

and Goths numbering 80,000 men on the north

of the battlefield.

On the opposite side, Attila leads as many

as 100,000 warriors set to charge.

♪

- Today, we will rip their empire from their dead hands.

There will be great sacrifice, but we will be victorious!

[all cheering]

♪

- Sound the advance!

♪

- The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains

is one of the bloodiest in the history of the Roman Empire.

♪

Roman historians describe a slaughter

on an unprecedented scale.

♪

- Very clearly, upwards of 50,000 men total

died during the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

These are numbers that are comparable to some

of the largest battles in World War I and World War II.

♪

- The Huns never regained their previous strength.

A victory for Rome and its allies.

♪

Aetius returns to Italy as the commander

of the depleted army.

The battle is a strategic victory for the empire,

but its military losses are so great that

it is vulnerable to the threat from Gaiseric's Vandals.

♪

- We lost seven legions in the battle.

The northern border's a mayhem.

We do not have enough manpower to reinforce them.

Gaiseric continues his blockade of Sardinia,

severing us further from the sea.

We must again ask the Eastern Empire for reinforcements.

- You dare to question my rule

by blaming the troubles of the empire on me?

- I blame no one-- - Oh, enough.

♪

Do you wish power for yourself?

♪

- I seek nothing.

- You seek to usurp me.

You won't get the chance, you traitor!

- [grunting]

♪

- For Aetius, he should be celebrated as the great hero

who has defeated the Huns.

He has done the impossible.

Arguably the greatest military figure Rome has known.

Certainly the greatest military figure Rome

has known for a long time.

♪

- The death of Aetius deprives Rome

of its most effective protector.

His reputation alone is probably enough

to keep barbarians away from the gates of Rome.

But without him, they've become much more vulnerable.

- The decline of Rome accelerates

as the barbarians dismantle the once-great empire.

♪

The imperial household begins to implode.

♪

- [grunting]

- Within a year, Valentinian is assassinated

by soldiers loyal to Aetius.

♪

By the time of his death, Britain, North Africa,

Spain, and most of Gaul

have passed out of Roman hands.

♪

Using the excuse that his son is still

engaged to Valentinian's daughter,

Gaiseric seizes his chance.

♪

- Gaiseric is the dark knight.

He is the one that really

brings the Western Empire to its knees.

♪

- The Vandals arrive at the gates of Rome in 455 C.E.

♪

- Gaiseric's intention is not to conquer Rome,

but to plunder it.

What he's seeking to do is to increase

the strength of his own kingdom at the expense of Rome.

He wants to carve out a domain for himself

from the ashes of the empire.

♪

- It takes the Vandals less than two weeks

to defeat the city's defenses.

For days, the Vandals loot at will.

♪

The Second Sack of Rome is a fatal blow

from which the empire will never recover.

♪

A succession of emperors and pretenders

will squabble over the ruins for another 20 years

while Goths, Franks, Vandals,

and others move in for the kill.

♪

In 476 C.E., the last Roman emperor in Italy

is deposed by a Gothic king.

The Western Roman Empire has fallen.

♪

From its humble beginnings to its spectacular decadence,

the story of Rome's rise and fall

echoes through the ages.

♪

- Rome rose to power by making the most of its strengths.

Its army. Its values. Its engineering.

But ultimately, its ambition also proved to be its downfall.

[tiger roars]

- The Roman Empire didn't die a natural death.

It wasn't murdered by outsiders.

It accidentally committed suicide.

Rome was a victim of its own success.

♪

- Internal divisions, invasions, economic collapse,

religious upheavals.

Even a phenomenon as resilient as Rome

could not stand up to all those attacks.

♪

- There's many empires that have claimed

to carry on the flame of Rome,

but no one has really succeeded in coming close.

♪

- Roman law continues.

Roman religion continues.

Roman ideas and philosophy continue into the present day.

- Let the games begin!

[crowd cheering]

- We are, to an extent, the grandchildren of Rome.

And so in looking at Rome's collapse,

we would be foolish not to look at ourselves

and see how those same events would affect us.

♪

- Rome is ultimately a cautionary tale to us.

You are never too big to fail.

♪