Original subtitles

[Narrator] On a rocky outcrop high above the city of Athens,

engineers race to stabilize one of the most famous

buildings in history.

[Narrator] They are on a mission to restore

the iconic Parthenon.

-This is the most nervous moment because we want

everything to be perfect and not to have damage.

[Narrator] And reveal the secrets behind the greatest

wonder of Ancient Greece.

[Narrator] The Parthenon is a towering symbol

of Ancient Greece,

a civilization that changed history.

-We all know the perfection of the Parthenon.

This is the foundations of Western civilization.

[Narrator] Since its dawn around 4,000 years ago,

the legacy of Ancient Greece has shaped the Western world.

Greece was the birthplace of democracy,

the cradle of classical art and architecture.

From awe-inspiring inventions to epic myths and dark legends.

The wonders of Ancient Greece are amongst

the greatest ever known.

Now our cameras have unique access to follow teams of

archaeologists as they use cutting-edge technology to

uncover the secrets behind this remarkable civilization.

How and why was the Parthenon built,

and what does it tell us about the rise of Athens,

a city that came to dominate Ancient Greece?

The Parthenon towers above the Greek capital, Athens,

on a rocky plateau called the Acropolis.

Architect Vasileia Manidaki works here on an ambitious

engineering program, the Parthenon Restoration Project.

[Narrator] The Parthenon Temple is Greece's

most famous building,

but at more than 2500 years old,

it's in urgent need of conservation.

Earthquakes, war,

and previous well-intentioned but misguided interventions

have taken their toll,

key sections are damaged or missing,

making it structurally unstable.

[Narrator] The restoration team don't want to rebuild the

Parthenon so it looks brand new, instead,

their aim is to restore what is necessary to maintain

the building's stability.

Today, restorers work to slot new pieces of

marble into existing ones,

creating a patchwork of old and new that will

preserve the glory of the site for generations to come.

[Narrator] To create the new marble supplement,

the team begins by making a plaster mold

around a broken original marble piece.

This cast gives them the exact contours of the surface.

So the new model can be cut and shaped exactly to fit.

When finished, the two will fit together like a jigsaw.

The Parthenon was built more than 2,500 years ago.

At this time,

the Pyramids in Egypt were nearly 2,000 years old,

and Ancient Rome was in its infancy.

Greece as we know it didn't exist in 500 BCE,

it was a collection of over 1000 city-states,

including Sparta, Corinth, and Athens.

Greek cities could be found as far west as Syracuse

in Italy and on the eastern coast of modern-day Turkey.

Athens began in the 4th millennium BCE as a

small settlement on a hilltop, the Acropolis.

As the city developed,

the Acropolis remained its center and religious heart.

In the 5th century BCE,

the Athenians decided to build a temple on

the Acropolis in honor of their patron goddess Athena.

Vasileia investigates traces of this early temple.

[Narrator] Work began on the temple's foundations,

but disaster struck before it could be completed.

[Narrator] In 480 BCE, Greek city-states were invaded

by the mighty Persian Empire,

Athens was attacked and its buildings on the

Acropolis burnt to the ground.

But just days later,

the Greeks forced the Persians to retreat,

this paved the way for the golden age of Athens

and its crowning glory,

the Parthenon.

A clue to this reversal in fortunes could lie around six

miles from the Parthenon at Piraeus,

the city's harbor.

Archaeologist and sailor Nefeli Pirée Iliou investigates

how the rise of Athens is linked to the development

of another engineering marvel.

She is about to set sail onboard an extraordinary

reconstructed Athenian warship from around the time

of the Parthenon.

-Wow, and there she is!

She is stunning, she is stunning.

[Narrator] This is the Olympias,

a reconstruction of an ancient Athenian ship known

as a trireme.

-A trireme or in Ancient Greek a triris,

was an oared warship,

and the reason that it is called the trireme

is probably because it had three rows of rowers.

[Narrator] No ancient trireme has ever been discovered

on land or at sea.

So an international team used ancient texts and

archaeological finds to inform the construction

of the Olympias.

This archaeological experiment can be used to

learn about the ancient world.

-While the Olympias has been called a floating hypothesis,

it’s also a chance for us to liven the past

in the present.

[Narrator] The Olympias can shed light on a critical battle

that would determine the fate of Athens.

In 480 BCE,

with Greece under attack,

Athens, together with other Greek cities,

decided to confront the Persian force at sea.

They made their stand at Salamis,

in the face of overwhelming odds.

-The Battle of Salamis was fought by a collection of

Greek allies who got together in order to fight

the Persian fleet, which was much, much larger.

[Narrator] Athenian triremes made up about half of

the Greek fleet.

[Nefeli] The Olympias, it’s a chance to test speed

and capabilities,

and would ancient triremes actually have been

able to do what ancient authors claim that they could have done.

[Narrator] The first step is for Nefeli to explore how easy

it is to row a trireme.

She joins the crew of the Olympias.

This ship is a military vessel operated by the Greek navy,

its commander is Manos Zorbas.

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] Today, he leads the ship and a crew of

military students on a training voyage.

-Rowing with Olympias is very challenging,

it demands, uh, strength,

it demands good performance,

and people have to coordinate.

[speaking in Greek]

People used to train for a lot of months before

going out to battles.

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] There are 170 sailors onboard sitting on

three different levels.

For the ship to move efficiently through the water,

they must all row in time.

-You try to imagine what it would have been like

2,000 years ago,

and I don’t think it necessarily would have been

that different to what it feels now.

The difference of what it would have been like if we

were going to the Battle of Salamis is that

we would all be very, very anxious.

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] Rowing a trireme demands physical

effort and coordination.

At the first, the crew’s oars clash,

but it doesn’t take long for the rowers to find their rhythm.

-There is already the sense of camaraderie and

the different rowers on different levels

helping each other.

[Narrator] At Salamis, Athen’s triremes provided much

of the allied fleet’s strength.

With the face of Greece hanging in the balance,

they won a decisive victory against the Persians.

How did the Greek Alliance manage to defeat the much

larger Persian fleet?

Nefeli’s next step is to find out what was different about

the Greeks that won the day.

The victory at Salamis secured Athens’ freedom,

it also set the stage for the city’s rise to power.

On the ruined Acropolis, the Athenians built a

new temple directly above the foundations of the previous one,

a magnificent structure, the Parthenon.

What is it about the Parthenon,

that sets it apart from other Greek temples?

[Narrator] At the Acropolis,

restoring the Parthenon is a formidable challenge.

There are no surviving plans.

To preserve it,

today's architects and stone masons must take on the role

of archeologists.

Investigating and decoding the techniques used by

the ancient Greeks.

The Athenians began building the Parthenon in 447 BCE,

at its heart was a wooden statue of Athena,

the city's patron goddess.

Around 40 foot tall,

it was wrapped in over a ton of gold with

skin carved from ivory, polished to a glow.

Sheltering the goddess was a sacred chamber known

as the Cella.

On the outer temple, exquisite sculptures brought

Greek mythology to life.

This was the pinnacle of Ancient Greek architecture and

a symbol of Greek victory after Salamis.

At the temporary workshop in the Cella,

restorers have completed the carving of the new section and

are ready for the next step.

[Narrator] The team coats the original marble in clay,

and slots the pieces together,

using the clay markings on the new marble as

a guide to fine-tune the fit.

This is an enormous project of experimental archaeology.

[Narrator] The team is not only joining new marble

sections with the old.

At the entrance porch,

after patching the columns with new marble,

the team has to carve them by hand.

Athanasios Psilopoulos is replicating the work of the

Ancient Athenians by carving fluting into the new

marble parts of the columns.

[Narrator] Athanasios's greatest tool is his expert eye.

[Narrator] To shape the marble,

he chisels it and then sands it until the

fluting looks perfectly even.

This precision reveals the skill of the

Ancient Greek artisans.

Their principles of aesthetic harmony and elegance continue

to inspire architects and builders in Europe and America.

[Narrator] The workmanship of the Athenians

was exceptional.

How did the Parthenon compare to other Greek temples

of its day?

A clue lies hundreds of miles away at the city of

Syracuse in Sicily.

Here, archaeologist Rodolfo Brancarto investigates

the ruins of another ancient megastructure,

the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

This building predates the Parthenon by around 150 years

and could help shed light on the development of

Ancient Greek temples.

[Narrator] Today, Syracuse is Italian,

but it began life as a Greek colony.

It was one of many powerful city-states founded by Greek

settlers in search of new, fertile lands and access to

trade routes.

This season, Rodolfo wants to investigate the architecture

of the structure here.

[Narrator] Understanding what would have been here

over 2,500 years ago is an enormous challenge,

little remains of the ancient structure.

[Narrator] To find out more about the temple,

Rodolfo and his team need to carefully

target their excavations.

They explore the bedrock of the foundation walls.

Scraping through soil, one of the team finds a clue.

[Narrator] Even the smallest of fragments can be used

to piece together a picture of the site.

-No way!

-How old do you think that is?

-And this is the first thing that I found here so this is

very exciting for me.

[Narrator] Despite their appearance today,

Greek temples had roofs.

Most were built with terracotta tiles, but a few,

like the Parthenon, had tiles of marble.

Building a temple this way is not just

much more expensive.

Marble is extraordinarily heavy,

and the Parthenon’s builders needed around

100,000 tons of it.

How did the Ancient Greeks move and remove the marble

at the Parthenon?

[Narrator] At the Parthenon,

Vasileia and the restoration team are now

working on one of two triangular facades

that bookend the temple.

It is called the west pediment and is where

exquisite statues stood in ancient times.

Today’s task is to install a 1.7-ton block of new marble

onto the pediment’s backing wall.

Architect Kosmas Skaris oversees the installation.

[Kosmas] This backing wall has a double row on one hand

holding upright the triangle which is the background of the

sculptures of the pediment,

and on the other hand have these special cuttings

for the beams of the roof.

So it was not a visible part of the monument but very

special one for its architecture.

[Narrator] To get it up to the pediment,

the team must hoist this block of precision-cut marble

around 50 feet into the air.

They begin the lift.

Every movement must be carefully calibrated to

preserve the fragile marble.

[Kosmas] This is the most nervous moment when you have

to lift an old or a new piece in its position,

because we want everything to be perfect and not to

have even the minute damage.

[Narrator] The block reaches the pediment,

but now a more difficult task,

it needs to line up exactly.

[Narrator] Even for today's team,

fitting new marble is a challenge.

How did the builders manage it nearly 3,000 years ago

Ancient texts say how Athenian stonemasons first cut

huge marble blocks from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus,

and hauled them to Athens on ox-drawn carts.

To move the heavy blocks up the slopes of the Acropolis,

the builders used a clever mule-powered,

counterbalanced rope lift.

Experts believe that the Greeks were the first to

use cranes for construction to lift the

stones into position.

Once finally in place,

the craftsmen shaped the marble by hand to ensure a

perfect fit without mortar.

The Ancient Greeks were impressive engineers.

Why did they go to such extremes of effort?

In Sicily, Rodolfo searches for evidence of the scale and

layout of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

There is so little left at the site that it's difficult

to know where to focus their digging.

So the team uses modern technology,

including ground penetrating radar,

or GPR for short,

which can detect potential ruins hidden under the earth.

[Narrator] These surveys, alongside previous excavations,

reveal the scale of the temple.

[Narrator] This temple was even larger than the Parthenon.

Now the excavation team is opening up trenches according

to the maps grid system to find out what is

buried beneath the dirt.

[Narrator] Rodolfo hopes that digging at the Cella in

Syracuse will uncover more about the layout

of this building.

And he thinks that the entire sanctuary is much

bigger than once thought.

It reflects the ambitions of Syracuse...

...as the Parthenon does for Athens,

and suggests this city once rivaled Athens.

[Narrator] Mega temples like these required enormous

resources and the investment of organized,

powerful city-states.

The Parthenon is a supreme example of this,

magnificent even by the standards of

Ancient Greek temples.

Some experts believe that building it cost around

half the city’s entire annual income.

Athens had not just grown rich,

by the time it build the Parthenon,

it was the wealthiest city-state in Greece.

How did it rise to this point?

The answer could lie at sea.

[Narrator] Close to Athens, off the coast of Piraeus,

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] Nefeli investigates what made the Athenian trireme

so effective as a weapon of war.

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] Out on the water,

the crew from the Hellenic Navy is discovering

how to sail a trireme like the Ancient Athenians.

[Nefeli] I’ve never rowed this part of a trireme crew before.

There is a learning curve.

Quite a lot of oars that I’m hitting, I can feel it,

but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

[Narrator] A trireme’s primary weapon was the

bronze ram on its prow,

which could hole an enemy ship below the water line.

The Olympias’ ram is a replica of one found off the

coast of Greece.

The first step in using it requires speed.

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] The ship’s 170 rowers are organized

in three tiers.

The vertical rows allowed the Athenians to pack a large

number of oarsmen into a relatively light,

narrow hull, perfect for speed.

Their combined power would likely have accelerated

the ship to around eight knots per hour.

[Nefeli] A trireme compared to other oared warships of the

time was a much faster ship, it had the ability to accelerate

very fast because of the numbers of rowers,

and that could come in very handy in battle.

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] The trireme was fast,

but success or defeat in battle depended on a trireme

getting into position first to use its ram.

Nefeli and the crew practice changing direction at speed.

[Manos] You have to make, uh, a faster turn,

so we do this with the rudders.

[Narrator] With help from the rowers,

the ship makes a fast turn.

[speaking in Greek]

[Nefeli] You could imagine a ship that coming in at

a very fast speed in a matter of seconds,

running through enemy line, turning around,

and ramming the stern of a boat with water,

then rushing in and disaster following.

[Narrator] The design of the Athenian trireme prioritized

speed and maneuverability

[speaking in Greek]

[Narrator] And the experience of the modern crew

demonstrates to Nefeli how effective they could be.

At Salamis, the Athenians made the most of their capable

fleet after enticing the Persian ships into

a narrow strait,

which nullified their enemies' greater numbers.

But the Athenians believed they had another

edge over the Persians, their political system.

-Instead of hiring foreign mercenaries like the Persians,

they’re using their own free citizens.

[Narrator] In the 5th century BCE,

Athens is one of the world’s first democracies.

This democracy was partial by modern standards.

But every adult male citizen can vote,

whether they were rich or poor,

and only citizens were allowed to join the Navy.

-One of the first lines is that it is the poor people

who are important, those who row the boats,

because it is they who impart the strength of the city.

They have to have the right to vote because they’re

the ones without whom there would be no

Athenian navy and hence no Athenian democracy.

[Narrator] This citizen navy cemented Athens's naval

supremacy, and in the mid-5th century BCE,

when the Parthenon was built, Athens used this military

muscle to cement its power and influence in Greece.

Two years after the Battle of Salamis,

some Greek city-states formed an alliance against Persia.

They cast metal into the sea as a symbol of their alliance,

and vowed it would endure until the metal rose again.

Athens came to dominate the alliance and eventually seize

control of its treasury.

It used the money to finance the building of the

Parthenon and continued to demand

tribute from its former allies.

The Parthenon was a symbol not just of victory

over the Persians but of imperial might.

[Narrator] At the Acropolis, restorers are part way through

fitting the 1.7 ton new block on the Parthenon.

[Narrator] Now the marble is roughly positioned,

the team removes the ropes...

[overlapping chatter]

...and uses an enormous clamp to pick it up.

They take away the wooden wedges underneath the block

and clear the gap of debris.

The block must be lowered into its final position

exactly level, any tilt to it when it hits the

pediment could damage one of the corners or edges.

[Narrator] Finally, the new marble block is

lowered into place.

[Narrator] The old and new marble fit flush

against each other.

[Kosmos] Precision is very important,

we all know the perfection of the Parthenon,

and we want to have the same level of quality and perfection.

[Narrator] The Parthenon took just under

ten years to build.

When it was finished,

it was a symbol of Athenian power.

Colossal marble statues on its outer walls displayed

scenes from Greek mythology and celebrated

the Goddess Athena.

Tucked away high on the outer wall of the Cella is

an unusual feature...

...a marble frieze not of gods,

but ordinary Athenians during a festival.

No other Greek temple has anything like this.

What does it reveal about why Athenians thought their

city had risen to greatness?

A clue could lie far below the Acropolis in the political

and cultural centre of Athens,

it was known as the Agora.

Archaeologist John Papadopoulos from the

American School of Classical Studies is at the

start of a new excavation season here.

One of his goals is to discover more about the

Ancient Athenians who built the Parthenon.

[John] We're going through every little bit of dust.

This place has the potential to give voice a little to the

people that inhabited these places.

[Narrator] The Agora was a hub of Ancient Athens,

a marketplace buzzing with merchants,

philosophers, and politicians.

Beside it stood an assembly chamber where

citizens debated laws.

Thousands marched through the Agora to take part in a

festival of sport and song in honor of the

city’s patron goddess.

The procession ended at the Acropolis with

sacred offerings to Athena.

The challenge with investigating the lives of the

past Athenians is that most of Athens is covered

with modern buildings.

So this season,

John digs in a spot that has never been fully investigated.

-Sarah.

Can we get that leg closest to the umbrella?

Can you move it a little bit?

[John] Archaeology is a little like fishing.

-Alright.

[John] We are working our way down.

How far I will get, I have no idea.

[Narrator] Discoveries made over the past decades have

pieced together fragments of evidence that reveal that this

area was originally a covered walkway adorned

with painted panels.

It’s likely this part of the Agora was known as

the Painted Stoa.

[John] The importance of the Painted Stoa is immeasurable,

it’s the world’s first shopping mall,

it’s where the Stoic philosophers like to hang out

in the 4th century BC, so much was happening here.

[Narrator] Today, John’s team is digging at the

western corner of the site.

[John] Gabriel, what have you got today?

Good man.

Look at this black glaze,

that is a fragment from a handle or a part of a

classical period pot.

This has to be sixth or fifth century, uh, BC.

Um, so it's in these modern levels, in these levels,

you sometimes get residual material that's earlier,

and this is a really good example of that.

[Narrator] This evidence of classical remains points

to a time of transformation in Athens.

After their victory at Salamis,

the Athenians launched a colossal building program

that included the Painted Stoa and the Parthenon.

-Civic architecture was all-important to the Athenians.

When we look at the Athenian Acropolis,

there was bragging rights,

we beat the Persians on our own home turf and

virtually singlehandedly.

For the Athenian democracy to have existed,

it had to beat the might of the Persian military machine.

[Narrator] The Athenians were so proud of their

city and democracy,

that they celebrated themselves on the walls

of the Parthenon.

Athens seemed unstoppable,

but the tides of fortune were about to turn.

[Narrator] In the gulf off the coast of Piraeus,

Nefeli's time as part of the crew of the trireme has

revealed the skill of the Ancient Athenian navy.

-It was through its navy that Athens became a power

way beyond Athens,

its navy was how it ran its empire.

[Narrator] The Athenian navy was second to none

in open water,

but it had a weakness.

In 415 BCE,

Athens sent 130 warships and 5,000 soldiers

to invade Syracuse and extend its empire.

They seized the high ground and fortified the

Temple of Olympian Zeus,

using it as a base to launch their attack.

Syracuse was a rival regional power and allied

with other dominant city-states,

Sparta and Corinth,

in a strategic alliance which did not include Athens.

At Syracuse, the Athenian navy found itself

trapped and outsmarted.

Syracuse called on their Spartan allies to help defeat

the Athenian attack, and in a final sea battle,

the Syracusans bottled up the entire Athenian fleet

in their great harbor,

destroying the trireme navy and killing and

capturing tens of thousands.

Unable to make use of their tactics of ramming

and maneuvering in an enclosed harbor,

the Athenian fleet was doomed.

This was one of the greatest naval defeats

in ancient history.

[Nefeli] The defeat at Syracuse was incredibly devastating

because the Athenians lost 200 triremes and thousands

of men as a result, uh,

which was the majority of their navy.

[Narrator] Athens relied on its navy to enforce its

power and procure resources and tribute

from its empire.

The loss of so many ships heralded the end of

Athens’s golden age.

By 404 BCE, Athens was defeated by rival city-state

Sparta and occupied.

But though the power of Athens was at an end,

the fame and legacy of this city lived on.

At the Athenian Agora,

John and his team have discovered the floor of

a house dating to between the 10th to 12th centuries,

common era.

[John] We take samples just to see what’s going on

in the room,

what they’re doing, what sort of activity.

[Narrator] Over the centuries,

the Agora was used and reused by generations of inhabitants.

Later civilizations held the city's 5th-century BCE

achievements in high regard.

When the Romans conquered Greece,

they drew inspiration from the classical buildings of Athens,

like the Parthenon.

[John] The Romans were very much in awe of the Greeks.

The Roman legal system, for example,

was very much built on the basis of the earlier Greek,

and it’s on the basis of what happened here

at the Athenian Agora.

[Narrator] On the Acropolis,

with the new block of marble in place,

work on the backing wall of the

west pediment is finished.

It’s a testament to the skill of the ancient

and modern engineers.

[Kosmas] I think we have the,

the best result for the day.

I’m quite moved to finish this special project.

[Narrator] Another part of the ancient Parthenon

is restored.

[Kosmas] This is the foundations of Western civilization,

it’s our society that is based on these values,

so we feel this opportunity to have this special monument

conserved and, uh, a symbol of our civilization.

[Narrator] 2,500 years after the Parthenon was built,

experts are still uncovering the secrets of its builders as

they race to preserve Greece’s most famous building.

Investigators across the ancient world reveal how this

structure was a symbol of the ambition of Ancient Athens.

The result of its rise to become the most

powerful city in Greece.

Even as its star faded,

the achievements of Athens lived on,

a legacy treasured from the Romans to

the modern day.