Original subtitles

[Narrator] On a hillside in Western Turkey,

a team investigates the remains of a

mysterious ancient city.

-What did you find here?

-What do you think, what do you think about this?

[Narrator] They’re uncovering clues dating back

more than 2,000 years.

-Oh, that’s interesting. Okay, this is very early.

[Narrator] Could their discoveries shed new light on

the life and legacy of one of the greatest military leaders

of all time?

-This is really breaking news yeah.

[Narrator] A real-life hero whose story has become

legendary, Alexander the Great.

[♪ theme music playing]

The wonders of Ancient Greece are among the

greatest ever known.

Greece was the birthplace of democracy and the cradle of

Western engineering and architecture.

From inspiring inventions to epic heroes and legends,

the legacy of Ancient Greece still shapes the modern world.

One of its most influential figures was Alexander the Great.

-He was extremely successful, very powerful, and strong.

[Narrator] A legendary commander who never

lost a battle.

In just 10 years,

Alexander established one of the greatest empires

the world had ever seen.

-He is known to so many different cultures,

and his stories are told in so many different books

that he is for sure one of the most influential leaders

that has ever lived.

[Narrator] Alexander’s vast empire stretched from Greece in

the west to modern-day Pakistan in the east.

And he conquered it all before he died at the age

of just 32.

Alexander’s reign was short-lived,

but the new age he created, the Hellenistic Period,

would endure for three centuries.

Why did his influence last so long after his death?

This season, international teams of archaeologists dig

through centuries of earth to shed light on the real world

behind this legendary hero.

In Northern Greece lies the ancient city of Pella,

the birthplace of Alexander the Great.

-There's a piece of pottery there, isn't there?

-Yeah, there’s a piece of pottery there,

some of the stones over there.

[Narrator] Archaeologist Lisa Nevett investigates the

city where Alexander’s journey began.

She wants to understand how his influence endured

for so long.

[Lisa] Alexander was able to create an empire very quickly,

that empire also fell apart very quickly on his death.

But an interesting aspect of it is that we see that

the culture continued.

[Narrator] Alexander was born in Pella in 356 BCE,

2,000 years after the Pyramids of Giza were

constructed and about a century after the

Parthenon of Athens.

At the time, Pella was the capital of Macedon,

one of several rival Greek kingdoms.

[Lisa] Today, we think of Greece as a single nation,

but in antiquity, it was a land of many cities,

and they were independent politically

and related culturally.

[Narrator] Alexander was a royal prince,

the son of Olympias, a Greek princess,

and King Philip II of Macedon.

Philip conquered nearly all the kingdoms in Greece and wanted

to invade the Persian Empire, Greece’s mortal enemy.

But the plan was cut short when the King was

assassinated by his own bodyguard.

So when Alexander took the throne at the age of 20,

he vowed to complete his father's mission and

defeat the Persians.

In Pella, Lisa wants to find out how the city changed

thanks to Alexander's success.

The problem is that little remains of the place

where he grew up.

[Lisa] Most of the buildings that we see today were

constructed after Alexander’s death,

and so the city I think, was shaped, erm,

perhaps by Alexander’s legacy more than by Alexander himself.

[Narrator] Today, Lisa and her team excavate a house

in the south of the city.

[Lisa] Is the soil texture different there?

[Narrator] They uncover a well-preserved layer of tiles,

which they think might be part of a floor.

-So do they continue?

This is something new,

we haven’t seen this elsewhere in the house,

and in fact, it’s really hard to find floors in

this house because they’re nearly all made

of stamped earth.

One possibility is some sort of area where people

were using water,

and that the tiles are to prevent water

damaging the floor.

The house was originally about 400 square meters,

which was quite big,

so maybe ten or 12 rooms around an open courtyard.

[Narrator] The size and design of this house tells Lisa

that it belonged to a relatively prosperous owner.

By studying this structure further,

Lisa hopes to learn more about how Alexander’s empire

brought wealth and influence to his hometown.

[Lisa] Pella is a really interesting site,

it went from being quite a small town at around 400 BC,

and then very quickly it seems to have grown into a large city.

[Narrator] So, how big was the Greek world at the

start of Alexander’s reign?

And why did the young king dream of making it bigger?

On the other side of the Aegean Sea, in Turkey,

sits the city of Ephesus.

Archaeologists have been working here for more

than 130 years.

Today, the dig is led by Martin Steskal.

-Okay, today’s program,

we are going to expand our trench,

so make two groups, one group is working here,

one is working there, let’s go, okay.

[Narrator] Although Ephesus now lies in modern Turkey,

it was originally founded by Greek settlers almost

3,000 years ago.

In ancient times, Ephesus was one of many Greek cities on the

coast of what is now Turkey,

a sprawl of homes and workshops stretching

up to 450 acres.

At its heart stood the city’s most sacred monument,

the Temple of Artemis.

Covering an area larger than the Parthenon,

it rose on 127 marble columns, each nearly 60 feet tall.

It was decorated with mythological figures,

and much of it was painted in vivid colors,

a temple so stunning it was considered a wonder

of the ancient world.

This season, Martin and his team hunt for the extent

of the ancient city from the age of Alexander,

no easy task in a metropolis that was continuously occupied

until Roman times.

[Martin] If we want to find the Greek city here in Ephesus,

you have to either dig very deep because the city's really

densely built over,

or you have to dig in areas that have never been explored before,

like we are doing here.

[Narrator] From written records,

researchers know that Ephesus had three city gates,

excavations had only found two.

But Martin's team has made an exciting breakthrough.

[Martin] So we’ve been starting to excavate here last year,

and we really found this third, so far unknown city gate of

Ephesus, er, which we know from the literary sources was

called The Coressian Gate.

[Narrator] Martin explores the new gate.

-What you can clearly see here is a wide entrance

between two pillars,

and just to the right of us,

there would be another entrance,

not as wide as this one.

[Narrator] As they continue to excavate the gate,

they unearth other structures.

[Martin] Here you have the remains of

a massive watchtower, it's a square watchtower,

only the foundations have been remained unfortunately.

But it was probably a watchtower with two or three stories,

and from here a potential enemy could be easily attacked.

If you look up here you can see the connecting city walls,

they run up this hill.

[Narrator] Ephesus was one of the greatest Greek cities

of its day.

But for much of the fourth century BCE,

its citizens lived under the overlordship

of Greece’s archenemy, the mighty Persian Empire.

A realm that stretched from the shores of the

Mediterranean Sea to the mountains of Iran,

it was a world that the young Alexander was

determined to change.

[Martin] Alexander pursued the idea of his father,

who wanted to liberate the Greek cities here in

Western Asia Minor, however Alexander had ideas

that got far beyond that.

[Narrator] In 334 BCE, at the age of just 22,

Alexander the Great landed in what is now Turkey,

on his mission to defeat the Persian Empire.

Ephesus was one of the first cities that he reached.

What might discoveries here reveal about the scale of the

task ahead of him?

[Narrator] At Ephesus in Turkey,

Martin Steskal investigates more of the

newly discovered city gate.

-What did you find here?

-What do you think about that?

-Oh, that’s interesting. Okay, this is very early.

Can you please register this find?

Yeah fantastic.

[Narrator] In 334 BCE, Ephesus was one of the first cities in

the Persian Empire to face the invading army of

Alexander the Great.

The piece of pottery tells Martin that he is close

to the Greek period.

And as the excavation continues,

the team makes another discovery.

[Narrator] Martin thinks they have discovered the threshold

of an important part of the gate.

[Martin] Once you have reached the gate and you’ve passed the

first gateway, you ended up in an antechamber where there was

still possibility for the guards to attack a potential enemy,

because obviously a city gate is the weakest point

in the fortification.

[Narrator] The discovery reveals how the city gate was

strongly fortified against invaders.

But to find out what Ephesus looked like

when Alexander arrived,

Martin first needs to dig down further,

he wants to know when the gate was built.

[Martin] So far, we have only a glimpse of this city gate,

actually excavated.

We are pretty sure that this gate has been built very early

in the Hellenistic Period,

but of course we need more detailed information about that.

[Narrator] The team continues to record and analyze the ruins.

If Martin’s right and the gate was built in the

early Hellenistic Period,

that means this gate was built in the

time after Alexander.

There was no wall here when he arrived.

[Martin] The city looked completely different,

it was not as strongly fortified as it is today.

Actually, the city consisted of a couple of more village-like

settlements that were very badly fortified,

so for Alexander, from a military perspective,

it would not have been a problem to overcome a

city like Ephesus.

[Narrator] The lack of strong defenses sheds light on how

Alexander’s empire was one.

Alexander did not need to lay siege to cities one by one.

Warfare at this time was determined on

the open battlefield,

and it was here that the Macedonians excelled.

The backbone of Alexander's army was a

formation called the phalanx,

a tight wall of infantry armed with long spears and shields,

unbreakable from the front.

It pinned the enemy in place, so that Alexander’s elite

cavalry could attack from the side or the rear,

shattering their line.

The Persian army was a looser force made up

of Greek mercenaries,

archers, infantry, and cavalry.

Alexander’s innovative military tactics and strong leadership

enabled him to crush the Persian army.

Once he’d defeated them on the battlefield,

Alexander simply walked into Ephesus as the new ruler.

[Martin] I think the Ephesians were used to ever-changing

rulers, so throughout the centuries they always

tried to side with the potential winner of a conflict.

[Narrator] Ephesus, with its strong Greek ties

and pragmatic attitude,

was just one of many cities across the empire that fell.

In November 332 BCE, Alexander marched into Egypt,

where he was welcomed as a liberator and crowned pharaoh.

In the following year, he led his army into Mesopotamia,

the heart of the Persian Empire.

In October, he crushed the Persian army in a single,

mighty battle at Gaugamela.

He entered Babylon unopposed in triumph,

the new ruler of the east.

He continued to conquer relentlessly for

the next eight years,

pushing his empire to the edge of India.

Along the way, Alexander brought Greek culture to the

east and adopted eastern traditions himself.

-Alexander the Great was the first person who was

able to connect this Greek and eastern world

to such an extent.

[Narrator] By then, the territory Alexander controlled

covered more than two million square miles and

included parts of around 20 modern-day countries.

But before he could go even further, in 323 BCE,

Alexander died, probably of a fever.

He was just 32 years old.

What happened to his empire after his death?

[Narrator] At Pella in Greece,

Lisa Nevett and her team are investigating how

the city of Alexander's birth changed after his death.

They want to find out how the house that they're uncovering

compares to those around it.

[Lisa] Previous excavations show that there was a regular

grid of streets, and our aim really was to see if we could,

erm, get a sense of the plan of the city in an area

that wasn’t excavated.

[Narrator] Lisa’s excavations reveal how Pella experienced a

dramatic change in fortunes in 4th century BCE.

[Lisa] What we do see is that the grid plan

continues into this area,

and we don’t know too much about what classical

Pella looked like,

but we do know that it became this, er,

big grid planned city with an enormous marketplace

at the center of it.

[Narrator] In the 4th century BCE,

Pella expanded rapidly,

new districts rose to the east and north,

stretching the city's grid layout to new limits.

Luxury houses and busy workshops lined the southern

slope of the city.

And at the city's heart stood the largest public square in

Greece known as the Agora.

Crowned by an enormous palace, Pella reached its greatest

extent in the years after Alexander's death.

Alexander's brief reign may have laid the foundations for

Pella's success, but it flourished under the rule of

one of his former generals, called Cassander.

Ambitious and ruthless,

he had Alexander's young son and his mother poisoned,

and took over Greece and Macedonia.

The rest of the empire was seized by Alexander's

brothers-in-arms.

While Cassander took lands in Greece and Macedonia,

Generals Seleucus and Lysimachus seized territories

to the east.

And Egypt was claimed by Ptolemy.

Together, they became known as the Diadochi, the successors.

In Egypt, at the city of Alexandria,

archaeologist Jay Silverstein investigates how Ptolemy

ensured Alexander's legacy lived on.

-Ptolemy was known as Ptolemy Soter,

because Soter means savior.

He had saved Alexander the Great's

life in battle,

and when Alexander the Great died,

he claimed Egypt as his part of Alexander's empire.

[Narrator] Ptolemy needed to convince the fiercely

independent Egyptians that he had a legitimate right

to rule them.

So just like Alexander,

he declared himself Pharaoh,

and decided to continue what Alexander had started.

[Jay] So when Alexander the Great

came to Egypt,

he established the foundation of the city of Alexandria.

He had the vision to see how important a port in this

location would be, and he literally outlined the city of

where it should be constructed.

[Narrator] In Egypt, Alexander planned a major strategic port,

ideally located on the Mediterranean coast.

When he died,

his successor, Ptolemy seized control of it,

Ptolemy expanded the city into a global hub of trade,

and a beacon of culture and knowledge in the ancient world.

He commissioned its famous lighthouse,

an icon of Greek engineering and architecture.

In 321 BCE, Ptolemy brought Alexander’s body to Alexandria,

the final resting place of a king who would become a legend.

This was a strategic move.

[Jay] Ptolemy was a shrewd politician,

he knew that by grabbing Alexander the Great’s body

and holding it within his capital city,

that he had legitimacy to claim the entirety of

the Hellenistic world.

[Narrator] So great was Alexander’s celebrity,

that having his tomb here made Alexandria the new

center of Greek culture in the East.

[Jay] This is a power that resonated throughout history

for hundreds of years, even Julius Caesar came to stand

before the tomb to be humbled before the presence of

Alexander the Great.

[Narrator] Today, the location of Alexander’s tomb is one of

the greatest mysteries of archaeology.

[Jay] We don’t know how much of it survived.

Archaeologists have been searching for it for,

for decades and decades, but it’s never been found.

[Narrator] Controlling Alexandria

gave Ptolemy and his descendants great power.

But tensions were brewing across

Alexander’s former empire.

What did the growing rivalry between his successors mean

for the people living under their rule?

[Narrator] The new kingdoms ruled by Alexander's

former generals were rivals,

but they shared a common culture,

a blend of Greek and eastern customs known as Hellenistic,

from Hellene, the name the Greeks gave themselves.

How did the generals keep control over their new lands?

A clue lies at the city of Metropolis,

not far from Ephesus in Western Turkey.

It was a medium-sized city built around a

necropolis or citadel.

After Alexander's death,

it was claimed by another of his generals, Seleucus.

Today, archaeologists are digging in the main meeting or

marketplace called the Agora.

Serdar Aybek has been working here since 1993.

He wants to find out what life in the city was like

in ancient times.

[Narrator] The team uses a conveyor belt to help move

the excavated soil.

This helps to ensure they don't miss crucial traces of

evidence buried in the dirt.

[Narrator] Excavations show that Metropolis grew rapidly

under the rule of Seleucus and his successors.

The city reached its height in the 3rd century BCE.

Serdar explores one of the buildings constructed

in this period, the theatre.

In the Hellenistic Age,

this was the hub of metropolitan life,

seating up to 3,600 people.

But excavations underneath the building reveal

its humble beginnings.

[Narrator] Theaters like the one in Metropolis offered local

people a taste of Greek culture,

and provided homegrown entertainment

for Greek immigrants.

Alexander's successors competed to build new and

impressive cities and stamp Greek culture on

their new lands.

So how successful were they?

500 miles south at Alexandria in Egypt,

Jay Silverstein investigates whether Greek customs were

welcomed in countries with their own

long-established traditions.

He hunts for clues deep beneath the city.

[Jay] Here we are down in the catacombs of Alexandria,

the underworld, the,

the place where the dead would be buried.

[Narrator] He explores some intriguing carvings,

unlike anything in Egypt from before the Greeks arrived.

-Over here, we can see at the very top,

you have a shield with a representation of a gorgon or

medusa, a, a symbol of Macedonian power that you would

often find on a warrior’s shield.

Er, you see the Agatha demon, a, a symbol of good fortune,

of power, but wearing the crowns of upper and lower

Egypt, sitting on top of a very Egyptian temple.

[Narrator] The tomb displays a curious fusion of Egyptian and

Greek religious images.

It dates to the second century CE,

more than 300 years after Alexander died.

At this time, a new people, the Romans, ruled Egypt.

[Jay] Here you have the god Anubis, but he’s dressed in,

very much like a Roman warrior, so with this leather skirt

hanging down and that pose and spear,

he’s a Romanized Anubis.

[Narrator] Jay thinks the decorations reveal

the background of the tomb’s owners.

[Jay] We know it was a family,

from the representations that we see here,

we know that it was probably from the Greek aristocracy,

it’s a wealthy family,

there’s a lot of Greek representations,

but there’s also Roman representations, and of course,

the strong Egyptian influence.

[Narrator] The persistence of Greek culture in Egypt into

Roman times reveals the success of the aristocracy that

arrived with Alexander.

The tomb appears to depict a harmonious fusion of

east and west.

But how peaceful was this brave new world?

[Narrator] At Ephesus in Western Turkey,

Martin Steskal continues his excavation of the

city gate to learn more about what happened after the

death of Alexander.

[Narrator] As the dig progresses,

Martin finds more evidence of expansion and fortification.

-These huge blocks, they were joined together by

iron and lead so actually they were pouring in lead,

you can see the, the shape of the liquid lead,

and in the interior of this would be a, er,

an iron joint that really fixed those blocks together.

[Narrator] These iron and lead clamps are incredibly strong,

even today, the blocks are still held firmly together.

Martin thinks that the strength of the gate’s construction

reveals what happened here when Alexander’s

empire broke apart,

and Ephesus was inherited by another of his generals,

Lysimachus.

-One is wondering why a city like Ephesus,

all of a sudden, needs a fortification like that.

Clearly, after the death of Alexander,

whoever wanted to establish an empire for himself afterwards

needed to fortify his er, potential residency,

and so did Lysimachus.

Er, he decided Ephesus to be his residential city,

and this city really needed to be strongly fortified because

the situation in the region was very unstable.

[Narrator] Ephesus's city gate is not the only hint at the

volatile situation after Alexander died.

While Lysimachus was busy fortifying his new city,

just 12 miles away at Metropolis,

Historian Boris Dreyer works with Serdar to

investigate how its ruler Seleucus,

also prepared for possible threats to his rule.

In the storeroom, they examine more than

50 excavated stone projectiles.

[Narrator] Boris heads up to the Acropolis to find out what

this huge cache of weapons was for.

[Narrator] This vantage point allowed the ruler of Metropolis

to control the traffic going to Ephesus,

it's also where the team found the projectiles.

[Narrator] This arsenal reveals how the break-up of Alexander's

empire led to conflict between his former generals.

They fortified their cities, stockpiled weapons,

and often fought among themselves.

But the threats these new Greek kingdoms faced were

not only from each other.

What happened when the attacks came from within?

In Egypt, now ruled by Ptolemy,

lie the sister cities of Thmuis and Mendes,

less than a mile apart.

Jay Silverstein has been excavating here for 16 years.

He investigates how Ptolemy and his son, also called Ptolemy,

tried to win over their Egyptian subjects.

-We know that Ptolemy II came here to pay tribute

to the ram god of Mendes.

It was a really important event that the pharaoh would come and

work with the priests to build that political relationship

between the old religions of Egypt,

and the Greek or Macedonian government in Egypt.

[Narrator] Just like his father in Alexandria,

Ptolemy II tried to maintain his power by blending Greek and

Egyptian traditions.

But here at this temple in Thmuis,

Jay’s dig has uncovered a dark secret.

[Jay] We found piles of ceramics that dated to the

Ptolemaic Period where they’d been left, but burned,

suggesting that there had been a sudden fire.

And then we noticed that we were also finding stones from a

stone-throwing catapult, and we found some arrowheads as well.

To me it’s, it’s starting to look very much there had been

a war here.

[Narrator] Other discoveries here are more gruesome.

-I saw a piece of bone sticking out of one of the excavations.

I excavated there and uncovered the body of

a man in his 50s who was built like a warrior,

had wounds healed on his bones like a warrior,

and most importantly, he had one very clear unhealed wound

on his left arm, telling us that he,

he probably died fighting.

[Narrator] Jay thinks this man died during a rebellion known

as the Great Revolt.

To protect their new kingdom, the Ptolemies trained native

Egyptian soldiers in the elite tactics of

the Macedonian phalanx.

They equipped them with Greek weapons and armor and

sent them to fight in wars against rival Hellenistic kings.

But after decades of war funded by heavy taxation,

many Egyptians felt exploited and revolted against

their foreign masters.

The dynasty responded with brutal force,

slaughtering many rebels or enslaving them

and their families.

[Jay] Throughout this time period,

we see evidence of tension between the indigenous people

and their beliefs, and the Greek system that was

superimposed on top of them.

They stepped up to free Egypt from Ptolemaic rule.

[Narrator] The Hellenistic kings might have wanted their

subjects to embrace Greek culture,

but they backed up their rule with military power.

How did their dominance finally come to an end?

[Narrator] The world founded by Alexander the Great

was politically fragmented,

but united by a common Greek culture.

It lasted for 300 years.

Why did it end?

At Metropolis, while the team continues the excavations,

Boris Dreyer has found an intriguing inscription.

[Narrator] The inscription is dedicated to a man

named Apolllonius.

[Narrator] In 133 BCE, the Greek kingdoms in Asia Minor

faced a new threat, the Romans.

They promised to liberate the people from Greek rule.

Although Metropolis was his home city,

Apollonius sided with the invaders,

Rome soon became the dominant power in the region.

Down the road at Ephesus, Martin finds evidence of the

Romans in this city's magnificent buildings.

[Martin] At this time, it was clear that, er,

it is the Roman power who is going to unify this world again

in the 2nd century BCE,

and Ephesus had to accept the fact that there’s a

new ruler again.

[Narrator] Thanks to its strategic location,

the Romans made Ephesus the capital of the entire

province of Asia.

Martin's excavations provide clues to what happened

under Roman occupation.

[Martin] In Roman times,

we were in the middle of the Roman Empire,

there was no enemy whatsoever close to the

city of Ephesus.

So they started to actually dismantle the city walls

because they were thinking there will never be

enemy around anymore.

[Narrator] It was a new era of peace under the Romans,

so what happened to the legend of Alexander?

[Martin] The Romans adored Alexander the Great,

particularly Caesar for example,

he was like a role model of military strength

and military glory,

he was a superstar in the Roman period.

[Narrator] Today, few structures remain from

Alexander’s time at Ephesus.

But one important link to the city’s origins endures.

-The one Greek tradition that persisted for

the longest time is the language.

Even though this is a very Roman city and there were very

many people from Italy actually present here,

the people spoke Greek here, yeah, for,

for over 2000 years actually.

And so, from the many, many inscriptions you will see here

in the city, over 90% are in Greek letters.

They were very proud of their Greek ancestors,

and they were very proud that they’ve been founded by

actually Greek people.

[Narrator] It was thanks to Alexander’s conquest that Greek

culture spread so widely.

-It brought Greek traditions and education,

science, and Greek architecture into areas that didn't

know anything about Greek culture back then.

[Narrator] At Pella, the Macedonian capital,

Lisa's team has uncovered more of the tiled area

in the house.

[Lisa] So it looks as though there are almost

three levels here.

-Yeah.

[Narrator] But for now, its purpose remains a mystery.

-One possibility is that this is some kind of drainage

feature that’s running along here,

so I think whatever it is,

it’s something to do with liquids, probably,

but we need to continue the excavation.

[Narrator] Here, too, Lisa has found clues to what

happened at the end of the Hellenistic Period.

[Lisa] What we see is quite widespread destruction.

We don’t exactly know the reason,

there’s one hypothesis that there was an earthquake

that destroyed many of the buildings,

another idea is that the destruction could be associated

with the Romans.

[Narrator] In 168 BCE, the Romans conquered Macedon

and looted the city.

But as the birthplace of Alexander the Great,

Pella remains immortal.

[Lisa] I think we’re still talking about Alexander today

simply because he was regarded as this

charismatic figure, and also because the changes

that happened under his leadership really were

quite transformational.

[Martin] We are still talking about Alexander the Great

because he’s been one of the most influential military

leaders in the world.

There is hardly anybody who has ever conquered such a huge

empire in such a short time.

[Narrator] Alexander conquered one of the greatest empires

the world has ever seen.

Thanks to his ambition, cities rose and grew,

and Greek culture spread.

[Jay] From Persia to Egypt to Asia,

there was a cultural unity that facilitated and encouraged

trade and exchange of ideas, of knowledge,

of goods from around the world.

This was one of the hallmarks of Hellenism,

one of the strengths that allowed the Hellenistic world

to become so successful.

[Narrator] Alexander’s legacy was the rise of a new

multicultural world.

Greek influence lasted for centuries across his former

empire, and even after it ended, his legend survived.

The fame of Alexander III of Macedon,

the Great, lives on.