All language subtitles for Who Were the Greeks 1of2_Subtitles01.ENG

Language, literature, art,
philosophy, politics,

architecture, sport, culture -

the very bones, sinews, muscles,
and life blood of our modern world

are often said to be indebted
to the Ancient Greeks.

But scratch the surface
of that culture

and you find, amidst the democracy,
the philosophy and the literature,

what can seem to us
a seething tornado

of alien,

unsettling

and sometimes downright outrageous
customs and beliefs.

I'm Dr Michael Scott.

As an Assistant Professor
of Classics and Ancient History,

I study the strange world
of the Ancient Greeks.

In these two programmes,
I'll be asking two big questions.

How did they live?

And what have they given us?

HE SPEAKS IN ANCIENT GREEK

In this programme, I'll be finding
out who these people were.

The Ancient Greeks
who invented democracy

but who engaged in wrestling matches
sometimes to the death.

What were their lives like?

They came up with the Olympics

but dined on a filthy mix
of vinegar and blood soup.

A tough food for tough men.

They gave us philosophy

but were happy to abandon newborn
babies outside their city walls.

How did this mix of the bizarre
and the familiar

create such an impressive
civilisation?

I want to find out,
who were the Greeks?

I'm in the hills above a place
that changed the world.

It doesn't look
that impressive today,

scattered with modern houses
and beach hotels.

But down there on that very shore,
one of the most important

battles in history was fought
and won by the Ancient Greeks.

In 490 BC,
a relatively small Greek force,

took position down there
on the plain of Marathon to face up

against a vast
invading Persian army.

There were around 10,000 Greeks and
probably 25,000 to 30,000 Persians,

although some of the sources
talk about hundreds of thousands.

The Greeks were outnumbered...

..and supposedly totally outmatched.

But they were
fighting for their freedom.

By 490 BC, when the Greeks were
facing the Persians at Marathon,

they had already invented
the world's first democracy.

Greek architecture, art, philosophy
and medicine were flourishing too.

But all of this
could have been wiped out

with a sweep of the Persian sword.

There was a huge amount at stake.

But at Marathon, the Greeks
broke all the rules of battle

in order to win.

They ran at the Persian line,
taking them by surprise.

The Greeks did not normally
run into battle in those days.

It was an extraordinary thing
for them to do.

After the Battle of Marathon,
Miltiades, the Athenian general,

travelled to the sacred site of
Olympia to make offerings of thanks

to the gods for their miraculous
victory against the Persians.

And in the Sanctuary of Zeus,

he dedicated possibly the very
helmet he wore in battle to the god.

This is Miltiades' helmet.

And we know this because the helmet
is inscribed

"Miltiades anetheken to Dii",

"Miltiades dedicated this
to the god Zeus".

For me, there's no better way
of getting up close and personal

with history
two and a half thousand years ago

than standing in front
of this incredible object.

But this object right next to it
tells a very different story.

It's a helmet, but you can see
the difference in styles.

This is a Persian helmet.

And what it's doing here,
well, again,

an inscription tells us the story.
Here it is.

"Di", to the gods,
"athenioa", the Athenians,

"medon", the Persians,
"labontes", took it.

The Athenians took this helmet,
probably off a dead Persian,

and dedicated it to their gods.

So what does this tell us?

There was more to Ancient Greece
than the traditional image

we might have in our minds
of philosophy, politics and art.

The Greeks were ferocious warriors,
they took battle trophies,

and were quite happy
to put thousands of their enemies

to the sword.

The political philosopher,
John Stuart Mill,

once claimed Marathon
was more important

in the story of English history
than the Battle of Hastings.

If the Greeks had not won that day,

our world would be
unrecognisably different.

Who were these people

who accomplished
such an extraordinary victory?

In the fifth century BC,
when the Greeks fought at Marathon,

Greece's political organisation
was very unusual.

Its population was divided
by mountain ranges

and dotted across myriad islands.

It was a patchwork of thousands
of small territories

rather than anything
resembling a nation.

Ancient Greece was composed
of a huge number of tribes,

monarchies and city-states,
called "polis".

Now these weren't anything
like our modern cities today.

They were much more country towns
or villages

surrounded by an amount of territory
that provided the community

with, by and large, everything they
needed - olives, grain, animals.

And most of them were fairly small.

One area of Ancient Greece, Boeotia,

which is a bit smaller
than our Kent,

there were 12 of these independent
city states sitting side-by-side

but every one of them, whatever
size, had their own traditions,

their own laws, their own ideas
about how things should be done.

Every one of them
had their own unique identity.

More often than not,

the Ancient Greeks referred to
the Athenians,

the Spartans or the Corinthians,

rather than talking about
Athens, Sparta or Corinth.

They spoke of communities
made up of people

rather than cities
made up of buildings.

How did this mosaic of independent
communities link together?

Well, one of the ways
they did it was through alliances.

This is a copy of a bronze tablet

that was originally discovered
in 1813

and it would have been
fixed to a wall.

These are nail holes here and here.

And it details an alliance, a treaty
alliance between two city states.

That of Elis in the Peloponnese
and Haria in Arcadia.

But the terms of the alliance
are fascinating.

It's a treaty for 100 years
and it works like this -

if one city goes to war,
the other city state will join in.

If someone makes war on one
of the city states,

the other will come to its aid.

And there was a fine

if one of the city states doesn't
live up to its obligations.

A talent - 6,000 days' pay which had
to be paid over to Olympian Zeus.

The truth was that each independent
polis needed treaties and alliances

because the city states
of Ancient Greece

were almost constantly
at war with one another.

They fought over land,
they had long-running feuds

and bitter rivalries for power.

Every man grew up
knowing how to fight

and was instilled with a deep desire
to win, no matter what the cost.

At the Battle of Marathon, the
reality was that only the Athenians

and their allies, the Plataeans,
turned up to fight the Persians.

It was one loose alliance
that saved the whole of Greece.

Winning was everything in Ancient
Greece, second place meant nothing.

Pindar who wrote victory odes
for Olympic winners wrote one

in which he gloats about how a loser
will be shunned by their mother

and have to creep around
in the back streets,

"Nor returning to their mothers

"did sweet laughter
arouse joy around them,

"but down the alleys they slunk,

"keeping aloof from their enemies,
bitten by defeat."

Success was everything.

In a world in which only wealth,
breeding or achievement

could really distinguish you,

the thing you could do most about
was achievement.

You had to fight and you had to win.

Within the city states
of Ancient Greece,

if you were a man and a citizen, you
had a great deal of responsibility.

All citizens had to serve
as soldiers

because there was no
professional army.

Because all citizens
had to be battle-ready,

a good deal of any spare time was
spent keeping fit in Ancient Greece.

And the Greeks were extremely
competitive about it.

Today, at the Olympic Centre
in Athens,

there is still a legacy

of one of the most brutal forms
of Ancient Greek combat sport.

The no-holds barred Pankration
is still practised here.

Pankration was a sport
in the ancient Olympics,

but it was also used in battle.

When the Greeks were disarmed,
when they lost their weapons,

they could still fight
to the death using this sport.

Competition was at the core
of the Greek psyche.

The Greek word for "competition"
is "agon" - our "agony".

A Syrian writer named Lucian

wrote a guide to Greece for
foreigners in the second century AD,

and he said that the Greek obsession
with competition

bordered on insanity.

'Pankration still looks
pretty dangerous today,

'but I'm here to give it a try.'

I understand Pankration
as part of the ancient world.

What does it mean to you?

We are very proud to do this sport.

We love it, we do it every day.

So it's a part of our life.

In the ancient world Pankration
was thought of

as the most difficult sport,
the toughest,

almost no rules whatsoever.

Is it like that today?

No, today we have rules.

Would you show me some moves?
You will be gentle?

Yes, of course. Don't be afraid. OK.

You can do this move.

OK, yeah. It's impossible to move.

You cannot move
when you're down here.

It's very difficult.

'All the throws and moves
in modern Pankration

'come from the ancient sport.

'It's an incredibly effective
martial art.'

Wow.

So you can throw someone
of any weight? Yes.

It doesn't matter how heavy
or tall they are?

No, it's about technique. Amazing.

'The fact that the Greeks developed
and competed in sports

'that doubled as battle tactics,

'marked out the militaristic nature
of their society.

'Yet there were some
in Ancient Greece

'who took the idea of military
training and combat to the extreme.'

If you want to know how tough
life could be in Ancient Greece,

you have to look at Sparta - a place
of wild mountains and deep forests.

In Ancient Greece, nobody was
tougher than the famous Spartans.

We still use their name today in our
word "spartan"

meaning simple, austere, frugal.

But Spartan society went
a lot further than just austerity,

it was a society where you had to
survive in the wild

and fight for life
from the moment you were born.

Sparta was essentially
a military society.

Boys were taken away
from their families aged six,

and taught in packs.

They were subjected
to rigorous training,

to make them soldiers and also
punished with things like whipping

for even minor offences,

and there they became used to the
incredible intensity of observation

that defined Spartan society.

One source tells us that

a Spartan's body was checked for
physical perfection every ten days.

The Spartans strove
to be perfect warriors,

they sought glory in battle and
to instil fear in their enemies.

They were a ruthless fighting force.

Spartan warriors, when going
into battle, wore a red cloak,

much like this one.

Now, you might think it's a bit
luxurious for those hardy Spartans

to have a nice red cloak but,
the way they explained it was that,

the red colour covered up
the sight of their blood

if they were bleeding
on the battlefield.

If you saw these,
you knew you were facing Spartans.

You knew you were facing soldiers
trained within a society

that was tuned to the highest
pitch of competition, obedience

and self mastery.

'Tough Spartan training

'and the Spartan way of life
is still admired today.

'I've arranged to meet some
modern-day Spartan re-enactors,

'who have agreed not to beat me or
check me for physical perfection,

'but they have cooked up an ancient
Spartan recipe for me to try.'

So, Spiro, what are we making here?

OK, this is the black broth.

It's the typical food
for the Spartan fighter.

It is a food that is adapted to
the military lifestyle of the time.

Does that mean
it doesn't taste very nice?

It tastes horrible.

The main reason
because it's called black broth

is that it has a lot of pig blood.

OK, so what else?

It has barley flour, it has salt, it
has vinegar, it also has pork meat.

OK, I've heard a story
about this food

that a man from Sybaris, a man
from Sybaris in southern Italy,

said that once he'd tried this

he understood why Spartans were so
willing to die on the battlefield.

That is correct, that it correct.

Because it tasted so horrible.
Yes. Right.

THEY LAUGH

I think I might be
with Sybaris on this.

You can taste the vinegar,
that's really strong.

And the thickness of the barley.

But you can taste the blood as well.

Yes, there is a small taste of blood.

This is a, you can say,
a tough food for tough men.

It strengthens the mentality
of those people

and it makes them feel
they were strong.

Spartans had to compete constantly,
carry out orders,

test themselves to the limits
of their endurance.

And it wasn't just the men,
it was also the women.

This is a replica of an ancient
bronze statuette of a Spartan girl.

And it sums up everything you need
to know about the women of Sparta.

The key detail is here.

Look at her pulling up her skirt

to reveal her thigh
so that she can run faster.

That's exactly
what the ancient Athenians

labelled Spartan women as -
thigh-flashers.

They talked about their intolerable,
unrespectable behaviour,

not least because Spartan women
were out there as young girls

training, wrestling with one another
in order to become as fit

as they possibly could
to be the perfect mother.

But what the Spartans thought
was a perfect mother,

would not be a perfect mother
to us today.

Spartan mothers had to be prepared
to give up their babies

for examination by the Spartan
council of elders.

And if the elders thought the child
was imperfect,

it would not be allowed to live.

Here in Sparta, if a child was
judged weak or unhealthy in any way,

then its father was ordered to carry
it to the slopes of Mount Taygetos

and leave it to die.

Because as the ancient sources say,

"The life which nature has not
provided with health and strength

"can be of no use to itself
or to the state."

This practice of infant exposure,

leaving babies to die if they
weren't considered strong enough,

didn't just happen in Sparta either.

It was allegedly practised all over
Ancient Greece, even in Athens,

the birthplace of our modern
sense of democracy and freedom.

It's estimated that the rate
of female exposure was perhaps

as high as 10% in Athens.

Baby girls were certainly abandoned
more frequently than boys.

Sons could grow up
to become citizens,

they could fight for their polis

and did not need
to be provided with a dowry.

A comic writer of
the third century BC wrote,

"If you have a son you bring him
up, even if you're poor,

"but if you have a daughter, you
abandon her, even if you're rich."

It seems shocking that a culture
that we so much admire

practised what we would now call
infanticide and eugenics.

But in the Athenian agora,
the ancient city centre,

a startling discovery
was made in the 1930s

that helps us put these practices
into context.

An ancient well full of baby bones
was uncovered.

Today, archaeologists

at the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens

have analysed
the entire contents of the well.

'Osteologist, Dr Sherry Fox,

'has agreed to share
some of their findings with me.'

How common is it to find a well
full of bones in the ancient city?

This is a unique burial in that
we have only the remains on infants,

for the most part, around 450.

It dates to the second century BC,

and from a fairly narrow window,
we think around 15 years.

What sense can we get
of what killed these children?

Well, prematurity for certain,
I believe it's 15%.

We have also some other defects
that we're not so certain about

and we found a number of cases
of cleft palate.

We also have infection

and here we have an example of
infection on the back of the head.

This is the occipital bone.

It's the same bone that I have here

and often times we will see
pitting within this area.

And what kind of infection creates
this pitting on the skull?

Well, one of the more
common infections is meningitis,

and it's a problem today.

And was anything else found
alongside the infants in the well?

Absolutely. In addition to those
infants, we have about 150 dogs.

Yeah, those definitely
aren't children's.

Dog burials are often associated
with human burials

in many different cultures.

They look green,
and the reason for that is,

in addition to the infants
and the dogs,

about 18 kilograms of bronze
were recovered from the well.

Right, so this is the staining
of the dog bones from the bronze.

It is.

So, what are we dealing with here?

Is it the family dog
being thrown down the well

after the child has died?

It may be a sacrifice.

It's possible
that it could be a sacrifice.

'In Ancient Greece, sacrifices
were payments, almost bribes,

'to accompany your prayers
to the gods

'if you wanted something to go well

'or if you wanted to rid yourself
of bad luck.'

Socrates recorded that the people
of Argos sacrificed female dogs

to ensure successful childbirth.

Dogs were also sacrificed to Hecate,
a goddess of the underworld,

who was accompanied by the souls
of those who had died prematurely.

The dogs in the agora well
may have been sacrificed

to accompany the babies
to the underworld.

Or they might have been sacrifices

simply to help rid the midwives
and families of the bad luck

associated with death
and childbirth. We just don't know.

This extraordinary archaeological
discovery, for me,

I think, focuses two
absolutely crucial things.

The first is that
in trying to understand

why you would throw dogs
down a well after dead babies,

it really brings home to us just how
different a world Ancient Greece

was to our own - how weird, alien
and strange it should seem to us.

But the second is this,

those 450-odd babies
were part of a bigger picture,

we estimate that something like
25% of babies

died in their first year
in Ancient Greece.

And in that context, it can seem
an anathema that the Greeks

would have wanted
to add to that number

with the intentional exposure,

the intentional killing
of more imperfect children.

But I think the reality was
very simple,

this was a harsh world in which
only the fittest could survive

and anything or anyone else
was a burden.

The Greeks had to fight to survive
from the day they were born.

You needed all the help you could
get to survive in Ancient Greece

and that was why the Greeks
constantly appealed to their gods,

many of them still famous today,
like Zeus, god of thunder,

and Aphrodite, goddess of love.

The Greeks believed that the gods

were involved in every aspect
of their lives.

Land, sea, harvest, love,
wine-making, weaving -

you name it, and there was
a Greek god behind it.

The best way I've heard
of describing it is like this,

"The Greek gods spilled like clothes
from an over-filled drawer

"that no-one felt obliged to tidy."

And yet, at the same time,

those gods could be actively for you
or against you.

And you had to do everything in your
power to keep them on your side,

to keep them well disposed
towards you, to keep them happy.

There wasn't even a word
for religion in Ancient Greece.

Worshipping the gods
was so much a part of life

that it could not be considered
separately.

But here's the paradox,

because alongside believing
in a vast array of gods, the Greeks

were also fundamentally interested
in scientific thought and medicine.

They were, in a way, rational
and irrational all at the same time.

I'm on my way to Epidaurus,
across the sea from Athens,

in the Peloponnese.

Epidaurus was a medical sanctuary
where the Greeks came to be healed,

and it was a place
where Greek religion and medicine

were perfectly combined.

There's no better symbol
of the very curious,

but ultimately very successful,
interweaving, of what are to us,

rational and irrational approaches
to medicine, here at Epidaurus,

than these things.

These stelae that were put
up right by the abaton.

The top line of the inscription here
tells us what they are.

"Mata to Apollonos..."

"The cures of the god Apollo
and the god Asclepius."

And what follows
are success stories, testimonials,

stelae of them.

And on the one hand, some of them
are absolutely fantastical.

The very first one - "Cleo,
who was pregnant for five years,

"came here and gave birth."

And it gets better because then,
apparently,

her son got up immediately
and washed himself in the fountain.

But on the other hand,
some of them feel very real.

A man who had an arrow in his lung,

that had seeped 67 bowlfuls of pus
before he got here, was cured.

And even those who came here
disbelieving in the god Apollo

had their ailments cured.

'Here at Epidaurus, I've arranged
to meet Dr Stefanos Geroulanos,

'a professor of surgery and
a scholar of Ancient Greek medicine,

'to find out exactly
how this sanctuary,

'with its gods and doctors,
actually worked.'

They were offering to the gods,

they were bringing some presents
to ask to be cured.

And what sort of things
would they offer?

Mainly food.

If there was something
more important,

they would bring an animal
and eventually sacrifice.

And this is the altar of Asclepius
here, this is where they came to?

Definitely, it is the main altar
and it is here

where they would offer
what they had brought from home.

What would happen in the days
after they had arrived

and made their initial sacrifices?

The physicians would
take the history,

they would examine the patient
and come to a diagnosis.

Then they would ask the patient
that he has to sleep in the abaton.

In the night, the god would come
with all his followers

and tell to the patient
what he had to do to be cured.

It seems a little like

we've stepped over here
from medicine into hallucination.

Do you think there were some
kind of tricks that these people,

when they came to sleep
in the abaton,

encouraged them to have
these sorts of dreams?

Definitely.

They were giving them drinks,
not with hallucination drugs,

but definitely to make them sleep.

The second thing that was
extremely important, I think,

is that if the treatment,
the first treatment, wouldn't work,

so what should we do?

God could not make a mistake.
You didn't hear very well.

Go sleep again and then they
could give the second treatment.

'It wasn't simply faith healing
in the sanctuary at Epidaurus,

'Ancient Greek physicians
administered cures

'and even performed
operations here.

'And in his own private collection
now on exhibition, Dr Geroulanos

'has examples of the tools
which the ancient surgeons used.

'I'm about to see
an Ancient Greek medical kit.'

Stefanos, tell me
about this array

of rather nasty-looking
pieces of equipment here?

Let's start from the top,
there are some knives and scalpels.

This one is to open up a small vein

to have blood letting out

and it was the only way
to put your blood pressure down.

That one looks a little bit more
than a small vein opener?

It is there for a small amputation,
it was very suitable.

There's an incredible variety,
of specialisation, of tool here.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

How would you judge this
in terms of the sophistication

of the ancient surgery kit
compared to the modern?

For example, the curettes are exactly
the same today as they were before.

The same is this spoon
sort of a curette, exactly the same.

The hooks, and especially
the sharp ones, are identical.

Really, obviously, we've advanced in
terms of knowledge and technology,

but the bones of the kit are here.

It is like all tools.

When the tools reach a certain
standard, they stay for ever.

I mean, think of the hammer.

And what are these?

These are cupping glasses.

I was going to say, I've never
heard of a cupping glass,

I don't know
what a cupping glass is.

You are too young.

I had them when I was a young boy,
I had them on my back

when I had a flu.

It was one of the best therapies
at the time

because it makes
your immune response better.

You put some fire in, up to the end
that the fire disappears,

so it has taken all the oxygen away.

And then you put it on the skin.

Now, having a vacuum,
the skin goes up

and creates under the skin...

..a dome.

The effect is that the body
needs much more white blood cells

and it creates more, that they are
not going only there,

but they go to your pri-monia,

or to another place
where there is an infection.

So this is a device which
sort of encourages the body

to go into overdrive and to get
the immune system in overdrive.

Exactly, and they were used
up to the 1960s.

'After their treatment
in medical sanctuaries,

'the Greeks would also leave
replicas

'of whatever parts of their body

'had been cured
as offerings to the gods.

'And it would seem from the objects
found that then, just as now,

'there was a fair degree of concern
about a whole range of body parts.

'It might seem strange to make
a public display

'of a part of your anatomy
that had been afflicted.

'But the healing sanctuaries weren't
the only places in Ancient Greece

'where your body could be seen.

'In the gym, nobody
had a stitch on.'

Now our word "gymnasium"
comes from the Greek word "gymnos"

which effectively means "naked".

So, in a sense,

to get the proper understanding
of the word "gymnasium"

we should really be saying
"nuditorium".

And that's the crucial point.

Here, in these spaces,
Greek men were naked,

wrestling, exercising
with one another.

And it will come as no surprise,
that in such spaces,

given such nudity,
given such close physical contact,

gymnasia were centres of sexual
attraction in Ancient Greece.

And they were part of a much wider
sexual landscape

which was very different to our own.

Looking around the Athens
tourist market today,

it would seem that
from the replicas on sale,

sex was the only thing
on Ancient Greek minds.

And a lot of what they thought about
sex seems to us very strange indeed.

The Greeks believed that sex
was good for women

because it kept their wombs
from drying out

and wandering around the body.

And, of course,
from a male perspective,

it also supposedly kept them
under better control.

So, according to the laws of Athens,
Athenian men were supposed

to have sex with their wives
at least three times a month.

And from
the male perspective, though,

there were also
lots of other options.

They could go with
a high-class geisha girl prostitute

called a "hetaerae",

they could have a live-in lover
mistress, a "palleacae",

or they could go to a brothel for
a street prostitute, a "pornai".

Anal sex with their wives
was repugnant

but with any of the other three,
absolutely fine.

It really was an unfair
state of affairs

because, for women, adultery
was a much worse crime than rape.

In addition to having
carnal relations

with their wives or prostitutes,
in Ancient Greece,

it was also expected that young men
would court adolescent boys.

The beauty of youth was celebrated
and much sought-after,

and pederastic relationships
were seen as very much the norm.

Girls were married off
when they were 13 or 14,

at the same stage,

boys would attract the attention
of older male lovers.

Something that today
would be labelled as pederasty,

or even perhaps paedophilia,
was considered by the Ancient Greeks

an exalted and important
form of love.

The relationship between
the "erastes", the older man,

and the "eromenos", the younger boy,
was governed by strict rules.

The older man had to be in his 20s
but not yet married,

and his role was to protect, to
love, to educate the younger boy.

And he had to win his affection.

He had to sleep on his doorstep,
he had to shower him with gifts

and the younger boy
had to agree to the match.

Although it was said
that many fathers were furious

when they heard that their sons
had male admirers,

fathers would also wish
for their sons to be beautiful

so as to attract the best lover.

These relationships were almost
a final stage of a boy's education,

an exchange of wisdom and youth.

The images on Greek vases offer us
sometimes a suggestive

and sometimes
a fairly graphic picture

of the erastes/eromenos
relationship.

So, this one here shows an older
man, a suitor, offering a cockerel,

a gift, towards the youth,
the potential eromenos.

And just in case
there's any doubt

about how to interpret this image,

the inscription around the edge
reads

"hoptite kalos" -
"the beautiful boy".

But this one over here,
on the other hand,

is a little bit
more vivid an image, perhaps,

of the erastes/eromenos relationship
later on in the evening.

Here, both are naked

and the youth stretches out with his
arm to cradle the older man's head.

The older man, clearly excited,

reaches out with his own hand
towards the youth's genitalia.

The images give us
a picture of everything

the erastes/eromenos image
could be -

affection, love and lust.

Older man/younger boy relationships
were celebrated in Ancient Greece.

There were even famous
eromenos and erastes couples.

These relationships weren't hidden
in the backstreets,

they were front and centre
in Greek society.

There were also strict rules

about when the erastes/eromenos
relationship should be over.

In an ideal world, the man should be
married by the time he was 35,

otherwise he faced a fine.

And the young boy's days
as an eromenos were said to be over

when he had "hair on thigh
and down on cheek".

And if the relationship carried on,

well, the younger boy
was subject to shame

and the older man to ridicule.

So we shouldn't think about sexual
orientation as something

that was set for life
in Ancient Greece,

much rather, it was that there
were different sexual relationships

appropriate at different ages.

The admiration of youth,
the cult of admiring the physique

and promise of adolescent boys
on the brink of manhood

was a huge part
of Ancient Greek culture.

'Professor Olga Palagia,
of Athens University,

'is an expert in classical
sculpture,

'and has studied the hundreds
of statues of perfect young males

'known as kouros figures.

'And Olga believes that these
statues give us a real sense

'of how the Greeks thought
about young men and young women.'

So, Olga, where are you taking me?

I'm taking you to the statue
of the kouros

that was standing on his grave
in Attica outside of Athens,

probably with his sister,
who is the next statue over there.

And what strikes you
immediately

about so many of the statues
from Ancient Greece,

the male statues,
is the nudity, isn't it?

What did the nudity say?

What would a viewer have thought
when they saw this kind of statue?

I think, first, they would think

that this is an aristocratic
young man

because he had the leisure
to exercise.

We know that the sons
of good families

could go to the gym
every day and exercise

and they were really obsessed
with athletics and exercise,

very much like we are.

When we see nudity today,
we think sexuality, we think lust,

we think attraction. Is there
that element to it as well?

Yes. If we're men, we're
supposed to be attracted,

because in ancient Athens, older men
would be attracted by young boys.

Because they wouldn't have a chance
to look at young girls.

Young girls were confined at home.

And in statues, they are
very different, aren't they?

They are, of course, always dressed,
heavily dressed.

There was a lot of emphasis
on virginity

because young women
were going to get married

and have the heir to the family, so
they weren't supposed to see anyone.

And the difference is key, you can't
see, really, any features

of her body underneath at all,
compared to our gentleman over here.

That's right.

If you had that perfect
physical body,

what did it say
about your character?

It had no implications at all.

So it really is body beautiful
and it doesn't matter

what their brain is like
or what their character is like

or what their soul is like,
but it is the body above all.

Well, the brain was a challenge
for the mature lover

who would like to teach
the young boy various things,

so he would be very happy
to take him on

and teach him all sorts of things...

..and, you know, develop his mind.

Ancient Greece
was awash with images,

many of them sculptures of people
with perfect physiques.

Indeed, more often than not,
uber-perfect physiques.

And that cacophony of perfection
set the bar high

when it came to expectations of what
people looked like in real life.

And more than that it fed into
a wider set of expectations

about how what you looked like
said something about who you were

and how who you spent time with
said something about who you were.

Plutarch put it like this -

"If you live with a lame man,
you'll start to limp."

So, the ideal in Ancient Greece
was to look good,

spend your time with good-looking
people avoiding the ugly

and anyone who didn't match
up to the ideal.

The Ancient Greeks enjoyed spending
a great deal of their time

drinking, discussing and carousing
with good-looking people

and those with great minds.

And much of this appreciation
of the good-looking and good-minded,

fuelled by good wine,
took place in "symposia",

which were drinking parties
held behind closed doors.

But even these Ancient Greek parties
were not what you might think,

they weren't relaxed events,

rather they were a series of tests
on how to conduct yourself.

The male guests at the symposium
were asked to recline on benches,

to take up positions
something like this.

And to assume this position
was to prove yourself

a fully-fledged member
of Greek society.

Youngsters, for instance, weren't
allowed to recline, they had to sit.

But even when you'd obtained
this privileged position and place,

that was only the beginning
because the symposium

was a continual series of tests
on how to behave -

one of which was
how to drink your wine.

Now this is a kylix,
an Ancient Greek drinking cup,

and it's a lot harder to drink
out of than you might first imagine,

not least because of the wide brim

and the shallow nature
of the vessel,

but also because I'm reclining
so I can only drink with one hand.

As you tip it towards you,
the wine comes forward

and makes the whole thing very
unbalanced.

It's easy for a novice,
particularly like me,

to make a complete mess of it.

A bit of an epic fail on my part.

But what this shows is what the
symposium did in the Greek world.

It proved who was in
and who was out.

But then proved whether or not

you knew how to behave
within Greek society.

It wasn't, like down the pub today,
how many pints can you drink?

It was do you know how to drink?

And that's why I think that,

on so many of the vessels that were
used in the symposium,

you see this, you see an eye,
a reminder to all the guests

that society
was looking right back at them.

There's an impression that symposia
were wild orgies with drinking,

high-class prostitutes,
dancing girls and flautists,

young men and older men enjoying
the pleasure of close contact,

reclining two to a couch.

Everyone getting drunk,

well, maybe that's a taste of what
happened when they got out of hand,

but symposia were also governed
by exact social etiquette.

There was a master of ceremonies

who decided how strong
the wine for the evening would be

and oversaw what happened when.

There were cleansing rituals
and libations to the gods,

which had to take place.

Wine was mixed with water
in great jars known as kraters.

Everything would start off
in a very civilised manner.

Now, of course, some symposia
went much further than that

and the playwright Eubulus tells us
about what each krater,

each bowl of mixed wine,

means, when drunk, for how
the evening will continue.

He puts it like this,

"For sensible men,
I prepare only three kraters -

one for health, the second
for love and pleasure,

and the third for sleep.

And after that
the sensible man goes home.

But if you stay, well, the fourth
krater belongs to hubris,

the fifth is for shouting, the
sixth is for rudeness and insults,

the seventh is for fighting,

the eighth is for
breaking the furniture,

the ninth is for depression,

and the tenth, well, that's for
madness and unconsciousness.

It does sound to me exactly how
a ten-pint evening might pan out.

The symposium was not just about
drinking and having a good time,

it was really supposed to be a place

for intellectual discussion
and debate.

And as for what was discussed
before the shouting, rudeness

and unconsciousness ensued,

the philosopher Plato wrote
a whole philosophical discourse

about one famous symposium party
that took place one night in Athens.

In Plato's Symposium,
all the guests are invited

to debate and discuss
about the nature of love.

That is until
Socrates' on-off lover, Alcibiades,

turns up half drunk
to ruin the party.

But in that story
of a symposium gone wrong,

Plato underlines
what a symposium should be about -

debate, discussion,
investigation, argument,

all the hallmarks of what made
the Greek psyche so unique

are on display in the symposium.

It wasn't mindless drinking, then,
in Ancient Greece,

quite the opposite.

Wine was crucial to the symposium
because it facilitated

exactly what the event
was intended for - talking.

It was expected that you had to lead
a public life in Ancient Greece

just as you had to display your body
in the gymnasium,

you had to display your mind
in the symposium.

In Greek, the word for a "private
person" is "idiotes" - our "idiot".

Opting out of society
was really not an option.

The Ancient Greeks
were very different to us today.

They lived in a world
of exorbitantly high expectations

in almost every aspect
of their lives.

And they had to debate
and discuss and argue

and to do it all publicly

without any real value
attached to a private life.

They weren't slaves to conformity
but they were driven

by an internal anxiety and need
to meet those expectations

and to prove themselves
publicly - a good sportsman,

a good soldier, a good citizen,
a good Greek.

All these pressures
to prove oneself worthy,

were part of what the Athenians felt
they were protecting

more than anything else
on the battlefield at Marathon -

their democracy,

the biggest talking shop
and opt-in system of them all.

This rather unprepossessing place

on one of the hills
above central Athens

is, in fact, the beating heart
of the ancient Athenian democracy.

This is the assembly.

Now today we are used to electing
representatives

who will meet to take decisions
on our behalf.

But in ancient Athens,
it was very different.

Every single citizen had the right
to come here to the assembly

to listen to the debates
about all sorts of issues

from what to do with
the financial surplus

to whether or not to go to war.

6,000 or so people and every one of
them had the right to step up there,

to the speakers' platform,
and to make their opinion known.

And then a vote was taken,
probably just with a show of hands.

The direct nature
of the democracy in ancient Athens

is unlike anything we know today.

Life could be brutish
and short here in Athens,

but if you did survive childhood
and adolescence,

you would, at some point,

be directly involved
in governing your city.

It was also a hands-on world.

In the law courts,
there were no lawyers

and no Criminal Prosecution Service.

If you wanted to try a case,
you had to bring it

and you had to speak to the jury.

But it was not all fair and ideal.

There were still dirty politics.

These pieces of pottery
are called "ostraca"

and they've given us our word
"ostracism" today

because they were used
in a particularly important vote

in ancient Athens.

The way it worked was this,
you took your piece of pottery

like our replica here,

and you wrote on it
the name of an Athenian

who you wanted to expel
from the city

for a period of up to ten years,

a person you wanted to ostracise.

Now, all of these pieces here,
like our replica,

have the same name on it
and it's Themistocles.

Themistocles was an incredibly
important politician in Athens

in the years
after the battle of Marathon.

But it seems like he might have
got a bit too big for his boots

because these pieces are part of
a larger collection of 190 ostraca

all with his name on it.

But here's the rub -

because when these pieces
were analysed by archaeologists

it was discovered that all 190 were
written by just 14 different people.

And that can be for one
of two reasons.

Firstly, that there were some
enterprising people

pre-writing these
to sell them to citizens

who perhaps couldn't write
so well for themselves

or else, that there was some pretty
extensive vote-rigging going on.

Democracy in Athens meant complete
citizen participation.

If you were a man and a citizen,
you were part of the process.

But along with all these
participatory politics

came something we probably wouldn't
want to thank the Greeks for -

bureaucracy.

The Athenians, it seems, were in
love with it, and the city was awash

with countless inscriptions holding
anyone and everyone accountable.

Here at the Epigraphic Museum
in Athens,

many of these inscriptions
can be found on display.

The Athenians published in profusion

every aspect of the workings
of their democracy.

We have laws, decrees,
honours, contracts,

registers, scrutiny lists,
calendars, the list goes on.

What we get is a sense
of the incredible accountability

and transparency that defined
the ancient Athenian democracy.

And this stelae symbolises
that above all it's,

as the first line tells us,

"a summ grafai",
a set of building specs

for what is effectively a bit of
a storeroom down in the Piraeus,

the ancient port of Athens.

And what follows is an incredibly
detailed description

of what the building
should look like.

This tells us, not just the general
outline of the building,

but where the windows should be,

how deep the foundations should be,
every detail.

But the best bit is the final clause
because this is the penalty clause

and it tells us
that the building contractors

must finish everything
they promised "en teus cronos" -

"in the specified time".

So builders back then,
just like builders now,

had to be pushed
to finish the job on time.

Some things never change!

But how did the Greeks afford
all their monumental building,

their drinking parties, sculpture,
art and architecture?

Citizens would not work for free,
there were rates of pay

and civic duties to attend to.

The uncomfortable truth is
that Ancient Greece

was a civilisation
built on the backs of slaves.

Slavery was a fact of life
in Ancient Greece.

Slaves were captured in war
or bought from overseas.

One census states
that in fourth century BC Athens,

there were 400,000 slaves

to a citizen population
of around just 35,000.

Not all Greeks were free,

but even those that were
knew what slavery meant.

And the prospect of becoming
a slave,

or of your wife and children
being forced into slavery,

would have terrified them,

mainly because Greece and even the
fabled democracy of ancient Athens

ran on slave labour.

Ancient Athens ran on slaves
and silver.

At Laurion, just 40 miles
southeast of Athens,

were the silver mines which provided
Athens with much of its wealth.

And they were mines
worked by thousands of slaves.

Off the beaten track today,
you can still find the galleries

and tunnels of these ancient
silver mines.

This is not a place
you often get the chance to explore.

The silver from the mines
here at Laurion

in part went to making Athens'
famous coinage,

the Attic silver owl.

Each one of these is worth
about four days' wage

for a skilled worker
in ancient Athens.

And the slaves that worked here
came from, amongst other places,

Thrace and Paphlagonia.

That's modern day Northern Greece,
Bulgaria and Turkey.

And in these dark
and cramped conditions,

they must have felt a long,
long way from home.

Oil lamps, like this replica here,
have been found in the mines.

And from the amount of oil
that they contained,

we can estimate that a shift

might have lasted something like
ten hours.

That's a long time
to be down these tunnels

with just this kind of light.

Of all the types of slave you
could be in Ancient Greece,

being a silver mine slave
was considered to be the worst.

Plato talked about these places
as being, in Greek, "vari"

which means
"dark, heavy, depressing".

And I can see what he meant.

Unsurprisingly, the life expectancy
of a Laurion slave was short.

But what is surprising
in Ancient Greece

is that not all slaves
were treated badly.

Many led quite comfortable lives.

Slaves could be well cared for
by their masters,

they could be well educated

and some had important
administrative positions

in Greek cities.

Indeed, Plutarch tells us that
he would rather be a slave in Athens

than the king
of some poxy little island.

And other sources talk about the way
that in Athens

you couldn't tell between
a slave and a non-slave

because everyone
wore the same clothes.

House slaves served as cooks,

cleaners, porters, tutors
as "pedagogues",

escorting their master's sons
to school,

watching over them to make sure
they completed their lessons.

Slaves were messengers,
nurses and companions.

Some were even buried alongside
their masters and mistresses

in the family burial plot
at the end of their lives.

Let's not get too carried away,
though, with this idea

of a cosy slave-master relationship.

Slaves were essentially seen
as subhuman.

Slave testimony in Ancient Greek
courts, for example,

was only allowed if it had been
extracted under torture

because slaves were seen
as natural liars.

Starvation and flogging
were common punishments.

And, of course,
if your master wanted sex,

you had no business refusing.

As offensive as it is
to our modern concepts of liberty,

slavery didn't really bother
the Ancient Greeks.

Slaves could be seen
as the working class,

the people
who kept the cogs turning.

But there were ways to work your way
out of slavery in Ancient Greece.

You could be granted your freedom.
You could even make a lot of money.

There was one slave

who actually became
one of the richest men in Greece.

His name was Pasion and he had
the ultimate rags-to-riches story.

'To learn more about Pasion, I've
come to the ancient port of Athens,

'the Piraeus, where Pasion
first worked as a slave.

'And I'm hoping Dr Paul Millett,
an expert on Ancient Greek slavery,

'can tell me more about
Pasion's extraordinary story.'

So, Paul, tell me about
this character, Pasion.

What do we know about him?

So he was born, we think,
some time around 430

and he came to Athens
as an outsider, a non-Greek,

and almost certainly also would
have been landed here at the Piraeus

before being taken
to the slave market,

and we think being bought
by a couple of Athenian bankers.

What happened next
in Pasion's story?

He was a great success
as their assistant, one presumes,

because they gave him his freedom

and he continued to manage the bank.

And somehow, we don't know quite
how it came about,

he ended up owning this bank.

The idea that you could rise up
from being a slave to be freed,

that was fairly
typical in Ancient Greece?

Well, my view is absolutely not.

I see this career path
as being one pursued

by a tiny minority of slaves.

So Pasion, I see, as being
very much the exception.

Once he becomes free,
what happens next?

I mean, does he continue
to work in the same business?

He became a successful, what we might
say, businessman in his own right,

with other interests
apart from banking

and was able to be sufficiently
generous to the Athenian state.

One donation, we know about,
was in the shield factory.

He gave a thousand shields.

He provided a number of "triremes",
"warships" for the Athenian navy,

a very expensive thing to do.

And was, in the end, rewarded
with citizenship,

which is very, very rare indeed
for a slave.

And can we get any sense
of just how rich Pasion was

as an individual
by the time he died?

Well, we think he may have been
the wealthiest man in Athens.

'Many slaves would have dreamed
of gaining their freedom

'and becoming a citizen, having
a say in the Athenian democracy

'which Pasion became a part of.

'But the equality that was
the hallmark of democracy in Athens

'also demanded crushing conformity.

'Every citizen was supposed
to have a modest house,

'obey the rules and even
wear the same clothes.

'But as always with the Greeks,

'things weren't quite
as straightforward as they may seem,

'not even when it came
to your funeral.'

The Athenians tried to enforce
equality amongst their citizens

even in death.

So there were rules about

the maximum size of funerary mat
you could have,

the number of garments
that could be put in your grave,

the extent
of your funeral procession,

and even in relation
to the size of your grave monument.

The idea was
that no-one should stand out

as being more worthy
than anyone else.

But, of course, this didn't work.

The Ancient Greeks, as ever,
found a way around the rules.

These are some of the gravestones
from Athens' Cemetery

and while they are all
fairly similar in type,

you can immediately see
there are vast differences in size,

in the quality of the sculpture and,
of course, as a result in the cost.

So what I think this room shows is

that despite all the laws that
Athens put in place

to try and ensure
that everyone looked equal,

actually the desire
for individualisation,

the desire to be different,
to demonstrate your wealth,

your birth,
the desire to be remembered,

just kept breaking through.

And this is one of my favourites.

This is Hergesso.

Hergesso, the daughter of Proximos.

She's beautifully carved
and out of her jewellery box,

she's picking her favourite piece
of jewellery

that would have been put in
in paint or precious metal.

There's no way, when walking past
this in Athens Cemetery,

that you would have thought Hergesso
was the equal of everyone else.

She was, and she would be remembered
as being, quite rightly,

something special.

The Ancient Greeks
were full of contradictions.

They lived in an incredibly
tough environment

but they created magnificent art
and architecture.

They invented democracy
but their world ran on slave labour.

They had philosophy and logic

but they would bend over backwards
to please the gods.

It was a society that can seem
like a vicious free-for-all,

but actually followed strict,
if slightly odd, rules.

And it was that explosive mix

that propelled the Greeks to
extraordinary creations, discoveries

and achievements in almost
every aspect of human society,

including victory over the Persians
at the Battle of Marathon.

Ancient Greece is probably not
a place that any of us today

would want to find ourselves in.

But it is also a place,
I would argue,

that we would never
want to be without.

Next week, I'll be exploring
the great legacies

of the Ancient Greeks and asking,
"Why are they so enduring?"

I'll travel across the Greek world

to reveal the extent of their
creative and scientific genius

and I'll uncover
the strange realities

of the Olympic Games
and ancient theatre...

You've got a golden heterae
or prostitute,

so she turns out
to have a heart of gold.

..and I'll find out how modern
science is enlivening our quest

to discover who were the Greeks?
How amazing.

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