All language subtitles for Civilisations Rise and Fall.s01e01.Rome

The 24th of August, 410AD.

The magnificent city of Rome
is under attack.

The ancient capital of the
mightiest empire on earth

is at the mercy of
a barbarian leader,

thirsting for revenge.

The rich scramble
to hide their wealth.

The poor run for their lives.

No-one saw this coming.

The Sack of Rome is one of the
iconic events of Western history.

Imagine thousands of men,
pouring into your city,

and rushing into your house.

The fear must have been
extraordinary.

Rome believed it had

an immortal imperial destiny.

This empire's dominated Europe
for 500 years.

How did it come to collapse?

This is the story of three men,

and how their fateful decisions

brought the mighty Roman
civilisation to its knees.

A refugee, treated with cruelty
and prejudice, driven to violence...

..a weak emperor, blind to the
reality beyond his palace walls...

..and a wily general,
caught between two worlds,

and trusted by no-one.

They have gambled
with Rome's future.

Now the eternal city
is running out of time.

Ancient Egypt...

..the Roman Empire...

..the Aztecs of Mexico...

..and the samurai of Japan.

Four great civilisations,

each a pinnacle of human ingenuity
and achievement.

Each lasted for centuries.

Their people thought
they would endure forever.

Until, suddenly...

CANNON FIRES LOUDLY

..everything changed.

These civilisations faced challenges

that are all too familiar today.

THUNDERCLAP

Climate catastrophe...

..pandemic...

..war.

Challenges for which ancient
societies had few solutions.

But what if there was a place that
had the answers to what went wrong?

A place full of secrets and stories.

A repository of memory,
stretching back through time.

The British Museum,

home to more than eight million
artefacts,

is a record of how and why

the greatest civilisations
rose to power,

and then spectacularly fell.

Its treasures are the human traces
that survived disaster.

But might they also hold
lessons for our own future?

Every civilisation throughout
history has had an expiry date.

These great societies,

the seeds of their destruction

are sown within the society,
they're already there.

No civilisation ever thinks
it's going to fall.

But the question is -
what can we learn from the past?

Rome is the largest city
in the world.

Home to over 700,000 people -

traders and artisans,

senators and slaves.

Arriving to Rome and entering
from one of the gates

of its wall in late 4th century,

we would see a city

at the height of its splendour.

Rome is still this monumental city.

It has this history of emperors
building things.

You would still have seen
things like temples,

the Forum and the Curia,
the Senate House,

the Colosseum.

Rome's magnificence is built
on the spoils of empire.

800 years earlier,

Roman armies began to carve out
a growing territory

that, by the 4th century, stretches
across 1.7 million square miles.

From Britain to North Africa

and the Middle East.

The empire is so vast
it's now split into two halves -

East and West -

each ruled by its own emperor.

Around 40 million people,
a fifth of the world's population,

now live under Roman rule,

in a heady mix of cultures
and languages.

It's all held together
by a ruthless military might...

..but also
by the benefits of a shared peace,

and pioneering advances
in technology.

Aqueducts for clean water,

concrete for construction...

..and a complex road network
that brings trade and prosperity.

In the western half of the empire,

a handful of aristocratic families
have profited more than most

from Rome's imperial success.

They need a strong emperor
to keep the status quo.

But their new ruler
is a major cause for concern.

Emperor Honorius

is young and inexperienced.

Honorius was not from Rome.

He is not even born in Rome.

He's born in the east.

He really spends most of his youth

living amongst the other courtiers.

He's made a few visits west
to see his father,

the previous emperor,

but his first big trip

is the one that ends up
being permanent.

He comes over and,
shortly thereafter, his father dies.

The accession of a child
like Honorius

is extremely odd.

In fact, in previous eras,

Roman politics had never
tolerated child emperors.

The personal leadership
of the emperor in earlier eras

is just too important. You can't
have a child on the throne.

By 395, it is common practice

for Romans to prostrate themselves,

literally crawl on all fours,
in front of the emperor.

This was an act of
humility and homage.

It was required as part
of the imperial ritual.

Imagine how tough
that would have been

if you were an extremely wealthy,
successful senator

and here you are
crawling before a child.

Honorius is remembered

as an indifferent, foolish,

self-absorbed emperor.

Honorius is completely at sea.

Left to his own devices,
I think Honorius would have lasted

no more than ten minutes.

It's inevitable that someone else
is pulling the strings.

General Stilicho.

Stilicho is this really
interesting combination

of loyal servant to the empire,

but also, perhaps a little bit
of a conniving opportunist.

Stilicho is commander
of Rome's Western armies.

Under the previous emperor,
he had become a trusted adviser.

Then he married into the imperial
family, consolidating his power.

Now, no-one has greater influence
over the young Honorius.

Stilicho is competent militarily,
politically astute.

He knew the type of alliances
that you had to make

with the key civilian
and military leaders,

how to appoint people
who were loyal to him.

He absolutely has his eyes
on protecting Honorius,

doing what he can to keep
Honorius in power.

Of course, if Honorius
isn't in power, neither is he.

Honorius needs to persuade
Rome's elite

that he can project absolute power
across his domains.

He's not the only Roman emperor
to face such a challenge.

This is the very first emperor -

Augustus.

Augustus was one of the most
brilliant minds.

A real game-changer,

someone who changed forever
the path of history.

The head of a bronze statue
of Augustus

is a really extraordinary object

that we have from
the 1st century BCE.

Partly extraordinary
because it still has its eyes.

We're not used to seeing these eyes.

We're used to very vacant sort of
eye sockets of our Roman figures.

But it still has its eyes,
which make it a really

fascinating object to see,
and a really evocative object.

When this statue was cast,

Augustus had just defeated
his rivals

in a brutal civil war to lead Rome.

It was the first time
one man ruled alone.

And Augustus used this image
to cement his reign.

What we see with Augustus
is actually a bit of a change

in the way that Roman politicians,
Roman statesmen were presented.

Previously, age was seen as a
sort of way of communicating wisdom,

so statues and busts of wrinkles

and, you know, signs of age
on a face was something

that you would have been
used to seeing.

Augustus doesn't do this.

Rather, he wants to put forward
the sort of youthfulness, I guess,

of a ruler and the vitality
of a ruler.

This is a young,
kind of a movie star.

He's going to attract everyone
with his magnetic beauty,

and make everybody want to
follow him.

So in that sense
it's a real shift of gears

from the traditional way
of representing authority.

The scale is larger than life,

giving Augustus
the appearance of a god.

And yet, this object is
also a cautionary tale

for future rulers, like Honorius.

Look closely

and you can see microscopic grains
of sand embedded in the bronze.

They tell a story of the dangers
of imperial ambition.

The reason why the head
is so well-preserved

is because it was purposefully
buried.

In 30BC,
Augustus's army invaded Egypt...

..and expanded into Kush,
to the south.

But the Kushites resisted

and pushed back.

They looted Roman treasures,

pulling the head of Augustus's
statue from its body.

They carried their prize back
to their capital, Meroe,

where they buried it
under the steps of a temple.

Kushites could now literally rub
their feet in the face of Augustus.

So, in a very disrespectful
and insulting way,

every time someone
went on pilgrimage to this temple,

what they did was ultimately
walking on the head of the emperor,

the most powerful leader
of the world of that time.

It was a sign that aggressive
empire-building comes at a cost.

The downside to invading
your neighbours is that, often,

you don't just create new frontiers
but also new enemies.

In the US military
there's a term for this - blowback.

Rome suffered from blowback
again and again.

Augustus had been an ambitious
young emperor

who presided over a fragile peace.

Now, four centuries later,

the young Honorius needs
to persuade the people

that he too can successfully
unite his fractious empire.

His adviser, Stilicho,
embarks on a campaign

to construct a new image
for Honorius.

One of power, stability,
and authority.

The start of a new regime
was always marked by

a ceremonial pay-out to
the military of gold coins.

These coins aren't just sent out as
spending money, but as propaganda.

Passed from hand to hand,

they can reach all corners
of a sprawling empire.

These early coins,
slapped with the head of Honorius,

are part of a meet and greet
campaign.

You wouldn't know from the coin
that this is somebody

who's underage for being
a full-fledged Roman emperor.

It's the way he's shown in profile
with a diadem

and this sort of
slightly 1980s hairstyle.

But something that I think
is particularly interesting

on this coin is if you turn it over
and you look at the back...

..you have Honorius standing with

his foot on the neck of a soldier,

and Victory is just up
in the corner, holding her crown,

as if she's going to crown him.

And it's a very brazen
military image for him to choose,

given that he is not yet
battle-tested.

Victory is the
crucial characteristic

of a legitimate emperor.

This is the claim that's being
made on that coin,

that Honorius is
a legitimate emperor.

But Honorius and General Stilicho
will soon discover

that success requires more
than mere propaganda.

Little does this regime know that
in just a few short years,

their world would be
turned upside down,

the empire would be shook
at its very foundations,

and one of them would end up
in his grave.

BIRD OF PREY CRIES

The man destined to become
Rome's nemesis

is leading a rebellion
in the Balkans,

attacking Roman forces

and taking captives
and plunder wherever he can.

His name is Alaric.

Alaric is a legend.

We know he's an experienced soldier,
and an admired and feared one.

Unlike a traditional monarchy,
or indeed the Roman Empire,

he's not holding power
because his father held power.

He is the one they are following
because they choose to follow him.

Alaric is charismatic,
intelligent and very capable.

He's also a bitter man,

a man who has good reasons
to be going rogue.

The root of Alaric's anger
stretches back to his childhood.

Soldiers manning Rome's northern
border, along the River Danube,

begin to see large crowds of people
gathering and asking for help.

If a huge number of people
end up on your border,

it means that something
has gone really, really wrong.

My experience is that people
really don't want to move.

They don't want to
leave their countries.

And with the kind of numbers we're
talking about, I think it means

that there was conflict raging
and they had to come.

These are Alaric's people -

the Goths.

Their homeland
lies northeast of Rome,

stretching from present-day Romania
to Ukraine.

For generations, they've lived
as warriors and farmers,

but now, a rival people,
the Huns, attack...

..forcing the Goths to flee south.

Something like 100,000
Gothic men, women and children

come towards the Danube River.

It's a migration on a scale
the Romans have not encountered.

Even today, 100,000 people
is a lot of people.

And any government would look at
100,000 people and see a problem.

In Roman times, they will have been
looking at their own resources

and thinking about,
how can they look after

people who need to be fed,
who need to be housed,

so they don't become a problem
further down the line?

Despite the diverse populations
within their empire,

the Romans are uneasy about
such a vast influx of people.

And it plays into
deep-seated prejudices.

Racial stereotypes are so enduring

because they're ubiquitous
in ancient culture,

just like they are in ours.

This mask is meant to evoke
somebody from the North -

a barbarian.

The word "barbarian"
comes from the Greek "barbaros",

and the Greeks invented it
because, to them,

it sounded like the
"bar, bar, bar, bar,"

the babbling of peoples whose
languages they could not understand.

The Romans, like the Greeks,

conceptualised race as being
essentially environmental.

The further you get away
from Mediterranean,

the further you get away
from that environment

that was so familiar to them,

the more likely you are
to be a barbarian.

The Roman stereotype
of the barbarian

was always defined
by certain traits -

clothing, hairstyle, customs.

They're savage,
they're less cultured,

they always have looser hair.

A theatre mask designed to depict
a barbarian has to convey that.

A giveaway is the ponytail.

You might notice that the man's
hair is pulled back.

It looks like a kind of man bun.

That man bun is the dead giveaway.

Romans don't wear man buns.

These were the kinds of stereotypes
that Romans would have absorbed

by going to the theatre,

and really internalised them,

and that can be weaponised
in all sorts of ways.

It's a stereotype you can appeal to,

to rally other people
to support you.

The 20th, early 21st century

has seen more examples of that
than one can easily count.

Reducing people to a stereotype

means you don't have to regard them
as full human beings,

usually with tragic results.

Romans may see the Goths
as primitive savages,

but they have their uses,

working in the fields,
or as conscripts in the army.

Under orders to remove
their weapons,

the soldiers at the border
begin to let the Goths in

in increasing numbers.

The problem is not migration.

The problem is not
displaced peoples.

Moving is fundamental
to being human.

It is the reason why we survived
through the Ice Age.

The problem is how governments
respond to displaced people.

You can choose to take them
into your society

or to make them into an enemy.

A number of the local Roman
officials see these refugees

and think, "Right, how can
I profit from the situation?"

Only give food to those
that are willing to pay.

Why actually give them the good food
when you can send them

anything else that you might have,
like dog meat?

Can you take away some of the Goths,

sell them off into slavery?

If I was giving advice
to the Roman government,

I would say be careful. These people
are competent soldiers.

You know, the last thing you want
to do is create a situation

where people feel
that they're being treated cruelly

and that they owe you nothing.

THUNDERCLAP

Enraged by their humiliation
at the hands of the Romans,

30,000 Goths stage a fightback.

The battle is a catastrophic
defeat for the Roman Empire.

The larger estimates think that
20,000 Roman soldiers are killed

on this battlefield
in one afternoon.

It means the Goths are now
inside the empire.

There's no way that they can be
driven out again.

The crushing defeat forces
the Romans to do a deal.

They give the Goths land to settle

in the wilder regions
of the Balkans.

In return, the Goths supply
warriors for the Roman army.

It's not actually a long-term
solution to the problem.

Effectively, it buys time,

another decade or so
of relative peace.

And then we come to Alaric.

Alaric has followed
the path of many Goth refugees

and served in the Roman army.

He has been a loyal commander
for four years,

until the Romans betray him.

At a battle in the Alps,
Alaric and his fellow Goths

are sacrificed as cannon fodder
for the Roman Empire.

The Goths were put
on the front line.

After all, they'll be effective
shock troops.

And they are effectively
abandoned there.

10,000 Goths were killed.

Alaric was there. He's a survivor.

He cannot possibly have forgotten.

What we have is a two-tier society.

Promises have been broken to them
time and time again,

and no respect is given to them,
and at the end of the day,

they feel they have to rise up
and fight for their rights.

Alaric takes the opportunity
to mount a major rebellion

at the head of these Gothic soldiers
who'd fought under that campaign,

I think certainly responding
to the level of casualties

that they'd suffered on it.

But for the Emperor Honorius
and General Stilicho,

an uprising is something
they can ill afford.

Because while there is plenty
of money swilling around

the Roman Empire,

less and less of it is going
into the imperial coffers,

and more into those
of Rome's super-rich.

This casket
is for a very elite woman.

One of the 1%.

The lid contains a portrait
with a man and a woman

standing shoulder to shoulder.

This is a classic marriage scene.

We do know for sure it
belonged to a woman named Projecta

because there's an inscription
on the edge of it.

The inscription refers to Projecta
as well as a man named Secundus.

And we believe that this casket was
given to them as a wedding present.

These are two incredibly
wealthy people.

This would have been
the wedding of the year.

It's elaborately carved

with scenes all over,
on almost every side of it.

There is a beautiful image of Venus
sort of stepping up out of a bath,

mostly naked.

There's a scene of a procession

of an elite woman
to the Roman bathhouse,

which is the place of glamour
and luxury in the Roman world.

A lot of objects like the casket
are really about showing off

ostentatious wealth,
making it very clear

that you are in that
very small strata of society

where you can spend most of
your time doing very little,

engaged in pleasurable activities.

This celebration of luxury
is part of a worrying trend -

the 1% hoovering up
the wealth of the wider empire.

There are estimations
that 20 families owned

all of Southern France and Italy,
for example.

Recent excavations in different
areas of Rome have uncovered

absolutely luxurious
urban residences

that date precisely to this period.

They were really living
la dolce vita.

The wealthy of late antique Rome

are a lot like this super-wealthy
billionaire class of today.

They live in these enormous houses
that they had created by

cobbling together a bunch
of preexisting buildings,

just like we see today in cities
like New York and London.

This is a family
getting richer by the day.

And yet the emperor is not seeing
the benefit of this boom time

for the wealthy elite.

The rich, in principle,
are supposed to pay taxes,

but things don't
really change in history.

And yesterday, as it happens today,

those who have connections find
more or less legal

and more or less conventional way
not to pay taxes.

This kind of tax avoidance is
squeezing the emperor's finances,

forcing the regime to lean instead
on those who can least afford it.

The burden seems to be
falling on the lower classes.

The vast majority of Romans
are living in tenement blocks,

in crowded, shared spaces,

rat and cockroach infested.

They are living
very different lives

to the lives that the
wealthy are leading.

Growing wealth inequality is
the most common and crucial element

in societal collapse.

It corrodes the social fabric.

Wealth inequality, in short,
hollows out societies,

leaving them to be a brittle shell,
which can be cracked asunder

by numerous different shocks,

such as disease, climate change
and invaders.

THUNDERCLAP

For the last seven years,
Alaric and his army

have been plundering what they can
in the Balkans.

Now, he marches his massed forces
towards Italy.

Alaric is in search of a deal, and
that is a more recognised position

within the Roman
imperial structure,

payments for his dependants,

and recognition for himself
as an imperial general.

Alaric doesn't want to destroy
the Roman Empire.

He wants to be a part of it,

if he can overcome Roman prejudice
against the Goths.

His great problem, Stilicho,
is in the way.

Stilicho and Alaric
may be on opposing sides,

but the two men have more in common
than Stilicho would like to admit.

Stilicho is actually half-barbarian.

Half-Roman on his mother's side,

and half-Vandal on his father's.

The Vandals were close
neighbours of the Goths

beyond the northern frontier.

Stilicho followed his
barbarian father into the army,

and rose on merit.

He is an example of how Rome
could assimilate outsiders,

when it chose to.

The Roman Empire has controlled
a vast region for 400 years.

And one of the secrets
is integrating people.

You don't actually treat the peoples
you've absorbed as barbarians.

If you learnt the right languages,

if you became part
of the Roman system,

you got all the benefits -

Roman law, Roman trade networks.

Stilicho has also committed
to a Roman way of life.

But his journey to the top
has not been easy.

If you're born in a country
where you're a minority,

very often you have to show
more resilience,

you have to work harder,
you have to prove yourself,

because some of the, you know,
the narrative around who you are

and what you're about and
what your community are about

is extremely negative.

Stilicho was a Roman by upbringing,
by culture.

He didn't identify himself
as something separate

from the Roman Empire.

Unfortunately, there is
a strong faction within Italy,

within the imperial court,
who've never liked the prominence

of a half-Vandal soldier
dominating affairs.

THUNDERCLAP

If Alaric hopes Stilicho,
a fellow barbarian,

will help him cut a deal,

he's much mistaken.

Stilicho is a top general.

His job is to quell the rebellion.

I don't think that
he's busy thinking,

"Oh, I have a little bit
of sympathy for this guy."

Rome is a great military power
at that stage.

You use your power.

Alaric and Stilicho finally meet
at the Battle of Pollentia.

According to our main source,

Stilicho strikes the barbarians
like a thunderbolt.

Alaric is defeated,
his wife is taken,

plunder is taken,
his people are scattered.

But crucially, Stilicho fails
to capture Alaric himself.

It will prove a costly mistake.

THUNDER CRACKS

Honorius begins to hear rumours
that his most trusted general

has allowed Alaric to slip
through his fingers on purpose,

in a barbarian masterplan
to overthrow him.

As soon as his regime
is looking a bit shaky,

when other people are
getting in Honorius's ear,

then the barbarian card is
the obvious one to play.

You can use it both to disparage
Stilicho, and also to say

that he's secretly in league
with Alaric and always has been.

For Honorius, tales of a palace plot
would be all too familiar.

As a child, he had been brought up
on stories

of emperors being overthrown,

or murdered.

As well as myths of how the powerful
punish those who betray them.

He may even have held
one such myth in his hands.

The Lycurgus Cup,

perhaps the greatest single
surviving example

of magnificent
late Roman glassware.

A cup crafted so beautifully

that it does indeed reflect light
in different colours.

From green to red,

depending on where the light
comes from.

If people are drinking
by candlelight

or the wine has been poured in,

and that's changing
the colour as well,

so it's making
these marvellous effects.

This cup must have belonged to
someone with extraordinary wealth,

perhaps a member
of the imperial court,

even the emperor himself.

The cup shows the myth
of the King Lycurgus,

who offended the God of Wine,
Bacchus,

and as punishment was entrapped
in a grapevine,

had stones hurled at him
by Bacchus's followers.

The god punishes the upstart
Lycurgus

by putting him to death.

Probably the message of that cup was
don't get too big for your breeches.

For Honorius,
the myth offers some stark advice...

..get rid of those
who are a threat to you.

He becomes increasingly paranoid.

As society becomes top-heavy,
you suddenly have more elites,

generals, wannabe emperors

competing for a small, limited
number of high-status positions.

We see this again and again in Rome.

It was always a game of thrones.

And it leads to worse decisions.

The emperor has heard news of
multiple barbarian incursions

into Roman territory.

Incursions General Stilicho
has failed to repel.

Palace insiders spin these failures
as proof of Stilicho's treachery...

.pushing Honorius's paranoia
to breaking point.

A figure of the imperial court
finally convinced Honorius

that Stilicho, being half-Vandal,
was a barbarian after all,

and therefore he would have
inevitably conspired

with other barbarians to take over
the imperial throne.

Honorius reaches a fateful decision,

and orders Stilicho's arrest.

Honorius is growing up.

Stilicho's been the dominant figure
at his court for over 13 years.

It's pretty normal for
this kind of child emperor

to start kicking over the traces
as they get older.

It certainly was a decision that had
really serious consequences.

Stilicho's faced with a choice.

Some of his colleagues are
urging him to take the choice

of actually going into rebellion
against the ruling regime.

He says, "No, I'm not going
to cause mayhem

"at the heart of the Western Empire
at a moment of stress."

That's an extraordinary testament
to his loyalty

to the basic Roman system.

Stilicho has given Rome
his allegiance.

Rome has repaid him
with suspicion...

..and a death sentence.

History will judge it
a catastrophic error.

Stilicho's execution means
disaster for the Western Empire.

It is a chronically misguided,
short-sighted action.

Honorius has just removed
the one man

who could either do a deal
with the barbarians,

or defeat them in battle.

CROWS CAW

He's also unleashed dark forces
that will bring carnage to Italy...

..as violence against immigrants
erupts.

Stilicho's execution
triggers a bloodbath.

The opposition to Stilicho

flows into a major assault

on anybody of barbarian descent

or related to the barbarians
in Italy.

There's no question
that the level of severity,

the ferocity of this massacre,
going after not just the men,

but going after
their wives and children,

this went way beyond
the kind of political purge

that you would normally
expect to see

following the death of
somebody who's a major leader.

The extent to this suggests

that there was some layer
of prejudice at work here.

But if the massacre is meant
to terrify the barbarians

into submission,
it does exactly the opposite.

BIRD OF PREY CRIES

You can't appeal to the emperor.

You can't appeal
to the local population.

Who might protect you?

There is one very obvious
candidate - Alaric.

And so a lot of these soldiers
who had been loyal to Stilicho

now flood to join Alaric.

Estimates are, perhaps,
10,000 soldiers

now swell Alaric's forces.

Not only is his
greatest opponent dead

and the western military
is in chaos,

but Alaric's own following
has been greatly strengthened.

Alaric goes for the jugular.

He marches unopposed through Italy
to Rome.

His forces surround the city

and cut off the food supply.

Rome is still the single most
prestigious city in the empire.

And so Alaric is threatening
to sack that city,

as leverage for the things
he actually most wants.

So what does he demand?

Gold, silver -

both in thousands of pounds
of quantity.

He wants somewhere to settle.

And he wants an official
Roman title,

the one Stilicho held -

Commander in Chief
of the Western Army.

Our sources about the siege of Rome

are quite unanimous in its severity.

People are starving. Our sources
even talk about cannibalism.

The citizens of Rome are suffering,

but their emperor is not
suffering with them.

He has retreated to the
relative safety of Ravenna,

over 200 miles away,
on Italy's Adriatic coast.

Numerous people go up
to beg Honorius to help,

to send an army,
to make a deal with Alaric.

Our sources report
that Honorius declares

that he will never do a deal
with one of Alaric's race.

What it's suggesting is an
unwillingness on Honorius's part

to wake up and smell the coffee,
that the Goths are here

as a permanent structure
within the Western Empire,

and you have to find a way
of living with them.

You can see why
he might resist that.

Honorius has grown up in a world
of total Roman dominance.

He doesn't realise
that the world has changed.

Alaric gets tired of waiting

and he decides it's time
to just sack Rome.

The Romans stereotype Alaric
and his people

and, in a way, force him to become
the thing that they're fearful of.

Alaric's followers are
targeting the noble houses.

They're targeting everything
they can basically gather together

and carry off.

SCREAMING AND SHOUTING

Amazingly, some of Rome's treasures
from that time survive.

They offer a glimpse of the riches
the Goths discovered,

and bear witness to the violence
they unleashed.

The Projecta casket is
part of a hoard of objects,

almost all silver,
nearly 60 of them,

discovered in the ruins of
a Roman house in the city of Rome.

What's particularly interesting

is the dating of the objects

align very, very attractively

with the Sack of Rome.

It's pretty likely that this hoard
was created

precisely at the moment

when Alaric was at the gates
of the city,

and this is one family's attempt to
preserve its wealth, its heirlooms.

Why would no-one come back

for such a very expensive
luxury collection of treasures?

It's possible that some of the
family members fled the city.

It is, of course, entirely possible
that these were people

who did indeed fall victim
to the Goths.

The Goths are primarily interested

in taking every single thing
they can carry,

and bringing it out with them.

But it also, importantly,
includes people.

Human trafficking, captive-taking,

was one of the primary forms
of booty in the ancient world.

And this was a major goal
of the army when they came through.

Honorius, inexperienced, isolated,

is entirely unable to comprehend
what has happened.

Honorius was told that Rome
had just fallen,

and the reaction of the emperor was

an immediate expression of grief
and desperation.

But what he said was,

"But I had fed her with my own hands
just a few hours ago."

Because Honorius had a hen house

and one of the hens was called Rome.

Such was the idea
that Rome could not fall.

After three long days
of violence and plunder,

the Goths finally leave Rome.

As a psychological event,
the Sack of Rome sends a shock wave

across the Roman Empire.

It is one of those events where,
when you heard about it,

you remember where you were
when news reached you,

like 9/11.

Events that trigger a spark
across a consciousness.

Nobody could accept the idea

that the most powerful city
of all times

had eventually capitulated.

Alaric and the Goths have forged
a path that others will follow.

The Gothic migration,
the refugee crisis of the 370s,

effectively marks the beginning

of the so-called decline and fall
of the Roman Empire.

The Goths will eventually form their
own kingdoms on Roman territory.

It becomes the model
for other barbarian peoples.

One by one, the territories
of the former Western Roman Empire

fall away from imperial control.

Rome lost its grip on western Europe
over 1,500 years ago...

..with a weak, inexperienced leader,

blinded by paranoia.

What the Romans got wrong

was refusing to understand

the political moment,

the instability,
the fragility of the government.

No leader rising to the top

who could calm the situation
and end the stand-off.

This didn't have to happen.

It was a two-tier society
that favoured the rich...

..while failing to solve
the challenges of mass migration.

This story is a refugee crisis
gone wrong.

It is something we are now very
familiar with in our modern world.

The fall of Rome, for many people,
was a liberation

from a predatory autocracy
which over-taxed its citizens,

mistreated immigrants
and persisted through conquest.

Do not mourn the empire.

The Romans did not believe
their empire was about to collapse.

But it did.

Our world order will change.

That will always be the
great lesson of history.

Egypt, a civilisation that has
thrived for 3,000 years,

is torn apart by a toxic dynasty,

forcing the great Cleopatra
to face civil war,

famine and foreign invasion,

threatening to end
the age of the Pharaohs.