Original subtitles

The Colosseum.

A vast, awe -inspiring arena.

Built to showcase the power of Rome.

A symbol of control.

I don't think we really appreciate just how incredibly intelligent and complex a

structure it is and what it means.

To celebrate its construction, 100 days of games are staged. With thousands

of gladiators fighting for glory.

We'd get as much of the excitement pulsing through the crowds as possible.

But these games feature more than just gladiators.

The arena also hosts a different kind of warrior, beast hunters.

Dramatic, exciting encounter with exotic beasts they've never seen before.

Champions who stalk and slay ferocious animals for the crowd's amazement. The

most famous of them all,

Carpophorus. A beast fighter from North Africa whose battles with deadly

predators will capture the imagination of Rome.

The Coliseum is one of the greatest pieces of architecture in history.

It was an achievement unlike any other.

It becomes the largest amphitheater in the Roman world.

It remains that for the rest of Roman history. It's enormous.

The Colosseum is built by the Emperor Vespasian on the site of the Golden

the vast and opulent palace that belonged to his disgraced predecessor,

Nero.

Vespasian decides to take that imperial land and give back to the people, to

show that he's the anti -Nero.

And how he does it is he builds the greatest cinema, theatre and stadium all

rolled into one, the Colosseum.

Vespasian wants his new amphitheatre to be on a bigger scale than anything

that's come before.

The Colosseum is built during the 70s.

Incredibly, the Colosseum only takes eight years to build.

The Colosseum did require these amazing construction techniques.

Day and night, carts are going backwards and forwards, bringing every piece of

construction necessary.

There are probably a number of different groups involved in the building

projects in Rome.

Emperors wanting to make sure that the people of Rome have wages.

Local people, local tradesmen, local builders.

Then you would have skilled people involved in the design, architecturally.

The labour certainly came from the enslaved population.

It's huge.

I mean, it could seat at least 50 ,000 people.

It also gets up to a height that no other amphitheater gets to.

You're presented with this sort of towering edifice.

The ability not just to build it was one thing, but the ability to build it so

fast was something that would really, as an emperor, launch your career.

This is no temporary structure.

Carved from marble and stone, the Colosseum was commissioned by Emperor

Vespasian as a gift to the Roman people.

A bold statement from a new dynasty, the Flavians.

It stands as a symbol of Roman power.

You have the engineering, which is unbelievable, but you also have the

importance behind it. On one aspect, you've got the greatest political

that have ever existed.

A way for the emperor, the top of the food chain, to come in contact with the

common people.

It was a way to gain an audience. How else did you get 55 ,000 people to give

you your attention if not to build a structure like the Colosseum?

But also on the other side, it gave the people a chance to talk with the

emperor, to interact with the emperor.

You were coming into contact with the most important person in the known world

at that time.

The Colosseum was the arena where Rome's power was made manifest,

where both majesty and triumph, but also evil and

brutality were on display in equal measure.

It was politics, it was theatre, it was mythology, just rolled into one

incredible structure.

I don't think we really appreciate just how incredibly intelligent

and complex a structure it is and what it means.

The Colosseum is completed in ATCE, a triumph of engineering speed

and imperial ambition.

But Emperor Vespasian dies before it is unveiled.

It is left to his son Titus to oversee its inauguration. And as a new emperor,

he has to throw a spectacle.

that will win the hearts of the Roman people.

In order to celebrate the completion of the Colosseum, which was the grandest

amphitheater that would ever be built, the Emperor Titus threw the most

elaborate games that Rome had ever seen.

A hundred days of games.

Titus' games are unprecedented.

A hundred days of games, it's really on such a large scale.

Emperors have thrown big events before.

This to be focused in particular on one space, on the arena, that's something

that Titus really takes hold of and runs with.

It's of a completely different order than anything that's happened before.

Months of intense preparation must have unfolded before the games commence.

Countless workers and performers mobilize.

The scale and cost is immense.

Rome has never seen a stage like this.

Ten titans deliver games worthy of the greatest amphitheater ever built.

Thousands of gladiators are primed for battle.

But another spectacle.

is about to steal the show.

Part of the spectacles that Romans liked to watch, it wasn't just the gladiators

that they came to see.

They also enjoyed seeing the beast hunts and the beast fighters.

These beast fighters are known as Venatores.

It was too much of a risk to put a gladiator.

fighting against a wild beast, because of course the beast is unpredictable.

The Venatoris were a perfect example of the professional hunter, who were from

parts of the provinces, usually people who were local to where the animals were

from, who'd grown up with the animals, who knew how to approach them, but also

how to bait them, how to get them into a good fight, and how to dispatch them in

a way without making a risk to their lives.

At the building of the Colosseum, the Romans were pretty domesticated. They

really didn't come in contact with nature.

The beast hunts were a way to bring that savage nature in a

very controlled environment and show the Romans what they didn't see.

It's a little bit like television, bringing the world to you.

Would you travel three months to go to India to see a tiger in a jungle?

Probably not. But do you need to? No. You sit in the amphitheater, the

going to do it for you.

He's not going to show you just how ferocious tigers are. He's going to show

that the Roman Empire, that man can defeat the tiger. That's how powerful we

are.

It wasn't just people who would fight animals. Sometimes they would set the

animals against each other.

Again, they've probably been trained in some way how to do this.

They're probably provoked by perhaps being kept hungry.

There was always a fine line there. You couldn't starve the animal because it

might not look very good. It's got to look the part when it hit the arena.

The Venatores are specialist fighters, risking their lives against savage

beasts.

Most of them are forgotten by history.

But one man's name has stood the test of time.

Carpophorus.

Alongside the gladiators, another kind of warrior captivates the Roman crowd.

The beast hunters.

Lions, leopards, and bears are all part of the spectacle.

But who is Carpophorus, the man who faces such creatures for the amusement

Rome?

Carpophorus is probably the most famed beast hunter of all of Roman history.

He was somebody who was put into the arena to fight against the wild, savage

beasts from all parts of the empire.

You might liken it to being an animal trainer as part of a circus.

They've got to be able to bring the best out of the animal in the arena setting.

Cup Forest is one of the only ones that we have mentioned by name in the

celebratory poems, which makes him something very unusual and special.

And it says something about his talent.

In the way that he is able to deal with the animals that he fights with, the

kind of show that he puts on for the crowd, that he is someone who is

remembered.

The Romans liked to watch these sorts of things because watching a man like

Carpophorus taking down wild animals, that kind of shows the human conquering

nature.

Carpophorus may be the most famous beast hunter.

But the history of fighting animals in the arena stretches back centuries

the Colosseum ever stood.

Beast fights emerged earlier on in the Republic, in sort of the 2nd century

After a general had conquered an area, he would bring back exotic fauna, like

wild animals, different wild animals from different parts of the empire.

But it's not until the time of Augustus and then...

After into the first century CE and beyond, wild beast hunts and spectacles

become part of this regular show.

The Roman Empire in the time of the Flavians is very substantial.

By this time, the Romans have conquered essentially the Mediterranean.

In the east, they've gone as far as Judea and Syria.

And then in the west, they've gone as far as Britain.

And then south, they've also gone into North Africa.

Introducing these wild animals and exotic species into the arena at Rome

bringing the empire to the capital and signalled the huge reach of Roman power

and the wealth and resources of the emperor who could afford to bring these

animals from such a...

To supply animals for the arena, the Roman Empire

launches extensive hunting expeditions across its territories.

Exotic beasts are dragged back to the Colosseum for slaughter and spectacle.

The North African province of Numidia is an especially abundant region.

In the Roman imagination, Numidia was a land rich with resources, full of

biodiversity.

It's these big cats that are the real kind of high point that the Romans

love to see.

The kind of animal that you get in North Africa and not in mainland Europe.

They're the most terrifying, ferocious, exciting animals to watch in the

amphitheatre.

Getting the beef to roam is a massive operation.

The more foreign these animals are, The better the spectacle is going to be for

the crowd, the more you can ask for the animals.

It was so important for the emperors to be able to source animals for their

hunts in the capital city that they used the army to carry this out.

And it's a difficult, dangerous job.

And they would use traps and baits and anything they could to try and lure the

animals in and then capture them and ship them over to Rome.

You would have different groups of hunters, some who would be looking to

cubs from leopards, for example.

There they would distract the mother, try and grab the cubs and then ride off,

and they even describe how if you were being pursued by the mother, you would

throw one cub back to distract the mother again, then you could escape with

the other cubs that you'd stolen.

Rome discovers that often the most effective way to capture wild beasts is

enlist local hunters, men like Copophorus.

Numidians were renowned for their courage and martial excellence.

They were obviously a skilled knowledge base among the local indigenous people,

aware of the landscape, aware of where these beasts were.

The locals would have known how to catch them and how to deal with them.

in such a way that they didn't actually damage them.

Because if you want to have them preserved alive for the arena, they've

be in good shape.

And then they would transport them from North Africa back to take part in these

games.

Carpophorus is enslaved by Rome.

Likely held captive alongside the animals, he endures a brutal sea journey

north. Aboard the ship, he is forced to work, cleaning pans, feeding predators

with the carcasses of the dead. His life now belongs to the Empire.

The types of these games are unprecedented.

100 days of games in which we're told 9 ,000 animals

appear and 10 ,000 gladiators.

It was a hot ticket, 50 ,000 feet for a population of one million.

And so demand must have been enormous.

We don't hear of ticket sales.

And tickets are kind of handed down through patronage on the basis of the

emperor's favor.

And this was another way that the emperor could exert control over the

of Rome.

Behind the scenes, countless workers keep the games running, an operation as

massive and demanding as the games themselves.

The Coliseum really was a city within a city, and it depended on a whole

community of workers in order to make it function.

The number of enslaved individuals working to make one of these days happen

would have numbered in the hundreds.

You'd have the whole one -stop shop.

You've got to provide the gladiators and the beast hunters with their glamorous

costumes, with their carefully wrought armor.

You need people to hand out the food.

If it's a nice day, they would use sails as awnings to keep people in the shade.

And they had a special sort of marine unit who were used to hauling up sails

ships to operate the awnings at the top of the Colosseum.

There are people to clean up the sand between fight, clean up the spilled

to take away the bodies, to introduce other animals.

Enslavement and animal exploitation were the engines of Roman Empire.

The Romans brought people and other beings to Rome for their own uses, for

exploitation.

These enslavers always had a keen eye out for who was most suited

for what task.

When it came to individuals who were strong, who were charismatic, that those

folks... might especially be marked out for service.

These very skills are embodied by Carpophorus as he is forced into his new

no longer a hunter, but something more ferocious.

Once he's captured and taken to Rome, Carpophorus would have been a stage name

given to him by his handler.

He becomes Carpophorus the beast hunter.

The man who will delight and entertain, being spectators.

In Rome, beast hunters like Carpophorus are sent to a ludus bestiarium, a

specialized school where fighters are trained to battle wild animals, not men.

This would have been where Carpophorus would have trained.

Beast hunters were even lower on the social scale than gladiators were.

Their conditions were even more unpleasant.

Carpathrus was not living in comfort.

There obviously was a high degree of training and a real premium on having

highly skilled fighters.

They need to be nimble.

They need to be skilled in firing arrows.

They need to be very skilled in using a spear.

both to kill and to fend off an attacking animal.

These games at an amphitheatre were not just physical exertions, they were also

performances put on in this show to entertain the masses.

And so Carpal Fritz's training would likely have involved understanding these

beasts, how best to get them to react in certain ways.

So that when the day came, it would not end so quickly.

Because that would have left a very unsatisfied audience paying for more,

entertainment and more spectacle.

Soon, Karpofros' training will come to an end.

The sands of the Colosseum await.

When he's in the arena, staring down predators like the ones he hunted in

Africa, the choice is simple. Win or die.

So it's finally the day of the games.

The crowds flood in, and the Colosseum stands ready, built for a magnificent

spectacle just like this.

One of the contributions of the Colosseum in general is various zones.

The innermost zone, of course, is the playing area, in this case, the sand.

And then there is the seats themselves, the second zone.

A third zone are the whole elaborate circulation system that led people into

their seats.

There are cells. There are storerooms.

There are storerooms for the various animals. There are cells for the

gladiators. There are cells for the people being condemned to die in the

One thing that really did help is a system of numbering of the arches. You

still see it to this day.

Each with their number at the top of the arch.

and a ticketing system in which each individual, once they entered that zone,

knew precisely where they were supposed to go and where they were supposed to

sit.

A central part of the new building is the imperial box.

This is where the emperor and his entourage are going to sit, and they are

just there to see, they're there to be seen.

They are part of the spectacle.

And for the crowd, you know, one of the big buzzes they get is that there they

are sharing this hugely expensive entertainment with the emperor himself.

Location was everything in the Roman amphitheater.

Clearly, also, anyone who was in the box, or the closer you were to the

emperor's presence, the higher your own status was.

But also there's a whole vertical aspect as well. The topmost tiers of Roman

society had the closest view, whereas slaves and women were put on top.

The day begins with the savage thrill of the hunts.

But even before the first spear is thrown, danger is already in motion.

For dragging wild beasts into the arena is a deadly task in itself, chaotic.

and often fatal.

Dealing with animals was always tricky and it didn't always go as it was

to.

There was no sort of concern with safety.

Certainly not for the people who were participating.

There was some concern about animals getting up into the crowd.

And they did actually use rollers that meant that the animals would not be able

to climb up into the crowd and cause mayhem.

You can imagine what a huge logistical effort it was to get all of these

in the right place without fighting each other, without killing each other.

They would have probably been collected at one of the gates of Rome and then

transported from there to the Colosseum, most likely only a few hours before

their appearance.

We believe that the animals were taken into the arena in cages and released

through trapdoors.

And it must have been a... horrifying, smelly, noisy, terrifying job to be one

of the enslaved persons managing those winches.

Just the sensory overload that you would have had.

There would have been animals crying, all kind of animal muck everywhere. The

stench would have been overwhelming.

It must have just been terrifying.

With the beasts finally in position.

The audience are ready for Carpophorus to make his debut in the Colosseum.

The crowd have been waiting for this moment for a long time.

They are in their seats and they're cheering. They're just waiting for the

procession to enter the Colosseum.

And their eyes are laser -focused on looking for Carpophorus.

You can imagine what it would be like, sort of waiting in darkness.

Hear all the noise and the shouts of the crowd, and then to appear in front of

50 ,000 screaming Romans.

They've been advertised everywhere, and they've come from far, just to see their

favourite Venator.

Hippoporus is fetish on his adversary. He's riding in on a raging bull.

And then he leaps off of the animal.

And then he has to face it down and bite it.

That skill set of the person who has to bring those beasts together to produce

that spectacle is able to whip that animal up into a kind of frenzy.

Now, this is the sort of thing that would be horrifying, I think, from a

perspective to observe.

But it would require a really specific set of skills.

Part of Carpool Hood's training would have likely been an attempt to try and

extend the event as much as possible, to try and really get as much of the

excitement pulsing through the crowd as possible.

Somebody in this beastie area...

is going to be predicated on your capacity to move quickly and to get out

danger fast and have a whole bunch of strategies to come and deal with animals

that are feisty and wild and ready to bite.

With skill, Carpophorus slays the beasts he's pitted against, a spectacle that

sends the crowds into a frenzy.

Yet the 100 days of games are far from over, and there is much more brutality

ahead.

Tidus' games are unprecedented in both scope and scale.

Alongside the beast hunters, the arena offers a host of spectacles and

novelties.

including a gladiator duel that will echo through history as one of the most

legendary ever fought.

So the highlight of Titus's first day is this big fight between Priscus and

Verus.

Priscus means something like the sort of primeval one, Verus means the truth.

These were stage names, and they were both well -known gladiators.

And they fight, and they fight, and they fight, and it goes on and on.

So much so that they have to have rest breaks, and they're even given

refreshments because they're so tired.

But in the end, neither of them is able to win.

And they both simultaneously

raise their finger and ask for mercy.

It's never been seen before, and the crowd go mad, and of course Titus plays

for this by freeing both of them.

And this is a sign of, you know, what a good, generous emperor he's going to be.

One of the main themes in the development of gladiatorial combat in

perennial search for novelty.

One of the ways to introduce novelty was to have women fight.

It's very clear that women developed into skilled fighters in their own

As such, they were included in the displays at the inauguration of the

Colosseum.

It's possible that, like other female fighters, they were dressed as mythical

figures, as gods or heroes, as a way to increase the excitement of the crowd.

But they fought, and they often fought each other, or acted as beast hunters.

We do know of one pair of named female gladiators.

We have a stone from southwest Turkey which shows two females

in combat stance facing each other.

And their names are Amazon and Achillea.

So there we have the symbol of strength, the symbol of youth and courage.

And this would have caused all sorts of reactions in the crowd. They might have

expected to see a woman. And it also might have caused real admiration from

male and female fans.

Gladiators, female fighters, and the legendary Carpophorus.

Day after day, the Colosseum delivers shock and awe.

The Empire's greatest arena.

hosts the wildest battles ever played.

All of it enforcing the power and majesty of the man in charge of the

By this point, it is now a demonstration of the emperor's power.

When Hytus puts on these games, when he puts these animals, these beasts, into

the clothing,

This is the demonstration of his power, his reach. It's the reach

of the empire.

To put your name out there. I'm the person who put on these games.

I've treated you.

I've given you entertainment.

This was a key political strategy in climbing up the Roman political system.

After 100 days of intense combat, the spectacle finally comes to an end. A

dazzling display of imperial majesty, these games will be remembered as

the greatest in Rome's history.

Yet Titus' glory is short -lived.

Within the year, he is dead, and his brother Domitian sits upon the throne.

81 CE.

A new emperor ascends to the throne.

Domitian. A man determined to reshape the games in his own image.

The emperor Domitian was the third in the line of the Flavian dynasty.

He was the son of Vespasian, the emperor who built the Colosseum.

and the brother of Titus, who had succeeded Vespasian.

He is not as successful as Titus as emperor.

We hear all sorts of interesting stories about Domitian and his personality

type.

Constantly worried about conspiracies against his life.

He was said to have lined the walls of his palace with reflective stones.

Stone that would shine to such an extent that he'd be able to see who was behind

him at any point.

We hear of him spending his time pulling the wings off of flies for

entertainment.

He is accused of having a hand in the death of his elder brother, Titus.

He pushes the boundaries of power, which are constantly being pushed by

emperors, but... one step further.

All emperors want to outdo the emperor before them.

Especially more so if the emperor previously was your older brother and

the youngest of the family.

Every emperor tried their best to make their games the ones that were

unforgettable.

And these are standards that have been set previously by Julius Caesar, by

Augustus.

In the case of Domitian, he's in a period where now the stage is set bigger

it's ever been before because now he has the coliseum.

He tries his utmost to be the emperor that's most remembered.

Anything that he thinks is going to gain attention, that's going to make the

game slightly different, he's willing to use.

The more novel you can be with your entertainment, the more you would

the attention and the popularity of the common people.

Domitian was interested in the theatrical, and that's reflected in his

transformation of the games into even more lavish spectacle than his

predecessors, in terms of setting them at night, in terms of increasing the

types of competitors.

Domitian also expanded the Colosseum, constructing a vast labyrinth called a

hypogeum beneath the arena floor.

Hidden from the crowd above, this underground world housed gladiators,

animals and elaborate props, bringing new levels of drama and danger to the

games.

Once the basement was installed, we believe that the animals were taken down

into the basement and then winched up into the arena in cages and released

through trap doors.

All about competing for status, outdoing your rivals.

These new additions all fed into the emperor's personal passion for the

Like many emperors, Domitian did not make a secret of his preferences when it

came to sports. And he was a strong proponent of the type of fighter known

Murmillo.

So fierce.

was Domitian's obsession that a brutal reprisal was in store for a man who

voiced his love for another fighting style.

This enraged Domitian to such an extent that he had the perpetrator ripped to

shreds by dogs with a plaque around his neck advertising that he was a fan of

the Thracian style of fighting.

And this really shows...

Domitian's vindictive and perverse nature pretty clearly to us.

Determined to build his own legacy, Domitian drives the games to new

Carpophorus is called to return to the Colosseum.

Beasts from the farthest reaches of the Empire await.

Victory is not assured, nor is survival.

It's 83 CE.

Carpoporus's finest moment.

This is when he will fight 20 animals in the arena.

The crowd have been waiting forever and he is full of anticipation.

Carpoporus enters the arena.

He looks spectacular.

The crowd roars.

He waits in anticipation.

for his first opponent.

On the other side of the arena emerges a wild boar.

The boar let out a terrifying grunt, looked at Carpophorus

and charged.

Many combatants followed.

Panther, Leopard and innumerable other apex predators.

But it was the final fight that mattered.

A great lion of untold size.

This is the himalaya peak of his career.

It's dramatic.

It's exciting.

It's thrilling.

And it's all done in the name of Rome's imperial majesty.

With a final fatal strike, Carpufros brings down the raging lion.

In that moment, he cements his legacy.

He will forever be known as Rome's most famous beast slayer.

Carpophorus is described as surpassing the labors of Hercules.

Hercules, a demigod who killed a Nemean lion with his own hand.

This was a human who had become divine because his actions were so great.

Here is Carpophorus who is going even beyond that.

Carpophorus may have won eternal fame in the arena, but what became of him after

is lost to time.

We can only speculate about Carpophorus' subsequent life.

He likely was never involved in anything quite as spectacular again.

He was probably, by this time or through this event, freed and gained a great

amount of wealth for his victories.

Yet the price of Carpophorus' glory was steep, paid in blood, and the

destruction of a natural world, torn apart by Rome's hunger for spectacle.

The continual thirst for exotic animals by the Roman beast trade resulted in the

extermination and the extinction of animals in whole swaths of parts of the

Roman Empire.

Many of the animals that were killed were apex predators, and when you remove

apex predator from an ecosystem, you cause what are called cascade effects,

which means that the populations of lower predators change and grow, and

the whole ecosystem is disrupted.

This would have caused all sorts of extinction events throughout the Roman

Empire.

The selection of predators for the stage had impact outside of Rome and Italy

itself.

Rome has no concept of the environmental damage that they're doing.

If they did, it doesn't seem like they cared.

They were happy to go into places and strip them bare of whatever made them

wealthy in order to increase their own wealth.

That is the nature of the Roman Empire.

And we should not forget it because they are not to be lauded.

At the heart of all this bloodshed stood a single structure built to project the

power and dominance of Rome.

The Colosseum is still in many ways the key building of the Roman Empire.

The beauty of it, the sheer scale of it, the way that it sits within the

landscape.

It stands for its great achievements, its great conquests, its

incredible martial spirit.

But of course it also symbolizes the people who were at the receiving end of

that.

The many hundreds of thousands who were killed, the millions who were enslaved.

As you go further into Rome's history, we certainly see the spectacles, whether

they be gladiator displays or beast hunts or beast fights, become a lot

bloodier.

And the scale does increase.

It probably is one of the places that we can point to in the world and say there

was a huge amount of bloodshed in this particular location.

And it went on for hundreds of years.

is one of the most iconic buildings of the Roman Empire.

Built for spectacle, it drove a relentless demand for animals and men,

to die for public entertainment.

Most of the names will never be known, but some became legends.

Carpophorus was one of them, the famed beast hunter of ancient Rome.

Repair and Synchronization by Easy Subtitles Synchronizer 1.0.0.0