All language subtitles for Sicily The Wonder of the Mediterranean Series 1 1of2 720p HDTV

She's been fought over and occupied

by all the great powers of
the Mediterranean.

Ravaged by many, lovingly embraced
by just a few,

still haunted by her own demons.

'I'm Michael Scott.
As an ancient historian,

'I'm on a journey to discover an
island on the border of two worlds.'

HE SHOUTS

'As much North African as
it is European.'

Sicily.

I want to know how Sicily's
extraordinary history

has shaped the island we see today.

Is it too late to run away?

'How Sicilians, so rarely in
control of their own destiny,

'have forged an identity and
culture that is, well, so Sicilian.'

We live on a volcano,

but it's normal, yes!

'How they learnt to survive invaders
and live with each other,

'to look forward to the future
from a turbulent past.'

What calls the tourists here
is The Godfather,

but what makes them stay is the sun,
is the limoncello, is the granita,

is the coffee.

'I want to find out what Sicily's
history and people can tell us

'about how to survive in
an unstable world.'

We are giving an example to
the rest of Europe -

welcome is the best
guarantee for safety.

Head down, head down, head down.

Well, that seems to be the modern
version of ancient sea defences,

just have some very low bridges
trying to get into the town.

I'm arriving at the largest island
in the Mediterranean, Sicily,

where for centuries people have come
here using it as a stepping stone

between Europe and Africa,

and as a gateway between the east
and west Mediterranean Sea.

Not all have come in peace, and
yet Sicily's culture, identity,

its history is the result of that
continual tidal wave of people

coming and going.

I want to find out what it
means to be a Sicilian.

I'm in Syracuse on
Sicily's east coast,

founded by the Greeks
27 centuries ago.

In the city's ancient heart is the
Duomo, the Cathedral of Syracuse.

Today, this is a Christian church,

but to walk through its doors
is to take a trip back in time

to 500 years
before Christ was even born.

The Duomo began life in 480 BC

as the building project
of a Greek tyrant,

who having beaten the
Carthaginians in battle,

used the loot to build this.

And these are the columns from that
temple, soaring up into the sky.

It was topped by a statue
of Athena with a golden shield

that could be
seen for miles around.

This building was a marvel for the
Mediterranean before a single block

of the Parthenon had ever been laid.

The Romans, too, in their time

came here to admire and loot for
themselves its artistic treasures.

And then this building saw
the invasion of barbarian tribes.

But that was just the beginning
of this building's story,

because then the Byzantines came,

broke through the inner walls of the
old Greek temple and filled in the

outer colonnade to
create a Christian church.

But then in the 9th century,
the Arabs invaded Sicily.

The citizens of Syracuse took refuge
here and were massacred before the

Arab conquerors turned this
church into a mosque.

But this story does
not stop there either,

because then the Normans
came to Sicily, took it back,

turned this mosque back
into a church,

raised the roof high and
in every generation since then,

every newcomer to Sicily has added
their flavour to this wonderful

building. So when you stand here,

you stand in the midst
of 2,500 years

of Sicily's kaleidoscopic
heritage and history.

What made Sicily so irresistible
was its geography.

Poised on the toe of Italy,

just 3km from the European mainland,

in parts further south than
the African coast.

Directing the sea lanes
to flow around it,

to control Sicily was to control
the movement of trade and people

in the western and
central Mediterranean.

Sicily was occupied from
early prehistory

by three different tribes.

The Elymians,
the Sicans and the Sicels,

who buried their dead
in rock-cut tombs

and probably gave Sicily its name.

But for me, the island's
character was born in Greek myth -

a mysterious, dangerous land

in the shadow of Europe's
largest active volcano.

I am here absolutely in the jaws
of the beast that is Mount Etna,

this one-eyed Cyclops of a volcano.

This is a lava flow all around me

from the 1981 eruption that
came crashing down here,

destroying everything in its path.

It's now 20 feet or
so above my head.

It's no wonder that the ancient
Greeks saw this place as the home of

the monster Typhon
that had 100 snakeheads

and who did battle with Zeus

to be champion of the cosmos.

And when Zeus finally won,

he supposedly imprisoned him here,
underneath Mount Etna,

and then threw the mountain
on top of him to keep him there.

Just like today,

Mount Etna is probably one of the
most well-known things about Sicily,

so you can be absolutely
sure that the ancient Greeks,

every single one of them,

knew that this was a place
where you had to be careful.

'Just as today, Sicily's
ancient migrants risked danger

'and uncertainty on their
journey to a new life.'

Ciao! Grazie!

The Greeks first arrived in
Sicily here, in Naxos, in 735 BC.

They didn't need a harbour,

they had this wonderfully naturally
protected beach to land on,

and their arrival here was part of

a much wider spreading out of the
Greeks

around the Mediterranean world,

creating Magna Graecia -
Greater Greece.

Sicily was never going to
be the same again.

The Greeks arriving here,
they were putting down roots.

And in the years to follow,
many more Greeks did the same.

The result was a higgledy-piggledy
spread of Greek cities around the

eastern and the
southern coasts of Sicily.

We shouldn't think about it as a
kind of organised colonisation or

imperial arrival, it was much more.

Different, individual groups,

doing things in their own way,

and all jostling with
one another to thrive.

What all Greeks would do, however,
soon after their arrival,

would be to build an
altar to the gods,

to thank them for
their safe delivery,

and for the foundation
of their new home.

It would often be placed just on the
beach here where they'd arrived.

Here in Naxos
there was a very famous altar,

the altar of Apollo Archegetes -

Apollo, the founder of
settlements and cities.

It was worshipped at, not just by
the people of Naxos, but over time,

by all Sicilian Greeks
across the island.

It was, if you like,
a rallying call,

a point at which they could all
believe that they were part

of something greater.

Like the Arab world today,

being Greek was a concept
rather than a nationality.

Linked together by religion and
language, if you spoke Greek,

you were Greek. Everyone
else was a barbarian.

The word itself coming from the
sounds that, to Greek ears,

non-Greeks made.

According to the
Greek historian Thucydides,

the peoples of the Mediterranean
began to emerge from barbarism

when they learnt to cultivate
the olive and the vine.

Sicily's wine industry today owes
its origins to the vines planted by

those first Greek settlers.

It's far too early in
the day for a tipple,

the sun's just come over
the yard arm,

so instead I've come in search of
an ancient Greek wine press.

This is a palmento,
a gravity-driven wine press.

I'm hoping that the director
of excavations here at Agrigento

is going to give me a helping hand

to see this thing,
once again, in action.

'Director Giuseppe Parello tells
me he has his own vineyard,

'so he's the expert.

'We have 150 kilos of grapes.

'In theory, that's enough to
produce 100 litres of wine.

'But before they go in,

'the ancient palmento's surface
needs to be protected.'

The director's going to call the
shots here on how we're making our

wine in our palmento-cum-swimming
pool here today.

The first thing he's told me I've
got to do is take off my shoes.

I guess the director is going to
take the role of boss today,

he knows how to do this.

'Ancient Greek wine making meant
treading the grapes by foot

'on a sloped floor, the juice
running off into a collection basin,

'a method that continued in Sicily
all the way up until the 1990s,

'when it was banned by the
European Union on health grounds.'

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

The director's being
very kind to me,

saying with the plastic
making it so slippy,

he'll accept my slow progress,
but if this was for real,

I would have been fired already.

I'm far too slow here
in the process.

The other thing he's saying, which
struck me as quite surprising,

is that if they were doing this for
real, this would be a rhythm,

a process, people
bringing grapes in,

crushing them and moving through.

No-one would want to interrupt that
process with the natural need,

for example, to go to the loo, so
you would just pee in here as well,

because, as he put it,

it's all fermented alcohol at
the end of the day. I hope,

in fact I'm quite glad I think that
the European Union outlawed this

process fairly recently!

THEY LAUGH

'Exports of wine and olive
oil helped transform Sicily,

'generating wealth to build
great cities and temples.'

Grazie.

So, the director's given me
my next instruction,

which is, "Get out all the stalks."

Now, I sort of had this fanciful
idea in my head that it was all

prancing around, dancing around in
a wine vat pressing grapes,

and, actually, it's
incredibly hard work.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

THEY LAUGH

So, I finally got it, this is the
speed he wants me to work at.

Blimey, slave driver or what?!

Got to produce, I've got to get on,

I've got to stop moaning
and get on with it.

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

No? No, no, no.

No break, no nothing,
that's it, I quit.

That's it, I'm done.

Io vado via.

Mi dispiace.

THEY LAUGH

'The treading of grapes
may have been outlawed,

'but one modern vineyard has revived
an ancient Greek tradition.

'Before Tito, one of the vineyard
owners, could explain,

'we had to crush the
grapes the modern way.'

So this machine...

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

..it not only crushes the grapes...

..it amazingly separates them
from their stalks,

and then sends the liquid
all the way in there,

to where it's going to be
stored and fermented.

'Nowadays, wine is usually
fermented in wooden barrels

'or steel containers,

'but here it's pumped into
Greek style clay amphorae,

'buried deep in the ground.'

So when you feel it coming through,

the pressure is suddenly very
intense, sort of bursts of

grapes and the grape juice coming
through, filling up this amphora,

which is going to be used as the
place to ferment the wine.

IN ITALIAN:

Tito is going to say when to stop
for the fermentation to happen...

Stop! That's stop.

Like in the time of the Greeks, huh?

'For the next seven months,

'the grapes are left to
ferment in the amphorae.

'But, as Tito explained,

'producing wine the Greek way
wasn't without difficulty.'

IN ITALIAN:

'Too much oxygen had entered the
wine, allowing bacteria to grow.'

'The answer was to ignore the
rules of modern winemaking,

'and leave the grape
skins in the wine.

'The skins soaked up the excess
oxygen, halting bacterial growth,

'allowing the wine to develop
a unique character.'

IN ITALIAN:

'Tito has grown his business on
the lessons of the past,

'so what does Sicily's
history mean to him?'

IN ITALIAN:

'Sicily's history
has rarely been settled.

'Even as the Greeks were planting
their vines of the east coast,

'a rival group of migrants
were arriving on the west.

'The island of Motya is just a short
boat journey from the mainland.

'In the 8th century BC,

'Phoenician settlers from
modern-day Syria and Lebanon

'set up a trading
base on the island.'

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

'Archaeologist Lorenzo Nigro
pieces together their story

'from the remains of
the city they left behind.'

So, Lorenzo, where are we
digging right now?

We are digging in a deposit

which is just at the side of
the Temple of Astarte -

the major goddess of
the Phoenicians.

As you see here in this ring, this
goddess was the goddess of love,

of fertility. And this is Astarte?

This is Astarte.

And you found this right here?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So, from the 8th century,

the Phoenicians are
here, trading, living.

Do they do like the Greeks, who
also arrive in the 8th century,

are they expanding their territory?

In Motya, they were so able to be
in touch with the Greeks

and to be integrated with them.

Motya has to survive in Sicily,

so they used to have
trade with the Greeks

and they absorbed Greek culture.

So what do you think motivated the
Phoenicians to leave the East

and to head to a place
like Motya in Sicily?

One of the major reasons was the
situation in the Near East,

which was like nowadays,
there were big wars,

there were big powers
which was pushing,

and there were states which were
very strong, so there were taxes...

It was a very...

bad economic situation.

There were also people travelling
for religious reasons.

They wanted to build up a free
place, free from taxes,

with a different approach to life,
and they travelled with everything

but the wives.

The wives they needed to take from
the local population, and this,

of course, helped
them to be an integrating culture,

because they needed to be

in good relationships
with local populations.

They weren't afraid to engage with
and mix with other cultures?

Their religion was
not only rules saying no,

it was just open to life.

And this is what we can say
from these broken stones.

It's an inspiring
vision of the past.

Yes, give us hope, for the future.

Perfect.

Lorenzo, buona fortuna. Grazie.

'But Motyan independence
was short-lived.

'In the 6th century BC, the rival
Phoenician city of Carthage,

'just a day's sailing away in
modern-day Tunisia, seized Motya.'

On the other side of the island
is this - another crucial,

sacred religious area
for the Phoenicians.

This is the tophet.

And here, the sacred well,

dating back to the earliest phases
of the Phoenician settlement here,

typically round.

But just alongside it

is another good symbol of the
Carthaginian take-over of this place

in the 6th century,

because the Carthaginians built
their wells square.

They weren't going to use the
Phoenician round well,

they wanted their own.

You can even see the hand and
foot holds they've created,

so that people could get down to
bring up that sacred water

for the rituals practised here.

But this tophet,

while it was obviously
used for sacred ritual

and for dedicating objects to the
gods, also has a darker side,

an aspect of Phoenician-Carthaginian
culture that really sticks in the

throat, and it's right over here.

This is an area full
of small stelae,

but also these urns
that you can see,

dating to both the Phoenician and
Carthaginian eras of this site.

And every single one of these urns

was filled with the
cremated remains of children,

who many argue were intentionally
slaughtered to honour the gods.

In effect, these people,
this civilisation

practised human sacrifice.

Greek, and later Roman, writers

told how parents slaughtered
their own children.

Some have argued that this
was just propaganda,

put about by the enemies of the
Carthaginians, but on Motya,

the evidence for
sacrifice is growing.

Come va? Grazie!
OK, this is for you.

Thank you. So, this was found when?

In 1993.

OK. And we're excavating the
contents today...for the first time?

Yeah, now we try for the first time.

So we take this

with your gloves. Absolutely.

And then we start.

But these pots,

they look to me like a cooking pot.

It is, maybe this one was not used,
but it's a cooking pot.

It's exactly the same.

So what have we got here, Sharon?

We put this,

it's very little, but...

It's a little fragment of bone.

Yeah. So, we take a little bag and

put inside.

OK. I'll leave that
there for the moment.

We could be working on
this for some time,

but you've also brought one here
from the same year that was found.

Exactly. 1993. That has already
been excavated, is that right?

Yes. And can we...?

Yeah, we can open it.

So what we're looking at here,
the burnt ashes and...

Yes, bits of bones
and the ashes...

Bones and the ashes of the baby.

What would the process have been?

The child, they would
have been burnt?

Yes. On an altar, perhaps?

Yeah... Or somewhere?

Somewhere that we don't know, yet.

OK. And then their
ashes gathered together,

placed in here and then
this placed into the ground.

Before they cover, they closed.

They would have covered it with
a...? A dish or a bowl.

A dish or a bowl, wow, OK.

And then placed into the ground?

Yes. In the tophet. Yes.

The question is, were the children
whose ashes we see here,

were they sacrificed or had they
died from any number of causes that

contributed to the very high infant
mortality rates in antiquity?

Traditionally, this idea of child
sacrifice has been used to separate

out the Carthaginian-Phoenician
culture from that of the Greeks.

The Greeks wouldn't do that kind
of thing, whereas they did.

Yet I don't think we can
really see it like that.

Sharon, what do you think? Do you
think this was a case of child

sacrifice? Or infant mortality?

Yes. You think child sacrifice?
I think child sacrifice.

We're both in agreement.

We think it could well have been
child sacrifice,

but the Greeks and Romans didn't
necessarily see that as

something horrible or abhorrent,

they just saw it as a
different way of doing things.

Your culture does things one way,
mine does it another way.

How we doing, Sharon, have
we found anything yet?

Only little, little pieces.

Small fragments of bone.

Fantastic. But we're getting there,
right, we're getting there.

Slowly but surely. Slowly, slowly.

Slowly, slowly!

Child sacrifice was deeply
embedded in Carthaginian culture,

but other ideas
they borrowed from the Greeks.

The ultimate example of that
cultural blurring between the Greeks

and the Carthaginians here at Motya
is this guy, the Motya Charioteer.

Now, we know he was sculpted
in the early 5th century

and he's definitely sculpted by
a Greek craftsman, but after that,

he leaves us with a real problem,

because this guy's
definitely a charioteer.

The long robe, the high, tight belt
and here the fixings,

where a safety harness
would have been put,

so if he dropped the reins,

he didn't lose them completely.

But a Greek would never think
of a charioteer like this.

A charioteer was not a hero.

A charioteer was a lackey, but this
guy, look at the musculature,

the pecs, the abdominals, the
six-pack, the honed thigh, the,

quite frankly, impressive lunchbox.

And when you come round the back,
it's exactly the same, the buttocks,

the backs of the legs, everything
is tuned to the ultimate perfection,

uber perfection, one could say.

How do we explain this?

There's no good,
satisfactory answer,

but one I quite like is this -

that the ruler here in Motya wanted
to create a sculpture of a

Carthaginian deity,
or perhaps a Carthaginian deity

that had become kind of
mixed with a Greek deity,

but to do so, by the
early 5th century,

the only sculptural language that
could really command attention

across Sicily was
that of the Greeks.

And as a result of that complex,
cultural interaction,

diffusion and desire also
to speak to the wider world,

you get this - a complete
and utter one-off.

On the coast across from Motya,

Phoenicians harvested
salt from shallow lagoons -

a legacy kept alive by
modern Sicilians.

The warm African winds,
the long summer days

and the shallow coastal waters in
this part of Sicily

make this area fantastic
for salt production.

It was a fact not lost on the
Phoenician settlers

who came here some 2,700-plus years
ago, and it's a fact still not lost

on the people who live
and work here today.

However, most salt production
today is done by machines,

however, I'm off to meet one family

who still do the majority
of it by hand.

So, I feel like I've been given the
trainee apprenticeship badge today,

with my yellow boots.

What we're doing is
breaking up the salt.

So, originally, they'd let the
seawater into one of the salt pits

out there. The warm winds, the warm
weather would slowly dry it,

the water would get heavier and
heavier in its salt concentration,

and then they let it
into these fields,

where it starts to dry even more,

until this thick crust of
salt forms under the water.

What we're doing today
is breaking up that crust,

and then they're going to let the
last layer of water dry off,

and then they start to harvest it.

Sale del mare. Del mare.

'Work breaking up the salt
began in the early hours,

'but the day quickly heats up.'

I want to find out

why they think, when there is a
machine that could do this,

why they still want to
do it by hand.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

The guys are saying that this is the
natural way to do it,

this is the way
their ancestors have done,

this is the way it's
been done for centuries.

It makes a proper
artigianale product,

and they much prefer it that way.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

THEY LAUGH

So we've started in on
the Sicilian jokes,

and obviously the police,

the poor old police,
are the butt of them all.

IN ITALIAN:

2,500 years ago, a battle was
fought to decide Sicily's future.

A conflict that began between Greek
city states and escalated into

all-out war between Carthage
and the Greeks of Syracuse.

In 480 BC, the Carthaginian army

advanced on the Greek
city of Himera.

The forces of Syracuse were waiting.

'The future of Sicily
hung in the balance.'

All battles are,
of course, horrific,

but there's something about being
faced with the material and human

remains of a battle that makes that
horror strike ten times deeper.

Here we have, these are shin guards
and from its style

we know it's Iberian, Spanish.

So the likelihood is that this
has been ripped off the body of

a Spanish mercenary fighting
for the Carthaginians.

On the other hand,

this...

..is somebody's vertebrae,
somebody's spine.

Most probably a Greek,

and what you can see still lodged
in-between two vertebrae here

is the point of a bronze arrowhead.

This guy was shot in the back,

buried here in one of the
mass graves of the Greeks.

On the other hand, over here
we have perhaps even a sadder story.

We're looking at two feet and the
bone analysis tells us

that they were in
their 60s or 70s.

This wasn't a warrior,
this was an old man or woman,

a local. And they, too,

you can see still
embedded in their foot,

have a bronze arrowhead.

These objects speak to
the traumas of war,

but they also speak to
a moment in history when

rivers diverted, when Sicily's
history changed dramatically.

It was confirmed as an island of the
Greeks and not the Carthaginians.

The Greek victory was marked with a
temple at Himera and at other sites

around the island
and back in Syracuse,

with the Temple of Athena that would
one day become the city's cathedral.

'Temples were statements of power
as much as religious centres

'and with war booty filling
their coffers,

'those that had sided with Syracuse
could afford to build big.'

There's absolutely no way you could
have missed this temple

when you were approaching
this part of Sicily by sea,

as it sits here bestriding
this ridge of landscape,

or indeed the other six temples
that also occupied this ridge.

This was the Greek city of Akragas,

or the Roman city of Agrigento as
they called it, saying to the world,

"We're here and we're a match for
anyone who wants to take us on."

As the dark, thunderous
clouds gather over there,

it's about time we pay homage to
the king of the Olympian gods,

to Zeus the thunderbolt thrower,

and this is the top of one of the
columns that once adorned

the building on all four sides.

This is a building built possibly
by the people of Akragas, Agrigento,

to celebrate the Greek victory
over the Carthaginians at Himera.

But it may also have been just
simply because they were playing,

"Ya, shucks, boo, my
temple's bigger than yours"

with the nearby Greek
city of Salinas.

'But you didn't have to be
Greek to build a temple.

'The city of Segesta
belonged to the Elymians -

'one of Sicily's
indigenous peoples -

'and they desperately needed to
convince a powerful ally

'that Segesta was an important city
worthy of military support.'

If you wanted a picture postcard
perfect Greek temple,

this could well be it.
The irony being, of course,

we're not in Greece and this town
is not actually Greek.

But it was built when this town
wanted to be on good relations with

the Greeks, particularly with the
city of Athens in the second half of

the 5th century BC, so that they
could have a treaty with Athens,

so that they could get Athens' help
in their own war against other

Sicilian cities. But the double
irony about this temple

is that it's not finished.

How do we know that?
First off, the columns,

they never had
their fluting applied.

No roof has ever been put on,
and these,

these things I almost keep tripping
over, these are the lifting bosses.

They would've been used to wrap
ropes around so you can lift this

entire block into place and if the
temple had been finished,

well, they would've been
shaved off and smoothed over.

But here they are, running along
all three lines of the building.

So why was this temple,
such an expensive operation,

never completed?

Well, it may have been that
Segesta had decided that

once it got its treaty with the city
of Athens that it was aiming for,

it didn't need to
impress Athens any more,

so why bother finishing
their Greek temple?

What a waste.

'Unfortunately for Segesta,

'the treaty with Athens proved
as empty as their temple.

'Instead of supporting Segesta,
Athens decided to attack Syracuse,

'an ally of Athens'
enemies back in Greece.'

In 415 BC, Sicily and the city of
Syracuse became the major front

in the Peloponnesian War,
the conflict,

the civil war that was
tearing the Greek world apart.

The Athenian fleet sailed into this
harbour and tried to take the city.

It proved a disastrous campaign.

After two long years, the Athenian
fleet was finally destroyed here.

Those who managed to escape overland
got caught in the marshes and those

who didn't die of fever ended up
working in the quarries at Syracuse.

The abandoned charm
of this place today

belies the cruel
reality of its creation.

These are the quarries of Syracuse,

excavated by captives of war
in the blistering heat.

'In 1609, the brutal
history of these quarries

'inspired one famous visitor

'to imagine the horrors
that played out here.'

The great painter Caravaggio
was on the run from Rome

having committed
"accidental murder".

He came to Sicily
and while on the run,

he decided to take in some
of the ancient sites.

He came here to the quarries in
Syracuse and saw this and it was he,

Caravaggio, who first gave it its
name - the Ear of Dionysius.

Dionysius was a great
tyrant ruler of Syracuse

in the beginning of the
4th century BC.

And this man-made cave in
the shape of an ear

extending some 65 metres back
into the rock was, it was then said,

the place where Dionysius,
the cruel warlord tyrant,

used to put his captives
so that he could,

with its perfect acoustics,

listen easily and with glee
to their screams.

'This rabbit warren of quarries was
so inescapable that even the Romans

'would later commend it as the
best prison to be found

'anywhere in the Roman world.'

And for those fateful Athenians,

the only chance of escape was to
recite the words of the playwright

Euripides because Syracuse,
for all his cruelty and majesty,

was also a great fan of drama.

Greek culture dominated Sicily,

setting the stage for every
city to have its own theatre.

Segesta's theatre lies
400 metres above sea level,

on the slopes of Mount Barbarian.

Every summer, groups of local actors
keep traditions alive by performing

Greek tragedies on a stage
they build themselves.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

So we've crept in on a rehearsal for
tonight's performance of Sophocles.

Oedipus Rex, Oedipus the King.

Originally, this place would have
held something like 4,000 people,

but frankly, it's the view that
takes your breath away here.

How one's supposed to concentrate on
what's going on on the stage,

I don't know.

I mean, I presume that's Oedipus.

Or is it Tiresias,
the Blind Prophet?

So while the real actors have
taken a rain break,

I thought I'd sneak on stage

to bring a little bit
of Shakespeare to the party.

Much Ado About Nothing
is Shakespeare's

most regularly performed
comedy and it was written at the end

of the 16th century and it's set
in Sicily, in the town of Messina.

It's a play I know a little bit
about because I used to use one of

the speeches when I was little,

doing drama exams.

So let's have a little bit
of Benedick, one of the heroes,

professing or realising that he's
in love with a woman called Hero.

This can be no trick.

The conference was sadly borne.

They have the truth of
this from Hero.

They seem to pity the lady.

It seems her affections
have their full bent.

Love me!

Why, it must requited.

I hear how I am censured.

They say I will bear myself proudly

if I perceive the love
come from her.

I can't remember any more.
HE LAUGHS

Public performances were one way to
keep the population happy.

But this being Sicily,

public performances with food
thrown in were even better,

and as the Greek gods
demanded animal sacrifice,

that meant there'd be
plenty of leftover meat.

Welcome to the sacrificial
altar of Hieron II -

the ruler of Syracuse in
the 3rd century BC.

This guy believed in building big.

This altar is gigantic.

It's over 200 metres in length,

11 metres high,

and it's said that this thing
could take simultaneously

450 oxen for sacrifice.

Now, that's enough meat for
over 200,000 people.

That's quite an ancient
Greek barbecue.

Hieron wanted to be seen as
the equal of the great

Hellenistic rulers in the East,

the successors of Alexander the
Great, and in building this,

well, he certainly gets
himself into that category.

'Hieron's altar
was dedicated to Zeus

'in his role as the
deliverer of freedom,

'but by the 3rd century BC,

'freedom was in short supply.

'200 years after the
Battle of Himera,

'Greek rule on Sicily was fading.

'Carthage had risen again

'and Rome was the new power
on the Mediterranean block.'

For all that Hieron
played being a big ruler,

he was, in fact, a rather small pawn
in a much greater tectonic shift

in the power politics of
the Mediterranean.

For this was the era when
Rome took on Carthage

to decide who would be
master of the Mediterranean.

A battle that took place on Hieron's
doorstep in and around Sicily.

Hieron had formed a pact with Rome
to keep Syracuse independent,

but in 214 BC, just a
year after Hieron's death,

a Roman fleet attacked Syracuse.

'The Romans may have
expected an easy victory,

'but one old man stood
in their way.'

Archimedes - the great inventor,
scientist, mathematician -

was a citizen of Syracuse. And in
his 70s, he was called upon to bring

all that knowledge to bear to defend
the city against Roman attack,

and he did it brilliantly.

He not only helped make their
catapults more accurate

so that they could chuck
stuff at the Roman ships,

but he also invented a
machine called The Claw.

This was where an enormous kind of
crane-like thing extended over the

walls of the city towards the sea,

where they would drop a huge weight
into the front of the ship

and then be able to yank that
ship up out of the water

where it would break
apart, or capsize,

or everything on it would
be tipped overboard.

The Roman general
Marcellus complained bitterly.

He said, "Archimedes is
using my ships as a ladle

"to put sea water into
his wine cup."

This was a fantastic example
of brains winning out over brawn.

Protecting the city's landward
side was Eurialo Castle.

With great trenches to prevent
siege engines coming close

and underground tunnels to speed
defenders around the walls.

Frustrated in their attempts
to take Syracuse by sea,

the Romans also tried
to approach by land

where they met these
formidable defences and where

it's likely that Archimedes had been
working to improve the catapults

that were atop the
fortification walls behind me.

The stalemate led to a two-year long
siege of the city

and it wasn't until all Greek eyes
were turned towards

an important religious festival
that the Romans found their moment

to slip in through the walls
and take Syracuse for good.

The question now was,

what was going to happen to the
Syracusans and to Archimedes?

Now, supposedly, the Roman general
Marcellus wanted Archimedes taken

alive, but the Roman
soldier that discovered him

demanded that he drop
what he was doing.

Archimedes refused and as a result
the Roman soldier supposedly

killed him in the
heat of the moment.

Now, it may have been that at that
point Archimedes' body was lost,

but another story goes that
a tomb was created for him.

A tomb that Cicero,
the great Roman orator,

coming to Sicily centuries later
rediscovered in the shrubbery

and upbraided the Syracusans for not
taking better care of the tomb

of one of their great ancestors.

That tomb, if it did exist,
is once again lost.

And for me, that same
accusation still rings true today.

We have no idea where
Archimedes' tomb may be,

but it's also pretty hard to find

any memorial to
Archimedes' genius here in Syracuse.

For my money, he
deserves a lot better.

Sicily was Rome's first
foreign conquest,

its capture a key moment in the
struggle to control the western and

central Mediterranean.

These were the Punic Wars,
Rome versus Carthage,

that raged around the island
and in the waters around it.

The eventual winner was
Rome and as a result,

Sicily became Roman property,
but it was never Italy.

It was always seen by the
Romans as a foreign place.

They were Greek speakers here.

It was a place that the Romans
could loot for nice art

and it was also a place that could

be turned into a
bread-making machine.

And as a result, the landscape
of Sicily was changed completely

to create these systems of grain
organisation, grain production

called latifundia.

And at their heart would be
a controlling entity.

A villa like this one -
Villa Casale.

Its owner was a powerful player in
the business of keeping the mob in

Rome fed and thus happy.

And thus the emperor in power.

Built in the 4th century AD,
Villa Casale was decorate with some

of the world's finest Roman mosaics.

They give an insight into what life
on Sicily must've been like

for Rome's super rich.

IN ITALIAN:

What Francesco's been telling me is
that this extraordinary mosaic is

actually unique in the Roman world.

From Africa over there
to Asia over there

and how they're all being
brought to the centre, to Rome,

disembarked from the ships and taken
off to be used in the gladiatorial

and beast hunt arenas.

And this chap right here,
although we can't be sure,

there's no name attached to it,
given that he is so central,

he must be an important person.

Perhaps he is the Dominus,
the master, the owner of this villa,

but certainly he would've been here
because this is the Basilica

where he would've been receiving his
clients, his visitors each day.

So he was, in reality,

at the centre of this mosaic
representation of the Roman world.

What I love is the sheer audacity of
this guy to create in his villa

this beautiful mosaic,

putting himself as a sort of
mini-emperor strutting around here.

Very much too big for his boots.

As people came to meet him,

they came as if from the
entire Roman world,

meeting here at
the very centre of it.

Mosaics were created to impress
and with money no object,

this villa owner could hire the very
best craftsmen in the Roman world.

This is a scene of games,

a set of games that would have been
commonplace in Rome and once again,

we get the idea that this owner of
this villa here in Sicily,

down in the sticks, wanted
to have that little bit of Rome,

that little bit of the centre
of the world here in his villa.

But what's fascinating
is that actually,

he went much further
afield than just Rome.

This seems to have been a man

who had significant
interest in North Africa.

Not just perhaps with the
transportation of animals,

but probably also land holdings.

The techniques and the craftsmen

that are being used here in
these incredible mosaics

are coming from North Africa.
He's bringing up teams of people

to do those mosaics
from North Africa and

perhaps some of the material
as well.

And there are two schools
here in the mosaics.

One more traditional, more
sort of stand-and-deliver.

The other much newer,

much more interested in
movement and light and shade,

as you can see here as the
girls move and dance,

the light is visible,

shining on their legs,
and the shadows as well.

And, just as today,

so many people talk about the
links between Africa and Sicily,

here back in the 4th century AD,
we're seeing a villa owner here in

Sicily turning to North Africa

for the cutting-edge technology

and artistic creativity.

It was the peripheries of the Roman
world in Africa

that were the engines
of artistic interpretation

and representation in this period.

'For 600 years, Rome took much
more from Sicily than it gave.

'The island's forests were felled to
make way for fields of grain.

'And at the same time, no great
roads were built or cities founded.

'Rome's greatest legacy to Sicily
wouldn't be material,

'but spiritual.'

What's surrounding me here is not
a series of individual baths,

but actually the final
resting places of the dead.

This is the necropolis at Agrigento,

and it is from here that we can get
into a secret underground world.

'As Christianity became more popular
in the Roman Empire,

'it started to spread
through Sicily.'

By the 3rd century AD,

communities across the Roman world
had started burying their dead in

massive underground networks,
tunnels and catacombs.

These would become particularly
associated with

the Christian communities
of the Roman Empire.

They would exploit already
existing underground spaces.

Here I am in the middle of what is
probably the entrance to a well

just above my head,
or cisterns or quarries,

and use those as their access points
to then dig tunnels out from

in every direction you can see.

Today, it looks to us
fairly higgledy-piggledy,

but actually these would have been
very well organised streets,

if you like, underground.
Streets of the dead.

These would have been spaces
not closed off and forgotten about,

but spaces in which living family
members regularly came down to

to pay their respects to their dead.

When Rome fell at the end of
the 5th century AD,

Sicily was occupied by
barbarian tribes.

The Vandals from North Africa
ruled for two decades,

followed by the Ostrogoths,
a Germanic tribe who,

for 40 years or so,

united Sicily with their
conquests in mainland Italy.

Something that wouldn't happen again
for another 14 centuries.

'As Europe moved into
the Middle Ages,

'Sicily was captured
by the Byzantines,

'the Eastern Roman Empire ruled from
Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul,

'by Greek-speaking Christians

'who shared much the same
culture as Sicilians.'

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

'The first century of Byzantine rule
passed off peacefully enough

'until an Islamic army came surging
out of the deserts of Arabia,

'sweeping all before it.'

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

In the 7th century, indeed in
663 AD, the Byzantine emperor,

Constans II, the Bearded,

decided to move the capital of
the Byzantine Empire...

Grazie.

..from Constantinople back to the
centre of the Mediterranean,

to Sicily,
to the city of Syracuse.

This was to counteract the new
threat of the Byzantine world,

coming up from Africa
and down from Italy,

and Constans II made
this his capital.

It wasn't good news for
the Sicilians,

or particularly the Syracusans,
they were taxed beyond all measure.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

I absolutely love
a cut-throat shave,

and Signor Corrado is an expert.

He has been here in this
shop since the '80s,

and he has been cutting hair and

doing cut-throat shaves for many
years before that.

This is a real expert at work.

'The next five years were a
nightmare for Sicilians,

'as Constans ran the island dry

'to fund a counteroffensive
against his enemies.'

Constans II thought that
Syracuse would understand him.

It was, after all, a
very Greek city.

But just a short five years after he
moved the entire capital of the

Byzantine Empire here, he was
murdered in his bath.

He was murdered in his bath by his
servant who supposedly hit him

over the head with a bucket.

Grazie...

So, thankfully, I
am no longer bearded,

and although Signor Corrado has
offered to wash my hair as well,

I think I'll say no to that one.

Grazie, Signor Corrado.

'The bath bucket murder effectively
ended the Byzantine Empire's

'last chance of halting
the advance of Islam.

'Now, the Arab armies were gathering
on the shores of North Africa.

'The story of what happened when
Christian Sicily met Islam

'is for next time. But for now,

'I'm keen to celebrate what I think
is one of the greatest Arab gifts

'to the island.

'The slushy iced dessert that
Sicilians have made all their own.'

This is Sicilian breakfast.

This is granita,
a Sicilian ice cream,

coffee flavoured with cream on top.

And brioche.

Ice cream for breakfast.

This is my kind of town.

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed
to be dunking and eating,

or using my spoon, or
sucking it through the straw.

It's all a bit...

I guess it's every man to himself
to decide how he wants to eat this.