All language subtitles for The Treasures of Ancient Rome 2of3 Pomp and Perversion_Subtitles01.ENG

I'm continuing my quest to change
the way we view ancient Rome.

The collapse of the republic
shortly before the birth of Christ,

unleashed a new era of
imperial magnificence.

Rome's empire was built
on the might of its legions

and genius of its engineers.

We all know that.

But there was something else
equally important.

The power of art.

And you can't understand
the history of Rome
until you understand its monuments.

Like Trajan's Column.

Emperors like Trajan were
the masters of this new type

of strident, declamatory art.

They transformed their public
monuments into big brash billboards,

boasting of their conquests.

But there was another side
to Roman art.

The private world of the emperors

who collected art overflowing
with mythological fantasy,

unimaginable cruelty,
and red hot eroticism.

For all of those mad, bad
and dangerous emperors of
the first century AD,

people like Caligula and Nero,
art of the highest quality,

offered a backcloth
for their hedonistic debauchery.

To the modern eye, much of what
we'll see is shocking and

depraved, and it tells us much about
the emperors and their many vices.

By dropping in on the emperors
at home in their lost

pleasure palaces, we'll see how art
dominated their lives.

History always gives the wrong
sense of the word - something
in the past that's done and dusted.

But it's not - it's a beautiful
unfolding story that's continuing.

This was an era of exuberance
and of great artistic triumphs.

And one man presided over a cultural
golden age, that crystallised

the look of the Roman empire
at its zenith, for ever more.

The emperor Hadrian.

The first emperor, Augustus

had brought peace and prosperity
to Rome after years of civil war.

He also killed off the republic,
and replaced it with a new

political and artistic vision
for an imperial future.

The big question, was what would
happen after his death?

It's something Augustus
had planned for.

This is the Maison Carree,

it's one of the best preserved Roman
temples anywhere in the world.

And it was dedicated
to Augustus's grandsons,

Gaius and Lucius Caesar,
who'd been anointed as his heirs,

but they died early,
long before he did.

And you can see it's a stunning
building in its own right.

But, despite its splendour,
it isn't anywhere near Rome.

In fact, this was built in Nimes,
in the South of France.

Just imagine the kind of message
that buildings like this must

have sent out to the people
who lived in Roman colonies.

The Maison Carree is a gleaming
marble-clad vision of the future.

All sorts of details of it proclaim
a new era of peace

and prosperity like these abundantly
carved Corinthian capitals

you can see at the tops
of the columns.

And their lush acanthus foliage
you can see scrolling right round
the temples,

sumptuous and very crisp, frieze.

The temple was also
the beginning of something new,

because above the entrance,
you had the names of members

of Augustus's family, emblazoned
in big bronze letters, and today

you can still see the holes
where those letters were attached.

So the Maison Carree
was the beginning of what would

become essentially a cult that
spread right across the empire

with astonishing speed -

honouring and celebrating
the emperor and his dynasty.

After the death of Augustus
in AD 14, temples like this,

were decorated with statues
of emperors as gods.

Augustus himself
was deified by the senate.

And depicted as the most important
god of them all, Jupiter.

It was the start
of an imperial cult,

which played an important role
in uniting the empire

that sprawled all the way across
three continents, from Gaul

in the North, to Asia Minor
in the East, and Egypt in the South.

Augustus had created
the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Everything now depended
on his successors,

starting with his adopted son,
Tiberius, Rome's second emperor.

When we think of Roman art,
most of us think of galleries of
busts and sculptures.

But in the late republic,
in the early empire,

there was another art form which
was very exquisite and prized,

actually more highly
by the Romans themselves,

which was the carving of gemstones,
semi-precious stones.

And there's a piece here in
the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris,

which is the biggest gem to have
survived from antiquity,

and this is it.

It's known as the great cameo
of France.

And as you can see, it is ginormous.

It's made of an Indian stone
called sardonyx.

This is a layered
semi-precious stone.

And this is a cameo which means
it's been carved in relief,

so the artist who's created it,

has taken advantage of the different
colours of the layers of the stone

to achieve the effect of
the brightness of the figures
in the foreground,

versus the darkness
of the background.

And there's a great deal of subtlety
in-between as well.

And this piece shows in the centre,

the emperor Tiberius
enthroned as Jupiter.

Above him you can see his ancestors,
there's Augustus,

veiled with a crown,
being taken up towards the gods.

And beneath him you see a bunch
of barbarians huddled together,

so there's a very clear demarcation
between the enemy beneath,

the Roman court in the middle,

and their proximity
to the world of the gods up above.

We know quite a lot about Tiberius,

and the other 11 of
the first 12 Caesars from this.

This is Seutonius, my granny
first recommended this book to me,

she loves it, and I always find
that quite amusing

because when you read it,
it's so compelling

because it feels like a red top
expose of these different Caesars.

It's, to be honest,
completely scabrous,

scandal-filled salacious filth.

And we hear a little more about
the kind of man that Tiberius was.

He was quite cruel,
he was very cruel.

He was quite superior and proud,
saturnine.

He wasn't the most affable person.

He had a load of pimples.

Next to Tiberius, as well,
you can see his mother Livia.

Supposedly he quarrelled
openly with Livia.

And, in fact, their quarrels
were so intense and

he was so upset by her overbearing
presence in the politics of Rome,

that eventually he left
the city altogether

and retired to a pleasure palace.

So this vision of domestic
harmony and bliss,

is really a far cry from the truth.

During the early years
of the empire

cameo carving enjoyed a boom

and cameos were among Rome's
most prized artistic treasures.

The artists were bigger names
than sculptures and painters.

Ciro Accanito is
a modern day cameo carver.

There was another side
to Tiberius's taste in art,

which we can revel in
at a very special private place

where he came to get away
from his domineering mother.

Anyone who assumes that Roman art
is the stuff of

monochromatic marbles in
boring old stuffy museums,

needs to come here to this
spectacular place, Sperlonga,

which is 60 miles
south of Rome, on the coast.

And it was once the setting for
this luxurious seaside villa,

where Tiberius used to come,
and retreat from public life.

And back in the '50s there was
an amazing archaeological discovery

in a grotto just over there, which
yields so much insight into how art

was actually viewed by the Romans
themselves. Rather than seeing

the pieces in museums, this place
is all about the context of the art.

The centrepiece of Tiberius's
villa here at Sperlonga,

was this craggy grotto where
Tiberius hosted what must have been

these breathtaking dinner parties,
banquets.

Imagine how spectacular they must
have been with the sea
crashing outside,

and in here, a bunch of cosmopolitan
guests, stuffing their faces.

And it's a famous location this,

because Tiberius was almost
killed here in this cave,

when there was a rock fall.

In fact the story gets another
outing in good old Seutonius,

who talks about Tiberius's dinner
party here at the cavern -

spelunka in Latin -

when some huge rocks
fell from the roof,

killed several guests in attendance
close to him

and he miraculously survived.

And I imagine that many of
those guests would have been a bit

disappointed that he did survive
because, by all accounts,

Tiberius was a very dour,
cruel-hearted, cold-blooded emperor.

Supposedly one of Tiberius's
ways to get off

was that he trained little boys,
whom he called his minnows -
brilliant detail -

to chase him while he went swimming

and get between his legs
to lick and nibble him.

Each to his own, I guess!
But the important point for us,

aside from all of the colour
in Seutonius,

is that this cavern was an art
gallery as well as a social space,

and it shows how art
was used socially.

Back in the '50s

they salvaged around
7,000 scraps of marble statuary

whilst they were excavating
Tiberius's cavern.

And the most important have
been meticulously reassembled

here in the museum at the site,
alongside these colossal

recreations of the sculptural
centrepieces of the grotto.

And this is a piece known as
the Blinding Of Polyphemus.

It presents a scene from
The Odyssey, in which Odysseus and
his followers

have become trapped in the cave of
the cyclops Polyphemus,

who's started eating
some of the followers.

He had a couple for dinner
one night,

next morning he ate
a couple more for breakfast.

Understandably,
Odysseus wants to leave.

So he hatches a cunning plan,
which is to get the cyclops drunk,

so you can see one of Odysseus'
followers is carrying
a leather wine skin.

Polyphemus himself has been drinking
a load of wine in his wine bowl,

and it's just slipped from his
fingers and he falls back in
a drunken stupor on this rock,

with his single cyclops eye closed,
ready to be blinded

as Odysseus, with great drama,
frenzy on his face,

commands his followers
to pick up a burning stake

and shove it
right into Polyphemus's eye.

What a wonderfully ironic piece
to have

for the middle of a banquet setting
in a cavern.

You can't help but speculate

that some of the guests who were
in the cavern in real life,

would have looked at this group
and thought

"I'd really like to stick a stake of
my own, right into Tiberius's eyes."

One person who wouldn't have been
welcome at one of his raunchy
cave parties was his mother, Livia.

She had a villa of her own
at Prima Porta near Rome.

Her taste was somewhat more refined
than her son's.

I really feel that this
is one of the gentlest

and most beautiful works of art to
have survived from the Roman world.

And it's extraordinary to think
it was painted 2,000 years ago

for a windowless room, a triclinium
or dining room in the house of Livia

which would have been used
as a refuge from the summer heat

and what you see is this magical
transporting woodland fantasy.

Oaks and laurels and pomegranates
and quinces and cypresses,
date palms.

There are poppies,
there are cabbage roses.

And replete with all of these
exotic songbirds

which are luminescent
in the foliage.

And the whole thing's been suffused
with this beautiful greeny-blue

murky, magical early morning mist
so that the trees in the foreground,

are so sharp you could practically
lean over these fences

and pluck the fruit off the bough
and take a bite.

But in the distance, it's much
more shadowy and indistinct

which creates that sense of depth
and a feeling of well-being really.

It makes you feel
very happy and calm.

I want to dive in to
this strange magical fantasy land

on the other side of the fence.

Most of the paintings that survive
from antiquity are frescoes.

That's because they're literally
part of the walls.

The fresco is a technique

in which you paint on the wall

so for this we need to apply
plaster made with sand and lime.

And on the top of this layer
we paint with the pigments

mixed with water only.

The pigment soaks into the pores
of the plaster and hardens.

Pigment mixed with wax is used
to paint the fine details.

I think the Romans were
very natural painting.

In the houses, to decorate
on the walls is fantastic.

Tiberius outlived his mother
but by the time of his death,

he'd withdrawn entirely into his own
private world, with his minnows.

He was succeeded in AD 37
by his great nephew

Gaius Julius
Caesar Augustus Germanicus,

better known as Caligula.

Probably the most scandalous
Roman emperor of all.

I've come to Lake Nemi
just outside Rome,

to investigate a story of depravity,

modern day tomb raiders,
and a lost masterpiece.

Caligula got his nickname
because when he was growing up

he spent a great deal of time
with the Roman army.

And he used to have this
miniaturised soldiers' uniform.

The soldiers had
standard issue boots

and the Latin word for boots
is caligae,

and the diminutive, is caligula,

so it was quite an affectionate
sweet name really,

quite endearing imagining this
little boy in his soldiers' outfit,

trying to be one of the big boys.

Of course it doesn't bear
witness remotely,

to the extent of his
cruelty and debauchery.

And we get a very good sense
of that from Seutonius.

You know, we think that
Berlusconi had these debauched
bunga bunga parties,

I tell you, he didn't have anything
on these 1st Century AD emperors.

I mean the section on Caligula
goes on and on.

Well, for one thing,
when he was having dinner,

he enjoyed breaking it up by having
sex with his sisters,

he was really into incest.

All three of his sisters had to
sleep with him at regular intervals.

There was probably something
actually wrong with him mentally.

He really enjoyed watching
people being executed
in a very slow fashion.

Apparently his familiar order,
"Make him feel that he is dying,"
soon became proverbial.

There's been a recent and exciting
new twist in the story of Caligula.

Tomb raiders struck gold, or rather
marble, near the lake shore.

Broken fragments of
a rare statue of Caligula.

The police arrested the thieves
as they tried to smuggle the statue

to Switzerland,
en route for Japan.

Their discovery confirms that
Caligula did, in fact, have

a palatial villa on Lake Nemi.

The statue's now safely
installed in the museum,

next to replicas of
two of Caligula's ships.

The originals were salvaged from
the lake in 1932,

on the orders of Mussolini,

only to be destroyed in a fire
12 years later.

Say this had been sold
on the black market,

how much would it have fetched?

We don't know for sure, that kind
of sculpture have a lot of appeal

so it's a thousand,
over a million maybe.

A million euros?

Yes. But it's so weathered
and it's so fragmentary.

The antique market is like this,
you know.

How excited did you feel, I mean
this must be quite a rare discovery?

SHE SPEAKS ITALIAN

To me there's a contradiction that
someone as debased as Caligula

could represent himself as a god.

It's a paradox that runs right
through Roman art and society.

On the one hand Rome is the last
word in ancient civilisation,

but at the same time it had
a shocking blood lust

and taste for cruelty that's
played out in the artistic arena.

This is one of my favourite works
that survived from antiquity.

It's the sculpture of what's called
the Hanging Marsyas

and Marsyas was
a character from ancient myth.

He was a satyr who played
the pan pipes,

and he challenged the god Apollo
who played a lyre,

to a musical contest,

and obviously that was a contest
he was doomed to lose.

And as a result Apollo condemned him

to be executed for the temerity
of challenging him

to this contest in the first place,
by being flayed alive.

So here he is,
his feet tied together,

possibly his shoulders have
already been dislocated,

he's strung up, and we know
about the Hanging Marsyas because

about 60 copies of the sculpture
from the Roman world have survived.

This one is particularly grizzly,

because the marble that was
used to carve it

is known as pavonazzetto,
it's a red streaked marble,

you can see there's a violet
crimson-ish tinge, to the stone,

which in a way prefigures
the punishments about to be enacted.

All of the blood and guts and sinews
and veins that would have been seen

after the executioner started
flaying Marsyas alive,

is there already in that red sheen
to the stone. It's very gruesome.

This particular one was discovered
in a garden in Rome,

gardens belonging to a very wealthy
man called Maecenas

who was the patron
of the poet Virgil.

And, in a sense, the hanging Marsyas
gets right to the heart

of Roman art, because it illustrates
the whole conundrum about it.

How could such a gruesome
scene of punishment,

produce pleasure for the Romans,

so that they would have things like
this hanging up in their gardens?

Another stunning example
of the Romans love of violence

is the Farnese Bull, which was found
in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.

Astonishingly carved
out of a single piece of marble,

it shows the punishment of Dirce,
a character from Greek mythology

as she's tied to the horns
of a bull, then gored to death.

Just what you want
from a piece of public art.

Cruelty was one side of the coin,

on the other,
was no holds barred debauchery.

This can be seen in one of the most
controversial works

to have survived from ancient Rome.

So if ever you doubted that the
past can be a foreign country,

then the Warren Cup
provides the proof.

It's a silver wine goblet,

and it's very distinctive because
it's decorated with these
two scenes,

really quite raunchy scenes
celebrating gay sex.

I guess the thing that's proved
controversial to modern people

is just that the two scenes are
quite eye-wateringly explicit.

So on one side on this side
you've got a young man,

who's holding a strap,

and he's lowering himself onto
an older bearded man.

You can see a small boy, slave,
a peeping Tom, who's just

poking his head round the door
to watch the action.

On this side you've got
two younger men,

and one of them's entering
the other from behind,

and again you can you can just make
out his silver testicles, which

have been very lovingly picked out
by whoever's made this work of art.

It's a really beautiful
very high status object,

but that's not really why
this cups so interesting.

It's interesting to imagine
how this was used socially.

What was the context
for something like this?

Would it have raised eyebrows
in the ancient Roman world?

We don't know, but presumably not.

Something like this must
have been an erotic centrepiece

for the sorts of lavish parties
and banquets that

would have been held by Tiberius at
Sperlonga or Caligula at Lake Nemi.

You can readily imagine that downing
a load of wine from this goblet,

would really help get you
in the mood

for whatever Tiberius
was expecting.

After Caligula had been
murdered by his own soldiers,

he was succeeded by Claudius,
and now I'm on his trail.

I'd like to introduce you
to my new best buddy.

Sergio here has brought me to Baia,

which is just north of
the Bay of Naples,

because back in the '60s there was
an extraordinary discovery when a
big storm churned up the seabed,

and people looking down through
the surface of the sea,

suddenly glimpsed some,
what looked like, classical statues.

And it began this huge period
of marine archaeology,

and they excavated here,
something called a Nymphaeum,

which was a sort of fantasy grotto
if you like,

part of a big pleasure
villa complex

that belonged to one of the emperors
from the 1st Century AD, Claudius.

You can, in fact, see
just above the cliff there,
the remains of his villa.

And I thought before we actually
go diving to explore his Nymphaeum,

there's just time to
have a look at Seutonius's

Twelve Caesars, because somewhere
around here we learn about his...

the way he looked,
the way he behaved.

He was apparently quite tall,
he was well built and handsome,

but he had various strange ticks,
he had this uncontrolled laugh,

and this horrible habit
that stuck in my imagination,

under the stress of anger,
he used to slobber at the mouth
and run at the nose.

He had a stammer and a persistent
nervous tick that grew so bad

under emotional stress that his head
would toss from side to side.

It's not really what you expect of
someone who leads the Roman empire.

He also had quite lavish tastes,

they all did really in the
1st Century AD, all the emperors.

He gave many splendid banquets
usually in large venues,

and at times invited no fewer
than 600 guests.

And it's tempting to imagine
that 2,000 years ago, here,

beneath the waves,
Claudius would have hosted
some extraordinary parties.

Big banquets, lavish,
opulent affairs

with hundreds of guests
visiting his Nymphaeum.

OK!

It's hard to believe

but we're actually swimming through
the lost world of a Roman emperor.

You can imagine carts trundling
along the cobbled Roman road.

My favourite moment comes
as we're swimming along

and Sergio starts pushing away
sand and stones from the sea bed.

Underneath is this beautiful
red-stained marble flooring,

that looks like a piece of
delicious Italian bresaola.

It's the closest I'll ever come
to uncovering real treasure.

It starts getting eerie as figures
appear suddenly out of the blue.

This one is Dionysus.
The god of wine.

The statue's a copy,
the original's now in a museum.

Next, we meet what's
left of Odysseus,

and one of his friends,

carrying a wine skin
ready to get Polyphemus drunk.

So this time, perhaps wisely,

Polyphemus hasn't stuck around
to get another stake in his eye.

There are also members of Claudius's
family, I get to say a quick hello

to his mum, Antonia Minor,
before coming up for air.

That was very, very magical.

That was cool, there was... oh God,
I've come a bit like Claudius.

I've got a runny nose, I'm
slobbering, but that was beautiful.

Really beautiful.

Claudius supposedly died after
eating poisonous mushrooms,

as Roman emperors do.

He was succeeded
by his great nephew,

the last of our mad, bad
and dangerous emperors, Nero.

While the other emperors
cultivated the arts,

Nero actually took to the stage
and performed.

His passion for theatre can be
seen in this villa,

reputably owned by his wife Poppaea.

During Nero's rule, the arts became
infused with all sorts of theatrical

flourishes that blurred the borders
between reality and illusion.

How rare, I mean, what sort of
a find is this?

This is really
an extraordinary find.

These second style paintings
are the largest and most complete

that have ever been found
or associated with an atrium.

And in fact the whole ensemble
of painted works of art here,

is really unsurpassed.

Vitruvius tells us that one of
the subjects that the wall paintings
took were stage facades.

So there was probably a kind of
cross fertilisation

between theatrical painting,
and domestic painting.

The theatre was hugely important

and was made particularly
important in the last days

of this villa because Nero himself
was a patron of the theatre.

He acted, he performed for the first
time we're told by the Roman
historians, in Naples,

so in a sense it all became
super respectable then.

What could be better than having
the Emperor himself saying,
yes, theatre is great and good.

Didn't he lock the doors
so people couldn't escape
when he was performing?

The ultimate captive audience!

One of the Roman historians says
that his performances were so long

and tedious, that people used to
fake dying to be carried out,

to be relieved of this
tedious performance.

I wonder whether that's why
you've got the closed doors?

Along the whole Eastern side
of the villa

is this enormous great
swimming pool.

And not just for the swimming,

but along that side of the villa,

they built a number of
reception rooms, pleasure rooms,

rooms for dining,
rooms for relaxation,

rooms for, you know,
enjoying the ambiance.

But then, as you turn,
you see again and again and again,

this series of apertures,
each one with a garden,

which had real flowers, real plants,
real fountains on it.

And then along the walls
of those rooms,

you had painted flowers and gardens.

So in the middle of this
there would have been a garden?

There would have been plants and
probably some kind of a fountain.

The artists have replicated it.
You're looking at the real thing

but you're actually looking
at the unreal thing,

and because this is enclosed space,
you can't actually get into it.

Your mind's eye is being drawn
into both the real world

and the illusionistic imaginary
world at the same time.

I love some of the details.
There's a tiny bird there.

But think how more
evocative it would be

when there were real birds
flittering around here.

On a summer's day, while you
were lounging by the pool.

Do you think this is a kind of
Roman sensibility?

This double-edged thing between
nature and artifice somehow?

That they liked being on the cusp?
They revelled in it.

They wrote about the delight
in basically art imitating nature...

There IS a bird!
There's a bird indeed! Sorry.

Bird has returned to its lair!

No, artifice and... Art and artifice
and life and nature

constantly suffusing,
intermingling.

Which is what we see here.

The garden, and then
garden all around.

Real garden, painted garden. Yeah.

Wonderful!

Nero's suicide in AD 68

signalled the end of a dynasty.

And for Rome,
things could only get better.

To understand how it changed,

we need to look at
a very different kind of art.

The art of pomp and power.

The great Historian of ancient Rome,
Edward Gibbon,

once described
the second century as,

"The period
in the history of the world

"during which the condition
of the human race

"was most happy and prosperous."

It was the golden age
of the Roman empire.

The era of the good emperors.

People like Trajan and Hadrian
and Antoninus Pius.

And also this man.

Marcus Aurelius.

Rome's 16th emperor,

who ruled from 161-180 AD.

And this colossal
gilt bronze portrait

of him mounted on horseback

is one of the great glories
of Roman art.

It doesn't take much, though,

to be awe-struck
by the thunderous authority

of this monster-sized masterpiece,

because Marcus Aurelius
is SO enormous.

He's a super-human.

He's far bigger in relation
to his steed than any ordinary man.

And he feels like a commander
of a race of giants,

descended onto Earth, who can easily
command our pygmy-like human realm.

I feel quite cowed
looking up at him.

And immediately,
this is an expression.

This is the creation of a supremely
self-confident society.

You can feel that.

The thing about Roman art
of the high empire

is it's the sort of stuff
that can only be produced

by a totalitarian regime.

Colossal works pushed through
by the will of one man.

And one innovation epitomises this.

The Triumphal Arch is one of
Rome's greatest legacies to art.

Arches, they're such a prominent
feature of modern cities.

Think of Marble Arch in London,
Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

But they wouldn't exist
if it wasn't for the ancient Romans,

who decorated their monuments
with historical reliefs,

turning them into
these enormous marble billboards,

if you like, of imperial propaganda.

And this one
is one of the greatest of all.

It's the Arch of Titus
at the entrance of the Roman Forum.

It celebrates the crushing
of the Jewish revolt

by the emperor Vespasian
and his son Titus in AD 70.

On the inside of the arch
there are two stunning reliefs

featuring Roman soldiers
carrying the spoils of war

from the temple in Jerusalem.

Including the sacred menorah
or candelabrum.

The carvings are worn,
but still dynamic.

This one, typically triumphalist,

shows Titus accompanied
by the goddesses Victoria and Roma.

Monumental arches sprung up
all over the empire

and became the artistic symbol
of imperial Rome.

It may not look like much,
but on the other side of this door,

there's going to be
an extraordinary Roman masterpiece

and we're going to get
a very special view. So...

Buongiorno. Alastair.

Grazie! Well rehearsed!

OK, so we're going into a church.

What we're about to see
is one man's bid for immortality.

Getting a bit out of breath!

Yeah, maybe this one.

HE TURNS KEY

Eccoci qui.

Ci troviamo sul terrazzo
della cupola.

Prego...

I think that means
"the terrace of the dome."

Somewhere around...well, up there.
So which way?

Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank YOU!

This is going to be... This really
is going to be a good view, I think.

Oh, my God! Look! Check this out!

This really is genuinely
an exciting moment!

Trajan's column
was dedicated in AD 113,

and it commemorates
two successful campaigns

that the emperor Trajan
waged against the Dacians,

a barbarian tribe
from modern day Romania.

This is a magnificent view!

On the column itself
there are 2,639 figures.

Trajan himself appears 59 times.

The other thing to remember
about this column

is that nothing like it
had ever appeared before

in the history of art.

So this is bona fide Roman,
right to the bone.

I mean, this piece, Trajan's column,

That's how you do
monumental sculpture.

Trajan's column was made
by a team of sculptors

from 29 different blocks of marble,

each weighing up to 77 tonnes.

Whoever designed it was a real
genius in the art of storytelling.

There are 155 scenes,

that spiral up for 200 metres.

It's only when you see
the scenes in close-up,

that you really appreciate
the full effect.

And the place to do that
is the Museum of Roman Civilisation,

which has a cast
of the whole shebang.

So, Vito, this gallery
really gives us a sense

of just how monumental
the column was, because you can see

it stretches down, I guess,
for 100 metres that way,

and 100 metres back, and
there's the frieze on either side.

It's amazing, yeah.
So this is the base of the column,

and they've done it in sections
that it takes us up,

but it's quite a good opportunity
to talk about the way

that the narrative
has been structured.

Well, it's a big narration.

It's an epic narration,
200 metres long.

And it's sort of a long movie
about history with a capital H.

And it seems that, at the beginning,

the Trajan column was in colour.

So it was in colour

and 3D, we could say today.

As a matter of fact, we can notice

that it there are some holes
in many hands,

like this, for example.

Here, the soldier
was supposed to hold weapons,

stuff like that,

so it's contributed to give
that three-dimensional effect.

In here, we can see by the way

this is beautiful in terms of art.

Pure art.

Look at the composition of this,
round circles.

What's happening here?

Here the Romans
are defending themselves.

They're throwing stones
against the Dacians,

and the whole story is seen from
the point of view of Decebalus.

He's the chief of the Dacians?

He's the chief of the Dacians.

"They're crazy," this Roman says.
Very angry here.

And he looks to the long shot,

where many dramatic things
are happening.

That feels like a cartoon!
He's going, "Oh, you pesky Romans!"

Yeah, exactly!

Sometimes it is a little ironical.

Sometimes, it's like a horror movie.

And later, you will see
that Decebalus fights,

and finally, he kills himself.

You know, not to be a prisoner.
You know, he kills himself.

You're giving away
the ending of the film!

Oh, sorry!
But it's not a detective story!

The Roman soldiers try to catch him
but he doesn't want to be caught,

and he kills himself with a knife.

So this is the big climax.
The money shot.

Yeah, but after the big climax,
the real ending of the movie,
quote-unquote,

will be the Dacian people
slowly abandoning their land.

And then it fades to black. The end.

After that,
you see the sky and the moon.

Of course. That's the technical,
cinematical term.

It's a dissolve we're seeing there.
Yeah, exactly!

So far, we've seen two sides
of Roman imperial art.

One, private and perverted.

The other, public and propagandist.

One emperor had a vision of how
to bring these two together

and create a coherent
imperial vision,

that would inspire loyalty
as well as awe.

When Hadrian became emperor
in AD 117, he inherited

one of the mightiest empires
that the world had ever seen,

stretching all the way

from the Scottish lowlands
to the Sahara Desert,

from the Atlantic Ocean
to the river Euphrates.

By the time that he died,
21 years later,

and you can see
his majestic mausoleum behind me,

he'd presided over
an artistic renaissance

that would shape our image
of the Roman world forever.

Hadrian has a reputation
as peace-loving emperor

who set the Empire's borders
in stone,

with Hadrian's Wall
in the North of Britain,

and the limes in North Africa.

In portraits he wears a beard,

supposedly to portray himself
as a Greek-loving intellectual.

But he was more complex than that.

In other works, he's shown hunting,

or as a military strong man,
crushing the enemy underfoot.

During his rule, he undertook
two grand tours

and visited almost all his provinces
in an attempt to promote stability.

It enabled him to create
an inclusive

and pan-imperial artistic style,

influenced by the most
distant corners of his empire.

And of all the monuments
from this Hadrianic golden age,

none bears his imprint more than
this vast temple to all the gods.

The most miraculous achievement

of Hadrian's
architectural renaissance

was the famous Pantheon in Rome.

At first sight,
you see this temple facade,

and it seems relatively
conventional, if monumental.

There are one or two quite
spectacular details, though,

not least these enormous eight
grey granite shaft columns here,

supporting the facade.

And all of them are monolithic,

which means they weren't constructed

out of several different drums
put on top of one another.

They are one piece of rock.

And they didn't
even come from Italy.

They were hewn out of a quarry
in the eastern desert of Egypt.

So here you have the emperor

almost supernaturally
snapping his fingers,

and he can command the natural world

and things are brought to Rome,
suggesting Rome's mastery.

But that sense of majesty
that's in the porch

is just a mere appetizer,
compared to what happens

through the bronze doors
in the main centre of the space.

I have visited the Pantheon
once before,

but I imagine that it doesn't matter
how many times you come.

Nothing can lessen the extraordinary
impact of entering this space

which has this
almost stupefying splendour.

You can see that every element
bespeaks the majesty,

the imperial might of ancient Rome.

The surfaces are covered with
all sorts of coloured marbles,

other stones, including
porphyry, serpentine,

that come from many different
places in the empire.

Egypt, Tunisia...

But the real tour de force,

the centrepiece of the rotunda,
is up above.

This enormous, coffered,
cast concrete dome.

Look, there's no doubt, of course,
that this is an engineering marvel.

This is a feat of
Roman architecture and building.

But it's more than that.

If feels like
a big, bejewelled bauble.

This is a kind of electrifying arena

where imperial spectacle
would have been played out.

And it has this spiritual power.

A sense of a kind of proximity
to some sort of divinity,

up through there,
through the infinity of the oculus,

that makes it, for me,
a work of art.

This is one enormous work of art.

It truly is one of the most
spectacular treasures

of ancient Rome.

Previous emperors
had kept their passions private,

but Hadrian realised that he could
exploit his to win over his people.

In doing so he created one of the
most intimate icons of art history.

This melancholic youth is
someone very, very special indeed.

He's the last pagan god of antiquity

who once gave Jesus Christ
a run for his money.

And more portraits
of this fellow have survived

than of any other figure
from the Roman world,

bar Hadrian and Augustus,
both emperors.

Around 100 marble images
and counting, in fact.

In the Roman era, he enjoyed almost
unparalleled posthumous celebrity,

and his cult offered very vigorous
competition to Christianity

in the early years of the religion.

And yet today,
most people haven't heard of him.

His name is Antinous,
and his story,

involving a grand affair of the
heart on the part of an emperor,

and also an unsolved mystery
surrounding his death in the Nile,

is totally spellbinding.

The love story
between Hadrian and Antinous

has all the makings
of a Shakespearian tragedy.

The emperor doted on
the beautiful young man

from Bithynia, modern Turkey,

and was left broken-hearted

when he mysteriously drowned
in the Nile.

He was only 19.

Hadrian built a new city
close to where Antinous died

and named it Antinopolis.

A cult worshipping the beautiful
but tragic young man

flourished there
and spread around the empire.

I've come to the Louvre
to meet Ernest Gill,

a priest in the modern day
cult of Antinous.

This is one of them.

Oh, this is one of my favourites.

Antinous Aristeos.

Aristeos is a totally
forgotten god now,

but he introduced farming
to mortal human beings,

and every farmer in ancient Rome
knew exactly who this was.

He's holding a cluster of olives here

and he's holding a rake or something,
and has a farm hat on.

Before we go any further,

I just wanted to see whether
I should be calling you Ernest,

or Hernestus, because I've been told
that that is your official title.

Yes, well, Hernestus
is my priestly name.

You can call me Ernest.

That's fine. Thank you.

You are a priest of
the cult of Antinous. Yes.

With a straight face, seriously?
Absolutely, absolutely.

He's always been,

not so much worshipped, but admired,
by homosexuals throughout history.

He's a gay icon. He's a gay icon.

All the gay aristocrats in the 18th
century wanted statues of Antinous.

And a cardinal in Rome,
Cardinal Albani,

had a huge villa full of
Antinous statues and other things.

And he had a German friend of his
who was an art collector,

Johann Joachim Winckelmann,

who went out
and would scour everything

looking for Antinous statues,
basically.

Winckelmann is known as the father
of art history, so you're suggesting

that we have Antinous to thank

for the entire discipline
of the history of art?

And it was rumoured that they were
secretly priests of Antinous.

But throughout history it was
sort of a coded way of saying,

HE WHISPERS
"I'm one of these people,"

you know, without actually saying it.

"Oh, you have a lovely statue
of Antinous." "Yes, indeed!"

And that sort of thing.

This really does remind me
quite strongly of the pure Antinous,

which is over here.
Let's have a look.

It's a bust of just Antinous,
not as a farmer,

not as Dionysus or Osiris.

This is him, and the most
interesting part is the hair.

You can always tell exactly
what this is based upon.

Doctoral theses have been
written about the curl.

This curl goes this way,
this curl goes that way,

That's how experts know,

"Ah, yes, that's a statue
of Antinous."

And, I mean, do you feel
when you look at this,

he must have been
a very beautiful youth?

To me, he always looks
a little bit sulky.

He looks sulky, and that's another
one of the great mysteries.

Why is he looking downward,

and why is he looking
somewhat melancholy?

Of course, homosexuals throughout
the ages have said,

"Oh, yes, we understand.
He was misunderstood."

Well, here he is
as the Egyptian god, Osiris.

Now, I know that
he drowned in the Nile.

That's an Egyptian association.

But do you think there were
any political implications

for Hadrian to show Antinous
dressing up as an Egyptian god?

Oh, absolutely, because Hadrian,
as emperor,

was also Pharaoh of Egypt.

There had been
a terrible, terrible drought,

and the Egyptians
had been begging for a miracle.

And after Antinous died, the Nile
rose up in a bountiful flood.

That was called his first miracle,
and Hadrian was saying,

"Yes, of course. Antinous has
risen from the dead,

"just as Osiris rose."

So it was a canny way
for Hadrian to ensure loyalty

from his Egyptian subjects? Yeah.

And I imagine that for you,

this must be like confronting
the holy of holies!

The Mondragone head
that got Winckelmann so excited.

Absolutely!
It got all of Europe excited.

It is, of course, Antinous
in the form of Dionysus or Bacchus.

It's so big!
I mean, it's just magnificent.

Is this your favourite one?

Mustn't tell the others,
but it's one of my favourites, yes.

They're all magnificent.

Do you feel like you're tending
a flame in a time of heathens?

Although, of course, he's a pagan
god. But you know what I mean?

No-one really knows about
poor Antinous. Yeah.

But more and more people
are knowing about him,

and I think that was Hadrian's goal,

to create the perfect society

based on Hellenistic principles
of peace, learning, understanding.

And I think he's a very good god
for the 21st century.

Hadrian had a flair for melding
the private with the public,

And this vision culminated
in a villa unlike any other.

It was at once
a personal playground,

and the political nerve centre
of the Western world.

To call this place Hadrian's villa,

in a sense,
is just a total misnomer.

It's a red herring.

Because what was actually
constructed,

this sprawling complex here

in the foothills
of the Tiburtine mountains

about 30-odd kilometres
east of Rome,

was just colossal.

The site has barely
been excavated yet,

but already,
just from the known structures,

there are 900 rooms and corridors.

The grounds would have extended
for about 120 hectares.

There would have been hundreds,
possibly even thousands of staff,

who would have scurried around
the site

using these underground
hidden passageways and corridors

so that the visiting dignitaries
from abroad and Rome's elite

who came here for
informal gatherings,

would never have had to
encounter them.

And just over this drawbridge

is one of the earliest structures
on the site,

which is known as
the maritime theatre.

And this may have been
Hadrian's private quarters.

And so you can imagine him

following those extensive travels
all around the empire,

returning here to relax
and recuperate.

But in Hadrian's day,

this would have been sumptuously,
lavishly decorated.

Every surface
would have been covered

with the finest quality mosaics
and paintings and marble.

You can actually see where
the marble was clad to the walls.

The holes would have taken the iron
supports for the marble cladding.

The eye would have been dazzled and
ravished by what was inside here.

There would have been
phenomenal sculptures

and the very best art
that could possibly be acquired.

And it was surrounded by this canal,

which doubled as a swimming pool,

and was linked to a private
bathing suite for Hadrian.

So it's very easy to be impressed
by the grandeur of the Pantheon.

Of course. But it's very formal,
in a sense.

What you have here is something much
more private, much more informal.

It's the material representation
of Hadrian's character.

I like to think of
this specific place

as the epicentre
of the Roman empire.

This was the fortress
of Hadrian's mind.

The resting place, if you like,
of his artistic soul.

Hadrian's villa was full of art

inspired by masterpieces
from around the empire.

This marble fawn is exquisite.

The doves of Sosos

is one of the most celebrated
mosaics from antiquity.

And these two centaurs,

carved from a smoky grey marble,

represent the highs
and lows of love.

The perky young centaur contrasts
with his sorrowful companion,

perhaps reflecting Hadrian's
grief for Antinous.

Hadrian recreated many

of the artistic highlights
from his grand tours.

As befits his nickname,
Graeculus, or, "Greekling,"

he commissioned perfect copies
of Greek statues.

Here, Rome meets Egypt.

The Tiber, this bearded river god,

leans on Rome's iconic she-wolf.

And this is the Nile,
resting on a sphinx.

All very symbolic
of the wider empire.

The Egyptian theme is completed
with this scary crocodile.

Carved from Cipollino marble,
it brilliantly brings to life

the croc's rough and scaly hide.

Many of Hadrian's finest sculptures
adorn this magical pool.

A homage to the canal
that cut through Northern Egypt

from Alexandria to Canopus.

Since the death of Antinous,
it was a corner of an empire

that held a very special place
in Hadrian's heart.

We know that Hadrian liked
magnificence,

but I feel that here,
he surpassed himself

by creating this
spectacular setting,

essentially for dinner parties.

We know he loved dinner parties,

it says that
in the ancient literature.

And imagine this long canal,
a colonnaded extravaganza

where guests
would have been reclining

in between the pillars, eating.

Apparently there was sometimes food
actually in the middle of the canal
that could have come over,

controlled by slaves
on little ships.

You pluck the food off.

And I like it,
particularly at this point,

because the pillars which
elsewhere are just ordinary columns

are replaced by these caryatids,

which are an allusion
to very famous statues

that supported a building
on the Athenian acropolis.

And on either side of these
four caryatids,

two drunken Silenae, this old soak
character from ancient myth,

with a pot belly and a beard,

and he's a bit pissed, basically.

And I quite like the idea

that that would help get you
in the party spirit.

Here's the pillar. Sprouting out of
his head would be a load of grapes

cascading down, like the top
of a Corinthian capital.

And if you were a guest,
you just had to look up there

and there's your example for how
to behave at a Roman dinner party.

The convivium that Hadrian loved.

Hadrian himself would have sat
right at the end there.

In that semi-dome,

which would have been covered
with sparkling mosaics.

There was a podium in there
with spaces for seven people.

And Hadrian would have come out,

sat right in the centre,
looked straight down this canal

which goes for about
120-odd metres,

and I think if you were a guest

at one of those parties thrown by
Hadrian here in the Canopus,

you must have felt like the most
urbane, chic, glamorous person

it would be possible to be.

As if you were at the very centre,
not just of the world,

but the whole universe.

Under Hadrian, the Roman empire
stretched across three continents

and Roman art was
also at its zenith,

because the great
classical tradition

which the Romans had inherited,
and re-invigorated,

by tailoring it
to their own society,

was at its most
stunning and urbane.

Roman culture was the envy
of the known world.

And there are some traditionalists

who suggest that the quality
of Roman art from this period

would never be surpassed.

There's definitely something
in that argument,

but it's not entirely true.

The aesthetic achievements
under Hadrian are brilliant,

but they're not the final chapter
in the story of Roman art.

In the next episode,
the empire strikes back.

How far-flung provinces
transformed the look of Rome,

and an obscure cult emerged,

to seize the mantle of art history.

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