All language subtitles for Who Were the Greeks 2of2_Subtitles01.ENG

This great icon standing
heroically on the Acropolis,

alone against the sky, dominates
the city of Athens today

just as it did when it was first
built over 2,000 years ago.

This is the Parthenon and today,
it is the symbol of ancient Greece.

It stands for everything that that
world has given us -

democracy, philosophy, literature,
art, architecture,

science and sport.

It is a beacon of culture
and civilisation.

I'm Dr Michael Scott and in this
series I've been finding out

more about the people who created
this extraordinary monument.

In the last episode, I explored
how the ancient Greeks lived.

I looked at their life cycle,
city life, beliefs and strange

mindsets and I discovered a world of
gods, myths, democrats and warriors,

inhabited by a people who could be
as brutal as they were brilliant.

But in this programme
I want to explore the great legacies

of the ancient Greeks and trace them
back to the people who created them.

I want to return to the
home of the Olympic Games

to reveal its harsh
and strongly religious reality.

I want to visit Athens to find out
why the city that gave us

philosophy also put to death
one of its greatest minds.

And I want to see the Parthenon

as the Greeks themselves would
have seen it.

The Greeks were
so successful that their culture

and way of life ended up spreading
from western Europe to Asia.

And even when the Greek golden age
ended, their legacies remained.

I want to know why the Greeks were
so successful,

why their legacies are
so enduring, and why

they still have such a powerful hold
over our imaginations today.

I want to find out,
Who Were The Greeks?

The Parthenon is one of the most
famous structures on the planet.

Its very creation testifies to the
scientific, mathematic

and creative genius of the ancient
Greek world.

One fact in particular always
blows me away,

although the lines of the building
appear to be perfectly straight,

this is actually an optical
illusion.

The building is made almost
entirely of curves, but these

are exactly the right arc to appear
perfectly straight to the naked eye.

This foundation is actually six
centimetres higher in the centre

than it is at the sides and these
columns are all meticulously

curved to create a vision
of absolute harmony and balance.

This building is a powerful
insight into the mentality

of the ancient Greeks,
their faultless precision,

their limitless ambition
and their fastidious eye for detail.

And yet at the same time the people
who built the Parthenon were

vastly different to us.

Their beliefs, their motivations,
their ways of life can seem

strange, unsettling
and sometimes downright alien.

So much of what we think
we know about ancient Greece turns

out to be different
from the reality.

Even this iconic building behind me
is not quite what it seems.

To get to the bottom of the great
legacies of the ancient Greeks

we have to understand
the realities of their world.

2,500 years ago,
there was no such thing as Greece.

Instead, the Greek world was made
up of over 1,000

independent communities spread
across the Mediterranean, described

by the philosopher Plato as being
like "frogs around a frog pond."

These communities inhabited
different landscapes,

and had distinct forms of
government, different loyalties and

contradictory ideas that frequently
set them against each other.

Yet there was something that linked
all these different

communities together
and distinguished them

from other cultures, those who the
Greeks called barbarians.

It was Herodotus,
the father of history, who first

put into words what made these
disparate communities gel together.

He put it like this,

"Common blood, common language,

"common shrines and rituals
and common customs."

That was, he said, what made up
To Hellenikon - The Greek Thing.

It was these elements that allowed
the Parthenon in Athens

and the community that surrounded it
to be linked to those in Sicily,

and to Greeks in North Africa
and to Asia Minor.

The ancient Greek world possessed
a unique dynamic,

a winning combination of rivalry
and difference on the one hand,

and shared culture, what
we now call Hellenism, on the other.

The great legacies
that are still with us

today are a product of this tension.

And there's no better
place to understand this than

one of the few locations where
Greeks from all over this

diverse world regularly came
together.

Olympia, home of the Olympic games,

one of the greatest of Greek
legacies.

Every four years, something like
we think 40,000 Greeks

came from all over the Greek world
here, to Olympia.

They came from Italy and Sicily,
from Greece, from Asia Minor,

from Africa, and they sailed
along rivers, crossed seas,

travelled on horseback,
in chariots or even on foot.

And when they got here,
there were no hotels,

most of them just pitched tents.

This was the single biggest
gathering of people

in the ancient Greek world.

It's said that by the time the
sun rose on the first

day of the games, there was not
a single space left.

In the words of the ancient Greek
poet Pindar,

"As in the daytime, there is no star
in the sky warmer

"and brighter than the sun,

"likewise there is no competition
greater than the Olympic Games."

The games lasted for five days

and consisted of a small
selection of sports.

There were running races,
the discus, the long jump -

which was performed from a standing
start with the aid of stones

or lead jumping weights -
and the javelin.

There were also horse races
and chariot races.

And there was the boxing,
and the pankration,

a no-holds-barred
kind of martial art.

But in ancient times, these sports
weren't carried out with

quite the same Olympic spirit that
defines the games today.

In 484 BC, the boxer Kleomedes was
disqualified for an illegal

manoeuvre that
left his opponent dead.

A couple of years earlier,
a wrestler had had his throat

crushed in the pankration.

And a boxer talked about how he had
lost an ear in a bout, another

time an eye, and before that he had
been stretchered off, presumed dead.

The ancient Olympics were violent,
and fiercely competitive and many of

the athletes bore the scars of their
engagements and some ended up dead.

Now, in our Olympic games, of course
winning is important

but we also subscribe to the
idea that it's the taking part

that counts, but in ancient Greece
that would have been an anathema.

Winning was everything.

This shared belief in winning,
in excellence,

was one of the bonds of Hellenism
that united

the thousands of disparate peoples
who journeyed here to Olympia.

But all this striving and all this
violence also had a greater,

and more surprising purpose.

Winners were seen as being
touched by the gods

and were raised above the station
of mere mortals.

For the ancient Greeks, competitive
sport was an act of worship.

And the real focus of the games lay
outside the stadium, with the Gods.

Olympia was the home of one
of the Greek world's most sacred

sanctuaries.

This whole area would have been
covered with monuments to the

gods, particularly to Zeus,
the ruler of all the gods.

In fact, the entire Olympic games
were held in his honour.

And most impressive of all
the monuments here at Olympia

was the magnificent Temple of Zeus.

This enormous block of stone gives
you a great sense of just how

big the Temple of Zeus really was.

It's my height, six feet in width,

and this was just one of the column
drums that made up

the columns of the Temple of Zeus.

And it was inside that temple that
stood one of

the seven wonders of the ancient
world, the colossal statue of Zeus

himself, made in ivory and gold
by the master sculptor, Pheidias.

It's the cost, the attention,
the effort paid to this temple

and to the statue that
underlines that it was religion,

not sport, that was the real
focus of the games.

In fact, the climax of the Olympics
was not an athletic

event at all but a great ritual
procession to the altar of Zeus.

But this was no altar as we know it.

The culmination of this religious
occasion was

the sacrifice of 100 oxen.

They were led in, their throats were
slit, their bodies cut up

and then their thigh bones
wrapped in fat,

deposited on Zeus's altar and burned
as an offering to the god.

But this was no altar made of stone.
Zeus's altar here at Olympia

was made up of the surviving ash and
congealed remains from every single

one of these sacrifices, from every
single Olympics in ancient history.

So we know that by the second
century AD this altar was

standing over 20 feet high.

I can imagine the blood, the smoke
the smell, the ash

settling on everyone around as
they watched this incredible sight.

Today, all that remains of the altar
are these votive offerings

which were once buried
amongst the ash.

Not only does this
emphasis on religion

change our understanding
of the Olympics, it's also something

of an earthier, grubbier view of the
ancient Greeks than we're used to.

We think of these sites
with their stunning architecture

and sculpture as somehow
elevated above worldly realities.

But the beauty of the monuments
can blind us to the

way they would have been
viewed in ancient times.

This beautiful sculpture once
stood around the Temple of Zeus

here at Olympia.

You can see her flying through
the air,

her cloak billowing out behind her.

Of course, at this time in Greek
art, the sculptor was not allowed

to show a woman fully naked.
It just wasn't done.

But here the sculptor has
brilliantly got around the rules

by having her flying though the air.

Her dress is pressed back
against her.

She might as well be naked,
but the crucial thing is she's not.

But this is also no ordinary
woman.

This is Nike,

the Greek personification
of victory itself.

We look at statues like this today
and marvel at their beauty.

But to the ancient Greeks, they
would also have been loaded with

a very different,
very violent, symbolism.

The inscription here reads:

HE SPEAKS GREEK

The Messenians

and the Naupactians set up to the
Olympian gods, a tenth,

a tithe, from the spoils of war.

This is no victory monument
to athletic success.

This is a victory monument
for battle.

And not just any battle,
but one of Greeks against Greeks -

the Messenians and Naupactians
against the Spartans.

Olympia was a place where the
brutal reality of war,

of Greeks fighting against Greeks,
was inescapable.

All over this site,
archaeologists have found

hundreds of pieces of armour -

helmets, shields and greaves -
from real battles

engraved to commemorate
different military victories.

These would have been displayed
all over the grounds during the

games, including in the middle
of the spectators in the stadium.

They would have been constant
reminders of both glorious

victories and devastating defeats.

As well as bringing Greeks together
through religious ritual,

Olympia reminded them
of the things that split them apart.

This is where the Nike would
have been placed,

on top of the tall,
triangular column

facing off against the temple and

against a Spartan monument that had
been put there some years earlier.

And around it was a cacophony
of monuments to competition,

rivalry and conflict and this was
the realities of ancient Olympia.

To get a sense of it today, I guess
we have to take our Olympic games

and add in the emotional tension
of a highly charged international

football match, the religious
importance of an event like Easter,

and then dial in the political
tension of a United Nations summit.

Take away any proper sanitation
and let it

stew for a week in the Greek heat,
that's the ancient Olympics.

No wonder in the ancient
world they said

if you wanted to punish a slave you
sent him to the Olympic Games.

For the ancient Greeks,
art and architecture

was much more than just
works of beauty to be admired.

As well as honouring the gods,
they were also

the means by which the different
cities

and individuals announced themselves
to each other and to the world.

Each monument carries
a message about the person,

or people who created it.

And there is no better example
of this than the Parthenon itself.

The Parthenon was born
in a particular time and place,

Athens in the 5th century BC,
around 30 years after the Greeks had

finally defeated the invading
armies of the great Persian Empire.

This victory over the Persians was
one of the finest

hours for Greece
and, in particular, for Athens.

For the Athenians the victory over
the Persians came at a high price.

The invaders swarmed across the
city, ransacking the buildings.

Then they moved on to the Acropolis.

They scaled the walls,
killed the defenders,

and then burnt its
temples to the ground.

For the next 30 years, the Athenians
left the Acropolis in ruins

as a constant memorial to the
sacrilege of the barbarians.

Standing above the city as it does,
it must have been that

kind of everyday reminder of just
how badly the Persians had

behaved, but also how close
the Athenians had come to defeat.

That was all until just after
the mid-5th century BC

when under the guidance of Pericles,

the Athenians finally decided to
rebuild their monuments.

These new monuments are a record
of how 5th century Athenians saw

themselves, and of how they wanted
to be seen by the wider world.

The new Acropolis was built,
quite literally,

from the foundations of the old.

These column drums,
built into the wall,

are remnants of one of the old
temples that the Persians destroyed.

And on top of the rock,
guarding the summit,

stood the original
statue of liberty.

The first site to have greeted
visitors as they emerged

on to the Acropolis was
the giant statue of Athena

that stood right there.

She was bronze, about
nine metres tall,

and she held a giant
spear in her hand.

She had been sculpted by Pheidias,

who made the statue of Zeus
at Olympia, and she was made

out of the spoils of war taken
by the Athenians from the Persians.

But the crowning glory was of course
the new Parthenon itself.

Standing on top of its ruined
predecessor,

it rose like a phoenix
from the ashes.

Around all four sides of the temple
there were sculptures

depicting epic battles
from the world of Greek myth.

They told a story of the struggle
between civilisation and barbarism,

and symbolised the triumph of heroic
Athenians over savage Persians.

These examples show Greeks
fighting centaurs.

The Greeks look noble and brave,

whereas the centaurs look cruel
and savage.

Here is a brutal centaur about to
trample a fallen Greek.

But overall it's the Greeks
who have the upper hand.

Here, a heroic Greek has grabbed
the centaur and is poised to strike.

All of these images contributed
to the same overall story,

which culminated with another
amazing statue.

Inside this enormous temple
stood a gigantic

statue of Athena in gold and ivory.

And in her hand, she held
a figure of Nike, of victory.

Everything around us on the
Acropolis speaks to that victory,

from the walls to the Parthenon, of
Athens' victory over the Persians.

So in reality the Parthenon is
not just a temple,

it's actually the most beautiful
victory monument in the world.

Just like the monuments at Olympia,

the monuments of Athens reflected
the identity of their creators.

They proclaimed to the world what it
was that made Athens different

and successful.

But although they tapped
into an important idea in Greek

thought of superiority over
the barbarians, not everyone

in Greece would have agreed with the
Athenians' glorious self-portrait.

After the Persian Wars were over,
Athens had established a league

of Greek states, mostly those
Greeks in the Aegean and in Asia who

resided closest to Persia, in order
to resist future Persian invasions.

But it was not long before Athens
had turned this

league into a tax-paying empire.

The Parthenon was built with monies
extracted from the cities

under the thumb
of the Athenian Empire,

and when it was built it became
the bank where the monies that

continued to be collected
from the Athenian Empire were kept.

So while to some this was
a symbol of victory and freedom, to

others in ancient Greece it was
a symbol of oppression.

As Plutarch put it, he said,

"The Greeks must consider this an
unendurable insult when Athens uses

"these moneys to gild and beautify
the city, like some vain harlot,

"all dolled up with precious stones,
statues and temples worth millions."

Plutarch's comments about
being dolled up like a harlot

make much more sense

when you realise that in ancient
times, the Parthenon

would have looked very different

from the clean marble structure
we admire today.

We're so used to thinking
of the sculptures and buildings

of the ancient Greek world as being
clean, off-white shining marble,

stone and clay, but this sculpture
paints a very different picture.

What we're looking at is surviving
paint here on the cloak

but also down here is the outline
of the armour, of the greaves.

And this is the reality. The ancient
Greek world wasn't monochrome.

It was technicolour.

Many sculptures and fragments
of buildings still bear traces

of colour today, but in most cases
the paintwork vanished long ago.

We know that parts of the Parthenon
building were painted,

but the great mystery has
always been

whether its sculptures were also
once covered in glorious colour.

Today, with the help of infra-red
imaging,

experts at the British Museum
have discovered

traces on the Parthenon sculptures
of a pigment called Egyptian Blue.

It's having a huge impact on the way
we view the ancient Greeks.

Their most iconic image,

the clean, off-white marble
Parthenon, is actually

a misunderstanding
of the ancient reality.

And we're looking at the figure
of Iris who was

the goddess of the rainbow.

To the naked eye there is
nothing there.

Yes, yes.

But with these techniques you
all of a sudden have a view that

hasn't been there for anyone
for thousands of years.

Because what happens is that
Egyptian Blue

has a very special property.

It absorbs visible light,

holds it in and then will re-emit
it as infra-red light, which will

show as a glowing
white against a grey background.

Fantastic. Well, let's take it away.
How do we start the process?

OK, so this is what the sculpture
looks like with no LED lights.

If I go there and move the light,
you look in the screen.

So at the moment I'm seeing
exactly the same picture.

But if I turn the lamp you
will see small...

It's just coming out of nowhere.

Yes, those are single
particles of Egyptian Blue.

How amazing.

So what I'm
seeing there is the colour that was

originally painted onto
the belt of Iris on the Parthenon?

Yes.

But this screen is very small,
we can actually look at it here.

Yeah, that's really coming
through there.

It's sparkling, almost like
diamonds.

It is, it is almost like diamonds.

You can see that all these particles
seem to be all merging together.

This seems to suggest that the actual
band was entirely painted

using Egyptian Blue.

And if we assume that, for
example, the garment was painted

white, it would have
had like a strong contrast.

Something very visible when they
were so far up above human height.

Correct.

I assume that as the sculptures are
so well sculpted they would have

been equally well painted, so she
would have been even more beautiful.

Than she is already.

Giovanni's techniques
have been a revelation.

As well as bands of colour
like Iris's belt,

they have revealed patterns
and shapes.

When used on this relief
from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus,

the imaging reveals that this
soldier would once have held

a sword in his hand.

And when shone on this horse,

we can see the decorative pattern on
the saddlecloth for the first time.

We are so wedded to the idea
of ancient Greek sculpture being

clean and white that this is not
an easy concept for us accept.

It's even harder
when you realise just how bright

pigments like Egyptian
Blue really were.

So can we get a sense of what this
Egyptian Blue

would have looked like?

Yes, here are two samples.

A block of raw pigment
and a bottle.

This was scraped off an architectural
block

by Charles Newton in the 1850s,

and he feared he would be
disbelieved,

so he took the precaution

of bottling some blue and bringing
it back with him to England.

It really is a strong blue,
isn't it?

Yes, exactly, a deep blue.

The sea in the afternoon.
The sea in the afternoon.

So for how long have we known or
suspected that the Parthenon

and other Greek buildings and
sculptures were painted?

The travellers,
the architects who went to Greece

and Turkey in the 18th and 19th
century, they became instantly

aware of the probability that all
ancient architecture was coated.

This is the colouring,
the geometric patterning in colour

decorating the entablature
of the Parthenon.

How shocking would that have been
to people in the 18th

and 19th century to hear that these
buildings were painted?

It's the habit of every generation
to corporately forget, isn't

it, that architecture in antiquity
was coloured, and sculpture too.

And it's the privilege of every
generation to rediscover that,

and our own generation recently did

so in a dramatic way, with
the discoveries of Giovanni Verri.

When we imagine an ancient world
full of colour, what does that

do to our understanding of what
being in the ancient Greek

world was really like?

We shouldn't think of it as a one
material marble culture at all.

We should think of it as composite.

In marble sculpture, the drill holes
were to fit the bits

and harness of the horses.

It increases the presence
of the monuments.

For example, cult statues were
highly coloured,

their eyes were inlaid,

and when you approached a cult
statue standing in its temple,

you approached an impersonation
of the god or goddess.

And the great impact was
overwhelming

and the colour assisted
that sense of awe.

Do you think,

given this revolutionary moment
and the discovery of colour,

do you think future generations

will again forget
and re-discover for themselves?

I do hope so because, having

participated in the rediscovery
of colour, I would hope that future

generations will have the same
joy of new discoveries to be made.

I never expected that
after 200 years of searching

the Parthenon sculptures
would reveal

the secret of the sparkly blue belt
of the messenger goddess, Iris.

And it enlivens our understanding,

but also energises our quest
to unravel the mystery

of the ancient world

and to understand it better in
the modern world.

We're still a long way from knowing
exactly how the Parthenon

would have been coloured, but we do
know that instead of looking

like this, it would
have looked something like this.

It's an amazing riot of colour,

with bronze adornments
glinting in the sun.

It makes us realise that
some of the most enduring

legacies of the ancient Greeks,

our sense of Classical Greek
architecture and sculpture,

have been shaped by our own
misunderstanding of the Greek world.

But there's also something else
we can learn from colour,

and it comes from looking
at where the different pigments

used by the ancient Greeks
actually came from.

This is gypsum, coming from Epirus
in northern Greece.

This is realgar, coming all
the way from the Caucuses.

This one is called limonite, known
to us as ochre,

coming from the island of
Cyprus.

This is chrusicalla, coming
from Attica in central Greece.

This is haematite, coming from the
island of Kea in the Aegean.

This is Cinabar, coming all the way
from Spain.

Lastly, my favourite, lapis lazuli
all the way from Afghanistan.

What this shows us
is that the temples

and sculptures of ancient Greece
were coloured with materials

that came not just from Greece
but from across Europe and Asia.

They were the result of a network

that criss-crossed the
ancient world.

But it was more than just coloured
pigments.

There were all kinds of goods
involved.

And one of the biggest hubs on this
entire network was Athens.

Athens was one of the most
cosmopolitan

places in all of Greece.

Traders were drawn here from far
and wide, bringing everything

from fish and fruit, to spices,
cushions and carpets.

As the Athenian statesman
Pericles boasted,

Athens was a city that threw
open its doors to the world.

And it wasn't just goods
travelling on this network,

it was people,
and with people came ideas.

Some of the most famous Greeks
to inhabit this city in antiquity

did not actually come from Athens,

but rather from the very boundaries
of the Greek world.

Aristotle came from Stageira in
northern Greece,

but came here to study

in Plato's Academy and eventually to
set up his own school of philosophy.

The father of history,
Herodotus was an outsider here.

He came from Halicarnassus
in modern day Turkey.

And the scientist-philosopher
Theophrastus

was from the island of Lesbos.

They were all part of a group
known here as metics,

coming from the Greek metoikos which
means "one who dwells among".

They could never be Athenian
citizens,

but they could live
and work in Athens.

The result was one of the most
dynamic intellectual

environments in history.

An environment that bred
something new, an intense

focus on what it is to be human.

This way of exploring the world was
pioneered by an Athenian

philosopher called Socrates.

He relentlessly questioned
the people of Athens,

encouraging them to investigate
the great issues of life -

courage, justice, virtue,
love and the soul.

He famously said that
an unexamined life

is not worth living.

And after Socrates
came his pupil, Plato.

In one of his most famous works,
The Republic,

he grappled with the question
of what makes

a good and just individual,
and what makes an ideal state.

Questions that we are still
struggling with today.

But what's most impressive about
the great philosophers

is the vast range
of their interests.

The book Problems contains examples
of the work of Aristotle.

It's not what he's most famous for,
but for me,

it brilliantly illustrates the
unbelievable extent of the curiosity

that defined him
and his successors.

Why in response to others yawning
do people usually yawn in return?

Why don't the parts of the body
in hot water sweat?

Why does everything appear to be
travelling in a circle

to those who are very drunk?

Why it is that the onion makes
the eyes water

to such an excessive degree?

All these problems begin with
the same word - why.

And with this question,

the ancient thinkers probed every
possible realm of knowledge.

This desire to question everything
was one of the defining

characteristics of the
intellectuals

who came together in Athens.

And it is reflected in the meaning
of the word philosophy itself.

First coined by the Greeks,
Philosophia, our philosophy,

simply means "love of wisdom".

I asked Professor Paul Cartledge
why Athens provided

the perfect climate for the pursuit
of wisdom, and what it might have

been like to live here alongside
such giants of Western thought.

You could call Athens
a city of words.

It really is, very importantly,
a city in which

matters are thrashed out verbally.

And it's very striking that these
intellectuals couldn't have done

what they did without the,
if you like, wireless network

that Athens provides, which
dynamises, galvanises thoughts.

Paint a picture for me of what it
might have been like to interact

with these people in Athens.
Where would you go to find them?

Well, we know that they were
star showmen.

Some philosophers, in other words,
gave display lectures

at which Athenians would
sit for entertainment.

After all,
no movies in ancient Athens.

And they did love talk,
so they loved hearing speeches.

Athens had a big space in the
middle, where people would hang out.

The Greek word is "Agora,"
somewhere where you gather together.

Hyde Park corner, if I can give
a very English analogy.

In other words, not a formal, actual
physical space - that comes later.

And we might think our picture of
ancient Greece was that they were

all sitting around doing nothing
all day, discussing philosophy.

I think we should get out of the way
first the idea that all Greeks,

as it were, all ancient Greeks
were philosophers.

Most Greeks, 90+% of them were doing
something to do with agriculture

and that's pretty time-consuming
and pretty back-breaking,

and actually you don't tend to want,
instantly to ponder

extremely difficult
philosophical problems.

Another Greek word, problem.

Obviously, some of the most famous
names that have come to us,

Aristotle, Plato, Socrates.

Socrates was asking the very big
questions - what is?

And then big abstract and justice.

And his technique would be to make
people realise that they knew

either nothing, or they knew very
much less than they thought

they knew, and quite often
a dialogue would end

on what was called "Aporia,"
no way forward.

Well, that's very dispiriting.
Most people like to be shown

the way to go, not to be told,
"You're at a dead end, mate."

And so a lot of Socrates' lessons
are questioning

how should one think about this
question - let's say justice.

Today we think of men like Socrates
with reverence.

But perhaps that's because we never
had to live alongside them.

For everyday Athenians,
his incessant questioning

provoked something closer to
irritation or even ridicule.

Socrates is said to have
considered himself

the gadfly of ancient Athens, there
to sting the city out of its stupor,

to make them reject any tradition

that didn't stand up
to rational argument.

But the result of it was

that he was always pointing out
Athens' moral weaknesses.

He was always criticising,
always philosophising

and it all got rather annoying.

The comic poet Eupolis
put it like this,

"I loathe that poverty-stricken
windbag Socrates,

"who's always contemplating
everything in the world,

"and yet doesn't know where his
next meal is coming from."

Even 2,000 years ago, no-one liked
an insufferable know-it-all.

But what happened next to Socrates
was quite shocking.

In 399 BC, Socrates was put
on trial and imprisoned.

He was charged with corrupting the
youth of Athens, of not believing

in the gods of the state and of
introducing his own divinities.

It didn't help that his
political affiliations

were also extremely unpopular.

He was found guilty by a
jury of 501 Athenians,

who sentenced him to death.

Athens, a city so proud of its
democracy and its freedom,

put to death one of
its brightest minds,

one of the founding
fathers of philosophy.

This extraordinary explosion of
philosophy in 5th century Athens

has had an enormous influence
on our thinking ever since.

One of the reasons why we see the
Greeks as our forefathers

is that they were the first
civilisation in Europe to ask

the big questions about life
that we still wrestle with today.

But the case of Socrates reminds
us of what we saw at Olympia,

that the Greeks were a people

who could be as ruthless
as they were remarkable.

Despite producing some of the
greatest minds in history

no-one was put on a pedestal.

A result of this was
that the ancient Greeks

could never get too comfortable.

They had to keep moving,
keep striving.

It was a trait of Hellenism that
defined the entire Greek world.

These are some of the most
impressive Greek ruins in the world,

but this is not Athens.
It's not even Greece.

This is the ancient Greek city
of Selinus, in Sicily.

Now, the ancient Greeks had been
moving around

the wider Mediterranean world
for centuries,

but it was in the last part of the
8th century BC that this process,

of not just travel but of
establishing new communities,

really took hold.

The colonists would have brought
with them the sacred flame,

the embers of the flame that burned
in the heart of their home community

to establish here
in their new world.

And, of course, with that flame
they also brought their customs,

their cultures, their way of life.

And in setting out that blueprint,
they would have established

their new community's temples.

This is a classic example of
Doric Greek architecture, and there

would have been sculptures adorning
this temple of Greek myths and gods.

But the architecture here was
about more than merely replicating

the culture of the mainland.

It was also about outdoing it. This
city contains the ruins of temples

that were destined to be amongst
the largest in antiquity.

Their floor plan alone gives some
sense of their size and scale.

Yet the greatest of them
was never completed.

In 409 BC, Selinus was invaded by
the Carthaginians in North Africa.

The inhabitants of Selinus fled
and their city was destroyed.

But this terrible disaster
has given us a rare insight

into the secrets of ancient
Greek construction.

An old road leads to the quarry
which provided the stone

for the city's temples.

When the invaders arrived,
the stonecutters fled.

And these incomplete column
drums have lain here,

as monuments to that moment,
ever since.

The column drums of the
extraordinary temple at Selinus

began life just like this one,
hewn out of the solid limestone,

and these ones are here today
because the quarry

was literally abandoned overnight,

the craftsmen never returning
to complete their work,

but on the other hand, it's because
of that catastrophe

that befell the city that we can
today still unlock the secrets

of how they created these
incredible monuments.

The shape of the column
would have been drawn out

onto the top of the rock,

before the stonecutters began
carving downwards.

These are the tell tale signs,
the striations

of all the chisel marks and tool
marks as slowly, slowly

this gap was worked down and down
around what would become

the column of the temple, until
they'd finally got far enough down

to create this extraordinary height.

Then, using wooded wedges that had
been soaked in water

so they expanded, or metal wedges
to drive in and cut off

each column drum, topple it over

and then start the hard business of
moving it towards the temple itself.

Wooden frames would have been
constructed around the columns,

and they were moved on wheels
or carts.

These square holes were used
to attach the wheels

and wooden frameworks
to the column drums.

The fluting, or vertical grooves,
common to Greek columns on temples

were only carved once the pieces
were all in place.

This temple never reached
that stage,

but if it had been finished,
it would have been enormous.

Each one of these column drums
weighs around 100 tons,

and the columns themselves would
have been over 16 metres high.

This incredible architectural skill
produced some of the most

colossal feats of architecture
in the ancient west.

And we may well ask why here?
Why Sicily?

In part it was because Sicily was on
the edge of the ancient Greek world,

and people at the edge of a
community tend to shout louder

to make themselves heard
as part of that group.

And shout loud the Sicilians
definitely did.

But it was also to do
with competition,

not just between the different
peoples of Sicily

but also with entirely different
parts of the ancient Greek world.

This was keeping up with
the Joneses writ large,

and that continual process
of competition

provoked artistic innovation
and perfection,

making Sicily one of the key
melting pots for the creation

of the physical legacies that have
defined the ancient Greek world.

In ancient Greece,
there was a fine line

between creative competition
and violent conflict.

These two forces were described
brilliantly by a Greek writer

called Hesiod as "good strife"
and "bad strife".

He said that bad strife was
destructive and led to war

and battle, but that "agathe eris"
- "good strife" - was when people

competed creatively and pushed
each other to even greater success.

Good strife pitted potter against
potter, craftsman against craftsman

and architect against architect,
inspiring an outpouring

of creativity that has only ever
been equalled by the Renaissance.

I would argue that it was this need
to balance good and bad strife

that pushed the Greeks to reach
such astounding levels

of achievement and to create
such an extraordinary legacy.

And this good strife was
at the heart of another

great Greek invention - theatre.

Theatre emerged in Athens in the
form of a drama competition,

but soon spread throughout
the Greek world.

It was particularly
popular in Sicily,

and this island is still home
to some of most beautiful

Greek theatres ever built,
like this one,

hewn into the hillside in Segesta.

The Greeks gave us the two
defining dramatic genres,

tragedy and comedy.

Without them, there would be no
Shakespeare, no Oscar Wilde,

no soap operas and no sitcom.

And it's here, in the theatre,
that the Greeks feel simultaneously

at their most familiar
and at their most alien.

Greek tragedy has given us
some of the most strange,

dark and brutal stories
of all time.

There are tales of murder,
vengeance, and incest,

of insanity and mutilation.

There are men who kill their
fathers and marry their mothers,

lovers who commit suicide, and
women who kill their own children.

These are bloody
and violent stories,

but they're much more than some sort
of weird form of entertainment

for the ancient Greeks.

They spoke to the dark side of
humanity and to the harsh

and unpredictable nature
of life itself.

And here in the Greek theatre,
these stories did something more

than that as well. They were
lessons. They were challenges.

My favourite line in Greek tragedy
is in Aeschylus' Libation Bearers,

and it's when Orestes is about
to get his revenge.

He's there, knife in hand,
about to kill his mother

and he panics and asks the question
"ti draso?" - "What shall I do?"

That is the key question of tragedy.

Tragedy didn't just tell
a nasty story

and let the audience walk away. No.

It asked them to respond, it
challenged them. What would they do

if they were caught in such
an impossible situation?

The result of all this

was something Aristotle
called catharsis.

It refers to the relief
and clarity that can come

from experiencing extreme emotions

in the controlled environment of
the theatre, and which leaves

the audience better equipped

to deal with their problems
in real life.

Tragedy, therefore, while it seems
violent and strange,

had a real purpose
in the Greek world.

But for me, it's actually
with comedy that we can see

most clearly what we have inherited
from the Greek theatre.

One of the most famous comic
playwrights in Greece

was an Athenian called Menander,
and as with all Greek theatre,

his plays were performed
with masks.

Comedy masks appear especially
alien and strange,

but when we look more closely at
the characters that they represent,

we find a society not that
dissimilar to our own.

In a typical plot you'd have
maybe a young man falling in love

with an experienced prostitute.

He's going to get a clever slave
who helps him along the way.

He's going to have a father who
might object, and somehow,

one way or another,

by the end of the play, they're
going to be happily married.

And obviously we've got
a collection here of masks.

How do they relate to the comedy
that we're talking about?

For Menander,

it was really helpful to have these
masks for the stock characters.

You could tell immediately, as the
audience, that you're looking at

the clever slave, just from the mask.

So, who do we have here?

Well, let's start with the lady.

Here we have, often called
the golden hetaerae,

which is just a word for prostitute.

She would be someone with
a lot of front,

someone who seems like she's
disinterested maybe in the plot,

but then turns out to have a heart of
gold and get involved and help out.

Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,
right? We're hoping.

Who else do we have down here?

Here, we've got your standard
young man.

In many of the plots, he's going to
be the one who falls in love,

but then he may be more or less
streetwise, depending on how

he's done, so you might think
about the difference

between Tim in The Office
and Simon in The Inbetweeners.

OK! Both are young men
who are in love,

but here we have the possibility
of different characterisation.

And this is obviously your
favourite down here,

you're keeping him
close to your heart.

This is the ruler slave.

He's cleverer than his master,
and he's often quite a deceptive

character, but really in quite a
charming way at the same time.

So I guess the modern equivalent
here would be Blackadder?

Blackadder, exactly,
Jeeves in Jeeves And Wooster,

maybe Humphrey in Yes, Minister.

So I guess step one is
to recreate the mask,

but step two,
to really understand this,

is to put them back
into performance.

Seeing them in action is where you
get to see that, really,

they're not just static, they don't
just have one fixed expression.

That's where you see how a character
can really colourfully

be brought out by masked theatre.

So this is giving us more of the
anxious face, the anxious slave.

Exactly. He's anxious, he's worried
about something, you can

see that by looking straight
at him there.

And then here's this transition,
where, actually, maybe he's having

an idea, and at that point
you start to see the eyes more.

And when you start to see the eyes
more, you get this sense of,

wait a minute, the cogs going
round in the brain

and, yes, he's got the idea!

And then looking up even further,
you're seeing the eyes,

the bulging eyes appearing.

Which tell us he's got the idea
but also bring out his cunning.

You can see now those crossed eyes
which make you think,

"Wait a minute, maybe I
don't really trust this guy."

So what do you think watching
this in performance does

for our understanding of how alien
ancient Greek theatre might seem?

I think it's exactly that idea that
it's alienating, but actually, when

you start watching a performance,

and seeing what the mask can do
and the emotions it brings out,

these characters become
really familiar.

And you realise actually this
is drama that we can understand,

this is drama we can tap into.

Tragedy, comedy, philosophy, art,
architecture and sport -

these were some of the great
innovations of the ancient Greeks.

But their mere invention
isn't enough to explain

why they have spread so far
or endured so long.

Something else happened that spread
what Herodotus called

"the Greek Thing" as far as
the Middle East and Asia.

That something was the impact

of a father and son
from Northern Greece.

King Philip II of Macedon,
and his son, Alexander the Great.

The question of who were the
Greeks cannot be answered

without considering two of the
most famous Greeks of all.

The Kingdom of Macedon was a land
of horses, huntsmen and warriors,

and under the leadership of
Alexander's father, King Philip II,

it had become a power
to rival Athens.

These treasures testify to the
wealth and artistic achievements

of Macedon, but also reveal
Philip's own ambition,

which was to become the single
leader of all the Greeks.

This silver banqueting set
belonged to Philip.

It features a representation of the
hero Heracles from Greek mythology.

The Macedonians emphasised
their Greekness by tracing

their royal line back
to Heracles himself.

This gold oak crown is one of the
most impressive artefacts

in all of Greece.

It has 313 leaves, 68 acorns
and would have been made

by some of the most skilled
craftsmen in the Greek world.

Philip was drawing the best
artists in Greece away

from Athens to Macedon.

This suit of armour was
found in Philip's tomb.

The ivory design on the shield
shows a classic scene

from Greek myth of the Greeks
defeating the Amazons,

and the armour itself includes this
- Athena, the symbol of Athens.

By becoming a patron of all that
the Greeks excelled in creating,

and by engaging with Greeks myths
and traditions, Philip preserved

and augmented the legacies
of the ancient Greek world.

With a combination of military
might and diplomacy, Philip brought

the independent cities of mainland
Greece under his leadership.

He prepared to embark
on a war of revenge

against Greece's age-old enemy,
Persia.

But before he could begin,
he was assassinated,

and the leadership of Greece
passed to Alexander.

Alexander pursued
his father's campaign,

and in the process,
conquered a vast empire

that stretched from Europe
to the shores of India.

And it's the way in which he
secured his empire

that helps to explain the lasting
endurance of Greekness.

These are the ruins of Priene,

a small Greek city
near the Turkish coast.

And in ancient times, this city
had one great claim to fame.

In the fourth century BC,
the citizens of Priene decided

to rebuild their city in this
extraordinary location,

and at its heart would be
the Temple of Athena Polias,

the temple to the city's main deity.

It was designed by one of ancient
Greece's master architects, and its

architecture came to be seen as a
perfect example of the Greek style.

But what's really fascinating
about this temple is an inscription

that once stood on the
south wall of the temple,

facing out over the plain below.

And it read like this,

"King Alexander dedicated this
temple to Athena Polias."

Alexander the Great came here
and paid for this temple

as part of his conquests
heading east.

Alexander spread Greek
culture across his empire.

He founded new Greek-style cities,
sponsored temples to the Greek gods,

and got his generals
to stage Greek plays.

But he also realised that he could
not secure his power and position

through force alone.

He had to work with local
inhabitants.

Alexander took Greek culture
further east,

but he also mixed it as he went
with local traditions,

so he used Persian officials
and systems of government.

He wore Persian dress, he and his
officers married Persian wives.

And what he created as a result was
a much bigger but also much

more mixed, cosmopolitan world
and there's no better example

of how that cosmopolitanness
defined that world than this.

This is a replica of a coin minted
by one of Alexander's successors,

and it shows Alexander wearing the
ram's horns of the god Zeus Ammon,

a god that was itself the creation
of a mix of Greek culture

and Egyptian culture -

the Greek god Zeus
and the Egyptian god Ammon.

It was a god that Alexander claimed
to be a descendent of,

and the fact that his successors
have chosen this hybrid image

shows that it was a powerful symbol
in a world in which Greek culture

mixed with local traditions from the
Nile all the way to the Himalayas.

This mixing of cultures is one of
the things that allowed

the great legacies of ancient
Greece to take hold

across Alexander's empire,

and to be woven into the fabric of
the civilisations that followed.

But that isn't the end
of the story.

Alexander the Great soon left
Priene to continue his conquests

further east, but this temple wasn't
completed for another 300 years,

and it's this inscription that tells
us who was finally responsible.

It reads like this,

"Demos" - the people, "Athenai
Poliadi" - to Athena Polias,

and - "kai".

"Autokratori kaisari, theowhoyoui
theoi, sebastoi anatheykin."

The people erected this temple
to Athena Polias

and to the emperor, Caesar,
son of a god, god, Sebastos -

the Greek for the
Roman Emperor Augustus.

In the second century BC,

Greece was conquered by the
expanding Roman Empire.

It was Augustus, who came to power
in the late first century BC,

who oversaw the completion
of this Greek temple.

But he chose to keep
the original Greek design.

The Romans saw the Greeks
as military weak,

but artistically supreme.

They adopted and promoted Greek
cultural achievements so much

that one writer quipped that,
in effect,

though Greece had lost the battle,
it had won the war.

To understand the power and
tenacity of the Greek legacies,

we need to realise that the Romans
were fundamentally involved

in shaping what we see
as ancient Greece today.

One of Augustus's successors
was the emperor Hadrian,

who was a lover of Greek culture.
In fact, it's in part thanks to

Hadrian that the city of Athens
was transformed into a beacon

for the greatness of Greece
in the Roman world.

And there's no better example of
that transition

than the extraordinary temple
of Olympian Zeus.

The Greeks failed to finish it,
whereas Hadrian completed it.

And in that process of not just the
preservation but the augmentation

of the realities of ancient Greece,
Hadrian was part of the way Rome

stage-managed Greece's transition
into the icon that it is today.

The Romans were just the first
of many cultures who have,

in admiring and learning from the
Greeks, also shaped their legacy.

It's a process that continues
to this day.

There's no better symbol of the ways
in which the wonders

of ancient Greece have been reshaped
and reworked over time

than the Parthenon.

It began as a symbol
of victory and freedom,

but became the place from which the
Greeks honoured the Roman emperors,

and since then it's been
a Christian church, a mosque,

even a gunpowder store,
amongst other things.

And today it is being restored
to one moment in that story,

to the golden age of ancient Greece,
but without the paint,

because we're still
not ready to accept

that version of ancient Greece.

We are still absolutely implicit

in shaping the answer to the
question, who were the Greeks?

The Greeks gave us
some amazing legacies,

things we can't imagine
living without today.

Because of their brilliance and
appeal to societies ever since,

their genius is still
all around us.

Their legacy is so strong that, in
a way, I believe we are all Greeks.

And when we trace these legacies
back to the people who created them,

we find an unexpectedly large,
diverse and interconnected world.

We find a people propelled
by good strife,

to reach ever-greater
creative achievements.

A people who never stopped
asking why.

But they also challenge some of
our strongest preconceptions

about their world and our own.

They painted their sculptures
in vibrant colours,

they could be violent and cruel

and they refused to put anyone
on a pedestal.

Without doubt, the ancient Greek
world has had a major impact

on our own, but its legacy has also
been a movable feast,

because of the way
that every generation

has reformulated and recast it.

And that makes ancient Greece

the perfect combination
of icon and enigma.

And that, for me, is what's
so unique about their legacy.

Asking who were the Greeks
means asking who we are,

and stops us from becoming too
comfortable in the answer,

and that can only be a good thing.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media