Original subtitles

male narrator: This week on "Ancient Top 10,"

a mighty Roman siege tower

the size of the Statue of Liberty

unleashed against a mountain fortress.

- It's clear that the Romans

were going to stop at nothing to win this.

narrator: The greatest city of the ancient world

overrun by barbarians.

- The Romans enslaved entire cultures.

They slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people.

But now they're on the receiving end.

How are they gonna handle that?

narrator: A brutal, violent siege

that ended in human cannibalism.

- First they ate their horses, then their camels,

and eventually they resorted to eating each other.

narrator: And the ultimate devious siege weapon,

which shows you should never look a gift horse in the mouth.

- 40 feet high, 50 feet long,

and inside, 40 Greek soldiers ready to pounce.

narrator: Where will they be ranked

on the only top ten list

thousands of years in the making?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Cities and fortresses were the power bases

of the ancient world.

They attracted wealth and prosperity

but were also a target.

♪ ♪

Enemies would do anything to take them,

and the most effective way to do that was through sieges--

surrounding the cities and cutting off their supplies.

- As long as we've had cities and fortresses,

we've had siege warfare.

The defenders have to wait it out.

The attackers have to find a way to starve them, thirst them,

or just make them give up.

narrator: This week on "Ancient Top 10,"

it's ancient sieges...

ranked according to the devastation caused.

[rock music]

Standing tall at number ten

is the siege of a formidable fortress in the sky...

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

The Roman siege of Masada.

- When we're talking about top ten sieges of all time,

Masada has to be in there.

You can't even argue with that.

narrator: This is Masada,

an isolated mountain fortress in Israel.

♪ ♪

In 72 AD, Jewish rebels known as the Sicarii

had revolted against Roman rule.

The Romans were determined

to stamp out the rebellion for good.

♪ ♪

The Sicarii had taken refuge here at Masada,

which they thought was impregnable.

- Masada is a superfortress.

The Sicarii had seized it,

and they were using it against the Romans.

narrator: The Sicarii were well stocked

with food and provisions.

And, crucially, they had their own cistern

built into the mountain,

so they had all the fresh water they needed.

- A fortress on top of a plateau

is a very difficult target to take.

A fortress on top of a plateau that had its own water supply,

its own food supply,

and an ability to wait out a fight

was really difficult.

The Romans had their work cut out for them.

narrator: The only way up to Masada

was by a steep, narrow path.

That would mean that the 10,000 Romans

could only attack single file,

making it too easy for the defenders to pick them off.

But the Romans were prepared to do whatever it takes.

In just a few days, they built a wall five miles long

all around the mountain.

Now nothing could get in or out.

Their next move was even more extraordinary.

- Imagine you're one of the Jewish rebels

up on that hilltop of Masada.

You've seen the Romans construct a huge wall

trapping you inside.

And then they start to build a ramp.

♪ ♪

- The Romans are smart about this.

All around the plateau, it's 400 feet to the top,

except for one point, it's only 240 feet.

And that's where they start to build.

- It's actually hard to get your head around

how massive the Masada ramp is.

It's 650 feet long,

it's 240 feet high,

and it means that the soldiers and the slaves who built it

had to shift half a million tons of earth.

narrator: In just two months, by muscle power alone,

they moved the equivalent weight

of 1 1/2 Empire State Buildings.

The ramp was so solid that nearly 2,000 years later,

it's still a part of the landscape.

- Today we're quite fond of the phrase "move any mountain"

to talk about getting something done at all costs.

Well, the Romans did just that.

And I don't think there's any greater demonstration

of Roman intelligence, tenacity, and just refusal to say no.

♪ ♪

narrator: This was

an incredible engineering achievement.

But the Romans still needed to storm the fortress.

- Once the ramp was completed,

the Romans brought out a siege tower.

[dramatic music]

It was high enough to scale the walls,

it had a battering ram to break through walls,

it had catapults and artillery weapons,

and it was armor-plated.

- The siege tower was about 90 feet high.

That's almost the height of the Statue of Liberty.

Now, up above, the Jewish rebels think they're safe.

Now they see this big, massive tower of death

slowly making their way towards them.

It would have been a terrifying sight.

[men yelling]

narrator: Hundreds of soldiers pushed this vast tower

up the steep ramp and into position.

At last they were able to storm the walls

of this seemingly impregnable fortress

and take Masada by force.

- But when they got to the top,

they couldn't see a single defender in front of them.

The Jewish rebels had already taken care of that

and committed suicide.

So basically they robbed the Romans of victory

by taking their own lives.

♪ ♪

narrator: Despite months of defending Masada,

the Sicarii's resistance proved futile.

Nothing could stand in the way of the Roman war machine.

♪ ♪

But 400 years before the Romans moved a mountain,

Alexander the Great topped this by turning the sea into land.

♪ ♪

At number nine...

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

It's the siege of Tyre.

- No matter the topic, no matter the list,

if we're dealing with ancient military history,

Alexander the Great is gonna show up.

narrator: In the fourth century BC,

Alexander the Great was on the rampage.

He had taken control over all of Greece.

Next in his sights were Persia and the kingdoms of the East.

[men yell]

But there was one island fortress in his way:

the Phoenician city of Tyre,

on the coast of modern-day Lebanon.

- Alexander the Great is acclaimed to be

one of the greatest military leaders of all time.

But when he tried to attack the naval base of Tyre,

things went badly wrong for him.

And if you could make Alexander look like an amateur,

you deserve your place in the top ten.

narrator: Alexander's first move

was to send in diplomats to negotiate the city's surrender.

♪ ♪

- The Phoenician response was to take the entire team

and throw them off the 200-foot city walls.

Needless to say, Alexander did not take kindly to this.

narrator: He decided to take the city by force.

But Alexander didn't have a navy,

so how could he lay siege to an island city

half a mile from the mainland?

[music intensifies]

Simple: he changed the sea into land.

- Alexander demanded a causeway to be built

to get across the water, and in a brilliant move,

he had the landside buildings destroyed

to build this causeway.

It was 3,000 feet long and 200 feet wide.

- The people, they can see it.

It's coming towards them day by day by day.

And at the head of it, huge siege towers.

The people of Tyre, they need an answer,

and they need it fast.

[rock music]

narrator: The answer they came up with

was devastating.

It was a revolutionary military weapon.

- A fireship. They built a fireship.

And it had cauldrons filled with a secret explosive liquid.

They crashed it into the causeway,

and it exploded in a 500-foot fireball.

narrator: The Phoenicians had the first recorded use

of a fireship in history.

- The sea was on fire, and those huge siege towers

crammed with soldiers were all consumed.

Alexander's men were jumping into the sea

to escape the flames, but there was no escape,

because the sea itself was on fire.

For the Greeks, it would have been Armageddon.

[dramatic music]

narrator: Alexander had more than his fingers burnt.

His reputation as a great general

was also in danger of going up in flames.

Could this tiny city defend itself

against the might of history's greatest leader?

Find out on "Ancient Top 10."

[dramatic percussive music]

♪ ♪

narrator: This is "Ancient Top 10"'s countdown

of ancient sieges, ranked by the devastation caused.

[man yells]

And we're at number nine.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great was besieging

the Phoenician island city of Tyre in the Mediterranean.

But his strategy to attack

by sending mighty siege towers across a manmade causeway

had been shot down in flames

by the Phoenicians' explosive fireship.

Alexander had no navy of his own at hand,

so he called upon his allies and assembled a naval force

capable of mounting an attack by sea.

♪ ♪

Alexander brought his ships right up to the city walls

and pounded them with battering rams.

♪ ♪

- The siege of Tyre took Alexander months--

months of battering, hammering, and building.

So when he got inside the city, you can bet he was angry.

- Now, if you are going to resist Alexander the Great

and burn his men alive, you better not lose.

- 6,000 are immediately killed, and 2,000 were crucified.

The women and children were spared,

but they were sold off to slavery.

This was brutal.

narrator: Now master of both land and sea,

he rampaged through Persia,

going on to create one of the world's largest empires.

Undefeated in battle, history remembers him

as one of the most successful generals

the world has ever seen.

♪ ♪

Next in our countdown, another David-versus-Goliath battle.

Could the ancient world's greatest inventor

really have created a death ray

and a steam cannon

hundreds of years before the discovery of gunpowder?

[dramatic music]

At number eight...

♪ ♪

The siege of Syracuse.

In the third century BC,

the kingdom of Syracuse on the island of Sicily

faced a new, terrifying threat.

- Syracuse is in the path of an expanding Roman empire,

an empire that's gobbling up every city-state and country

in the Mediterranean.

Rome is bringing with them a professional army

and 60 state-of-the-art warships.

Syracuse is being attacked by the world's leading superpower.

narrator: Syracuse was seen as an easy target.

But the Romans were in for a shock.

- Syracuse had a secret weapon:

a man, a genius called Archimedes.

narrator: Archimedes was a scientist

who invented terrifying new weapons

that could be used against the Romans.

From the city walls,

the Archimedes Claw grabbed enemy ships

and wrenched them from the water.

[crash]

A team of men could lift a 60-ton ship with it.

And this wasn't even the most extraordinary

of his inventions.

- There's a story

that Archimedes actually invented a cannon

that fired projectiles only powered by steam.

Now, if that's true, it means it pre-dates

any other kind of cannon by hundreds of years.

narrator: Confident in their defenses,

the Syracusians became complacent,

giving the Romans the perfect opportunity to attack.

- When the Romans finallyre break through,

they've seen so many of their fellow soldiers killed

by Archimedes' incredible inventions,

they're furious and they go on a killing spree,

resulting in 10,000 people dead.

And the ones that survived were sold off into slavery.

- That's combat. Those are the rules of battle.

When you win, you win.

narrator: But the Romans weren't content

with taking just the city.

They wanted to capture the mastermind

behind the super-advanced weapons.

- The soldiers were told

to find and capture Archimedes alive.

Archimedes was at home,

and he was so busy working on a mathematical problem

that when soldiers burst into his home,

he didn't say who he was;

he told them to get out because he was busy

and didn't want to be disturbed,

which meant that they slaughtered him on the spot,

and it meant that we lost one of the greatest minds

that the ancient world ever gave us.

♪ ♪

- Now, we don't know if Archimedes' weapons

had more of a psychological or physical impact,

maybe a combination of both.

The point is, they gave Syracuse such a leg up in this fight

that it gets on our top ten list.

narrator: From weapons of science fiction

to mass crucifixion.

The next siege on our list

turns a holy city into a genocidal wasteland.

At number seven...

[dramatic music]

The Roman siege of Jerusalem.

- The Romans could be your best friends

or your worst enemies,

and you didn't want to be on the wrong side of them,

because you could expect an extreme response,

a response like genocide,

and that's exactly what happened in Jerusalem.

[people yelling]

narrator: It was one of the bloodiest sieges in history.

But what gruesome end would come

to those who crossed the Romans?

It's coming up on "Ancient Top 10."

[dramatic percussive music]

♪ ♪

narrator: This is "Ancient Top 10"'s

"Greatest Sieges of the Ancient World,"

and we're at number seven...

[dramatic music]

The Roman siege of Jerusalem.

[low music]

In 66 AD, Jerusalem was under Roman rule.

But there was growing anger

about the occupation of the city.

- Jerusalem is a powder keg waiting to explode,

and when the Roman governor raids the Jewish temple

for silver-- and it's their most holy place--

all hell breaks loose.

narrator: The governor of Jerusalem

had been ordered to seize the silver

by Emperor Nero to help fund his greed.

- [crying]

narrator: This triggered a rebellion

that lasted four years

and led to the siege of the city

by Roman general Titus in 70 AD.

[dramatic music]

After gathering troops and weapons,

he started his assault at the city walls.

♪ ♪

- Some of the stone throwers the Romans were using

to attack Jerusalem are 40 feet high

and can throw boulders up to 100 pounds.

They mean business.

- This was a showcase of Roman engineering and military might,

and it only took them a few days to break through.

♪ ♪

narrator: The Jewish rebels retreated,

taking refuge in the temple and its surrounding streets.

- Titus knows that fighting in a built-up area

is the easiest way to lose thousands of troops.

So Titus has enough.

He steps back, builds a wall around them,

and waits for them to starve.

- The key principle of a siege is to trap your enemy

inside a small place and then wait.

You wait for them to starve.

You wait for them to get sick.

You wait for them to become so desperate

that they become a very, very weak enemy.

narrator: And starve they did.

- They were forced to eat anything they could--

rubbish, leather.

There are even accounts

that people were forced to eat their own children.

narrator: After waiting outside the walls,

Titus then went in to finish the job.

- When the Romans finally break through into Jerusalem,

they're in a bloodlust.

They set fire to the main temple

and go on a killing spree.

narrator: It's thought that up to 30,000 were killed

in the slaughter.

- Anyone who tried to escape the siege

was caught and crucified.

It was said that about 500 crucifixions a day

were taking place,

and the Roman soldiers got so bored of nailing people up

that they started to nail them up

in different postures just to entertain themselves.

The other story

is that they eventually had to stop crucifying people

because they ran out of wood to nail them to.

narrator: The holy temple was so thoroughly destroyed

that only one wall, the Wailing Wall,

still stands today,

so called because people came here

to mourn the temple's destruction.

Nothing was left behind.

- Jerusalem's temples were stripped of all their treasure.

narrator: And the Romans honored

their victorious general with the Arch of Titus,

which still stands in Rome today.

But in our next siege,

could ancient napalm save an entire city?

[dramatic music]

Coming in at number six,

the Arab siege of Constantinople.

- Constantinople, which we know as Istanbul

in modern-day Turkey,

was really the jewel of the East,

the gateway to the East,

and the seat of power for Eastern Christendom.

Everybody in that area wanted it.

Everybody in that area would do anything to get it.

narrator: Back in the 4th century AD,

Constantinople became the capital of the Roman Empire,

making it the greatest power in the world.

♪ ♪

It was protected by some of the best fortifications

in the ancient world--

not one wall but a double wall

up to 40 feet high and 12 feet thick.

[percussive music]

But in 717 AD, the city faced its greatest challenge.

A massive Arab invasion force was attacking Constantinople

by both sea and land.

[army yelling]

- The troops of Constantinople were outnumbered ten to one,

but they use guerrilla warfare and they raid the Arab lines,

taking supplies as they need.

And when the Arab relief ships show up,

out comes the wildfire.

narrator: Wildfire, Constantinople's secret weapon,

also known as Greek fire.

It was a liquid inferno, so effective

because it couldn't be extinguished by water.

Its ingredients were top secret and are still a mystery today.

- Accounts of Greek fire show

that it was the ultimate weapon of terror,

a liquid that could burn on water.

It would be shot by a jet to about 150 feet,

accompanied by smoke and the sounds of thunder.

It would have been absolutely terrifying.

narrator: Ancient writings describe it

destroying the Arab ships.

♪ ♪

And it was followed by the collapse of the land army.

- The winter was particularly brutal,

and the Arabs ran out of food.

First they ate their horses, then their camels,

and eventually they resorted to eating each other.

[men shouting]

- The Arabs arrived at Constantinople

with an estimated 210,000 men and 2,500 ships.

But the defense of Constantinople

was so great and so ferocious

that the Arabs were forced to admit defeat

and only went home with 30,000 men and just 5 ships.

narrator: That's one of the highest loss rates

of any battle in history.

♪ ♪

- The Arab siege of Constantinople

was one of the most crucial moments in Western history.

If Constantinople had fallen,

the world as we know it would be completely different.

narrator: Constantinople was saved.

Islamic expansion into Europe was stopped

for almost a millennium, with Europe remaining Christian.

♪ ♪

Coming up, an ancient blitzkrieg.

How would the world's most bloodthirsty army

destroy hundreds of years of human knowledge?

[dramatic percussive music]

[rock music]

narrator: We're now halfway through our historic list

of the greatest sieges of the ancient world.

♪ ♪

At number ten

was the extraordinary Roman siege of Masada.

Number nine was Alexander the Great's takeover of Tyre.

At number eight, the Romans against Archimedes at Syracuse.

And number seven, the brutal attack on Jerusalem.

At number six was the Arab siege of Constantinople.

But now we're into the top five,

and it's the finest hour of the greatest Roman.

[dramatic music]

The siege of Alesia, led by Julius Caesar.

- Julius Caesar is one of the greatest generals,

and the siege of Alesia, it's one his greatest moments.

He's bold and audacious and thinking the unthinkable.

narrator: It's 52 BC, and Julius Caesar

is on a mission to bring Gaul, what is modern France,

under Roman control.

But the Gaul leader the great warrior king Vercingetorix

is determined to stop him.

He and his men take up position

in an impregnable hill fort in the town of Alesia.

- 80,000 Gauls, armed to the teeth,

dying to take on the Romans.

They're ready for a fight.

narrator: Caesar's troops arrive at Alesia,

and so Vercingetorix sends word for aid.

A huge army of reinforcements are on the way

to join the Gauls.

Caesar will be outnumbered four to one.

- Most generals in this position would turn and flee,

but Caesar decides to stay and fight.

He orders one of the greatest siegeworks in history.

Caesar's troops dig a trench

all the way around the Gaul stronghold.

This trench is 20 foot deep and 25 miles long.

[low music]

narrator: Then they build their own walled fortification--

one wall to surround the Gauls inside the hill fort,

and a second, outer wall is to protect Caesar's men

from the approaching army of reinforcements

called in by Vercingetorix.

Caesar lays in wait in the area between the walls.

♪ ♪

- Assaulting a fortified position,

that's the most deadly part of siege warfare.

So what does Caesar do?

He turns it around.

He gives his enemies no choice

but to assault his own fortified positions.

That is total genius.

narrator: Just as Caesar predicted, the Gauls attack,

but they're no match for the well-defended Romans.

- In total, the Gauls lose 90,000 men to Caesar's 12,000.

This is a crushing defeat for the Gauls.

narrator: Victory at this incredible siege

allowed Caesar to conquer the rest of Gaul,

what is now France,

and the Roman Empire spread across Europe.

From military genius to monstrous brutality.

Next in our countdown,

the horsemen of the apocalypse are at the gates.

[dramatic music]

It's the Mongol siege of Baghdad.

- The Mongols are coming.

They're coming for the Middle East,

a frightening prospect.

They are unparalleled in their ferocity.

narrator: In 1258 AD, the Mongols were

one of the ancient world's most ruthless and efficient armies.

They had already conquered China and much of Asia.

♪ ♪

Their target now?

The center of the Islamic empire, Baghdad,

a great cultural center of learning.

- Baghdad should be pretty well defended.

Its walls are formidable.

They're 150 feet thick, 100 feet high.

The four city gates are made of iron,

and each takes 30 men just to close them.

narrator: Baghdad refuses to submit.

But they have severely underestimated the Mongols.

- The Mongols have conquered Asia,

and through diplomacy, fear, and conscription,

they've created an army of 200,000 soldiers.

narrator: They're armed

with state-of-the-art siege technology

from their conquered enemies,

such as trebuchets, capable of throwing projectiles

from over a quarter of a mile away.

After six days of constant barrages and attacks,

the city's defenses were breached.

- When the Mongols finally entered the city of Baghdad,

there was a week of pillaging.

narrator: Ancient reports claim

that up to a staggering one million people

were slaughtered within the city walls.

[people screaming]

- The smell of death from Baghdad was so bad,

the Mongols actually had to move their entire camp upwind.

- As well as slaughtering thousands, they committed

one of the greatest cultural atrocities in history.

They destroyed the Baghdad library,

which once held the greatest collection of books

in the world.

And it was said that so many books

were thrown into the river

that the waters ran black with ink.

narrator: Priceless texts and centuries of knowledge

lost forever.

We can only wonder what the world would have been like

if it wasn't for this brutal siege.

Coming up, how could a horde of barbarians

take down the greatest empire in the ancient world?

And hold your horses.

The most cunning siege of all time.

[dramatic percussive music]

narrator: The greatest sieges

have changed the course of history.

They have determined the fate of empires.

It's time for the top three in our list of ancient sieges,

ranked by devastation caused.

And at number three, the greatest military power

now gets a taste of its own medicine.

[dramatic music]

The siege of Rome.

- The Romans enslaved entire cultures.

They slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people.

But now it's Rome that's under siege.

They're on the receiving end.

How are they going to handle that?

narrator: By 408 AD,

the Roman Empire had grown so large,

Constantinople ruled over the eastern half,

while Rome remained the capital of the western empire.

It was simply unthinkable for it to fall.

But it was under threat from the Barbarian king Alaric,

who wanted its land, power, and money.

Together with his Germanic tribe, the Visigoths,

he marched on the city.

♪ ♪

- The walls of Rome--

50 feet high, 11 feet thick, and a circuit of 12 miles.

The Romans thought they were impregnable.

But the Visigoths have a plan.

- They turned Roman engineering against itself.

They cut off the aqueducts.

They cut off the water supply.

They stopped food coming into the city,

so the once great city of Rome was slowly starving to death.

narrator: Rome had bought itself peace...for now.

But two years later, Alaric went back for more.

The Visigoths storm into the city.

They steal anything and everything of value.

In its 800-year history, the city of Rome

had never fallen to an enemy until now.

- That sent shock waves right across the Mediterranean world.

What you're really seeing here

is the beginning of the end of Western Rome.

narrator: The Western Roman Empire fell,

Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages,

and such culture and civilization

wasn't seen again for 1,000 years.

But that was nothing compared to our next epic siege.

Ancient black ops,

the ultimate infiltration mission

thousands of years ago.

At number two, beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

[dramatic music]

[percussive music]

The siege of Troy.

- There are several ways to end a siege.

The first is a frontal assault, which is gonna cost you a lot.

You could also starve them out.

The final option is to use deception,

which is exactly what the Greeks did.

narrator: And the greatest deception of all time,

devised by the Greeks to win the siege of Troy.

- The story of the siege of Troy

is one of the greatest stories on Earth.

And this is a story that was never forgotten.

narrator: The siege of Troy was always thought to be a myth.

But in the 1870s,

archaeologists uncovered a city in Turkey

which is now widely accepted to be the location

of ancient Troy.

Subsequent evidence has shown

there was a great battle and destruction,

meaning that the epic tale could be true.

[rock music]

According to the story, Helen, a beautiful Greek queen,

was abducted by Paris, a prince of Troy.

The Greeks mount a rescue

with a fleet of more than 1,000 ships.

But when they arrive at Troy,

they find its walls are impregnable.

- The Greeks have no way to take the city,

and the Trojans don't have enough guys

to go out and crush the Greeks,

so what we end up having is this stand-off,

and it lasts for ten years.

narrator: Eventually, the Greeks retreat,

leaving only a large wooden horse outside the city.

But it was all a deception.

- The Trojan horse is arguably

the most famous siege machine in all of history--

50 feet long, 40 feet high,

and inside, 40 Greek soldiers ready to pounce.

- The mental toughness of these guys

must have been incredible.

It's like a modern soldier on a black op in a helicopter.

These guys, they were ancient Navy SEALs.

♪ ♪

narrator: Thinking the Greeks had given up and gone home

and left the giant horse as an offering to their gods,

the Trojans wheeled the gift into the city.

Perhaps they could benefit from offering it to their own gods.

♪ ♪

After patiently waiting for the cover of night,

the Greek commandos crept out, killed the Trojan guards,

and waited for the rest of their army,

who had sailed back in secret.

- The Greeks come back,

and their commandos let them in at the gates.

The Trojans are exterminated,

and the city of Troy is destroyed.

narrator: The siege and the abduction of the Greek queen

are over, ended by the Trojan Horse,

a deception so ingenious that we still talk about it today.

[people screaming]

Coming up, the apocalypse of the ancient world.

What superpower was wiped off the face of the planet

in our number one most devastating ancient siege?

[dramatic percussive music]

narrator: The most devastating sieges of the ancient world.

This is "Ancient Top 10"'s historic countdown,

and we've seen some brutal and world-changing military sieges.

At number ten was the breach

of the impregnable Masada fortress.

At number nine, Alexander's conquest of Tyre.

Number eight was the Roman siege of Syracuse.

And at number seven, mass slaughter in Jerusalem.

At number six, hellfire at the siege of Constantinople.

And at number five, the genius of Julius Caesar at Alesia.

Number four was the horrific siege of Baghdad by the Mongols

and number three the sacking of Rome.

And at number two,

the deviousness of the Greeks at Troy.

But there's one siege

more devastating than all the rest,

an ancient apocalypse

that ended in complete destruction of a city

and brought down an empire.

The number one most devastating ancient siege...

[triumphant music]

The Roman siege of Carthage.

- This siege deserves to be at the top of the list,

because during it, an ancient superpower

was wiped off the face of the Earth.

narrator: For much of the first millennium BC,

the Carthaginian Empire dominated the Mediterranean.

They had the world's greatest navy

operating from their base in Carthage,

on the coast of North Africa.

But they had a rival across the sea, Rome.

Rome had conquered Italy and the strategic port of Syracuse

and wanted to take the entire Mediterranean for themselves.

[sweeping music]

But Carthage stood in their way.

♪ ♪

- Rome versus Carthage--

bound to clash, but neither giving up

until the other has been reduced to ashes.

narrator: After over 100 years of brutal wars and conflicts

between these two great powers,

Rome had gained the upper hand,

and they eventually bring the fight

to the city of Carthage itself.

They demanded complete surrender.

- In 149 BC, 80,000 Romans troops arrive

and tell the horrified population to open their gates.

They refuse, and the siege of Carthage begins.

[rock music]

- Carthage was protected by 23 miles of wall.

Now, to put that in perspective,

at that time, Rome was only protected by five miles.

narrator: These 45-feet-high walls

made Carthage the best-fortified city

in the world at the time.

[dramatic music]

They were so large that 20,000 Carthaginian soldiers

lived inside them along with 300 war elephants.

[elephant trumpets]

The city itself was transformed into a giant arms factory.

Every citizen was called upon,

women even giving up their hair to make rope for catapults.

♪ ♪

In a matter of months, they created a huge arsenal

to defend their city with.

They hold strong for three years,

but finally the Romans break through.

♪ ♪

- Now, Carthage is the size of Manhattan,

but it's very densely built,

and so 500,000 people are packed into that space.

And so the Romans, at every turn,

are fighting people desperate for their lives.

There is no front line.

This is siege warfare on a completely different level--

brutal, ruthless, with everybody involved.

♪ ♪

narrator: It takes the Romans seven days

to wrestle control of the city.

Then the order is given:

"Destroy it."

- Carthage burns for 17 days.

The heat is so intense, it consumes buildings

and sucks people into the inferno.

This isn't war; this is genocide.

And the Romans aren't here just to kill the Carthaginians;

they are here to eradicate their memory.

[soft music]

- And of Carthage's population of half a million,

only 50,000 remain,

and they're sold into a bitter life of slavery.

narrator: The death or enslavement

of the entire population, a city levelled.

Carthage no longer existed.

It was total annihilation.

Because of victory at this siege,

Rome becomes the dominant power for centuries to come.

♪ ♪

They went on to influence our modern world

more than any other ancient civilization.

- The Roman siege of Carthage has to be number one--

the total ruthlessness, the total destruction.

This was an epic clash of Western civilization

and determined the history of the West.

[dramatic musical flourish]

[intense percussive music]

narrator: The mega sieges of ancient times

caused mass destruction

and the annihilation of millions.

♪ ♪

Magnificent ancient cities and entire populations

were devastated.

[people yelling]

They changed the course of history,

and the success or failure of those sieges

has shaped the world as we know it today.