Original subtitles

(opening music)

Okay, here we go.

All right, start moving the boat please, about six meters, 020.

MAN (over radio): 020.

NARRATOR: Off the coast of Sicily,

maritime archaeologists have discovered a mysterious artifact

on the sea floor.

It's incredibly exciting to be able to see this

sitting here after more than 2,000 years.

NARRATOR: It may reveal clues about a fierce naval battle

that completely changed Ancient Rome's history.

DAVE: We have lift off.

PETER: I'm hoping it comes up in one piece.

(theme music playing)

NARRATOR: Rome, the eternal city.

2,000 years ago it was the greatest city of the ancient world.

In the heart of a mighty empire that stretched for almost

three million square miles.

Today, teams of archaeologists dig Rome and it's empire,

searching for clues to understand how this city

rose to dominate so much of the ancient world.

For me, as an archaeologist this is a great site because,

you can see the growth and rise of the Roman empire.

NARRATOR: How did this one city conquer the entire

Italian peninsular, the Mediterranean world and beyond?

We follow excavators as they investigate how Rome and its

people drove an incredible expansion from city state to imperial power.

In search of answers Canadian archaeologist,

Eve MacDonald, has come to the heart of the ancient capital.

Here it is, the Roman Forum, the center of the city of Rome.

The very essence of the city that became a world empire.

NARRATOR: Eve has been studying the Romans for over 20 years.

EVE: I find the Romans absolutely fascinating.

If you don't understand the Romans you really can't understand

so much of Mediterranean history, of world history.

NARRATOR: To see evidence of Rome's early ambitions of conquest,

she's heading to one of the city's oldest structures,

built in the fourth century BC.

Here we have a massive defensive wall.

These stones that we look at come from a, a site outside of Rome itself,

they were quarried from a city called Veii,

which isn't very far away. It's only on a tributary of the Tiber River.

But, it is a symbolic place

'cause it stands for one of Rome's great early conquests.

NARRATOR: From its earliest times,

Rome had a thirst for war and conquest even before

it was a powerful city.

In the fourth century BC, Rome was a small city state.

It had a track for chariot racing and mass entertainment,

the Circus Maximus,

temples for worshiping Gods and for public meetings,

and many houses made of mud brick and wood.

It was spread across seven hills, an area of 610 acres and

was protected by a huge wall, 32 feet tall,

built in response to repeated attacks.

How did this city begin the conquests that led to its

complete control of the Mediterranean world?

This wall tells us about two aspects of the Romans.

One is their aggressive conquest of their neighbors

with their taking of the city of Veii and the other is

their incredible resilience in the face of challenge.

It was a zero sum game, conquer or be conquered.

NARRATOR: In Trapani, Sicily,

260 miles south of Rome.

I think moving further east to delineate the battle site is a great plan.

NARRATOR: Maritime archaeologist, Peter Campbell,

and his colleagues from the RPM Nautical Foundation

are setting sail on a state of the art research vessel, the Hercules.

They are looking for traces of a brutal naval battle fought

in the third century BC.

The battle of the Egadi Islands is one of the most important ancient naval battles

that took place.

This is a point where history changed.

(radio chatter)

MAN (over radio): Is approaching on your port side.

Copy that.

NARRATOR: Peter is a specialist in ancient marine warfare,

he hopes the mission will provide clues to how the Romans

mastered the seas to achieve one of their most important conquests.

The significance of this battle is that Rome

took on Carthage which was a superpower at the time.

It's really exciting to be part of this project for me because

there's very little evidence for ancient warships that has survived.

NARRATOR: Ancient historical accounts reveal the clash took

place off the western coast of Sicily.

To identify the full extent of the battlefield,

the investigators use the very latest search technology

including side scan sonars which map the seabed.

The search area is 5.5 times larger than Manhattan and, uh,

we're sitting on a research vessel 100 meters above the sea floor;

so it's a bit like searching for objects that are less than a meter wide, uh,

from sitting on top of the Empire State Building.

NARRATOR: Peter and the team have identified anomalies on the sea floor,

the challenge now is to examine each of these targets at a depth of 260 feet,

and find out if they are traces of the battle.

(radio chatter)

NARRATOR: The archaeologists head to one of the most promising sites.

Copy that, slowing down 2.7. Four-zero meters to go.

MAN 2 (over radio): Roger.

NARRATOR: The team launches a cutting edge remote operated vehicle or ROV.

The ROV serves as our eyes on the sea floor.

NARRATOR: Technology like this has revolutionized maritime archaeology,

long lost treasures are now within reach.

This underwater robot houses a high-res camera

allowing the archaeologists to study their targets close up.

With the ROV successfully deployed,

Peter and the team can now examine every inch of the sea floor.

If you spin left we might have a little flicker of something.

We can try and, uh, see if anything flashes.

MALE ROV OPERATOR: Digital currents do you have?

MALE ROV OPERATOR 2: 1.0 from from three-five-zero.

NARRATOR: The ROV moves carefully from target to target.

PETER: We've got something there about, uh, eight meters away.

- I think it's a rock what do you guys say? - DAVE: Rock.

PETER: All right, let's keep moving.

If you come back up...

It's a bit like looking for a needle in the world's largest haystack.

So, what we're trying to do here is search this area and

hope that something pops out of the abyss.

DAVE: Visual contact.

NARRATOR: Suddenly the image on screen gets everyone excited.

JIM: Stop, large visual contact here.

- PETER: Johnny can you get down? - JOHNNY: Looking down.

- DAVE: There it is. - PETER: That's a beauty!

JIM: Bingo!

NARRATOR: In Terracina, 50 miles south east of Rome,

a team of archaeologists is digging at an intriguing site

on top of a mountain.

This is the central place where all the people from Terracina

coming together to worship their Gods.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists, Paul Scheding and,

Francesca Diosono are leading the excavation.

The thing that I enjoy the most being an archaeologist is

that you can touch history, so you have real objects you can touching.

FRANCESCA: We have so much work to do now in a wonderful landscape.

NARRATOR: Terracina is a very ancient settlement,

dating from at least 600 BC and it was one of Rome's neighbors.

Paul and Francesca hope it can yield clues to the early stages

of Roman expansion within the Italian peninsula.

PAUL: Hey guys, how are you doing?

- MALE EXCAVATOR 1: Hi. - MALE EXCAVATOR 2: Hi.

PAUL: Something special?

FEMALE EXCAVATOR: Yes, we found an ingot.

- PAUL: A piece of lead? - FEMALE EXCAVATOR: Yes.

- FRANCESCA: With an inscription? - FEMALE EXCAVATOR: Mm-hmm.

FRANCESCA: Oh, it's very unusual to find, it's very rare.

PAUL: Yes.

NARRATOR: Inscriptions are valuable clues.

The names and style of lettering can reveal their date.

PAUL: This is a "V" and the "A", this has to be maybe an "M".

FRANCESCA: This is also complete.

Yes and it's, it's definitely Roman.

So, we have, uh, something in hand that we can work on.

This is a exciting day actually for us.

NARRATOR: The inscribed ingot shows the presence of the Romans on site,

but not when they arrived and took over.

To confirm the date, the archaeologists need much older evidence.

FRANCESCA: Hi guys, how's it going?

FEMALE EXCAVATOR: Fine.

NARRATOR: Francesca checks in with her team in another section of the site.

How about the material? What did you find?

We found some pottery, some black clay.

FRANCESCA: I think it's a piece of pottery.

Yes, we have to keep it.

NARRATOR: Every tiny shard of pottery they find can provide vital clues.

To the expert eye, minute differences in shape and decoration

can be evidence of place and time of production.

We found big plates of Roman period, from I think second century BC.

This is a big jar for containing food.

This is pre-Roman pottery but it's very, very small;

this is pre-Roman because it's handmade pottery

so before Rome arriving here.

NARRATOR: The pre-Roman pottery is mostly found in deeper

archaeological layers which points to a date of Roman conquest.

Terracina's Roman colony started here at the end of the fourth century BC.

NARRATOR: From its earliest times,

Rome started clashing with it's neighbors and was slowly expanding.

In the fourth century BC it kept pushing south to Terracina

and beyond to the bay of Naples.

By the middle of the third century BC,

Rome controlled most of the Italian peninsula.

The excavation is going well for Paul and Francesca but many

mysteries remain unsolved here.

The temples and the architecture was built in different steps,

so we want to get also clue how this whole area developed

and to link all the structures to the rise of Rome.

NARRATOR: Off the coast of Sicily.

PETER: Look at that.

NARRATOR: Peter and the team are trying to work out

what the sunken relic is.

Oh, it's all twisted and covered in fishing line.

- Johnny can you get round the back? - Yep.

Okay, I'll come up and start moving around so you can try and

get a good overall view.

NARRATOR: The team hopes this evidence can identify a section

of the battle site where Rome fought for mastery of the Mediterranean.

- PETER: Look at that! - It's a ram.

- (excited woot) - (chuckles)

It's a, it's a bit of a jungle but, uh,

underneath all of that it looks like a really impressive robust ram.

NARRATOR: This ram was attached to the front of a ship.

It was designed to strike and sink enemy vessels.

This is an incredible discovery. It extends the battlefield,

and it tells us that it covered a huge territory,

much larger than what we expected.

NARRATOR: Now the archaeologists want to lift up

the ram and examine it closely.

They want to find out if it's Roman or Carthaginian.

Team members Jim and Johnny are figuring out how to do it

without damaging the fragile find.

JIM: We're going to have to deal with

that ship, the line that's snarled around it and get some kind of rigging on it,

- don't you think Johnny? - Yeah.

- To bring it up. - I think we need divers in the water

to try and release that.

NARRATOR: In Tunis, the capital of Tunisia,

archaeologist, Nejib Ben Lazrey is investigating Rome's great rival

in the Battle of the Aegates, the Carthaginians.

I became interested in archaeology after reading about a discovery done in Egypt.

I knew that Tunisia is full of ancient sites,

wherever you dig you find something.

NARRATOR: He heads to the seafront of

the modern city looking for ancient remains.

We are in the middle of a military harbor which was round.

In the very middle we have an artificial island because

the harbors were dug in the mainland, they didn't have jetties.

NARRATOR: Carthage's harbor was a masterpiece

of ancient engineering. It could fit up to 220 war ships.

The foundation of the power of Carthage was due to the control of the sea routes.

NARRATOR: In the third century BC, Carthage was a major power.

Their navy gave them control of territories of the Mediterranean coast.

They had fought the Greeks for over 300 years to conquer western Sicily.

In 264 BC, Carthage seized the Port of Messana on the east coast of the island,

only three miles from Roman territories and the Italian mainland.

Sensing danger, Rome sent troops and ships to Sicily

triggering war with Carthage.

Carthage in the third century BC was an important metropolis.

NARRATOR: The Carthaginians were master seafarers,

their ships outnumbered the Romans.

So, when the two fleets clashed off the Aegates islands,

it was a crucial test of Rome's maritime ambition.

500 miles north of Rome in Gunzenhausen, Germany,

classical historian, Boris Dreyer

is leading a team of experimental archaeologists.

Their innovative project aims to reveal the technology

the Romans used to fight at sea.

They have rebuilt two Roman boats based on wrecks found in the Danube and the Rhine.

And want to test their speed and efficiency on water.

The best preserved wrecks can be found here in Germany, not in the Mediterranean.

They were fixed on the bottom of the river so the conditions were

airtight and the, the ship could survive these 2,000 years.

NARRATOR: The wrecks only provide partial evidence.

Boris has had to make some mathematical estimations in important places.

This is the ram of the boat. Uh, we don't actually know the length of her ram,

this length is just a guess, uh, but we know that there must have been a ram.

NARRATOR: This boat is a quarter of the size of

the ones used in the Battle of the Aegates.

Its ram is made of wood unlike the bigger boats who's ram was bronze or iron.

Boris thinks the ram reduces the turbulence alongside the hull

and keeps the boat balanced as it cuts through the waves.

This kind of design makes the boat more stable in water

because the boat is very shallow.

NARRATOR: The next challenge for Boris and the team

is making the boat waterproof.

He wants to try an ancient method using hemp,

one of the earliest plants to be spun into fiber in the ancient world.

Hemp is important to make the space between the planks dense.

The planks are pressing to each other and so that

no water will come into the boat.

NARRATOR: When the wood is wet it expands,

compressing the hemp between the planks and sealing the hull

but problems soon emerge.

CARPENTER (speaking foreign dialogue): There is still about 20 cm left.

BORIS: I can’t reach it.

NARRATOR: Some of the hemp has been pushed in

too far leaving gaps between the planks.

- LEO: Where it went in? - BORIS: Yes, exactly.

NARRATOR: This can jeopardize the boat's seaworthiness because

the planks will not be locked together.

Boris must make sure all the gaps are filled or his boat could sink.

NARRATOR: In Terracina,

Paul heads to the center of the modern town.

Here are some inscriptions left here.

It's the letter "I", then "V" or "U" and "S".

This is the inscription of the man who financed the Forum.

NARRATOR: The full inscription reads

" Aulus Aemilius, he was a wealthy Roman citizen."

This is the ancient Forum and this is the actual ancient floor.

NARRATOR: Wherever Romans like Aulus Aemilius went, they rebuilt Rome.

Their new subjects soon enjoyed the benefits of life under Roman rule.

Right next to Terracina's Forum another ancient structure helps

reveal how the Romans took control of all Italy.

PAUL: The most important thing here is the road over there,

you can see coming from the north and going through the south.

NARRATOR: This ancient road, the Via Appia,

connects Terracina directly to Rome.

It's evidence of an ingenious tactic of Roman control.

In Rome, 50 miles north of Terracina,

Eve examines traces of the same road leading out of the capital.

This is this amazing example of one of the many, many,

many thousands of tombs of people who wanted you to see as

you walked into the city that they were prominent Romans.

NARRATOR: These many tombs of wealthy Romans

reveal the importance of this road.

It is the main entrance into the ancient city.

Eve can date the road through these monuments.

We often date portraits from the, uh, Roman period by the hairstyle.

The hairstyle of the woman who's on the left is very similar to

the hairstyle that we see on some of the portraits of

the first Roman Empress Livia, that's Augustus Octavian's wife.

So, the first century BC would be a good date for the family here.

NARRATOR: The dates of these tombs reveal that

by the first century BC, the Via Appia was already established as

one of the most important highways in the ancient world.

The Romans began building it almost as soon as

they started expanding in the fourth century BC.

The Via Appia led to Terracina to the south,

extended south east through Capua,

ending at Brundisium in 264 BC.

Spanning over 360 miles, it was the first super highway

the Romans ever built and was a vital route

for marching armies and military supplies.

This huge paved road, averaging 20 feet in width,

allowed Rome to concentrate its troops rapidly and

maintain control of far flung territories.

It was crucial to Rome's military domination of the Italian peninsula.

Very early on in Rome's history,

it has the ability to create massive infrastructure.

NARRATOR: In Terracina at the dig site...

(thunder rumbling)

Paul and Francesca are hunting for artifacts to date

the buildings of the temple here and find new clues

about Rome's expansion but

their project might have to come to a halt.

here are thunderstorms coming from the north, uh, to Terracina.

This is quite a difficult situation for us because we are

on top of the mountain, so we are kind of exposed.

NARRATOR: Last year the team sheltered in one

of the ancient temples during a storm and it was hit by lightning.

Excavating in a thunderstorm is like the most dangerous thing that you can do.

NARRATOR: Everyone hurries off the site.

(thunder rumbling)

In Gunzenhausen, Germany,

Boris and his team are ready to put their Roman replica boat on water.

- Hello. - Hello.

BORIS: How is it going? - It's good.

BORIS: Are we ready to take off? - Oh, I am.

Hopefully it will not sink.

NARRATOR: They want to test its speed and efficiency to find out

if ship building technology and engineering are the secret

to Rome's expansion into the Mediterranean.

First they need to tow the 2.2 ton vessel ...

LEO: Carry on...

NARRATOR: Out of the hanger.

3 cm left... Carry on... Carry on... Good.

LEO: Stop.

MALE CARPENTER: You may go ahead, you're ready.

NARRATOR: It has been a year in the making,

so they take great care.

MALE CARPENTER: Keep going straight.

Wonderful, wonderful.

NARRATOR: Once out, Boris reverses the boat slowly into the water.

No-one knows if the ancient hemp waterproofing technique will work.

There's a real risk it will sink.

MALE CREW MEMBER: Yeah! Bravo!

(applause)

NARRATOR: The boat is finally afloat.

But, water starts seeping in.

We just have to look here. It's not sure yet.

Water is coming in but it seems to be okay.

So, it's the right amount of water.

NARRATOR: The boat can handle around three inches of water

inside the hull but more could become dangerous.

This allows the planks to expand and lock the hemp inside.

MALE CREW: Okay... Lift it.

NARRATOR: The Roman ship building design is so far proving solid.

NARRATOR: Off the west coast of Sicily,

the divers have cleaned up the ram and wrapped a strap around it.

Peter and the team aboard the Hercules are getting ready to lift it.

DAVE: Put it on the blue gear.

Okay, we've got the ram. Here we go.

All right, start moving the boat please, about six meters 020.

NARRATOR: The main challenge is to attach the strap to

the ship's powerful crane without damaging the brittle ram.

Back deck, deploy the crane.

MALE CREW (over radio): Copy that, deploy the crane.

NARRATOR: First, the ROV has to pick up the heavy hook of the crane.

PETER: Dave if you could just keep an eye on the tether on the top left.

DAVE: Right. No, no, no left.

PETER: We'll go with the left, yeah, yeah.

- JOHNNY: Go down, oh! - PETER: Okay.

NARRATOR: Then it needs to pass the tether of the strap

through the crane's hook.

DAVE: You have to spin around and come in that way.

Back up, back up, back up. Let it clear.

NARRATOR: Each movement of the ROV kicks up sand reducing

the water visibility, so progress is slow.

- DAVE: You've got a straight shot in. - PETER: Straight shot in, yeah.

DAVE: Push right.

- PETER: All right! - (applause)

NARRATOR: Eventually the two are connected.

JIM: Does everybody agree we're clear?

- PETER: We're clear. - JIM: All right, let's lift.

NARRATOR: The ram has been underwater for 2,300 years,

there's a huge risk that lifting it will tear it apart.

Everyone in the control room holds their breath.

DAVE: I'm hoping it comes up in one piece.

- JIM: Yeah. - DAVE: About three meters.

MALE CREW (over radio): Coming up.

(suspenseful music)

NARRATOR: In Gunzenhausen, Germany,

Boris has enlisted the help of 18 students and volunteers.

(overlapping chatter)

Loose the, uh, ropes.

Okay. Ready at oars.

Put your oars in the water and at the signal go and go and go.

NARRATOR: They want to find out how fast a Roman ship is

and how easy to maneuver.

It could reveal if engineering gave Rome the edge in naval warfare.

It's against the wind. We are going against the wind.

Very, very, very difficult, rough.

(yelling) Go!

NARRATOR: The strong winds bring the boat to a standstill.

KORAI: I can't feel my hands actually but we have to continue rowing.

BORIS: Keep to the rhythm.

NARRATOR: The Roman soldiers who rowed

into battle needed their energy to fight.

Far from shore in the full blast of the wind, Boris is facing another challenge.

There's no modern keel and we only have the grip with

the rudders, uh, in the back part of the ship.

NARRATOR: The ancient keel of the boat is flat,

it only extends around 13 inches underwater.

BORIS: The wind is coming from the side and the ship is drifting.

NARRATOR: In windy conditions the flat boat drifts dangerously.

Boris tries to direct his team and stabilize the course.

BORIS: Only starboard row. Portside stop rowing.

Starboard row.

NARRATOR: In battle, losing control of the boat could be fatal.

BORIS: Portside ready, row.

NARRATOR: The Roman admirals and mariners must have been

extremely well trained to navigate large ships at sea.

Back on course, the boat quickly starts gaining speed.

I think the design is rather good. It's a fast ship.

NARRATOR: The boat averages four miles per hour but

it can reach up to eight miles per hour during a sprint.

At this speed, plunging into another ship with a ram

attached to the front would cause catastrophic damage.

(dramatic music)

BORIS: Stop rowing.

(heavy breathing)

NARRATOR: After almost two hours in the water,

Boris and his team return to harbor.

Before starting I thought it would be harder,

I guess the wind is quite exhausting but once we are, um,

at some speed it's much easier and I think we could do it for some hours.

This boat is very easy to maneuver and one can understand

that Roman soldiers were able to control the boat, um,

to find the best position according to the wind.

I think the result is a, is a success.

NARRATOR: With a fleet of hundreds of fast well-built ships,

the highly skilled Roman sailors had become a formidable

match for their enemies, the Carthaginians.

NARRATOR: Off the coast of Sicily,

the ram is finally coming out of the sea.

JIM: We have lift off.

DAVE: Step to the ram.

- Ram is at eight-zero. - DAVE: Ready to the surface.

NARRATOR: Everyone has gathered on deck for the big moment including

the Director of Underwater Cultural Heritage,

Valeria Li Vigni.

Their heavy ram has made it up in one piece.

JIM: Peter look, the force of the damage here.

- Right. - VALERIA: Yes.

- Produced a crack all the way up here. - VALERIA: And also in the...

(speaking in native language)

- JIM: Yes, yes, yes. - In the keel.

- VALERIA: Okay. - PETER: Yeah.

Yeah, damage on every face.

NARRATOR: It's made of cast bronze but still bears traces of

the violent clash that sank the ship it was attached to

during the Battle of the Aegates.

The next challenge for Peter and Valeria is to work out

if it's from a Roman or Carthaginian ship.

VALERIA: There are no inscriptions.

PETER: No inscription?

VALERIA: So, maybe it’s Carthaginian.

- Carthaginian navy? - VALERIA: I think.

NARRATOR: The Romans usually decorate and inscribe their rams.

The lack of any inscription suggests this one is Carthaginian

and remarkably the size of the ram itself hints at the dimensions of the ship.

PETER: And on the inside is, is the wood.

Yeah. Three different timbers... Yeah.

Yeah, and this I mean, this is a big keel.

JIM: We really need to get some samples, can we do that?

- MAN: Oh, yeah. - JIM: Great.

I mean, it's big timbers that it's covering here,

I mean, this would have been a big ship.

NARRATOR: The ship size might have been a significant drawback,

it made it harder to maneuver;

this might even be the reason why it was rammed and sank.

This ship must have run into one that was much better made and, uh,

it must have just crushed like a can when it impacted the other vessel.

NARRATOR: For centuries the Carthaginians ruled the Mediterranean.

The rams on their ships were lethal weapons.

In 241 BC at the Battle of the Aegates,

they outnumbered the Romans but were heavy with supplies.

(cheering)

The Roman Navy, now a match for their enemies,

took down their masts and rowed at speed into battle.

They outmaneuvered the Carthaginians,

ramming and sinking 50 of their ships and winning a shock victory.

The unexpected naval victory changed the balance of power in the Mediterranean

and opened the door for Rome's conquests overseas.

PETER: This was an amazing mission that is rewriting what

we know about the Roman navy, the Carthaginian navy and

ancient military history.

It really is giving insight into what it was like to be

on board ships in the ancient periods.

NARRATOR: Next season, Peter and the team plan to return and

scour the seabed for more artifacts to get

a fuller picture of this defining Roman victory.

In Tunis,

Nejib investigates how the loss of this battle affected Carthage.

He heads to a very special site in the south of the city.

We find, uh, several layers of burials. The earliest layers go back to 750 BC.

NARRATOR: The site is a Tophet, a sacred burial place for children.

This special cemetery was established at the same time as

the city of Carthage, around the eighth century BC.

Each of these stelae was placed next to an urn which

held the cremated remains of a child.

Nejib looks for the last burials.

They stop by the mid-second BC.

NARRATOR: Only 100 years after the Battle of the Aegates,

the Carthaginians abandoned their precious graveyard.

The Tophet functioned with the city,

the people who lived here and they buried their own babies here.

The use of such a cemetery stopped with the destruction of the city of Carthage.

NARRATOR: Nejib looks for more clues of this devastating event.

In a corner of the site he finds an unexpected ancient construction, a vault.

NEJIB: It was not built by, uh, the, uh, Carthaginians because

Carthaginians never knew the use of the vault or nor the arch,

so it could be only Roman.

The Romans built this vault and surely many other ones on top of

the remains of Carthage.

NARRATOR: The Romans built over this precious burial site.

It's evidence the Battle of the Aegates wasn't the end of the rivalry.

A few decades after the clash at sea, a Carthaginian warrior rose up, Hannibal.

He crossed the Alps with war elephants and wreaked havoc in Italy for 15 years.

Then in 204 BC, Roman general Scipio landed his army in North Africa,

forcing Hannibal to return home.

They fought an epic battle, the vast Roman cavalry massacred

the Carthaginian infantry.

(battle cries)

Carthage signed a truce that lasted just 50 years until

Rome invaded and burned it to the ground and later rebuilt it

as their own city in Africa.

In the second century BC, Romes expansion engulfed

the Carthaginian empire and was pushing even further.

NARRATOR: In Terracina, the storm has passed.

Paul needs to assess its damage on the dig site.

PAUL: The storm last night was very terrible. So, what are we doing?

FRANCESCA: Today the soil is very wet.

I think it's a good idea to make a little survey of the area

we don't excavate, so we, so we can find pottery.

NARRATOR: The team can use the setback to its advantage.

The dark waterlogged soil means pale pottery is much more visible.

We have a lot of finds, more finds than a normal day.

NARRATOR: The temple that once stood here is now in ruins,

it's remains scattered on the mountainside.

The archaeologists hope these many pieces of pottery can

reveal when the Romans built it and what it looked like.

Francesca spots something unexpected among the finds.

This is part of the decoration of the temple, it's terracotta.

I think it's a flower or something like this.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Wow, yeah this is an actual part of the, of the architecture?

Yes, this is the early decoration.

NARRATOR: The Romans used terracotta to help decorate their buildings.

The style of these pieces can help pinpoint the date of

their earliest temple on site.

This is a Roman tile, you can see by the form. It was part of the roof.

This must have been part of the second century BCE, more or less.

NARRATOR: From the second century BC,

the Romans built magnificent temples here. The largest was likely dedicated to Venus,

their Goddess of love, fertility and victory.

They overlooked the commercial harbor of Terracina and were a

visual representation of Rome's power and riches.

PAUL: Picture yourself as an ancient Roman standing in

the street of Terracina, looking up the hill and then

the monumentalization of these temples like, growing,

growing and growing as the empire was growing at this very time.

NARRATOR: Paul thinks the temple here is built on even greater spoils of war.

He examines an extraordinary recent discovery.

A terracotta head.

What we see here is the most amazing piece we found just a couple of days ago.

NARRATOR: Paul compares its features to an established

depiction of a famous warrior.

The most recognizable feature is that he's turning his head and you can see it here.

So, it gives you an expression that he is in a

dynamic position and looking through the landscape,

also of the armies he's in control of.

We are quite sure that it's Alexander the Great.

NARRATOR: Alexander the Great

built a huge empire in the fourth century BC.

Paul thinks the Romans wanted to follow his example.

Alexander the Great, he conquered the east until

modern India and now the Romans are starting to conquer this territory

which was already conquered by Alexander the Great.

So, this is really a symbol for the power of Rome in the east.

NARRATOR: The Romans conquered Alexander's homeland, Greece,

in the middle of the second century BC, just as they conquered Carthage.

These incredible victories established Rome as

the new military powerhouse of the ancient Mediterranean world.

You show the man who'd conquered the world and now

the Romans have conquered the world.

NARRATOR: In Rome,

Eve examines the ancient buildings inside the Forum.

We see the Colosseum in the distance there,

built on the spoils of conquest and war.

We see triumphal arches to when the Roman victorious generals

came back through to the city, cheering crowds would greet them

and they would parade the spoils of conquest through the Forum.

NARRATOR: Rome’s unexpected victory in the Battle of the Aegates

was a springboard for many more conquests,

monumentalized in this famous capital city.

They were the first to display their enormous power of potential,

their military might, in such grand terms. They're there for us to read and

they're there for us to try and understand.

NARRATOR: The team's investigations have led to new evidence

of how Rome first expanded into its immediate neighborhood.

It then built imposing structures like temples and

roads to control its growing territories and showcase its power.

The Romans built a mighty fleet that defeated a formidable enemy,

the Carthaginian empire

and gave them control of the Mediterranean.

Future excavations will add precious information to how

one small city gained so much power that it dominated the ancient world.