Original subtitles

Rome...

the greatest empire the world has ever seen.

With our grip on the Mediterranean, we conquer all.

Deep into Africa and as far north as Britannia,

and all under the ultimate control of one man - the Emperor.

Or so it seems.

HORSE WHINNIES

Let emperors strut the world stage,

and let us, the humble women in the wings, build our dynasties.

For the first time,

we are seeing women altering the history of the Western world.

Julia,

Messalina,

Agrippina,

and of course, me, Livia.

All women who can shape the world, changing it forever.

The empresses are the ones that actually

push the emperors into position.

Driven by sex, power and violence.

But if you slip for even an instant, you're gonna be torn to shreds.

My name is Livia Drusilla.

I nurture the first great imperial dynasty.

Augustus, Tiberius,

Caligula, Claudius, and Nero,

One way or another, they are all men under my control.

Without Livia pulling the strings,

would any of them have reached the heights that they did?

There's nothing she won't do to protect her dynasty.

This is the strangest, baddest family that history has ever known.

It may take a Caesar to lead an empire,

but it takes a woman to make it work.

Everyone thinks they know the true story of Rome,

but nobody knows it like me because I lived it.

And it was I who ruled Rome.

When I was young, I was so beautiful.

I was the greatest prize in Rome.

But I was just a humble senator's daughter,

yet I still became the most powerful woman in the world.

Forget what you think you already know,

I am about to tell you the real story

of the world's greatest, bloodiest dynasty.

In this first act of the story of Rome,

dear old Julius Caesar, the great disrupter,

is cut down in his prime.

He sets it all up for the first emperor,

my beloved husband, Augustus.

Now I, Livia Drusilla, ever the dutiful empress,

must remove every obstacle in our path to ensure our dynasty survives,

and with my own son at its head.

Before Augustus and I, there is the Roman Republic.

Five centuries of no kings and queens,

I10 emperors and empresses,

just a ruling class of infighting, self-important blue bloods

calling themselves the Senate.

The Roman republican system is really not functioning very well.

This is a system that had been developed very effectively

to run a city state in Rome.

It's now running the whole Mediterranean world,

and the systems that had worked so well when it was just a city

are really breaking down. It's simply not

a system that's built for the running of a vast empire.

The Senate, all men, of course, and fond of their own voices,

is no longer fit for purpose.

Thankfully, one great man sees his chance.

A brilliant general and leader of men puts a cat among the pigeons.

His name isjulius Caesar.

Sojulius Caesar was one of a number of essentially warlords

that emerged during the late Republic,

when the kind of old republican system of Rome

is somewhat breaking down.

SHOUTING

Over the course of his many years, he's risen, he's fallen.

He's had alliances with other prominent figures,

but he's also won this great success recently in the Gallic Wars.

And it's very clear from his personality that he believes

he is destined for greatness.

To a teenage daughter of a senator,

watching this dashing war hero bring his swagger

to the dithering forum is quite a thrill.

A wonderful lesson in getting things done with a mixture of charm,

charisma, and utter ruthlessness.

It's hard not to be a little bit infatuated.

He wins military glory for himself. He becomes Pontifex Maximus,

the most important religious figure at Rome,

and he holds the consulship.

So he has this glorious public career,

and he really gets a taste for holding that power.

So he just keeps essentially trying to maintain his position

at the top of the Roman political system.

Ancl I think it eventually gets to a point where he thinks,

"Why would I ever give this up?"

He defeats a lot of his enemies,

and he makes himself dictator of Rome.

Brilliant, but a little too far, too fast, I fear.

He ignores the golden rule of power and forgets to watch his back.

In modern terms,

I think we'd refer to Caesar as a populist.

Ancl the problem with populists is that they're popular

with the people, but unpopular with politicians.

They try to take him to court, they try to indict him.

But ultimately the only method they could see

as a way out was, of course, to murder him.

A word of advice, if you're going to plot an assassination,

do try to consider all the consequences.

The Ides of March, the 15th of March, 44 BC.

One of the most famous days, or shall we say infamous days,

in ancient history.

Julius Caesar was clue to attend a meeting of the Senate

in the theatre of Pompey in Rome.

There had been a number of ill omens

about his attendance at this meeting.

His wife begs him not to go.

Ancl then, one of the conspirators sends him a letter

and says, you know, "We really need you at the Senate today.

"There's all this really important stuff that's gonna happen."

Ancl so Caesar changes his mind. He says, "OK, I'm being ridiculous.

"Of course, I'm just gonna go to this senatorial meeting."

Ancl there was a seer, a sort of clairvoyant,

who'd warn Caesar to beware this very clay.

He said to beware the Ides of March.

When he's on his way to the Senate's meeting, he sees the soothsayer,

and Julius Caesar was boasting, saying,

"Hey, the Ides of March are here, and I'm still here."

And Spurinna basically goes,

"Ah, yes, they're not finished quite yet."

He's led towards the temporary senate,

at which point he's separated from his guards

and led to a place that is very easy for him to be murdered.

One of the senators approaches Caesar.

He grabs Caesar's toga and pulls it off of his shoulder,

and that is the sign to strike.

Suddenly he feels a stab in his back.

A man called Casca stabs him from behind,

but botches the job - doesn't do it very well.

Caesar turns around and basically expletive Casca,

"What do you think you're playing at?" ls what he says.

Ancl then as soon as one has stabbed him, it is an absolute frenzy.

He's stabbed, I think, 23 times.

It's shameful. Not only Casca,

but Cassius, Bucilianus, and Decimus,

many of them Caesar's own men.

Traitors, the lot of them.

Not fit to lick his boots.

And Caesar was a hardened soldier, one of the best Rome had ever had.

Ancl he actually put up a really good fight.

Cornered as he was, he grabbed a stylus, which is like a metal pen.

He stabs one of the senators in the eye.

But it's when he realises that Brutus,

who's supposedly his illegitimate son, is amongst the conspirators,

he gives up.

Ancl famously, he says, in Greek, "And you, my child."

If even Brutus wants him dead,

it seems that Caesar's willing to go.

Caesar then kind of covers himself with his toga,

and falls, and bleeds out.

Ancl I think that's the moment in which he realises, you know,

it's-it's really game over.

Everyone that I believed supported me has now turned on me.

Over 60 conspirators plunged the knife. Shame on them.

But what is their plan?

It's very clear to me that they have no plan.

All the foresight of naughty children.

People flee in every direction, and there is just utter chaos in Rome.

Eventually his body is-is taken out.

One arm allegedly falls off the bier.

There is this absolute sense that everything is to play for now.

But so begins the history of Western civilisation.

Caesar's brutal murder unleashes 17 years

of power-grabs and bloodshed as never seen before.

Frankly, it's utter chaos.

But this is also my chance.

Back the right horse, and my future is made.

Then I can make sure my own son Tiberius is next in line...

whatever the price.

Julius Caesar,

the greatest general Rome has ever known,

has just been brutally murdered by a sickly bunch of senators,

supposedly his friends.

Vermin, every last one of them.

But I, Livia Drusilla, your narrator, am about to rise

to the most powerful position any woman has ever reached.

When Caesar died, he left a power vacuum,

and so it had to be filled.

There was really a moment in which Rome as we know it didn't happen.

No doubt I'm biased, but only one man can fill this void.

Only 19 years old when civil war kicks off,

his name is Octavian, Caesar's nephew and my future husband.

He has brains and youth on his side.

Oh, and he also has his uncle's blessing and his money.

Julius Caesar is Octavian's uncle.

Andjulius Caesar, I think, sees something potentially

in the young Octavian and takes him under his wing.

Caesar names him his principal heir in his will,

which means he gets his money.

Ancl not only does he say that, "|'m going to accept this legacy.

"And when I come to Rome, I will declare

"that I am not just Caesar's heir, I am his son."

Every move Octavian makes is smart.

He buddies up with Mark Antony,

Caesar's greatest friend and favourite general.

The brawn for his brains.

Together, they are unstoppable.

One by one, they take out the traitors who killed Caesar.

And all the time, he watches his back.

But the greatest power moves play out

not on the battlefield, but in the bedroom.

Whenever the sources talk about Octavian having affairs,

they suggest that his affairs are all politically motivated.

That he is sleeping with the wives of senators

in order to procure information or strengthen his position.

One clay, when he's entertaining a senator,

he takes a fancy to his wife, and he takes her to bed.

Ancl then they come back a bit later,

and supposedly, her hair is all over the place

and very much giving an indication of what's going on.

This is the young me. Aren't I pretty?

When Octavian's eyes find mine, I am far too clever to resist,

and he knows it, too.

It's win-win for us from the start.

And my existing marriage is a detail easily fixed.

Octavian and Livia meet for the first time in the summer of 39 BC.

He is about 24 and one of the most powerful men in Rome.

She is about 20.

Ancl the sources all kind of claim

that this is love at first sight,

and he is immediately obsessed by Livia.

What happens is extraordinarily strange.

Ancl it's not what you expect from Octavian

because he forces Livia's husband to divorce her.

Ancl then within a couple of clays, he marries her.

He is in need of some social credibility

with the old Roman aristocracy.

Livia can provide that for him,

and Octavian can provide Livia with security and a route to power.

After 17 tiresome years,

the civil war is reaching its climactic ending.

My darling husband, Octavian, controls the west of the empire,

and Mark Antony the east, cosying up to his new queen,

the former lover ofjulius Caesar, Cleopatra.

A beautiful woman, but a dreadful narcissist.

As ever, when there's this much power at stake,

there's only room for one winner.

Augustus and Mark Antony go from brothers-in-arms to bitter rivals.

Each one wants Rome for himself.

By the time Octavian clashes with Antony at the Battle of Actium,

he is no longer the gauche 19-year-old,

but a seasoned warrior.

Now it's his time.

Our time.

Mark Antony and Cleopatra, they're defeated,

and they realise at this point that there is no way back for them.

They have lost this war, and so both of them end up committing suicide.

And Octavian is now the undisputed sole ruler of Rome.

Well, Caesar didn't adopt my husband for nothing.

He knew a ruthless winner when he saw one.

Now we have peace.

This is where I can help cement his power.

It's the beginning of 27 BC.

Octavian, he's just been consul,

the leading figure in Rome for the last two years.

Ancl he's very much promoting himself

as the man who is restoring peace and stability in the ways of old

to the Romans.

Ancl the Senate, they gather and decide

what honours they can heap on Octavian,

to thank him for all that he's clone.

Ancl one of the honours that they decide is to give him a new name.

Augustus.

Augustus, leader of the Republic.

How far we have come in such a short time.

Not long ago, they were sneering at his gaucheness.

Now watch them bow and scrape.

Never underestimate my husband.

Young Octavian was very lucky

because he got a masterclass by Caesar in politics,

in how to accrue power, but also how to maintain it.

He used that formula of power and pleasure to seduce people.

He gave them what Caesar gave them -

games, distraction, wealth, abundance, extravagance,

and all these things seduced the populace

to such that they decided,

"Why do I need democracy? Actually, I don't."

With me at his side, Augustus is not going to make

the same mistakes as Unclejulius.

The Republic secretly yearns for the strong man,

but is squeamish about titles like "king" or "dictator".

It's all really just semantics.

Augustus's real genius is that he pretends,

he maintains to the end

this fiction that he is not an autocrat.

You see, Rome had an allergic reaction to kings.

I mean, the Republic was born out of the fact

that the Romans no longer wanted kings.

Ancl I think what is really key to Augustus's success,

where Julius Caesar had failed, is his public relations.

He essentially maintains this fiction,

despite all the evidence to the contrary,

that this is not really an autocratic system.

This is actually a restoration of the old Republic.

Everyone is equal,

he just happens to be the one who holds literally all of the power.

He develops a new word with no negative connotations around it,

the word of "princeps",

which might be saying "first amongst equals."

But unlike words like "rex", meaning "king",

which a very dirty word, the title of princeps

has less negative, if any, negative connotations surrounding it.

Really, it's genius.

Augustus has ultimate say, however the Senate vote.

They call him "first among equals".

You may know it by another name.

Emperor.

And as an old-fashioned, virtuous wife

living only to serve her husband,

I am the key to unlocking the hearts of the Roman public.

Livia made whatever Augustus was wearing.

He would let people see her weaving clothes for him.

She'd make these simple, modest garments

so that people didn't think they were too ostentatious.

He didn't want people thinking they were showy and they were rich.

I think it's remarkable testament

to the fact that Augustus clearly views Livia

as an indispensable life partner.

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

But some of us know better.

Livia recognises Augustus has manly needs,

and she provides him with virgins to sleep with.

Why virgins? Because they're untainted,

and she doesn't want him to fall into relationships

with the more elite women who might get their claws into him

and see themselves as the next empress.

You may ask yourself, "What kind of a wife would do such a thing?"

But again, here, we see the intelligence of Livia.

She's there for the long game.

She knows that she has to keep Augustus happy.

Oh, please, don't be so provincial.

The odd, energetic virgin is not going to shake our marriage.

Let him have his fun. There are bigger games to play.

That's why she stays in power.

She plays a blinder in the role of empress,

and nobody really can copy her.

Livia is very much on view.

She sits with her husband in the imperial box

to watch the gladiatorial shows.

She is very, very active as well,

writing letters to important dignitaries.

She is part of the internal administration with Augustus,

but she is also sort of taking on this mantle

of being this virtuous wife.

Together, we bring Roman citizens prosperity, peace and food for all.

By uniting Rome, we win the hearts of the grateful citizens...

...only for the gods to threaten it all.

Suddenly, in 23 BC, Augustus falls ill,

and it really looks for a couple of months

like this is the end, that he's gonna die.

Everything was going great -

the empire was growing, prosperity, political stability.

Ancl then everything changed because Augustus becomes ill.

As he lies on his sick bed, I grasp a terrible truth.

We broke all the rules to make him emperor,

which means there are no rules to decide who succeeds him.

But every cloud has a silver lining.

You just have to see it and act.

So it looks like Augustus is going to die,

but he makes a miraculous recovery, and so all is good again.

From then on, Augustus realises that he needs to solidify further

the succession of what's going to happen after him.

Augustus, obviously, doesn't have a son.

It's become clear by now that Livia is not going to give him a son.

Ancl so the question becomes,

who is going to take on this power when Augustus dies?

Rome needs a successor, or the empire will fall.

For my bloodline to survive, blood must be spilt.

Darling Augustus has been the first emperor of Rome for four years now.

I love him, the people love him.

With my guiding hand, some say,

he's put an end to civil war and brought stability to Rome.

Now we must become a dynasty.

Augustus must name an heir,

and that's where it gets tricky.

I can only bring him a stepson,

another man's blood.

Augustus isn't happy.

He starts considering his daughter, Julia,

a frightful little whore with terrible hair.

So, all of his focus now fell upon his daughter

and his sole surviving offspring, Julia.

She is the only conduit for Augustus's heredity.

His first choice of person to succeed him

would be a descendant ofjulia.

The daughters of powerful figures are used basically as pawns.

This is exactly what happens to Julia.

She's very young, and she is married to Augustus's nephew,

and he is called Marcellus.

That makes Marcellus first in line.

Not my plan at all.

My son Tiberius is what the empire needs.

That is going to take some doing.

But I've always liked a challenge.

It looks like Marcellus has this crown-prince role,

that Augustus is lining him up.

But it's not for very long, because, soon after, Marcellus dies.

This is a total shock.

It comes completely from out of the blue,

and it really hammers home the fact

that succession is going to be a problem.

Augustus is heartbroken

to have his closest male heir snatched away so young.

Of course, the blame game begins.

And who do you think is in the cross hairs?

Why is it always the wives that people point the finger at?

And so the thinking emerges that, "Ooh, maybe because, look,

"he was a young man, he may well have been in the prime of life.

"Surely he didn't just die of disease. Maybe it was poison."

And that means, maybe, did someone in that imperial family poison him?

And goodness forbid that that was a woman.

And there are later rumours that emerge

that supposedly Livia poisoned Marcellus.

Poisoning was very common in ancient Rome.

It was the most commonly used way of getting rid of political rivals,

jealous husbands,

people you didn't want around, predominantly because it was subtle.

You didn't go and openly stab somebody.

So when that person died, you could put your hands up

and deny you had any involvement in it.

With Marcellus dead, the prospects for my Tiberius are improving.

But Augustus will insist on looking tojulia to give him a grandson.

Augustus couldn't afford to waste any time.

He felt it was really important that she was married off once again.

So Augustus had Julia betrothed to his right-hand man, Marcus Agrippa.

Again, that wretched daughter of his keeps side-lining my Tiberius

with the prospect of a grandson.

I have no choice but to be patient.

This is a long game.

Meanwhile, there's an empire to run.

Rome's armies have brought us peace,

give or take the odd, unruly German tribe.

And together, Augustus and I bring moral reforms

and a new sense of discipline to the empire.

Peace and decorum.

It's a fine time to grow old together.

Decades go by, and now Augustus is old...

...as am I.

But I have worked my way into the heart of the empire.

Whereas when other women tried to do this,

it doesn't tend to go so well.

Livia is known throughout the empire.

She gets revered throughout the empire early on.

Ancl even though they're childless, Augustus doesn't divorce her.

Granted, being popular with the people has its uses,

but nowjulia delights Augustus

with grandsons - priceless direct descendants.

This is bad news for me,

but fortunately, Julia has what we might call a reputation.

Augustus was scared from the very beginning,

when she married Agrippa, that she would be unfaithful.

Augustus was actually relieved when she had her first children

and they bore some resemblance to their father, Agrippa.

This was proof that these were indeed her husband's children.

But rumours start to swirl aboutjulia's fidelity,

and it's said that she even openly jokes

about being unfaithful to her husband,

that her friends kind of say to her,

"How come all your children look so like Agrippa

"when, you know, you're cheating on him all the time?"

Ancl she makes this comment that's like,

"Oh, because I'm very careful only to take on passengers

"when the ship's hold is full."

So as in, she only sleeps with other men

when she's already pregnant with Agrippa's child.

Well, that sort of behaviour would not sit well

with Daddy's trademark decorum.

And then the poor, forsaken husband, Agrippa, dies.

The emperor loses another heir.

They are remarkably careless with their young men.

There is just... Every single man

that Augustus makes his heir seems to die.

Time to make my move.

Julia is a widow.

If my son Tiberius divorces his wife, he can marry into the family.

Julia is being passed around from one figure to the next,

and ultimately, she has to marry Tiberius,

and Tiberius has to marry her.

Their marriage is not a happy one.

Tiberius's nature is taciturn and surly

and ungiving and undemonstrative.

Ancl what these two people discover once they're married

is they're almost entirely incompatible.

So what you see is a very natural rebellion to her position.

She exudes that rebellion through being promiscuous,

through drinking, through wild parties.

The stories become increasingly colourful,

including the idea

thatjulia offers herself at night in the forum

as a sexual partner to any passing willing fellow.

Ancl so there is a story of her having sex on rostrum in the forum,

in full view of anybody who may be passing.

Tiberius is well aware of these rumours,

and he's humiliated by them.

He's not in control of his wife.

Tiberius decides that he has absolutely just had it up to here

with life at Rome.

He does something that is a complete shock to Augustus

and to a lot of people in Rome. He resigns.

My foolish boy withdraws from the race.

If only he had my patience,

he would see thatjulia's shameful behaviour may yet be our gain.

Livia knows thatjulia's nature is the way it is.

Sooner or later, she's going to make a huge mistake.

As this is all going on, Augustus, in fact,

is promoting these morality laws

where adultery is made a crime.

Augustus's moral legislation imposed requirements on cuckolded husbands

to divorce their wives at once or face a penalty of pimping.

If the law forces my Tiberius to divorce the adulterous Julia,

he will be back out of the family, out of the line of succession.

And when Augustus dies, his heirs will cast me aside, too.

And you have the story ofjulia telling Livia,

"Well, you know, that's fine. You're married to Augustus,

"but I'm the daughter of Augustus. That's a bigger deal."

That is a silly mistake.

Julia is forcing my hand.

If I do nothing, she may ruin us all.

Augustus has a really difficult position here.

Does his loyalty lie with his wife, Livia?

Or does his loyalty lie with Julia?

Ancl we all know that father-daughter relationship

is a very special relationship.

Dear old, deluded Augustus is blind to it all.

If only he could see the realjulia.

Soon enough, a list of lovers was passed to Augustus,

and at least five men were named as being Julia's lovers

while she's married to Tiberius.

So, in 2 BC, Augustus takes this extraordinary step

of writing a letter to the Senate in which he denounces Julia

for having clone all of this kind of scandalous stuff.

Ancl he's said to be so ashamed

that he can't actually appear in the Senate to read it himself.

Julia shamed my son into self-imposed exile.

Now, her arrest means she reaps what she sows.

The punishment forjulia is one of the most severe

you can possibly imagine.

Julia is sent off to a prison island far from Rome,

near the Bay of Naples.

She's deprived of all of her possessions.

She has no nice clothes. She's given no nice food, no wine.

She can't even receive visitors unless Augustus is asked first.

He calls her a disease of his flesh.

Ancl for a daughter, I don't think you could hear anything worse

coming from the mouth of your father.

Augustus won't relent. He is furious.

He is so damaged byjulia's alleged behaviour

that he actually files for divorce from Tiberius on her behalf.

He says that fire will sooner mix with water

than Julia be returned to Rome.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

No more troublesome offspring to get in the way of my Tiberius.

The plotting and scheming of Livia has paid off.

Julia, her rival, is out of the picture.

Her son Tiberius is back in the picture,

and he's right there as the potential successor to Augustus.

My dear Tiberius is no longer a boy,

but at least he can now hold his head high and return to Rome.

Now I can get busy here, looking after the empire's interests.

But abroad, some of our generals are meeting uncharacteristic failure.

Those ghastly German tribes!

A horde of barbarians annihilates three of our legions

and takes their standards.

It's a disastrous blow to morale that shakes Rome to the core

and calls the authority of our rule into question.

These losses have hurt Augustus's reputation badly.

And now all the talk on the street is who will succeed him as emperor.

Augustus has two grandsons, Gaius and Lucius,

who look like they're gonna become his successors.

Even with Julia shamed, it appears that my son Tiberius

is still a lowly third in the line of succession,

behind the two young princes, Gaius and Lucius.

But with their father dead and mother banished,

one can only hope the little lambs are safe.

A few years later, the joint heirs, the intended successors of Augustus,

they both die.

One of them dies of illness in southern France,

the other in Turkey from a wound.

Augustus's preoccupation with dynasty,

with extending his rule beyond his own lifetime,

led to more than one heir.

Ancl each heir, save Tiberius,

would find the same outcome -

almost certain death.

Marcellus first, Lucius, Gaius.

They're either just incredibly unlucky,

or there is something more sinister going on.

On every occasion, the finger of rumour pointed to Livia.

I would say that Livia's a pretty good inspiration

for Game Of Thrones.

One by one, she gets rid of all the competition

until the only viable heir is, of course, her son Tiberius.

I will not deny I have ambitions for my son.

But murder, poisoning and character assassination?

I will not dignify these accusations with a denial.

However, I will say this...

once more, the door is now ajar

for my poor, cuckolded, exiled Tiberius.

Tiberius is recalled to Rome because really

he has become Augustus's only hope at having a successor.

At this point, it's his only option.

Ancl so Augustus ends up passing on power to Tiberius,

who is his stepson and Livia's son from her first marriage.

There is only one person standing in my way now.

Only one man who could jeopardise Tiberius crowning as emperor.

My own husband of over 40 years.

My dear, beloved Augustus.

To ensure my dynasty is safe,

he will have to go.

Rome, the greatest empire in the world.

For years, my son Tiberius has waited to take his rightful position

as heir to Emperor Augustus.

And his nymphomaniac daughter Julia is banished,

but she's left offspring all over the place.

One in particular alarms me -

a dubious character by the name of Postumus Agrippa.

Despite Postumus being previously struck off the list of succession,

Augustus now appears to be wavering.

Could it be that Augustus is about to change his will

and make Agrippa Postumus his heir, rather than Tiberius?

The question mark is too big,

and so Livia ultimately finds that that question mark can't exist,

and she has to get rid of Augustus

to ensure that Tiberius is gonna become heir to the throne.

"Get rid of my Augustus"?

A grubby way of putting it.

There really are some poisonous rumours

around the imperial palace these days.

I have only Rome's best interests at heart.

Augustus and I have done great things together,

but now... it's all about our legacy.

Nothing else matters.

There is one rumour said that Livia poisoned Augustus,

and she does it through a very ingenious way.

There is no fruit my Augustus enjoys more

than the plump figs from his own trees

growing outside his villa in Nola.

He liked to pick the figs straight off the tree

to ensure that they hadn't been poisoned.

Augustus is an old man. He's well into his 70s.

They feared of his life quite a few times before.

So he'll only trust figs he picks himself and all this sort of thing.

Livia employs the use of poisoners

to actually poison the figs on the tree before they're picked...

...so that there's no way that she plays -

at least from a point of view of public perception -

a part in his murder.

She directed Augustus to one of the poisoned figs.

Augustus ate.

So, you've gotta imagine you're in Tiberius's shoes.

When he receives word that Augustus is dying,

he races down to Nola.

Livia refuses to publish the information that Augustus is dying

until her son Tiberius can make it onto the scene.

This delay allows Tiberius to ensure

that there is no kind of potential questioning of his authority.

He can really be asserting his power from the outset.

Augustus's final words showed how he thought about Roman politics.

"Acta est fabula, plaudite."

"The tale is over, applaud."

The Roman historian Tacitus says that it's not sure

whether Tiberius arrives after Augustus has died or before.

Other sources say that Tiberius does arrive in time,

and Augustus has a very good death, that he talks with Tiberius

about the succession, about what should happen next.

He then does things like he combs his hair,

and then he dies in his villa.

Oh, howl mourn him.

We were married for over 50 years,

most of that, building Rome to its greatest glory yet.

But now I must hold fast onto that legacy.

Augustus dies in 14 AD at the ripe old age of 76,

and this is obviously a moment of potential crisis for the empire.

Augustus has been in power for 45 years,

and this could be a point at which everything falls apart.

This is the first time that this has happened, a succession.

So it's very much brand-new territory.

Do not be so quick to judge me.

I need to act decisively if Tiberius is to claim the empty throne.

Augustus saved Rome from destroying itself,

and together, we created an empire unsurpassed in power and prosperity.

Leaving undisputed succession to Tiberius

was his final act of unwavering duty.

I am simply proud I could help,

and I will ensure nothing destabilises that legacy,

even if that includes Julia's last living son.

With Augustus out of the way, who's left to stop Tiberius?

The other one is Postumus Agrippa, and so guards are sent

to the island where he's being held to get rid of him.

Imagine his shock when he sees a centurion, a Roman soldier,

approaching him and informing him that he's been sentenced to die.

Tiberius, my son, is Augustus's legacy.

I'm honestly lost for words.

But I worry for my son.

Despite all I've done for him, he doesn't seem to share my joy.

I see that once again, I have my work cut out.

Tiberius first-hand witnessed what his mother had to do

to get him into that position.

He witnessed what Augustus had to do to maintain that position.

Ancl now, unfortunately, he has to play the game,

and he sees danger absolutely everywhere.

He's waited so long.

But how long will he hold this prize?

Who will get him? Is he safe?

No-one is safe in early imperial Rome,

not least with a family like Tiberius's.

Next time, the reign of Tiberius takes a darker turn...

You see the most horrific rumours emerging.

A Pandora's box of perversion is opened.

...but his depravity is child's play compared to his awaiting heir...

He was savage. He was sadistic.

Caligula had incestuous relationships with all his sisters.

...who threatens to ruin Rome itself.