Discovery Channel Ancient Rome_6of8_The Fall of the Roman Empire
Transcript
00:00Rome's glory shone for a thousand years, but nothing lasts forever.
00:11In the 3rd century AD, civil war engulfed the empire.
00:16Chaos and corruption undermined it from within, and from every direction, its enemies gathered
00:23for the kill.
00:25Panic spread as terrified Romans sensed the apocalypse at hand.
00:55Rome rose to the pinnacle of its extraordinary power and glory in the 200 years after Christ.
01:05It grew until the empire united all lands from Spain to Syria and from Scotland to Egypt.
01:12More prosperity, more stability, and more peace than the western world had ever seen.
01:21It was in 190 AD with the mad emperor Commodus that it all started to fall apart.
01:27Crazy emperors were nothing new to the Roman Empire, so when Commodus started fighting
01:32as a gladiator and walking around town dressed like Hercules, Romans weren't too worried.
01:39They simply assumed he'd be assassinated like so many before him.
01:43He was.
01:45Then waited for reason and order to return.
01:48It didn't.
01:52Civil war broke out as legion fought legion, each trying to install its general as emperor.
02:00Anarchy grew.
02:06Romans yearned for one of the great emperors of the past to take control, Julius Caesar,
02:14and Augustus, a Hadrian.
02:19Instead they got the likes of Elagabalus, proclaimed emperor by the third legion on
02:25May 16th, 218 AD.
02:30Elagabalus was a 14-year-old transvestite from Syria brought up to worship the sun.
02:39At 17, he married a male charioteer named Heracles, who publicly whipped him.
02:47It wasn't the only bizarre ceremony to invade the imperial court.
02:53In honor of the sun, Elagabalus sometimes walked backwards through the city, carrying
02:58a large black stone.
03:01Romans looked on stupefied.
03:04When he finally announced he wanted to be castrated, it was the last straw.
03:09His own palace guard killed him as he sat on the toilet, then threw his body in the
03:14Tiber.
03:21Romans wondered how their great empire could have fallen to such a shameful state of affairs.
03:30Some believed it was the long-awaited fulfillment of the Sibylline Oracles, a series of apocalyptic
03:36prophecies that had haunted Rome for centuries.
03:44And on thee one day shall come, O haughty Rome, a deserved blow from heaven.
03:51You will be plundered and destroyed, and with wailing and gnashing of teeth you will
03:57pay.
04:02And you, daughters of Rome, clothed in gold and luxury, drunk with the attention of your
04:09wars, you shall be made a slave and a whore because men forgot the good and gave themselves
04:17to greed and unrighteous living.
04:25But there was nothing mystical about the chaos of the third century.
04:29Quite simply, the empire had become unmanageable.
04:33Emperors could no longer cope with the monster Rome had become.
04:38We tend to get a picture of Rome, particularly through the movies, as being dominated by
04:43a bunch of kooks.
04:44Yes, Nero was disturbed.
04:46Yes, Caligula was an extremely unpleasant person to be around, and Commodus liked being
04:52a gladiator and a beast hunter.
04:53Elagabalus liked dressing up in funny clothes and dancing around his pet rock.
04:58The average Roman emperor is a bureaucrat, is a man who's able to balance the different
05:05demands of the major political constituencies within his empire, the army, the guard, the
05:12population of the city of Rome, the senate and the palace, keeping those interests working
05:18in concert with each other so he can stay alive.
05:24After Elagabalus, the best efforts of a succession of hard-working emperors were all in vain.
05:31Political power was concentrated in too few hands.
05:35The wealthy were forgetting the old democratic ideals, balancing the power of rulers with
05:42the needs of ordinary citizens.
05:49Rome had turned its back on the common man.
05:57The ancestors of Roman peasants like Gaius led humble but dignified lives as small farmers.
06:05The slave-owning aristocrats had commandeered their land and evicted them.
06:13Destitute families flooded into the city, swelling the ranks of sweatshop workers and
06:18the urban poor.
06:23Gaius grew up in Rome doing menial jobs and a lot of drinking.
06:29Like millions of poor Romans, he lived on welfare handouts of grain and mindless distraction,
06:35lots of it.
06:40The proletariat are idle, lazy and devote their whole life to drink, gambling, brothels,
06:47shows and chariot races.
06:50Their temple, their dwelling, their meeting place, in fact the centre of all their desires,
06:56is the Circus Maximus.
06:58But they talk about nothing else, ammianus.
07:11By the 3rd century AD, the number of days devoted to games had risen from a handful
07:16to a staggering 170 each year.
07:22People became obsessed by these games, by watching races, by watching gladiatorial events,
07:28by watching whatever it is that was put on for their amusement.
07:33I think that often people say that that's what's happening to the modern world.
07:38We're more interested in sport, more interested in watching games than we are in working.
07:43But I think it puts it in some perspective if you understand how far the Romans went.
07:48And we've got a long, long way to go.
07:52Being a couch potato now is a lot different than being a Colosseum potato 2000 years ago.
08:03Intent on distracting themselves, most Romans didn't notice the social fabric of their empire
08:08shredding all around them.
08:12Rome's sense of community had disappeared.
08:17The elite were increasingly isolated from the poor.
08:23They are greedy.
08:24Their language is foul and senseless.
08:27The manners of the poor have decayed completely.
08:30They're quarrelsome and make disgusting noises by snorting loudly through their noses, ammianus.
08:41Upper class Romans could ill afford their disdain.
08:44Gaius would die in squalor and oblivion, but his children and grandchildren would never
08:51forget how Rome had shut them out.
08:58Educated Romans were turning their backs on everything to do with old Rome, not just the
09:03poor.
09:05The East, ancient, mysterious and exotic, seemed much more enticing.
09:12Early Romans headed off to see the sights of Egypt.
09:16The world's first tourist boom had begun.
09:20Bored local officials were forced to cater to Roman aristocrats on senatorial junkets.
09:26Lucius Mammus, a Roman senator in a position of considerable importance and honor, is sailing
09:31up the Nile from Alexandria to see the sights.
09:35Receive him in grand style and see to it that at the usual points, lodgings are prepared
09:40and landing facilities completed.
09:43Also, provide furniture for the lodgings, the special food for the feeding of the crocodiles,
09:49whatever is needed for the labyrinth, offerings, sacrifices, all the usual things.
09:56In general, do everything possible to please him.
10:03Romans marveled at the wonders of Egypt and, like tourists in centuries to come, scratched
10:09graffiti to record their visits.
10:12I, Palladius of Hermopolis, a judge, saw and was absolutely amazed.
10:21I, Colonel Januarius, was here with my daughter, and we marveled at this place.
10:34Unique! Unique! I only curse myself for not being able to understand the hieroglyphs.
10:47Egypt was a land of magic and mystery. It had the pyramids, it had hieroglyphs, it had
10:52the Nile. And Romans, they went to Egypt much more often in fantasy, in pictures, by bringing
10:59the wild animals of Egypt from Egypt into Rome, hippopotamuses, crocodiles. But some
11:07of them, probably on lazy culture trips, went as far as they could, right to the boundaries
11:15of Ethiopia.
11:19As travelers abroad marveled at the mysteries of Egypt, Romans back home were hungry for
11:24their own taste of the mysterious East. A luxury trade in expensive foreign goods flourished.
11:35There is this exotica that the rich and wealthy came to expect. Perhaps one of the most startling
11:42examples would be spices. They came from the Far East, from the islands of Indonesia. Even
11:50more than that, we've got a guide written for shippers up the Red Sea on how to cross
11:57over using the monsoon to India to pick up goods. And it tells you what you can get in
12:05the Yemen, at Bombay, on the southern tip of India, where there may very well have been
12:11a colony of Roman citizens.
12:15The Roman delight in far-flung places was not reciprocated. As Rome thrilled to the
12:21exotic East, the exotic East was starting to hate Rome's guts. In the provinces and
12:28periphery of empire, resentment festered. The great Roman orator, Cicero, had foreseen
12:38it all.
12:41You cannot express, gentlemen, how bitterly we will be hated among foreign nations because
12:46of the outrageous conduct of the men we have sent to govern them. All the provinces are
12:53complaining about Roman greed and Roman injustice. I remind you, gentlemen, Rome will not be
12:59able to hold out against the whole world. I do not mean against its power and arms in
13:04war, but against its groans and tears and lamentations.
13:12From the beginning, Rome had built its empire by conquest and force of arms. In the early
13:22days of empire, there had been real benefits to being defeated by Rome. Citizenship, civil
13:31rights, trade and prosperity. But by the third century A.D., those benefits were evaporating.
13:39Citizenship was giving way to slavery. Peace and prosperity replaced by shameless exploitation.
13:52And for all the wealth that Rome took from Asia, three times as much shall Asia take
13:59from Rome, visiting upon her her accursed arrogance. And for every slave in a Roman
14:07house, I swear, twenty Romans will one day be sold into the most wretched slavery.
14:20Rome was sitting on a powder keg of poverty and resentment.
14:37In April, 248 A.D., the Emperor Philip staged the Millennium Games. Rome was a thousand
14:53years old and celebrating its birthday in the only way it knew how, with a grandiose
15:01spectacle of ritual, races and bloodletting. As Romans celebrated, barbarian armies hammered
15:12the empire's frontiers. Rebellions were breaking out in the provinces. With their world collapsing
15:20into chaos, the Roman thirst for macabre distraction grew. The death toll from the Millennium Festival
15:35was spectacular even by Roman standards. A thousand gladiators and hundreds of exotic
15:43animals were killed. Leopards, lions, elephants, giraffes, tigers, hippos, and even a rhinoceros.
15:55Noisy crowds paraded statues of the gods through the streets. Priests heaped offerings in front
16:01of the temples, praying for a return of Rome's good fortune.
16:08Nature itself seemed to be conspiring against the Roman Empire. Climatic changes in Central
16:15Asia were freezing the high plateaus and forcing its nomadic peoples to migrate. Shut out of
16:24the Chinese lowlands, they had no option but to move west. As they headed for Europe, they
16:32pushed all the tribes in their path further west as well. In the 3rd century, wave after
16:41wave of uprooted peoples were pushed up against Rome's northeastern frontier. Goths, Slavs,
16:50Vandals, and more. In 259 A.D., Persians attacked. The Romans
17:02were defeated. Rallying to the Empire's defense, the Emperor Valerian marched his legions hundreds
17:07of miles to confront them. Weakened by illness and exhaustion, they were massacred and the
17:15Emperor captured. Eager to humiliate the Emperor to the maximum, the Persian king used Valerian
17:22as a stepping stool to mount his horse. When Valerian died in captivity, the Persians
17:31skinned him and hung his hide in a temple for all to see. Rome's humiliation was complete.
17:44Dearest Mother, my greetings. I just want you to know that I finally arrived safe and
17:50sound in Alexandria after four days' travel. I miss you all already. Tell Io that if he
17:58wants to join the army, he should come here. Everybody seems to be joining the army.
18:11As Isis wrote to her mother from Egypt, the disaster of Valerian's defeat had sparked
18:16panic throughout the Empire. There was a furious recruitment drive. By the year 300, there
18:24were almost half a million Roman soldiers and the legions were still growing. The only
18:33way to maintain this gigantic military machine was taxation. Taxes rose and inflation spiraled.
18:41Roman currency, the denarius, was progressively devalued. Once again, ordinary Romans bore
18:49the brunt.
18:51The ordinary person in the late Roman Empire could expect to be taxed more efficiently,
18:57more harshly, more often and more consistently than ever before. Likewise, people realized
19:04that in order to safeguard themselves, their families, their livelihoods, that they should
19:09join the state. So there's an enormous competition to join the army and join a bureaucracy, all
19:16of which confer substantial taxation privileges and immunities. Taxation would be less brutal
19:23if the burden were shared equally by all. It is not. Tributes due from the rich are
19:31extorted from the poor and the weaker bear the burden of the stronger. Ordinary people
19:37are being crushed by the weight of taxes. What more can I say? The situation is shameful
19:44and disastrous. Salve.
19:50Beset by enemies without and turmoil within, the empire tried desperately to tighten its
19:56grip. Along with the army, the whole apparatus of imperial power began to swell. Bureaucracies
20:07multiplied. The people who oversaw the postal system, the speculatores, had become the world's
20:14first full-fledged intelligence operation. Spies were everywhere, reporting any signs
20:22of rebellion in the provinces. Emperors were obsessed with maintaining control. Rome was
20:31moving slowly but surely towards the totalitarian regimes that would preside over its final
20:37collapse. In 285 A.D., realizing the empire was becoming bloated and top-heavy, the Emperor
20:47Diocletian embarked on reforms to streamline it. He split the imperial bureaucracies into
20:55two, two linked empires, two emperors and two armies. He froze prices, putting the brakes
21:03on runaway inflation, and banned the subversive cult called Christianity. In the short term,
21:16Diocletian's reforms were astonishingly successful. Romans breathed a sigh of relief as peace
21:24and order once again reigned in the empire. Certain the Roman world was back on its feet
21:32and back on track, Diocletian did something no Roman emperor had ever done. He retired
21:39and lived quietly to be an old man. But the peace didn't last long. By the fourth century,
21:49no amount of bureaucratic restructuring could cope with the class conflicts and the political
21:55infighting tearing the empire apart. If Rome was to survive, it needed more than a sane
22:01administrator like Diocletian. It needed a ferocious and all-powerful ruler. It was about
22:09to get one. On October 26, 312 A.D., rival Roman armies massed outside the city, waiting
22:22to do battle. At the head of one was a young commander called Constantine. Constantine
22:32knew the next day a river of Roman blood would flow. He also knew that if he lost, it was
22:40all over, his claim to the empire certainly, and probably his life. Constantine looked
22:51up into the sky. He saw a cross of light that seemed to burn itself into the heavens, and
22:58above it the words, In hoc signo vinces, by this sign you will conquer. He had crosses
23:07painted on the shields of his troops. The next day, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge,
23:14he smashed the armies of his rival, Maxentius. No sooner was Constantine installed as emperor
23:22than he repealed many of Diocletian's reforms, including his ban on Christianity. But he
23:32went even further, declaring himself a Christian. Romans were stunned. Most thought Christianity
23:40was just another weird eastern sect. Suddenly, their new emperor had declared himself a cult
23:47member. They thought they had another lunatic on their hands. They didn't. Constantine cleverly
23:55saw how Christianity could unify an empire coming apart at the seams. Unlike Rome's pagan
24:02religion, it preached discipline, obedience, and only one God.
24:08Constantine was one of the most dynamic figures in Roman history. He presented himself as
24:12a new Moses, leading his people to a promised land. But I think he saw himself being guided
24:17by the hand of a God. And after all, it's one God who's in charge, just as there's one
24:23emperor who's going to be in charge. We're getting rid of this old system of multiple
24:27emperors under Diocletian, and going back to the system where one man is calling the
24:32shots. Christianity resonates with Constantine's view of himself.
24:38For Constantine, Roman unity was reborn. But there wasn't much that was Roman about it.
24:46Constantine grew up in the Balkans in Eastern Europe, and the imperial city of Trier, Germany.
24:53He had no liking for Rome, and recognized it had become strategically irrelevant. All
24:59the important conflicts in the empire were now along the frontiers to the east and north.
25:07So he moved the empire's capital to the ancient city of Byzantium, and renamed it after himself,
25:13Constantinople.
25:16The foundation of Constantinople is, I think, one of the most important moments in the history
25:22of the Roman Empire. It's the foundation of New Rome, to use Constantine's name for the
25:28city. It marks a political, a cultural, and an economic shift from Italy to the Balkans.
25:37The Roman Empire now will be centered not in the west, but in the east.
25:44Constantine abandoned the traditional trappings of a Roman emperor, and ruled like an oriental
25:48sultan from his palace in modern Turkey. His power was absolute. His piety, and some say
25:56his vanity, knew no bounds.
26:00Others were a little more doubtful about Constantine's piety. One pagan story said that Constantine
26:08converted to Christianity because, having murdered his son, and had his wife suffocated
26:14in a hot steam bath, he was desperately in search of a religion that would give him forgiveness.
26:21And Christianity was the only religion that would do that, Constantine having been flatly
26:26refused forgiveness by a number of pagan priests.
26:31Before he died, he had thirteen coffins placed in his sepulcher, twelve for the twelve apostles,
26:38one for himself, as if Constantine was the thirteenth apostle of Christ, the one who
26:44finally brought his kingdom to earth.
26:51It may have seemed like God's kingdom was coming to earth, but not for long. Christianity's
26:57growth from a small, persecuted sect to the dominant religion of empire was a violent
27:03and bloody one.
27:07Even before Constantine died, fine points of Christian doctrine about the Holy Trinity
27:12were generating furious debate, and before long, bloodshed.
27:20In 366, a conference of bishops left 137 corpses on the floor of a Roman basilica.
27:33The fourth century was marked by bitter divisions of belief between bishops, and they fought
27:41with every weapon they could. They used state forces to expel some people from the church.
27:49What's remarkable about Christianity is the degree to which Christian leaders thought
27:55that their religion could encompass only a single orthodoxy.
28:02The very persons who ought to display brotherly love are violently estranged from one another.
28:10It's disgraceful, positively sickening. Bishop Crestus.
28:17By the end of the century, there were over sixty official decrees outlawing different
28:22heretical beliefs. Before long, there were attempts to ban all non-Christians from public
28:29office. Synagogues were burnt.
28:37Pagans observed the growth of Christianity with alarm. Their Rome had been ruthless in
28:43punishing people's actions, but unconcerned about their beliefs. That sort of tolerance
28:49was now a thing of the past.
28:53Have a care. Even wild beasts are not as ferocious as these Christians in their hatred of one
29:00another. Ammianus.
29:04But not all Christians were engaged in theological feuding. In 423, outside the town of Ammianus,
29:13town of Antioch in Syria, a man called Simeon climbed up a pillar. He stayed there for thirty
29:20years, scorched by the sun, kneeling, singing, and suffering.
29:28A hundred years earlier, everyone would have assumed he was a madman. He would have been
29:33arrested or ignored. Not now.
29:39In this new Christian Rome, suffering was the mark of holiness. Educated Romans gave
29:46up comfortable lives to go and live in the desert. In 375, St. Jerome was one of many
29:54who chose to renounce everything, retire to the Holy Land, and mortify the flesh.
30:01Tears and groans were every day my portion. Whenever I felt sleep overcoming me, I bruised
30:08my restless bones against the bare earth. My only companions were scorpions and beasts.
30:15My face was pale with fasting. But though my limbs were cold as ice, my mind was burning
30:23with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me, even when my flesh was as good
30:31as dead. Jerome.
30:36Romans had always reveled in grandiose displays of wealth and power. They had inherited from
30:43the Greeks and Etruscans a love of the human body and its appetites. In Rome before Constantine,
30:51if you had it, you flaunted it. To the pagans who refused to convert, Christian self-denial
30:58was bizarre and puzzling.
31:02The ones who call themselves monks live in unspeakably dreary places and shun the light.
31:11Why would a man choose to live in misery in order to escape from it? They seem to be afraid
31:18of everything, particularly what is good and pleasurable. The reasoning behind all this
31:25seems completely insane, and I find it utterly incomprehensible. Rutilius.
31:35Despite the rigors of Christianity, as the fourth century progressed, Romans flocked
31:40to it. Women, long oppressed by patriarchal Rome, found respect and recognition. To everybody,
31:48men and women, rich and poor, Roman and non-Roman, Christianity offered a refuge from the chronic
31:57uncertainties of the era.
32:01There's no doubt in my mind that Christianity saved the Roman Empire. At the end of the
32:06third century, it gave it a new focus for unity, both religiously and ideologically.
32:13Christianity is the glue that sticks the various parts of the Roman Empire together in the
32:19centuries after Constantine.
32:23Christianity could hold the empire together for a while, but not forever.
32:35In the year 378 A.D. at Adrianople in modern Turkey, the Emperor Valens led his army into
32:41battle against Goths from Romania. It was time to teach the barbarians a lesson and
32:50make them submit to the might of Rome.
32:58Like Valerian before him, Valens marched into disaster. His legions were surrounded. The
33:05famous Roman discipline gave way. He and his army were massacred.
33:15It was Rome that had learned its lesson, and it was a bitter one. Rome could no longer
33:21rule by military might alone. She would have to negotiate with the barbarians.
33:29The truth was there were already as many Germanic tribespeople within the ranks of the Roman
33:34legions as opposing them. But now they wanted more. If they were good enough to fight Rome's
33:40wars, they deserved to share its power. But Romans didn't share power.
33:47As beasts from men, as the dumb from those who speak, so the foolish heathen differs
33:53from the Roman.
33:56Rome stands alone in pride over barbarian lands. Prudentius.
34:04That Roman pride was now taking a serious blow. Forced to accommodate the barbarians,
34:15Romans began to feel threatened. Intolerance and resentment grew.
34:23The Goths are profiteers, the Alani rapacious lechers, the Saxons, Franks and the Rulians
34:30are wantonly cruel, and the Germans are alcoholics to a man. Salvin.
34:38Special scorn was reserved for the Huns, the nomads from Central Asia who had pushed the
34:43other barbarians westward in the first place. They, too, now appeared on the frontiers of
34:49empire.
34:52They are so monstrously ugly and misshapen that one might take them for two-legged beasts.
34:59They are totally ignorant of the difference between right and wrong, so it's impossible
35:04to make a truce with them. Like unreasoning beasts, they are at the mercy of the maddest
35:10impulses. Ammianus.
35:19These attitudes didn't bode well for the future of interracial harmony in the empire.
35:26For centuries, barbarians had been humiliated and enslaved. They were tired of it.
35:37When Alaric, leader of the Goths, settled his people inside the northern frontier, he
35:43wanted a dignified coexistence with Rome.
35:50Alaric spoke Latin fluently, was well-read, and not about to be dismissed by pompous Romans.
35:57We tend to think of the barbarians as a collection of Conan the Barbarian and his buddies coming
36:03across the frontier waving their double-handed axes. This is quite far from the truth. By
36:08the time the barbarians come across the frontiers, they're beginning to be Romanized. Alaric,
36:14who sacked Rome in 410, did so because he was turned down for a job as a Roman general.
36:20What these people wanted first and foremost was a place within the empire for themselves,
36:26and when they didn't get it, they turned on the government of the emperors.
36:33But Rome had still not learned its lesson. Instead of building diplomatic relations with
36:38the Goths, local governors systematically insulted, starved, and overtaxed them. Alaric
36:44sent letters of protest to the emperor. They were ignored.
36:51When Alaric and his people finally descended on Rome in 410 A.D., it was not to rape and
36:57pillage, but to drive home his people's protests and demand the decent treatment they'd been
37:02promised.
37:06To his surprise, as his army swept through the heart of the empire, there was hardly
37:11a Roman soldier in sight. The truth was, many Romans were no longer prepared to fight the
37:20barbarians. Some even welcomed them.
37:24I tell you that the poor have been so robbed and downtrodden that many of them seek refuge
37:31with the enemy. They seek among the barbarians a Roman mercy because they cannot endure the
37:38barbarous mercilessness they find among the Romans.
37:47And so in the year 410, for the first time in almost a thousand years, Romans awoke to
37:53find an enemy army camped just outside the city. They couldn't believe it.
38:02Alaric's demands were reasonable. All he wanted for his people was part of the Danube River
38:08Valley in what is now Austria.
38:12Rome refused.
38:22Furious with Rome's arrogance, Alaric laid siege to the city. In addition, he now demanded
38:295,000 pounds of gold, 3,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silk tunics, 3,000 scarlet-dyed skins
38:38and 3,000 pounds of pepper.
38:40Will you leave us with nothing? asked the Roman envoys.
38:45Alaric replied, if you give us what we want, you can keep your lives.
38:53Rome held back, procrastinated, and in the end, Alaric lost patience. Barbarian slaves,
39:02delighted by the prospect of Rome's ruin, threw open the city gates. The Goths poured
39:09in and sacked the city. Proud Rome was finally brought to her knees.
39:23It's inconceivable. Rome, fallen? The city which subjugated the whole world, conquered?
39:40I am speechless with despair. What will have happened to our friends? I fear the whole
39:48world is faced with annihilation. Jerome.
39:58Although the city of Rome was no longer the center of the empire, for Romans everywhere,
40:04seeing it sacked was an omen of catastrophe.
40:12Diseases are spreading. Time surely is nearing its end. I foresee the massacre of all humanity.
40:23This surely is the twilight of the world. Ambrose.
40:33Romans were now sure the apocalypse was at hand. Stories circulated that the mouths of
40:39volcanoes were getting bigger, ready for the souls of all the sinners they'd have to receive.
40:46Rome was now divided in half. The Eastern Empire remained strong, but as barbarians
40:52overran the West, Romans everywhere were terrified the end was at hand.
40:58My soul shudders to recount the downfall of our age. The blood of Romans is being shed
41:04everywhere from Constantinople to the Alps. Women are raped. The whole empire is being
41:11sacked, pillaged and plundered. Jerome.
41:18But apocalyptic visions turned out to be untrue. Not only did the world not end, the barbarians
41:26didn't do much raping and plundering either. Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and other German
41:34tribes streamed out of Central Europe and spread themselves throughout the Western Mediterranean.
41:41To everybody's surprise, they tried to live peacefully alongside the Romans. Paulinus
41:47was a wealthy Roman nobleman with huge estates near Bordeaux in modern France.
41:54When news arrived that an army of Goths was heading for his lands, he feared the worst
41:59and fled in terror for his life. Tormented by all the stories of mass rape and Roman
42:09children sold into slavery, he sent his family ahead of him.
42:17On the road, he was astounded to receive a letter from an unknown Goth.
42:23He says he wishes to buy a piece of my property and has actually sent me the price of it.
42:29I am astonished. It is nothing like its true value, of course, but in the circumstances,
42:36it seems like a gift from heaven. Paulinus.
42:42There's no doubt that the Mediterranean was seen by much of the rest of the world as a
42:46sort of El Dorado, as California. It's where you want to be. There was the good life. It's
42:54very wrong to think that the German tribes that were trying to invade the Roman Empire
42:59and who eventually bring about its collapse in the West were seeking to destroy it. They
43:04weren't. They wanted their piece of the action. They wanted to be part of it. They wanted
43:09to be part of this great world. And when they take over in the West, they behave like mini
43:14Roman emperors, great Roman senators, because this is the good life.
43:21The quick sack of Rome in 410 A.D. was not the end. The Eastern Empire was still strong.
43:27From its wealthy cities in Turkey and the Middle East, it viewed the disintegration
43:31of the West with growing detachment. It would slowly become the Byzantine Empire, but go
43:39on calling itself Roman until the Middle Ages.
43:46The Western Empire staggered on for another 60 years. There were still emperors in Rome,
43:54but their control was evaporating as the power of the central bureaucracy crumbled. The Western
44:01Empire now did nothing for the provinces except tax them. Local Roman nobles soon felt they
44:08were better off without it. They came to see themselves as free agents, fortifying their
44:15estates, making their own deals with the barbarians, even intermarrying with them.
44:26This was the birth of medieval Europe, an anarchic world where local barons owed allegiance
44:32to few and built their own fiefdoms.
44:39The disintegration of the Western Empire drove even more people into the arms of the Christian
44:46church. With this world collapsing all around them, they sought refuge in the next. Paulinus
44:55was one of them. After the Goths took over his estates, Paulinus threw away what little
45:03he'd rescued. He wandered on foot through Spain and finally found his way to the south
45:10of Italy, where he ended his days as the abbot of a small monastery. His poverty came to
45:17feel like a blessing.
45:22I visit cities infrequently these days and have grown to love the intimate remoteness
45:27of the silent countryside. Solitude is conducive to the spiritual life. I feel that I am fashioning
45:37and strengthening Christ within me every day. I strive for the kingdom of God, as once I
45:44strove for position. I attend to heavenly goods as carefully as I once attended to earthly
45:51ones. Paulinus.
46:00Everywhere people were turning their backs on Rome. In 476, a Gothic commander quietly
46:09told the last Roman emperor of the West he was out of a job. The emperor withdrew to
46:15his villa by the sea. Nobody cared or even noticed.
46:23By a strange twist of fate, the emperor's name was Romulus.
46:31Over a thousand years had passed since the first Romulus, that legendary wild man reared
46:36by a she-wolf, killed his brother and founded Rome on the banks of the Tiber.
46:46In the millennium in between, Rome had grown from a tiny primitive backwater to ruler of
46:53the Western world.
46:58The achievement of the Roman Empire is extraordinarily impressive. Conquest, commitment to discipline,
47:04to winning, to victory, to war. And in the history of the human race, the creation of
47:10large empires has been fundamentally important, even though it's no longer fashionable. The
47:16creation of peace, the creation of law, order, the institutions of senate, the creation of
47:22money, democracy, elections, voting. All these, even if some of them are only the perpetuation
47:28of the Greek tradition, have been fundamental in modern European culture.
47:36With Rome's passing, the West's long love affair with its memory began.
47:45Paradoxically, it was the Christian church that faithfully kept the language and culture of its former persecutor alive.
47:54Simply walk into any church. In its architecture and design, you have just walked into a Roman
48:02imperial palace. Sit down in that church and perhaps listen to the church service, listen
48:09to the liturgy, listen to the hymns. You are listening to Roman imperial court ceremonial.
48:16The structure of the buildings of the Christian church, its liturgy, its choirs, its priests,
48:22its bishops, are taken, are imitative of Roman imperial court ceremonial.
48:31In the centuries that followed her fall, Rome was reborn again and again. The guiding idea
48:39of the Italian Renaissance was the rebirth of Rome and its classical ideals.
48:48When the founding fathers of the United States sought a model for their new country, it was
48:52to Rome they turned. Raised on the classics, they poured Rome's republican ideas into
49:02the constitution. The early Roman Republic inspired democracies and high ideals down
49:13to the present day. But the empire it became left a very different legacy.
49:26When the French Emperor Napoleon claimed to have Roman blood coursing through his veins,
49:30it wasn't the Republic but the empire and its all-powerful rulers he was thinking of.
49:37The great danger is that we believe that the Roman Empire was a good thing. That is a 19th
49:45century view. It's the reason why in Britain people learnt the classics. They learnt the
49:52classics and they read their livy in order to know how to govern India because Britain
49:57saw herself as doing exactly what the Romans had done. We have not yet properly written
50:04the post-imperialist history of Rome that will come and realize that this whole thing,
50:12great though it was, has its negative side. It has its violence. It has its dark side.
50:19That dark side of Rome was ruthlessly exploited by the fascist dictator Mussolini, who openly
50:25styled his regime as a new Roman Empire and himself a new Emperor Augustus.
50:39For both good and bad, the whole Western world has grown up in Rome's towering shadow. Nurtured
50:47on its stories, imitating its heroes, always trying to learn the lessons of its Republic,
50:56its empire and its fall. Rome, ruthless in its lust for power, insatiable in its ambition,
51:04revolutionary in its political ideals. Its soaring spirit has never died. Rome's power
51:23and glory have branded themselves on the Western imagination forever.