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Secrets of the Dead Season 23 Episode 1
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00:00Ancient Rome, heart of a powerful empire, and home to an architectural masterpiece,
00:19the Colosseum. The Colosseum is the largest amphitheater ever built in the Roman world.
00:26The most famous, the most impressive monument in the ancient city of Rome.
00:35Built to amaze, but also to entertain, educate, and control.
00:48We get a sense of incredible engineering, incredible architecture, and of course,
00:53what took place here is something that still leaves us in awe.
00:59Now, archaeologists are taking a closer look at this icon of the Roman Empire,
01:05revealing its former glory. The most exciting thing about this excavation
01:11is that it gave us the opportunity to touch the very origin of the Colosseum.
01:16And further research across the Roman world is shedding light on long-held myths about this
01:24great amphitheater and the empire itself.
01:27It makes it possible to prove what they ate, how they lived, how they trained,
01:33so it was just super exciting.
01:34How does the Colosseum and the games that went on inside reflect Rome's political,
01:43financial, and military fortunes?
01:49It's, in many ways, one of the most political buildings of the city of Rome,
01:53and arguably of the Roman Empire as a whole.
01:55The rise and fall of the Colosseum.
02:09The year is 80 CE. 50,000 Romans, from senators to slaves, arrive at the brand new Colosseum.
02:20Entrance is free, a gift from the emperor.
02:23The inaugural games are about to begin.
02:32Trained hunters known as Venatoris slaughter exotic animals from across the empire.
02:41Criminals are forced to act out ancient myths before their execution.
02:48And the highlight, gladiator fights.
02:53Hundreds of them.
03:03What you see inside the games is a microcosm of the reality of the world order.
03:09Rome is in charge.
03:10The emperor is in charge.
03:12When those first games were held, the emperor ruled over territory that spread from North Africa
03:20to Germany, from the north of England to Syria.
03:23The opening of the Colosseum marked the dawn of Rome's Golden Age, a period of peace, strength, and immense prosperity.
03:41This is the epicenter of the entire Roman Empire under the emperors.
03:502,000 years later, only portions of the amphitheater remain.
03:54The wooden arena floor, seating stands, and internal corridors have long since collapsed.
04:07Now, a new large-scale excavation of the Colosseum is underway.
04:12There it is. There. These are the splinters from the boards of the wooden frame.
04:21We're going to conserve it and take it to be analyzed.
04:25Researchers want to understand how the Colosseum was built and what it originally looked like.
04:37Lead archaeologist Federica Rinaldi oversees the team.
04:42We're working on the Colosseum's southern side, an area that very little is known about.
04:57Only the northern facade of the Colosseum remains standing.
05:01To the south, an earthquake in the 14th century brought down the outer corridors and walls,
05:08an area later paved over.
05:12The archaeologists are digging where these structures once stood,
05:19down into the Colosseum's very foundations.
05:24We decided to remove this cobblestone pavement and start digging,
05:29layer by layer, this immense area of 3,000 square meters, to restore the story of the Colosseum.
05:38Colosseum.
05:42It's the first systematic exploration of this vast area that once supported two huge parallel corridors.
05:54Technical architect Barbara Nassaro is part of the research team.
05:57She is studying the methods used to build the Colosseum.
06:03This is a very, very hard concrete made with mortar and a basaltic stone,
06:09which gives a very, very hard foundation because we know that the Colosseum was nearly 50 meters high.
06:19It was very heavy and so it needed a very deep foundation. The foundation is at two levels.
06:25That's more or less 14 meters.
06:28The thick foundations, thought to extend under the whole structure, are nearly 45 feet in
06:38depth and held the weight of the massive Colosseum, an estimated 990 million pounds.
06:46The immense weight came from its building materials. Limestone, dense volcanic rock, bricks, concrete,
06:56and thousands of iron clamps that held the stones together.
07:03Today, much of the original material is gone, taken and reused over time.
07:08But there's enough left of the Colosseum for archaeologists to understand how the crowds
07:15entered this great structure to enjoy the games.
07:24The entrances to the Colosseum took place along a radial axis, not via a circular route like today.
07:33There were, in fact, 76 entrances for the public, who entered in this direction.
07:45Each had a ticket on which was engraved the number of the arcade they had to go through.
07:53And then, going up the stairs, they would reach their seats.
07:57Important officials and various organizations like guilds allocated tickets to citizens.
08:12But who were the spectators that came to watch the games?
08:16And once through the numbered arches, how did they know where to sit?
08:22While much of the Colosseum's internal structure has long since collapsed,
08:27Pompeii is home to the first stone amphitheater ever built.
08:32It's 150 years older than the Colosseum, and much better preserved.
08:40Darius Aria has studied the remains in detail.
08:45We have some corridors that lead you directly to the best seats in the house, the ringside seats.
08:51And then we have external staircases all around here,
08:55and that's going to take you to the higher located seats.
09:00The stadium was designed to maintain a strict segregation of social classes.
09:07What we see is that there's a rigid categorization of people.
09:11You literally have a blueprint of how society works.
09:15The most important people have the best seats, are closest to the action.
09:19And as you make your way up into the nosebleed seats, well, you're less and less important,
09:25reminding you of your place in that Roman society.
09:34Classics historian Shushma Malik has spotted clues suggesting the same was true at the Colosseum.
09:40When we think about the seating arrangements, the different levels are made from different materials.
09:48So at the bottom, we've got more brick and solid stone.
09:52But as we work our way up to the top, the materials become wooden, so less comfortable, less secure.
09:59This represents the difference in who's sitting in the different places in the Colosseum.
10:03On the ground floor, huge corridors 30 feet tall display exquisite reliefs.
10:13The top floor arcades are smaller and left plain.
10:19At the bottom, we've got the elite.
10:20So we're talking about senators and equestrians who are the richest people in society.
10:26And then as we go further up, in our next layer, we've got male citizens.
10:30And then as we go further up, you have the other category of society, which is the rest, essentially.
10:36So non-citizens, the enslaved, and women.
10:42Everyone in the crowd knew their place.
10:44We're looking really at a space that restates the political and social order.
10:59And that, on the one hand, gives people plenty of entertainment and plenty of fun,
11:05but also gives the people in charge, the men in charge,
11:08the opportunity to control very closely who's doing what and where.
11:14The Colosseum was more than a place for entertainment.
11:19It was a demonstration of power to maintain control.
11:26And from the remains uncovered by the archaeologists today,
11:31it's possible to understand what the Colosseum looked like when it hosted gladiator games.
11:36The Colosseum was more than a place for entertainment.
11:42In front of me, there's a square section that has a very smooth surface.
11:48On top of this footprint, there would have rested blocks of travertine,
11:58at least 90 centimeters tall.
12:02They formed the base of the pillars that supported the arches.
12:06Travertine is a dense type of limestone that was quarried locally.
12:15Archaeologists estimate that more than 250,000 tons were used to build the Colosseum.
12:21The uncovered architectural footprints reveal where lost archways once stood,
12:31and enable archaeologists to create a virtual model of the Colosseum,
12:36with its collapsed southern walls still intact.
12:41108 arcades stood here stacked on top of each other over three floors,
12:47almost 130 feet in the air.
12:53On the ground floor, senators and senior politicians reached ringside seats,
12:59through corridors reserved exclusively for their use.
13:02While the public followed a network of staircases and hallways,
13:08that took them to seats determined by social status.
13:15And at the center of the amphitheater, the emperor and his entourage.
13:25The archaeology here has revealed detailed information about what the Colosseum looked like when first built.
13:32But there's still more to uncover.
13:36What they did is to create these drains inside the foundation.
13:45The floor of these drains was made with bipedali, which are square bricks.
13:55The drains would have prevented the Colosseum from flooding during heavy rains,
13:59and taken away whatever refuse built up on game days.
14:05This was full of things like nowadays drains.
14:09So water, rubbish, something coming from toilets,
14:13and any washing and cleaning that was done inside.
14:17Also burns from food, seeds of the food they ate during the day,
14:22and probably some animals that were killed inside too.
14:30But the drains reveal something else.
14:35Maria Rosaria, look, there's a stamp. Can you see its shape?
14:39Yes, it's a half moon. I can read roofie.
14:44Okay.
14:46The Romans stamped their bricks, so that each factory could be held accountable for the quality of its products.
14:55Thanks to the huge database of brick stamps from Imperial Rome,
15:00we can say that this stamp dates to Vespasian's time.
15:07It's proof that the Colosseum's foundation was built in the reign of Vespasian,
15:13the ninth emperor of Rome.
15:15He took the throne in 69 CE.
15:23Vespasian comes up with the decision of building the amphitheater in Rome in the early months,
15:30really, of his reign.
15:33The project begins in Ernest in 72 CE.
15:39Why did he build the Colosseum and choose this location for him?
15:45Vespasian followed the reign of an infamous ruler, Nero.
15:54Just yards from the Forum, the central hub of ancient Rome,
15:59Nero had built himself a huge palatial complex,
16:04the Domus Aurea, or the Golden House.
16:09The very construction of that palace had led to the eviction of thousands of people from,
16:14really, a central site in the city of Rome.
16:17So it is a monument of despotism, it is a monument of extravagance and imperial corruption.
16:23And Nero didn't stop there.
16:27Alongside his grand estate, he built a huge statue of himself, 100 feet tall,
16:35known as the Colossus.
16:38So we're talking about a megalomaniac, we're talking about a person that wants to leave his mark in the city.
16:46After Nero's death, warring factions attempted to claim the Roman throne.
16:51In the political fallout, there's a lot of bloodshed, there's a lot of uncertainty,
16:58and from that competition, that Game of Thrones experience, there's one man that remains standing.
17:04His name was Vespasian.
17:05Vespasian was not of royal blood, but a military man.
17:14A general.
17:17His first challenge, building a relationship with his people.
17:21So what did he do?
17:26Vespasian is on an important political populist mission.
17:36He gives back to the people what Nero had taken away,
17:39and builds the greatest structure for spectacles in the Roman Empire.
17:50Vespasian built the Colosseum on the grounds of Nero's vast estate,
17:56and the Colossus statue was reshaped into the Roman god Sol.
18:01Vespasian built the whole, savvy political gestures to erase Nero's legacy and establish a new dynasty,
18:08the Flavians.
18:15The building of the Flavian Amphitheatre was central to the political program of Vespasian.
18:22It was, first and foremost, a major statement of the fact that he was the new guy in charge.
18:31By 80 CE, after only eight years, the great amphitheatre is finished.
18:49But the emperor celebrating the first ever games at the Colosseum isn't Vespasian.
18:55Vespasian had a very distinguished career as emperor.
18:58He transforms the city, building the first public amphitheatre on such a grand scale.
19:05Unfortunately for him, he didn't live to see its completion.
19:11Vespasian achieves something very remarkable.
19:14He dies in his own bed, never a mean feat for the Roman Empire.
19:20Vespasian dies only months before the Colosseum's grand opening.
19:24Vespasian succeeds his father, he gets the glory of celebrating the games.
19:32It was, in many ways, his big day.
19:39He was, by inaugurating the amphitheatre, as he was then known, announcing, advertising, stating the
19:48beginning of a new era, of a new golden era.
19:56Rome's golden age would see the empire reach peak prosperity and military strength.
20:02How did the entertainment within the Colosseum reflect the grandeur of the mighty Roman Empire?
20:13The main event in the afternoon each day, it's man against man.
20:17It's world-famous gladiators going head to head.
20:21Gladiators are central to our story.
20:23Public entertainment in Rome, they are central to the story of the Colosseum.
20:26The Colosseum was primarily built to host gladiatorial contests.
20:34It would become the most iconic venue for these spectacles.
20:40But there was more to these clashes than a simple fight to the death.
20:44In Rome, Alexander Mariotti is a specialist in gladiatorial combat.
21:00He believes the only way to truly understand a gladiator is to become one.
21:08Experiment in archaeology is an interesting way to get another perspective that the sources don't give us.
21:12Once you put on the armor, once you fight with the weapons,
21:16you start to gain a physical knowledge and a physical memory.
21:19You understand the hardships.
21:21Things as simple as the inability to breathe, your perception of what you can actually see,
21:26the weight of the helmet, the tiredness that comes to the physical combat.
21:31So it's a great way of sort of filling in the gaps that we have through history.
21:37The sport is entirely different than we've been led to believe.
21:39Every time that I go in the arena, I think about the real gladiator, what they have in their mind.
21:48You know, a lot of people wants to see you, fight and see the blood,
21:52so you should make entertainment for the people of Rome.
21:55More than 15 different classes of gladiators, distinguished by their weapons, armor and fighting styles,
22:21fought inside the Colosseum.
22:29Through their armor, through their weapons, they have advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.
22:33One of the most popular battles was between two specific classes, the Retiarius versus the Secutor.
22:47This is a fan favorite. This is the Retiarius. He was the only one whose face you could see.
22:51And that made him human. The thing about gladiator helmets is that they dehumanized the fighter.
22:56He became more of a robot. He didn't show expressions of pain.
23:04Whereas the Retiarius is us. We can see him. We can see his expressions.
23:07As a way of projecting authority over the Roman people,
23:15many classes of gladiators were inspired by the ancient enemies of Rome.
23:22But by the time the Colosseum was inaugurated in 80 CE,
23:27most gladiators were professional athletes who chose to fight.
23:31The Retiarius was a newer class of gladiator.
23:39Fighting without a helmet, he was an everyman, a simple fisherman.
23:48So he has two weapons which are pretty iconic. He's got a trident over here and a net. The net is
23:54really a very dramatic piece of equipment.
23:56You can imagine them swinging it in the middle of the arena, the people loving it.
24:05The Retiarius had the advantage of mobility, but little protection, unlike his opponents.
24:14The Secutor here is a tank. He's got not only this massive helmet, which if you look at it objectively,
24:21has a little bit of a fish-like quality. Small eye holes, thin on the top. And so we have a
24:26theme to the fight. This is a fight of nature. Man versus nature. The fish against the fishermen.
24:43Man versus nature. Rome against its enemies.
24:51Gladiator fights were more than sporting contests.
24:56They were a part of Rome's national identity.
25:01And it's the clash of these two, who's going to win, that makes it exciting for the Roman audience.
25:08That's what it is. It's a show.
25:14During Rome's golden age, the Colosseum would showcase around 100 gladiatorial fights per year.
25:21Most games were organized by the emperor, but also by wealthy aristocrats intending to further
25:31their political careers. How did Rome produce enough skilled fighters to keep the crowds entertained?
25:40More than 400 miles from Rome lay the border town of Carnuntum, in what is today, Austria.
25:54The remains of these amphitheaters, almost two miles apart, are nearly all that's visible of the
26:03settlement today. Professor Wolfgang Neubauer has been working at the site for over 30 years.
26:12The Roman Carnuntum was a really important town. It is one of the hot spots of the Roman Empire in the
26:22second and third century. Located on the banks of the Danube River,
26:28Carnuntum was a thriving center of commerce and home to 50,000 citizens.
26:34And it still lies here, untouched, under farmland and pristine countryside.
26:45Carnuntum is very special because it has never been overbuilt.
26:50All the remains are still preserved in the ground. So it's all there.
26:53The town is about 10 square kilometers.
27:03It's absolutely impossible to excavate something like this.
27:06But there is another way to do archaeology.
27:18Wolfgang and his team
27:20are pioneers of non-invasive archaeology.
27:24They combine LIDAR, ground-penetrating radar, and magnetometry to create detailed models
27:31of the structures below the ground.
27:39Wolfgang's survey reveals the sprawling infrastructure around the larger of the two amphitheaters
27:45for the first time.
27:46We can actually really walk into this data and see all the different details.
27:54And one mysterious building stands out.
28:01The scans show four stone walls surrounding a round wooden structure,
28:08more than 60 feet in diameter.
28:11The most amazing thing was a circular structure.
28:14And when we look closer to this circular structure, it looked like a small amphitheater.
28:20And in the center of this circular feature was one individual hole, a post hole.
28:27We realized that this might be the foundation of Apollos.
28:33Roman sources described the palos as a wooden post that gladiators used to practice
28:39their sword blows like a timber punching bag.
28:44One typical place to find a palos would have been a gladiator school.
28:49We had to verify this.
28:51So we made an excavation and we found the foundation of the palos in the center of the training arena.
28:57And this made it clear that we really found a school of gladiators in Canunto.
29:03This gladiator school has remained preserved beneath the ground for almost 2,000 years.
29:11It's the first of its kind to be found outside Italy.
29:14While the first gladiators were simply prisoners of war.
29:22Over time, a whole industry developed around the game's participants.
29:28Even freemen chose the life of a gladiator.
29:32And were turned into professional fighters in schools such as this one.
29:36And the most prestigious school of all was discovered in the 1930s under a city block adjacent to the Colosseum.
29:50Right here in the shadow of the Colosseum is this large sprawling complex.
29:56You can actually see quite clearly there's a massive curved wall.
30:00This structure is an amphitheater.
30:03But what is another arena doing right next to the Colosseum?
30:08This structure is known as the Ludus Magnus.
30:10And that means in Latin, the big school.
30:13So this is really the epitome of gladiator schools throughout the Roman Empire.
30:16This is number one.
30:18Evidence of its lost grandeur is still easy to spot.
30:22Now take a look right here.
30:24All right.
30:26So what you have here is a marble plug.
30:29And then right next to it is a little piece of a metal pin.
30:32That's part of the attachment system to which you would adhere panels of marble.
30:36Those panels of marble are stripped away.
30:38But this tells us they were there.
30:40Which means that this gladiator school was beautifully decorated.
30:44Because the emperors owned this, it means money is no object.
30:47This is just imperial magnificence.
30:51You can imagine the emperor coming to watch some of the performances in this practice arena.
30:56That's the prestige of the Ludus Magnus.
31:02The barracks were at least two, even three stories high.
31:05So hundreds and hundreds of gladiators every day.
31:08They're practicing, they're training, getting ready for the main event in the Colosseum.
31:11You want to think about it being like coming to Madison Square Garden.
31:20You've made it.
31:21You've established yourself.
31:22You're coming from all over the empire.
31:24And now you're going to the great big show.
31:26The remains of the gladiator school hint at how far the Romans went to provide the best entertainment.
31:39But is there a way to learn more about the gladiators themselves?
31:42Vienna, Austria, home to the lab of forensic anthropologist Fabian Kanz, an expert in human remains.
31:58For us as humans, everything we do leaves traces in our skeleton.
32:12Fabian and his team were called in to examine the remains of more than 60 bodies,
32:18found buried in a mass grave over 600 miles from the Colosseum,
32:22in a Roman cemetery in Ephesus, Turkey.
32:29All but one turned out to be male.
32:33Then we start finding injuries.
32:36This was just overwhelming how many injuries we found.
32:44There are just two options.
32:45Maybe they have been soldiers or they have been gladiators.
32:48What is really impressive on this call is a really massive sharp force wound.
32:55And there is kind of tearing, which means this must be caused by a barbed instrument.
33:03The only weapon that could have torn bones in this way was the barbed tip of a trident.
33:09And only gladiators use tridents in combat.
33:14Never soldiers.
33:15There was a moment where we put all these clues together.
33:21We have this group with just males in it.
33:24We have this very high amount of healed and unhealed trauma.
33:30This all together fitted very well that these are the remains of gladiators.
33:36These are the first gladiator bones ever found, let alone studied in this kind of detail.
33:42It makes it possible to prove what they ate, how they lived, how they trained.
33:49So it was just super exciting.
33:54Signs of damage to one of the skulls catch Fabian's eye.
34:00He zooms in to inspect the wound more closely.
34:03This is the frontal bone of the skull.
34:08And as you can see here, there's a massive sharp force trauma.
34:12The chance to survive this is very low.
34:15But you can see all the borders of the injury are smooth.
34:19This means it was professionally treated.
34:22All the little bone splints and everything picked out.
34:25Therefore, it recovered nearly perfectly.
34:31It's evidence that this person was treated for a severe skull fracture and survived.
34:37Proof that gladiators received sophisticated medical attention.
34:43The most renowned physician in the Roman Empire, Galen, wrote about treating wounded gladiators in his
34:49city of Pergamon in modern-day Turkey.
34:52He claims to have saved all the men in his care.
34:57We know from the books that gladiators have the best medical treatment at that time.
35:03But now we have the physical evidence to prove this.
35:08Ancient accounts also revealed that the training and upkeep of these warriors
35:12was financed by the managers of gladiator schools.
35:15It was a big investment.
35:20A lot of money could be made from top gladiators performing well
35:24at lavish games organized by rich Romans or the emperor.
35:30But did the special treatment of gladiators go beyond emergency medicine?
35:39Fabian cuts a bone sample.
35:41Fabian cuts a bone sample and freeze dries the fragment with liquid nitrogen.
35:52Before grinding it into powder and mixing it into a solution.
35:56A flame spectrometer can reveal the presence of different elements in a liquid
36:08to analyze its chemical composition.
36:13Fabian tests the bone solution for any unusual elements.
36:18The flame burns bright red.
36:20And then you see it's very intense.
36:23Evidence of the element strontium.
36:28Strontium, normally found in only trace amounts, strengthens bones, improving mobility,
36:35making them more resistant to fractures and protecting vital organs from injury.
36:42All of which would enhance the fitness of a fighter.
36:45And perhaps make the difference between life and death in combat.
36:52But these gladiator bones contain unusually large amounts.
36:56The body obtained strontium primarily through dietary intake.
37:13Ancient texts mention that gladiators drank a special brew made from burned bones or plants.
37:21Drinking bones, wood or bark to ash increases natural strontium levels.
37:30Drinking this mixture boosted the gladiator's intake.
37:35Fabian believes this could explain the superhuman levels of strontium in the skeletons.
37:40You have to think about this ash drink like we drink nowadays after sports.
37:49These fizzy tablets.
37:51And this was pretty much the same.
37:55From advanced health care to strontium supplements,
38:00nothing was spared in pursuit of the ultimate warrior.
38:03But there was more to the Colosseum than just gladiator fights.
38:15Hunting wild animals was also hugely popular.
38:21And new archaeology and research revealed the scope of these performances.
38:25At the Sapienza University of Rome, zooarchaeologist Claudia Miniti examines animal remains recovered from the Colosseum's sewer systems.
38:41The Colosseum is the only amphitheater which has given us such a vast quantity of animal remains.
38:46It's an exceptional collection.
38:48Cleaning them reveals details that can identify the animals.
39:04Carnivores usually have sharp teeth for cutting and tearing meat, whereas herbivores teeth are flat.
39:10This skull has teeth that are characteristic of a carnivore, although it must have had a somewhat omnivorous diet,
39:25because the teeth have both sharp and flat surfaces.
39:31From the teeth, I can tell this is a bear.
39:35Other skulls belong to everyday animals, horses and dogs.
39:44But Claudia homes in on a more unusual fight.
39:51Here we have two radius bones from different individuals.
39:57The radius is a bone found in the front legs of animals.
40:01They are the same shape as the radius of a domestic cat.
40:12This tells me that we are dealing with the remains of large felines.
40:22To identify which species, Claudia compares the size of these bones to those of big cats living today.
40:31These are therefore two large individuals that fall within the range of lions.
40:47In particular, the largest bone proves to be very large,
40:52probably belonging to a very large male, which was specifically chosen to be used in the games.
41:01This collection of bones also reveals lions weren't the only exotic animals used in the Colosseum.
41:13This measurement fits within the range of a leopard rather than a lion.
41:18It's a very large man.
41:21These animals from far-flung corners of the empire left the crowds in no doubt of Rome's dominion over the known world.
41:33From the very beginning, no expense was spared to provide entertainment for the masses.
41:39And the spectacle didn't stop there.
41:51Ancient writers suggest the inaugural games included an event even more extraordinary.
41:56One that demonstrated the empire's political, financial, and military might.
42:06A show that would stretch Roman ingenuity to the limit.
42:09In the heart of Rome, Darius Aria examines ancient texts that describe the first games held at the brand new amphitheater.
42:24Take a look at this.
42:25Fort Titus suddenly filled this same theater with water.
42:30And he brought in people on ships who engaged in a sea fight there.
42:34We're talking about ship battles in the Colosseum.
42:40This passage from Roman historian Cassius Dio was written more than 100 years after the inaugural games.
42:48He never witnessed the event himself.
42:53But naval battles had been acted out before on artificial lakes.
42:57Could they really have been staged in an amphitheater?
43:03And we're talking about flooding the largest arena in the ancient world.
43:08It would have been a Herculean task to carry something like this out.
43:12So how do they manage to do this?
43:15It would take extraordinary skill to build such a system.
43:19A recent engineering investigation into the Colosseum reveals it might have been possible.
43:28Researchers suggest large ducts that ran around the building's circumference
43:33fed into shallow channels that could have filled the arena.
43:38Calculations based on their capacity prove that if flooded,
43:42the arena could have then been drained in just a few hours.
43:45This sounds like an incredible challenge, but the Romans were masters in engineering
43:53and the manipulation of water.
43:58The Colosseum, as it is today, reveals no direct evidence that naval battles took place here.
44:06Too much of its internal structures collapsed, leaving researchers with many unanswered questions.
44:15But the network of channels and the contemporary texts suggest that naval reenactments with
44:22scaled-down ships may well have been a reality.
44:32Just imagine it, now you have this huge arena of the Colosseum, flooded with water,
44:38filled with ships, manned by sailors, with these ships ramming into each other,
44:42and the sailors fighting each other to the death.
44:46This is the kind of experience that would have made the Colosseum legendary.
44:58But just 10 years after those first games, the Colosseum underwent an upgrade,
45:03adding infrastructure that would make spectacles even more extraordinary.
45:21So not long after Titus opens the Colosseum and there are the inaugural games,
45:26he dies and his brother Domitian takes over.
45:30The Flavians have been in power for a little over a decade.
45:37And Domitian lacks the respect that his father Vespasian or brother Titus had.
45:44He is keen to make his mark.
45:46One of the things Domitian pays attention to is the Colosseum.
45:52Domitian is thinking about developments he can make to make the games more spectacular.
46:00By throwing games that will keep the people entertained,
46:03he's making sure that they also see him as a good emperor and he remains popular.
46:08During the games, emperors would shower the audience with gifts, food, tokens for prizes, money.
46:24Successful tactics to win the support of the Roman public.
46:30Domitian went even further.
46:32The games were hugely popular, so he added a fourth level to the Colosseum,
46:38which made room for more than 10,000 additional spectators.
46:43And increased its height from 130 to almost 160 feet, the equivalent of a 15-story building.
46:52Not only did he expand the Colosseum to new heights, he dug down, creating the Hypogeum, an underground chamber.
47:05A huge expanse beneath the arena floor.
47:10It replaced any water control system that may once have been in place.
47:14But how did this labyrinth of passages help entertain the crowds?
47:24Federica descends into the belly of the Colosseum.
47:28The Hypogeum is a maze of 14 corridors, lined with 32 small chambers.
47:46In many places, the floors are marked by mysterious holes.
47:50Here we see a quadrangular block of travertine, in the center of which there is a circular hole,
48:01bordered by an enclosure, a metal structure that also bears a number.
48:11Within the walls that surround the holes,
48:14grooves and shapes in the stonework add to the mystery.
48:18By examining all these features together, archaeologists have managed to reconstruct the intricate system.
48:31The bronze inlay once held a wooden column that, when turned,
48:36would hoist a caged animal or man from a holding cell up to the arena floor.
48:41These hatches open suddenly, from which, just as suddenly, come out scared, hungry animals,
48:56ready to perform on the arena floor.
48:59Emperor Domitian had transformed the area below the Colosseum into 130,000 square feet of high-tech stagecraft.
49:16The crowning glory of the greatest amphitheater in the Roman Empire.
49:21A magnificent venue for almost 60,000 people.
49:32The empire, in its sheer diversity, in its exotic, mesmerizing quality,
49:37comes to town, and it comes to town first and foremost at the Colosseum.
49:41The Colosseum would continue to host thousands of games for the next 400 years.
49:52A showcase for the emperor to demonstrate his authority over the Roman populace.
49:57But when Rome falls to barbarian invaders at the end of the fifth century,
50:18the Colosseum is on borrowed time.
50:21Rome remains an important city. The Colosseum remains an important time-honored monument in the city of Rome,
50:29but the empire is no more.
50:39Without the empire, Rome can no longer afford the luxury of the Colosseum.
50:44The archaic monument. Written accounts reveal animal hunts and acrobatic displays were performed here in 523.
50:54After that, the historical record is silent.
51:02But was this really the end?
51:06Amongst the ancient trash excavated from the Colosseum's sewers, the archaeologists make a discovery.
51:14When it arrived here, apart from the earthy and crustaceans, it didn't present any type of corrosion,
51:23so it was in excellent condition.
51:31It's a finely crafted ring of almost pure gold.
51:35The most special thing is that inside we found a small ball, probably in gold, which jingles inside this cage.
51:50Can I hear it?
51:54Yes, we can hear it a little.
51:58But the golden ring presents a puzzle.
52:04The shape, the presence of this design, suggests it was made between the 6th and 7th centuries.
52:12Records state the games of the Colosseum ended by the early 6th century.
52:22But if this ring was crafted later, a person of wealth was in the Colosseum long after the games finished.
52:29Why were they there?
52:36What were they watching?
52:42Questions for future archaeologists to answer.
52:44The Colosseum had hosted bloody entertainment for almost half a millennium.
52:59It reflected the golden age of the Roman Empire.
53:11But without the empire to pay for expenses, this once great venue was abandoned.
53:17Over the coming centuries, Rome herself would move on, returning to greatness as the center of Western Christianity.
53:30And this new Rome found a way to repurpose the ancient monument.
53:36I'm standing in front of St. Peter's Basilica.
53:38This is the most famous church of the Roman Catholic world.
53:41If you take a look at the balcony and then the rest of the facade,
53:46we see these beautifully articulated architectural features.
53:49It's all the same creamy white limestone called travertine.
53:54And it should look familiar.
53:58We've got written documentation in the Renaissance of thousands of cartloads of travertine stone
54:05brought directly from the Colosseum to build St. Peter's Basilica.
54:09The ultimate irony, if we think about the Colosseum and its bloodshed and its violence,
54:19and we have that grand arena for gladiatorial bouts living on,
54:24its stones transformed and reused as part of the heart of the new spiritual empire,
54:31the heart of the Catholic Church here in St. Peter's.
54:34Not every stone was taken.
54:42What remains is the ruin we see today.
54:46Still standing almost 2,000 years later,
54:50it's a potent reminder of ancient Rome's bravado and brilliance.
54:56Evidence of its cruel and callous culture.
54:59But an enduring symbol of an empire that once transformed the world.
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