The story of ancient Rome can be overwhelming.
We'll take it slowly,
starting where the city did... in the Forum...
and try to bring to life all this ancient rubble.
In a nutshell, classical Rome lasted about
a thousand years, roughly 500 BC to 500 AD.
Rome grew for 500 years, peaked for 200 years,
and fell for 300 years.
The first half was the republic, ruled by elected senators.
The last half was the empire, ruled by unelected emperors.
In its glory days, the word "Rome" meant
not just the city, but what Romans considered
the entire civilized world.
Everyone was either Roman or barbarian.
People who spoke Latin or Greek were
considered civilized, part of the empire.
Everyone else, barbarian.
According to legend, Rome was founded
by two brothers, Romulus and Remus.
Abandoned in the wild and suckled by a she-wolf,
they grew up to establish the city.
In actuality, the first Romans mixed and mingled here,
in the valley between the famous Seven Hills of Rome.
This became the Roman Forum.
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In 509, they tossed out their king
and established the relatively democratic Roman Republic.
That began perhaps history's greatest success story --
the rise of Rome.
From the start, Romans were expert builders,
and they had a knack for effective government.
This simple brick building
was once richly veneered with marble
and fronted by a grand portico.
It's the Curia.
The senate met here and set the legal standards
that still guide Western civilization.
The reign of Julius Caesar, who ruled around
the time of Christ, marked the turning point
between the republic and the empire.
The republic, designed to rule
a small city-state, found itself trying
to rule most of Europe.
Something new and stronger was needed.
Caesar established a no-nonsense,
more disciplined government, became dictator for life,
and, for good measure,
had a month named in his honor...July.
The powerful elites of the republic
found all this change just too radical.
In an attempt to save the republic
and their political power,
a faction of Roman senators assassinated Caesar.
His body was burned on this spot in 44 BC.
The citizens of Rome gathered here in the heart of the Forum
to hear Mark Antony say, in Shakespeare's words,
"Friends, Romans, countrymen,
lend me your ears.
I've come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."
But the republic was finished, and Rome became
the grand capital of a grand empire.
The Via Sacra, or "Sacred Way,"
was the main street of ancient Rome.
It stretched from the Arch of Septimius Severus
to the Arch of Titus.
Rome's various triumphal arches,
named after the emperors who built them,
functioned as public-relations tools.
Reliefs decorating the various arches
show how war and expansion were the business of state.
Rome's thriving economy was fueled by
plunder and slaves won in distant wars.
2,000 years ago, this was a working port town.
Wandering around, you can imagine the bustle
and complexity of a once-thriving port
of 60,000 people.
Warehouses,
apartment flats,
mansions,
shopping arcades,
all laid out in a typically Roman grid plan of streets.
Located where the Tiber River meets the sea,
Ostia was founded in the fourth century before Christ.
It served as a naval base,
protecting Rome from any invasion by river.
It was also an administrative and warehousing center,
keeping more than a million Romans fed and in sandals.
But eventually, things went downhill for Ostia.
Rome fell, the river changed course,
the port silted-up and was abandoned,
the entire place became a malaria-infested swamp,
and Ostia was forgotten.
The mud that buried Ostia
actually protected it from the ravages of time,
including stone-scavenging medieval peasants.
And, thanks to extensive and ongoing excavations,
there's lots to see.
This fine mosaic decorated the baths of Neptune.
At the bottom of the pool,
Neptune rides four horses through the sea.
Apart from the cupid riding the dolphin,
the sea looks pretty frightening --
which, to those ancients, it was.
The adjacent theater seated 4,000.
Plays were rowdy, daytime events
with lots of audience participation --
perhaps a bit like today's school field trip.
[ Speaking Italian ]
Typical of Roman urban design,
this complex mixed religion, business, and entertainment --
a grand theater facing a temple,
surrounded by a commercial square.
The square of the guilds,
lined with offices of ship owners and traders,
was the bustling center of Rome's import/export industry.
Mosaics on the sidewalk advertise services
offered by various shops,
with symbols for sailors and merchants
who were either illiterate or couldn't read Latin.
Shippers showed off fine vessels.
This lighthouse was the sign of
the great Egyptian city of Alexandria.
Grain containers are reminders that grain was
the major import of Ostia.
Francesca: Rome imported most of what it consumed.
These big jars contained oil, wine, grain
that came from all over the Mediterranean,
was stored here then shipped off to Rome.
This is the mill --
Ostia was famous for the quality of its bread.
They would put sticks through these holes,
and then a donkey or a human
would push them around.
-Okay, so, you'd pour the grain in here,
grind it up, flour comes out the bottom.
And that's stone-ground, I'd say.
-Isn't it, really.
Rick: I love to imagine how people must have lived here.
Francesca: Yes, in apartments that could be
easily up to five stories high.
They had no kitchens, no plumbing, no heating,
so, they used these apartments
like tents at a camping site, just to sleep.
-No kitchens? -No kitchens.
So, even to eat they would have to go to
a fast food or a cafeteria --
of the time, it was just across the street.
-So, you just step across the street to the corner diner?
-Yes.
2,000 years ago, this was the neighborhood bar.
-Yes, like a cafeteria or a fast food place.
You would come up to the counter and maybe order something to go,
maybe you might see some food or some drinks on display here.
Or, if you had time, you would come inside
and you could have something sitting down.
And here, probably, they had a display of the food
or maybe the cups and the plates,
and then here there's a pictorial menu
that shows us what was offered.
So, we have food, we have drinks, and we have music.
-So, music, like,
Tuesday night, we got live music,
out in the courtyard? -Yes, why not?
As you can see, public restrooms were really public,
and quite advanced --
they had running water coming through.
-So, there's a stream going all the time,
constantly flushing. -Constantly flushing.
So, constantly clean.
Imagine frescoes on the walls,
and even revolving doors at the entrance.
-So easy to underestimate how advanced Rome was.
-That's really true.
Rome's ancient wall stretches eleven miles.
It protected the city until Italy was united in 1870.
From gates like this, grand roads fanned out
to connect the city with its empire.
The Appian Way, Rome's gateway to the East,
is fun to explore on a rented bike.
It was the grandest and fastest road yet,
the wonder of its day.
Very straight,
as Roman engineers were fond of designing,
it stretched 400 miles to Naples and then on to Brindisi,
from where Roman ships sailed to Greece and Egypt.
These are the original stones.
Tombs of ancient big-shots
lined the Appian Way like billboards.
While pagans didn't enjoy the promise of salvation,
those who could afford it purchased a kind of immortality
by building themselves big and glitzy memorials.
These line the main roads out of town.
Judging by their elegant togas,
these brothers were from a fine family.
This is the mausoleum of Caecilia Metella,
whose father-in-law was extremely wealthy.
While it dates from the first century BC,
we still remember her to this day,
so apparently the investment paid off.
But of course, early Christians didn't have
that kind of money, so they buried their dead
in mass underground "necropoli," or catacombs,
dug beneath the property of
the few fellow Christians who did own land.
These catacombs are scattered all around the city
just outside the walls,
and several are open to the public.
The tomb-lined tunnels of the catacombs stretch for miles
and are many layers deep.
Many of the first Christians buried here
were later recognized as martyrs and saints.
Others then carved out niches nearby
to bury their loved ones close to these early Christian heroes.
By the Middle Ages,
the catacombs were abandoned and forgotten.
Centuries later, they were rediscovered.
Romantic Age tourists on the "Grand Tour"
visited by candlelight, and legends grew
about Christians hiding out to escape persecution.
But the catacombs were not hideouts.
They were simply budget underground cemeteries.
Further along the Appian Way is Rome's Aqueduct Park,
offering a chance to see how the ancient city got its water.
With its million people, Rome needed lots of water.
These ingenious aqueducts carried a steady stream
from distant mountains into the city,
and they still seem to gallop, as they did 2,000 years ago,
into Rome.
These aqueducts were the Achille's heel of Rome.
If you wanted to bring down the city,
all you had to do was take down one of the arches.
In fact, in the sixth century, the barbarians did just that.
Without water, Rome basically shriveled up.
Today, the park's a favorite with locals for
walking the dog or burning off some of that pasta.
♪
While Mount Vesuvius is sleepy today,
in 79 AD, the volcano exploded,
sending a cloud of ash and cinders
12 miles into the sky.
It spewed for 18 hours,
sending a red-hot avalanche racing down the mountainside
at about 100 miles an hour,
burying the city of Pompeii in 20 feet of scalding debris.
Life in Pompeii was stopped in its tracks.
Today, excavations of this once booming city
offer the best look anywhere at ancient Roman life.
For archeologists, Pompeii was a shake-and-bake windfall.
Ancient Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean Sea.
That made it a kind of free-trade zone.
And Pompeii was an important port town.
It was big -- 20,000 people.
It was an important commercial center.
Imagine this square just busy with market activity.
And, because it was a port,
it was a kind of a sailors' quarter,
and that meant it was fun --
lots of bars, baths, brothels, restaurants,
and places of entertainment.
The main square, or forum,
was Pompeii's commercial, religious, and political center.
The curia housed the government.
It was built of brick and mortar -- a Roman invention.
It was originally faced with gleaming marble.
The basilica, or law court, was nearby.
Here you see the basilica floor plan
that medieval churches adopted after Christianity became legal.
In good Roman style, the city was well-organized,
with a grid street plan contained within its walls.
Remains of homes give a glimpse into Roman lifestyles.
The House of Vettii, the home of a wealthy merchant,
shows the typical layout of a mansion.
Its colonnaded atrium,
with formal garden and water flowing to give freshness,
was ringed by colorfully frescoed rooms.
Roman dining rooms were always richly decorated.
This one shows little cupids
playing out commercial activities of the town --
collecting flowers,
taking your knocks on a chariot...
...and enjoying the local wine.
For a better understanding of life at Pompeii,
Italian archeologist Gaetano Manfredi
is taking us on a walk.
Pompeii's impressive baths were just past the gymnasium.
After working out, Romans would relax, be pampered,
and enjoy the social scene in a public bath.
This was the tepidarium.
So, people coming from gymnasium after sport,
they were massaged by the slaves.
Inside the niches all around,
there were oils, creams, perfumes for the body massages.
And part of the ceiling is still original,
and so we can see how beautiful decorated
it was once on the ceiling.
They were massaged by the slaves
25, 30 minutes before going to the sauna.
Because tepidarium means "lukewarm bath."
After the tepidarium, there was the calidarium,
which was the hot bath.
Beside this wall,
there was a room where the slaves made the fire.
The hot air went underneath the double floor,
because this floor is supported by little columns,
and the hot air went between the double walls.
There was a circulation of hot air,
and just when everything was really hot,
they opened the water fountain over here.
The water slowly fell on the floor --
the floor was hot -- and this produces steam.
The last stop was the frigidarium,
the cold bath, eh?
As we still do today,
after the sauna, to harden the muscles
and for the body circulation, the cold bath.
Rick: Water was abundant in this well-plumbed city.
Fountains provided a social center at intersections,
and a steady stream of water
flushed the chariot-rutted streets clean.
So, why the stones in the street here?
-Well, there was always water flowing along the roads,
and washing the roads,
so that's why the sidewalk all over, and the stepping stones.
-So the pedestrians walk across and not get wet?
-Yes, to the crossroad, avoiding wet feet.
-Very smart.
Rick: While the site is evocative,
the horrors of that day in 79 AD are hard to imagine.
Manfredi: Thousands of people died in this eruption.
Here we have the casts of those people.
You know, during the excavations,
sometimes the archeologists
felt under the volcanic materials
some empty spaces left by the decomposition of bodies.
And so what they did,
they injected the liquid plaster in these empty spaces.
The liquid plaster took the form of the previous bodies,
and when it dried up,
the archeologists cleaned all the ash away
and it appear, the body, in the same position
the man was when he died 2,000 years ago.
One day a thriving city, the next day...this.
♪
The Villa Romana del Casale,
near the town of Piazza Armerina,
was tucked away in a remote Sicilian valley,
about midway between the city of Rome and Africa.
This was the mansion of a wealthy Roman
senator who traded in exotic animals.
That was a big business back when Rome
so creatively entertained its masses with arenas
filled with wild beasts and gladiators.
In about the year 300 AD,
the senator built this lavish country escape,
right here in the middle of Sicily.
Its splendor survives
in some of the finest Roman mosaics anywhere.
Each room had a theme, like this dining room
with its scenes of Romans hunting game.
This room features cupids fishing.
Far from the sea, only the very wealthy could afford seafood.
Serving fish for dinner was showing off.
This scene is as much an extravagant menu
as a piece of art.
While today, tourists with cameras stroll
on elevated walkways,
imagine this place with big shots in togas
wandering past fountains down colonnaded halls.
These mosaics, made of dozens of different kinds
of multicolored marble and glass chips,
give us a colorful peek at the lifestyle of Rome's elite.
The expressive and realistic faces are a vivid reminder
that it took a lot of people, real people, to run the empire.
The Corridor of the Great Hunt is 200 feet long.
It shows off the merchant's animal importing business
and it illustrates Rome's fascination with wild animals.
Exotic beasts were caught and transported alive by ship
from distant lands.
They were destined to battle each other and slaves
to the delight of urbanites packing big-city Roman arenas.
The details are instructive, entertaining,
and flat-out beautiful.
Any top-end villa came with baths and a gym.
These women athletes are demonstrating Olympic events,
discus throwing, racing, and some kind of ball game.
For the winner, a victory palm and a crown of roses.
And I thought bikinis were an invention of the 1950s.
This countryside palace was built to impress,
and today, 1,700 years later,
with little more than its lavishly decorated floors
surviving, it still does.