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This is the story of
how Britain came to be.

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Of how our land, and its people,
were forged over thousands
of years of ancient history.

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This Britain
is a strange and alien world.

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A world that contains the epic story
of our distant, prehistoric past.

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For hundreds of years,
regional tribes had fought for
the land of Iron Age Britain.

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It was the time of heroes,
champions, men who could
wield swords.

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This was a world of
powerful Celtic warriors,

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Druids and Kings,

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before Britain was torn
apart by an even greater force,

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the Roman Army.

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These men were executed and
their heads were stuck on spikes.

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This is what would happen
if you got in the way of Rome.

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Now the journey continues

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with the next chapter in our
epic story,

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a time when our land
was being re-created
in the image of Rome itself.

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This isn't just an abstract
depiction of gladiatorial combat,
these people have names.

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And its people had to come to
terms with a bewildering, new,
and utterly modern world.

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This is science fiction.

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Britain, 200 AD.

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The brutal violence of the
Roman military campaign
was a distant memory.

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Apart from the lands of the
Picts to the North, all this was
a far-flung corner of Empire.

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Roman garrisons and administrators
ruling over a land of more
than three million people.

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The roads, buildings and cities,
were established and
impressive features

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in the landscape of Britain.

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People no longer felt that
they had been invaded,

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instead, they were part of
the most impressive,

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the most technically advanced empire
the world had ever seen.

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Britain was being dragged from its
ancient pre-historic past into
a new, and very modern world.

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A world in which you could,
perhaps, be both British
and Roman at the same time.

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Today, the relics of Roman Britain
still lie buried,
right beneath our feet.

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Here in central London, construction
work is uncovering fragments

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of a city that once stood here
almost 2,000 years ago.

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This building is
completely derelict,
and it's shortly going to be

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almost razed to the ground
and replaced by something new.

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At the moment, there's a brief
window of time that archaeologists
can take advantage of

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and dig deep into the foundations.

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And what they're revealing
deep down here

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is a rare glimpse of Roman London.

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Alison Telfer and her team
are uncovering the preserved
remains of streets and buildings.

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This is planned, urban development.

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Everything about this is amazing, so
recognisable. This is Roman timber.

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Yes and you can see the skill
of the workmen who made this.

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The timber survived very well
because of the damp conditions,
and that's helped preserve it.

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In just a few generations, Roman
London had grown into Britain's
most important trading town.

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What's being discovered here
are some of the shops and workshops
that stood right at its very heart.

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Is that a fence line?

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It is a fence line dividing this
building from the one over there

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and heading that way, there might
have been shop frontage and 20 metres
that way is the Roman road.

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When you use words like
shop frontages,
it suddenly sounds modern.

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At the time it would've been.
You could get your latest leather
shoes here, get them made to measure.

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It fascinates me that
life down here is so vivid.

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It makes people real, doesn't it?

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Look at this, it's a bag of leather
pieces that have been excavated.

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How recognisable is that?

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That's the sole

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of a leather, Roman shoe.

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Look at that. You can see on the
sides, the holes for stitching.

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Even more interesting in a way,
given that we're in a workshop,

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is a piece like this,
which is an offcut of leather.

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It's been cut from a larger piece
during the shaping and the making
of something.

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It's a find like this that shows
that shoes aren't just being sold

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from these premises,
they're actually being made here.

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And it still smells
ever so faintly of leather.

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As early as AD50, a bridge had been
built across the River Thames,

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and London grew rapidly around it.

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This was a trading hub -

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the Thames connecting Britain
to mainland Europe

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and the furthest reaches
of the Roman world.

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Not only to France, Italy and Spain,
but Africa and the Middle East.

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Nearly 2,000 years ago,
all of this was green fields,
as far as the eye could see.

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Because there were no Britons
settled on either bank.

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This is the actual site of the
very first bridge across the Thames,

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built by Romans
in the first century AD.

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It would have taken its line

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across the Thames, parallel
to London Bridge up there and the
settlement that grew up either side,

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they called Londinium,

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a name that has such a profound
and deep connection to the city
we know today.

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The Roman city of London
was built on two hills,
Cornhill and Ludgate Hill.

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By around 200 AD,
it stretched all the way

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from where St Paul's Cathedral
is today to the Tower of London.

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It was home to maybe 40,000 people.

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And it was Britain's
very first metropolis.

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The growth of urban living
wasn't only felt in the South East.

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From Bath in the West,

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to York in the North,

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many early forts and garrison towns
had evolved into civilian centres
of government and commerce.

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The roads that had been
built to transport troops

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were now carrying the latest goods
to growing centres of population.

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Roman mass manufacturing
was making decorative goods

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ever more accessible to
the aspirant middle classes.

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Innovations such as glassware
would have been a modern marvel.

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Look at that.

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Instant product!

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And it's so detailed,
just from the clay mould.

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You've got the basis of
mass production there, haven't you?

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Even the idea of
windows was new to Britain.

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It's almost impossible for us to
imagine a world without glass,

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but try and put yourself in the mind
of an Iron Age Briton,

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for whom the world
had only and always been glassless.

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Think of the impact for him of
standing inside a building,

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while being proof against
the rain and the wind,
to still be bathed in sunlight.

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And glass was far from
the only modern marvel
that came with the Romans.

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Look at this.

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This would have been a wonder.

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This is all that remains
of a gigantic statue
that stood 20 feet high.

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And it wouldn't
have been green, either -

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the figure would have been painted
gold, it would have been gilded.

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The native tribes had never before
seen likenesses of human beings.

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To see these people were accompanied
by golden giants, three times
the size of a human being,

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what would that have said to you
about what these people
were capable of?

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And then look at this, so familiar.

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It's exactly what it looks like,
it's a padlock.

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Here's the keyhole.

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This could well be the key
that fits.

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It shows the way in which the
Romans quite literally brought

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the modern world,
they brought the future with them.

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This is science fiction.

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Of course, not everyone in Britain
was so directly exposed to
the wonders of Rome.

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Away from the heavily Romanised
south, the impact of Roman culture

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would have been much less,
but if you were living
in one of the new urban centres,

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then the classical, civilised,
Roman world would have touched
every part of your life.

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It wouldn't necessarily have been
threatening and foreign,

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it would've
been exciting and seductive.

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If the new urban centres weren't
enough, the new commercial
opportunities, the new technologies,

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then Rome had something else to
offer the people for the first time.

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And that was mass entertainment,

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often on a truly massive scale.

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I'm cycling along a piece of
invisible Roman Britain.

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Where I am now
used to be a race track

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where charioteers would hurtle
along, racing against one another.

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That's once around,
another six to go.

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Colchester
was the first Roman retirement town

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where old soldiers could settle
with their own plots of land.

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Its racetrack, or circus,
was discovered by archaeologist,
Philip Crummy.

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What we've found is the only
circus known in Roman Britain.

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Comparing it to these modern
buildings, it's colossal,
even by modern standards.

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Look at this massive industrial
unit there - the circus dwarfs it.

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This is the largest
Roman building we know of in Britain.

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This is the real deal,
this is a giant thing.

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Despite knowing its layout,
only fragments of the original
structure have ever been excavated.

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It's half a kilometre long and we're
taking out just this slot here.

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That's right.

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Inches beneath the ground,
evidence of building work still
remains from the massive stadium.

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Right, let's fire this up.

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1,800 years ago,

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Romans and Britons,
rich and poor, citizens and slaves,

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would have shared
in one of the greatest sporting
spectacles of the ancient world.

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A chariot race.

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What you'd hear is
the sound of the chariots

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going seven times round
the central barrier,

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and the cheers of up to
15,000 people, yelling and screaming.

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This was the modern
equivalent of football.

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So it's mass entertainment,
almost on an industrial scale.

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This is where you come
for a bit of excitement.

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So that's mortared masonry?

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Oh, yeah, look at that.

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That's it there,
that mortar coming up there.

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The start of Roman stuff,
Roman brick there.

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These are the foundation remains
of one of the greatest stadiums
in northern Europe,

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built under a car park.

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It's good, isn't it?

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But in Colchester,
the racetrack wasn't the
only mass entertainment on offer.

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People could also get a glimpse
of some of the sporting superstars
of the age.

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Gladiators.

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This piece of pottery, this vase,

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encapsulates so much of what
we think about the Roman world.

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It was found in Colchester,
near the circus.

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It's widely regarded
as one of the finest pieces

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of Roman period pottery
ever found in northern Europe.

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These two men here are baiting,
what looks to our eyes like a dog,

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but it's actually a bear.

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That is so much how we think about
Roman sport, Roman entertainment,

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how it was all
wound up in blood and cruelty.

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But it's not just animals that are
on the receiving end of violence.

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On this side of the vase
are two gladiators.

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This one here is a class of
gladiator called a Secutor.

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He has armour, a helmet,

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a shield and, classically, a sword.

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His opponent, however,
is in all kinds of trouble.

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He should be armed with a net
and a trident, but he's lost both.

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What makes this

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vase so fascinating

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is that this isn't an abstract
notional depiction of
gladiatorial combat.

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These people have names.

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Valentinus and Memnon.

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Now, Valentinus was an
international superstar of his age.

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He was attached to
a legion in Germany,
so perhaps he was brought over

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to Colchester, to Britain,
to the provinces,

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to entertain the locals here

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and give them a
taste of European glamour.

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Nothing like this could have
been seen, even conceived of

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by the native British tribes, not
until they had contact with Rome.

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Ancient Britain had evolved
gradually through thousands of
years of pre-history.

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But in the centuries following
the Roman invasion, the face of
Britain was being transformed.

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And it was all part of a plan,

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to feed and bolster the economy
of an increasingly
bloated Roman empire.

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Look at this.

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A silver, Roman coin.

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It's got the head of the Emperor
on one side. It's called a Denarius.

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In its day,
it was worth around £100.

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And it was money and wealth
like this

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that was key
to the control of Britain.

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Across an empire of
perhaps 80 million people,

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the Romans needed to keep resources
circulating and coming towards them.

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So it's likely that Britain
was taxed directly,

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the individuals,
for the very first time.

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All the building,
all the entertainments,

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the military forts, the roads,
they all had to be paid for.

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So another coin, like this one,
would have become a common sight.

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It's called an as, and it
was the pound coin of its day.

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You can imagine it being handed over
reluctantly by a worker
from Londinium,

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to a Roman tax collector.

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It's usually the Roman military
that gets all the attention,
that has all the glamour.

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In truth, when it comes to
controlling a province like
Britannia,

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keeping control of its economy,

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then the secret lies in Roman
bureaucracy, its civil service.

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London, the commercial gateway
to Britain,

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also became its
political nerve centre.

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At the heart of the city,
the Roman administration

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built a base for government
in the shape of a vast basilica.

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The one built here was three stories
high, so, an enormous building.

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In fact, it wouldn't have been
much smaller than the building
that's here on the side today.

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The Roman basilica, though,
was part Court House, part
Records Office, part Tax Office.

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So all in all,
a frighteningly imposing structure.

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During the last 2,000 years,
this ground has been built on
over and over again.

226
00:19:36,560 --> 00:19:41,000
But amazingly, a fragment of the
ancient basilica still survives,

227
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:42,920
if you know where to look for it.

228
00:19:45,120 --> 00:19:48,840
You're not going to believe
what is behind this door.

229
00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:52,920
Look at that.

230
00:19:54,560 --> 00:19:59,560
Unbelievable as it may seem, this
is all that remains of what was once

231
00:19:59,560 --> 00:20:03,240
one of the largest, most impressive
buildings of the Roman Empire.

232
00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:07,400
One of the largest things they
ever built north of the Alps.

233
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:12,560
It might have been a wonder of
the Empire, it was certainly
a wonder of ancient Roman Britain.

234
00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:27,680
In London, Rome had
created a provincial capital.

235
00:20:27,680 --> 00:20:31,280
The capital of a single territory,

236
00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:35,560
the very idea of Britannia
that endures to this day.

237
00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:39,200
What you've got here
is the start of something quite new.

238
00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:43,960
Whereas Iron Age Britain was based
around local, tribal power bases,

239
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:47,480
the Romans had imposed a single
unified political structure.

240
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:50,400
Look at this, it's a tile,

241
00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:56,200
and it's stamped with the letters
"PPBRLON", so it's from London.

242
00:20:56,200 --> 00:20:59,360
It's stamped
by the Authority of the Procurator

243
00:20:59,360 --> 00:21:01,360
of the Province of Britannia.

244
00:21:01,360 --> 00:21:06,240
What you've got here is the very
start of the idea of Britain

245
00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:12,360
as a separate country, a single
unit, and it all starts with Rome.

246
00:21:16,440 --> 00:21:22,520
For Rome, though,
Britannia was just one part
of something even greater still,

247
00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:25,760
the Roman Empire itself.

248
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:31,120
And just like today's cities, Roman
towns were cultural melting pots,

249
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:39,160
not only between the people of
Britain and Rome, but people from
all its far-flung provinces.

250
00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:49,360
As far north as York, just 100 miles
or so from Hadrian's Wall itself,

251
00:21:49,360 --> 00:21:55,240
inhabitants would still have felt
very much part of an exotic,
international world.

252
00:21:55,240 --> 00:22:01,000
This was about as far from Rome
as you could get and still feel
you were in a civilised city.

253
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:06,200
But even this far north, you would
still have been bumping into people
from all corners of the Empire,

254
00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:12,480
people who were either from, or had
their origins in Germany, France,
the Middle East, even Africa.

255
00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:19,160
Here, languages would have been
heard from across the Empire,

256
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,920
but there was a
common tongue -

257
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:25,280
Latin.

258
00:22:26,520 --> 00:22:31,120
What made Latin special was
that you couldn't just hear it,
you could see it.

259
00:22:31,120 --> 00:22:34,600
Latin brought writing to
Britain for the very first time.

260
00:22:34,600 --> 00:22:36,840
And that was a massive shift.

261
00:22:36,840 --> 00:22:42,960
It took us from the pre-historic
world into a world of records,
names and dates.

262
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:47,440
The trouble is that so little
remains of Britain at this time.

263
00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:52,880
Most of what we have are
abbreviated memorial slabs,
gateways, tomb stones and the like.

264
00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:57,160
So it's very difficult to know what
ordinary people in Britain
were writing about.

265
00:23:03,800 --> 00:23:06,320
A rare collection of wax tablets

266
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:10,520
is revealing unique insights into
ordinary life in Roman Britain.

267
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:13,400
It's a most remarkable
find for Roman Britain, because

268
00:23:13,400 --> 00:23:16,560
until this material came to light
we had nothing like this,

269
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:18,320
either from this period,

270
00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:22,400
or from the whole of the provincial
era of Britain under the Roman
Empire.

271
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:27,840
The tablets were discovered
at Hadrian's Wall in 1973,

272
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:33,120
but it's only now that
new imaging technology is
able to decode them fully.

273
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:42,480
These are private letters,
written around 100 AD, and sent home
from the very edge of Empire.

274
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:46,800
We've got one tablet which
mentions a price paid for a
small quantity of pepper.

275
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:51,240
We have another example in which a
writer refers to someone he's

276
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,920
trying to help, as a man who is
a lover of literary culture.

277
00:23:54,920 --> 00:24:01,680
A really quite remarkable phrase
to be using on the northern
frontier of Britain at this time.

278
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:05,200
These fragments reveal Britain
on the cusp of a new age.

279
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:09,040
The very beginnings
of written history.

280
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:13,600
For Britain itself, there were a
large number in the pre-Roman period

281
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:16,840
of different tribal units,
different small kingdoms and fiefdoms

282
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:20,440
and one of the things the Roman
presence did was to bring them all

283
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:24,720
under one political system,
and that system was run in Latin.

284
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:35,480
Latin language and widening literacy
were yet more unifying
forces across the Empire.

285
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:39,160
If you had the chance,
and you took the leap,

286
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:44,600
regardless of the heritage
that you carried with you from
birth, you could be Roman.

287
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:55,120
Even as far north as York, evidence
can be found of the cultural
mobility that came with Rome.

288
00:24:56,680 --> 00:25:01,440
The remains of a woman who
died nearly 1,800 years ago.

289
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:08,760
This is the skull of a young woman -

290
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:13,440
when she died, she was around
22, 23 years old.

291
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:16,680
She was buried with
fantastic wealth -

292
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:20,360
this is a few of the things that
were alongside her in her grave.

293
00:25:20,360 --> 00:25:25,520
This is a necklace made of
blue glass beads.

294
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:29,720
The individual beads are
so beautifully made -

295
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,160
look at the way it
allows the light through it.

296
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:35,200
Anyone who saw this
woman wearing it would have

297
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:40,240
identified her as someone of status,
someone with access to real money.

298
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,920
But then the story takes a
strange twist, because alongside her

299
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:48,720
in the grave were bangles
made of African elephant ivory.

300
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,800
With beautiful
turned decoration on it.

301
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:57,320
Now, what on earth is
an African ivory bangle

302
00:25:57,320 --> 00:25:59,840
doing in a grave in York?

303
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:06,480
There are clues
here in the skull itself.

304
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:11,160
First of all, she has a broad
and quite flattened forehead,

305
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,720
which suggests
someone of black African descent.

306
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:20,680
But when we look at her nose, her
nose is typical of a white European,

307
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:26,800
so in this skull, we have the
suggestion of someone of mixed race.

308
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:31,640
And when her teeth were subjected
to chemical analysis, it was found

309
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:33,720
possible, even likely,

310
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:40,160
that she grew up in North Africa,
somewhere like Libya or Tunisia.

311
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:46,200
Perhaps she is the wife
or the daughter of a centurion
posted to York.

312
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:52,160
She's this - to our eyes -
exotic figure, with this
luxury jewellery,

313
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,880
these luxury items,
and yet, in Roman York,

314
00:26:55,880 --> 00:27:00,680
when she walked around the streets,
she wouldn't have been
so very unusual.

315
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,600
To be a Roman
wasn't about where you were born.

316
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:14,080
But about how you lived,
how you dressed,

317
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:18,200
how you spoke, the values you held.

318
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,240
There was a sense that
within the Roman Empire

319
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:27,920
you could make your own way,
you weren't necessarily bound or
handicapped by your ancestral class.

320
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:32,400
And whatever barriers Rome did
put up, colour wasn't one of them.

321
00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:39,240
But was it possible to be both
Roman and British at the same time?

322
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:41,720
Or, 200 years after the invasion,

323
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:45,440
did that distinction
even matter any more?

324
00:27:53,960 --> 00:28:00,080
In Celtic Britain,
tribal identity had always
been central to who you were.

325
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:03,600
Now, under Rome,
who and what you were

326
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:08,960
seemed to be becoming more of a
choice, or a matter of circumstance.

327
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:11,800
You could either act as a Roman,
or not.

328
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:16,680
You could either live an urban life,
or not.

329
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:19,160
And that's aside from class -

330
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:23,360
whether you were wealthy and
powerful, or a trader or craftsman,

331
00:28:23,360 --> 00:28:26,080
or at the bottom, a slave.

332
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,880
Or even more grim than that,
a slave's slave.

333
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:31,400
Think of that.

334
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:39,360
Despite the growth of Roman towns,
most of the population of
Britain remained rural.

335
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:44,720
But even out here, the influence
of Rome was unmistakeable.

336
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:48,600
The modern Roman ways
weren't restricted to the townsfolk.

337
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:53,040
As a Roman citizen, you could
own land with proper legal title

338
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:57,040
which meant that it could be
bought, sold, and inherited.

339
00:28:57,040 --> 00:29:03,800
And in the South East,
amongst the very rich, that was to
lead to something truly spectacular.

340
00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:09,720
Rich agricultural estates,
surrounding big country houses.

341
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:13,760
The villas of southern England.

342
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:18,080
To our eyes,
this is incredibly ordinary,

343
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:20,280
but it's as staggeringly modern

344
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:23,520
as anything you would have seen
in the Roman towns.

345
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:28,440
These buildings were built
on top of the foundations
of the original building

346
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:31,440
that stood here in the late
Roman period, into the 300s.

347
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:37,360
And it's representative of a kind
of architecture that had never been
seen in Britain before the Romans.

348
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:43,080
You have to remember
that Iron Age houses in Britain
were round, single-room dwellings.

349
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:44,840
They look ancient.

350
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:47,240
But this is a house.

351
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:49,680
You've got a rectangular floor plan,

352
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,360
you've got separate rooms inside,
there's even glass in the windows.

353
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:55,200
This is the future.

354
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:57,400
And wait till you see what's inside!

355
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:09,280
No-one knows who owned this villa
and its surrounding estate

356
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:12,520
but we can be sure they were rich.

357
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,520
And that they enjoyed
a life of luxury.

358
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:21,000
If this was my villa,
this would have been the floor
of my private dining room.

359
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,240
It's luxurious and lavish
in the extreme,

360
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,120
it's a real show of status.

361
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:31,560
My guests would have been
arranged around the outside of
this mosaic floor

362
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:35,000
and it's covered in
scenes of myth and Roman legend.

363
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:48,200
My guests would have listened to
the soft sounds of the water
tinkling in the fountain,

364
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,800
they'd have been drinking wine,
celebrating the god Bacchus.

365
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:58,320
Their eyes were probably drawn
to the depictions
of topless lady dancers.

366
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:00,600
And maybe if it was
a really special occasion,

367
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:03,640
I'd have laid on real topless
dancers, make it a real party.

368
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:08,120
But in any event, this was and is
a spectacular place.

369
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:14,800
Now, as well as all the grandeur,

370
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:18,440
this room affords us
a glimpse of something else.

371
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:22,960
Because at some point, this
part of the floor has collapsed,

372
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,440
revealing the underfloor
central heating system.

373
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,640
It's called a hypocaust,
which means "heat from below".

374
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:34,520
And you can see in this void
where all the vents...

375
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:37,160
have been positioned to circulate
the hot air

376
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,200
and the heat comes from
a purpose-built furnace

377
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:42,040
on the other side of that wall.

378
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:44,800
All the hot air is pushed through,
makes the floor warm.

379
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:47,920
So the whole interior is heated,
very cosy.

380
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:51,960
The big man,
the owner of the estate,

381
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:55,440
would've sat at that end of
the room, in pride of place.

382
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,320
He would've greeted his
guests and visitors from there.

383
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:03,520
And he would've been close by
where that mosaic of Venus is

384
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:08,640
and that is regarded as one of
the very finest Roman mosaics
anywhere in Britain.

385
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:21,080
Any rich landowner would also
have enjoyed a rich Roman diet -

386
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:24,880
an aspect of life studied
by Sally Grainger.

387
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:27,200
We've got...

388
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:32,360
coriander and cumin, they are the
dominant spices in curry today. Yeah.

389
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,080
We've got lovage... Lovage.

390
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:39,840
It's very bitter - use too much
of it, you make appalling food.

391
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,120
We can then add some fish sauce.
It's rather fundamental to Roman...

392
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:47,760
Fish sauce? Yes.
That's quintessential Roman cuisine?
It is, it is.

393
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:50,320
Oh, that's so potent.

394
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:52,480
Yeah, that's strong, whatever it is.
Yeah?

395
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,800
Lentils in wine. Are lentils Roman?

396
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:05,320
They are. They came to Britain in the
first 20 years after the invasion,
you'd find them on sale in London.

397
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:09,400
So compared to the way that native
Britons would have approached food,

398
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:14,480
how much of a surprise would
all this messing about with spices
have been?

399
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:17,120
I think a great surprise,
because archaeologically,

400
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:20,600
we have no evidence
for use of spices in Britain.

401
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:26,240
What they were doing is roasting a
lot of meat and drinking a lot of
beer and eating a lot of bread.

402
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:28,480
But not actually
developing a cuisine

403
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,560
and I don't think it comes
until the Romans. Right.

404
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:38,440
The Romans wrote recipe books
and created the first fine dining.

405
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:43,280
Fruits from cultivated orchards
of apples and cherries.

406
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:45,320
New green vegetables -

407
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,520
cabbages, leeks, and peas,
as well as exotic herbs.

408
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:52,440
Even modern staples like chicken
begin with the Romans.

409
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:57,000
For rich Britons,
it was a culinary revolution.

410
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,760
Now we're going to flavour our pears.
OK.

411
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,840
And we're going to also add...

412
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:05,320
the fish sauce. The fish sauce?
The fish sauce.

413
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:09,120
Goodness! Why?

414
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,520
Why ever do that?
It's all going so well! It works!

415
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:13,760
It sounds so wrong. It works!

416
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:17,000
I can't believe you put that
in there! That just...

417
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:21,360
Oh, it's like varnish!

418
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:23,840
There we go.

419
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:30,920
Fairly crunchy on the outside
but on the inside, there,
you can see it looks pretty...

420
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:32,720
At least, it's definitely cooked.

421
00:34:32,720 --> 00:34:35,720
Very tender. It's falling off.

422
00:34:37,720 --> 00:34:39,160
Mm. Mm.

423
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:40,600
I must say... It's good.

424
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:45,720
I must hold my hands up
and say I can't taste fish sauce
in that at all. Course you can't.

425
00:34:45,720 --> 00:34:49,120
Somehow, all of this, the variety,

426
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:53,120
the spices, the care,
seems almost more civilising

427
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:58,480
than so many other things
the Romans are famous for.

428
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:02,960
There's something about all
this fine food that would be
so pleasing to people,

429
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:06,160
you think it would lead to the
betterment of society. You'd think.

430
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:09,400
The trouble is that we don't know
how many people it affected...

431
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,240
it's difficult to tell.

432
00:35:11,240 --> 00:35:14,320
City life
and some of the big villas, yes.

433
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:21,600
And I think as British natives became
more Romanised and consumed more of
this, it was great, it was wonderful.

434
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:25,280
But it's always for people
with wealth and leisure.

435
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,480
And a slave cook!

436
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:29,320
I can't do without one, myself!

437
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:42,840
Rome might have transformed
the lives of many people

438
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,800
but it didn't transform everyone's,
not by a long way.

439
00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:51,360
Of the 3-4 million people
living in Britain,

440
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:55,920
only a tiny fraction lived
in towns - even fewer around villas.

441
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:03,200
For over 90% of the population,
for all Rome's apparent impact,

442
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,160
life carried on
much as it had always done.

443
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:15,040
This is a living space
up here, I think.

444
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:16,640
Up these steps.

445
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:25,080
They're very simple,
massively built of stone, circular
in shape, cellular in shape.

446
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:28,640
You look at it and you can
think or assume

447
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:35,160
that it was built and lived in 1,000
years BC, during the Bronze Age,

448
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:42,240
because the whole site resonates
with everything you think of when
you think about ancient Britain.

449
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:54,880
In fact, this village was built
right in the middle
of the Roman period.

450
00:36:54,880 --> 00:37:00,360
In 200 AD, these very
ancient-looking houses
were brand new.

451
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:07,080
Away from the Roman centres,
away from the towns and the forts,

452
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:12,840
you would have had so much more
choice about just how Roman
you actually wanted to be.

453
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:18,000
And so a village like Chysauster
would be left behind

454
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:21,680
as a kind of
relic of ancient Britishness.

455
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:26,920
A kind of passive resistance, if you
like, to the centralised authority
of the Roman empire.

456
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:37,880
For many Iron Age Britons,
ancient Celtic identity was
even more important in death

457
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:39,800
than in life.

458
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:51,640
This is the skeleton
of a man who was around...

459
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:56,560
19, 20, 21 at the time of death.

460
00:37:56,560 --> 00:38:00,880
He was buried
in a very particular way -

461
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:06,920
he was buried in a crouched
position, with the knees drawn up to
the chest, like a baby in the womb.

462
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:14,920
A Roman in death would have
been laid out, lying flat.

463
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:20,760
And furthermore, would have been
buried far away from any settlement,
in a dedicated cemetery.

464
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:27,880
It's fascinating to speculate that
while in life,

465
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:30,960
this young man might have...

466
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,160
taken that on certain
aspects of Rome,

467
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:38,640
he was using the same tableware,
he might have worn a pendant,

468
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,240
ate the Roman way but in death,

469
00:38:41,240 --> 00:38:43,120
he showed his true colours.

470
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:46,000
In his heart
and in the heart of the people

471
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:51,200
who put him in the ground,
he was no Roman, he was a Briton.

472
00:39:05,720 --> 00:39:09,920
Rome might have established
Britannia as a single entity

473
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:15,200
but behind the administration this
was a diverse, even fractured land.

474
00:39:18,240 --> 00:39:23,120
The urban hordes and their mass
entertainments, the villa'd elite

475
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:27,840
and all their luxuries, the serfs
and slaves who worked for them

476
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:33,720
and the lives of the
countless thousands of
self-sufficient farmers.

477
00:39:33,720 --> 00:39:39,840
And that's just counting the part of
Britain that was actually
under Roman control.

478
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:44,440
We're talking about the
territories that would one day
be called England and Wales.

479
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:47,720
Cos up here in Northumberland,
beyond the edge of Empire,

480
00:39:47,720 --> 00:39:51,440
there was an awful lot of Britain
that the Romans never did control.

481
00:39:54,880 --> 00:40:01,520
Ever since 136 AD,
a defensive wall had stretched like
a ribbon from coast to coast.

482
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:06,400
From Carlisle to Newcastle,
guarded by 40,000 Roman soldiers.

483
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:13,280
This wall marked more
than the limit of Empire.

484
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:17,600
For Rome, it was the very
edge of civilisation itself.

485
00:40:25,720 --> 00:40:32,000
Far beyond the wall, the Scottish
Highlands still remained under the
control of Celtic Iron Age tribes.

486
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:38,680
Pictish peoples, who were as
fiercely resistant to Roman rule
as they'd ever been.

487
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:44,880
And at the National Museum
of Scotland,

488
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:48,200
there's a relic of a proud
and fiercely independent Britain.

489
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:04,280
This fragment is the earliest,
the oldest piece of tartan cloth
ever found.

490
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:11,080
And for us in the modern world,
it's also a potent symbol of
Scottishness.

491
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:16,120
The people who made this,
used this, wore this...

492
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:20,120
had their own culture,
customs and traditions.

493
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,960
It wasn't by choice that Rome
had drawn a line across Britain.

494
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:34,000
It had tried to conquer Caledonia
a number of times.

495
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:39,000
But the Picts had repelled them
again and again.

496
00:41:41,240 --> 00:41:44,720
The name "Picts"
means "painted people"

497
00:41:44,720 --> 00:41:49,760
and when it came to battle,
the warriors were in the habit
of stripping off naked

498
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:54,080
to reveal these tattoos or
painted designs on their skin.

499
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:58,520
The theory goes that they believed
that the gods would
look down upon them,

500
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:03,360
see the designs and confer
their protection upon them.

501
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:12,200
The Picts generally avoided engaging
the Roman army in set-piece battles,

502
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,200
preferring instead
to employ guerrilla tactics,

503
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:20,720
striking fast and then disappearing
into the forbidding landscape
of mountains and forests.

504
00:42:20,720 --> 00:42:24,280
And you can easily see,
in terrain like this,

505
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:28,720
even a small group of lightly-armed
men, who understood this landscape,

506
00:42:28,720 --> 00:42:35,160
could use it to turn it to their
advantage so that they could harass
and even damage a much larger force.

507
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,840
In the end, for the Romans,
it simply wasn't worth the effort

508
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:46,240
and the tribal lands of Scotland
always remained unconquered.

509
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,920
Even in second and third century
AD, here in the north,

510
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:53,800
the customs, the traditions,

511
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:59,200
the lifestyle of ancient Iron Age
Britain continued stubbornly
beyond the reach of Empire.

512
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:10,760
Rome still needed to make sure
the Picts couldn't cause
any trouble further south, though.

513
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:17,360
And back in Edinburgh,
there's evidence of how they managed

514
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:21,720
the slightly friendlier tribes of
southern Scotland
and Northumberland.

515
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:27,520
Look at this.

516
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:33,560
It's a tiny part
of a huge hoard of Roman silver
that dates from around 400 AD.

517
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:38,200
The whole horde,
the whole collection would fill
several museum cases.

518
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:44,760
It's thought that all this
was a massive bribe

519
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:48,760
from the Romans to a local tribe
called the Votadini.

520
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:54,560
You can see how it's been crudely
cut up with shears of some kind.

521
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:59,400
Experts believe that before
the Romans handed the silver over,

522
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:04,080
they themselves cut it up
so that it was only going
across as scrap silver.

523
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:08,920
Now, the Romans
weren't bribing the Votadini
because they had trouble with them.

524
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:13,760
Rather, they were determined
to keep that tribe on side

525
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,080
because with the Votadini
inside the tent, as it were,

526
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:22,320
the Romans were free to concentrate
their attentions on the tribes,

527
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,160
the people further north
in Scotland.

528
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,720
People considered
potentially more dangerous.

529
00:44:27,720 --> 00:44:32,280
It's about undermining
inter-tribal allegiances.

530
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,800
This is classic divide and conquer.

531
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:48,280
Much of the success of Rome
was down to the number of levels
on which it operated.

532
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,160
At first,
military might could crush you.

533
00:44:52,720 --> 00:44:56,240
And then a finely tuned
administration would control you.

534
00:44:59,240 --> 00:45:05,440
The trappings of Roman
civilisation could seduce you
and turn you Roman yourself.

535
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:11,080
And if all that failed, well,
the Empire could simply exclude you.

536
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:15,960
When Rome came,
it changed your land.

537
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:18,360
It changed your entire way of life.

538
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:21,480
But the Romans were used to
dealing with culture clash.

539
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:26,160
After all, they'd been doing it
all across Europe, in parts of
Africa and in the Middle East.

540
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:30,360
But they were also past masters
at dealing with something
much more personal -

541
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:33,280
religion and the clash of beliefs.

542
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,880
Rome might have transformed
the land of Britain

543
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:45,800
and the lives of many of its people

544
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:49,480
but religion was
something else altogether.

545
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:53,480
Ancient and heartfelt
Celtic traditions and beliefs.

546
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:58,640
Every tribe might have had
its own set of gods,

547
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,280
controlling a specific part
of the countryside.

548
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:04,920
Their hills,
their woods, their rivers.

549
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:08,760
And then between the individual
tribes were the druids,

550
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:11,960
the great priesthood
of the Celtic world,

551
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:13,240
trying to make sense
of it all.

552
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:21,440
The Romans worshipped very
different gods - Jupiter and Mars,

553
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,760
Apollo, god of the sun

554
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:27,240
and Saturn, god of time.

555
00:46:27,240 --> 00:46:33,120
Powerful supernatural beings that
held sway over the mortal world.

556
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:38,400
The Romans had imposed all sorts
of ideas on Britain.

557
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:42,480
Would they impose their gods
on the people as well?

558
00:46:55,920 --> 00:47:02,160
The city of Bath offers clues to
how the Romans dealt with the most
sensitive cultural invasion of all.

559
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,000
Because it was here that a spring,

560
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:09,480
producing a magical flow
of hot water,

561
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:12,960
was sacred,
venerated by the Britons.

562
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:18,720
As far as we can tell,
the ancient Britons believed

563
00:47:18,720 --> 00:47:21,800
that this spring was the domain
of a goddess called Sulis

564
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:25,560
and she was all about wisdom
and healing and insight.

565
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:30,440
And she had to be appeased
with gifts and offerings.

566
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:34,280
When the Romans conquered Britain,
they were presented with a choice.

567
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:38,480
Either they could leave
the local gods and goddesses alone

568
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:42,800
or they could seek to obliterate
goddesses like Sulis

569
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,560
and replace them
with their own Roman deities.

570
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,240
The Romans found
a pragmatic solution.

571
00:47:54,240 --> 00:47:58,040
Often, they chose one of their
own Roman gods

572
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:03,120
who seemed similar to the local
British god and combined the two.

573
00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:10,640
This is a depiction of
the Roman goddess Minerva

574
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:13,720
but what's happening here
is something very interesting.

575
00:48:13,720 --> 00:48:16,720
It's really about
the union of two goddesses -

576
00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:18,960
one British and one Roman.

577
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:25,600
The Roman goddess, Minerva, here,
is all about healing and wisdom,
particularly military wisdom.

578
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:30,120
That made her the perfect partner
for the British goddess, Sulis,

579
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:33,760
who was responsible for a lot
of the same areas of business.

580
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:37,200
So what you've got here
is a combination

581
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:43,120
and when it came to naming the
goddess of the spring here in Bath,
they called her Sulis-Minerva.

582
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:54,520
This combined deity
inhabited the sacred spring

583
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:59,800
and continued to attract acolytes,
who communicated with the goddess
Sulis-Minerva

584
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:04,880
through mysterious lead tablets
that give a rare insight
into their beliefs.

585
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:13,360
Classicist Roger Tomlin
has been studying them for 25 years.

586
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:16,600
Exactly what are these, Roger?

587
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:20,040
In very crude terms,
they're called curses.

588
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:22,120
They're a specialised sort of curse.

589
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:24,760
They're really letters
written to the goddess,

590
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,600
asking for ill health and misfortune
to people who've done someone wrong.

591
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:30,480
This one...

592
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:34,520
is this woman, Basilia,
who's lost her silver ring,

593
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:38,080
tells the goddess,
"I've lost my silver ring.

594
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:39,760
"Curse the thief who did it.

595
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:41,400
"The thief should lose his eyes.

596
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:43,880
"He should have his
intestines utterly eaten out."

597
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:47,760
This wonderfully exotic phrase
"intestinis ex comesus",

598
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,560
"his intestines utterly eaten out"
and so on.

599
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:52,800
This for the theft of a ring? Yes.

600
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:55,320
You couldn't be certain
the ring's going to come back.

601
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:56,880
You tend to overreact, I think.

602
00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:01,600
If it was certain the ring was
going to come back, you might say,
"I'll give him dinner afterwards,"

603
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:05,200
but there's always an element
of uncertainty whether
the god will react,

604
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:08,320
so people come out
with this horrific language.

605
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:10,080
Also it's a bit like letting blood.

606
00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:12,120
It reduces the pressure a bit.

607
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:13,240
Right. OK.

608
00:50:13,240 --> 00:50:17,800
This one is written backwards
in a rather peculiar way.

609
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:21,880
Each word is written backwards
but the whole text
isn't written backwards.

610
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:25,920
It makes it a devil to read
because you never know
where the word is ending.

611
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:27,560
And what's the logic?

612
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:32,000
I suppose it's to encrypt the text,
to make it personal between
you and the goddess.

613
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:33,280
No-one else can read it.

614
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:38,280
That's why you
fold these things up, you throw them
into water, you put them into graves.

615
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:42,600
They turn up in all sorts of places
but particularly in this hot spring.

616
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,000
It doesn't really
sound like religion.

617
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,680
It smacks more of an appeal
to the authorities.

618
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:50,720
It's almost like a...

619
00:50:50,720 --> 00:50:55,800
Trying to sue someone
or seek legal redress rather than
something to do with faith.

620
00:50:55,800 --> 00:51:00,840
I think there's a strong element
of legalism. The Roman world
is somewhat under-policed

621
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:05,920
and if earthly authorities
can't work, you appeal to
a heavenly authority instead.

622
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:10,800
And using the language you might
well use in addressing your patron.

623
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:17,960
Those healing pools
and the temple to the combined gods
of Sulis and Minerva

624
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:22,000
are a good illustration of how to
handle a clash between religions.

625
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:26,680
And the twinning of gods
would be tried again and again,
all across Roman Britain.

626
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:31,320
But that cosy religious relationship
that had served the Roman Empire
so well

627
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:34,760
was about to be seriously disrupted.

628
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:49,360
In the first century AD,
far away in the Middle East,

629
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:55,280
a new religious cult
had started spreading that
many Romans found absurd,

630
00:51:55,280 --> 00:51:59,760
because this religion
demanded faith to just one god -

631
00:51:59,760 --> 00:52:01,560
a Christian God.

632
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:10,320
Look at this dazzling collection.

633
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:13,800
All of these spectacular items.

634
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:19,240
The finest early Christian artefacts
found anywhere in the Empire

635
00:52:19,240 --> 00:52:21,280
all come from Britain.

636
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:28,400
Look at this magnificent,
glorious, silver...

637
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:30,040
cup, silver vessel.

638
00:52:30,040 --> 00:52:34,720
It's quite possible that it was
made and used for the quintessential
Christian act,

639
00:52:34,720 --> 00:52:38,560
that of turning wine
into the blood of Christ,

640
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:40,560
and if that's what this was for,

641
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:44,640
then it's the earliest such vessel
found anywhere in the world.

642
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:50,920
But as Christianity expanded,
it was outlawed

643
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:54,840
and its followers
had to practise in secret.

644
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:56,200
Look at this piece.

645
00:52:56,200 --> 00:53:00,600
The symbol here
is called the Chi Rho.

646
00:53:00,600 --> 00:53:06,000
It was like a secret sign
that let early Christians
recognise one another.

647
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:10,040
Chi and Rho are the first
two letters of Christ's name.

648
00:53:11,240 --> 00:53:17,280
Also within the symbol
are the letters alpha and omega,

649
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:20,200
showing that the person
who used this or made this

650
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:24,720
believed also that Christ was
all-powerful, from first to last.

651
00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:28,320
Part of its popularity
was the central tenet

652
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:32,160
that anyone who believed in Christ
would never die,

653
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:34,400
would have everlasting life -

654
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:39,840
even slaves, and that was
a truly subversive thought.

655
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:46,440
Despite the threat of persecution,
there was no stopping
such an enticing message.

656
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:53,400
Nevertheless,
it wasn't until AD 313 that
Christianity was finally legalised.

657
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:58,400
The Roman Emperor Constantine
was sympathetic to Christianity

658
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:02,800
and then there came a day when
his army secured a key victory

659
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:07,920
and while doing so, they had
carried at their head a cross,

660
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,280
a Christian cross, as a symbol
to bring them good fortune.

661
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:15,280
From that moment,
Constantine decreed

662
00:54:15,280 --> 00:54:19,920
that Christianity would be tolerated
throughout the Roman Empire.

663
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,000
It was actually another
political move.

664
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:28,000
With Christianity within the fold,

665
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,280
a religious hierarchy
could be established,

666
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:32,160
controlled by the state.

667
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:34,920
Look at this ring.

668
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:39,000
Like the plaque here,
it has on it the Chi Rho symbol.

669
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:43,320
Whoever wore this was obviously
a Christian, a believer.

670
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:46,480
He may even have been a bishop...

671
00:54:46,480 --> 00:54:49,640
in the country,
while Christianity was spreading.

672
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:54,440
Look at that. Beautiful.

673
00:54:55,840 --> 00:54:58,600
Christianity continued to flourish

674
00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:03,800
and in AD 391, it was the old
pagan religions that were banned.

675
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:09,520
The ancient spring of Sulis-Minerva
was abandoned,

676
00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:13,040
left to become silted up
and to overflow,

677
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:15,720
its temples left to collapse.

678
00:55:15,720 --> 00:55:20,840
It was the end of yet another
ancient prehistoric tradition.

679
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:35,680
Tens of thousands of years ago,

680
00:55:35,680 --> 00:55:38,320
the first nomadic hunters
came to Britain.

681
00:55:44,240 --> 00:55:48,880
Ever since, its people and the land
they inhabited had been entwined.

682
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:56,400
Mountains holding up the sky...

683
00:56:01,720 --> 00:56:04,120
..the seas that
made our land an island...

684
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:12,680
..and the sacred springs and rivers
that were so central to ancient
religious beliefs.

685
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:17,680
All had shaped our history.

686
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:23,400
But with Rome
and the modern world it brought,

687
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:25,440
a new world had been forged.

688
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:27,880
Not of nature's making...

689
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:29,480
but of man's.

690
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:42,960
The rule of Rome couldn't
and didn't last forever.

691
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:49,040
By 410 AD, the Empire was collapsing
and the Roman rule of Britain
was at an end.

692
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:55,960
The cities decayed
and people in many ways returned
to the rural lives of the past.

693
00:56:55,960 --> 00:57:00,560
But some of the ideas that
had emerged under Rome
couldn't be undone.

694
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:05,200
Christianity, writing,
the very idea of Britannia.

695
00:57:05,200 --> 00:57:07,880
Ideas that are still
very much alive with us today.

696
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:14,800
When the Romans arrived,
we didn't just start a new chapter.

697
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:17,040
We started a whole new story.

698
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:21,280
One that would be written down
in the history of our land.

699
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:25,880
And when people look back
1,000 or 2,000 years from now,

700
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:31,840
perhaps they'll see the beginning of
our world in that sudden break with
prehistory,

701
00:57:31,840 --> 00:57:33,320
in the coming of Rome.

702
00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:43,880
And here we are, occupying
this fleeting moment of time,

703
00:57:43,880 --> 00:57:48,880
with our hopes and fears,
pasts and futures, living our lives,

704
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:53,320
just one more generation
in a story that continues.

705
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:56,640
The story of Britain
and her peoples.

706
00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:28,040
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

707
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:30,600
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk