02x01 - Romans

[bunniefuu]

Our British history is rich
with tales of wealth and power

and all that political nonsense.

The glamour of our kings and queens,

the jewels and furs and charisma

and all those heads
being chopped off.

(AXE THUDS, WOMAN SCREAMS)

But what about the real people
who made everything happen?

(GASPS)

(BABY WAILS)

Rag and bone!

I'll discover what they ate...

It's a bit... dodgy.

..the challenges they faced...

"Stuff this for a game of soldiers!"

..and how they built Britain.

That's straight as a die.

I'm going to uncover
the extraordinary lives

of some of history's ordinary people.

Romans...

It's quite a weight on my head,
I have to say.

(SWORDS CLANG)

..Edwardians...

Breathe in, madam. Breathe in.

..1950s...

(JAMAICAN ACCENT)
Put the needle on the record.

Ooh, really soft brakes
Takes ages to stop it.

..and the Middle Ages.

There's the executive model
inside the house.

"Whatever!"

History... from the bottom up.

(BIRDS CHIRP)

This time, I'm going back
nearly 2,000 years

to the great Roman empire.

An empire that stretched
all the way from Egypt

to Hadrian's Wall

and brought people from Europe,
Asia and Africa

to live here...

..in gloomy old Britain.

(MAN SHOUTS ORDERS)

(LIGHT-HEARTED MUSIC)

A couple of thousand years ago, there
was no better way of seeing the world

than by joining the Roman army.

Although, it could be
a bit of a lottery.

For one young man,
let's call him Marcus,

this would have meant travelling
thousands of miles

just so he could do guard duty
at a forlorn outpost of the empire

in a distant and uncivilised place
called Britannia.

This is going to be our Marcus.

He came from the other end
of the empire in Africa.

In search of adventure,

he would have taken a boat
from his homeland along the Nile

sometime around the year 200 AD.

"Adventure, Marcus?
You want to join the Roman army?

"OK. Change in Cairo and take a
chariot west across the desert

"until you see a lot blokes
with spears."

"Great!"

"What a mug!"

The Romans had been in North Africa
for centuries

and Africans travelled around
the empire as soldiers,

traders and emperors.

Hail, Caesar!

But the army didn't take
just anybody.

To qualify, Marcus had to be solid
and strong, alert,

straight-necked and broad-chested.

But it didn't matter
how many fingers he had.

Some lads had tried to
avoid conscription

by chopping a couple off.

But the army wasn't having that.

So, having proved he was a sturdy
country lad with eight to 10 fingers,

Marcus had to swear to obey
the Emperor

and never run away from the army
or the enemy.

Then, he was in.

Every morning after a hearty
breakfast of a pound of bacon,

Marcus worked out with a wooden
sword, which sounds rubbish,

but it was heavier than a real sword,

to make him even more big and strong.

(MAN YELLS ORDERS)

Then he was dispatched over 3,000
miles from his homeland to Blighty.

Rome's most northerly colony
for over 150 years.

Now, you might think that being
a Roman soldier simply meant

getting into well-formed units

and then smashing the daylights
out of the barbarians.

(SWORDS CLANG, SOLDIERS YELL)

But there was actually
far more to it than that,

as Marcus and his mates
would soon discover.

For a start, there was the marching.

(FEET POUND)

You had to march for up to
24 miles a day.

Which is certainly a lot more than
the 4,587 steps I've taken so far.

And if there wasn't a road
where they wanted to go,

Marcus and his comrades
would just have to build one.

So, how did that work?

Attention!

This is historian Dr Simon Elliott.

Is it true that there were
virtually no roads in England

prior to the Romans coming,

and then they banged in
a whole lot of roads,

many of which are today's A roads?
Absolutely, yeah.

If you look at the landscape
of Britain today,

you look at all the A roads, they're
all the lines of Roman roads.

You think of Watling Street, which
is the line of the A2 and the A5.

You think of the A1, which is Ermine
Street and its extension from York

going into Scotland,
which is Dere Street.

These are all Roman roads
built by Roman legionaries.

They were serious roads,
with drainage

and layered with rocks,
gravel and sand.

The luxury version even had cobbles.

So how did they make them
so straight?

Well, Marcus may have had to be handy

with one of these strange
contraptions - a groma.

All you have to do is site
yourself on that plumbline. Yeah.

Go through the central plumbline.
Yeah.

And lock onto that plumb line.
Oh, yeah.

And then you stick your stick in
over there somewhere.

Just tell me where to go to, Tony.
OK, let's have a go.

So if I stop here, Tony,
for the first stick,

you tell me left or right.

Ah, right.

Just slightly that way.

Yeah. Bang-on.

There's the first one.
Yeah.

Then I go a little bit further.
Yeah.

Well, a gnat's knee that way.

No, too far.

That was an elephant's knee.

Just a tiny bit right.

Whoa. That's straight as a die.

There we are. A Roman road.
Yeah.

How long do you reckon it would take
to build a bit of Roman road

from here to those trees over there?

That's about 100 metres,
I would think.

To build 100 metres,
probably 40 man hours.

So if you had 40 men,
40 legionaries,

then it would take one hour.

That's staggering.
I know.

Is it fair to say the soldiers
in the Roman army

were half fighting men
and half builders?

Absolutely spot-on.

So if you look at the typical
Roman legion of 5,500 men,

you would have maybe 4,500
as the full-fat legionaries

with his shield, his helmet, his
javelins, his gladius, his sword.

But this legionary was also
a fully trained engineer.

So he didn't just carry that kit.

He always carried his
engineering kit as well.

And then within the Legion, the
other 1,000 were also specialists.

So you had stonemasons, you had
carpenters, you had surveyor.

(SAWING)

"I joined the army for the k*lling,
not the building."

"Yeah, stuff this for
a game of soldiers."

Marcus's unit was on its way
to Hadrian's Wall,

which had been built over 50 years
before to protect Roman Britain

from the tribes of Caledonians
and Picts.

His destination, some draughty fort
facing sleet and snow.

We've got a remarkably vivid idea
of what life would have been like

for someone like Marcus

from some fantastic
archaeological finds

that were found at a place called
Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall.

These are copies, they're letters,

and they're written on wood
rather than parchment,

because parchment would have been
very hard to come by.

And they've got in them
some lovely details,

like there's a request for more beer,

and there's another request
for warmer underpants,

which I can quite understand.

(SHIVERS)

And there's one which describes the
local people as "little Britons",

which I suppose is meant
to be derogatory,

although quite honestly I'm quite
proud of being a little Briton.

Marcus also had a reputation
for being a bit of a buffoon,

which probably kept his mates
entertained

in the long winter nights.

(LAUGHTER)

But one day in 208 AD,
there was a surprising sight.

The Roman Emperor turned up.

This is him, Septimius Severus,

the 21st to rule since the empire
was first founded in 27 BC.

And who also happened to be
the first African Roman Emperor.

Severus was a hard man who turned the
empire into a military monarchy.

When Marcus met him, the Emperor's
mind was on the w*r in the North.

Severus wanted to sort out
the problem of the troublesome Scots

once and for all.

But he needed to boost his defences
first.

And that meant that Marcus
and his comrades

would need to rebuild the forts
all the way along the wall.

Another massive backbreaking job.

It was all go in the Roman army.

Despite their practical approach
to life,

Romans were extremely superstitious.

Before launching an attack,

Emperor Severus wanted to know
what the future held.

This could be done by reading
patterns in nature,

like the way birds flocked,

or in lightning,

or even in the entrails
of sacrificed chickens.

One day the Emperor was inspecting
Marcus's fort,

and being a Roman he was
really superstitious,

so he was looking around for some
kind of sign or omen

which would guide him to victory.

And it was at that point that Marcus
stepped into the history books.

This history book, to be precise.

Roman historian Augusta described
an incident involving the Emperor

and an African soldier.

And he had got this wreath of
cypress leaves and he said,

"Emperor, you are a God."

Mind you, for a human being to be
a God, you have to die first.

So, sorry about that.

And as you can imagine,
there was absolute silence

and the Emperor was not amused
and sent the man out of his sight.

We don't know what happened to Marcus
after his ill-timed joke.

He would have been lucky
to get away with his life.

As for Severus,
he died in York in 211 AD.

At which point, the Romans suddenly
lost interest in Scotland.

But Severus had left one legacy,

which Marcus may just have
benefited from.

Before Severus died,

he changed the law so that soldiers
could marry local girls.

And when they retired,
they either got a little pension

or a piece of land.

So I like to think that

provided Marcus wasn't ex*cuted
for impertinence

or k*lled fighting the Scots,

he would have married a local girl
and settled down.

And maybe to this very day,

his descendants are still living
somewhere just outside Carlisle.

At the other end of Roman Britain,

it started as a small trading post
on the Thames - London.

Londinium was its original name.

THAT was a Roman town.

These were the original Londoners.

"Nice cuppa Rosie Lee."

Roman London grew fast

and soon became a vital trading hub
for the empire.

Around about the year AD 90,

a young girl called Fortunata
made this journey up the Thames.

But she wasn't selling anything.

It was herself that was on sale.

Fortunata was a sl*ve.

This could be her.

Fortunata means lucky,
which sounds like a cruel joke.

She may have been either captured
by the Romans

or sold to them by her parents.

She was from Gaul, modern day France,

which to her must now have seemed
very far away.

Roman London was crammed,
with a population of around 60,000.

The riverside would have been
bustling and noisy,

with languages being spoken
from all over the Roman empire.

"A pound of your finest
Sistine Chapels, please."

But there wouldn't have been any time
for sightseeing for Fortunata.

She'd have been shoved down
the street, probably stumbling

from the weight of the manacles
on her hands and her feet...

..and she must have feared the worst.

Fortunata was on her way to be sold.

Today, we might associate sl*very
with the trade in African people

taken by force to work
in the Americas,

but humans have been enslaving
each other for thousands of years,

and the Roman empire
was no different.

It depended on sl*ves, who made up
about 20% of the population.

Romans were happy to make anyone
a sl*ve,

whether they came from Africa,
Asia or Europe.

sl*ves didn't only do tough,
physical jobs either,

they could be accountants,
actors, scribes,

or financiers dealing with
huge amounts of money,

but their individual lives
are shrouded in mystery.

So, how did we find out about
Fortunata?

Did we just make her up?
No, we didn't.

It was a great piece of
archaeological detective work.

During modern excavations
near the Thames,

one sharp-eyed archaeologist
spotted this...

..a wax writing tablet.

Except, unfortunately,
the wax had disappeared.

Originally, it would have looked
something like this.

This is a tablet that a scribe would
have used in Roman times to write on.

You can see it's made of wood
and this black inside is black wax.

And the scribe would write,
'For-tu-NATA'

into the wax.

And that was the message.

If the wax didn't survive,
neither would the message.

Except, fortunately for us,

there was one particular scribe
who was very heavy handed.

How do we know?

Well, examination of the
wooden frame

revealed the imprint of his stylus,
enhanced in this replica.

He pushed so hard that he gouged
into the wood

all the words that he was writing.

So, you can actually read them today.

And they reveal that this is the bill
of sale of the sl*ve girl Fortunata,

to a chap called Vegetus,
who was a sl*ve of another sl*ve.

It says, "Vegetus assistant sl*ve
of Montanus, who's also the sl*ve

"of the August Emperor, has bought
and received the girl Fortunata

"for 600 denarii..." Which is quite
a lot of money at that time.

And she's in good health
and she won't wander or run away.

The sale would have been
a humiliating process,

which probably involved Fortunata
being stripped for inspection

by Vegetus.

Her price was equivalent to two years
salary for a Roman legionary

suggesting a highly attractive
young woman,

one who probably offered
special skills, such as cookery.

Fortunata's owner Vegetus

had been given this money
by his owner in a sort of trust.

He could use it to buy whatever
he wanted, even a sl*ve for himself,

so that one day if Vegetus
earned his freedom,

he could set up home and if he chose,
marry his sl*ve girl.

For now, though, Fortunata
belonged to whoever owned Vegetus.

So she probably went to work

in some kind of high-status
official residence,

maybe not unlike this one.

As a top-end sl*ve, Fortunata
might have been given duties

looking after the lady of the house.

"Oh, cheer up, girl.
For goodness sake."

She'd have had her own quarters
with the other sl*ves,

but she wouldn't have had all
the luxury of underfloor heating

and tile floors and all the things we
normally associate with Roman villas.

She would have lived
round the back or in the next field

in quarters which were pretty
cramped and basic.

She and the other sl*ves
would be expected to run the place

so that it was self-sufficient,

including growing all of their food.

And doubtless she'd have brought
some of her fancy

French cooking skills with her.

Caroline Nicolay is French
and an expert in Roman cookery.

Oh, Caroline, I could smell this
from the other side of the room.

Oh, it's really lovely, isn't it?
Oh, thank you.

Could I have a taste?
Yes, please. Absolutely.

So this is called
'Minutal ex Praecoquis'.

Which is a pork and apricot stew,
if you like.

Oh, it's very nice.

Excuse me talking with my mouth
full, it's a bit hot.

But it really is a combination
of the sweetness of the apricot

and the meatiness of the pork -
gorgeous.

It's very much like a
Moroccan tagine, if you like.

But what is it about this Roman stew
that makes it so irresistible?

It's the fish sauce
that we call garum.

Garum is a sauce
made by fermenting fish.

It's old dead fish that you lay out
on the beach for days

and the cats come and wee on it.

It is a smelly affair.

It's mainly the guts or the heads
and all that that are thrown in

left to ferment with a lot of salts
in the sun, in the heat et cetera,

for about at least three months.

(FLIES BUZZ)

"Yuuuuum."

So, Fortunata herself
wouldn't get any of it.

Except if she cooks it,
and working in a kitchen,

you might have leftovers,

but you won't be served that
as part of your daily meal.

If Fortunata was brought here
as a cook,

what products would she be able
to cook with?

There is apricots.

We can't have them fresh in Britain,
so they will have to be dried,

preserved in honey.

What about these cucumbers?

We don't have cucumbers,
as far as we know, in Britain

before the Roman conquest,
say, the first century BC,

that's where things and fashions
really begin to change.

Onions here, they would have been
originally English, wouldn't they?

No. Heh-heh. They are imported.
Ah!

That's really odd for us now to
think about a cuisine without onions.

But as far as we know,
before the Roman conquest,

all types of onion
are very Mediterranean.

Before the Romans arrived

the Brits relied on a simple diet
of meat, barley, beans

and root vegetables.

Fortunata, I've always thought of her
as a victim, but actually, at least

for some of the time, she would
have been doing quite well,

being surrounded by exotic food,
probably having a little bit herself,

maybe getting a bit of respect from
the fact that she cooked so well.

Yeah, absolutely. Just the fact
that she is so expensive.

She's a very respected sl*ve because
you are an asset to the estate.

It's horrible, isn't it,
to think about the lack of freedom

and the gross exploitation
that Fortunata and sl*ves like her

would have suffered from.

But I like to think that Fortunata

might actually have lived up
to her name and been lucky.

After all, she was alive.

It seems as though she was living in
quite a comfortable place.

Maybe she ended up marrying Vegetus
and they had a couple of kids

and they became free
and were happy ever after.

I hope so.

(FANFARE)

When the Romans invaded Britain,

they brought with them all sorts
of radical new ideas,

some of them even more exciting

than either roads
or the Mediterranean diet.

Like, for instance, showbiz.

(LAUGHTER)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
And welcome to the show tonight.

The Romans worked hard
and they played hard.

Among the impressive buildings
that they built,

or got their sl*ves to build,

were amphitheatres, circuses,
stadiums and theatres.

(APPLAUSE)

Roman Theatre was inspired
by classical Greek plays

and mainly consisted of dramas that
were either tragedies or comedies.

They were performed by actors
wearing costumes and masks

to convey character.

And although we don't exactly know

which plays were performed
in Britain,

we do at least know one place
WHERE they were performed.

This is the best preserved theatre
in Roman Britain,

at Verulamium in Hertfordshire.

Back in Roman times, it would have
been an entertainment hotspot...

(LAUGHTER)
..with something for all the family.

(APPLAUSE)

But who were the stars
of Roman Britain?

Well, we've got one fantastic clue,
which contains two intriguing names.

The clue is this gorgeous
terracotta piece of pottery

and the names are

Verecunda Ludia

and Lucius Gladiator.

Verecunda the actress
and Lucius the gladiator.

This is a replica of the original,
which was discovered in Leicester.

The small hole allowed it to be hung
as a pendant, surely a love token.

What we're looking at is
a showbiz couple from Roman Britain.

And first, I'm going in search
of Verecunda's story.

Much as they enjoyed
their entertainment,

respectable Romans looked down
on actresses like Verecunda,

who almost certainly
would have been a sl*ve anyway.

She would have had to be a great
actor, dancer and mime artist.

And if these mosaics are anything
to go by,

pander to the bawdy expectations
of the audience.

She would have been part of a troupe
of travelling entertainers

performing at venues
up and down Roman Britain.

For them, Verulamium would have been
a big tour date.

This area here, where all the grass
is now, rectangular space,

would have been the stage,

and they wouldn't just have had
this one pillar.

There would have been one, two,
three, maybe even four.

And behind them would have been some
kind of cloth or curtain

to access the scenery.

And over here,

that's where the musicians
would have played behind them.

You got this curve
all the way around.

That's where the audience sat.

And they'd have had tickets,
they'd have been lead tokens,

which would have been stamped
on the way in.

And what about Verecunda?

Well, when she was waiting
for the show to start,

she would have been up
in the preparation room,

what we call the green room nowadays.

This is where she would have been
getting a bit worked up,

wondering how tonight
was going to go,

hanging up her frocks
and dusting off her dresses.

(CHEERING, APPLAUSE)

I'm hoping that Reading University's
Roman expert Dr Matthew Nicholls

can reveal a bit more
of Verecunda's world.

What do you think of that name,
Verecunda?

MAN: It does have a meaning
in Latin, which is,

we could say something like modesty,

and her name is first.

It's before Lucius the gladiator.

So they seem to me to be probably
a couple, I would have thought.

It looks to me like something
these two people cared about

and thought about.

If you and I were here
for an evening's entertainment,

and Verecunda was up on stage,

what would we be likely to see?

I suspect if it's a troupe that's
got a ludia in it, an actress,

that we're looking at mime,

which might be a series of
almost farcical performances,

caricature situations
from daily life.

There might be song numbers
and dance numbers and so on.

It could be something
a bit more raunchy.

(SEXY TRUMPET PLAYS, WHISTLES)

It could be something
a bit more highbrow.

(SINGS OPERATICALLY)

Who would be watching it?

Just the people who lived
in the villas

or the ordinary people
and the goatherds?

If you look around at the building,
it's a pretty large structure.

It could hold a lot of people.

Looking around, I would say
several thousand people.

So that's probably most of the
population of a town like St Albans.

And we might imagine people coming
in from the neighbourhood as well,

from the surrounding villages
and farms.

I suspect you'd want to appeal
to the villa crowd

and to the goatherd crowd.

Whatever their demographic,

Romans liked an exciting end
to the evening.

And if the playwright struggled
to deliver a suitable cl*max,

they could always resort
to one time-honoured

if not terribly subtle device.

Sometimes a magic figure would just
come in and wave a magic wand,

everyone would die,

end of play.

This sort of ending was known
in Latin as a deus ex machina,

or God from the machine.

(LAUGHS)

But no-one was really harmed,
of course.

It was just pretend.

Verecunda could just go back
to her tent

and do exactly the same thing
the next day.

For her boyfriend, though,
the action was all too real.

Ruthless blood lust
was a cherished Roman value...

..and one they exported
around the empire

to colonies such as Britain.

(CROWD ROARS)

This was the world of
Verecunda's boyfriend, Lucius.

Lucius was a gladiator.

Britain may have been
a far-flung province,

but the Romans here
had to have their games.

There were very serious
about their entertainment.

You could say deadly serious.

Britain had its own modest versions
of Rome's theatre of death.

(JEERING)

Today, they've either been turned
into shady glades

or attractive traffic islands.

But don't be fooled.
The games were just as nasty.

They were put on for free by
wealthy politicians or businessmen

wanting to curry favour
with the locals.

Men and even women would often
fight to the death

in front of the baying crowds.

I'll have you, lad.

Come on if you think
you're hard enough.

Ooh!

During Lucius's time
in the second century,

defeated gladiators
weren't always ex*cuted,

but very few lasted
more than ten fights.

It's hard to imagine anything
more awful, isn't it?

But the games were extremely popular,

both with the Romans
and with the Romano-British.

So how did Lucius end up
with a career as a gladiator?

Well, we can be fairly certain

that this wasn't his preferred
career choice.

Lucius was most likely
an enemy combatant

captured from
one of the British tribes

and then offered a choice,

to either A, be ex*cuted...

Um, I don't really like that one.

..or B, be enslaved
and fight as a gladiator.

Yippee!

Lucius' life was all about survival
and fighting for a living

and being prepared to k*ll,

and the centre of his world
would have been his training,

into which I'm about to get
a crash course.

First, I suppose I best get myself
kitted out.

This is quite bizarre, this.

It's like a Roman car boot sale, isn't it?
Very much so.

A gladiator car boot sale, maybe.

John Conyard
is a professional re-enactor.

It looks like all this stuff
is designed

to make it difficult to fight in.

There's a whole variety of
different kinds of headgear here.

All the helmets are made of a copper
alloy, sometimes covered in tin.

It's quite a weight on my head,
I have to say.

The fights certainly won't last
very long.

Certainly in some of the helmets
they've deliberately got small eyeholes,

so it's going to be hard to breathe.

I like this wonky sword. What would
the function of that have been?

So the sword like this,

I can slide it over the shield
inside the collarbone to the heart.

I can place it on your breastbone,
turn it around,

and then slide it upwards
through the bottom of your chin

up into your brainpan.

(SCREAMS)

Look at this. You wouldn't want one
of these bits and pieces, would you?

The four-skewed dagger
was devastating

against knee or elbow joints.

On the days
when Lucius wasn't fighting,

what would he have been doing?

If he was a young gladiator,

I suspect he might have been
kept to barracks,

almost chained up in his room
or in the gladiator school.

After he's had some experience

and he becomes
a higher status gladiator,

he might be allowed into town,
where he could meet actresses.

How often would they fight?

Certainly once to maybe
eight times a year.

I thought it would have been
more like football

and you would have turned out
once a week.

They were paid
very large sums of money

for about anything
from maybe £75,000

to a quarter of a million
in our terms.

So fighting one or two bouts a year
would be an excellent way

of having a very good living
in the Roman Empire.

For Lucius, the secret
to a good performance

was not only to be handy in a scrap,

but also to get into character.

Each gladiator plays a different
role and had his own archenemy.

What with his glamorous girlfriend,
Verecunda

I reckon Lucius was
a pretty boy gladiator,

like this chap.

Known as a retiarius, or a net man,

he had no helmet
so he could show off his good looks.

His archenemy was the secutor.

Well armed, but slow.

So what's Tom doing here?

Tom's playing a gladiator for us.

You could take off the...

John's son Tom is dressed
as a secutor.

So the retiarius would be
practically unarmoured.

Yeah. They're using the
trident, the fishing spear.

It's a very powerful weapon.

I can use it one-handed...
(CLANG!)

Oh, hang on! It's a demonstration.

You right?
Not too bad. (LAUGHS)

The net would be weighted.

Lead weights all the way
around the outside.

And of course, we could try to throw
the net in such a way to...

(GROANS) I'd just...
..bring him down.

Ahh...

So you are the fisherman...
Yay!

..who has caught the fish.
Yes.

With a high-energy diet

and a program of rigorous training
every day,

Lucius prepared
for his next big fight.

When it came to the day of the games,

the whole thing would unfold a bit
like a circus in a series of acts,

and if it was a really classy show,

then it would be accompanied

by a soundtrack
played by musical instruments,

just like a sort of horror movie.

(THRILLING MUSIC)

And Lucius would watch from the wings

as the old warm-up acts came on
and got the audience in the mood.

But I'm not really talking about a
cheeky chappy in the spangly jackets.

(CHEERING, APPLAUSE)

First on were
the bestiarius fighters,

criminals given spears

to have a sporting chance
against very hungry big cats.

(ROARING, CHEERING)

After the ferocious hungry animals,
they'd probably be a few executions

just to get the audience's
blood lust up.

(HORSE NEIGHS, MAN SCREAMS)

Then it's Lucius's call.

He's had a few fights before,

so by now he's well known,
well seasoned and popular.

(FANFARE)

And here comes the star of the show,

Lucius the retiarius.

(CHEERING)

And a great reaction from the crown.

The secutor is striking at Lucius
with a chop to the head.

But Lucius easily dodges her.

With a quick, elegant movement,

Lucius makes the lumbering Rex
a bit ridiculous.

Ooh! Another swipe from Rex.

That was closer.

Now, Lucius has come in
on his blind side

and it's back of the net!

The crowd is going wild. Oh, my word.

(CHEERING)

Was it really this bloody,

or is just something
we see in the movies?

Well, not far from
the prim tearooms of York,

archaeologists recently
discovered evidence

for a huge English gladiators
graveyard.

80 bodies, nearly all men,

mostly k*lled in horrible ways.

Including one whose bones showed
he'd been savaged by a big cat...

(ROAR!)

..presumably brought to Britannia
for the games.

The end for Lucius too
was most probably brutal and grim.

We all know something about
gladiators, don't we?

The strange helmets
and the weird weapons and the nets...

In fact, they're so bizarre
they're almost reduced to oddities,

aren't they,
rather than human beings?

And it's only when we learn
the name of one of them

or see their butchered skeletons,

that we realise that they were people
just like us

with lives like ours,

but with terrible, brutal deaths.

In Roman Britain, locals who became
part of Roman society

often did so as sl*ves,

whether they were cooks, actresses...

..or gladiators.

But how about the Brits
who didn't get taken into sl*very?

What were their lives like, and are
there even any records of them?

Well, we do have a name,

and it comes from
the village of Prickwillow...

(ARROW THWACKS)

..on the "island of eels",
which is now Ely in Cambridgeshire,

and that name is Boduogenus,

which roughly translates as
"born of victory".

But whose victory?

Well, it could well be
Queen Boudica,

who was the tribe chief who smashed
the Romans on a number of occasions.

So calling your child
"born of victory"

could well be two fingers up
to the Roman Empire.

Tricky little Britain.

So did Boduogenus
live up to his name?

Well, not exactly.

However, he did find a way
of dealing with the Romans

on his own terms.

You see, Boduogenus had a job
which gave him a special value.

It was one which would have made
the other members of the tribe

look at him with a bit of awe,
a bit of wonder.

He was someone who seems
to have something to do with magic

because he could conjure
beautiful things out of the earth.

He was a metalworker.

This might be Boduogenus
hard at work.

(METAL TAPS)

After training under a mentor,

he'd have become a travelling
artisan or had a shop in the village.

But Boduogenus again soon became
an artist of the highest calibre.

We know about him

because one of his products
made in the second century AD

was unearthed in a bog
near the village of Prickwillow.

And it's kept in pride of place
at the British Museum.

This is stunning.

This strange looking thing looks
like a little saucepan to me.

What's so lovely about it is these
exquisite patterns on it.

Dolphins playing.

Sea beasts with scaly tails.

And what looks like a cupid
popping up in the middle of it all.

It's just beautiful.

Richard, help me out.

What am I looking at?
Yeah, well...

Dr Richard Hobbs is Western curator
of Roman Britain.

In some ways the most important bit
is the inscription

that you can just see here.

Yeah. Is that a bee there?

Boduogenus.
Boduogenus.

And then the letter F.
Oh, F! Yeah, I know what that is.

That's like... like, fabricated, made.
Yeah.

We know the name of the craftsman
who made this extraordinary thing.

Can I feel it? Wow.
Yeah, you can.

It's got a bit of heft to it.
It does, it's quite...

So what is it actually made out of?

It's made out of copper alloy.

So it's made of... it's made of
copper alloyed with other things.

Now, we certainly know
there's tin here.

That's why it's got this greyish
look to the inner part of the bowl.

And there are some tiny traces
of enamel,

which is like a type of glass.

The metal alloys would first
have been cast in clay moulds,

then the detail refined by delicate
filing and engraving with tiny tools.

Boduogenus is clearly a very skilled
and experienced man, isn't he?

Yeah, he's really working
at the top of his profession.

He also knows a lot about
Roman classical imagery.

So he's clearly learnt the kind
of artistic side of it,

as well as the skills needed
to make this.

And Boduogenus used his knowledge
to create something

Romans would have used
in sacred religious rites.

So this would have been commissioned
by a priest

who would have paid a lot -

something like a month's salary
for the average Roman legionary.

Do we know anything
about the kind of ceremony

that this would have been
involved in?

The decoration is all about Bacchus.
Bacchus is the god of wine.

But he's also associated
with rebirth, you know,

the coming of the seasons,
the good things in life.

Bacchus was a very important god
to the Romans,

and they held frequent festivals
in his honour.

In a sacred ceremony,

Boduogenus's skillet
would have been used

to offer wine as a sort of sacrifice
to the God Bacchus.

We can imagine that
this is being used

as part of one of those festivals,
the bacchanalia,

which is all about the merry-making
surrounding Bacchus,

the drinking of the wine,
maybe the grape harvest itself.

Once those ceremonies have been gone
through, then you can then...

..you can all partake freely in the
Bacchanalian festivals themselves.

So although this wine is sacramental
and it's been blessed,

you'd be able to neck it
as part of the party.

Absolutely.
You paid your due to the god.

So you can then be satisfied that
you're in harmony with the gods.

(PARTY MUSIC AND LIVELY CHATTER)

Bacchanalia was basically an excuse
to have a good time,

and for some reason this Roman God
became very popular with many Brits.

(WEST COUNTRY ACCENT)
Ah, it's a bit chilly.

Are you sure
you should be going topless?

What about you?

Oh, yeah! I got a bit carried away,
didn't I? (LAUGHS)

Do you think he would have been
a respected member of his society?

Well, the funny thing is a lot
of metal workers were not viewed

in that way.

They were kind of viewed
with suspicion

because of this amazing ability
to bring together

something from the earth with water
and fire

and make these
extraordinary objects.

So they were a bit magic.

They were sort of seen
as alchemists.

Great at last to find evidence for
how Brits could exploit the Romans.

All brought together
into one magnificent little saucepan

by a craftsman called Boduogenus
nearly 2,000 years ago.

The Romans provoke
such a mixture of emotions.

(WOMAN SCREAMS)

Whatever the benefits
of the Roman Empire,

I can imagine many little Britons
breathing a sigh of relief

when the whole thing finally
went down the toilet.

Hail Caesar!