Roman Empire

For over a century,

the Roman Coliseum has hosted the most grueling and bloody games

in human history,

fought and won by the Roman gladiator.

At the end of the second century,

the Roman people witness a game like no other.

For the first time in history,

a Roman Emperor will fight to the death.

All hail Commodus,

Emperor of Rome!

Commodus's reign will mark the beginning of the fall...

of the greatest civilization on Earth.

But his story begins more than a decade earlier.

By the end of the second century,

There's no civilization as massive or as powerful as the Roman Empire.

Almost one in five people on Earth lives within the Empire's boundaries...

and is under rule of one of the most powerful men on the planet,

the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

For more than a decade,

Aurelius has waged war to defend the Empire's reach.

And he reigns over a territory that spans thousands of miles.

From Western Europe and the Middle East,

through parts of Africa and the entire Mediterranean.

Marcus Aurelius was

considered really one of the most successful Emperors.

He was not just Emperor, but he was a distinguished philosopher.

He was a student of Epictetus,

who was the leading Stoic philosopher of the day,

and he was a gifted philosophical writer in his own right.

His meditations are still read today.

Over the last century,

Rome has been built into one of the most advanced cities

in the ancient world.

And, under Aurelius's reign,

it's given rise to a modern era.

The Roman Empire in the second century

was a formidable global superpower.

They had the most proficient military forces.

They ruled the most civilized array of people.

There was anything that you wanted by Roman standards,

you could find in their empire.

And what kept this empire together

was an incredibly efficient array of infrastructure.

Ancient Rome during this time period was the greatest empire

that the world had ever known.

It was responsible for enormous advances in technology

such as the system of Roman roads or the aqueducts that supplied water.

The city of Rome itself had reached one million people.

So it was the first

large-scale urban metropolis.

Marcus Aurelius rules over 50 million people

within the boundaries of the Roman Empire.

And no one lives better than his son...

Commodus.

The problem that was ushered in by Marcus Aurelius

when instead of doing what his predecessors had done,

and adopting a person who was qualified

by temperament, and upbringing, and training to serve as Emperor,

instead wanted his son to succeed him.

Commodus was the first Roman Emperor

who was ever born to a sitting emperor.

Growing up the son of an emperor,

as someone who was raised from birth to succeed his father,

we have to imagine that Commodus's ego had no place to go.

Knowing that he would have this role,

that this had planted some seed in his mind

that he was, in some sense, extraordinary.

Commodus.

Go.

Good morning, mother.

Now.

Do you know what time it is?

Early.

I'm sending you to Germania.

What? Why?

Because all you do here is drink and play with whores.

But there's a war.

It'll teach you discipline.

I'm not going anywhere.

It's already been decided.

Your father's expecting you.

When you think about Commodus, who had more, personally,

and more, historically, going for him than any other human being

previous in the history of human existence...

I mean, in fact, no Roman Emperor for 80 years had had a son.

However, one would be very, very hard pressed to find

a less intellectually,

less energetic, less motivated

person with that type of responsibility in the whole of human history.

Against his will,

Commodus has been called to Germania.

Ordered to train under his father to become the next Emperor.

Hundreds of miles from Rome,

along the borders of the Empire,

massive armies of Germanic tribes are invading Roman territory.

And the Roman military has been called to the front lines.

With one of the strongest ground and naval forces in the world,

the Roman military is made up of hundreds of thousands of highly trained soldiers,

equipped with the latest weaponry,

and prepared to defend the Empire's borders...

at all costs.

There was the problem of Rome's neighbors.

Both to the east, and to the north.

The Parthians to the east

and Germanic tribes to the north, which were a threat.

Romans had been fighting Germans,

at this point, for 250 years.

And the border

on the Danube had always been a problem.

And, in fact, as it turns out, always would be a problem.

The Roman army

was the most formidable fighting machine

that the ancient world had seen.

The basis for their success

was less their capacity for killing,

and more their capacity for entrenchment.

It was a capacity for digging fortresses,

for fashioning all the infrastructure of a frontier force

that served to ensure that the Roman frontiers

were essentially guarded and held secure.

Oh, Saoterus, that's disgusting.

I hope you learned your lesson. You'll never outdrink me, my friend.

Never again.

Tell my father I'm here.

Let's hope we're not stuck here for too long.

Come with me.

Marcus Aurelius and Commodus

have come down in history as very, very different individuals.

After all, he was also a leading general of his time

and led many wars along the Danube frontier.

Commodus probably was as irresponsible as people say.

That said, Marcus Aurelius does not appear to have shown any hesitation

in promoting Commodus from a very young age.

Where is he?

What?

I promised your mother

I'd try and do my best to make a man of you.

I never break my word. Ever.

It begins now.

You want me to train like some common soldier?

Again...

Again...

Again...

I'm going to show you what happens when you don't know how to handle a sword.

One of the great debates,

not just among Roman historians of today,

but even of the time, was why Commodus?

Why did Marcus Aurelius choose Commodus?

Why, despite the fact that everybody seemed to see

that he was not up to this task, why was there still the insistence

that Commodus was going to be the next Emperor?

Perhaps we can chalk it up to naïveté

or a kind of generic just love for his son,

blinding him to the realities

that his son was not up to the task.

And his son was not ready for this position.

The means through which Commodus was groomed and trained to become Emperor

were unparalleled in Roman history.

He had high hopes for his son during this period.

What Marcus Aurelius imagined for his child and what his child became

were two very different things.

As Commodus trains,

the Germanic tribes begin to push through Roman defenses,

banding together and launching a massive assault on the Roman army.

The great Roman nightmare was of Northern Barbarians

sweeping southwards and conquering Rome.

In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, there was a disturbance.

He knew that he had no choice but to confront that.

And as it turned out, the wars that Marcus Aurelius fought

against the German people were

as strenuous and challenging as any Barbarian enemy

that the Roman people had faced.

Lasting years...

it's a devastating war.

Killing thousands of men on both sides.

The war also takes its toll on the Emperor...

who soon falls ill.

Marcus Aurelius spent most of his life

dealing with, fighting, trying to resist, coping with

Barbarian tribes pressing up against the frontiers of the Empire.

And as the health of Marcus Aurelius began to fade,

there was a great deal of worrying.

He seems to have had problems in his chest and stomach.

It may have been cancer.

It may have been something to do with his heart. One doesn't really know.

With the Emperor's health diminishing,

news is sent to the palace.

But on its way back to Rome,

the message is quickly distorted.

And soon enough, it becomes a rumor...

that Marcus Aurelius has died.

In the case of Marcus Aurelius,

it seems quite clear that rumors started to spread

that the Emperor had died.

And sometimes these may well have been engineered.

And what is crucial about this, is that verification of these rumors

in the Roman world would have been phenomenally difficult.

Before long,

the rumor of Marcus Aurelius's death

reaches the most powerful woman in the Empire...