Pompeii: The Secrets of Roman Hedonism and the Fall of an Empire | GEDEON DOC

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:05]This is the year 79 Anno [music] Domini.

[00:00:08]The season is summer.

[00:00:11]Several earth tremors have already rocked the town [music] of Pompeii and the surrounding area, but such earthquakes are so frequent that the Pompeiians [music] don't pay much heed to them. Craftsmen are repairing the damage as the fiercest eruption Vesuvius has known for the past 4,000 years is already brewing.

[00:00:30]A magma pocket 5 km wide and 3 km deep blows up the volcano's dome at noon on August 24th.

[00:00:39]A pillar of molten rock 17 km high rises in the sky.

[00:00:44]Ashes and volcanic stones fall [music] back onto the town at the rate of 10,000 tons per second.

[00:00:54]The inferno is just beginning. As evening comes the eruptive pillar reaches a height of 32 km.

[00:01:01]The inhabitants try to escape taking with them whatever they can.

[00:01:06]At 9:00 p.m. Pompeii has almost been buried under 4 m of ashes.

[00:01:11]Those inhabitants who have decided to stay will die in excruciating pain.

[00:01:16]Several burning clouds 100° hot belched out at a speed of 200 km/h sweep across the town.

[00:01:24]At 7:30 a.m. on August 25th, the last one annihilates what is left of Pompeii.

[00:01:32]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> The buried city has been forgotten.

[00:02:26]Neapolitans keep farming this soil fertilized by Vesuvius. And yet Roman Pompeii still has many mysteries to reveal.

[00:02:39]By the mid-18th century, the discovery of Pompeii's remains creates a sensation. The specialists of antiquity thank God for this archaeological miracle.

[00:02:49]For what reasons?

[00:02:55]Until the discovery of Pompeii, archaeologists had only revived cities in ruins, leveled to a few inches from the ground in the best cases, and down to their foundations at worst.

[00:03:09]Such sites would reveal the plan of Roman cities, but not much about the mentalities of those who lived in them.

[00:03:21]A few truncated frescoes would give glimpses of an indecipherable world.

[00:03:26]But who were these people? What vision did they have of their world? How did they live?

[00:03:35]In villas discovered all over the Mediterranean area, the mosaic floors hinted at the beauty of those Roman homes, enough to let the archaeologists feel frustrated.

[00:03:51]In Pompeii, messages from the past can be found everywhere.

[00:04:10]Here, too, life has been swept away in less than a second.

[00:04:14]The mill grinding flour on the eve suddenly stopped. And the burning cloud caught by surprise in the stable the men and the beasts.

[00:04:35]The digs daily uncover the memories of an instant in history that has been frozen at the time of the final eruption.

[00:05:22]The memory of a full life has also remained engraved in the plaster work.

[00:06:32]>> Like many provincial towns, Pompeii is a very lively small trading town.

[00:06:37]The shopkeepers' wall have kept the lists of vegetables and their price.

[00:06:51]Fresh foodstuff came from the surrounding gardens and kitchen gardens.

[00:06:55]On the market stalls, you'd see plenty of dried fruit, raw or dried meats, and salt fish.

[00:07:08]What Pompeii showed is that Romans would write everywhere. Their streets were many colored. The whitewashed walls were also covered with brightly colored inscriptions and election announcements.

[00:07:18]Some gentleman is campaigning to be elected to a local function.

[00:07:22]Another one sponsors a gladiator show. A third one denounces corruption.

[00:07:31]In the street of plenty, the many trading booths open onto the pavement.

[00:07:41]>> [music] [music] [music] >> The town is teeming with an intense activity. Potters, coopers, coppersmiths, sellers [music] of cloth, tanners, cobblers are all over the center.

[00:08:15]The bakers sell large [music] loaves of bread rich in bran, but also more refined treats, such as crisp donuts [music] coated with honey, or thin transparent pancakes.

[00:08:29]Carts juggle on the huge cobblestones [music] of the wide avenues, and one may often see flocks moving across the city.

[00:08:38]Shops are open most of the morning, [music] but every day at 4:00 p.m. men go to the baths, main premises [music] of the town's social life. And later some of them will meet in the tavernas, whose bars open onto the street.

[00:09:07]In such plebeian eating houses, [music] the clients may have a dish of boiled broad beans, lentils, or chickpeas >> [music] >> seasoned with spices as varied as they are tasty.

[00:09:18]The walls of these tavernas are also decorated. The remaining frescoes tell us of trivial events in daily life.

[00:09:26]They're snapshots, usually revealing barroom squabbles.

[00:09:58]>> [music] >> No antique [music] frescoes had so far been so well preserved. Pompeii drastically changed all our theories on the decoration [music] of villas.

[00:10:11]It no longer was a matter of computations on fragments of wall. The archaeologists' shovels were clearing entire dwellings. The atrium, the triclinium, every room [music] was there in three dimensions.

[00:10:29]In front of the archaeologists stood the walls of vestibules, [music] of bedrooms, of dining rooms. They'd in them scenes of daily life, mythological [music] portrayals, and the solemn faces of the inhabitants of the empire.

[00:10:49]For a long time it had been thought that Romans decorated their walls as we cover them with wallpaper.

[00:10:56]>> [music] >> When discovering these works of art, archaeologists have realized that these decorations had a very different meaning.

[00:11:06]>> [music] >> maison.

[00:11:34]Leur richesse est là pour leur assurer leur pouvoir.

[00:11:38]Ces personnages ont besoin de se mettre en scène. Le goût du spectacle est dans la mentalité romaine.

[00:11:44]Alors, ils reçoivent leurs clients dans l'atrium avec ces décors superbes d'architecture qui leur donnent l'impression de se retrouver dans les palais orientaux de ces pays lointains qu'un riche Romain, au fond, il domine aussi.

[00:12:01]Et puis, il y a les décorations plus intimes dans les chambres à coucher, dans la salle à manger. Il n'est pas rare d'avoir euh des paysages. Et là aussi, il ne s'agit pas d'une simple décoration. Mais les paysages qui rappellent que la salle à manger est à l'image de l'univers, que le maître de maison est un peu le maître de cet univers et que les murs sont abolis pour prolonger la vision au-delà dans ces jardins [music] que l'imagination nous laisse parcourir.

[00:13:41]>> All over the empire, highly skilled artists [music] paint these unique and multi-colored compositions.

[00:13:47]They prepare their pigments themselves [music] and spend whole weeks achieving these works of art.

[00:13:55]And yet, >> [music] >> Pompeii's citizens do not hesitate in scribbling their messages on these exceptional decors in their own homes or those of their neighbors.

[00:14:06]It's another [music] discovery made by the frescos restorers.

[00:14:10]Pompeians would write anywhere.

[00:15:24]And see >> But not all messages were as romantic as these.

[00:16:10]Men also went to the town's many [ __ ] houses and signaled their presence with provocative and vulgar lines.

[00:16:34]>> [singing and music] >> The sexuality of the Romans, surmised to be unbridled, has engendered many fantasies. Sensual or even saucy representations are many in Pompeii's [music] villas.

[00:16:47]In fact, the relationship men and women had with sex was entirely different from ours. [music] The archaeologists' conclusions have often been distorted by their own fantasies.

[00:17:05]>> [music] >> In 1995, the diggers started excavating [music] a building whose entrance hall was decorated with erotic scenes above a number.

[00:17:26]They thought they had discovered a brothel [music] in which sophisticated sex was part of a menu.

[00:17:33]>> [music] >> 10 years later, as the digging advanced, [music] the archaeologists realized that they were in thermal baths.

[00:17:53]The numbers were those of the lockers in which [music] the clients left their personal belongings.

[00:18:00]This doesn't make a Pompeiians citizens with depraved morals.

[00:18:04]>> [singing] [music] >> These morals are found inscribed on the walls of Pompeii's villas.

[00:19:29]Some of the inhabitants have maxims engraved on them to be read by their guests.

[00:20:20]>> [music] [music] >> Certain frescoes in Pompeii describe [music] dinners during which the guests do let themselves go.

[00:20:41]Some graffiti seem to betray an inordinate [music] taste for drinking, if not for drunkenness.

[00:20:51]The accounting of the history of the [music] Roman Empire has often accentuated this decadence of morals, but what are the real facts?

[00:21:01]>> [music] [music] >> The other total show of ancient Rome is the circus games.

[00:23:00]>> [music] [cheering] >> In Rome, 55,000 people, men and women together, crowd into the largest amphitheater of antiquity, the Colosseum.

[00:23:16]From the end of the first century of our era, recreation days multiply. Citizens go to the games almost 100 days per year, and in some cases, as when celebrating Trajan's military victories, the emperor offers to Rome's people more than 200 days of festivities.

[00:23:43]At the time, every single city [music] of the empire has premises for spectacles, a theater or an amphitheater. We find them in every [music] town of Spain, Gaul, Britain, or even North Africa.

[00:24:00]>> [music] >> But does the amount [music] of such buildings mean that those bloody games were practiced all over the empire with the same ardor [music] as in Rome itself?

[00:24:18]Recent discoveries in Ephesus prove now that the gladiators confronted each other [music] everywhere around the Mediterranean area.

[00:24:48]Und in diesem Bereich ungefähr befinden wir uns an dieser Weggabelung von dieser heiligen Prozessionsstraße und dieser Damianustor.

[00:24:57]Da waren wurden Grabungen gemacht und dann We have here the Hinterhaupt. This is and there we have a a hole where a sharp object entered and is and where the and through this through this sharp force this gladiator died.

[00:25:38]He died from it.

[00:25:43]Other skulls show gashes [music] such as the one here due to a two-edged sword, which indicates the violence of the blow.

[00:25:53]Gladiators are truly gambling on their lives in the arena.

[00:25:57]These men are prisoners of war, slaves, seldom free men.

[00:26:01]It has been thought for a long time that they were thrown into the arena with no training.

[00:26:06]In fact, gladiatorship was a high-level sport and their owners seriously looked after [music] recruits whose maintenance and training was expensive.

[00:26:16]Some pathologies detected [music] by the archaeologists show that these men trained very hard in order to survive.

[00:26:24]So we have here the gladiator bone from the forearm. It comes from here.

[00:26:30]And uh here you can see the changes So the the the humerus comes in here and this point here, this change, this sharp point there this tapering where the tendon attaches, where the tendon attaches these are the effects that the training has on the bones of the gladiators.

[00:26:56]>> In the year 80 AD, the emperor Titus inaugurates the Colosseum and has 100 days of games.

[00:27:07]3,000 beasts and 2,000 gladiators will die during the festivities.

[00:27:13]In every arena, thousands of spectators crowd to be at the various shows. They bet on the chariot races in which some of the drivers, the aurigae, are popular heroes. In Rome itself, the Circus Maximus [music] welcomes 150,000 people who've come to cheer their champion.

[00:27:35]Some festive weeks might cost several million to their organizers.

[00:27:39]The more renowned gladiators were very expensive, even up to 50,000 sestertia, equivalent to the yearly wages of 1,000 legionaries.

[00:27:48]A combat would require at least 120 men.

[00:27:52]But during the empire, these deadly games are the keystone of the Roman political system. They allow the ruling class to buy [music] the favor of their constituents by offering them such pleasures.

[00:28:03]They also take the plebians' minds off a life of hardships and extreme [music] poverty.

[00:28:08]More and more sumptuous arenas proliferate in the cities.

[00:28:20]True enough, >> [music] >> the Romans are past masters in the art of organizing such festivities.

[00:28:26]Several times, the Colosseum is even turned into an [music] artificial lake.

[00:28:30]A diverted aqueduct fills up with water the arena, made waterproof with [music] pitch.

[00:28:35]Thousands of men will fight during full naval battles. These bloody reconstructions are such a [music] success that a special edifice will be built for this kind of show.

[00:28:45]>> [music] [music] >> All social classes flood the tiers of the Colosseum to partake of the festivities offered by the emperor. At the time, Rome has 1 million inhabitants, most of whom have never traveled.

[00:29:08]To them, the shows are also a way to change their daily lives and discover the Roman world through pageants and combats between alien prisoners or hunting scenes for which African savanna is reconstituted.

[00:29:24]For the Colosseum [music] has been converted into a tremendous machine that can accommodate any kind of performance.

[00:29:30]Everything has been [music] foreseen in it.

[00:30:11]>> [music] >> In the bowels of this stone nave lit by thousands of oil lamps, 28 wooden elevators are activated by over 100 slaves.

[00:30:36]A cable and counterweight system allows [music] them to raise wooden cages.

[00:30:41]The system brings up to the arena's sands not only the big cats, but even the [music] decors reconstructing a savanna.

[00:30:48]Rocks, palm trees, or bushes brought at great expense from Africa.

[00:31:04]>> [music] [music] >> The public is very keen on these hunting shows, unique visions of a remote Africa whence come strange animals sent by whole shiploads.

[00:31:25]These kills are so numerous that already at the time certain species, such [music] as North Africa's elephant or the Atlas lion, are becoming extinct.

[00:31:38]>> [music] >> Yet, what explains the Romans' lust for such bloody shows?

[00:33:15]>> [music] >> But these games are more and more expensive. They put a strain on the state's budget already burdened by military expenditures.

[00:33:24]In an arena in southern Spain, archaeological digs have unearthed [music] texts overhauling the organization of these spectacles.

[00:33:31]They define a ceiling [music] figure for expenditure and above all forbid the kill of gladiators.

[00:33:40]Henceforth, >> [music] >> money must not be squandered.

[00:33:45]Such measures are proof of the crisis generated by [music] the system. They also show that the games have acquired a paramount position in the Roman social life.

[00:33:54]As a political tool, they unleash passions.

[00:33:58]Tacitus, the [music] Roman historian, tells us of a confrontation opposing the inhabitants of Pompeii to those of Nuceria during a performance in the arena.

[00:34:08]Many Pompeian frescoes depict gladiators [music] confrontations also. In the course of a dig though, archaeologists have discovered a representation of the pitched battle described by Tacitus.

[00:34:20]His account was true. In 59 AD, the spectators of those two neighboring [music] towns did abuse the others before killing their opponents. That day, the fighting took place not only on the arena, but also on the tiers.

[00:34:35]We're far from a civilized [music] image of Roman society.

[00:34:39]Such bloody brawls mirror a waning world while the empire is [music] at its peak.

[00:34:45]A social crisis is brewing. The egalitarian ideal of the Republic is over. The gap between social classes is widening as proven by the autopsy of Pompeian corpses.

[00:35:32]In the heat of this night in August 79, Pompeii is heavily asleep.

[00:35:48]When the volcano blows up, the whole town is caught unawares by the suddenness of the eruption. Yet, no one leaves because no one is aware of the phenomenon's scale. No historian, no naturalist at the time had ever observed a volcanic eruption. They all ignore the dangers Vesuvius threatens its 15,000 inhabitants [clears throat] with.

[00:36:12]Only the next day, a frantic rush to the sea starts by the end of the afternoon.

[00:36:21]Too late for many people. A first scorching wave gushes down the slopes of Vesuvius, reducing everything to ashes.

[00:36:28]The Pompeiians are caught wherever they've tried to take shelter.

[00:36:36]Whole families are decimated.

[00:36:43]Archaeologists have found the victims where they died as no one tried to dig up the town after the catastrophe.

[00:36:51]In their flight, these people tried to take their treasure. In an alleyway, a rich [music] patrician lady gripped her most precious necklace. By her side, a 10-year-old child was wrapped in a sheet.

[00:37:04]The plaster mold shows even its finest pleats.

[00:37:10]A couple has collapsed, suffocated under a house's porch trying to protect themselves from the fine particles blocking their nostrils and windpipe, in vain.

[00:37:24]In his cloak's folds, the man was hiding too what he'd been able to save.

[00:37:29]Silverware now become pathetic.

[00:37:39]In a villa's triclinium, a surgeon cut down by the fiery cloud was gripping his surgical tools.

[00:37:47]Maybe he was going out to heal people.

[00:38:01]Within a few hours, Pompeii turns into a ghost town.

[00:38:05]A few days after the eruption, nothing emerges from the coat of ashes.

[00:38:11]The town is now frozen.

[00:38:18]While those streets, houses, and shops have taught us a lot about Roman mentalities and the way Pompeii's men and women lived. [music] By the mid-19th century, the discovery of these corpses has led further those investigations.

[00:38:30][music] We also had much to learn from the corpses.

[00:38:41]But to start with, how have they been found in such postures as if petrified by the eruption?

[00:38:50]In the 19th century, Giuseppe Fiorelli noticed that the skeletons he unearthed were always in a cavity.

[00:38:59]He decided to [music] pour plaster into them and saw that the bodies had left their negative imprint in the compact ashes.

[00:39:07]The figures of some thousand [music] inhabitants suffocated by the volcano's flows were thus discovered.

[00:39:18]Recent genetic studies have shown that these were whole families held back in Pompeii as they didn't want to abandon a handicapped close relatives. There were parents, children, and grandparents.

[00:39:30]The bodies were so well preserved that at a glance the anthropologists could determine the sex, age, weight, and size of each individual.

[00:39:38]They could even see whether they'd tried to escape or had collapsed at once.

[00:39:45]The discovery of these bodies and their casts helped further the investigation on the causes of these men's and women's death.

[00:39:52]But what really moved the archaeologists was the return to life of their intact faces as depicted on the frescoes of the wealthiest homes.

[00:40:12]Buried under several meters of relatively flaky ashes, the town's architecture has miraculously [music] been preserved. Pompeii had been put under glass.

[00:40:25]We can finally trace back the existence of those inhabitants that the [music] frescoes draw up before the eyes of the archaeologists as revived ghosts. [music] These many-colored walls tell us of luxury and affluence.

[00:40:44]In the wealthy [music] villas of Pompeii's patricians, some covering a surface of 400 square meters, >> [music] >> live more than 100 people.

[00:40:52]The hosts are surrounded by dozens of slaves [music] at their beck and call anytime of day and night.

[00:40:59]They have no privacy. And even when their servants keep away, there are clients [music] soliciting them for a request.

[00:41:23]In spite of the ease of their lives, the eyes of the Pompeiians of the 1st century [music] remain solemn.

[00:41:30]Why is that?

[00:41:40]Again, the skeletons concealed much information.

[00:41:44]In 30 years of work on the site, the anthropologist Maciej Henneberg has learned to decode all the clues transmitted by those bones.

[00:41:55]Here finally is a femur of a man who, when you look at it quickly, does not actually differ much from a healthy, unbroken bone. When we look at the back, we can notice that this bone is a bit unusual in this region.

[00:42:15]So there is some sign of healing.

[00:42:18]Here is a femur that is the upper part.

[00:42:22]This is the lower part. The bone was broken in the middle and the leg eventually naturally healed but shortened by about that much, about 5 cm and therefore this person for the rest of her life walked with a severe limp that caused the asymmetry to the pelvis and bent to her back and so on and so on could have had a number of other consequences. We have a very modern approach to orthopedic surgery here.

[00:42:52]But obviously it wasn't applied to everyone. So like today, some people could afford better medical care than others.

[00:43:01]It just depended on the money.

[00:43:04]>> [music] >> From the 1st century of our era, poverty becomes a fact. The gap between rich and poor widens.

[00:43:12]To survive, certain inhabitants of Roman [music] cities become beggars.

[00:43:16]The pathetic grimace of this bronze statuette, discovered in Pompeii, bears witness to it 2,000 [music] years later.

[00:43:28]On the whole, Roman society [music] grows poorer as proven by inscriptions on the walls of rich houses such as [music] to rent a wing of the house or to rent as from [music] August 1st a house with baths, storeroom and mezzanine floor where several people can sleep.

[00:43:48]>> [music] >> Some landlords would rent rooms in their homes or divide them into tiny lodgings where the poorest [music] inhabitants settled.

[00:44:05]>> [music] >> With such poverty, thefts multiply and some inhabitants take steps to protect their homes from burglars.

[00:44:18]>> [music] >> The Italian peninsula lives to a large extent on taxation in kind levied from the rest [music] of the empire. Wheat comes from Egypt, but a flood in the Nile or a tempest in the Mediterranean [music] is enough to create a food shortage.

[00:44:32]Bread is no longer regularly distributed. [music] Deprived of its supplies and in debt due to its growing military expenditures, the very heart of the empire faces an unprecedented inflation which forebodes its inexorable end.

[00:44:46]>> [music] [music] >> The walls of Pompeii also bear witness to the poverty of part of its society.

[00:45:05]>> [music] >> I'll do that >> Intact, the faces of Pompeii's inhabitants have waited 2,000 years to see daylight again.

[00:46:43]Many others are still shut away in an earthy shroud.

[00:46:47]The site has not been wholly excavated yet.

[00:46:57]How many revelations, how many broken lives, how many secret stories do the bowels of the volcano still hide?

[00:47:29]On August 26th of the year 79 Anno Domini, the town of Pompeii lay under almost 20 ft of pumice stone and ashes that smothered [music] all those screams.

[00:47:41]And yet, the disaster was also a miracle [music] for thousands of archaeologists who rediscovered on the Neapolitan site the roots of our mentalities, [music] of our civilization.

[00:47:55]Thus, they have gone back to the foundations of Europe's [music] ancient history.

[00:47:59]They have found again part of the Etruscan and Greek culture of which the Romans [music] were merely the inheritors.

[00:48:07]Above all, they have learned to decode the messages left [music] by Pompeii's inhabitants, thus erasing a century of surmises and many certainties. [music] We thought Romans were fickle.

[00:48:18]They were modest. We thought them exuberant. [music] They were solemn. We thought them rich.

[00:48:24]Some of them were poverty-stricken.

[00:48:27]At its peak, in the 1st century [music] of our era, the Italian peninsula was already under a death sentence.

[00:48:38]When all is said and done, the 1,000 dead of Pompeii, guardians of the city, have been more talkative than the 14,000 survivors [music] to the disaster. Those dead give evidence of a time that no longer exists in an [music] almost untouched countryside, for the volcano, indeed, is merely lying dormant.

[00:48:58]>> [music] >> Vesuvius still rules over men's lives in the Bay of Naples.