- When we are out there,
you're not my friend.
You are my enemy.
- And whatever happens out there today...
Both of us--
both of us will be free.
- The Colosseum is the Roman Empire
distilled to its most basic essence.
- It is a symbol of conquest.
It's a symbol of dominance.
It's a symbol of imperial power
radiating throughout the Roman world.
- Now!
- Any emperor had the Colosseum at his disposal
to use as a tool to reassert his power and authority.
- The message to the Roman people
is that life is a combat.
- It was also a judicial warning.
Do not test the power of Rome.
It was a death penalty offense.
- If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
- It demonstrates the power of the Colosseum.
It made slaves into heroes,
upending the power structure of Rome.
- The Colosseum would come to symbolize
the rise and fall of Rome.
- It's all there--
the blood, the glory, the magnificence,
and the flaws...
that made Rome the greatest empire
that Europe has ever seen.
narrator: In the First Century A.D.,
Rome is the biggest city on Earth,
with a population of more than a million people.
Now, after eight years of construction,
the largest amphitheater in the ancient world
has just opened.
- The Colosseum in Rome is one of the most iconic structures
in the history of humanity.
It really was a sight to behold.
- The Colosseum hosted a wide variety
of bloody entertainment--
gladiatorial contests, wild beast hunts,
executions of condemned criminals.
The Roman people were, in some sense,
connoisseurs of violence.
They expected and received a whole variety
of different kinds of bloody entertainment.
narrator: The new emperor, Titus, is a war hero
who inherited the throne less than a year ago.
The empire he now commands began with Rome's founding
as a powerful city-state in 753 B.C.
It conquers the Italian Peninsula,
then ancient Greece, the seafarers of Carthage,
the pharaohs of Egypt,
and by 80 A.D., most of Western Europe.
- It's a colossal empire,
one of the largest the world's ever known.
And Rome is its capital.
narrator: But despite his extraordinary power,
Titus is vulnerable.
He's part of a new dynasty, the Flavians,
who seized power after a bloody civil war.
His rule follows years of political turmoil.
- Titus was well aware of the fragility of his position.
He is the fifth emperor in 11 years,
and his family has no hereditary claim
to ruling the empire.
They are usurpers.
narrator: To cement his power
and win the love of the people,
Titus has declared an unprecedented
100 days of games to inaugurate the Colosseum.
- Titus had a lot riding on these games.
He knew that the Roman mob was fickle
and that they could turn on him easily
if things didn't go their way and they weren't entertained.
There was a high penalty for failure.
He would pay with his life.
narrator: To mark the Colosseum's opening,
Titus lines up a fight to the death
between two of the empire's best-known gladiators,
Rome's champion, Verus,
and the barbarian, Priscus.
- They are the prime athletes of ancient Rome.
In that specific moment, you could say that
they are the heavyweight champions of the Roman Empire.
- What we know about the fight comes to us
from just one source,
but it's a really important source.
It's the Roman poet Martial,
who was a spectator at the games.
He actually saw this fight and saw how it played out.
narrator: Martial's poem is the only surviving account
of its kind.
The fight he records captures
some of the contradictions of Rome.
It's combatants are celebrated,
but they are also enslaved.
Most gladiators were captured on the borders of the empire,
so for Priscus,
the long journey to the Colosseum
begins far from the glory of Rome.
In the First Century A.D.,
Roman armies push into Germania, present-day Germany.
- It's a fair bet that Priscus came from Germania
because that's where Roman armies were campaigning
at this particular point in time.
- Fall back!
- What allowed Rome to expand
was the best fighting forces
that the ancient world had ever developed.
narrator: The enemies Rome defeats
are usually killed or enslaved.
- The Roman Empire probably consisted
of 50 million individuals, but 20%, maybe even a quarter,
maybe even a third of these individuals were enslaved.
- Hey! Get back in the circle!
narrator: The most promising of the enslaved
become gladiators.
- Germania was a wonderful source for gladiators
because it was full of big, strong fine specimens
who were sell-suited for gladiatorial games.
Priscus would have been
kind of shuttled between slave traders,
all the way from the frontier
into the heart of the Roman Empire.
narrator: According to the Roman historian Livy,
the first gladiators appear in Rome in 264 B.C.
In a funeral rite, two men would fight to the death
over the graves of rich aristocrats,
their blood a kind of human sacrifice.
- As time went on,
gladiatorial games expanded from this focus on funerals
and became mass entertainment.
narrator: Priscus is almost certainly sent
to a gladiator school, known as a ludus.
- The most famous ludus was the one in Capua,
the ludus at which Spartacus trained,
from which he broke out
and led the largest slave rebellion in Roman history.
- You belong to me now!
I own your bodies...
Your thoughts...
Who you were...
Where you came from
mean nothing anymore!
From this day forwards,
you are gladiators.
My gladiators!
You fight for me.
- Priscus would have been sold on to a lanista,
who was the head of the ludus.
He basically is responsible for the recruitment
and for the training of the gladiators.
- If you work hard,
you will be rewarded.
If you don't...
Your new names.
You are Fulgar.
And you,
your name is Priscus.
- Priscus will not have been his real name.
Gladiators were given names.
And these names were sort of to evoke a feeling or an emotion.
Priscus, which means primeval, was a stage name, essentially.
- Usus. Huh?
Okay.
- Maybe he was brutal. He exuded that.
- It would have taken two to three years
to become a gladiator.
The training would have been brutal.
narrator: Despite that, gladiators are well-cared for.
They're fed a carbohydrate-rich diet
designed to provide energy and a layer of fat.
- We have evidence that they had a diet
that was rich in barley and beans.
They were actually known as barley men to the Romans.
That was their nickname.
- And a little layer of fat is great protection
if you're in a business of being stabbed and cut.
A little something extra to cushion the blow, so to speak.
- They're going to physically build you up.
You're given a rudis, which is a wooden sword.
It's twice the weight of the gladius,
the sword or the weapon you're gonna be using in the arena.
- They're taught, by striking a wooden pole, the palace,
the essential moves of gladiatorial combat.
- You! Priscus!
Need to toughen you up.
- You have no rights. You're not considered human.
You're like a piece of property.
But the incredible, extraordinary thing
with the Romans is that ultimately,
some slaves could be freed.
A gladiator is a slave.
But he has the opportunity.
He can become a superstar. He can become a legend.
narrator: After years of training,
most gladiators like Priscus swear an oath
and become an official fighter.
- It is a very strong oath.
"Vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari."
- I will endure to be burned, chained, beaten,
and slain by the sword.
- They're being shaped in a brutal military bootcamp.
So you're really getting these people prepared,
brainwashed to face death.
narrator: After swearing their oaths,
gladiators are divided into different types,
each with its own weapons, training, and fighting style.
- We know of roughly between 20 to 30 main types of gladiators.
The murmillo, for example,
is the armored tank of gladiators.
He has a massive helmet.
He has a manica, which is a segmented
or scaled arm guard.
He has a large shield called a scutum
that is about 4 feet in length.
He has the gladius,
the fighting weapon of the Roman soldiers.
Priscus was probably a Thracian.
A Thracian is more the middleweight.
He's fighting with a small,
about 60 to 65 centimeter shield called a parmula.
His weapon is the sica.
It's got a curve to it.
This is to get behind the shield.
So he's very fast. He's very aggressive.
And each gladiator really brought with themselves
a particular style of fighting that the Romans really enjoyed.
narrator: For the next two years,
Priscus trains hard and his talent shines.
He knows being the best comes with rewards.
- If you succeed in the gladiatorial world,
you can earn enormous amounts of money.
- When you become a professional gladiator,
you can command up to 12 or 13 times
the annual salary of Rome for one fight.
- But the ultimately goal is freedom.
This is an opportunity not only to prove themselves,
but more importantly, to gain access
to the most valued prize of all,
and that was their liberty.
- The only way that a gladiator
was going to earn his freedom
was in the arena, through his actions,
by being so famous, so well-known,
so renowned that the crowd was going to demand
that he be freed.
narrator: The path to freedom for a fully-trained gladiator
begins in the empire's smaller amphitheaters.
This is where reputations are made.
- Amphitheaters have been found in practically
every large Roman settlement, 230 of them.
There were things that bound Romans
together no matter where they lived.
One of those things was the enjoyment
of violent spectacle like this.
It is part of the civic fabric of any Roman city.
- Being a gladiator was a very paradoxical thing.
On the one hand, they were lauded.
They were celebrities.
They were * symbols.
They symbolized courage, tenacity, manliness.
On the other hand, they were looked down on.
They were held in contempt.
- It's not just that they were slaves.
To be looked at in public
was thought to be a degrading thing.
So prostitutes, actors, and gladiators
all belonged in the same category.
narrator: Gladiator fights have referees and clear rules.
- The referee, the summa rudis,
would ensure that there wasn't too much grappling,
that there wasn't too much circling without contact.
Fights are normally organized
between combatants belonging to the same schools.
So they're usually people who know each other.
- Gladiatorial combat is a mixture of violence,
of skill, but also of showmanship.
There is an element of spectacular.
Their sole desire is to appease the crowds.
It's a bit like modern wrestling.
It's so dramatic. The guy's bleeding.
He's surely finished. But he continues to fight.
He might even win the fight himself.
- It's a myth that every bout resulted in the death
of a gladiator.
These gladiators had gone through years of training.
They have been invested in,
and you want a return on that investment.
- Maybe one in ten gladiators
would actually die in the arena.
Gladiators were too loved. They were too powerful.
They were too important.
It made them almost impossible to kill.
- We know this because we have gladiator tombstones,
where it talks about a gladiator
who survived 34 wins and ten losses.
But at the same time, fights to the death
are the highest form of gladiatorial combat.
- In the rare occasion they were actually told
to fight cena missionas, which means no mercy,
gladiators were to offer their throat to the victor
and to take death as if it was nothing.
Then you would be remembered and immortalized.
- Didn't I tell you he was good?
- Yeah, you might be right.
Might finally be your chance to get to Rome, Cornelius.
- It's within the realm of possibility
that a guy like Priscus was scouted.
So in other words, "Hey, we're inaugurating the Colosseum.
"We need the best.
"We hear this guy has a great reputation.
We want him."
- If you arrived in Rome as a gladiator,
the overall scale of it would have been very daunting.
- Rome at last.
We did it.
You're going to be a champion.
- Seeing the Colosseum for the first time,
you can imagine the conflicted feelings
of experiencing the awesome power of this capital city
that has probably decimated your homeland.
What's going on in your mind is that, "I might die here,
but also, I could get my freedom."
narrator: When Priscus arrives in Rome,
the Colosseum is in the final stage of construction.
It's called the Flavian Amphitheater,
after Vespasian Flavius,
the emperor who commissioned it
to appease the people of Rome.
But when Vespasian dies, the city his son Titus
now rules becomes even more restless.
- Rome is a very strange place at this time.
There is a huge slave population,
so the people who live in Rome, a lot of them aren't working.
There are slaves who are doing their dirty work.
- It's a volatile place.
It is full of people who are underemployed
or entirely unemployed, who are subsisting on a dole,
who have to be kept busy and entertained.
Otherwise, the city of Rome was a powder keg.
- Titus is a successful general,
but he's an unproven leader.
So he has to finish the Colosseum.
He's got to inaugurate this new venue.
- So in 80 A.D., to extend his control,
make himself beloved by the crowd,
he declares 100 days of games.
narrator: Only the most outstanding gladiators
will be chosen to compete in the games.
And the most formidable of them all
is the champion of the gladiator school
where Priscus is now training.
- I want to see how well you do against the champion.
His name's Verus.
- Priscus and Verus certainly would have known each other.
This is a relatively small community of people.
- You've got spirit. I'll give you that.
- Verus means, in Latin, "true."
But in this context, it really means
"the real thing."
There must have been a whole personality
that was based around this moniker.
- I'm also going to give you a beating.
all: Verus! Verus! Verus!
- Why would someone be called truth?
Well, maybe he was true to form.
Maybe he was the greatest, and people would say
he truly is the greatest.
He's the best gladiator.
He's the most violent gladiator.
Or maybe it's true that when you meet him,
you will meet your demise.
- We can think about rivalry amongst them.
But at the same time, you're in a club.
You're in a group. You're in a fraternity.
- Look.
You're tough.
But you must fight smart if you want to survive.
I could help you.
- You're living together. You're training together.
You're sharing stories and tips and tricks.
You're gonna get to know one another in a way
that's almost impossible for anybody else to.
So there's this powerful sense of community and brotherhood
between gladiators.
Gladiators had obligations to one another
that extended even into death.
- When one of their own gladiators died in combat,
their comrades would sometimes pull money together.
- For Megarus, my friend.
Your predecessor.
His funeral.
- Why should I give money for someone I didn't know?
- Because when you're killed,
your successors will pay for yours.
- They would have either paid for their burial
or a tombstone, or if they had a family,
they would look after that family.
narrator: With the opening games fast approaching,
trainers race to secure their gladiators
a spot in the Colosseum's debut.
- The stakes are highest for the gladiators in Rome.
If you want to have somebody
who's really good fight to the death,
that's much more likely to happen in Rome,
where there's the money to pay for it.
narrator: And new Emperor, Titus, has money to burn.
- Head high. Hold. Eyes.
I've taught you everything I know.
I must be getting soft.
Priscus!
I've got you a slot
in the opening day of the games.
Headline bout.
Weren't easy.
Every owner wanted their man to have a shot at Verus.
- For an event of this magnitude,
with this kind of crowd,
with who was going to be in attendance,
Priscus and Verus had every reason to think
that this was going to be a death match.
For the winner would be freedom.
For the loser would probably be death.
narrator: In the fall of 80 A.D.,
the Colosseum is finally ready.
- This was the hottest ticket in Rome.
This would have been the biggest event
that anybody could remember in their lifetimes.
- The tickets were small pieces of lead
that the emperor would disburse to Rome's senators,
and from there, it would trickle down to the population.
- Ordinary Romans would have been awed
by walking into this building,
the likes of which had never been seen before.
The structure in and of itself was part of the draw.
There was nothing like it in the Roman world.
- Workers dug out 220,000 tons of dirt
to create 30-foot deep foundations,
3 1/2 million tons of travertine stone,
a million bricks,
and 300 tons of iron clamps to hold the stone together.
- This massive structure located in the heart of Rome,
punctuated by 80 arched entrances.
Estimates of seating capacity range
between 50,000 and 80,000.
- Seating in the Roman Colosseum
was a microcosm of how rank worked
in Roman society as a whole.
- The emperor sat in a seat of honor in the front,
surrounded by the senators and the state priestesses,
the Vestal Virgins.
And as you went up higher,
the rank of people
would go down lower in the social class
until you got to the very top of the Colosseum.
You'd have noncitizens and slaves,
and that was the only place where women could sit,
other than the Vestal Virgins.
narrator: Before the games begin,
Priscus and Verus enter the arena to greet the crowd.
- Walking out from the darkened tunnels
into the light,
the color, all those people there
would have been an extraordinary experience
for Priscus and Verus.
- Can you imagine if you are a gladiator from Germany,
and you look up at the imperial box--
there is Rome's emperor in the flesh,
with the power of life and death over you.
Well, that must have been an overwhelming experience.
The emperor's presence
in the imperial box was absolutely key.
The emperor could see everyone and everyone could see him.
- The games are all about Roman emperors
giving the people what they need.
And it's always described as bread and circuses.
They had to feed the people of Rome.
But once they were fed, they had to be entertained,
and they loved these shows.
- We might call it a bribe.
This was Titus saying, "I'm providing this for you.
Please, please, please don't rise up."
narrator: With Titus is his younger brother Domitian,
a potential rival.
- While Titus had been charming and suave,
Domitian was not a pleasing person at all.
- Not a bad crowd, brother.
They seem excitable.
- He was sullen, he was suspicious,
and by all accounts,
very jealous of his elder brother.
- Well, Verus feels like the most popular man
in Rome right now.
- Priscus will provide equal contest, I'm sure.
- I hope so. For your sake.
- These are our games, brother.
Our games.
- Titus and his family were a new dynasty.
They needed to show that they were good for Rome,
and that was what the Colosseum was about.
- Everybody is watching Titus to see if he slips.
And if he slips, well,
in Rome's there's always a dagger waiting for you.
- Let the games begin!
narrator: The games held by Titus
are designed to showcase his power and wealth.
They cost an estimated $10 million per day,
in today's money.
The schedule is an astonishing festival of death.
- The standard sequence of events was as follows:
in the morning is when you had the venationes,
the beast combats.
- At noon, the meridiani.
This is when the executions of criminals
condemned to death took place, in ways that were memorable.
- And in the afternoon is when you had the paired combats,
the gladiators,
the ones that entertained most of the people.
- When we are out there,
you're not my friend.
You are not my brother.
You are my enemy.
And whatever happens out there today...
Both of us--
both of us will be free.
- There are huge stakes for Priscus and Verus.
The pressure must have been incredible.
They are the headlining fight.
And they will walk into that arena
knowing that one of them
may not walk out of there alive.
narrator: If Priscus was a Thracian,
armed with a deadly sica,
then Verus was probably a more heavily-armored murmillo.
- If you have a Thracian,
almost always paired with a murmillo.
And we can imagine, in that main event,
with these two most famous gladiators,
that you'd have some sort of epic pairing.
narrator: Gladiators enter the arena
through the Porta Sanavivaria, the gate of life.
If victorious, they leave the same way.
If defeated, they exit
through the Porta Libitina, the gate of death.
- Titus sets some rules for the fight.
It cannot be a draw.
It has to be until one of the gladiators submits.
Then they appeal to the emperor for mercy.
But it's highly likely that this,
the headline act of Titus' games,
is going to result in the death of one of them.
narrator: The winner will be given a rudus,
a wooden staff given as a trophy,
which symbolizes his freedom.
both: Hail Caesar!
- So the stakes couldn't be higher.
It's death or freedom.
- Titus favored the Thracian style of fighting,
and Domitian, the murmillo.
- The fact that the two brothers
would have been rooting for different gladiators
would have been known to the audience.
And it would have added even more drama to the proceedings.
- Imagine having a huge metal pot,
essentially, on your head-- you can't breathe,
your eyesight's limited, you're lifting a heavy shield.
You've got 35 to 40 pounds of armor.
The noise of the crowd, the heat, your heart pumping--
and remember, you're fighting for your life, on top of that.
It's gonna take nerves of steel.
But if you fight bravely enough and the emperor graces you,
it's the chance of being free, of becoming a citizen,
of becoming someone normal.
- Martial's poem tells us that the fight between them
was grueling, that it went on for hours.
- This is what Martial says.
"Priscus desperately played for time.
"Verus struggled to hold on, too.
Neither could get the better of their mortal combat."
- Most bouts-- over pretty quickly.
Just a couple of minutes. But this one here is epic.
This one here is on the level of,
you know, the greatest heroes in mythology.
It's something special,
and you know that great things are gonna happen,
things that you've never seen before.
narrator: The Colosseum is finally open,
and Emperor Titus has promised Rome's people
a fight to the death
between two famous gladiators,
Priscus and Verus.
- Everyone involved--
the 50,000 spectators, the emperor,
and the two gladiators-- they all know
that one man is gonna win and one man will died.
- Martial indicates that it was not just the skills
and the strength,
but the long-term commitment
that touched on the spirit,
that really impressed the crowd.
- It would have been exhausting.
Even professional fighters today,
who are exceptionally well-conditioned,
do not fight and just throw blows at each other
until somebody drops.
There is always going to be some breaks in the action.
- Fights are exhausting. You need to stop.
You need to get some refreshments.
You need some water.
- We know that they fought so bravely
that their actions are still spoken about 2,000 years later.
Think about the last round of a championship boxing fight,
when you see these two men unable to continue fighting.
They're hugging. They can barely lift.
The power's gone.
- Your man looks tired.
- They're both tired.
- "They battled to a brutal draw.
"Now, each was dead on his feet.
"But Caesar was bound by the letter of his own law.
"The rules were clear: there had to be a winner.
And only a raised finger could stop the bout."
- If the gladiator is wounded, if he's down on the sands,
he can lift his finger
and ask for misio--
ask for survival.
- What Martial says is that they both submitted.
And the crowd don't know what to make of it.
- One staff.
One winner.
- The outcome of the games
is ultimately decided by the emperor.
But he's there to please the audience.
It's very rare that the emperor's
gonna go against the people
because he does not want to be unpopular.
- And the crowd, you can imagine they're going wild.
Some of them would have been cheering for Priscus,
some cheering for Verus.
What's the emperor going to do?
He might say, "Well, you've both submitted.
You should both die."
- Ultimately, Titus is gonna have to make a decision.
But he cannot go against his word.
- As my brother has reminded me...
There is only one staff.
And that means
there can only be one winner!
- Holding the rudus, this symbol of liberty,
Titus is literally holding
their life and death in his hands.
- To you both.
Champions of Rome!
- Titus ultimately doesn't designate one the winner
and one the loser.
Both were the victors--
victors, in this case, over death.
- Titus is stealing the limelight.
But he's showing that he is ultimately in charge
of life and death over everybody.
And if you fight well, if you serve him well,
if you're loyal to the emperor, then you will be rewarded.
narrator: Titus has used his political instincts
to turn a potential embarrassment into a triumph.
- It's a culmination of power, of control, of distraction.
It's everything, really, the Colosseum stood for.
- Imagine what it must feel like for Priscus and Verus--
overwhelming relief, pride, joy,
and they will have been conscious
that they're going to be remembered forever.
And here we are, still talking about them.
- My father demands a new palace.
And it must be built without delay.
- It will be done.
- In size and scale and scope,
the colosseum was the ultimate.
- And it's a place that was built
in order to provide unity to Rome.
both: Hail Caesar!
- A great set of games will revive this whole city.
- It was the symbol of how to live as a Roman
and how to die as a Roman...
- With strength, with courage,
and with honor.
- I want to be a gladiator.
- You don't belong here.
- I'll hold the greatest games the world has ever seen.
Hold it!
- As long as the Colosseum stands,
Rome shall stand.
If the Colosseum falls, Rome will fall.
- The only way most of us leave the Colosseum...
Is as dust.