[Music] two and a half thousand years ago a Greek city flourished in a quite spectacular way out of this place came extraordinary things philosophy theater and a great political idea [Music] the city was Athens the idea democracy democracy triumphed briefly then was forgotten [Music] yet today we venerate it as the cornerstone of Western civilization in Washington the greatest superpower in the world champions Athenian ideals liberty equality and freedom of speech but are we really the guardians of Greece's Golden Age these perfect white columns seem to me to be a great metaphor for what we've done with the classical past we've taken the world of the ancient Greeks and we've whitewashed it we've turned it into a kind of fantasy we look back at ancient Athens and we see what we want to see not what was actually going on [Music] I'm going back to ancient Athens the dig deeper to look at the grit as well as the glory and to discover the true story of democracy [Music] if you say the name Athens certain images immediately spring to mind a beautiful Greek vars enlightened philosophers the Parthenon this is a place that we cherish is the first free and equal society a good solid basis for our story of democracy [Music] but beneath the golden age ideal was a city that constantly voted to go to war and the ruthlessly carved out an empire to enrich itself a city which championed freedom of speech that couldn't tolerate criticism from within and now's the perfect time to dissect the idealized picture of Athenian democracy because so much has recently been discovered that casts new light what actually happened here in the Golden Age five hundred years before the birth of Christ three centuries before the rise of Rome the world was dominated by the great empires of Asia Europe remained the province of primitive tribes but this world order stood on the brink of cataclysmic change a new power Persia had swallowed up the great civilizations of the Middle East forming the world's first superpower the Empire of the King of Kings spread from the mouth of the Indus to the gates of Europe but beyond the borders of this first world empire a small dynamic place is making a noise wedged between east and west slay a mountainous collection of islands and strips of land each ruled by one of hundreds of rival city-states just one of these was the ancient city of Athens in the sixth century BC Athens was dominated by the Acropolis a jagged Fortress of prehistoric limestone crown with simple stone structures but the people made sacrifices to their gods in its shadow was the Agora the center of the city where the Athenians came to buy and sell talk and debate it was the hub of Athenian life one of the busiest noisiest places in the Greek world archaeologists have been excavating this site since the early 1930s their basement storerooms are packed with artifacts from 5,000 years of Athenian life John camp showed me around how many artifacts me got in here catalogued one something like a quarter of a million and then we keep a great deal of the pottery and fragments because that tells us the date and down here the layers of archaeology here show us that Golden Age Athens was built on prehistoric foundations before it was the Civic Center it was a burial ground that's on the Iron Age and Bronze Age there were lots of tombs we have several hundred tombs and so we have the remains of various people who were buried here long before this was the center of town so this is about 1,000 somewhere between 1000 1500 BC I think we always forget that the classical thing is worth they were walking on the ghosts of the past no in recent centuries the Greek states had emerged from a Dark Age and transformed themselves Greek shipping now spanned the Mediterranean making trade with Palestine Africa Italy and the Black Sea [Music] these were warrior societies but the Greeks didn't go in for individual heroics they fought as one in massed ranks of soldiers called hoplites they protected one another with their shields all across the Greek world populist military dictators tyrants backed by these citizen armies grabbed power from traditional elites ironic that in Athens the path to democracy was smooth by tyranny tyrannous is a Near Eastern word which initially referred to relatively benign rulers who are sometimes even supporters of the common people but as time went by the Greek tyrants started to live up to the name as we understand it from the fifth century BC to the present day tyrant has become synonymous with an abuse of power by the end of the sixth century Athens could no longer tolerate the vindictive regime of the tyrants they were expelled by a group of aristocrats who began fighting amongst themselves it was this conflict that would help spark democracy on the one side I sagres backed by Athens rivals Sparta on the other was Cleisthenes who desperately needed a tactic to counter his enemies military muscle Cleisthenes came up with a shopping plan he appealed to the mob the rabble holy PO lorry as they're called in Greek the historian Herodotus tells us that Cleisthenes welcomed into his faction the ordinary people if you are a member of the elite you thought that people were not the people as a whole it's the masses it's the unwashed masses the mob democracy it was power of the poor people over the rich now hope was stalking the streets of Athens the people had tasted power and although power is relatively easy to hand out it is almost impossible to take away when the aristocrats tried to impose their power the people rioted and stormed the Acropolis they overthrew their rulers and without knowing it for planning it democracy was born [Music] what had begun as one man's solution to a problem returned in the next 50 years into a completely new system of government now I knew that what had been invented was the first direct democracy at the time of Cleisthenes the concept didn't even exist the word democracy comes from Dimas people and Kratos power or grid my dear it caught on pretty quickly within a couple of generations the word was everywhere and soon the city would worship democracy as a goddess democracy is an extraordinary surprise they didn't replace one set of rulers with another set of rulers as has happened for thousands of years in the West they said no actually why don't we try something extraordinary we can rule ourselves in a world controlled by kings and cliques the Athenians created almost by accident a remarkable experiment in direct popular rule and they transformed their cities especially to house the new system opposite the Acropolis people would assemble on the hill of the Plex any citizen was allowed to attend and a vote of the assembly was law the assembly was chaired not by career politicians but by ordinary citizens chosen at random for a term of one month they were put up at state expense in a circular Thoreau's next door was the council chamber where 500 ordinary citizens met each day it was their job to prepare the agenda for the assembly back on the hill at the PX [Music] if we were to follow Athens example we would have a different Prime Minister each month selected by lot and we would all take our turn in Parliament's they didn't elect people to make decisions for them they rules and were ruled in term we have reason to believe that this is one of the law courts archaeologists have an earthed tangible proof of the Athenian pursuit of equality they found an Athenian ballot box when it was excavated little bronze discs like this seven of them were found and they carry an inscription as you can see they say public ballot and you as a juror in the law courts would be given two of these one with a solid axle and one with a pierced axle one disk represented a vote for guilty and the other for not guilty you would hold them so people couldn't see which way you were voting throw one into the ballot box and a verdict would be arrived at fantastic a lot of thought has gone into this I don't know they want to make sure that the jurors don't feel coerced in any way yeah so plenty of checks and balances to be a secret ballot the courts are tremendously important for the functioning of the democracy yeah my job a woman said wouldn't it be a massive vote that's true I'll do it there to make sure that the jurors were fairly chosen brilliant technology was devised this is called a claret Ariane and it was a random selection machine now how it works is that individual citizens would have their names inscribed on two metal tags that would then be inserted into each of these slots down the side here there would have been a wooden shoes which of course hasn't survived over the millennia and down the chute would be sent black and white marble balls if your name lined up with either a black or a white marble ball it meant that you were or you weren't going to be selected that day and because this process happened every day that there was democratic business to be done it was impossible to bribe jurors or to pull rank so that you were always chosen it shows just how important equality and fair play was to the early democracy [Music] in theory you can be a magistrate that proposes a law you can sit in the assembly and vote for the law and then four months later you could be sitting on the jury that's going to decide how its to be interpreted or if it's even constitutional you can hold any office in the state the seismic shift had occurred but in a world where rule by the many was confined to one city in a thousand the survival of the infant democracy was in peril only 20 years after its foundation a timely discovery would transform Athens fortunes and turn it into the richest city [Music] at the dawn of the fifth century BC the ancient city of Athens sat perched on the edge of the civilized world [Music] democracy might not have survived had it not been for a windfall that made Athens rich at the bottom tip of the Athenian Peninsula lies larium industrial heart of ancient Athens even today the landscape is littered with the spoil of hundreds of abandoned mine shafts although off the tourist trail larium has an important story to tell that the Athenian Golden Age was actually built on silver people have been mining here since the early Bronze Age because the rock is so rich in mineral deposits but then in 483 BC the Athenians struck a giant seam of lead carrying within it precious particles of silver overnight democratic Athens was filthy rich recent excavations have uncovered a complete settlement of tiny houses and streets the conditions here are pretty cramped actually it's not that different from other towns and villages of the period what makes this place different is that this building has just been identified by some archaeologists as the remains of a watchtower the living quarters surrounding the tower were not occupied by citizens the by slaves as soon as the Athenians wanted to keep their slaves under 24-hour surveillance and it's no surprise they were jumpy we're talking massive numbers as many as one in three of the people who lived in Athens were slaves the Athenians could be such vigorous Democrats because they had someone else to do their dirty work for them the Athenian citizens felt their freedom all the more keenly as the owners of people who had lost theirs in ancient Greece Liberty has an inflection which it doesn't have in our society namely there are an awful lot of unfree people I mean slaves and in fact not far from where we're standing right now was one of the slave markets in the center of Athens we mustn't forget the dark underside of the Democratic achievement most slaves began their lives as free men and women but were forced into a life of manual labor when they became prisoners of war they were bought and sold separated from their families sterilized so as not to breed it wasn't only slaves in fact nine-tenths of the population were barred from voting there was an age restriction and it wasn't enough to be born in Athens both your father and your mother had to be born there too and of the remaining free Athenians half like me were automatically disqualified women weren't just unequal they were believed to be demonic possessed by Damone A's spirits they needed to be controlled visibly restricted in fact the first hard evidence of the full face veil comes from Athens women were not meant to be seen all the evidence of ours painting would suggest that the woman is veiled she has her cloak draped over her head sue blundell is researching the status of women in Athenian society then if you want to cover your face you can go like literally I match Sophocles said silence is the greatest ornament of the woman I feel nicely sighs hate it makes me feel really claustrophobic the message that's being sent out is that a married woman is the possession of the man yes he is the one person in her life for whom she will unveil herself yes it wasn't only Athens almost every society until the twentieth century has been fiercely patriarchal but there was in that searing mass of experimentation the possibility that something different could have been done where do we hear about that we hear about it as a joke Aristophanes imagines what would happen if women took over we hear about it as philosophical thought so Plato imagines what happens if we got rid of the family and had women as well as men those guardians of his Republic but of course it didn't happen only the free men of Athens could belong to the Democratic Club which met together on the panics at dawn Athenian citizens would come here to sit around on the bare rock and debate in the assembly how it was that they should run their own lives so we're going to do an experiment in Greek democracy so who's for the purpose of life for an ordinary human being in essence was political life and again it's absolutely unparalleled in world history so the motions carried luhan's hansen is a world authority on athenian democracy and how it worked in practice this is where the people meet to pass their laws to pass the decrees to elect their prime minister and they all do it by show of hands that's a voice of the people the Athenians believe that the nymph Nix was derived from the adjective Preakness which means crowded or densely packed the Plex covers 2,400 square meters a person takes up 0.4 square meters if he sits down thus it could accommodate six thousand citizens important legislation needed to be endorsed by a vote of 6,000 and that's exactly the number of people mearns has worked out would face onto the crowded connects but it's impossible to count six thousand hands man's went to the Canton's of Switzerland where they guesstimate the vote first I took photos and then I blew up my photos and with a pencil I started each hand so I could check that this was a fair method of deciding a majority in a large assembly [Music] you think that is fair way of doing it yes it is Aristotle it shows that they did the same in essence just think of the hubbub of the assembly 6000 men here together shoemakers sitting next to Nobles and all debating issues which directly affected their lives heralds kept order and there was a police force of slaves nearby if things got out of hand but we're told that if the crowd really disliked one man's argument they would shout him down until the roar reached to the skies so seriously the Athenians tape being a player in democracy that they called people who didn't participate idiotas which gives us our word idiot fiends actually had a word for politicians and it was orator people who especially practiced and skilled in addressing large crowd so you can get one orator to stand up against another and in that way the people can choose it's very important that you always have more than one voice this young woman is called faith Oh persuasion the Athenians worshiped her as a goddess they've bestowed great honors on her in the hope that she in return would give them the gift of a fine speaking voice sweet words and a fifth-century talent for spin in 483 BC the citizen assembly had a weighty decision to make what to do with the flood of silver pouring in from the mines now there's nothing like a discussion of how to spend a fortune to get the creative juices flowing and one day in 483 BC a man called Themistocles stood up with the brave and farsighted plan the mr. Cleese wasn't from one of the old aristocratic families he was someone who'd benefited directly from the new opportunities of democracy he was hungry and he had the Verve and focus of a man freshly empowered Themistocles vision was that Athens should command the scenes Persian power was a threat to a thens existence Themistocles was well aware that they'd already invaded Greek lands to everyone's surprise the Athenians defeated a massive army marathon although the Persians retreated Themistocles knew that it was only a matter of time before purges King Xerxes returned to settle old scores he was intent this time Athens would take her enemies on at sea Athenians needed a brand-new fleet of warships another tax break he argued in the assembly it's a tribute to Themistocles powers of persuasion and to the acumen of the assembly that they approved his strategy over the next three years the Athenians would build themselves a fleet of over 200 triremes this was a fundamental shift in the way the Athenians made war triremes would be the new weapon of democracy the word trireme means three oars rowers were arranged in three banks what about the other it's faster it's more deadly than any warship that had been used before this is the technology that the Athenians have to master in order to defeat the largest Navy in the world the Persian Navy triremes offered the perfect balance of speed and weight highly maneuverable with twin rudders Athens was already a democracy it's no accident they mastered this form of warfare the Greeks associated the word techne our technology with the triremes and that is the great Athenian strength playing to technology playing to innovation they would have been about 170 was went on a boat like this most of them would have been packed down here you can just imagine what the atmosphere would have been like very cramped very sweaty and then as you rode your face smacks up into the back of the man in front of you but the situation here forced a feeling of community and because these things were the engines of the fleet you knew that your muscle counted the trireme is so perfect it's hard to think of a better symbol of athens in its democracy the development of the fleet has remarkable political consequences and I think the Athenians knew it we know that upper-class Athenians were hostile to developing the fleet and it's perhaps because they saw what was coming once you had a fleet Athenian power would rest on the shoulders of the poorest people in society the military power of Athens depended on the fleet and so the political power followed it inevitably and Athens became more of a real democracy [Music] in the east Xerxes preparations for conquest gathered pace he mustered a colossal army from across his empire rational debate wasn't enough to decide the Athenian strategy they needed assurance from higher powers 100 miles northwest of Athens in Delfy lies the sacred Oracle of Apollo [Music] in Apollo's temple questions were put to the priestess and her enigmatic replies were then translated by priests the Athenians came to ask advice their question with what strategy could they best defeat the invading Persians the mightiest army in the known world the answer came back Zeus grants to thrice born Athena a wooden wall in this and only this shall she be secured the meaning of the wooden walls was debated on the panik's some argued it meant the protective Palisades on the Acropolis if the Athenians took refuge there they'd be safe for mr. Greece was in no doubt the wooden walls meant the Navy in a vote the Athenians agreed with their Admiral man woman and child evacuated their city for the nearby island of Salamis they waited for the battle to begin [Music] in September 480 the Persian army entered Athens hungry for revenge Zack's he found the whole territory deserted the Persians raised the Acropolis to the ground stole its treasures and torched whatever was left these deformed statues blistered and buckled provide vivid evidence of the terrible fires that raged on the Acropolis all the Athenians could do was watch as their city burned they waited with their Greek allies running nearby island of Salamis the key was to get the Persians to fight where the Athenians wanted a battle the only way to do that was to trick them Themistocles sent a message to the Persians saying his men were deserting with Persians to enter the Straits by Dawn they could capture his fleet without a fight it was gambling the Persians would believe him and rose straight into a trap adorned on the 25th of September the Persian ships files into the narrow waters the modern Greek Navy has a base at Salamis captain cosmos Christie's studied the battle while training to be an officer he's used his intimate knowledge of the Straits to bring new evidence to the textbook history you can see now there is where the battle took place on the right side they were the Greeks on the left side the person the Greeks were outnumbered two to one but the straights were so narrow only half the Persian fleet could enter the mr. Glee's had lured the Persians into his trap the strait of Salamis which is around 300 yards the Persian fleet cannot be deployed that's very clever saying because you've got such a narrow area so as he said you're limiting the number of Persian boats that can come in that's good it Themistocles also knew that the morning currents and crosswinds would disorientate the Persian fleet wint don't them like this so he wants to ram the side of the boats if you succeeded the tactics of a battle work to ram the enemy and to quickly back off before the enemy could do damage to you [Music] the Athenians face the best part of the Persian fleet and they defeat them the remaining Persian ships turn to flee so what results is just an enormous and remarkably bloody traffic jam it's a massacre the blood in the water men being speared like tuna fish and goes on all day Xerxes watched as the Persian fleet was steadily annihilated this victory would underpin Athenian democracy one factor which made the democratic experiment the way it was was the Persian Wars just having a bunch of people coming in taking over Athens smashing your statues up on the Acropolis there you start thinking hey why did we win what makes us different from them and so if there wasn't a notion of the power of the people as against dictatorship and tyranny before the Persian invasion that was after all over the city public monuments were set up eulogizing the victory the message was clear Western democracy could and should triumph over Eastern tyranny the schism between East and West had been set in stone Salamis is just a key event in Western history all the things we associate with the Golden Age of this century Greece the democracy the art the literature the history the philosophical debates about empire and power above all that wouldn't have happened without Salamis having triumphs decisively over tyranny democratic Athens set its sights and building an empire they understood that once the Persians pulled out of the Aegean that the Aegean would be a power vacuum and then if the Greeks didn't move in the Persians would come back the athenians simply couldn't allow that to happen [Music] the Greek states that ring the coast of the Aegean formed a grand Confederacy with Athens for protection against the Persians historians call it the Delian League after the small island where the Allies had their headquarters Delos was a sacred place the legendary birthplace Apollo and Artemis I think the Greeks got it right when I thought the gods of wind seen sky roamed Rams hair it was very astute to base the league here this was a neutral Island and also try-me Valley sacred the fog of mystery and superstition surrounded the place this is not somewhere that you'd have tampered with to begin with the leak was a huge success as time went on it became more and more clear that Athens but its vast Navy was the obvious leader of the league many of the smaller states found it impossible to man a fleet all year-round so it suited both sides for Athens to provide protection and take money from the Allies for the service to celebrate the foundation of the league this temple to Apollo was built and in it a massive Treasury where all the leaks cash could be stored but then just 20 years later the league stops building work which is very odd because this is the time when the Greek world is at its most prosperous and then you realize there's something else going on here building had stopped on Delos because the Treasury of the league had been moved from its neutral territory to Athens itself allies who attempted to leave the coalition soon found themselves forced back in by the Athenians what had once been a mutual defense pact was now looking very much like an empire but what was behind Athens new thirst for imperial power Democratic imperialism maybe down to something as basic as the need for grain grain is the oil of the ancient world whoever controls its supply can keep a stranglehold on power barley or wheat was the staple food of Greece when it ran short the people starved huge sways of the landscape around Athens of rocky and infertile [Music] this area is now built up with housing but these spy photos taken by the RAF during the Second World War show terraces where the ancient Athenians desperately tried to squeeze maximum food out of the soil 5th century Athens might have been riding on the crest of a wave they still needed to feed itself [Music] proof that a thens was desperate for grain was found in the most unlikely of places when they were examining the ancient drainage system in the Agora they found a stone recording payments to athens this is an inscription relating to tax and it tells us that athens asked athenians abroad to pay their tax not in silver but in Iran sit on grain now new evidence about how the grain supply motivated the driver Empire has come from Oxford historian Alphonso Moreno he found a whole range of athenian forts on lush fertile new beer athens had conquered your beer reducing its population to serfdom was very unfortunate to live on flat fertile land you do attract carrots yes especially unfortunate if you happen to live right across a very small stream of water from the athenians following rare maps and surveys Alfonso discovered a network of unexcavated forts proving successive generations of Athenians spent huge resources on conquering and defending yet more of you beer they went so far as to evacuate the entire population of this part of the island and they moved it out forcibly how many people are we talking about it's a good guess that it's probably a 50,000 people and in their place are put one or two thousand Athenians it makes you wonder whether people realize that democracy isn't necessarily a virtuous thing [Music] this stone steely represents the monumental night of the Athenian Empire you can see that all over the stone surface there are closely carved descriptions listing the places that owed tribute money to Athens from Palestine to the Black Sea it's an incomplete jigsaw puzzle now but it represents a continuous flood of money pouring into the athenian coffers up on the acropolis the domination of euboea and the aggressive imperial project was the policy of athens most powerful aristocrat Heracles II was the darling of the people the cities wrote of him that during his leadership Athens was in name a democracy but in fact under the rule of one man Pericles was following on a long tradition of competition to deliver to the people of Athens ever larger prizes and ubo was just the the largest the latest example of that isn't it the era sprats standing on bits of coastline like this looking at across the sea I'm wondering where it is that they can lay their hands on next you know I think that's more or less precisely what they do this was a kind of competition it was many ways the transferal of the archaic ideal that you see in the Olympic Games to a political arena and democracy was the ultimate way of playing a competitive game with other members of the elite and the people derived great riches from the invasions the feats of the aristocratic prowess of their leaders [Music] first they had silver mines and now they had an empire democratic Athenians had more money than they could spend Pericles use the surplus in a brash new way to create for the people a symbol of their own Imperial glory in 447 BC work began on the defining symbol of ancient Greece the Parthenon [Music] in 447 BC the modest temple of Athena that had lain in ruins since the Persian invasion was rebuilt on an epic scale it was the favorite undertaking of Pericles the Parthenon for 15 years citizens slaves and foreigners laboured side-by-side to construct one of the most celebrated buildings in history but the million tourists who visit each year find a site covered in scaffolding and cranes the restoration is giving new insight into the original construction do you know how many would have been working on here when it was first built for the reaction of the panel yes eating in the building we found between the members we found bones from chicken and cells yes yes they are sitting over there looking the view can be think that's there shellfish picnic while they build the Parthenon the Parthenon was adorned with reliefs including plays supreme aristocrats the Athenian cavalry it was the biggest temple in Greece every powerful city or state was express his rank I think this is an appearance of that yeah a monument to power yes well the Parthenon is always called the temple what people forget is it was primarily a bank it was a place in which we put money treasures and it wasn't used for any religious ritual that we know not only does it put its Mundi and treasures there but it was built out of money from the Empire so far from being a symbol of a pure white Hellenism is a symbol of how Athens asserted power over a lot of rather smaller states and used it to glorify itself but Pericles beloved project was stirring up trouble fractions in a city were enraged that the Democrats could steal from the Defense Fund to provide salts for the people they brought their complaint to Pericles in the assembly the Allies must be outraged they cried they must consider this an act of barefaced tyranny when they see that with their own contributions extorted from them by force for the war against the Persians we are gilding and beautifying our city dressing her up like a common [ __ ] Pericles response was as much a defensive Empire as it was his most potent symbol the Allies do not give us a single horse nor a soldier nor a ship all they supply is money you told the Athenians it is no more than fair that after Athens has been equipped with all she needs to carry on the war to protect the Allies she should apply the surplus to Public Works which once completed will bring her glory for all time it's a politician very cleverly spinning the situation and writing his legacy into the history books [Music] Athens drove her imperial project ever further those that resisted were punished men women and children massacred it is the nature of man Athenian said to take power wherever he can the strong do what they like and the weak accept what they have to accept in the name of democracy they pursued an aggressive foreign policy which set them on a collision course with their rival city-states [Music] in 432 BC the Athenians found themselves confronted with an enemy they could not overpower the ancient world's most formidable military force sparta it was an irony worthy of Greek tragedy that Sparta virtually a totalitarian state now claimed to be the liberator of Greece from the tyranny of Athens the world's first democracy Pericles had taken Athens into a disastrous war yet he appears to have been brilliant at persuading his citizens that they were dying for a higher cause [Music] at the annual burial ceremony of the city's war dead he gave a last impassioned speech in defense of democracy and Athens I could tell you a long story about what is to be gained by beating the enemy back what I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day and the greatness of Athens our Constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands of the whole people everyone is equal before the law what counts is not membership of a particular class but the ability which a man possesses they are fine and persuasive words and for centuries we've chosen to take these as representative of the true spirit of fifth century Greece but there are many who wouldn't have bought into Pericles vision of a free and tolerant society this was a time when unorthodox views were circulating throughout the city and they were viewed as very dangerous democratic Athens was beginning to fracture the evidence for how the break-up occurred is only now emerging words really were the lifeblood of the Athenian democracy here there are many millions of words that were written in the fifth century BC which haven't even been translated yet an unofficial history of the cities starting to emerge in the next program I'm gonna see how bitter rivalries both in and outside Athens created havoc for the democracy and how newly discovered documents are changing our ideas of the Golden Age [Music] [Music] in the year 399 BC a Greek Court tried the philosopher Socrates for crimes against the state the 70 year old was found guilty of introducing new gods and corrupting the young he was forced to drink poison the city which sentenced him to death wasn't a tyranny or a totalitarian regime it was a democracy one of the first democracies and certainly the most vigorous of all time so can it be that Athens the city which created the concept of freedom of speech should vote to kill one of its wiser citizens simply for speaking his mind freely in the second part of this series we'll see how Socrates pushed Democratic Liberty to its limits and was destroyed I'll explore Athens in its Golden Age homes of great artists philosophers and scientists but also tearing itself apart from within could it be the very things that made democratic Athens great also held the seeds of its destruction [Music] at the end of the sixth century BC the Greek city of Athens took a dramatic step in the history of mankind the aristocracy handed over power to the people they said why don't we try something extraordinary we can rule ourselves this grand experiment in popular rule lasted for just over a century this we take to be a ballot box the ordinary man of the city got to make every political decision themselves safe horse Damacio which means public vote it's absolutely unparalleled in world history 5th century Athens is the place where most of our central ideas a protic place our ideas of Western culture words like democracy like theater and there are whole principles of the legal system these are an inheritance from Greece if we want to understand where ideas have come from we have to go back there but the aphelion experiment was hardly a utopia some kind of progressive Wonderland while men were newly empowered slaves and women remained oppressed all the evidence of ours paintings suggests that the woman is veiled in that she has her cloak draped over her head the Athenian Democrats repeatedly voted to go to war they amassed a vast empire forcing whole populations to become refugees the Athenians take overseas territories dividing them democratically among themselves and that it was essentially what exporting democracy means so is our image of Athens benign high-minded a solid bedrock for Western civilization it's all this just a bit rose-tinted in 438 BC the Parthenon was finally completed and Athens was flying high the Athenian democracy had amassed the largest empire Greece had ever seen over 150 states from North Africa to the Crimea handed over vast sums to the Athenian Treasury which paid for a navy which roamed the seas an opposed these ships were not for show in its Golden Age there were no two years when Athenian citizens did not vote to go to war it's ruinous conflict with the Spartans the Peloponnesian War was to be the backdrop for all its high achievement this war is such an abysmal milestone in the history of civilization massacres killing all the males and slaving the women and children this becomes standard practice in the Peloponnesian War this is a new and terrible mode of warfare for the Greeks but amongst all this conflict from every corner of the Empire a stream of artists architects and philosophers flooded into the city brilliant with them new experiences new ideas there's a real sea change in how people thought about what they were doing instead of just doing what we were doing before we could now think about it and that led to experimentation and that idea that you could experiment is what makes democracy and the Enlightenment go together that it's sense of ceaseless experimentation and sorting [Music] this bronzer the Greek god is one of the most celebrated artifacts of the ancient world and I think one of the reasons is because despite his antiquity he looks like us [Music] the staff informal figures that the Greeks had learned from the artists of Egypt began to disappear as a more realistic style emerged it's been called the Greek miracle but there's new evidence to suggest that the change in style was accompanied by an innovative technique casting from life nobody has ever got it to look quite so lifelike I think if you then put some clay sculptor Nigel constant believes they used live models so you think that in the workshops of the famous sculptors of the day they had models and they they covered them in plaster in order to get a cast from life is that right that's right in high classical times they were using life cast there's no other explanation why do you think it is that the experts don't want to believe your theory well I think nearly everyone regards him as the greatest sculptors ever and to show that it was arrived at by this rather simple method it's it's painful Nigel's been sculpting for 40 years and when he studied the soles of the feet of the fifth century bronzes he recognized the telltale signs of a sculptors trick something many art historians had missed in all the Greek bronzes that have survived you get the sole of the foot distorted by pressure of the body on the foot they're very naturalistic not at all the way somebody would carve there's only one way you can get that and that is casting live human models were copied in plaster we will take this mold off assemble that and before waxing the important thing is this bit here the shapes of the toes show weight upon it do you think them why they're doing this is because they are trying to achieve absolute human perfection yes I think you although it looks a bit disgusting [Laughter] in Athens experimentation wasn't only limited to the Arts this is the place where some of our most fundamental scientific theories were debated and honed natural philosophers wanted to explore the basic matter of the universe the invention of the optical microscope was over 2,000 years away and yet without the microscope the Greeks came up with the idea of an irreducibly small particle and they gave it a name meaning indivisible a Tomas atom it's just astonishing to me that they were able to think in that really hard straight away things like what is matter made of and the idea of atoms of course it's taken us until the last decade or so until we could actually isolate and visualize individual atoms as we can if here scientifically that's difficult to do it's completely cutting edges right at the limit of what we can technologically do today at last atoms can be seen in the light of a laser in a vacuum the Greeks couldn't see atoms but they could imagine them to come up with the ideas in the first place that's the peril Greek thought so have the ideas that there are out there laws of nature that we could perhaps discover by doing experiments and thinking about them rather than just saying well this happens this Apple falls to the ground when I drop it because God says oh well there's some God which is putting the stars in the sky they might be pretty good at some other distance to the moon but they even were thinking about how far away the Stars must be while art and science pushed ahead the most radical advances were being made in pure thought no one personifies the breakthrough in ideas more than Socrates the most influential philosopher in the Western world born the son of a midwife and a stonemason Socrates was in most respects a completely ordinary Athenian citizen he served in the infantry took his turn as a city official he didn't write great works or open a philosophical school but he did gain influence with aristocrats whose sons competed for entry to his circle Socrates was a fantastically original thinker central to his view of the world was the idea that each man should pursue his individual path to truth and to the good life we've had a lot of Socrates ideas strike right at the heart of confident ballsy democratic Athens he kept asking these really irritating questions like does wealth really make you happy in an open society why do we keep on needing to build city walls much of what Socrates had to say was simply not what the bulk of Athenians wanted to hear he must have cut a strange figure in a city that made a cult of the beautiful famously ugly he rarely washed or wore shoes it had been a familiar sight striding along and his threadbare cloak surrounded by bright young men eager to hear his novel ideas [Music] what do you meant anyone he was renowned Stan expert he said about asking them questions and in the process invented an entirely new method of rational inquiry do you know what the difference is between good and evil yes goodness is what the gods love and evil is what they hate but there are different gods they don't always agree that's true so they love and hate different things yes that would mean that some things were both loved and hated by the gods so some things are both good and evil I suppose it would well then it looks like you haven't really answered my questions have you know for most of the people he went up to he asked questions that made them feel humiliated ignorant and an uncomfortable he famously said the unexamined life is not worth living Socrates method of philosophy may seem familiar to us but at the time it was breathtakingly new it laid the foundation of our belief that all things can be questioned but it would earn him as many enemies as friends Socrates unsettling questions were to trouble not merely at citizens Athenian democracy itself the fifth century BC saw an explosion in new scientific ideas all around Greece philosophers started to develop theories of how the world was made up of atoms and elements how diseases could be cured how societies ordered a new breed historians sought to document not decorate events they called it rational inquiry but rationalism competed with an older world view one dominated by the gods which Athenians learnt as children from epic poems and myths the Greeks all knew the stories they knew that the gods and goddesses lived on Mount Olympus where they squabbled and drank and had affairs with each other but they also knew that they physically inhabited with patches of earth and so they started to build for them monumental stone temples earthly palaces had gone tribe [Music] at the time even wealthy men lived in mud brick structures the spirit world was honored with opulence for religion was supreme [Music] these gorgeous gigantic structures have come to resemble the essence of Greek culture they seem solid confident robust but just because the temples have lasted we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that Greek religious life was all about grand gestures and monumental stones in one way you get a better sense of the real ritual experience of the Athenians if you come down here late at night this whole side of the rock was dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite and men and women would continually come here to leave offerings and specially carved niches during one festival young virgins would clamber down this staircase was carved back in the Bronze Age they carried what we were told were baskets of unspeakable offerings and they would stay here all night to worship the goddess [Music] encouraging women to worship Aphrodite have an interesting political use Aphrodite is the goddess of sexual love but she's also the goddess of persuasion and harmony in a political system where there were so many players each with vested interests harmony was vital and by worshiping Aphrodite it was thought that women could entice this cosmic glue out of the goddess in ancient Greek there is no separate word for religion ritual was just part and parcel of everyday life in the political process gods and demigods were thought to walk the streets and be around every corner but unfortunately these are often malevolent spirits who demanded appeasement [Music] recent excavations show that black magic who was at the heart of the Greeks famously just and rational judicial system in the main cemetery of Athens the kerameikos underground wells and cisterns have yielded hundreds of cursed tablets this poor chap said his hands tied behind his back and he's been sealed in a lead coffin and we know his name because on the lid of the coffin there's a very crude inscription that reads Manasseh MCOs and all his cronies in the legal case so whoever commissioned this was prosecuting their symmachus and hoped that by creating this thing you could appropriate some kind of supernatural powers at the outcome that the law case was favorable to him there are many of these things so clearly this kind of magic was an unofficial but an integral part of the Athenian judicial system scholars have often struggled with great religion it doesn't square easily with the Athens they wanted to see that was sophisticated and rational Athens might have been a democracy that it had emerged from an archaic world of multiple gods and primordial rituals for the Athenians there was one particular festival they cherished which fostered a sense of togetherness it was known as the mistress the ritual started with a procession from the Kerameikos cemetery all along the sacred way for years it's been virtually impossible to work out what went on because this was a mystery religion and initiates to the cult were bound by an oath of silence the secret rituals promised hope of a happy afterlife the men and women arrived at a lusus in time for the nocturnal celebrations you have to try to imagine what it must have been like for them to be here approaching the sanctuary they passed a cave just thought to be the entrance to the underworld itself [Music] Hades the god of the underworld had raped and abducted the goddess to meet his daughter Persephone the ritual torch procession was to console the goddess for the loss of her child Demeter could have her daughter back but only for eight months of the year the myth was an allegory for the cycle of nature the death of crops in the autumn and their magical rebirth in the spring to the initiates it must also have meant a promise of their own rebirth after death there have been the smell of smoke from thousands of pine torches then you arrived here at the gates to the sanctuary but you can see how heavy they were from these ruts where the doors were dragged open so that the thousands of cult followers could make their way into the sacred space Athens jealously guarded admission to the mysteries those who revealed the secret rites risked the death penalty any attempt to divulge the secrets of the cult was considered an attack on democracy itself Michael Cosmopolis has been the chief archaeologist here to lusus and has studied Greek ideas of the afterlife this fear of death progressively it gets more and more intense the reasons for this have to do probably with the emergence of the individual as a separate unit within democratic city states especially Athens what you're saying is that as you get more of a sense of yourself in the democratic system that's when you can really start to address what happens to you after you die yes you start wondering about the big pieces of life and death and it is here at the losses that people try to find some answers for the first time there is no heaven or hell the world of the Dead is this place without hope without joy mystery cults is offered to hope to getting a better after life and perhaps even finding your way to the Elysian Fields the closest the Greek religion comes the notion of paradise so what would have happened to the initiates once they arrived here well they would line up right there at the end of the sacred way each person would come into the temple and as you can see this whole building is basically a huge theatre yeah the doors would lock and that was the beginning of the ritual most scholars agree was a reenactment of the actual myth of the abduction of Persephone by Hades and her final reunion with her mother Demeter when we watch a play or a movie wait we identify with the personalities Persephone has gone to the underworld and she has returned it's like your best friend has defeated death therefore you draw strength and courage from that victory so you don't fear death this was as close as the Greeks would come to virtual reality with in the sense that they would simulate death in ritual like us the Athenians struggled with insoluble moral debates and they chose to play these out in public and invented a new art form in order to do so drama gives us an insight into what the Greeks thought about life over all because they lived their lives in a very strict logical well structured society and when you live in a kind of society some of your passions and feelings are suppressed so by celebrating that were allowed to have an outlet for these passions and feelings that they suppress for the rest of the year the dramas dealt with horrific extremes of behavior sons raping mothers brothers and sisters make you love mothers eating their children all the dreadful potential of man was laid bare here and a constant theme was the pursuit of power playwrights made it quite clear that even a democracy couldn't quench the ambitions of ruthless individuals at almost exactly the same moment as the creation of democracy something radical happened one man stepped out of the chorus to take center stage one actor became to two became three drama was born it's better than religion I think tragedies one of the great inventions of all time at Delfy the poet Tony Harrison explains his take on Greek tragedy just as some people need religion to answer the questions of what we suffer from it was an important part of politics their culture their debate certainly they don't separate art and culture in the way that we do something to do in the evening the fact for performances for during the day when they very important to remember that they were done in the full light of day it brought these things to the light of day stuffers to the light if you're in the darkness how could you bear such dark subject matter the tragedies on but most of them are written at the time of the Peloponnesian War are we seeing any of that terrible real historical time reflected back back into the drama well we do get terrible stories of war in for example Euripides specular in the play the Greeks are debating whether to sacrifice a young girl to glorify the dead warrior Achilles the people were most eloquent and debating for sacrificing our Athenians start undermining their own democracy by having a democratic act to kill yeah and it can be a true horror of democracy that that the mass of people can vote for something which is appalling what followed after was build clash and conflict dwelling and surging through the whole summoned army some for the sacrifice and others against the sons of Theseus both bred in Athens made separate speeches but were of the same mind that the grave mound of Achilles be given its crown of glory a fresh Gore garland from a green girl [Music] it's all the language of democratic voting used to sacrifice an innocent girl the same language you need it for the persuasion in the law courts and the assembly the end of the war when I was 8 I saw in terrible film of bulldozing bodies in Belsen and it it really went into my soul and I thought well how can you find ways to express the terrors of our own time and then I discovered this great theater of light and the style to express darkness and I always think here in Delft we've touched these stones down here on the polygonal wall because that for me is a metaphor for tragedy was built with all these strange shapes when the earthquake came they would lock they wouldn't fall down like regular bricks they would lock together more more tightly and this for me is like the verse of tragedy containing and surviving the earthquake of dark because those blocks have all got their inscribed and this guy the wonderful thing is that you can see letters joining them together and I always think it's really the words that hold everything [Music] when you hear the words of Greek tragedy you don't get the impression of a culture that is calm and robust this feels like a society in turmoil somewhere that is at once immensely confident and immensely insecure that tension runs all the way through Athenian society so in some ways we have this great intellectual explosion of we are now scientists we can now progress and all the time Greek tragedy a new genre new trendy literature is reminding us now you can't like you to piss you're gonna find out that actually when you thought you're in control you've been sleeping with your mother you killed your father your life has been one big sham the person who thinks he has the answer is the person who's leading himself into tragedy and now Athens too was courting tragedy spawned by the tension of new ideas and old beliefs 5th century Athens was transforming herself but new ideas were setting her on a collision course with tradition they were not expecting to find three hera Socratic graves in pristine condition when archaeologists came here the next day to investigate they were astounded they described this tomb as being suffocatingly full of artifacts there was gold and bronze and alabaster perfume jars but in fact he was up here on the top of the tomb in the charred remains of the funeral pyre that the greatest treasure would appear [Music] the tune was clearly of a wealthy ouster granite someone who could afford such elaborately decorated artifacts amongst the riches of the tombs the fragments of burnt papyrus turned out to be the oldest surviving book in Europe these words have been burnt scattered on top of a tomb and buried in the earth for 2,400 years so it is close to miraculous that they've survived at all in this little fragment here we learned that soos has raped his mother he then goes on to give birth to Aphrodite so you can just see after edite the scrolls took years to decipher but idea is contained in the writing presented a remarkable puzzle der copying was the first scholar outside Greece to see the scrolls and the Oxford papyrology Institute he uses spectral scanning to decipher the text using different wavelengths of light when we took it down deep in the infrared spectrum most of the color disappears but you get great contrast between the dark background and only slightly darker ink an entire line of writing was produced that section was so dark that it to the naked eye it wasn't even read it shows what multi spectral imaging is able to do with a difficult to read text the Devaney papyrus presented special problems because it had been rolled up in a scroll but as with the Dead Sea Scrolls it's taken a long time just to figure out what author it was talking about the author is commenting on a religious text he tells us we shouldn't understand the myths literally but interpret them scientifically the author gives an analysis of a piece of religious poetry but he thinks it mustn't be taken literally it has to be taken allegorically and when he analyzes it he's presenting the view that it's actually an account of the creation of the world in terms of the current theory of molecular science which is a truly extraordinary mode of interpretation and the kind of thing you might find in the 18th century when Newton was reinterpreting the Bible as showing the latest physics this scientist thinks that the universe always existed has known beginning or end that's why it's so exciting though isn't it because this is the touch paper at the moment that it's being laid this is the origins of modern science it gives us an insight into a period when the Greeks were speculating about the origins of the universe these theories are incredibly dangerous in 414 the author died aggress of Melo's a friend of Socrates was charged with in piety the democracy put a price on his head and demanded that he be assassinated without trial almost certainly because he dared to write this Tigris fled the city think is like digress were becoming the target of suspicion and persecution because of their ability to mislead the people intellectuals and a so Kratz would meet behind closed doors and discuss unorthodox ideas at the infamous symposium that's one of the very peculiar things about the Athenian democracy is suspicion of any groups of people getting together its hatred of Keeks because there could all be against the democracy James Davidson has studied the symposium and the various power groups within Athenian society the Greek symposium is really a group of men who are all drinking together in a very small room so it's a very intimate kind of environment the symposium is supposed to be off duty they're in a relaxed situation and you're not supposed to be talking about politics either this is not a debating chamber but underneath all of that this is a way for people to establish links so politics keeps on creeping in through the back door symposium was reached with homosexual overtones but the erotic dalliance is we're often a cover for secret networking is the homosexual relationship to do with power and status as well as sex I think it's more to do with male bonding and it sounds fairly obvious but we very often find that and there's a great anxiety about how the beloved is really in it for a political position when the admirer is really in it to have a little client or a little agent it will help them it was at the symposium that Socrates drank with and inspired the most powerful of the aristocrats he was the dazzling young generals Alcibiades the fame of an Olympic victory had propelled him into the limelight overnight he'd become Athens most charismatic and influential politician at exactly this time Plato tells us Socrates and Alcibiades would be found together at a famous symposium Socrates reveals to Alcibiades and the other guests the mysteries of love it's a clever adaptation of the mysteries of a loses its language which mixes religion and science is reminiscent of the Devaney papyrus the ideas appeared radical Alcibiades and others were engaged in private celebrations that seemed to some people to be actually mocking the Augustinian mysteries note if any papyrus could also well have been seen in some circles to have been mocking or trying to displace the traditional mysteries the bullet remains in private was about to erupt in public and shatter the career of Alcibiades and the fortunes of Athens in 415 other bodies was riding a wave of public popularity he persuaded the Athenians to enlarge the Empire and conquer Sicily [Music] but even before the expeditions set off something shocking happened a religious scandal across athens at every street corner was statues representations of Hermes the messenger gold the morning after they decided to sail for Sicily the Athenians woke up to find hundreds of these statues mutilated with their noses and erect fallacies cut off an investigation was launched and witnesses started to come forward with information about the nocturnal antics of groups of aristocratic young men deport dinner parties in which the gods were marked and all whispered that Alcibiades was the ringleader once the fleet had arrived at Sicily a boat was sent from Athens to bring Alcibiades back for trial but Alcibiades escaped he was now in Sparta advising the enemy on how to defeat Athens now that really was a bad omen when it came to assaults on their religion the Athenians were in a very ugly mood they started a witch hunt of course first for the people who had smashed the statues but secondly for people who had been alleged to parody the earliest in Ian's mysteries and the Athenians revoked the prohibition on citizens being tortured and a lot of people were tortured and executed it was truly terrible time in the city things were looking very bad for Socrates his most famous Protege had become a national pariah and all around him his fellow intellectuals were being brought to trial the scene was set for Socrates own tragic drama the last decades of the fifth century BC saw the end of the Golden Age of Athens as her internal divisions were punished on a massive scale by the might of her foreign enemies in just fifteen years the democracy itself would crumble and the man who'd come to define the first enlightened age would be put to death in the year 413 BC Athens had been at war for almost 20 years with Sparta Athens great hope of ending the war had been the brilliant young general our societies now in disgrace [Music] two years after the voyage to Sicily the Athenian force Shaun of its greatest general found itself trapped in the harbor at Syracuse her enemies closed in the Athenians were annihilated [Music] the few survivors started to limp back to the city the stories they brought with them were so horrific that at first the Athenians refused to believe them and then when they realized that these things were true panic swept through the city after Sicily things went from bad to worse for Athens inside the city there was political turmoil the citizens looked for people to blame persecuting the talented leaders and thinkers who'd once been the democracy's lifeblood a system that had harnessed the competitive instincts of the Artic rats for the benefit of the people had turned into a regime that drove Athens finest into the hands of its enemies democracy was fatally wounded death squads roamed the streets and in this climate of fear the Athenians turned on Socrates for over half a century Socrates had roamed through Athens goading the city like a gadfly with his interminable questions and while the democracy was strong the Athenians had viewed him with interest there's a bit of an eccentric but after the horrors of the last few years he was viewed as a destabilizing influence that had to be permanently eradicated socrates was brought to trial on two counts for mocking the gods the city believed in and for corrupting its youth a couple of Socrates former pupils turned out to be traitors and anti Democrats and so they saddled Socrates with the responsibility for that the Athenians always believed that people should be held responsible for whatever views they expressed the accusations were put to him in the Agora where he was summoned to appear before the chief magistrate the quarter is now severed by the Athens Metro according to Plato Socrates says he has to stop taking part in the dialogues because he has to go to this building here in order to answer the charge John camps been excavating the Agora for nearly 40 years the Athenians are very litigious people so the courts would have met frequently and there were lots of them and they took huge manpower because the smallest Athenian jewelry is 201 501 is common 1,500 and 1 if they really wanted to it was very loud and very noisy and very crowded all the time the trial of Socrates was a most extraordinary occasion Socrates was utterly uncompromising the thing I'm not going to do he says is to give up philosophizing to give up talking to people asking people what it is that they believe in clearly there was quite a lot of heckling Plato reports that Socrates scorned his accusers they fall back on the stock charges against any secretive wisdom that he teaches his pupils about things in the heavens and below the earth to disbelieve in the gods and to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger they would be very loath I fancy to admit the truth which is that they are pretending to knowledge when in fact they are entirely ignorant he refused throughout to respect the court asked to suggest a punishment when the jurors might well have accepted exile he answered free meals for life the traditional reward for sporting heroes he'd always told them the truth what was good for them and therefore they ought to thank him and that's not quite how they saw it and so when he suggested he should be treated as the equivalent of an Olympic victor which was the most heroic human being around and that didn't go down as it was more jurors voted yes he should be executed than had voted yes he's guilty some change their minds in other words [Music] Plato tells us that Socrates made sure he had the final word the hour of departure has arrived and we both go our own ways I to die and you to live which is better god only knows [Music] it may have been here that Socrates spent his last days in the small prison in the Athenian Agora on the allotted day he drank hemlock from a tiny cup he walked around until his legs grew heavy he lay down on his bed plato was clearly moved this was the end of our comrade a man who was best wisest and most just of all but death by hemlock was agonizing Socrates would have been consumed by pain vomiting and diarrhea almost immediately the Athenians regretted what they've done they voted to erect a statue of Socrates just outside the city walls and Plato his pupil would go on to write him into history as the world's first ideological martyr a martyr to liberty and freedom of speech he told the thien's they did things they didn't want to hear about themselves and he refused to make any concessions that's of course one of the reasons he saw admirable but also one of the reasons he was executed socrates was seen as the educator of tyrants it'd be better to think of him perhaps in those terms as somebody giving a hate speech in a mosque would we allow free speech under such terms teachers have responsibilities they should live up to the responsibility and Socrates certainly was productive of some of the most dangerous men in Athens in the 5th and 4th century and one should never forget that his most important pupil Plato was the theorist to whom Stalin turned and Hitler turned in order to justify their totalitarian date there is something of a blackness in that philosophy Socrates questioned the wisdom of misrule he allied himself to the gung-ho conservative aristocrats he was in many ways anti-democratic but at the same time his questions liberated mankind he was a pioneer in a movement which had begun to reach beyond the confines of religion and ask questions about how the world was made and what the role of humans was within that world democracy could tolerate many things but not a direct challenge to democracy itself by questioning the gods Socrates had undermined the shared value system upon which democracia depended the paradox is that these radical ideas developed precisely because Athenian democracy allowed free speech direct Athenian democracy only lasted for a hundred and fifty years although we uphold it as the pillar of our civilization in fact the West has spent much of its history rejecting it as a political model the story of Athens goes part of the way to explain why democracy is hard work it is demanding and flawed and volatile [Music] for three generations Athens had been phenomenally successful the citizens the police had lived through one of the most radical and innovative histories of the world yes it was fickle and inconsistent and sometimes vindictive that we have to admit to ourselves that those are the hallmarks of an open society if you empower people you sign up to a life of uncertainty and change and nowhere demonstrates that better than the bloody and brilliant place that was democratic Athens [Music] you [Music]