Hadrians Wall (History Channel)

for a project that was built by hand the dimensions of Hadrian's Wall are staggering it was made up of 25 million individual stones laid together they stretched across northern England cutting Britain and two built in the 120s ad it marked the northern limit of the Roman Empire south of the wall Roman controls stretched nearly unchallenged to the sands of Arabia the wall was a dividing line in the bloody conflict between the Roman army which had conquered most of Britain and the local tribes were trying to drive them out Hadrian's Wall named after the Roman Emperor who ordered it was the ultimate statement of Roman determination 2,000 years of time and weather have worn it down but when it was built it was a wonder of the world when you hadrian's wall stood about 20 feet high and ten feet thick more than just a wall it was a complex of forts castles and lookout towers along much of the wall today only remnants of its glory remain but a reconstructed part of the wall gives us some idea of how all inspiring it must have been to local British tribesmen when it was built across their lands to the locals who built their own houses from timber mud and thatch Hadrian's Wall must have seemed like something from an alien planet here was a stone structure seemingly endless built with a technology they've never seen before the Britons watched as the Romans used novelties like brick and mortar arch gates and tiles to reshape the world before their very eyes [Music] what propelled the Romans to undertake their biggest feat of engineering history gives us clues but no easy answers the only surviving reference by Roman writers is all-too-brief it simply states that the wall was built to separate the untamed northern areas of Britain from the Roman held areas in the south the Romans had begun colonizing Britain about 80 years earlier in 43 ad under the emperor claudius southern parts of Britain today's England had fairly quickly come under Roman control sometimes willingly the British upper class enjoyed the privileges of a new Roman lifestyle whose remains still exist in English towns like bath [Music] but it was a different story in the North especially in Scotland they're fiercely independent warrior tribes rejected the new Roman civilization they refuse to be tamed or dominated and they took up arms against the invaders but their independence collided with the Roman thirst for power driving deep into Scotland the legions conquered most of the country but they could not hold it Rome had siphoned away soldiers from Scotland for other campaigns and the invading army was forced to retreat further south the Romans gave their Scottish enemies and anyone else who rejected Roman civilization special derogatory names barbarians the word barbarian comes from the sound Baba because to the Romans the language of uncivilized people sounded like sheep but although the Romans look down their noses at the barbarians they also feared them the Romans as a race were comparatively small in stature and their literature is full of references to the taller menacing warriors of the north by the Year 121 AD the Romans and the tribes in Scotland had reached a standoff when the Roman troops received an important visitor their Emperor Hadrian since being crowned four years earlier Hadrian had set the empire on a revolutionary new course instead of expanding the Empire he wanted to restrict it to a manageable size in the Roman philosophy up to then was look you know as the poet Virgil said four gods of good and Roman Empire without end which meant in time or space they were just going to go on on expanding and suddenly Hadrian comes on and actually draws a demarcation line Hadrian toward the empire to decide for himself just how and where to defend the frontiers in Britain he must have heard plenty of complaints from the soldiers letters found near the wall show what the Roman troops thought of the barbarians there is one letter that says we hate these little Britons they won't stand their ground and fight to you man-to-man they'll throw their javelin or they'll take a hack at you and then they'll run off and hide behind a tree so the Romans all felt presumably when they were traveling an open countryside under some considerable threat the British resented having their young men drafted into the Roman army where non Romans could be physically abused in another letter the soldier talks of being beaten by Centurions weakens him he bled in fact he said once Asia and he writes that there shouldn't have happened to him because he was innocent and from overseas hominem in a Kent M at trey's marina in our words the implication is it's all right to beat the Brits who have been conscripted into their own army but the overseas troops shouldn't join me neither I think he was hoping to hand that Lester Hayden when he came because he writes I implore your majesty and very probably what John's because of these letters this draft was found in the Centurions quarters only will be confiscated in Manila Bay another frontiers Hadrian had ordered fences and ditches to be built but here he ordered a massive wall work began in 122 ad just after his visit any ancient reference to Hadrian building wall has a single sentence about his the ancient bogs of Hadrian saying he came to Britain you reformed many things and he built a wall the first to do so to separate the rims from the barbarians no architect is given credit but many signs point to Hadrian he actually considered himself a Great Architect and saw himself as the guardian of Rome's great building tradition Hadrian was born in 76 AD just as builders were beginning the Colosseum in Rome works like this inspired Hadrian to study architecture and to build throughout his reign as Emperor Hadrian personally helped to redesign the Pantheon in Rome which was completed around the same time as he was ordering the wall to be built in Britain Hadrian also spent about 20 years supervising the building of a 300 acre private villa at Tivoli near Rome the most ambitious palace ever built by any of the Emperor's given all that it's likely that Hadrian himself thought of the concept of the wall leaving his commanders in the field to turn it into stone and mortar [Music] the inscription of his name on the wall is more than just symbolic this is very much his personal brainchild and though it's very much the symbol of the change policy which he brought in them there's no more expansion peaceful development avoiding war and here you see Hadrian had tremendous interest in architecture this is one of his hobbies passions more than a hobby he reckoned he were he was better at it at that and better at everything else and he's one of these appalling no old so large was Hadrian's ego that to criticize his work could be fatal once while he was in the capital designing the Temple of Venus and Rome Hadrian asked the opinion of a famous architect Apollodorus he wrote back saying well as the problem about this because the statues of the goddesses of Venus and Rebbe were sitting on Thrones in the temple if they wanted to get up and go out they would hit their heads on the ceiling which was a sort of sarcastic joke and because of this Haven was alleged have had him executed I think this is probably a probably an exaggeration but it illustrates the point if it was Hadrian who planned the wall why did he order it on such a gigantic scale was it fear of the barbarians or of something closer to home when we return we'll see how fear of his own troops may have pushed Hadrian into his decision to this day historians are puzzled by the sheer scale of Hadrian's Wall in 122 AD the Romans had four legions in Britain more than enough to deal with any trouble from barbarian tribes in the north usually it was one or two tribes it wasn't a whole Federation and so really we assume the Romans didn't have too much trouble with barbarians historians now believe the Romans may have built a wall not just to repel invaders but to take charge of the whole region by controlling human traffic the Romans were very concerned to control cross frontier trade partly because it was quite profitable to them they were also concerned about things like the export of weapons to potential enemies whatever the reasons the wall comes off is a case of overkill experts say Hadrian wanted a symbol as much as anything I kind of made a maniac scheme really and what the puzzle is to impress people partly I think to to impress the Romans and and to tell present and future governors of Britain this is the limit chaps we're not going to have any more Wars of expansion I would think it's probably overkill and there's more than a hint of the greater glory if you like of of the emperor building this kind of commitment to the Emperor's works and all the wonderful things that he does showing people how dominant Rome is for Hadrian it was easy enough to water his wall to be built but who would build it and how the answer was obvious great works in the provinces were always a job for the army itself soldiers were trained to be builders as well as warriors the Army was stuck full of engineers and surveyors and technicians of that kind they had their own architects and indeed it was probably the army that that helped a province like Britain get up on its feet showed them how to build temples how to build alphabet one of the reasons the Roman army became a kind of mobile construction crew was the difficulty of long distance supply in ancient times things had to be done on the spot as much as possible Rome could afford to rebuild the known world because its builders were already on the payroll and materials were simply appropriated to build Hadrian's Wall today would cost billions the Channel Tunnel for example between Britain and and France has cost something about order so it's of that kind of scale of magnitude that we're talking about Hadrian had a personal reason for keeping his soldiers busy with a major building project armies could make or break Emperor's and Hadrian didn't want his legions to have any spare time for political plotting soldiers who were idle were trouble the world is not much doubt about that and the the army in Britain seems to have been fairly prone to mutinous behavior and not obeying its officers and so on and I think there is something in the argument that one of the reasons Hadrian's walls was ordered to be constructed was to keep the soldiers very busy indeed if they were also building a grand project which had Hadrian's name emblazoned all over it that was one way in which you could actually make people feel that I'm doing this for them prime doing this for the greater glory of Roman the wall building satisfied another one of Hadrian's obsessions keeping his troops disciplined the Roman cult of the goddess discipline if you like or the discipline of the emperor starts up on a head room they actually found an altar to the discipline of the Emperor Hadrian in in the river here touring all the army units checking on whether those excessive luxury whether whether the officers were wearing too fancy uniforms living with the man himself eating their simple fare or rest of it and and cracking down on discipline and and making them train and this is yeah this is very much giving the troops um you do I think that the legions in Britain got a bit of a tough deal because they got very much more to do than any other food and so the task began three legions of soldiers up to 15,000 men would build the wall themselves namely by hand they used few if any slaves or local workers even though the wall would have to cross nearly 80 miles of hills valleys and rivers it was incredibly difficult in some places and we can see from the archaeological evidence that there was a lot of effort taken to level the courses where the wall is sometimes going up a sort of 1 into slope it must have been extremely difficult to build something of the size and complexity of the war over some of that some of that terrain one of the toughest jobs was cutting the stone for the building blocks tools found near the wall are a clear reminder that the project was powered purely by human sweat there are quarries near the line of Hadrian's Wall which has some graffiti in them from the soldiers complaining about how hard the stone was and if some areas of the construction of the ditch they actually had to give up the rocks too hard for them so even the Roman army was defeated at times there's a marvelous letter from a soldier and he's managed to get a job on the staff and say the other soul is spending were they cutting stay around 13 the the CIO's office doing nothing or basically writing out his home and doing bit of paperwork and cutting stone like this I mean horrible job and then digging the ditches these ditches you know may look relatively easily but once you get down a few future into builder pay so that if it's hot weather would you sometimes is hear it baked baked brick hard you thought you can't get a spade into it and if it's wet which it very often is then after a few feet dying so slippery you can hardly move and and to tend to toss the star hard no the soldiers must have cursed Hagen once the stone had been quarried and brought to the line of the wall it was a painstaking job to lay each of the stone rows or courses using mortar made of limestone and water one gun would come and lay the foundation that's probably all they did they'd be on Foundations for the most their course and then another gang would come along and build courses of the wall and probably has to do a few courses fill it with rubble let that set come along another day few more courses let that set so we've probably seen not like Brit laying at all would be much slower than that but two years after building him started Hadrian suddenly changed his mind he wanted big changes the troops would have to start rebuilding whole sections of the wall when we return we'll see how these changes turn the project from a simple wall into a virtual city in Hadrian's original plan the wall would not be heavily defended it would be manned by a skeleton outfit of troops living in small forts every mile or so the so-called mile castles were attached to the wall itself each of the 80 mile castles could house about 30 soldiers giving the wall a total force of more than 2,000 that was considered enough to repel an attack until reinforcements arrived some of the troops would be stationed in Lookout turrets every third of a mile the turrets gave the Romans an unimpeded view of the countryside and could also be used for rapid communication between units weather permitting any signal in those days would have to be visual so it would have to be smoke it would have to be flame it would have to be something you could see and and anything like that breaks down when the weather is poor as it sometimes is even in the north of England if there was a serious barbarian attack the plan was to rush soldiers to the wall from forts in the south but about two years into the building of the wall Rome decided this was not good enough the wall would need a strong force of its own Hadrian ordered 16 large forts to be added to the plans presumably because the decision was taken that it wasn't just going to be a customs barrier or whatever the wall was for it was going to be something which actually was also a base for control of the territory further north it was going to have to have on it a quick response for so rapid responsible [Music] excavations have shown how the builders had to quickly change course the foundations of some forts run right over the wall proving that the fort was an afterthought it already built turrets and my castles in the whole war and then they had to demolish them again and slap the fort on top and they're examples of that all over the place this this fits in very much with Hayden havens interfering nature the fort's were not the only change Hadrian made soldiers were also ordered to build a deep wide ditch called a vellum running the whole length of the wall on its south side but why this seems little need for the Romans who have had extra protection on their own side of the wall [Music] on the south side elaborate earthworks which people still can't understand purpose I mean it's almost tempting to think that there was some misunderstanding because the Emperor was always changing his mind and sending through instructions to do something different again Hadrian's continual interference in the building process cost him one of his oldest friendships the man who had to oversee the wall project as governor of the British province was Pretorius meeples a good friend of the Emperor until construction started by the end of both their lives they had fallen out these two and I guess when Vittorio's Nepos returned to Rome three or four years after coming here with Hadrian Hadrian stays for a few weeks and says do this do this do that Nepos had two capable the change in plan and he probably couldn't stand the sight of the Emperor after that despite all the changes and difficulties the wall was probably finished in about eight to ten years judging from the various names and dates inscribed on the wall itself it shows that they were building pretty pretty hard and fast they had to do ten miles a year eight miles a year or so of curtain wall and that is an impressive achievement in it in any climate bearing in mind of course that the climate at the time you probably couldn't build for three or four months of the year because of the frost the snow it was just impossible to do some of that building once it was finished the wall could house up to 20,000 troops a huge number for an isolated region this created a giant bureaucracy because the Romans kept records sometimes in triplicate of every soldier's duties they kept proper rosters and from these records we do know that there's men out all over the place some are guarding the marketplaces the native markets some have gone to collect fodder for the horses some of them to collect barley there's one for chopping these records on herbs stuck every day we don't know what it is so we usually translate it into the train cleaning but soldiers on the wall did have some traditional Roman comforts this fort at Chester's hidden underneath the earth until modern excavation included a beautifully constructed bathhouse [Music] you would put a stone flag floor somebody would crawl in and light a fire underneath these balls so something to have to break the ashes out every morning light another fire and how it worked we're not absolutely sure did they like several fires underneath or on one huge bonfire or what and they usually laid out on patrons wall to a more standardized plan this we know because there is one which is a complete mirror image of the usual design which seems to suggest that they had a plan on parchment which somebody had used upside down the bath houses were just part of each wall for the elaborate plumbing scheme the Romans are excellent water and units if nothing else they would have clean water and then they use that water that was used for any purpose to flush out the latrines using it lowest point of the thoughts where all the water would be gathered together to flush now there was nothing fancy about the soldiers sleeping arrangements the barracks were laid out in long lines with eight men having to share each of the small rooms there were very few luxuries for the average soldier kitchen orders show the enlisted men were given sour wine while vintage wine was served to their officers the commanders quarters in the wall forts were also of a different class altogether the end of the block bed be the officers house which had a six seven rooms and was far more palatial the officers houses had heated floors and certainly the commanding officer had the usual heated floor system and his own private baths and with the other heating arrangements for the water the barracks generally didn't the wall and it's forts had been built to stand for centuries yet incredibly within a few short years Rome would reverse its entire strategy and the complex would become a ghost town when we return we'll see how death and ambition caused the abandonment of Hadrian's Wall the building of Hadrian's Wall had an important side effect on the north of England it created a whole new service industry the thousands of Roman troops on the wall were captive consumers a Merchants dream they were getting regular pay all this nebula ancient world had pay natives of casual labour we were a slave or whatever or you lived off your own land Sicily soon civilian towns sprang up outside each fort often as big as the forts themselves all sorts of hawkers and tinker's and traders would come set up outside the forts and of course also there will be other services provided to in the forms of brothels and all sorts of other shots and so on hangers-on you simply assumed that there would be taverns on occasion you might find a bit of pot suggest that they were they'd be soldiers wives there'd be people selling all sorts of food drink maybe even some of the natives would settle and do some farming for them the complex was still less than 10 years old when in 138 ad it's architect the Emperor Hadrian died without ever having seen his completed project his successor Antoninus immediately scrapped Hadrian's policy in Britain soon as he died his successor would have returned to Scotland almost as a slap in the face to Hadrian just just just to prove it Antoninus ordered the army to abandon Hadrian's Wall to advance north again and to build another wall about 100 miles north of the original this new one was built of turf instead of stone and was half as long about 40 miles from coast to coast the Roman army felt that there was more territory they could control they could pacify they could ensure that was was brought within the Empire who died by moving the wall that far north Hadrian had been an exception most emperors including Antoninus wanted military campaigns to win the loyalty of the army to feed such ambition Hadrian's Wall was cast aside I think the abandonment Hadrian's Wall and then the advancing to Scotland and the construction of the Antonine wall is a giveaway for the fact that a lot of these Roman military achievements like war construction or advances were often not particularly to do with local conditions they were often primarily to do with central Imperial politics in this case Emperor needed to have military victory but the return to Scotland did not bring the success the new Emperor had hoped for and the new wall itself was abandoned after about 15 years why had the new wall failed the Romans left no explanations but it was probably too difficult to keep garrison supplied in the sparse rugged north the Roman army again retreated south to renovate Hadrian's Wall and to call it home once more from about 158 ad it again became the northern border of the empire but how well did it perform its stated aim of keeping the barbarians out of romanized Britain historians have been disagreeing for centuries first although ancient writers spoke of the barbarian threat modern historians doubt that the northern tribes could have overrun the Roman army with or without a wall this thing's rather more like Berlin Wall it was designed to control people rather than to prevent invasions if there was going to be a danger of a military attack the Romans would expect to pick that up through their own intelligence gathering networks of spies and patrols and would go out and meet it in the field preferably on enemy territory a letter found near the wall shows that the wives of Roman officers felt secure enough to plan their social lives without much fear of attack [Music] there's another letter which is from the wife of a commandant at one of the fort's to the wife of a commandant at another fort which is about 15 20 miles away saying do come to my birthday party next week we'll be so delighted to see you clearly if the wife of a commander could travel 15 miles to a birthday party and on roads which were liable to an ambush then it's not quite sober quite so dangerous as all that necessary and yet ancient historians write of not one but several major attacks by the barbarians against the wall some of them apparently successful although that his joins may have mentioned Australians in Normandy watching from the security of Rome or Capri or somewhere really rather Pleasant and they were using documentary sources that they had available to them at the time they wouldn't necessarily know whether what they were saying was entirely correct or not there are very few eyewitness reports of that kind of thing excavations have shown that there was indeed damage to the wall that much is certain but who caused the damage and how whether that's destruction by hostile forces or whether its destruction by accident accidental fires just lack of maintenance if you like having buildings falling down it's difficult to tell from the record and archaeology only produces evidence of destruction it doesn't tell you who did the destroying how could barbarians have managed to assault the might of Rome masta long continuous walls history suggests that the Romans may have given them the chance by playing internal politics instead of protecting the Empire several times ambitious Roman commanders in Britain took their legions back to Europe to challenge the Emperor's crown historians say that during these absences Hadrian's Wall might have been left under protected and open to attack [Music] many people think that was when the barbarians recognizing it was a good opportunity came over the wall and destroyed various things and long wall itself in a bit further south there's dispute about this but that that's certainly a plausible story the wall by itself would not have been enough to stop a determined enemy from getting across it the wall depended on the Romans Lookout system if it was to stand unchallenged if it wasn't being properly watched the barbarians could have crossed it in a lightning raid one problem is the remm send it tended to tell official lies about the reasons for rebuilding they said you know something had fallen down through LD age and had been restored the last thing they would be likely to say was that it been captured and destroyed by the barbarians and yet the Romans would eventually be forced to abandon the wall because of an even greater threat to their empire when we return we'll see why rome had to turn its back on Hadrian's Wall forever Romans pursue debauchery and sensual pleasure without restraints of wine sex so three things that went together that sometimes turned into monstrous cruelty and epic extravagance sure everything it was a demolition derby was it this obsession with sex and death that brought down the entire Roman veiss tomorrow at 10:00 on a chai [Music] by the early for hundreds ad Rome had ruled Britain for more than three centuries but was losing interest in its northern frontier Rome itself was being invaded by barbarian tribes who would eventually conquer Rome and throw Hadrian's ashes into the river Tiber on the continent the Romans facing a much larger threat on the Rhine and the Danube from cold peoples on the move trying to force their way into the Roman Empire partly because they wanted to be Romans - so Britain no longer really needed its garrison Rome began pulling troops out of Britain and the wall defenders were reduced to a fraction of their former strength the numbers of troops in the unit were falling whereas had been five or six hundred in Hadrian's days in a troop unit maybe with only a hundred by the time we get into the fourth century there were reasons within Britain - for Rome to lose interest in the wall the line between the soldiers and the barbarians was starting to disappear I think the wall was becoming less and less relevant tools the end of the Roman period partly because perhaps paradoxically the peoples of that whole northern part of what is today England sub Scotland probably so accustomed to each other that they were largely assimilated together more and more the Roman army in Britain was made up of local recruits very few of the soldiers were actually Roman the Romans had been drafting British men and boys for centuries and for many of them the only contact they'd ever had with Rome with their commanding officers their loyalties drifted more and more toward their own backyard and away from their distant Emperor some Romans even collaborated with the tribes across the wall sharing military secrets the soldiers began to see the wall less as a barrier and more is their own neighborhood the way in which the Roman troops felt that being war changed and we can tell that from the archaeological record because the structures inside the forts seem to change the bag blocks change in their emphasis instead of being separate back rooms each of which would have held eight this is becoming accommodation for families rather than eight or ten men soldiers were spending more time farming around the forts to feed their families than they were defending the Empire because army pay from Rome slowed to a trickle archeologists searching the wall have found that the dates on the coin stopped at around the 380s ad it seems that as rome became more concerned with defending its own capital from invaders payment to its British soldiers slowed and then stopped leaving them to melt back into the local population [Music] Rome's final departure from Britain came at about 410 AD Hadrian's Wall was left to whoever wanted to claim it but without military wages and supplies coming through even former soldiers found little motivation to stay although the structures were there for them to live in and maybe the houses were there the hovels were there the chalets were there inside the forts for them to live in with their wives and families they would have found it increasingly hard in that rather barren area to make a lifestyle which was sustainable and I'm sure they would have moved south or north into much better agricultural land as soon as they possibly could Hadrian's Wall had served the Romans for nearly 300 years it had been built to secure its province of Britain but Rome had been forced to abandon it does that make the wall a success or a failure do you repair it then it must be doing whatever it was that the Romans thought it should do it's quite arrogant of archeologists to say that 300 years of history is rubbish because it can't have been doing we think it was doing they simply wouldn't have bothered to keep it going they would have thought of something else measured by time Hadrian's Wall was a great success few defensive lines have worked for 300 years so I think we should regard it as a success from the Romans point of view though always tuned to that sense of failure and regret that well the Romans never quite managed to dominate the whole of the land they wanted to dominate and this is a recognition that they actually were hidden to once abandoned the wall became little more than a lonely monument winding pointlessly through the northern English countryside it had once guarded an empire but now it could not even protect itself it became prey to poachers looking for stones for their buildings Anza structures abandoned people come and think materials and many of the churches which were constructed in the 9th 10th centuries and then the normal period in that area seemed to be built of the kind of stone that you might have expected the wall to be built worst damage was to follow in 1745 after English troops had to defend against the invading Scottish forces under Bonnie Prince Charlie England decided to strengthen its northern defenses by building a road for rapid troop movement and 30 miles of the wall became the foundation for a highway which is still used today fortunately much of the remaining wall has been rediscovered and preserved it stands as a monument to Rome's determination to rebuild the world in its own image rooms like to say we build useful things aqueducts and bridges and so on and the Egyptians build these useless pyramids power whether the person said that el funny if he had lived 4050 years longer and the tiara whether he'd have included Hadrian's Wall among the useful round building achievements there's another question from the day the first stone was laid Hadrian's Wall was a contradiction it was meant to be a monument to power but it's very existence spoke of failure the failure to expand an empire without end [Music] Romans pursued debauchery and sensual pleasure without restraints of wine sex for three things that went together that sometimes turned into monstrous cruelty and epic extravagance Chariot Racing was a demolition derby was a disinfection death that brought down the entire Roman vice tomorrow at 10:00 on a chai

Channel: Historytube

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Keywords: ancient history, amazing history, ancient documentary, ancient world, historic documentary, civilization, awesome history, story, ইতিহাস, কাহিনী, প্রাচীন ইতিহাস, प्राचीन इतिहास, قدیم تاریخ, histoire ancienne, sejarah kuno, древняя история, التاريخ القديم, alte Geschichte, αρχαία ιστορία, 古代歷史, 고대 역사, oude geschiedenis, Isiputukezi, تاریخ باستان

Id: O_i2xnf1Dpk

Length: 41min 14sec (2474 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2017