NARRATOR: They were the
outcasts of the Greek world until one man would
rise and take his people to the heights of empire. BARRY STRAUSS: Alexander was one
of history's great commanders. He was well aware that he
lived in an age of innovation in Greek warfare. NARRATOR: Alexander the Great
employed the latest technology to conquer civilizations,
transforming the lands from Egypt to
India into a new Greek world. GEORGE ZARKADAKIS: Greeks have
conquered the known world, so they are exporting
their way of life, because they think it's
the best way of life. It's the best way that
any human can live. NARRATOR: But there are no
kingdoms without a king. And with Alexander's
swift and stunning demise, his empire would crumble almost
as quickly as it was built. [music playing] 404 BC. A long and bloody 27 year
war has come to an end. Athens, its once
dominant Navy destroyed, is starved into submission at
the hands of its arch rivals, the Spartans. The Athenian generals
commanding the main Athenian fleet made a
disastrous mistake that led to a great battle
and a terrible defeat for the Athenians at a
place called Aegospotomoi. NARRATOR: In the decades
after Athens' demise, the city-states of
Sparta and Thebes would vie for
dominance of Greece. But in 359 BC, a 23-year-old
from the remote northern Greek region of Macedonia became
king and within two decades would change the face of Greece. His name was Philip the second. BARRY STRAUSS: - Macedon
was a funny Greek state. It was always a bridesmaid
and never a bride. It had lots of potential,
both in manpower and natural resources,
but it had never managed to get its act together. NARRATOR: The Greeks
of the city-states considered the tribal
Macedonians barely civilized, yet within 20 years Philip had
unified and transformed them into the most respected and
feared military machine Greece had ever seen. Philip built Macedonia on two
fronts, diplomacy and strength. He began by creating
alliances with the surrounding city-states while at the same
time reinventing the Macedonian army, making soldiering a
full time and highly trained occupation. But the key to his
new professional army was a corps of engineers that
Philip organized to design and build new instruments
and machines of war, and innovation that changed
forever how wars would be fought and won. The Macedonians were
not considered real Greeks by the Hellenic city-states. They came from a tribe
called the Macedonae. And they'd been
fighting barbarians for so long that
they were considered barbarians themselves. However, Philip II was no
barbarian, or, if he was, he was the most brilliant
barbarian the world had ever seen. Hello. I'm Peter Weller. The pillar of Philip's
military strategy was his combination of
cavalry with infantry. And the pillar of his
infantry was a formation called the phalanx, a rectangle
group of foot soldiers that traveled very lightly
at a marching speed few other armies could equal. NARRATOR: The phalanx had
been a part of Greek warfare for hundreds of years. Now Philip would
infuse it with a weapon never before seen
on the battlefield. The innovation
that Philip did was changing the shape
of the phalanx and introducing this long
weapon called the sarissa. So the phalanx became
like a huge tank. NARRATOR: The sarissa was a
nearly 18 foot long spear that could devastate an enemy
before its soldiers could use their swords or shorter
spears in a counterattack. Basically, you plant the head
of your pike against the guy and push him back. And the effect is a
little bit like, you know, an adult's when a kid
tries to attack him and you put your hand
on the kid's forehead. And his little fists
are swinging like this, but they can't reach you. That's what the pike enables
Philip's infantry to do. NARRATOR: Well drilled, well
disciplined, and well equipped soldiers gave the
Macedonian phalanx the upper hand against
traditional battle tactics. But it would be
engineering technology that would ultimately make
Philip's armies invincible. For much of their
military history, the Greeks were not particularly
good at siege craft. Beginning around 400 BC
or shortly afterwards, the Greeks begin to
take a quantum leap. NARRATOR: The bow and arrow had
been an instrument of warfare for thousands of years. But the bow's power was
limited to an individual and the strength of his arm. One of the ancient
Greeks' first innovations in military engineering was in
designing a bow that harnessed more power from the entire human
body than from the arms alone. The earliest weapons of siege
craft that the Greeks developed are essentially crossbows. And they're called belly
shooters, [non-english].. You had a much bigger thing that
had a kind of U-shaped element at the end that you pressed
against your abdomen. And then you drew back
the bow with both hands, pressing it with your
torso at the same time. So you could create a much
greater force of tension. NARRATOR: The [non-english]
was a deadly improvement over the bow and arrow. But to truly overcome
the armies of the world, Philip needed more power. In order to do
even more damage, they need to come up with yet
another generation of weapons. They need to invent
what we might call the torsion catapult. The torsion catapult
basically creates springs by twisting sinews or,
in some cases, horsehair or in emergencies
even human hair. You create thick ropes of them
and then twist them together. NARRATOR: Greek
engineers designed a device that acted as a belly
shooter mounted on a platform. They called it the
[non-english] or boat shooter. Instead of using
the body for power, the torsion created by the
[non-english] came from twisting ropes to an
explosive level of tension. There's an enormous stored
force because the sinews want to spring back and release
that tension, but they're held. And inserted into
this spring is a bar. And you then pull that bar back,
increasing the already great tension. And then when the
bars are released, they spring back with
enormous force and rapidity compared to the old
bow flexion system. NARRATOR: Distance no longer
protected enemy soldiers from a sudden and bloody death. When fired, the [non-english]
could pierce the shields and armor of an enemy nearly
a quarter of a mile away, giving birth to a term that
we still use today, catapult. The neat thing about
the word catapult is that it means
skin penetrator. You can see our word
pelt, like an animal skin in the Greek catapult.
Goes through the skin. NARRATOR: With his
weapons of war, Philip was unstoppable against
the other Greek city-states. By 338 BC, Philip's victory
over Athens and Thebes made him the undisputed
master of Greece. But it was Philip's actions
after the battle that would indicate how the
Macedonians would rule the lands they conquered despite
their barbaric reputation. Philip and his son Alexander,
who is only 18 years old, defeat a coalition of
Thebans and Athenians at the Battle of
Chaeronea in 338 BC. And then Philip does
a remarkable thing. He lets all the Athenians go. Go back home. Then he calls together
a council of Corinth, invites all of the city-states. He's got to cloak his power
in some sort of diplomacy. And he tells all the
city-states you can groove. It's all going to be the
same as it was before. He could have scorched the earth
just like Genghis Khan a few centuries later, but he didn't. Why? We've got to remember
that the Greeks thought of the Macedonians as no
better than a bunch of thugs. And the Macedonians didn't care
much for the Greeks either. But Philip had his taste
of the Hellenic ideal during his time at Thebes. And as a king, he invited
Greek philosophers and teachers to come to Macedonia. His entire court
spoke Athenian Greek. Philip didn't want
to destroy Greece. He wanted to be Greece. He was like the nerd at the back
of the class who wanted to join the frat party, become
one of the cool guys, albeit a little bit tougher. BARRY STRAUSS: In his moment
of triumph, led by Macedon, he was beginning. He was preparing to carry out
his life's ambition, which was to invade the Persian Empire. NARRATOR: He would
never get there. Philip would meet
an untimely demise at the hands of the
ultimate insider. Just before Philip began
his Persian conquest, he held a public celebration. As he marched alone
ahead of his entourage to prove he had no one to
fear, a bodyguard suddenly rushed forward and plunged
a dagger into his chest. The man who had put Greece
on the map was dead at 46. BARRY STRAUSS: Was
he a lone assassin or was there a bigger plot? We can never know for sure
because while the assassin was trying to escape, he was
mowed down by Philip's guards. NARRATOR: Philip's dream of
dominating the Persian Empire would not die with him
but only gather strength with the emergence of his son,
a 20-year-old named Alexander. It was Alexander who
would use Philip's army, engineers, and technology to
far exceed even Philip's wildest ambitions, transforming
the world into a Greek one. Marriage was a key component in
Philip's diplomatic strategy. Of his seven wives, only
one was a Macedonian. In just 20 years, Philip II
had transformed the Macedonians into a mighty army and became
the absolute master of Greece. But Philip's
assassination in 336 BC cut short his ultimate ambition
and self-proclaimed destiny to invade Greece's
age old enemy, Persia. Philip had conquered Greece. Now it would be up to his
son to conquer the world. He was a man who became known
throughout history as Alexander the Great. BARRY STRAUSS: Alexander was one
of history's great commanders. He was absolutely brilliant
on the battlefield. True enough, he inherits
a great military machine. But he has to get the credit for
leading this machine at a very young age. NARRATOR: Philip had laid
the engineering groundwork for conquest. Now it was time for his
son to finish the job. In 344 BC, Alexander led his
Macedonian army of over 35,000 soldiers into battle
against the Persian Empire. Persia was a massive
superpower, dominating the lands of the Middle
East and Asia Minor. Alexander and his army rampaged
through what is now modern day Turkey, carving deep inroads
into Persian territory. But the Persians
still had an advantage that Alexander had to neutralize
if he hoped to conquer Greece's age old enemy. Alexander's got a problem. He doesn't have a fleet. So what he needs to do is
to find a way to neutralize the Persian fleet. And his strategy is to fight
the Persian navy on land by laying siege to and taking
each of the great Persian Naval bases. NARRATOR: Alexander
continued to march south along the Mediterranean
coast, laying siege to the cities and ports
who resisted his advance. But it was the fortified
and powerful city of Tyre that would provide
Alexander and his engineers with their biggest challenge. Tyre, in antiquity, was
an island, a small off shore island. The city actually lay
on an off shore island. And that made it relatively
impregnable in the eyes of the Tyrians themselves,
since they had a great fleet. All of that changed in
the late 4th century. NARRATOR: At first,
Alexander tried diplomacy. He sent messengers
out to the island urging city leaders to
accept a peace treaty. The answer was short
and to the point. They killed
Alexander's ambassadors and threw their bodies from the
top of the walls into the sea. The stakes were high. If Alexander failed
to take the city, it would send a message to the
world he wasn't invincible. With Tyre protected from
his land forces by the sea, it was up to his engineers
to bring the battlefield to the city where Alexander
could fight the Tyrians face to face. Tyre would be an island no more. What if the enemy refused
to come out and fight you? But Alexander realized
that he could not allow his military operations
to get bogged down in the face of fortifications. And that meant that he needed
techniques and weaponry that could attack fortifications. With mammoth walls
and a fortified harbor, and very little land around
the walls, the city of Tyre was long thought
to be impregnable. Thus Alexander resolved to a
very, very ambitious approach. He knew he couldn't take the
city unless he did damage to the walls. So he had his engineers
build a causeway, a bridge from the
mainland to the island. Causeway was about half
mile long, 200 feet wide, 20 feet high. When the causeway was
within striking distance, Alexander unleashed a hail
of terror on the city. And then he deployed
the only weapon he knew would end the battle,
a siege tower. NARRATOR: The towers were a kind
of multi-storied armored car that moved forward on wheels. Outside they were fire
proofed with rawhide covering the entire wooden structure. Inside, a central staircase led
to a series of platforms where [non-english] and other
catapults launched missiles onto Tyre's walls. Down below, others used
the tower as protection to wield a ground
level battering ram. BARRY STRAUSS: They'd literally
wheel them up to the wall. The men inside
would be protected. And they would be
shooting arrows at the defenders on
the wall, and trying to cross over onto the wall
and to kill the defenders. NARRATOR: Alexander's siege
towers pummeled the walls of Tyre for days. Once the fortress
had been breached, Alexander went for the jugular. He unleashed a
firestorm of reprisal upon the city that
had resisted him. The assault
itself would really be a terrifying experience
for everyone involved. The only way to signal
would be through trumpets so you have to imagine trumpets
blaring, tremendous noise of men attacking, flags blowing
in the wind on the battlements of a city that was under attack. I think it would have been
an extraordinary scene. NARRATOR: Alexander
resumed his trek southward through Palestine. His confidence soarinng,
he now set his sights on the greatest empire the
world had ever seen, Egypt. With its soaring pyramids
and unrivaled colossal tombs, Egypt was an ancient
culture Alexander revered. But there was another
more practical reason Alexander coveted Egypt. It was the bread basket
of the Mediterranean whose wheat fields would
be invaluable in feeding Alexander's expanding empire. But unlike Tyre,
conquering the Egyptians required no bloodshed. Alexander entered
Egypt as a liberator and as a figure of
extraordinary powers. NARRATOR: The Egyptians not
only welcomed Alexander. They made him a god. In 331 BC, they crowned
Alexander pharaoh, proclaiming him a son of Amun,
their most important deity. At age 24, Alexander had
transcended mortality. CHRISTOPHER RATTE: can
imagine that someone to whom extraordinary
things happened, to whom all doors seemed to
open themselves magically, to whom every endeavor
was rewarded with victory would think, well, perhaps I
am, in some respect, a god. And I think that Alexander
really did think this. He wasn't just pretending. He was trying to find
out more about himself. NARRATOR: By the
late 4th century BC, Greek cities were springing
up in the wake of Alexander's marauding army. These cities served as centers
of control and administration. But more importantly,
they became a means of spreading a unifying fabric
of Greek language, culture, and learning. The result would be a
template of city engineering that would extend to the
farthest regions of Alexander's empire. Alexander ordered that his
soldiers be clean shaven so that enemies couldn't grab
their beards in close combat. By 325 BC, Alexander
had extended his borders almost 3,000 miles
from Greece in the west to modern day India in the east. Alexander's army may have
been a wrecking machine, but the legacy his
empire left in its wake was a new Greek world. Alexander's strategy for
ruling conquered nations included both accommodation
and assimilation. He often left soldiers
behind to marry local women and act as officials
in his growing empire. Towns that were formerly
Persian, Egyptian, or Indian were transformed
into Greek cities. It was an invasion of ideals
that formed a hybrid culture that became known as Hellenism. GEORGE ZARKADAKIS:
So definitely there are striking parallels what's
going on today in the today era of globalization. Today we have a
common language, which is English is the
language of trade. After Alexander
the Great, you have people who have adopted
the Greek customs and the Greek language. NARRATOR: Hellenism
was built on city life. And nowhere did this
expansion of Greek domination show up more so than
in city planning. Whether they were
beginning a new city or reshaping an old
one, as the empire grew, Alexander's engineers
laid it out on a grid plan that the Greeks had used
since the fifth century BC, The grid plan which
was used in these cities was a symbol of order. Any government that could
replace the traditional winding alleyways of a city
with a rectalineal grid plan of streets at right
angles was a government to be feared, a government
to take notice of. Alexander's
campaigns in Asia Minor would recreate a
new world order. Today we call it Hellenism. If you lived in a city
conquered by Alexander, you lived in a Greek city. This is an example
of such a city. It's called Pergamon. 2,000 years ago, Pergamon
would have had all the elements of a Greek city-- agora, temples,
gymnasium, theater. Pergamon would eventually rival
Athens as a cultural center. As a matter of fact, a
sculptural style pulled out of Pergamon would
galvanize Michelangelo and change the face of
the visual arts forever. Pergamon was built on
a series of slopes. It was engineered like this. It was dramatic. It was theatrical. And it was meant to be. Today the remains of Pergamon
stand high above in modern day Turkey, a spectacular monument
to Greek urban engineering. CLARY PALYVOU: The city seems to
be clinging on this steep hill. It seems that the architects
who built this city took into account the
topography in many ways, symbolically to start with,
meaning that higher up were the palaces and temples. NARRATOR: The city rises about
1,000 feet above sea level, which necessitated a series of
complex and extensive terraces. In Hellenistic times, Athens
was no longer the power center that it was before. There was a shift toward
other cities of importance. In that vacuum,
Pergamon rose to power. In some ways, it's an echo
of the Acropolis of Athens where the temple stands
on a hill, a natural rock over the city. And no expense is spared in
building splendid temples and splendid public
buildings in Pergamon. And so Greek city planning
begins earlier than Alexander, but it's taken to perfection
in the Hellenistic period. Wherever you go, each of them
has a recognizable institution. Each of them will
have a Greek theater. Each of them will
have Greek temples. Each of them will
have a gymnasium. Each of them will have a agora,
a marketplace come forum. NARRATOR: The focal
point of a Greek city could be found in its public
marketplace called the agora. Here merchants would
peddle their daily wares. And citizens would congregate
to discuss the political issues of the day. Adjacent to the agora was
the stoa, a simple structure that was the equivalent
of an ancient indoor mall. The stoa consisted of
a colonnade on one side with a back wall on the other, a
shelter providing an open space that was still protected
from the elements. The agora and the stoas were the
economic, public, and political heart of the Hellenistic city. But its cultural soul lay in
another engineering marvel and was arguably
the most important in Hellenistic
cities, the theater. The theater is basically
an Athenian invention. Drama is, above all, Democratic. It develops in
Athens concomitantly with the Athenian democracy. GEORGE ZARKADAKIS: Theater was
an essential and very important aspect of the Greek
outlook to the world, how they thought of
themselves, and how they thought of the world. And I think to many
people's opinion is one of the great legacies
that the ancient Greek civilization has
bestowed upon us today. NARRATOR: Theaters
in ancient Greece were not only forums
of social commentary. They inspired the Romans in
their building of colosseums and set the standard
of stadium design for the next 2,000 years. Separate your men
by tribe, by clan, such that clan may bear aid
to clan and tribe to tribe. Thus spake Nestor to
Agamemnon in the "Iliad." And those words might
have been said here, because one of the great gifts
of Greek culture to the world is theater and music. This is a Greek
theater at Pergamon. It is the steepest of its kind. Now a Broadway theater,
and I've played in a few, holds between 800 or
900 people and maybe 2,000 if it's a musical house. This theater holds thousands,
and thousands, and thousands of spectators. So how in the heck can an
actor stand on that stage and project his voice such as
that the spectator in the very last row at the
back of this theater can hear what he's saying? Well, the answer is sort
of an engineering feat. The theater, first
of all, is dug out of the side of a mountain. And it doesn't need a
very big substructure because the side of the
mountain provides the support for these stone benches. Second of all, the theater
is in a semicircle. And the semicircle gives way to
an amazing sense of acoustics. You can stand on that stage
and you can almost whisper. And someone in the very
back row would hear you as if you were speaking
right into his ear because the sound would
bounce off the back wall. Third thing is is that
the actors wore masks. And these masks not only
functioned as character, but they also functioned as
sort of a megaphone to the lips. So these three elements
combined, this theater would be a fantastic place
to come hear the Agamemnon performed by Aeschylus. I think, undoubtedly, the best
preserved ancient Greek theater are the theater at
Epidaurus and the Argolid peninsula in the Peloponnesus. NARRATOR: Greek theaters were
divided into three basic parts, the theatron or viewing area
in which the audience sat, the orchestra or dancing area
in which most of the action took place, and the [greek],,
a timber building set behind the orchestra. The [greek] and its flat roof
were used for dressing rooms, as a backdrop, and sometimes
for staging scenes. The theater at Epidaurus
has 55 rows of seats and is divided into three
horizontal seating sections. Stairs divide the sections of
seats into separate wedges. In all, this giant theater has
an estimated seating capacity of 12,000 to 14,000 people. But it's the
acoustical engineering that makes the theater at
Epidaurus clearly spectacular. If you're sitting
up in the top row, you're a long way
away from the stage. And the person who's down in
the orchestra or on the stage looks quite tiny. And yet you can have a
conversation with that person with only a slight
elevation of your voice. NARRATOR: In just
10 years, Alexander had set the stage for Greek
culture to dominate the world. But empires and their
leaders eventually fall. Alexander was no exception. His untimely end would give
rise to kings and kingdoms whose engineering feats
would be considered ancient wonders of the world. In 326 BC, Alexander founded
the city of Bucephala in honor of his slain horse. By 323 BC, Alexander
had forged an empire that spread from Greece in
the west down through Egypt and to India in the east. His conquests hinged
on his army's use of advanced technology. But they also depended on
Alexander's legendary ability to command the loyalty
of thousands of men. But after 13 years and thousands
of miles of constant warfare, that loyalty was stretched
to the breaking point. His troops, their loyalty
finally was used up. They rebelled against him. They refused to go further. And he had to turn around. While returning from
India, Alexander was preparing to consolidate
his empire when he was struck by a mysterious illness. No one knows exactly what it was
that killed him, whether it was an infection, whether it was
the result of a very hard life as a soldier in which he
was wounded in battle, these extraordinary travels in
which he, according to legend, subjected himself to the same
hardships as his soldiers. One of the stories is that
he essentially drank himself to death there was always
intrigue at the Macedonian court. Alexander's father
had been assassinated. Is it possible that he
was poisoned in some way? Those are questions
we can't answer. On June 10, 323 BC, just one
month shy of 33 years old, the most powerful man
on earth was dead. Now the stunning rise
of his sudden empire would be matched by its
spectacular and bloody fragmentation. A power struggle between
the regional commanders quickly ensued to fill the
void left by Alexander's death. These generals and
their heirs carved out vibrant Hellenistic
kingdoms and for generations fought a continual
battle for dominance. The land of Egypt would fall to
Alexander's general Ptolemy who had been left to oversee the
wealthy territory on the Nile. Ptolemy would shape
a kingdom that combined Greek and Egyptian
culture into a dynasty that would last for almost 300 years. Ptolemy I was a man
who had made a career as a military commander and
advisor under Alexander. What he therefore wanted was
as rich and secure a portion of that empire as he could get. NARRATOR: Egypt was the crown
jewel of the Mediterranean. Its surplus of grain meant
that a windfall awaited Ptolemy as ruler of the bread
basket of the ancient world. Ptolemy's plan was to ensure his
legitimacy both as Egypt's king and also true heir to Alexander. Macedonian tradition
held that the one who buried the body of the
king secured his rights to the throne. So Ptolemy hijacked the
funeral procession of Alexander and brought the
mummified body to Egypt where it would eventually rest
in Alexandria, the same city Alexander himself had
founded 15 years earlier. Under Ptolemy, Egypt would
grow to be a powerful kingdom. And Alexandria would
transform itself into the intellectual
and scientific capital of the Greek world. BARRY STRAUSS: He wanted
it to be a city that joined with Greek
culture and used both Greek and Egyptian
technological know how to build a new Athens if you will. NARRATOR: Alexandria lies
on Egypt's coastline. And an easily
accessible harbor would be vital for sustaining
trade with other cities around the Mediterranean. To that end, Ptolemy ordered
one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever
seen, the world's first known lighthouse. During the night, it
shown to a great distance. And ships can actually see
it for many, many miles away. And during the day, there
was smoke coming out of it. So it was still very visible. It must have been a
formidable thing to behold. At the time, only the
Great Pyramid of Giza was taller than the lighthouse. Legend says it stood 300
feet tall, comparable in size to the Statue of Liberty. Some estimates claim
the lighthouse may have stood as tall as 450 feet. How the lighthouse was
built remains a mystery. But 25 miles from Alexandria,
a funeral monument stands that researchers believe
is a scaled down replica of the actual lighthouse. Based on that model, it appears
the lighthouse was constructed with three separate
and distinct levels. CLARY PALYVOU: The
lower level was square. The one above was octagonal. And the final one
was cylindrical. And on top there was the beacon. NARRATOR: From the
top of the lighthouse, a strong and steady
beam of light emanated out into the sea. Scholars believe wood was most
likely the lighthouse's fuel, and that the lower
section housed a spiral ramp large enough
for pack animals to climb pulling carts
laden with firewood. The ramps may have led to
a series of storage rooms where the firewood was kept. From the second level upwards,
a shaft with a dumbwaiter was probably used to
lift fuel up to the top. There are stories
about mirrors and devices that could amplify
the light of this fire so that it can be seen
from miles and miles away. But there's no real
evidence of such a thing. And there are quite
a few scholars who believe that it was
just a normal beacon. It was just a big
fire and nothing more. NARRATOR: The lighthouse
stood for almost 1,600 years, battered by storms, tidal
waves, and even earthquakes. Then around 1300
AD, massive quakes brought that ancient wonder
of the world crashing down for good. For nearly 700
years, the lighthouse lay buried underneath the
waters of the Mediterranean. Then in 1994, a team of
divers and archeologists uncovered massive stones
in Alexandria's harbor, revealing what may be the
foundations of a guiding light in engineering history. CLARY PALYVOU:
Jean-Yves Empereur, the well-known
French archeologist, started a very, very important
series of underwater research. He is finding members,
architecture members, of the pharos. So there might come a day
when it may even be restored. NARRATOR: Beneath the waves,
archeologists documented pieces of stone that weighed more than
70 tons, including one piece that was believed to be the
lentil of the lighthouse's massive doorway. But the lighthouse would not
be Ptolemy's only engineering marvel in Alexandria. As the lighthouse rose
above the skyline, he launched another
building project, one that brought the
greatest minds in the world to his cosmopolitan city. It was called the Great library
of Alexandria, a place that claimed to have
over 200,000 scrolls dedicated to knowledge
and learning. It was here that one engineer
would harness the power of steam 1,700 years
before the world ever imagined a locomotive. It was in Alexandria during
the reign of Ptolemy II that the Hebrew Bible was
first translated into Greek. After the death of Alexander
and breakup of his empire, one of his generals
who had formerly lived his life conquering
civilizations now wanted to create one. Ptolemy's infusion of Greek
culture into Egypt's wealth and prestige would
lay the foundations for a new kind of city, one
that would become the greatest and most cosmopolitan in the
ancient world, Alexandria. It's the city of the world. And as such, the kings,
the Ptolemain kings of the new kingdom
of Egypt created something that's completely
new in the known world. It would be the towering fires
of Alexandria's lighthouse that guided ships
into the harbor. But it was another vision of
Ptolemy's that became a beacon for the greatest minds in the
world, Alexandria's museum and library. That does not mean it was
for exhibiting something. Museum at that time
meant something like a research center. BARRY STRAUSS: It's a think
tank, perhaps the world's first great think tank. And Ptolemy buys great
scholars and writers from around the Greek world. And the library is the
greatest repository of books in the Greek world. CLARY PALYVOU: It had a
mythical amount of scrolls. Some say 200,000. Some say 700,000. NARRATOR: It was at
the museum and library where, for the first
time in human history, knowledge becomes a commodity
to be stored and shared. In fact, some
scientific discoveries made in Alexandria
over 200 years before Christ
wouldn't be accepted until 1,800 years later. Pupils were taught
the Earth was round. And one of the great
astronomers, Eratosthenes, calculated the
circumference of the Earth and was off by less than 1%. So it's perhaps a
very interesting story that the Ptolemain kings,
whenever a ship will come to Alexandria, the first thing
that the captain had to do is had to declare if he
had any papyri, any works of philosophers or
science on board. They were taken to the
library to be copied, but usually they
give the captain back a copy and not the original. NARRATOR: Although Ptolemy
was a Macedonian Greek, the key to the success
of his dynasty in Egypt would be in its willingness to
assimilate Egyptian culture. Ptolemy's own family
went to great lengths to adopt Egyptian
practices as their own. Ptolemy's son Ptolemy II
even married his own sister, Arsinoe. There had been a tradition in
the Egyptian phareonic families of brother sister
marriage, because-- and there was a sense that a
figure like that couldn't just marry any old ordinary mortal
and that eventually only a sister who shared
his divine origins was an appropriate
companion and spouse. The Ptolemies may have used
Egyptian traditions to elevate themselves to the status
of gods, but in the end, like all pharaohs before them,
these kings were still mortal. Ptolemy wouldn't live to see
all of his dreams of Alexandria fully realized. He died in 283 BC
of natural causes before the library and
even the lighthouse were finally completed. Alexandria continued to flourish
as a mecca for knowledge under its Ptolemaic
rulers and produced many of the ages' foremost thinkers. And it would be just after
the end of their nearly 300 year reign in the first century
AD that Alexandria would produce one of the most famous
Greek engineers in history. His name was Hero. And his famous designs place
him among the ancient world's greatest mechanical engineers. All his books are
extremely detailed, very well describing all
engineering passages. But Hero himself also
was good in the sense that he has an inclination
in favor of arts. We must remember that
in ancient Greek, the word art was
meaning also technology. NARRATOR: Hero's
engineering designs had many practical
uses, including ideas for fire
extinguishers, odometers, and even automatic doors. But it was Hero's experiments
with steam technology that would ignite his imagination. The first working steam
engine was built in England around 1700 AD. Over 1,600 years
earlier, Hero built the forerunner of the steam
engine called an [greek].. It was a metal sphere
put up in such a way so that it could rotate freely
and had two tubes of light. When filled with water
and heated from below, steam developed and it started
to turn to put the sphere into motion, thereby turning
air into something very useful, something that
you could control. We maintain that under other
historical circumstances, these Industrial
Revolution could possibly have taken place in Alexandria
after a couple of centuries. The essence was there. The interesting thing about
the steam engine of Hero is that the guy
discovered steam power. So the question beckons, how
come it didn't use steam power how comes it didn't make steam
engines like the English did a few centuries later. And the answer to that is that
in Egypt forced labor or slave labor was so cheap, you didn't
need machines to do the job. So that's like an
interesting idea. You can have the
technology and you don't know what to do with
it because there's not a real economical need for it. NARRATOR: Hero's inventions
still intrigue engineers to this day, but there might
have been many more innovations from Alexandria
we may never know. Scholars don't agree on
when it happened, but much of the ancient world's
scientific knowledge vanished into smoke and ashes when
the ancient library burned to the ground. Still, Alexandria
and Greek engineering were flames of innovation
that lit the ancient world like a star that guides
a ship across the sea. The miraculous age
of Alexander may have seen empires rise and fall. But what's left in its
wake is a legacy still felt in our own world today. To outsmart the
raw forces of nature and to turn them into
something beneficial, that's the common denominator
for all Greek engineering. Alexandria was no doubt the
pinnacle of Greek mathematics and engineering with its
fantastic library that sadly went up in flames and the tomb
of a man who not only conquered the world but showered
it with Hellenism, passing of ideas and ideals,
the culture and values of Greece. But even as Alexander's
empire crumbled, Greece was not to
be extinguished. No. It was absorbed by
what many believe was the greatest experiment
in Hellenism of all, Rome. I'm Peter Weller for
the History Channel.
