Athens, Alexandria, Tikal and Rome: these legendary cities are some of the world's most famous archaeological sites. And yet, they still have not revealed all their secrets. The ambition of this series is to resuscitate the first megalopolises of universal history.
In the first episode, the extraordinary city of Athens, the richest and most powerful in all of ancient Greece. The film leads us in the footprints of a nation of extraordinary builders, thinkers, and inventors of incredible machines.

Caesar pursued Pompey to Greece but the tide has turned and it's Caesar who is on the run. He contacts Mark Antony, who he left in charge in Rome, to come and join him with the 13th Legion but Antony seems to be in no hurry.
Vorenus has re-enlisted in Antony's Legion and he and Niobe have begun to renew their marital relationship. The presence of Niobe's sister is the only sour note in their house. Pullo meanwhile continues to train young Octavian in the use of arms and the boy's mother Atia is so pleased with his development that she decides he should take another.

Caesar winters his army in Gaul near the Italian border while his enemies in Rome fear that he will do something no Roman General has done: cross the Rubicon with his army. To counter-balance his opponents, Caesar puts his friend Mark Antony up for office as the people's Consul. Vorenus and Pullo accompany Mark Antony and Octavian to Rome. For Pullo, it's an opportunity to get drunk and ravish every woman in sight.

The story of how the secret of life has been examined through the prism of the most complex organism known - the human body. It begins with attempts to save the lives of gladiators in Ancient Rome, unfolds with the macabre work and near-perfect drawings of Leonardo in the Renaissance, through the idea of the 'life force' of electricity, to the microscopic world of the cell. It reveals how a moral crisis unleashed by work on the nuclear bomb helped trigger a great breakthrough in biology - understanding the structure and workings of DNA.

Professor Mary Beard looks beyond the stories of emperors, armies, guts and gore to meet the everyday people at the heart of Ancient Rome's vast empire. In this programme, Mary asks not what the Romans did for us, but what the empire did for Rome. She rides the Via Appia, climbs up to the top seats of the Colosseum, takes a boat to Rome's port Ostia and takes us into the bowels of Monte Testaccio. She also meets some extraordinary Romans: Eurysaces, an eccentric baker, who made a fortune out of the grain trade and built his tomb in the shape of a giant bread oven; Baricha, Zabda and Achiba, three prisoners of war who became Roman citizens; and Pupius Amicus, the purple dye seller making imperial dye from shellfish imported from Tunisia. This is Rome from the bottom up.

In episode two, we discover the golden age of the La Tene Celtic warrior and reveal how their world extended as far as central Turkey. But by the middle of the first century BC, the Celts were under threat from an expanding Roman Empire, and the Gallic warrior Vercingetorix would challenge Julius Caesar in an epic battle that would shape the future of Europe.