Wood travels through war-torn Afghanistan, crossing the Oxus River into Central Asia and the Silk Road city of Samarkand where, in a drunken brawl, Alexander killed the friend who had previously saved his life.

The final leg takes him from the Khyber Pass through Pakistan to the Punjab, where Alexander's army mutinied and he was forced to return across the Makran Desert to Babylon, where he died at only 32 years of age.

Dr Michael Scott looks at the dramatic decline of Athens and the remarkable triumph and transformation of theatre. During the 4th century BC Athens would lose its Empire, its influence and even its democracy. But theatre, that most Athenian of inventions, would thrive, spreading throughout the Greek world and beyond and giving rise to a new kind of comedy, one so popular and prevalent that it is still at the heart of our comedy today.

In the fourth episode of the series, Clovis was the first Frankish king to acknowledge the Christian faith. This changed the direction of Europe's history.

Through the mountains and jungles of Colombia, Cooper goes in search of the truth behind one of the greatest stories ever told - the legend of El Dorado. His journey takes him from Bogota to the Caribbean coast, through territories once dominated by two cultures, the Muisca and the Tairona, who flourished for centuries before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. Cooper reveals forgotten peoples who valued gold in a way the Western world still struggles to understand, travelling to an astonishing lost city and meeting the last survivors of an ancient civilisation.

Andrew Marr tells the story of the first empires which laid the foundations for the modern world. From the Assyrians to Alexander the Great, conquerors rampaged across the Middle East and vicious wars were fought all the way from China to the Mediterranean. But this time of chaos and destruction also brought enormous progress and inspired human development. In the Middle East, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and one of the most powerful ideas in world history emerged: the belief in just one God. In India, the Buddha offered a radical alternative to empire building - a way of living that had no place for violence or hierarchy and was open to everyone. Great thinkers from Socrates to Confucius proposed new ideas about how to rule more wisely and live in a better society. And in Greece, democracy was born - the greatest political experiment of all. But within just a few years, its future would be under threat from invasion by an empire in the east...