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Just visit history.com slash subscribe. It's very hard to imagine early Rome, knowing all that would come.

It's very hard to imagine it as a smattering of little dwellings perched atop the now

famous seven hills,

clusters of small farming plots, wattle and daub huts, the Tiber River running below.

It's iron age people just sort of milling about, tending their crops, trading their livestock,

harvesting salts and timber down at the water's edge. But then every great empire has to start

somewhere and Rome started here. These little hamlets villages would become the epicentre

of one of the greatest civilizations in history. You'll all be familiar with that joke that men think

about the Roman Empire every day. And as a man who does, I say, of course we do. It's not hard to

see why. At Rome's height it encompassed parts of at least 50 modern countries and something like a fifth

of the entire world's population at the time. The Romans laid down founding principles that

still influences our societies, our law, our governance this day. They forged trade routes

across Europe, Africa and Asia. They built the roads

that connect us. They gave us a religion still worshipped across all continents. So how on earth

these little villages coalesce and grow to become a mighty empire? So powerful, so influential, so instrumental in building our modern world. Why did

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