This is a classic British Museum blockbuster exhibition in the old style. Along with Egyptian mummies, the Roman Empire is one of the British Museum’s perennial visitor favourites. Here the curators give you everything you could possibly want to know about life in the Roman Army and much more, in a beautifully designed, highly informative, consistently entertaining and interactive exhibition.

Copper alloy Roman legionary helmet © The Trustees of the British Museum

The fundamental facts about Rome and its army are admirably summarised right at the start:

– At its peak the Roman empire spanned more than a million square miles with a population of some 60 million.

– The Roman Empire owed its existence entirely to its military might.

– Its dominance arose from a deeply militarised society where every male of noble birth was a part-time soldier and it gained hegemony over the Mediterranean by creating an army of professional soldiers.

– Roman military history stretches as far back at the sixth century BC but it wasn’t until the first emperor, Augustus (63 BC to AD 14), that soldiering became a career choice.

– There were big incentives to join up. Citizen-soldiers like Claudius Terentianus (see below) could expect to win loot, spoils (and sometimes slaves) through fighting, and were awarded a substantial pension upon retirement after 25 years’ service.

– By promising citizenship to those who lived till retirement, Rome’s war machine also became an engine for creating citizens, co-opting people of all nationalities and ethnicities into the Roman polity.

– Soldiers usually signed up for 25 years service and it’s estimated that around 50% would survive the full period of service.

Installation view of ‘Legion’ at the British Museum showing the Roman scutum (shield) (Yale University Art Gallery) on the left and an example of the metal ‘boss’ which would have stuck through the central circular hole (British Museum) Photo by the author

Claudius Terentianus

So who is this Claudius Terentianus they mention? Well, he’s the spine of the exhibition. The central premise or conceit is the fact that back in the 1950s archaeologists discovered a wonderful cache of letters written by a common Roman soldier, Claudius Terentianus around 110 AD (during the rule of the emperor Trajan, 98 until 117).

In his letters Terentianus complained about the difficulties of enlisting without a rich sponsor, the dissatisfactions of life serving as a marine in the fleet, before managing to be transferred to a legion. He was deployed to Syria, possibly in relation to Trajan’s Parthian campaign, and was wounded quelling civic unrest in Alexandria, possibly one of the Jewish rebellions against Roman rule. He was finally discharged in 136 AD, and probably settled in the village of Karanis.

So the curators use the letters and experiences of Terentianus – supplemented by the experiences of other soldiers where necessary (and wives of soldiers, officers and emperors), by funerary steles, the wonderful scenes carved on Trajan’s Column in Rome, and much more – to proceed in a logical way through the stages of a career in the Roman army from enlistment, type of regiment, ranks and roles, equipment, weapons, flags and banners, through actual fighting campaigns to enforcing occupation afterwards, keeping the Pax Romana, and then finally, as in Terentianus’ case, retirement.

Dragon Standard (Draco) © Koblenz Landesmuseum

Key quotes from Terentianus’s letters i.e. ones which illustrate the theme of each section, are not only printed on the walls, amid wall-sized depictions of life in a Roman camp, enforcing the peace, battle and so on – but are read out via speakers, with the aim of hearing the words of this long-dead soldier brought back to life.

Synopsis

To give a sense of the way the exhibition unfolds in an pleasingly logical order, here are the titles of the main areas or subjects:

1. Joining the army
   • Introducing Claudius Terentianus (initially only managed to join the marines, a form of auxiliary force, and yearned to become a fully-fledged legionary)
   • Enlistment (you had to be at least 5 feet 7 tall and under 35)
   • Fitting in and getting fit to fight (learning to march at 2 set speeds; weapons drill and swimming)
2. Ranks and roles
   • Marines (low in the hierarchy; a type of auxiliary; did basic chores)
   • Promotion: standard bearers (double basic pay in return for which they had to manage the men’s accounts and bear the standard into battle)
   • Promotion: centurions (earned at least 15 times as much pay as ordinary legionaries, senior centurions as much as 60 times; commanded a century of 80 men; had to be literate)
   • Cavalry (extra pay and a slave groom for your horse)
   • Cavalry display (wearing dramatic face-mask helmets)
3. Dressing for battle (soldiers had to buy their own equipment; Terentianus wrote letters to his family asking them to buy and send him weapons)
4. Camps and campaign (marching and footwear)
   • Life on campaign (camps, earth ramparts, 8 to a tent)
   • Battle (equipment and tactics; the famous shield wall)
   • Aftermath (looting and enslavement)
5. Fort life (video of a fort layout, objects from Hadrian’s Wall)
6. Enforcers of occupation
   • Abusers and abused (summary justice, brutal punishments up to crucifixion for non-citizens)
   • Rejecting the imperial system (the German revolt of Arminius, the Jewish revolts, Boadicea)
7. Leaving the army

Not a military history

So if you were hoping for details of specific battles or campaigns this is the wrong exhibition for you. It is more like a social history of the army than a military history. A few battles are mentioned but only in passing and only to demonstrate particular aspects of armour or organisation.

There is much more about the social life of soldiers: for example, it includes letters written on papyri by soldiers from Roman Egypt and the many documents found at the Roman fort of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall – some of the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. These tablets reveal first-hand what daily life was like for soldiers and their womenfolk (wives or concubines), for the children and enslaved people who accompanied them.

So much of a social history is it that it contains more sandals than swords.

Horrible Histories

A major part of the exhibition is the museum has clearly invested a lot of time and resources making this a very child- and family-friendly display. They’ve teamed up with the team behind the mega-bestselling Horrible Histories books and TV series and produced a number of stands featuring a cartoon Roman rat legionary, who gives cartoon, child-appropriate summaries of the subjects under discussion, such as enlisting, musical instruments, equipment and weapons, the luck of war, and so on.

The Horrible Histories Roman rat, in this instance explaining the role of an army standard bearer, in ‘Legion’ at the British Museum (photo by the author)

These could have been embarrassing but struck me as really, really well done. At the end of the show a credits wall label explains that the text is by Terry Deary, the cartoon illustrations by Martin Brown, the original Horrible Histories team, and you can tell, not only from the distinctive visual style but because the text has a grip and entertainment that lots of other gallery text for children I’ve read, often lack. It’s a real gift to be able to write like this and I found Deary’s explanations of various aspect of the army much easier to read and process than the adult wall labels and much more memorable.

I counted ten of these Horrible Histories stands and they are not only informative but interactive. There’s:

– a height measurer to see if you’d be tall enough to enlist in the Roman army (5 feet seven inches)

– a pulley with a heavy sack weighing as much as a typical legionary pack, testing whether you can hoist it

The Horrible Histories Roman rat introducing the height measurer (off to the right is the weight pulley) in ‘Legion’ at the British Museum (photo by the author)

– in the display I’ve photographed, above, there’s three poles with big triangular dice on them, with each face of the die bearing a cartoon animal, such as you’d expect to find on a legion’s standard

– as we get closer to battle, there’s a Wheel of Misfortune which you spin to find out what would happen to you in the fighting (with some pretty grisly outcomes)

– there’s a rack of army shields to see if you can lift (they’re incredibly heavy) and some metal helmets designed to be taken off their poles and worn and a wall-length mirror for you to admire yourself in

– there’s an installation about camps where you lift wooden flaps to smell barrack smells (yuk) or put your hand down into recess to feel something creepy

– there’s a stand of games Roman soldiers played, such as a form of dice and noughts and crosses

– lastly, there’s a Survival Lottery, a kind of upright pinball machine where you put a black wooden coin in the top and then watch it ping down between the pins and wait to see if it will arrive in the ‘You’re dead!’ or ‘You survived!’ tray

The Horrible Histories Survive-ometer in ‘Legion’ at the British Museum (photo by the author)

I thoroughly enjoyed these and had a go on all of them, surrounded by lots and lots of children. In fact the whole exhibition was packed with families with babies, toddlers and children, so it appears to be a very successful Family Day Out.

Favourites

I appreciate that some of the objects on display are priceless, some are unique, and that the exhibition represents an impressive assembly of objects from around the world, containing 200 objects including loans from 28 lenders, both national and international.

Take the staggering fact that the shield whose photo I included, above, is the only legionary shield which has survived intact to the present day. Amazing given that millions of them were made over a period of 500 years. Or the oldest and most complete classic Roman segmental body armour, recently unearthed from the battlefield at Kalkriese (Germany) in 2018. Or the startlingly intimate correspondence discovered at Vindolanda camp on Hadrian’s Wall, which includes the earliest known woman’s hand-writing.

I understand the intellectual excitement of seeing and reading about the information-rich objects such as friezes, statues, tombstones and so on, many appearing in the UK for the first time, such as a rare public display of the Crosby Garrett mask helmet found in Cumbria in 2010, and a unique and fearsome dragon standard being displayed for the first time outside Germany.

And the glamorous, movie-level thrill of seeing real-life objects of war from 2,000 years ago, such as horse armour, cavalry face-masks, swords, armour, and so on – albeit may of these objects are in fragments, have been reconstructed, and only gesture towards their original finery.

Armour from the Arminius revolt. Museum und Park Kalkriese

But, for some reason, possibly influenced by the wholeness of the Horrible Histories graphics, on this visit I was attracted more towards finished and complete artifacts. So:

Spoils of war

Loots was a big motivation, for soldiers, officers and commanders who were allowed to loot captured property, towns or cities, according to a careful sliding scale. This relief shows captured arms and armour, mingling Roman with Dacian and Sarmatian equipment. It features: a draco or dragon standard top centre; helmets, cuirasses, shields and swords; a battle-axe, a quiver of arrows and a ram’s head battering-ram.

Marble victory relief – in ‘Legion’ at the British Museum (photo by the author)

Molossian hound

This marble statue of a seated Molossian hound is a Roman copy of a Greek bronze original. Molossians were a large aggressive breed used by Romans as guard dogs. They were used for fighting both in war and in the amphitheatre. At Roman forts they would be used both for security and for hunting. (Incidentally the blurred white blobs in the background are because the entire wall behind the hound and related artifacts displays an animation of snow falling on a dark northern day, as many of the objects are from Hadrian’s Wall).

Molossian hound – in ‘Legion’ at the British Museum (photo by the author)

Mummy paintings

Arguably the most beautiful objects in the exhibition are these two portraits. They were painted on wood to cover the wrappings of Romano-Egyptian mummies. Despite their refined appearance and her fine jewellery, the orientation of his sword suggests he was a soldier of relatively low rank.

Romano-Egyptian portraits on wood in ‘Legion’ at the British Museum (photo by the author)

At its conclusion, the exhibition funnels you out into the lovely, airy, well-stocked shop featuring the catalogue and plenty of books about the Roman Army. But I was very struck that the image plastered over the majority of the merch – posters, mugs, tote bags, postcards, jigsaws and soap – was none of the accoutrements of war, the armour or weaponry, the masks or shields – it was the stunningly beautiful face of this unknown woman, an image of beauty, wealth and, above all, peace.

Oddly meaningful that the most popular or saleable image from an exhibition about masculine war should be an image of feminine peace…

Dignity of remains

I first learned of the British Museum’s concern for the dignity of human remains at the World of Stonehenge exhibition, where the curator said we no longer gawped at skeletons and skulls in the style I was brought up with on numerous school trips, but were being introduced to real people, people like you and me, people who once lived and breathed, had family and worries and concerns just like us.

In recent years, a revolution has swept through our thinking about human remains and the dignity and respect owed to them. So much so that the exhibition was preceded by the museum’s policy statement on remains:

Visitors are advised that this exhibition contains human remains. The British Museum is committed to curating human remains with care, respect and dignity.

And there is a museum webpage and, indeed, a book of essays, devoted to this one subject.

Related links

• Legion: life in the Roman army continues at the British Museum until 23 June 2024

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