It’s fair to say that there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the British Museum’s latest exhibition, Legion: Life in the Roman Army. In fact, if you’re into soldiers and emperors, conquest and battle, it will be right up your street. Even for the uninitiated, however, this is a seriously impressive show, with sundry ancient artefacts brought together in the Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries at the back of the Great Court to give a sense of life in the service of the emperor with all its glamour, danger and romance.
A soldier might do very well indeed. To join the legions came with enhanced social status and the security of a regular pay packet. For non-citizens the rewards were even greater: the full protection of Roman law and transformative opportunities for their children and grandchildren. Free men enlisted from all over the empire, serving alongside comrades whose cultures and customs were unfamiliar. Plenty of them – and it’s a point worth emphasising – fought and died for Rome without ever having seen it for themselves.
Claudius Terentianus was one such likely candidate, through whose eyes and letters the curators seek to present the whole. An Egyptian serving under Trajan, he wrote letter after letter home recounting his experiences as he marched under the imperial standard. Some are mundane while others are full of pathos; plenty complain about conditions and the latest indignity visited upon him in his quest to become a legionary. The exhibition follows his fortunes as visitors snake their way round the exhibits.
It also, slightly oddly, follows the fortunes of a large anthropomorphic rat who has a similar dream of being a soldier. Illustrated by the team behind the Horrible Histories franchise, it’s part of the museum’s drive to make its exhibitions more attractive to children. It has been catering for younger visitors in this way for a while, but this is to date the furthest it has gone. There are diversions galore: dressing up in armour; playing Roman games; sniffing smells of the camp; giggling at an ossified turd. Chacun à son gout, I suppose.
It would be a shame if the regular sideshows distracted visitors from the whole ensemble, for this is a show packed full of spectacular pieces. Busts, weapons and instruments all vie for attention; there is even a draco, dating from somewhere between the last decades of the second century and the middle of the third. Wielded at height and speed with its fabric tube trailing behind, its dragon’s head was designed to emit a fearful howl as its bearer bore down on his prey; terrifying for an inexperienced enemy footsoldier.
Real animals have their moments, too. What first glance looks like an unpromising log turns out to be protection for a horse: a unique surviving example of an armoured blanket belonging to one of the fearsome cataphracts (armoured horses and riders) that we see in abundance on Trajan’s column in Rome. A nearby crocodile was less fortunate, and ended up being turned into a jerkin. Other clothing includes the only known surviving Roman articulated cuirass, dated to the early years of the first century, whose owner died inside it.
Those who survived twenty-five years in the legions were rewarded with an honourable discharge: a generous retirement bounty provided for their old age, with added benefits of law, tax and property for those awarded citizenship. Terentianus retired as a man of substance, leaving with a lump-sum of ten years’ wages. Poignantly, the example used to illustrate this aspect of army life is the Didcot Hoard – on loan from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – which was apparently never enjoyed by its recipient before being found centuries upon centuries later.
This really is a superlative collection, which merits earnest study and engagement. For a backdrop the design team have put together a series of spaces that set off the pieces with panache. Chief among their efforts are a series of striking recreations of military standards, black on red, which represent the banners around which the men of each century rallied. Their bearers were chosen for bravery and numeracy, and saw their pay double; they dominate the whole space and give off just a hint of Nuremburg.
There is one deafening silence. Save for the sanctity of the colours, the divinity of the emperors, a few amulets to ward off evil, and a brief cameo for Egyptian crocodile-worship, about what these soldiers believed we are left little the wiser. To whom did they offer up a prayer before going into battle? Was all they had the hope of promotion and a pension if they weren’t killed? At one point our friend Terentianus writes “If god should will it, I hope to live frugally and be transferred to a cohort.” But who was his god? Mithras, perhaps, or another?
The idea that the average Roman soldier was only interested in his earthly fortunes must surely be dismissed as bunkum. So much is known about the religions of the empire that we cannot pretend they were not of universal significance. Furthermore, we know that its armies (alongside its trade routes) were the main conduit by which early Christianity spread to north and south, east and west. There is so much to be said about it – and much has been said about it – and yet in this aspect of legionary life we are simply left wondering.
In the midst of this forgetfulness, a curatorial note in the context of a jigsaw of a reconstructed helmet records the revolt of Boudica and the sacking of Colchester – the helmet is made up of pieces of those found in the ruins – before observing that she was “only defeated after London and St Albans suffered similar fates”. Why not just say Verulanium? To call it by its explicitly Christian cognomen, named after the Protomartyr of England (who was himself a Roman soldier), and not even hint at the story, seems bizarre.
Alban came from the legions; so did Martin of Tours, Mercurius, Typasius, Cornelius, Longinus, Hadrian of Nicomedia, Acacius, Theodore of Amasea, possibly Sebastian, and probably Gereon of Cologne. The list goes on, and a small section dedicated to the spiritual side of life in the Roman army would have been a fascinating inclusion – not only to tease out the surreptitious presence of Christians, but also to give an overview of the diversity of other cultic practices and beliefs of soldiers drawn from such an enormous recruiting-ground.
The most telling caption deals with crucifixion; widespread across the empire as a means of despatch, intimidation and control. “One of the most extreme execution practices in the Roman world was crucifixion. Such a prolonged and painful death was reserved for the enslaved and free non-citizens.” All this is factually true, of course, but to talk in depth about crucifixion in the Roman world while managing simultaneously not to mention the most famous contemporary crucifixion of all takes some doing.
Legion: Life in the Roman Army is at the British Museum until 23 June
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