Follow Roman soldier Claudius Terentianus and his best friend Cladius Ratticus as they enroll in the Roman Army and rise through the services.
The new exhibition at the British Museum explores life in the Roman army. It’s full of great objects and has a strong exhibition design and narrative.
The objects on display include the world’s only intact legionary shield excavated from Dura-Europos (in modern day Syria). Currently held by Yale University and on loan to the British Museum for the exhibition. A gorgeous deep red curved shield decorated with eagles and a lion. It is a beautiful object, displayed here almost like a painting, but it packed a punch. Literally. The central metal boss could be used as an offensive weapon. Roman shields could also be used to create the famous testudo or tortoise. The juxtaposition of beauty and brutality emphasizes the contradictions at the heart of the Roman Empire and our enjoyment of it today.
The exhibition goes into the conditions of life in the army. The reasons why people would join (money and preferment) and the lived experience for the people connected to the army. The goat skin sheets that made up tents, found in Vindolanda, powerfully evoke what must have been at times a grim life.
For me, the most impressive objects were the tombstones. I attended the exhibition with someone who claimed to have spent her holidays looking at hundreds of grave stelae in museums and even she was impressed with what was on offer.
Some of these are famous.
Regina the 30 year old partner of a Palmyrene (from modern day Syria), first his enslaved human and then his wife. The gravestone includes text in Latin and Palmyrene. It may have been carved at Arbeia fort, which was possibly named after ‘the place of the Arabs’. So much that we would want to know of her life is left unsaid in the short inscriptions.
Another more impressive gravestone depicts a woman in impressive robes and holding a fan. Her other hand rests on a young child. It is a relaxed and yet regal image. This is performative luxury and presents an alluring image of life at the Northern fringes of the Roman empire. Yet how much was real.
The exhibition is a collaboration with Horrible Histories. The aim of this is to make the show appealing to children, but I think it does something even more interesting.
The collaboration brings in a narrative voice describing the other side of life in the Roman army, one of brutality, danger and privation, without glory. Horrible Histories created a new character, a rat of gigantic size by the name of Claudius Ratticus.
I didn’t really understand Ratticus’ backstory, his lore. I was a fan of Horrible Histories as a young person in the 90s. Borrowing new copies of the books from the local library as soon as they were published at a time when there were only about 10 volumes. The rat character was a later development of the series. He reminded me of Reepicheep from the Narnia stories, although some of his jokes were straight lifts from Asterix. But I warmed to him.
I implied he was a close friend of Claudius Terentianus, a historical person known to us thanks to surviving letters sent to his father in Oxyrhynchus (in Egypt). Ratticus was cynical and had a more grounded sense of life in the Roman army, while Terentianus just seemed to badger his father for new shoes.
The two became friends perhaps in training.
This tension at the heart of the show helped personalize the objects. Avoiding it just becoming a boys toys type of show.
Combined with this were the educational games. At the end you could play a game of chance to work out if you’d have survived or died.
This added a real depth to the show.
What was less useful for this was the display of human bodies, which just seemed gratuitous. The museum put up a sign saying the bodies were important for research. Okay, but how did displaying skeletons in this exhibition support research?
And that for me, was a major issue with the show. There was the unmistakable air of the tan chinos and pastel blue shirt brigade about it, like a fetid smell of trapped wind in a goatskin tent or the droning sounds of the roman tuba. If the curators could just channel Ratticus more, they would have a five star show.
Rhakotis 