Kill, die and rise in the legions: the British Museum in London looks back at life in the Imperial Roman Army with a spectacular exhibition

Enlist in the legions, they say;

that you will see the world, they say.

It is not unusual to walk through the entrance between the columns of the British Museum, repeating the phrases of

legionary Asterix

and marking the step, holding the umbrella like a

pilum

and looking for the

gladio

, the sword.

You arrive at the exhibition

Legion, life

in the Roman army, inaugurated this month in London (Londinum) and which can be visited until June 23 (

non deesset eam

!, don't miss it !), with high expectations.

Nerve and anxiety.

The legions in the British, wow! It's like having a date with Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator's general

,

and his troops in the forests of Germania.

So after showing your ticket (you had to make a pre-booking, the exhibition is sold out) and muttering to yourself the watchword of the legions of the North (“strength and honour”), you enter the museum's Sainsbury galleries to the tempestuous and exciting world of Roman soldiers, hail!

More information

The atrocious Vietnam of the Roman legions

The exhibition, which consists of more than 200 archaeological objects (from museums and private collections), some simply unique and sensational, and is accompanied by a voluminous catalog by its own curator, Richard Abdy, curator of the British Museum, proposes a Extensive and exciting journey through the experience of service in the ranks of the forces of Ancient Rome and the evolution of its impressive war machinery, with which it subjugated the world.

All the time you are accompanied by the disturbing recorded sound of hundreds of hobnailed sandals marching and the tall shadow of the eagles, the main and revered banners of the legions.

In the rooms, drawings, graphics and scenographic elements are displayed alongside the archaeological objects to increase understanding and provide atmosphere.

The exhibition, which Vegetius would approve, is rounded off with activity areas (delighting children and quite a few adults) where you can try on a Roman helmet, raise a shield and even experience the smell of a camp fire or of sweat after a day of walking.

And see the contents of a latrine (!).

You can also measure yourself to see if you would have been admitted to the legions: from 1.72 you were in.

The maximum age was 35 years.

Another requirement was to have at least one testicle.

Image from the exhibition on the legions at the British Museum.

Among the most spectacular things on display, a pair of shooting targets (one made of wood in the shape of a human and showing the mark of swords, and another an ox skull pierced by projectiles), a sandal (caliga) and a boot ( military

calceus

(and a sock!, which was worn with sandals), a large

cornu

(order trumpet), a dragon banner (

draco

) carried, of course, by the

draconarius,

and the extravagant parade masks of chivalry;

and some beautiful swords with their scabbards.

Absolutely extraordinary are the almost complete segmented cuirass found on none other than the battlefield of the disaster of the legions of Varus (Kalkriese) and which bears witness to the greatest defeat of the Roman army - three legions, the XVII, the XVIII and the XIX, 20,000 soldiers, completely annihilated in a large ambush by the Germans that later included savage human sacrifices (get ready, they say)—and a

scutum

, the iconic rectangular shield of the legionaries, from Dura Europos (Syria) and which is the only one of its kind. class that survives (a wall drawing shows a section of legionnaires doing the famous tortoise with their shields).

The Roman shield of Dura Europos, on display.

You can also admire, in a wonderful gallery of weapons, a piece of armor with scales of two different types (which proves a repair), from Hadrian's Wall;

helmets of different types that show the evolution towards greater protection, some with graffiti with the names of their owners (one has four, which suggests up to a hundred years of use, which is recycling), and one (the Meyrick helmet) with unusual Celtic decorations, testimony to its use by some auxiliary unit of one of those towns.

Also worth highlighting is the scale cuirass of an armored rider's horse (clibanarios or cataphracts) and the one made of crocodile skin, which is one of the most curious artifacts regularly exhibited in its Roman rooms at the British Museum.

But probably the most impressive and moving thing are the skeletons on display.

The most impressive, that of the soldier found in Herculaneum and who wore his military belt with sword and dagger

ad exercitum manere

(it is not clear if he was participating in an attempt to evacuate civilians cornered by the eruption of Vesuvius or if he was passing through there, in a bad day, really).

You can also see those of two other soldiers who were apparently murdered and thrown into a well in Canterbury with their swords and hobnailed boots.

Another skeleton shown (to illustrate that cowardly soldiers and prisoners of war were sometimes executed in this way) is that of a crucified man, with a nail still through his ankle.

The exhibition reminds us that despite all the enthusiasm they can provoke, Roman troops acted with savagery and rapacity, enslaved, and often acted as occupation forces and police.

Paraphrasing Calgacus cited by Tacitus, they created a desert and called it peace.

Segmented cuirass of a Roman legionary found in Germania, in the exhibition on the legions at the British Museum.Peter Nicholls (GETTY)

Given the extreme difficulty of covering the entire very long Roman military history (

roughly

a millennium, from 500 BC to 500 BC), the exhibition is limited to two centuries, the period that goes from the first emperor, Augustus (who reigned from 27 BC to 14 AD), under which the idea of ​​the professional, career soldier was established (until then the legions were formed and disbanded for specific campaigns; from now on they will be a permanent army) , and Maximinus Thrax, Maximinus the Thracian (235 -238 AD), the first of the “soldier emperors” of the 3rd century, which can be seen as the highest promotion a man can achieve from the ranks.

If Augustus was a giant because of his achievements, Maximinus, the first emperor of barbarian origin and also the first who never set foot in the city of Rome, was a giant because of his size (2.61 meters, with that height you would enroll through the door big).

Roman military equipment in the legion exhibition at the British Museum. Peter Nicholls (Getty Images)

The exhibition explains how one enlisted, the options that had to be done (you could be a legionary, the

first class

option , or auxiliary, or a sailor in the naval forces), the training (very tough), the combat techniques ("the knowledge "The military discipline feeds the audacity to fight," Vegecio maintained), the equipment (27 kilos that each one had to carry, five kilos just for the shield), the ranks (with the centurions as the backbone of the legions), the rewards, punishments (terrible, including

decimatio

, the decimation of troops crumpled in fighting), military health, cavalry (the most successful horseman perhaps being Tiberius Claudius Maximus, who captured the Dacian king Decebalus), camps (seen They exhibit fragments of tents and pickaxes) and forts, and the way in which one, if one survived (only half of the soldiers did), ended up being discharged after 25 years of service.

The oldest example of a retirement diploma is on display, the one granted by the emperor Claudius, of lame memory, to a Thracian who served in the navy of Misenium and who responded to the phenomenal name of Sparticus Dipscurtus.

Citizenship was granted to him, his wife and his children.

Parade mask of the Roman cavalry, in the British Museum exhibition on the legions.Peter Nicholls (GETTY IMAGES)

A central space is dedicated to the terrible experience of battle, a vortex of violence represented by images of fighting, the clatter of weapons,

pilums

flying over you and a ballista, one of those artillery machines (generically called

storm

) with which General Máximo by Russell Crowe unleashed hell in Germany.

In another area of ​​the exhibition, a statue of a Molossian dog also seems to be a nod to our favorite fictional Roman soldier, with permission from Marcellus Gallio from

The Sacred Robe

and Marcus Flavius ​​Aquila from

The Eagle Legion.

Messala would be more in the sports field.

To go through this history of legions and wars, the exhibition, the first that the British dedicates to the Roman army, presents different soldiers, whom we see face to face, represented especially in their funerary monuments.

There are Quintus Petilius Secundus, of the

legio XV Primigenia

, clinging to

his

pilum ;

Firmus Ecconis of a stout auxiliary cohort (from Raetia), with characteristic oval shield and javelin;

the standard bearer (

signier

) Pintaius Pedicili, who carried one of the insignia of the auxiliary cohort

V Asturum

;

the young and ill-fated puff-eared centurion Marcus Favonius Facilis and the veteran Marcus Caelius, the

primus pilus

, the only centurion of the first cohort (

milaria

) of a legion, the one carried by the eagle, with its identifying and feared vine staff (

vitis)

and loaded with decorations.

Centurions of his class were paid 80 times more than a basic legionnaire, and that was without three-year terms.

An aspect of the exhibition on the legions.

We are especially invited to follow the careers of two soldiers who exemplify the experience of being a soldier of Rome: Apion and Claudius Terentianus, both from the 2nd century and both documented by their letters home, from which significant excerpts are presented.

Terentianus was initially rejected from the legions for lack of recommendations and had to start in the navy, a less glamorous destiny.

He finally ended up as a legionary facing the Parthians.

Children can also follow the career of a third soldier illustrated in comic drawings, Rattus, a friendly auxiliary rat (“second-class weapons and shitty pay”) created by the authors of the series

That Terrible Story

(published in Spain by Mill), Terry Deary and Martin Brown.

Among the curiosities mentioned in the exhibition, there were units of Roman cavalry mounted on camels (

dromedarii

), that mobile hospitals were invented in the legions, that soldiers were given an identifying tattoo (from the 3rd century onwards a plaque lead hanging around the neck), that Roman medicine was capable of curing a soldier who had suffered intestinal evisceration, or that sailors, despite their low prestige, were used for special operations (Nero had them sink his mother's boat and then, since she didn't drown, murder her);

They helped build Hadrian's Wall, and several legions were created with them.

The exhibition dismantles some common ideas such as that there was some logic or order in the numbering of the legions or that the oarsmen of the Roman galleys were chained.

He also explains that the legionnaires advanced trampling on fallen enemies with their spiked footwear that was like rugby boots with studs.

So if you have been in the middle of a particularly close scrum you can imagine, adding gladios and very bad temper, what the advance of the legions, the famous meat grinders, was like.

The variation in the soldiers' equipment was very great, there was no uniformity seen in the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius.

Attention ( or tempora

!) is paid

to the presence of women in the legions, and this includes Agrippina the Elder, who with her decision, convincing the soldiers not to abandon her, saved a bridge in Germania, or the Empress Julia Domna, who accompanied her husband Septimius Severus, received the nickname

mater castrorum

, mother of the camps, and apparently had a characteristic hairstyle for life in the campaign.

Some of the famous letters from Vindolanda Fort are on display (including an invitation to a party) that shed light on the role of women in the garrisons, in this case on the edges of the empire (next to Hadrian's Wall).

A group of women torturing prisoners on Trajan's Column may have been vengeful Roman war widows.

It is perhaps necessary to mention bitter enemies of Rome such as Buodica, the warrior queen of the Iceni in the uprising of the British tribes, or Veleda, who was not a scullery but a Germanic priestess and seer who encouraged the Batavian revolt in the year of the four emperors, 69. A cavalry parade mask with the features of an Amazon introduces the theme – the exhibition suggests – that perhaps its wearer adopted a transgender identity during his activity.

That, of course, was not in

Legionnaire Asterix.

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