moved south as fast as he could, but it was too late for the Roman inhabitants of London and St Albans who were put to the sword by Boudicca’s tribesmen. Paullinus finally confronted Boudicca near Lichfield. The Celts, typically, began the battle with a wild, howling charge, Boudicca mounted on a war chariot. The Roman historian Dio Cassius describes Boudicca as ‘very tall, most terrifying in appearance, a fierce eye and harsh voice. A great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips. Around her neck she wore a golden torc and over a multi-coloured tunic she wore a thick cloak secured with a brooch’. The Romans withstood the assault, flinging javelins at the Celts, then closing with their short stabbing swords. It was a battle of no clever manoeuvres, just sheer hard fighting, and the professional Roman soldiers prevailed. Boudicca, her army disintegrating before her, could see no way out and, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, committed suicide by taking poison.
Roman bath at Bath. The Romans were bewitched by the natural heated spring waters that bubbled up from the ground near the river Avon and built a massive bathing and religious complex around it. [English Heritage]
Boudicca’s revolt was the last great act of resistance by the British Celts towards the Roman conquest, but the defeat of the Celts was not a calamity for all Celtic people. Roman rule provided a degree of peace and stability that had been missing in the years of tribal conflict and this triggered a growth in prosperity. Meanwhile, so long as the Celtic chieftains paid their taxes to the Romans, they were allowed to continue in their positions of local power.
The Roman conquest of Britain came to a halt in the 2nd century AD. The Romans now ruled an empire that stretched from Wales to Syria and their thoughts turned to the preservation of the way of life they had established, rather than seeking new territory. Such concerns were in the mind of the Emperor Hadrian when he visited northern Britain in AD 122. A large timber building with fifty rooms, some decorated with painted walls, was erected for his stay (the remains of this have recently been uncovered at the Vindolanda site at Chesterholm) and the Augustan History captures the bold idea that caught his imagination: ‘Having reformed the army of the Rhine in regal manner, he set out for Britain where he put many things to rights and was the first to build a wall, eighty miles in length, by which barbarians and Romans should be divided.’ It has been suggested that the idea might even have come to Hadrian, who was a lover of the exotic, when he heard about the Great Wall in China. Certainly, there are architectural similarities between the two.
Close-up of the famous leather boots worn by the ordinary Roman legionary as he marched across Europe. Typical of the style worn in the 1st century AD, they feature hobnails on the soles to protect the leather. Three layers of tanned ox or cow hide were used to construct such boots, the tanning process itself taking two years. Egyptian records state that pairs of boots were issued three times a year to each soldier. [Graham Sumner]
A column of Roman soldiers advances through the British countryside. The presence of armoured, organised formations of Roman soldiers must have been an awesome sight for the native British, used to a more casual form of raiding warfare. These re-enactors belong to the Ermine Street Guard, the oldest and most highly respected of British living history groups recreating the life of Roman soldiers in Britain. [Philipp Elliot-Wright/English Heritage]
Work began on Hadrian’s Wall almost immediately, starting from a bridge over the river Tyne at Newcastle and stretching right across northern Britain to the village of Bowness on the Solway Firth. The first section, as far as the river Irthing, just over forty miles, was built of stone, but then the materials ran out and the rest of the thirty miles was completed with earth ramparts. Later, however, this was replaced with a stone wall. Ditches were dug on the northern side to add to the obstacle. At every Roman mile (1,481 metres), a little stone fort was built to house the garrisons of from eight to 64 soldiers that had to guard that section of the wall. Two look-out turrets were added at regular intervals in the space between the fortlets. As well as adding a further four miles of wall from Newcastle to Wallsend on the east coast, 16 major forts were built behind the frontier line, the largest being at Stanwix, near Carlisle, which could maintain some 9,000 men.
Roman tent and equipment of the late 1st century AD. Such tents were made of leather sections that were stitched so the seams overlapped and were thus waterproof. Each soldier carried a wooden stake which could be tied together with others, like those on the extreme left of the picture, to form sharp barriers which could be erected around the encampment every night. These re-enactors belong to the recreated Legio II Augusta. [Legio II Augusta]
Although an impressive work of military engineering that has survived in substantial sections over 2,000 years, the purpose of Hadrian’s Wall was less about preventing barbarians from entering Roman Britain than about regulating their access. In reality, it would have been impossible to defend the wall with the same intensity of force as a castle - a few soldiers in the middle of nowhere could do little to stop a determined breach of the wall - but the physical barrier meant that anyone who wished to cross the border had to pass through guarded gateways. Traders could be taxed on their goods.
ROMAN WEAPONS
The most famous Roman weapon is the gladius, a short straight double-edged blade with a long point, effective for both stabbing and slashing. Roman chroniclers declared that this style of weapon was derived from the Celts, but it has since become identified with the Roman soldier who used it in combination with his large rectangular shield (another Celtic influence). The average blade length of these swords was about 500 mm. Roman cavalrymen used a longer, slashing sword called the spatha. A purely Roman invention was the pilum, a throwing spear with a narrow iron neck attached to its wooden shaft. The thin iron neck would bend on impact, thus denying the enemy the chance of throwing the spear back and also, ideally, weighing down his shield, so he could not fight effectively with it and would have to throw it down.
Archery did not come naturally to the Romans and so they employed archers from their conquered territories, particularly from the East where there was a strong tradition of archery. The most widely used bow was a composite bow in which the wooden structure was strengthened by strips of sinew and bone, giving it greater elasticity and tension. Recent tests have shown how effective arrows were against armour, penetrating both mail and scale armour, but not iron plate. Surprisingly, wooden shields with a leather covering also proved highly effective, preventing a lethal penetration. A Roman soldier equipped with both lorica segmentata and a shield could be almost impervious to enemy archery.
Close-up of reconstruction of a beautifully decorated scabbard of a Roman sword based on an example found in the River Thames at Fulham. [Graham Sumner]
Reconstructed Roman mobile artillery piece. Such a weapon worked like a crossbow and launched a large bolt at the enemy. The crew are members of the Roman Military Research Society who recreate soldiers of Legio XIIII Gemina, one of the four legions originally involved in the invasion of Britain in AD 43, who also fought against Boudicca in the most dangerous Celtic revolt of the period. [Roman Military Research Society]
Excellent example of a reconstructed suit of Roman scale armour made out of hundreds of little bronze overlapping scales sewn onto a fabric tunic. This particular suit with a hood is inspired by a 3rd century AD fresco in the Middle East and is an indication of later styles of armour worn in Roman Britain. [Graham Sumner]
Field artillery appears to have been a Roman speciality. Whereas catapults and ballistae had