Free Stuff from the Roman Empire

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Well, for my family they have certainly provided a lot of free stuff over the years and to my parents with five children and my own three wonderful youngsters that has been, on many days-out, a deity send.

I am a firm believer that there is some educational content and value in everything. This could be a strong material fact, an anecdote or just, my speciality, an unverifiable piece of urban mythology. It is little wonder that my children, when growing up, became a bit confused when, on what they thought was just an enjoyable day trip out they would be bombarded with some useful and some not so useful fact about things we drove past. That could be a building, a type of tree, a funny shop name, a rare car, a very distant aircraft or even a strange or suspicious looking pedestrian.

In most instances, through the speed we were travelling or the lateness of my actual noticing of the interesting item, the children would have nothing to see as the essential illustration of my fact or statement. This would involve some complex explanations for the ensuing 10 minutes involving frequent hands off the steering wheel. Everything was, without the visual explanation, totally out of any context.

Roman things are, by design, the perfect free educational resource. A Roman road, wonderfully straight and some good miles long provides the opportunity for me to have a rolling brief on its engineering, logistics and purpose. I will intentionally plan a long journey to include a stretch of Roman road. Sometimes I may be surprised by an arrow straight trunk road which just appears after a particularly car-sickness inducing series of bends, rises and falls. This starts my contention with the children or indeed any passengers at the time as to whether we are on a true Roman road or just a concession to a modern by-pass or much needed overtaking opportunity to clear a backlog behind labouring juggernauts and caravans. Gradually, by such subversive indoctrination my children, now all adults, have come to recognise the trademarks of a Roman road and I swell with pride if they identify such before I have had a chance to remark.

I will pay the often extortionate entry fee to visit te best surviving artefacts of the Romans. Vindolanda in Northumberland is well worth the large amount of denarius' that are handed over to the youth dressed most unsuitably for the chill of the north-east in sandles and body armour. Actually, the latter is very useful for a night out in Newcastle. Hadrians Wall is also a good free resource but any educational content has to be paid for by a bit of a hard long walk across rough terrain and we have only tended to do this on the way back from a holiday in Scotland or well out of season if we have managed to get away for autumn half term or a spring break.

We are very regular visitors to the City of York which has an abundance of free stuff from the walls and defensive buildings to fragments of stone pilfered after the Roman abandonment and then used in later construction. Unwittingly, the period may well have been remembered not so much for the architecture, engineering and culture as the greatest for the supply of hardcore, rubble and dressed stone for Anglo-Saxon housing and patios. My favourite feature in York is the incongrous pillar of very mixed materials which stands close to the Minster. It was found in flat pack kit form in an early excavation and subsequently re-assembled. If you get to see it you will understand that there were no actual instructions provided. It may even be upside down which, from my own experience of self assembly, can easily happen.

I spent a year of an internship in Lincoln, another great Roman garrison and cultural centre. More free stuff around the Cathedral and Castle, a stone gateway,some spa baths. One of the partners in the firm I worked for had a house built on Roman foundations and I was invited to see them having expressed an interest in such things. The stonework was perfectly preserved and accessible from the cellar. The craftsmanship was beautiful to behold. Of course the labouring will have been done by slaves with their Roman Masters getting all the glory.

My strongest memory of Roman artefacts also emphasised to me the cruelty and hardship of that period of, lets face it, occupation by a mighty foreign power. In the mid 1970's my father took me to the site of an archaeological dig in a field just adjacent to the busy A15 or better known Ermine Street, the M1 of the invaders. Maps of the locality between Lincoln and the Humber crossings on the way up to York showed many villa sites. Prime real estate for those qualifying for freedom from military or civil service. Early retirement at 35 but with a life expectancy of not much more. The field was quiet after the working party had left. The site had been throwing up bits of mosaic tile and pantile fragments for many years under the farmers plough or from treasure seekers.

A large rectangular shape had been revealed after careful removal of tons of topsoil. I could make out detail from my school projects on villas, some hypercaust pieces from the underfloor heating, labelled pieces of pottery still partly embedded in the ground and short stretches of partly intact but largely jumbled up tessera (Resource book; The Romans in Britain for ages 8 to 11. Published in 1970).

Then, in the four outer corners of the excavation I saw four metal collection trays, upturned as though to protect or hide something being worked on. Ever curious and a bit nosy I lifted up one of the trays. Huddled in the corner was the skeletal remains of a small baby. This was the same for the other three corners. I was shocked but also a bit morbidly fascinated by this discovery.

My father explained that the babies would have been sacrificed for a favourable blessing for the villa by the deities. I was already following the train of thought about who would supply babies for this barbaric practice. The field was soon returned to the farmer after meticulous recording and removal to a local musuem of the most important items. I hoped that the babies had received a suitable and respectful memorial if they had been left where they had been put to the sword.