At the edge of an empire

Is charmed by an entertaining guide to one of Britain’s most impressive ancient monuments

Hadrian’s Wall: Rome and the Limits of Empire by Adrian Goldsworthy Head of Zeus, 224 pages, £18.99

Even in its denuded and ruinous state, Hadrian’s Wall is an awe-inspiring monument. Designed to stand around seven metres in height, it originally comprised an estimated million cubic metres of hand-carved stone and ran for a distance of 73 miles, from Newcastle to Bowness-on-Solway. Constructed in the second century AD, and taking perhaps seven years to complete, it represents the single greatest building project ever initiated in Europe. Curious, then, that it barely appears in accounts surviving from antiquity, the only reference being in the fourth-century Scriptores Historiae Augustae, which rather perfunctorily notes that it was designed simply “to separate the Romans and barbarians”.

The wall was far more than just a barrier, however. With its multiple gates, ditches, banks, outlying signal towers and system of fortlets on the Cumbrian coast, it was a complex system of control: an architectural mechanism of shock and awe designed to maintain order along Rome’s most troublesome of borders. Manned by auxiliaries – non-citizen troops from Rome’s territories – it attracted a mix of soldiers and civilians from across the empire, including Dacians (from modernday Romania), Thracians (from Bulgaria), and Tungrians (from Belgium), together with Syrians, Spaniards, north Africans and even boatmen from the river Tigris in modern-day Iraq.

Goldsworthy is an erudite guide whose exhaustive research into the military

history of the Roman empire has helped to fill this new book with a range of interesting facts and entertaining anecdotes, from the life of Hadrian himself, to the men and women who lived and died in the shadow of his wall. The illustrations are also well chosen, conveying a sense of both the military and geographical contexts of Rome’s northern frontier.

As an introduction to the history of the most impressive of ancient engineering achievements, Goldworthy’s book is entirely successful. Best of all, it’s small enough to slip into a pocket and take with you as the perfect companion to exploring the remains of the wall today.