Roman Soldiers at Ease

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Twenty years, and five more on the reserve list. That was the bargain Augustus set for a legionary in AD 5, with three thousand denarii waiting at the end of it — roughly thirteen years' wages, which tells you how badly the state needed men to stay. Very little of that time was spent fighting. Legionaries built the forts they slept in, and the roads, bridges, harbours, public buildings and entire new towns of the provinces they garrisoned; they policed for the governor and kept the records. They were also forbidden to marry, a decree of Augustus that stood for two centuries and was, by about AD 100, quietly ignored by nearly everybody. We know how these men actually spoke because their letters survive — more than seventeen hundred ink-written wooden tablets from the fort at Vindolanda, most of them from around AD 95 to 105. Among them is a birthday invitation from one commander's wife to another, perhaps the oldest surviving Latin written by a woman; a sour nickname for the local Britons; and a note listing a parcel sent north to a soldier — two pairs of sandals, two pairs of underpants, and socks. Which is the scene King & Country have sculpted: one man on his feet mid-sentence with a hand raised, the other sat on a rock with his pilum upright, listening. No shields up, no weapons drawn — just the other ninety-nine per cent of the job. They give a camp diorama the thing it usually lacks, which is somewhere for the eye to rest between the action poses. Set them near a gateway with The Roman War Dog Set on watch, keep Roman Centurion at a comfortable distance — the copy on the box has them grumbling about him, after all — and post The Marching Optios nearby to remind everyone the conversation is on borrowed time. Model: ROM062 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 2 piece set Show more