Cold feet and pension problems – what it was really like to be a Roman legionary

Rome was a glorious idea but it was also a very human endeavour. As a revelatory new show about the brutal and banal everyday life of ordinary soldiers opens, Michael Hodges explains why, centuries after they left our shores, we are still gripped by the greatest of all empires…

A helmet depicting the face of a Trojan on display at the ‘Legion: Life in the Roman Army exhibition (Getty)

A lone red sock sits among the stop-you-in-your-tracks bronze cavalry helmets, crocodile-skin armour and other remarkable pieces that litter the halls of Legion: Life in the Roman Army at the British Museum. The show is aimed squarely at our apparently unending fascination with all things Roman but this small, uncannily well-preserved, item of knitwear, made in Egypt between 200 and AD400 with a separate pocket for the big toe, contains its big revelation.

Rather than a merciless killing machine imposing imperium on the barbarians, legionaries were the poor bloody infantry, obliged to arm and clothe themselves and often suffering from cold feet. Rome was a glorious idea but it was also a very human endeavour.

We suspected as much. The one thing every Briton learns about Hadrian’s Wall, apart from it now being shorn of a much-loved sycamore tree, is that the legionaries who manned it wanted warmer footwear.