Gardner, Andrew; (2025) Roman Military Identities. In: Skinner, Joseph and Manolopoulou, Vicky and Tsouparopoulou, Christina, (eds.) Identities in Antiquity. (pp. 414-427). Routledge: London, UK.

Text Identities in Antiquity AG Submission Final.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 31 December 2026. Download (376kB)

Abstract

The Roman soldier is hidden behind many layers of preconception. There are few more familiar figures in popular culture relating to antiquity than the legionary soldier in segmented armour and red tunic, fixed in the public eye by everything from film and television to museum mannequins, and increasingly by computer and video games. Many accessible books on the Roman world also focus on the Roman military, such as Peter Connolly's hugely influential The Roman Army 1 and numerous volumes by military historians, 2 not to mention historical fiction (e.g., Simon Scarrow's Eagles of the Empire series, from 2000 onwards). In more scholarly traditions, while military themes have certainly been important in ancient historical writing, in provincial Roman archaeology they have tended to be the focus of a distinct sub-discipline of frontier studies, limesforschung, with its roots in the linked academic communities studying the British and German frontiers. 3 That this has developed at some distance from the concerns of mainstream provincial Roman archaeology has been observed for some time, as has the relatively late adoption of more critical, theoretical perspectives in the archaeology of the military. 4 Indeed, these phenomena are all inter-linked. Many people, academic or otherwise, assume we know everything there is to know about the Roman military from abundant sources, ideally interpreted by those with modern military experience, and that what we know is that they were uncomplicated men fighting in the greatest military force of antiquity. The aim of this chapter is to show that every one of these assumptions is untrue.

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