What Did Roman Soldiers Do For Pleasure?

What did Roman soldiers actually do for fun when the fighting stopped and the long frontier evenings began? How did the men of the Roman legion and the auxiliary cohorts of ancient Rome survive twenty-five years of service, a ban on marriage and a fort on the edge of the empire without losing their minds to boredom? In this video you follow an ordinary Roman soldier on the northern frontier of Roman Britain through his free time and his wages. You will see the bathhouse that worked as the garrison's club, board games scratched straight into the stone of Roman forts, dice and gambling that Roman law officially banned, the Saturnalia festival paid for out of the soldiers' own pay, local beer from the taverns of the village outside the walls, wild boar hunts in the hills, and the women and families who lived next to the fort even though Roman soldiers were not allowed a legal marriage. Everything in this story of Roman army life comes from real evidence. The Vindolanda writing tablets preserve the letter of the cavalry officer Masclus asking for beer for his men, the request of the prefect Flavius Cerialis for hunting nets, a parcel of socks and sandals sent to a soldier, and the birthday invitation from Claudia Severa, one of the earliest known Latin texts written by a woman. A pay record on papyrus from Roman Egypt shows the deductions taken from legionaries' wages, and the Feriale Duranum from Dura-Europos lists the festivals of the Roman army. Excavations of the legionary baths at Caerleon, the civilian settlement at Housesteads and the waterlogged shoes of Vindolanda show how soldiers, women and children really lived around the forts, while an altar to Silvanus found on Bollihope Common records a cavalry commander's pride in one wild boar. Ancient writers fill in the rest: Tacitus on the Batavians and their beer, Suetonius on the emperor Augustus and his dice, Seneca on the Saturnalia, Vegetius on the soldiers' savings kept at the standards, Strabo on British hunting dogs and Herodian on Septimius Severus lifting the marriage ban, together with Hadrian's letter on the inheritance of soldiers' children and the bronze military diplomas given to veterans. Subscribe for more stories about the daily life of Roman soldiers and ordinary people in ancient Rome, told from the barracks and the mud rather than the palace.