Four score years after Roman emperor Claudius ordered Rome’s invasion of Britain in AD 43, soldiers of the Second, Sixth, and Twentieth Legions found themselves in an odd position. For hundreds of years Rome’s legionaires had confidently and generally successfully marched into new, often uncharted lands extending the borders of the empire in every direction of the compass. By AD 122 the Roman empire stretched from Britain in the northwest some 2,500 miles eastwardly to the Near East (roughly modern day Iraq) and 1,500 miles to the south to the Sahara desert in north Africa. Yet as the men of the Second, Sixth, and Twentieth Legions began to mass in the north of Britain in what they believed to be a move into modern Scotland, Emperor Hadrian’s (pronounced HAY-dree-un) orders called for them to put down their swords and shields and replace them with spades and trowels. Rather than confidently carrying the Roman fasci—long a symbol of Rome’s power and might—into Scotland thus extending further the northwest reaches of the empire and thus finally bringing the British Isles into Rome’s possession, the legionaires began construction of what today can be called one of the finest and lasting examples of Ancient history: Hadrian’s Wall.
