Hadrian’s Quiz
by Rachael
Birdoswald Fort, Hadrian’s Wall, England
True or false?
- Hadrian built the wall.
- It took seven years to build most of the wall.
- Hadrian’s wall was over 6,000km long.
- Roman soldiers patrolled and maintained the wall for almost 600 years.
- The wall was built to separate Romans from the barbarians.
- Soldiers stationed along the wall practised their fighting techniques using wooden and wicker shields.
- Soldiers cooked in their shields.
- Hadrian forbade the practices of killing slaves and mixed bathing.
- The weather is wet and windy.
Answers
- False. He gave the orders, but it was the men of the Second, Sixth and Twentieth legions, who did the manual labour.
- True, from 122 to 129AD.
- False – that was the Great Wall of China. England wasn’t big enough for a wall of that magnitude; stretching from coast to coast, Hadrian’s covered only 124km.
- False. They only lasted half that time. By about 410AD the Roman empire was losing its grip up in the north.
- True…and to control the local people by instigating taxes for passing through the gates and to glorify his own name too.
- Believe it or not, it’s true. Metal ones were much lighter and so on the odd occasion that they needed to go in to battle, they were nimble and swift with their relatively-easy-to-carry armour.
- No, my dear, that was Ghengis Khan!
- True enough – women had to bathe in the morning; men had the afternoon and evening.
- Well, let’s just say we were here in high summer and it was wet and windy. Then when it was no longer wet, it was still windy. Storyboards around the site also make mention of the abundance of wet and windy weather. Just might be true.
Our first stop at Hadrian’s Wall, was at Birdoswald Fort. No audio tour here – just an audio-visual presentation and “very realistic – in fact so realistic that Tgirl5 and ER3 did not know if the people were real or not” (quote from Kgirl10’s journal) indoor exhibition…plus, of course, the ruins themselves and accompanying storyboards.
Naturally, the history of the place did not stop with the exit of the Romans and over the next 600 years or so, civilisation has remained in this place, sometimes tearing down old buildings to reuse the stones for new purposes, sometimes boarding up gateways for greater security – during the Middle Ages, in particular, the raids on animals and household effects must have become quite tiresome. It was interesting to trace the old structures and see the new (that’s a relative term – we’re still talking more than twice as old as European New Zealand settlement) buildings, some of which still stand – and are used – today.
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 42km
Tags: 2008/09, history, learning, postcard: England, tradition, weather
rayres
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