Hadrian’s Wall is celebrating its 1900th birthday… the perfect time for History Hit to investigate this potent embodiment of Roman dominance.
Dan Snow explores the physical remains of Hadrian’s vast project of 122AD - over 80 Roman miles of wall, turrets and forts, stretching from coast to coast across northern England. Mile after mile of stone marching over the horizon.
But why did the Romans go to all this effort? We dig into the key questions: was the wall a barrier or a porous border; a hubristic vanity project or a vital line of defence; who lived on and around the wall; and why has it endured in popular culture for nearly two thousand years, right up to Game of Thrones?
Dan meets leading experts along the Wall and visits some of the key sites - from Arbeia in the east (where tombstones reveal people here from as far away as Syria) to Birdoswald in the west (where a blatant carving of a phallic symbol shows the Wall was more than just a barrier).
A Roman historian wrote that when the Emperor Hadrian came to Britain in AD 122 he ‘put many things to right and was the first to build a wall 80 miles long from sea to sea to separate the Romans from the Barbarians’.
In this film we discover what that massive engineering and construction project really meant - and the impact it had on Roman Britain and beyond.
Up Next in Digging up History
-
Karnak: Decoding Egypt's Greatest Temple
History Hit’s ancient history expert, Tristan Hughes, digs deep into one of Ancient Egypt's greatest treasures, a site that ranks among the world’s most impressive religious sanctuaries in both its size, splendour and importance.
But there is another, fascinating side to exploring Karnak beyond ...
-
A Tudor Wonder - Hardwick Hall - with...
A History Hit treat for the holidays, this special new film reveals an extraordinary Tudor life-story and an amazing creation. We meet the extraordinary Bess of Hardwick and go inside the incredible home she built, a spectacular construction in glass and stone that defined the elegance and grande...
-
Iron Age Women: Rulers of the Land
Did women have more power in Iron Age Britain than elsewhere? New discoveries from Britain's largest known Iron Age cemetery suggest yes!
At the site of Duropolis in Dorset, excavations led by the University of Bournemouth are revealing the prominence of women in Britain's pre-Roman societies. ...
27 Comments