About halfway through this wildly enjoyable delve into Roman military history, you see an eerie object: a cuirass, a piece of torso-fitting armour that looks too big, as if it were created for a giant. It makes you think the legions that dominated so much of Europe, north Africa and the Middle East two millennia ago must have been full of truly invincible men.
Then you discover this is a relic not of a Roman triumph but one of the most devastating defeats its legions ever suffered. It was found on the battlefield near today’s village of Kalkriese, Lower Saxony, where German warriors massacred the legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus in 9 AD. The legionary who wore this armour may have been slaughtered after the battle, on the ground, to judge from leg irons with which he was apparently restrained. Or perhaps he was paraded as a trophy? It feels incredibly intimate to be so close to an event that has become a kind of historical horror story. “Varus, where are my legions?” yelled Brian Blessed as Augustus in I, Claudius.
