Roman Soldier on Hadrians Wall.

[John]

Would a Roman Soldier (Surveyor) working on Hadrians wall, have read Vergil, The Aeneid. ?

 

My reason for asking is that I am writing a paper about Hadrians Wall, and wanted to add background information.

Personally, I would think yes.

If he is intelligent enough to be a Serveyor, he would probably be interested in finer things.

[Primus Pilus]

Would a Roman Soldier (Surveyor) working on Hadrians wall, have read Vergil, The Aeneid. ?

 

My reason for asking is that I am writing a paper about Hadrians Wall, and wanted to add background information.

Personally, I would think yes.

If he is intelligent enough to be a Serveyor, he would probably be interested in finer things.

 

Intelligence is not necessarily indicative of taste in the "arts". Interest in finer thing is truly an individual thing... so the answer is he could have. . It may depend on his education - formal or informal, the station of his family or even his place of origin. In any case, books were a relative luxury, hand printed, bound or rolled, etc - not as much as compared to the middle ages when they were truly scarce, but still uncommon for the average Roman.

 

Regardless, a fair case could be made for having exposure to such works without any great stretching of reality.

[Melvadius]

Would a Roman Soldier (Surveyor) working on Hadrians wall, have read Vergil, The Aeneid. ?

 

My reason for asking is that I am writing a paper about Hadrians Wall, and wanted to add background information.

Personally, I would think yes.

If he is intelligent enough to be a Serveyor, he would probably be interested in finer things.

 

If you can get access to it I would suggest reading at least the author's section of Brian Campbell's The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors. This work brings together much of what is know about Roman surveying from well know authors like Julius Frontinus who obviously did have a classical education with possibly lesser know authors like Siculius Flaccus who in this context is possibly a better example.

 

Campbell describes Siculius Flaccus as an author, writing in the second century, who described the history and practice of surveying and refered to

our (surveying) profession.

His attention to detail included

high ideals of accuracy and integrity that will protect the surveyor from error.

This attention to detail could well argue for a surveyor with a good education.

 

I would not argue from this that all surveyors would necessarily have had as good an education as a Patrician may have done. As in all professions there would have been varying levels of skill and similarly varying degrees of interest in the 'finer' things in life. However there would usually have been at least a few senior (and probvbly not so senior) men in each unit who would have had access to some such educaton and wider classical knowledge to discuss such concepts just consider the lines of Virgil found at Vindolanda which probably were a test piece set for one of the officers children to copy out.

Edited December 15, 2009 by Melvadius

[John]

Would a Roman Soldier (Surveyor) working on Hadrians wall, have read Vergil, The Aeneid. ?

 

My reason for asking is that I am writing a paper about Hadrians Wall, and wanted to add background information.

Personally, I would think yes.

If he is intelligent enough to be a Serveyor, he would probably be interested in finer things.

 

Intelligence is not necessarily indicative of taste in the "arts". Interest in finer thing is truly an individual thing... so the answer is he could have. . It may depend on his education - formal or informal, the station of his family or even his place of origin. In any case, books were a relative luxury, hand printed, bound or rolled, etc - not as much as compared to the middle ages when they were truly scarce, but still uncommon for the average Roman.

 

Regardless, a fair case could be made for having exposure to such works without any great stretching of reality.

 

Thank you for your reply to my question, it has been a big help.