Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall

By Adrian Goldsworthy
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“In just four hours we learn everything we would ever need to know about Hadrian’s Wall and the Romans who built and maintained it. Much of that relies on archaeological evidence and learned conjecture, and a kind of academic sifting that this author performs with distinctive grace and authority and that Perkins voices with his own distinctive command. Author and narrator together evoke a now and a then—the wall as it is now, and what it tells us about life at the border of civilization two thousand years ago.”

AudioFile

Stretching eighty miles from coast to coast across northern England, Hadrian's Wall is the largest Roman artifact known today. It is commonly viewed as a defiant barrier, the end of the empire, a place where civilization stopped and barbarism began. In fact, the massive structure remains shrouded in mystery. Was the wall intended to keep out the Picts, who inhabited the North? Or was it merely a symbol of Roman power and wealth? What was life like for soldiers stationed along its expanse? How was the extraordinary structure built—with what technology, skills, and materials?

In Hadrian's Wall, Adrian Goldsworthy embarks on a historical and archeological investigation, sifting fact from legend while simultaneously situating the wall in the wider scene of Roman Britain. The result is a concise and enthralling history of a great architectural marvel of the ancient world.