Opening scene of Gladiator - for real

(Updating to embed CNN report, with actual opening scene of Gladiator)


It seems as though somebody has whipped out their history books and cottoned on that the Romans did send expeditions across the Rhine, most famously those led by third-century emperor Maximinus Thrax, who boasted about it by taking the name Germanicus Maximus.

Nevertheless, they're sticking to the earlier story that the battle site at Kalefeld is the "find of the century", tracing the progress of the battle through finds of arrow heads, ballista bolts, broken harness, horseshoes, sandal nails, and other odds and ends (including an army-issue axe), scattered over an area of one and a half kilometres by 500 metres (suggesting that a substantial column came under attack and fought off its ambushers). Gosh, exciting stuff. They also say that the 600 finds already turned up barely scratch the surface.
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Roman trouble-making in Germania libera

For those interested, a post on my more historical blog about Roman-German confrontations post-AD 9. From around 300 Roman weapons are to be found in Norway (says Sigrid Undset in Saga of Saints), so I'm a little surprised at the surprise that a century earlier there was now and then something of a Roman military presence in Germany beyond the imperial frontiers.

(Update here)
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