Horrifying Facts about the Roman Army (with historical evidence) | BBC Timestamp

Regimented grids of streets, smelling foreign foods, seeing the new clothes. It must have been quite literally like walking into an alien world. But Silchester and the Roman-friendly pockets of South East England were rare. Across most of Britain, the tribal traditions of the Celtic Iron Age continued unabated. Look at this slope. This is a rampart. Now, some British tribes may have bought into the Roman dream. But almost a century after Caesar, this giant fortress was still a proud symbol of Iron Age Celtic identity. This great hill fort was the focal point of tribal life for the Durodriges, a powerful Dorset tribe. Behind these massive ramparts was an obvious place of defence, a safe haven in time of war. But for a hundred years or more, there'd been relative peace in this part of Britain. By the middle of the first century AD, people were living far and wide in scattered settlements. This fort and others like it had become symbolic focal points, places in which to gather for storage, for trade, for ceremony and for worship. But in AD 43, almost 200 miles to the east in Kent, Roman troops landed once more, this time to go one better than Caesar and take all of Britain, to make it part of the empire under total Roman rule. Hod Hill and other hill forts like it were to see action once more. Studies of human remains reveal the outcome of the bloody battles for Dorset's Iron Age hill forts. They appear to have been stabbed. One person has got trauma to their hands. They may have actually tried to grab the weapon. And on this individual, this square aperture here was probably caused by a Roman spear. There are multiple chalk marks, so they were disfiguring these people. They're more than necessary to kill them and they're quite violent and aggressive injuries. It wasn't only male warriors who were on the receiving end of the Roman swords. We have one woman where she has a chalk mark to the back of her leg and then she has a further two big chalk marks to the back of her head and that's quite commonly seen in where people are trying to run away. As well as hand-to-hand combat, the full might of Rome was being launched in a wave of shock and awe. What we've got here is this embedded projector. So you can see that it's come in at a slight angle and has removed portions of the bone. These projectiles are actually fired. They're kind of like artillery weapons. If the sheer weight of numbers and military organisation weren't enough, the Roman army also brought a new machinery of war. This is your missile. This is the weapon. You might call it an arrow, we call it a bolt. Just weeks after landing, Rome had taken control of the south-east. But it wasn't until about a year later that they began their campaign for the Celtic heartlands of the west. Over the top. Can you imagine these things coming out of the sky? If you were the enemy, you wouldn't see them coming. And imagine a whole battery of these. What range are we talking about then with one of these? The ancient righteous tell us they could go something like 300 metres. This could go 300 metres? Yeah, which is way, way beyond what a bowman could do. From the surrounding area, the tribe's people gathered behind the ramparts lined with sharpened stakes. They faced a dreadful choice. Should they risk their identity and accept the so-called civilisation of the Roman Empire, or risk their lives and fight to retain their independence? But even the defences of the giant hill forts were no match for the Romans as its armies stormed into the south-west. Right, same guy. Yes. Third on the left. Third on the left, headshot. Yes! So if that was flesh and bone, that would have gone through and out the other side. Sticking out your backbone, yes. Wow.