What did the Roman soldiers eat?
Vindolanda, the Roman settlement in Britain that the Blue Caesar team went to visit, has given us lots of information about what the Roman soldiers would have eaten. There were lots of clay tablets with amounts and types of food written into them – these were basically Roman shopping lists! The following tablet contained a list of food that was probably intended to feed the garrison … bruised beans, two modii, twenty chickens, a hundred apples, if you can find nice ones, a hundred or two hundred eggs, if they are for sale there at a fair price. … 8 sextarii of fish-sauce … a modius of olives … To … slave of Verecundus. The Roman Army consumed a healthy combination of simple high-energy food – they certainly needed it for all the marching they would have to do each day! Bread was their staple food and grain production was increased throughout Britain to meet the demand from the army. The bread would have been cooked in large ovens shaped like a bee-hive Drawing of an oven simi
