Once in a while, I get tempted by a book on my shelves, and totally throw over what I am currently reading in the interest of it.

My evenings, recently, have been spent knitting on the Hourglass pullover (I'm up to the increases for the bust!) and reading a book on Roman-occupied Britain.

It's one of those lovely "intelligent layperson history" books - I've seen others in a similar style. It's sort of a squarish hardcover, it has those broad margins on each page, and it has photographs and drawings. (Some of the photographs are aerial shots of, say, the remains of a hill-fort. The drawings tend to be the archaeologists' interpretation of a building lay-out). It's "veddy" British in tone, but even that makes it appealing to me - it's like sitting down over tea with someone who's actually taken part in the excavations and whatnot and having him tell you his interpretations of the information.

I enjoy learning about "ancient" history. For some reason, it's more interesting to me when it's mainly archaeological, when there are few or no written records (there are some of the Roman military records, and some of the writings, and a few, I guess, letters. But it's not like writing about life in WWI era France, where you'd have a hundred diaries and tons of letters to work with). I like the more speculative nature of things. I also find ancient Rome fascinating - the technology they had! The fact that they had indoor plumbing, and bathing was common, and that it was largely an urban society...and all of that fell apart over time, either because of a aristocratic class that largely ignored the commoners, or because of lead in the wine, or because of barbarians invading from elsewhere, or because the empire became too big to maintain (depending on whose interpretation you read). And it was many years before some of that stuff was rediscovered and used again.

(There was also an article in the most recent National Geographic about the Underground of Rome - where whenever you dug the foundation for an extension on your house, or a new subway line was to be built, there was a better than even chance of stumbling upon a basilica or an old dwelling or a storehouse from Roman times. Fascinating. Perhaps it's because I live in a very recently-settled region of a young country - it is HIGHLY unusual for things where I live to date from before 1900 - but I just find it amazing that you could be digging in your backyard and come across a cultural artifact from 2000 years ago.)

I'm also interested by the whole "outpost" idea of the Romans in Britain - Hadrian's wall and all that. That they were in a very different land - a much colder land, I suppose, and one with very different people in it.

I find myself thinking about things throughout the day, wondering about the Belgae or Boadicea (spelt Boudicca in this book but I still hear "Boadicea" in my head when I read the name) and contemplating what a Roman centurion's reaction would be to his first sight of a northern Britian warrior - naked, smeared with woad, with lime in his hair to make it stand up in quills...would the centurion have been intimidated? Would he have thought "someone going out into battle with his Little Maximus* hanging out like that is just crazy stupid," or what?

(*probably not the right term. I don't know enough Latin to have even a clue of what a centurion would have referred to another man's pintle as.)

I read somewhere that people learn most willingly when they're not compelled to do it - the information I'm absorbing from this book has no direct bearing on my life, but I enjoy it. (Well, there's a bit more emphasis on *battle* and not enough emphasis on how ordinary people lived than I would like - and I'm still finding myself confused a bit by the way the Roman military system was set up and how legions were names). But it's fun to read - to read about a world so different from my own, and yet, that has caused some ripples that even come down vaguely to us today.

And again - I think this is where the Strict Utilitarians lose out. I knew someone who only read books if he thought the information contained therein could somehow be used to further his career. I am not going to enrich myself one single cent by knowing and caring about Hadrian's Wall or the Antonine wall or the founding of Colchester or Wroxeter, but it's something that enriches me all the same.