With the ingenuity of a detective, Peter Connolly has brilliantly reconstructed the life of a Roman soldier, Tiberius Claudius Maximus, by using a vast array of archaeological material, including tombstones and Roman documents written on papyrus. This volume and its sequel The Cavalryman trace Maximus's career from the day he entered the Seventh Legion on the Danube frontier to the day he retired as a cavalry officer in Mesopotamia some 30 years later. Connolly calls on a vast array of archaeological material to provide a unique portrait of the life of an ordinary man who lived during an extraordinary period in Western history.