Last night I gave the first performance in my “show” tour, the Secret Histories of Rome. It was in Shrewsbury, where I grew up. In some ways that makes for a comfortable landing – and several women who had been in my class at school, and whom I hadn’t seen for more than fifty years, were in the audience and said hello afterwards (thank you all!). But at the same time, you feel even more of an obligation to do well in front of the home team, including the teachers at your old school etc. (A friend of mine once confessed that when her old university Director of Studies used to phone, decades on, she would stand up, as if on autopilot, going back to being a student in her head – that’s a bit how it was for me.)
It’s also strange visiting a town you used to know so well and is still instantly recognizable (as well as being the site of many past indiscretions) – but has also changed almost unbelievably. It has a proper theatre for a start. I was giving my show in the wonderful Theatre Severn. In my day the only venues were the Music Hall, now the Museum, and a large shed that had been erected in the garden of the local Arts Centre, which I think is no more). The performance spaces (plus café, bars etc) of Theatre Severn would have been beyond my wildest dreams in the 1960s.
For me, though, it was also a chance to explore the Romans in Shropshire again, so I could include some local examples in my show. The Roman town of Wroxeter (Viriconium) was one of the first places I did any real archaeology. And, in a slightly nerdy way, I used to hang out from time to time in the old town Museum (then housed in a Tudor house, Rowley’s House, near the bus station – so a good place to kill time, waiting for a bus). It was, and is in its new location, a fantastic collection. (My advice is: go to Shropshire for some of the most vivid glimpses of the Romans in Britain).
I recalled that my favourite object there had always been the tombstone of a first-century-CE Roman squaddie, by the name of Titus Flaminius, who died at Wroxeter aged forty-five (a long way from his original home near Bologna, in North Italy). He is not much to look at. In fact, all that survives from the portrait on his tombstone are his military sandals; the rest is broken off (I guess that is part of his appeal). But there is also a rough and ready epitaph, part of which is put into the mouth the dead man: “I did my service, and now am here. Read this and be either more or less fortunate in your lifetime. The gods prohibit you from the wine-grape and water, when you enter Tartarus. Live honourably while your star grants you time for life.”
That kind of sentiment was a cliché even then. But, nevertheless, I was struck by the almost direct connection it seemed to offer with a voice from the deep past. And it was fun to use him (or at least his words and his sandals) as an opener last night. I never imagined, when I peered at him curiously more than fifty years ago, that I would one day be on stage speaking about him – in a theatre in Shrewsbury.
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