cover

Beginnings英国起源(17) - 英语听力

Beginnings英国起源(17)-英语听力.mp3
So the purpose of these forts became not to preven...
So the purpose of these forts became not to prevent people going to and fro so much as to control and observe them. The forts in particular, became a place where a kind of customs scam was imposed on those trying to do business on one side or the other. So maybe it's better to think of the wall not so much as a fence but rather as a spine around which control of northern Britain toughened, hardened and prospered. If we can now imagine Hadrian's Wall as not such a bad posting, it's because our sense of what life was like at the time has been transformed by one of the most astonishing finds of recent archaeology - the so-called Vindolanda Tablets. They're scraps of Roman correspondence, jottings, scribblings and drafts of letters thrown away as rubbish by their authors almost 2,000 years ago. For 25 years, archaeologists here have been digging up these letters, 1,300 of them, from seven metres below the ground. Up they've come, lovingly separated from dirt, debris and each other and painstakingly deciphered. At once poignantly fragile and miraculously enduring, the voices of the Roman frontier in the windy North Country, loud, clear and strong.


所以这些堡垒的作用就变为并非用于阻止人们穿行,而更大程度上起到了监控作用。这些堡垒的作用就成了对往来其间的商人,收取赋税的关卡。与其说这是防护墙,不如说是一条中枢脊柱,控制着顽强、坚韧与繁荣的不列颠北部。如果我们难以理解哈德良长城的存在不无裨益,则都因我们对于那个世界的认知因一项最近惊人的考古发现所改观。这就是被称为文都拉多便签的发现,这些是两千年前罗马人的通信札记涂鸦以及一些被丢弃无用的草稿。历时二十五年这里的考古学家不断挖掘这些信件,自七米的地下挖掘出一千三百件文物。文物出土之后,他们悉心将泥土残骸以及粘连的文物剥离,并煞费苦心地破译字符,一时间,这脆弱得可怜的碎片竟成不朽。罗马先驱在北国风声中的声音,响亮、清晰、掷地有声。
展开