Canada’s Legion magazine, which we hasten to add for non-Canadians is addressed not to devils but to members of the Royal Canadian Legion dedicated to our veterans, announces with excitement that “Archeologists using laser technology have discovered a 2,000-year-old Roman military camp high in the Swiss Alps, uncovering a treasure trove of fortifications and artifacts, including arrowheads, slingshots and lead sling bullets bearing the stamp of the Roman 3rd Legion.” See, history is cool, huh? Especially as “The site was found 2,200 metres up in the Colm la Runga corridor of Switzerland’s Oberhalbstein Alps near the Italian border.” An area currently, uh, frozen over according to Google Maps.

Military history fans are a dedicated lot. Which we admire although it means that if you venture onto their terrain, even a minor mistake will call down a hail of rhetorical missiles that has you longing only to be targeted by, say, Balearic slingers. (This joke possibly illustrating the point.) And this camp has them in a lather because they’ve known there was this battle involving the 3^rd, 10^th and 12^th legions (sorry, III, X and XII) and some locals at Crap-Ses in 15 BC when Augustus ordered the former soldiers to clear out the latter rowdies and secure some key trade routes.

According to Legion:

“Switzerland is dotted with columns, villas, amphitheatres and other remains of ancient settlements dating to Roman times. But no battlefields had been identified before the Crap-Ses site was discovered in the idyllic mountain meadow where researchers now believe the Roman occupation of Switzerland may have begun.”

Now it seems, according to a statement from the Canton of Graubünden that:

“the advance of the Roman armed forces can now be precisely traced over several dozen kilometres.”

Including swords, shield fragments, and lots of hobnails indicating places where things were especially fierce, plus yes “lozenge-shaped lead slingshot bullets” suggesting in some detail a pattern of bombardment followed by hand-to-hand slaying activities.

Clearing out all these Swiss Suanetes and suchlike took repeated efforts, which is the sort of thing the Romans specialized in. And so do these researchers, who’ve been at it here since 2021, unearthing thousands of artefacts and now this camp:

“located in a remote southeast corner of Switzerland on what would have been a strategic position on Colm la Runga, providing its occupants with a panoramic view of the surrounding valleys.”

Now Google Earth does the same for us. And we can’t help noticing that it looks like pretty forbidding, snowy terrain. So the question of why you’d want such a thing brings us, like a legion trudging forward relentlessly, to what excites us about the story. Namely that it is more evidence of a Roman Warm Period in which the Alps, far from being the snowy scenery best seen from afar of the Little Ice Age, were the sort of place some guy from North Africa would think suitable for elephants.

The Roman Empire, like the British, was the sort of thing you’d throw rocks at and resent. And then you’d kind of like the outcome:

“Under the Pax Romana, the area was integrated into the thriving empire, and its population assimilated into the wider Gallo-Roman culture by the 2nd century AD. The Romans enlisted the native aristocracy in local government, built a network of roads connecting their newly established colonial cities, and portioned the area off among the Roman provinces.”

Alas, it didn’t last. As the piece wraps up:

“Roman civilization began to withdraw from Swiss territory in the 3rd century AD. But Roman control did not disappear until the mid-5th century, after which Germanic peoples began to occupy the region.”

Say, was that during the Dark Ages cold period? Or did Michael Mann wipe that one out in a sudden raid, leaving only some battered and broken proxies behind?