Rome did not hold Britain with Romans. By the second century the province was garrisoned in large part by auxiliaries — recruited at the edges of the empire and posted to its far end. Among them were Sarmatians: heavy cavalry from the steppe north of the Black Sea, a contingent of whom reached Britain in AD 175.
That was the subject the Greek-Scythian Society brought to AUXILIA in May 2023, its first appearance at Park in the Past. The Society's table carried reconstructed weapons of the steppe and of the Roman frontier, and the display traced how a cavalry tradition formed on the grasslands of what is now Ukraine and southern Russia came to be stationed on the Welsh border.
Over three days the exhibition drew a steady crowd — families, re-enactors, and a good number of children who had never handled a sword and left having done so.
