Roman Legion Symbols Found in Ancient Cave

[D B Campbell]

what's the difference?

This may exist entirely in my mind, Jona! I can see a difference between the once-only task of quarrying stone along the line of Hadrian's Wall to provide the necessary raw material -- a task in which the legionaries clearly took a pride, with their "ownership" inscriptions -- and the disagreeable task of mineral mining -- a task that seems to have been imposed on slaves and criminals, supervised by military units.

In the context of the Israeli find, I cannot imagine why the Roman army would have been involved; there would be no reason for legions to quarry stone here -- there is no nearby construction work -- and no reason for auxiliaries to be supervising mining -- there are no minerals in evidence. In fact, it looks more like the underground hideaways common during the Bar Kokhba revolt, but only the associated finds can help to prove this.

Does that sound sensible?