What did the Romans ever give Scotland? Heated floors, flashy sandals, sun gods – and a lot of nails

From steamy bathhouses to altars to Sol the sun god and leather shoes that still survive to this day, an eye-opening new exhibition chronicles Scotland under the Romans (before they fled)Inveresk is a handsome village near Edinburgh that sits above a curve of the little river Esk, not far from the mighty Firth of Forth. It is full of elegant 18th-century houses and an attractive kirk, dated 1805. To the casual observer, there is absolutely nothing Roman about it.And yet, in 2010, when the local cricket pavilion was being rebuilt, an extraordinary find was made – two altars made of local sandstone, lying on their sides, evidently deliberately buried in the Roman era, dedicated to the gods Mithras and Sol. They had been made in the 140s CE as part of a mithraeum, a temple devoted to the worship of Mithras, a cult dependent on secret ritual and complex initiation ceremonies, much beloved by the Roman military. Carved from sandstone quarried nearby, the altars were impressive in scale an