The Wall

by Alistair Moffat

  Vindolanda was enlarged to accommodate a double-strength cohort, but Army Command North, in the legionary fortress at York, sent orders for the infantry of the I Tungrians to move out and be replaced by the part-mounted Batavians. From this time onwards the volume of letters and lists increases markedly, and they paint a vivid picture of what garrison life was like in the White Fort.

  The day began with a morning muster when a roll call was taken and duty rosters read out. At Vindolanda both a list of these duties and the names of the men who worked at specialist tasks has been found. One morning, two thousand years ago, a centurion or his second-in-command, the optio, barked out that detachments were to be assigned to building work at the new bath house (recently discovered outside the south wall), making shoes, collecting lead and rubble, working in the lime and clay pits, and carrying out general plastering and building work. If it was raining and cold, the immunes, the men with inside clerking jobs, might have smiled a sly smile.

  Another list detailed the regiment’s specialists. Because it was a part-mounted outfit, the IX Batavians had two veterinarii, who looked after their ponies, the large herd of oxen and all the other livestock. Horses were particularly valuable and, with mounts for 240 cavalry troopers and a reserve of remounts to cope with, the vets will have been busy.

  ROMAN WOAD

  Julius Caesar and other Roman commentators noted the British habit of wearing tattoos and decorating their bodies with paint. But the Romans did it too, albeit more discreetly. It seems that soldiers were allowed to wear a legionary tattoo once they had completed some sort of test, perhaps an initiation. Some auxiliary regiments did the same thing. In his fourth-century treatise ‘The Epitome of Military Science’, Vegetius wrote that the tattoo was earned by a physical test, perhaps one concerned with endurance. The tattoo may have been an eagle and, after discharge, it was a handy proof of military service.

  Horsemanship was clearly premiated amongst the Batavians, and some Vindolanda correspondence leads to insight on this. Letter-writing appears also to have been an important business, and much valued. Here is Chrauttius complaining that Veldeius has not been keeping up:

  And I ask you, brother Veldeius – I am surprised that you have not written anything back to me for such a long time – whether you have heard anything from our kinsmen, or about Quotus – in which unit he is – and you are to greet him in my own words – and Virilis the vet. You are to ask him whether you may send through one of our people the shears which he promised me for a price. And I ask you, brother Virilis, that you greet me from sister Thuttena and write back to us about Velbuteius, how he is. I wish you may be very happy. Farewell.

  The address on the back of the letter is London, and Veldeius appears to have been a groom on the Governor of Britannia’s general staff. The Tungrian strength report showed 46 men on secondment in London; the practice of drawing men from the northern frontier to serve in the Governor’s bodyguard was not uncommon.

  When the Governor visited Vindolanda in 105, it seems that Veldeius was in his retinue, and that he brought Chrauttius’ complaining letter with him. Once again written sources link with archaeology to produce a rich picture of life in the fort. Preserved in the black mud, a piece of leather was found with Veldeius’ name stamped on it. Perhaps it was an offcut from a tanned hide he had bought and brought to a saddler to have some piece of tack made. A chamfron, a beautifully worked mask worn to protect the heads of cavalry ponies (but in reality used mainly in parade-ground displays) was also discovered. It belonged to Veldeius, and if it was made for his own horse, then he owned a beauty. The chamfron best fits a pure-bred Arab mare, a big horse for its type, standing more than fifteen hands high.

  The vets at Vindolanda will have seen many fancy horses, but their main concern was with the shaggy little ponies grazing in the regimental paddocks, the cavalry mounts. Most would have been smaller than Veldeius’ Arab, and much more strong-boned and chunky. Their brood mares must have interbred with local native stallions to refresh their bloodlines. Native hill-ponies were hardy and well used to the uncertain ground and the wet and windy conditions which often obtained. The Vindolanda lists and letters have maddeningly little to say about the people who rode them, the native British, and when one Roman observer sniffs at their poor military prowess, he focuses as much on their ponies:

  the Brittones, rather many of them cavalrymen, are naked [perhaps meaning ‘without body-armour’]. The cavalrymen do not use swords, nor do the Brittunculi mount to throw javelins.

  The most revealing aspect of this fascinating passage is perhaps the least suprising. As has been noted, Brittunculi is a dismissive diminutive meaning something like ‘pathetic little Brits’. Invaders and colonists always look down on the natives they have conquered, and Brittunculi could not have been worse than many names conferred by the British Empire – wogs, niggers, kaffirs, fuzzie-wuzzies are even more offensive.

  The rather many cavalry of native hosts is observed elsewhere on the frontier and the society appears also to have been a horse-based one. But it sounds as though the pathetic Brits not only fought on horseback but, as seems to have been the case in the north and at Mons Graupius, also sometimes used their ponies for speed and mobility, dismounting to throw javelins, fire arrows or use sabres and shields. The memorandum mentioning the Brittunculi may have been a disparaging comment on raw British recruits who needed licking into shape. But the date is early, and training local warriors in advanced military methods seems a little risky, even if they were to be posted elsewhere. British regiments turned up on the Rhine frontier in the late first century AD and into the second century.

  The morning roll call and duty roster will have held no surprises for some of the men. In peace-time they did the same things every day. Candidus looked after the piggery, making sure farrowing sows did not squash their litters (or indeed eat them). And then once they had been weaned, he found them safe access to the delights of the woodland surrounding the fort. The swineherd was an important man. Archaeologists have found enough bones to know that the garrison was very fond of pork. Bacon and ham was cured and kept well through the hungry winter months.

  Oxherds are also noted on the rosters. These men, who looked after the feeding and safety of 200 oxen, probably lived in shielings outside the fort so that they could be near the 100 or so acres needed to keep the beasts fit and strong. At one point, a supply of food is sent to the wood to feed the men and keep them in good condition.

  Condition, or well-being, could also be found at the bath house, which had been built by a work-party. Archaeology has discovered something which may have caused the workmen to shout and shoo. The caldarium and laconicum, the hot rooms, were heated by a hypocaust, a system which worked on the principle of warm air circulating under the floor. This needed a series of supports made from tiles. They could stand the heat and also allowed more precision in holding up a flat floor. When the workmen made the tiles from puddled clay, they laid them out on the grass to dry off before being fired in a kiln. It was at that stage the shouting and shooing took place. Several tiles have been found with clear animal paw and hoofprints on them. While they dried on the grass, dogs, cats, cows, pigs and either sheep or goats, or both, stepped on them. Perhaps no one was around to do any shooing.

  Other skilled workers went about their tasks on what must have been a daily basis when they were not soldiering. Only one cartwright, Tullio, is mentioned, but he probably had charge of a workshop of several men. Oxcarts were vital to the running of the fort, and soldiers were careful with them:

  The hides which you write are at Cataractonium [Catterick] – write that they be given to me – and the wagon you write about – and write to me what is with that wagon. I would have collected them already – except that I did not care to wear out the baggage animals while the roads are bad.

  Bad Roman roads! Another revelation. Despite the above writer’s consideration, carts often broke down, and Vindolanda’s cartwrights will have been busy.
Evidence of trade with a man who sounds like a local supplier suggests a large number of wagons were used by the fort. Metto wrote the following to Advectus:

  I have sent you goatskins . . . sent through Saco . . . 34 wheel-hubs; 38 cart axles, one of them turned on a lathe; 300 spokes.

  Other traders also supplied Vindolanda with hides. The regimental cobblers, the sutores, made hob-nailed boots, not sandals, for the soldiers, and there are several mentions of small numbers of nails being bought to make do-it-yourself repairs. Holes were deliberately punched through the uppers to allow water to squelch out. Boots were designed to protect the feet from sharp stones and worse, but not to keep them dry. Waterproof footwear for soldiers is a recent invention. The Highland army which crossed Hadrian’s Wall in 1746 wore very similar shoes. The Gaels called them brogan. Changed only a little into brogues, the principal design feature of these modern shoes is the tooling on the uppers which resembles half-cut holes.

  The duty roster included other roles such as the scutarius, or shield-maker, the venetus, the butcher, and of course, most important, the cervesarius, the brewer. The roster itself had probably been compiled by the men with the cushiest number of all, and their boss was known as the cornicularius, the chief pen-pusher. Records were kept in the principia, the headquarters building in the centre of the fort, and files were copied in duplicate and sometimes triplicate before being stored in capsae, document boxes. It is astonishing how few files have survived. From the beginning of the reign of Augustus in 31 BC to the beginning of Diocletian’s in AD 284, one historian has calculated that the pen-pushers generated about 225 million records of Roman army pay, but only three have been found in reasonable condition. Clerking may have been dull, but it was also dry and warm, a lot better than road-building and ditch-digging, and a lot better paid.

  CARRYING COALS TO HOUSESTEADS

  Carbo marinus, or sea-coal, was first picked up on Northumberland and Durham beaches a very long time ago. Prehistoric peoples probably burned it. The Romans certainly did. Coal holes have been found at both Housesteads and Vindolanda, but not for sea-coal; this sort came straight out of the ground. Along the banks of the Tyne and in isolated pockets inland, there were outcrops known as coal-heughs and, until the late Middle Ages, miners could get at them easily. Water transport for such a bulk item was handy, and barges may have brought it up the Tyne as far as Corbridge. Coal was probably used for heating up the bath houses. Until the nineteenth century there was a resistance to using coal for cooking. The fumes and gases which sometimes hissed out of big lumps persuaded people to use wood to cook on.

  Training was considered essential to maintain the physical fitness of all soldiers, and at Vindolanda the centurions organised it. It must have been difficult to dodge. Every ten days a route march in full kit was undertaken and the required rate was at least three miles an hour. More elaborate manoeuvres were planned and executed, temporary marching camps dug in remote locations and mock attacks mounted. Hadrian approved heartily of these as means of maintaining discipline and avoiding the ever-present danger of mutiny. But Army Command North at York had to approve manoeuvres in advance in case native kings misread them as genuine acts of warfare.

  Vindolanda was kept busy – perhaps precisely because, in all the lists and letters, there is not one solitary reference to war or fighting. All along the frontier, the Roman garrison spent 99 per cent of its time doing something else. Idle soldiers can become undisciplined and dangerous, and their commanders kept them almost neurotically at work.

  Building seems to have been a near-constant activity. Until 122 and the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, Vindolanda and the other Stanegate forts were made from timber. Posts rammed and chocked directly into the ground rotted quickly and that meant that the life of such buildings was no more than eight to ten years. Even the stockaded rampart could weaken, and soldiers packed a bank of earth and rubble against the inside to add strength and also allow rapid access to the rampart top in the event of a surprise attack. Later, ovens and kilns were dug into the back of this internal mound. Needing fiercely hot fires to be efficient, both could also be dangerous if let out of control, and their location at the rampart was safer than in the body of the fort. Ovens and kilns are also found in gatehouses. There is a particularly well-preserved example at Birdoswald Fort. It will have had the welcome effect of keeping sentries warm on long watches through winter nights. At Housesteads their famous latrines were also dug into the rampart bank, well away from the barracks block, but not for reasons of safety.

  THE LAST ROMAN BUILDING

  Under the floor of Hexham Abbey, surely one of the most beautiful and atmospheric churches in Britain, lies a remarkable structure. The crypt is all that remains of St Wilfrid’s seventh-century foundation. Before work began, a huge hole was dug and a small chapel built in it. Every stone came from the ruined Roman town at Corbridge. Still legible is an inscription dating from the visit of the Emperor Septimius Severus in 208. Unfortunately this stone has been removed now and put in the nave. In situ is a fragment of a pagan altar to Maponus Apollo holding up a passageway. Much of the Roman masonry has been broached so that render would stick to it. A leaf and berry design from the frieze around the walls of a fine house at Corbridge is visible in several places. It probably still had its roof on when Wilfrid’s masons robbed out the stone. The tiny chapel housed a shrine to St Andrew. Wilfrid had been to Rome, bought a relic of one of the disciples and brought it back to Northumberland. A direct link with Christ, it would have been visited by many pilgrims, and its planting under the church sanctified the ground it was built on. The seventh-century mason work is crude, some of the robbed stones are upside down, but it is, after a fashion, a complete Roman building.

  In some ways the timber forts were like more solid versions of marching camps, not designed to be defended like medieval castles, but to slow down an attack. The Romans’ instinct to get out into the open to fight is well illustrated at the cavalry fort at Chesters, near Chollerford. It abuts Hadrian’s Wall but has three of its four gateways to the north of it – so that squadrons of troopers could gallop out and get at an attacking force quickly. At Ambleside in the Lake District, an exception was recorded. The tombstone of Flavius Romanus, a regimental clerk, notes that he had been killed by the enemy inside the fort.

  As the frontier settled on the line of what was to become the Wall, and the province of Britannia quietened, the Romans began to rebuild their fortresses in stone. The garrison consolidated into a permanent army of occupation. By AD 122 many auxiliary regiments had been in Britain for eighty years. As soldiers completed twenty-five years of service and were discharged as Roman citizens, some will have returned to Batavia and Tungria with their savings, their bronze diplomas and their stories. Others undoubtedly stayed. As Kipling judged in ‘The Roman Centurion’s Song’, many had known no other place as home. Some will have formed lasting relationships with local women, and although army regulations forbad marriage while in service, they will have settled into a common law arrangement. A blind eye was usually turned. What happened to these men? Where did they go after all those years in the army?

  Not far, is the likely answer. When Tacitus wrote of smart dinner parties and the subtle process of Romanisation, he was describing the subversion of the native aristocracy. With ordinary soldiers who decided to stay in Britannia, the process took a different route. Having spent most of their adult lives in the army, they were the living agents of Romanisation, at least in the north. Those who married local women and had children by them created a slim but significant stratum of society with a direct stake in developing a more Roman culture. Enfranchised by marriage to a veteran, citizen-families settled in Britannia, and it is likely that those who left their posts in the frontier forts moved only a short distance, going to live outside the gates rather than inside them.

  THE ROMAN CENTURION’S SONG

  British admiration for the Roman Empire springs partly from a recent memory of our own impe
rial centuries. One of the great bards of the British Empire may have been recalling stories of old India hands who had sailed home to an uncomfortable retirement in the Home Counties, far from the country they had come to love. In this moving poem, Rudyard Kipling cleverly reverses the compass:

  Legate, I had the news last night – my cohort ordered home,

  By ship to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.

  I’ve marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:

  Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go!

  I’ve served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall,

  I have none other home than this, not any life at all.

  Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near,

  That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.

  Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done,

  Here where my dearest dead are laid – my wife – my wife and son;

  Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love,

  Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove?

  . . .

  Legate, I come to you in tears – My cohort ordered home!

  I’ve served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome?

  Here is my heart, my soul, my mind – the only life I know.

  I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!