Hadrian's Wall

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  The main hall of the bathhouse outside Chesters fort. Closest is the rear of the furnace room. Situated outside the fort near the river, a bathhouse represented one of the most sophisticated pieces of engineering created by the Romans. It is a mark of the wealth of Roman society that they were able to devote this technology to making life more pleasant. Many auxiliaries came from rural communities, and it is unlikely that they had regular access to a bathhouse before joining the army.

  The vici outside forts offered inns where men could eat and drink, play board or dice games and gamble, and no doubt engage the services of prostitutes. In the civilian community around Housesteads, excavation has revealed loaded dice, traces of the forging of coins, and evidence of murder all within yards of the rampart of the fort. The murder victims were an ageing couple buried beneath the floor of one of the houses. Presumably, at the time they simply vanished, as their remains were only uncovered by archaeologists, and the same is true of the boy whose skeleton was discovered under the floor of a barrack block at Vindolanda.9

  No doubt, life on Hadrian’s Wall could be brutal and was often bawdy and rough, but we should not push this image too far, for this was a zone regulated by the army. A merchant who had been beaten by soldiers felt able to complain to a senior officer at Vindolanda, most likely the prefect, and clearly believed that this was worthwhile and might bring some form of recompense. Plenty of civilians were drawn to the area and made prosperous lives for themselves, and some discharged soldiers chose to stay close to where they had served. A man named Barates came from Palmyra (in modern Syria), an oasis city on the Silk Road, and was either a serving or former soldier, or perhaps a merchant supplying standards to the army. At some point he bought a slave woman named Regina—Queen or Queenie—a Briton from the Catuvellauni who lived north of the Thames. He freed her and married her, and when she died he set up an expensive monument depicting her sitting in a wicker chair and dressed as a proper Roman matron. The text is mainly in Latin, but at the bottom he had added in the curving script of his own Semitic dialect, ‘Regina, the freedwoman of Barates, alas.’10

  Tombstones testify to an ethnically diverse community, but also to familiar and natural human emotions, as people commemorated friends, husbands, wives, lovers, or comrades. Monuments to children are among the most poignant, such as those to a five-year-old girl with the somewhat Germanic name ‘Ahtela’; the six-year-old ‘very dear daughter’, Julia Materna; or ‘Ertola, properly called Vellibia, who lived most happily four years and sixty days,’ whose tombstone bears a childlike picture of her holding a ball. At South Shields, a father inscribed this memorial to his son: ‘Sacred to the spirits of the departed: Au… dus lived nine years, nine months; Lucius Arruntius Salvianus [erected this tombstone] to his deserving and most devoted son.’ The same site produced another monument to ‘Victor, a Moorish tribesman, aged 20, freedman of Numerianus, cavalryman in ala I Asturum, who most devotedly conducted him to his tomb’. The dead young man is depicted reclining at a feast, and it is impossible to know whether he was a fondly regarded servant or a lover.11

  Religion and ritual were everywhere in the ancient world, and many inscriptions are religious in nature, with altars dedicated to gods and goddesses from all over the empire. Especially common are the guardian deities of Rome itself, revered as part of the official annual rituals of the army and state. Substantial, well-carved altars dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus (best and greatest) often bear the names of a senior officer and his unit and may well have been dedicated at a formal parade. For instance, ‘To Jupiter, Best and Greatest, Lucius Cammius Maximus, prefect of cohors I Hispanorum equitata, willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow.’12

  Cutaway reconstruction of the praetorium, or commander’s house, at Housesteads in the second century AD. Apart from being built on a steep slope, this is typical of the houses occupied by the equestrian officers commanding auxiliary units. It is built in Mediterranean style around a central courtyard and provides accommodation not simply for the commanders but for their families and their wider household or slaves and freedmen. Parts of the house have underfloor heating, for instance, the small dining room in the left-hand corner. A larger dining room is shown in the top centre. On its left is a private bath. Roman houses had few rooms specifically designed for one function, which makes it difficult to identify many of the rooms in a house.

  Others are far more personal, although no less expensive. The mithraeum, or Temple to Mithras, at Carrawburgh gives an idea of the dark, cavern-like shrines where this eastern god was worshipped. Mithraism was a mystery religion, its devotees sworn to secrecy about its rites and initiated to ever more senior levels in a cult that stressed manly virtues. It appears to have had particular appeal to equestrian officers, and perhaps was a useful way to make connections with other men of a similar rank, as well as an emotionally satisfying experience. The inscriptions on the main altars from this temple have a formal tone similar to other dedications by equestrian commanders of auxiliary units. For instance: ‘To the invincible god Mithras Lucius Antonius Proculus, prefect of cohors I Batavorum Antoninianae willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow.’13

  Nearby is the shrine to the goddess Coventina (or sometimes Covventina) and the nymphs, a temple built around a natural spring. It has yielded a good number of inscriptions, but the cult remains hard to pin down, and opinion is divided over whether Coventina was already a local deity when the Romans arrived or was imported from one of the Celtic parts of the empire. Combining local gods and goddesses with Greco-Roman equivalents was fairly common, so that we have Vinotonus, the god of the hunt, renamed as Silvanus, and the related Cocidius, who was equated with Mars. The outpost fort at Bewcastle was called Fanum Cocidii and appears to have enclosed an existing place of worship for the local population, probably to allow the Romans to regulate tribal gatherings. In spite of the suppression of the Druidic cult by the Romans in the first century AD, there is little sign of a direct clash between belief systems in northern Britain. In most cases, local religions were not seen as incompatible with the culture and religion of the empire, because for polytheists the addition of new gods and goddesses presented few problems. The druids were a rare exception to this, partly because the Romans were disgusted by their practice of human sacrifice, and also because as a priesthood with authority beyond that of tribes and local leaders, they had the potential to unite Britons in opposition to Rome. As a consequence, the religion was outlawed, and its most sacred shrines destroyed when the Roman army raided the island of Mona (modern Anglesey) in AD 60. Such direct conflict with a religious group was rare, but that is not to say that Roman appropriation of native cults and shrines represented a mutual and willing coming together of cultures. The locals may well have ignored many of the Roman versions of their cults and may have been permitted to continue their traditional practices.14

  Close to Carrawburgh fort is the natural spring and temple to Covventina (or sometimes Coventina) and the nymphs. A large number of dedications and votive offerings have been found at the site, which drew worshippers from soldiers and the wider civilian community on the Wall. It is unclear whether a native cult already existed or Covventina was introduced by the Romans.

  There is little direct evidence for Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall until well into the fourth century AD, but this is generally true of Roman Britain and thus unsurprising. The early Christian church is hard to detect archaeologically, for it set up very few inscriptions, and it was not until much later that buildings recognisable as churches began to be built. It seems reasonable to assume that there were Christians as individuals and organised churches on the Wall as there were in most of the empire, at first on a small scale but gradually becoming more common. Once the Emperor Constantine adopted the new religion (306–337), Christians became considerably more visible as part of the wider community. There is evidence for a very large building that was quite probably a church outside the fort at Maryport on the Cumbrian coast in the later f
ourth century, and there may have been smaller churches at Vindolanda, Housesteads, and South Shields.

  Altars and temples can survive as tangible traces of beliefs and rituals, but many other aspects of daily life leave little or no archaeological trace. One of the most striking features of the Vindolanda tablets is the normality of garrison life and trade on Britain’s northern frontier, and especially the social life of unit commanders and their families: ‘Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present (?). Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him [?] their greetings. I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail.’

  If life was settled enough for such pleasantries a generation before Hadrian’s Wall, then it was surely at least as secure for much of the time after its construction, when far more troops were concentrated in the area. Equestrian officers and their wives were the most senior people living for years on end in the forts on the Wall or the outposts beyond it. The wife of one prefect at High Rochester, north of the Wall, was a senator’s daughter. She would have run their extensive household just as she would have done at home, managing slaves and freedmen, as well as overseeing the education and care of her own children. If comforts were a little less than in settled provinces, and certainly great public entertainments and festivals were rare events and smaller in scale, these women, like their husbands, were still living a generally familiar version of the lifestyle of their class. The same was true of the junior officers and their families, and of the soldiers and civilians in and around the forts. Life on Hadrian’s Wall was in most respects much like life in the rest of the Roman Empire—people wore similar clothes, adopted the same fashions, and no doubt told the same stories and sang the same songs as people elsewhere.

  Eight

  HOW HADRIAN’S WALL WORKED: UNDERSTANDING THE EVIDENCE

  HADRIAN’S WALL FORCED PEACEFUL TRAVELLERS to cross at either a milecastle in the initial design, or later at a fort or one of the small number of other gates. This permitted the Roman authorities to monitor everyone who came through the military zone, allowing them to refuse passage if they chose, and to levy a toll on those who did cross if this was felt appropriate. All of this mirrors the army’s supervision of movement in other frontier regions or sensitive areas, such as the routes to and from the ports on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. In the case of northern Britain, we cannot say how many civilians routinely crossed the Wall, who they were, or what business they had. When the Wall was abandoned and the Antonine Wall established instead, it is striking how much effort went into slighting the Vallum and making crossing-places over it, and also into removing gates at milecastles. This does suggest that there was enough traffic through the line of the Wall to make this all worthwhile, but it does not tell any more about who these travellers were or why they wanted to cross. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that the Romans would have gone to such lengths to build the Wall and to maintain and man it for the best part of three hundred years if its sole purpose was as a grand customs barrier.

  A small sample of the thousands of Roman shoes and boots found in excavations at Vindolanda. Of various types, some for indoor and some for outdoor use, they conform to fashions seen throughout the Roman empire. Many, such as the one in the centre of the front row, were designed to show the colour of the wearer’s socks or stockings. Unlike most people in the Middle Ages, even ordinary soldiers and their families possessed more than one pair of shoes at a time.

  The presence of so many soldiers—perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 in the early third century and possibly half that number or even less by the early fourth century—makes it clear that there was a perceived and serious military threat, which meant that Hadrian’s Wall was re-commissioned after the decision to abandon the Antonine Wall. There would have been no need to do this had the Wall been simply the vanity project or grand architectural statement of Hadrian. Yet the Roman army was designed for mobile warfare and not static defence. Its doctrine was aggressive, both at the strategic and tactical levels, relying on its superior command and control, discipline, training, and equipment to give it an advantage over all opponents, and especially a tribal army consisting of a small number of semi-professional warriors backed by a mass of enthusiastic but untrained and undisciplined tribesmen. The larger a tribal army became, the harder it was for its leaders to control and manoeuvre it, magnifying all of the Romans’ advantages, so that often small Roman columns were able to defeat numerically far larger enemy armies.

  In all its phases, Hadrian’s Wall was designed to allow the Roman army ready access across its line. By the third century, more than one-fourth of the soldiers stationed in or near the Wall were cavalrymen, with three ordinary alae and a larger, elite milliary ala, the ala Petriana at Stanwix, as well as the horsemen in the mixed cohorts and some irregulars. Such a strong force of good-quality cavalrymen allowed the army to patrol far in advance of the Wall, and even well beyond its outpost forts. They acted as a reminder of Roman strength and of the army’s long reach, while providing intelligence of the mood of the local tribes and leaders. More information came from allies, spies, and informers. Diplomatic activity was equally vital, whether to ensure goodwill through payment of subsidies to native leaders, or in meetings that allowed Roman representatives to gauge chieftains’ moods and ask about their neighbours. On other frontiers we hear of centurions sitting in at tribal councils, and the Vindolanda tablets mention men with the title of centurio regionarius, who probably were responsible for dealings with the locals in a set area.

  Major wars were rare, and through all these sources of information the army hoped to have plenty of warning when they were brewing. If more urgent diplomacy, threats, and bribes then failed to deal with the situation, the army mustered one or more columns from the troops available and marched out to confront and defeat any enemies in the open. Far more often than not, this was successful. Problems arose only if the enemy proved stronger and more skilful than expected, or—and this was a bigger risk—the garrisons of the Wall zone were depleted, over-stretched, under-trained, or badly led. Then there was a risk of defeat and ignominious retreat.

  Hadrian’s Wall was not designed to withstand attack by a large and determined hostile army, for it was too long for the defenders to be strong at every point. Given that it was most likely to be attacked when its garrisons were weaker than usual and incapable of defeating the enemy well in advance of the Wall, this problem of a defending force stretched out too thinly to defend such an extensive position only became worse. A strong attacking force would be able to overwhelm the defences at a given point and seize one of the gateways. The blocking up of many milecastle gateways forced attackers towards the forts or major crossings, which were better protected, but since any trouble was likely to occur at a time of weakness, this was not in itself always enough to prevent their capture. Hadrian’s Wall would not stop a strong enemy force, but it would slow it down. It took time and perhaps casualties to seize a crossing, and then more time to pass through gateways and cross the Vallum.

  These delays provided the Romans with more time to recover and to bring troops from elsewhere in the province—or from the rest of the empire—so that eventually they had a strong enough force to defeat the enemy in open battle. How long this took depended on the wider situation, and at times of military crisis on other frontiers, and even more during the frequent civil wars of the third and fourth centuries, it might be many months or years before an effective military response was possible.

  Most of the time, the Romans were sufficiently strong that the Wall and its garrison, combined with an active diplomatic presence farther north, either deterred major attacks or dealt with them effectively in the field. Smaller-scale aggression was a different matter, and when we consider this, the design of the Wall
makes a good deal more sense. Raiding was common in most Iron Age societies and was the most frequent type of warfare. The communities north of Hadrian’s Wall were loosely organised, and a treaty with a tribe did not automatically bind all chieftains or individuals within the group to keep the peace. A successful raid brought profit from plunder—whether goods, livestock, or captives as slaves—as well as glory, demonstrating the might of a leader and his followers.

  Hadrian’s Wall was a barrier to unauthorised crossing, while its garrison provided substantial numbers of soldiers, many of them mounted, to hunt down and engage any raiding band. In normal circumstances it would be just a matter of time before attackers were intercepted. The Wall helped to give the Romans the time to respond. Even before an attack, it made it much harder for spies to cross and find suitable targets for the raid. On other frontiers, many tribes were only allowed to attend a few markets held on or near the frontiers, and it was a privilege and mark of trust to be permitted to travel more widely within the empire. Without prior information on where to find farms, villas, temples, or other sources of spoils, raiders had to spend time during the attack finding what they wanted.

  Getting across Hadrian’s Wall was not easy, as the ditch, obstacles, and the lay of the land slowed down attackers. The Wall itself might be climbed by men, but it blocked the path for horses, restricting mobility on the other side. From the start there was the risk of being spotted by patrols north of the Wall, and even more while trying to get across it. Large bands were inevitably more visible. A handful of men might sneak across, but if they were seen, even the small detachment at a turret or a few men patrolling the Wall itself (assuming there was indeed a walkway), could delay and inflict casualties on them. After the Wall, there was the Vallum to cross, bringing more delay and even greater chance of being observed. Bigger bands might fight their way across, overwhelming the men at a milecastle and crossing there, but this was hard to do without raising the alarm.