Hadrian's Wall
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AS USUAL, I MUST THANK my family members and friends, and especially Kevin Powell, who read drafts of this book and did a great deal to improve its clarity. This book draws on the work of many dedicated scholars of Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman army, including all those listed under Suggestions for Further Reading, and my understanding of the subject has been shaped by reading and talking to many of them. I am a historian, not an archaeologist, and most of my work has been concerned with the Roman army more generally rather than Hadrian’s Wall. Such is the enthusiasm of Wall scholars that they are always eager to discuss the subject and share their insights. I must particularly thank David Breeze and Ian Haynes, who took the time to read and comment in detail on this manuscript. Their contributions have made this a much better book, although any faults that remain are my own.
Throughout my work on this book, I kept in mind a comment of the late Brian Dobson, who wrote that ‘again and again as we strive to express some truth about the Wall we find that it has already been said, better and clearer.… If we ever imagine we glimpse some new truth about Hadrian’s Wall, it is simply because we stand on the shoulders of giants.’
ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY is an award-winning historian of the classical world. He is the author of numerous books about ancient Rome, including Caesar, How Rome Fell, Pax Romana, and Augustus. Goldsworthy lives in South Wales.
MORE ADVANCE PRAISE FOR HADRIAN’S WALL
“Adrian Goldsworthy has done it again! He has taken a well-known topic in Roman history and breathed new life into it. Goldsworthy has given us an easily-accessible study that takes the best and most up-to-date scholarship on the subject and has put it into an eminently readable narrative for the general public. If you can only own one book on Hadrian’s Wall, this is it.”
—Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
THE BEST SINGLE-VOLUME SURVEY OF Hadrian’s Wall remains David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, 4th ed. (London: Penguin UK, 2000). There are plenty of decent guides to the Hadrian’s Wall Path, but any serious visitor should also take David J. Breeze, J. Collingwood Bruce’s Handbook to the Roman Wall, 14th ed. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2006).
For those wishing to study the evidence and approaches to its interpretation in more detail, then Matthew F. A. Symonds and David J. P. Mason, eds., Frontiers of Knowledge: A Research Framework for Hadrian’s Wall, Part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, Vol. 1: Resource Assessment (Durham: Durham University, 2009) provides an excellent starting place. There are very good collections of papers in Paul T. Bidwell, ed., Understanding Hadrian’s Wall (South Shields: Arbeia Society, 2008); Paul T. Bidwell and Nick Hodgson, eds., The Roman Army in Northern England (South Shields: Arbeia Society, 2009); and Rob Collins and Matthew Symonds, eds., Breaking Down Boundaries: Hadrian’s Wall in the Twenty-first Century, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 93 (2013). Another good and insightful survey of the evidence comes in N. Hodgson, Hadrian’s Wall 1999–2009: A Summary of Excavation and Research Prepared for the Thirteenth Pilgrimage of Hadrian’s Wall, 8–14 August 2009 (Kendal: Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009). Those wishing to place the Wall in the context of Rome’s other frontiers would do well to look at David J. Breeze, The Frontiers of Imperial Rome (Leeds: Pen and Sword, 2011).
On more specific topics, Peter Hill, The Construction of Hadrian’s Wall (Stroud: Tempus, 2006) is the most accessible version of the analysis by an author who has revolutionised understanding of the practical aspects of building and maintaining Hadrian’s Wall. John Poulter, The Planning of Roman Roads and Walls in Northern Britain (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2010), similarly presents for the general reader his groundbreaking approach to understanding the process of laying out Hadrian’s Wall. Rob Collins, Hadrian’s Wall and the End of Empire: The Roman Frontier in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries (London: Routledge, 2012) is the most detailed examination of the later years of the Wall. G. B. D. Jones and D. J. Woolliscroft, Hadrian’s Wall from the Air (Stroud: Tempus, 2001) offers a fresh and well-illustrated perspective on the Wall and its sites. For the history of study of Hadrian’s Wall, see David J. Breeze, Hadrian’s Wall: A History of Archaeological Thought (Kendal: Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 2014), and William D. Shannon, whose Murus Ille Famosus (That Famous Wall): Depictions and Descriptions of Hadrian’s Wall Before Camden (Kendal: Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 2007) covers the Medieval and Renaissance periods in detail. On the Roman army in general, my own The Complete Roman Army (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003) and David J. Breeze, The Roman Army (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) offer introductions.
A good deal of research on the Wall is published in Archaeologia Aeliana (hereafter cited as AA), the journal of the Society of Antiquaries in Newcastle upon Tyne. Notable recent articles include:
Breeze, D. J. ‘Did Hadrian Design Hadrian’s Wall?’ AA, 5th Series, 38 (2009): 87–103.
. ‘The Vallum of Hadrian’s Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 44 (2015): 1–29.
, and P. Hill. ‘The Foundations of Hadrian’s Stone Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 42 (2013): 101–114.
Corby, M. ‘Hadrian’s Wall and the Defence of North Britain.’ AA, 5th Series, 39 (2010): 9–13.
Dobson, B. ‘The Function of Hadrian’s Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 14 (1986): 1–30.
Gillam, J. ‘The Frontier After Hadrian—a History of the Problem.’ AA, 5th Series, 2 (1974): 1–16.
Graafstal, E. ‘Hadrian’s Haste: A Priority Programme for the Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 41 (2012): 123–184.
Symonds, M. ‘The Construction Order of the Milecastles on Hadrian’s Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 34 (2005): 67–81.
Welfare, H. ‘Causeways, at Milecastles, Across the Ditch of Hadrian’s Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 28 (2000): 13–25.
. ‘Variation in the Form of the Ditch, and of Its Equivalents, on Hadrian’s Wall.’ AA, 5th Series, 33 (2004): 9–23.
This is a very short and incomplete list of the copious scholarship on Hadrian’s Wall, but these works in turn provide many references and should allow interested readers to delve more deeply into the subject.
The University of Newcastle runs a free online course about Hadrian’s Wall, and details may be found at www.futurelearn.com/courses/hadrians-wall.
Also of great interest is the Hadrianic Society, at www.hadrianicsociety.com.
APPENDIX:
THE KNOWN AND PROBABLE GARRISONS OF THE FORTS ON HADRIAN’S WALL (AFTER BREEZE AND DOBSON [2000])
Key:
C = ??
Ce = cohors equitata
CL = civium Latinorum (of Latin citizens)
CM = cohors milliaria
CR = civium romanorum (of Roman citizens)
eq. = equitata (mixed cohort)
mil. = Milliaria (double strength)
Table 3. The Known and Probable Garrisons of the Forts on Hadrian’s Wall. After David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, 4th ed. (London: Penguin UK, 2000).
CREDITS
xiii Hadrian’s Wall in the snow Clearview / Alamy Stock Photo
xvi Bust of Hadrian Heritage-Images / Museum of London / akg-images
3 Hadrian’s Wall scenic and Milecastle 39 Adrian Goldsworthy
6 Aerial of Housesteads fort robertharding / Alamy Stock Photo
12 Vindolanda tablets Heritage-Images / CM Dixon / akg-images
16 Map of Hadrian’s Wall Jeff Edwards
19 The Rudge Cup Tullie House Museum
22 Plan of Wallsend Jeff Edwards
26 Plan of Housesteads Jeff Edwards
32 Roman legionary, early second century © Graham Sumner
36 Turf Wall reconstruction Adrian Goldsworthy
39 Peel Gap turret Adrian Goldsworthy
44 Map of northern Britain Jeff Edwards
46 Roman auxiliary
© Graham Sumner
51 Painting of Vindolanda (Connolly) akg-images / Peter Connolly
59 Gateway at Milecastle37 Adrian Goldsworthy
63 Painting of Housesteads (Connolly) akg-images / Peter Connolly
64 Painting of Milecastle 37 (Connolly) akg-images / Peter Connolly
67 Reconstructed gateway South Shields Adrian Goldsworthy
70 Wall at Wallsend Adrian Goldsworthy
75 Barrack block at Housesteads Adrian Goldsworthy
79 Granary at Housesteads Adrian Goldsworthy
83 Barrack block at South Shields Adrian Goldsworthy
93 Principia painting (Connolly) akg-images / Peter Connolly
98 Painting of bathhouse (Connolly) akg-images / Peter Connolly
100 Chesters bathhouse Adrian Goldsworthy
103 Painting of praetorium (Connolly) akg-images / Peter Connolly
105 Covventina Altar Adrian Goldsworthy
110 Vindolanda shoes Holmes Garden Photos / Alamy Stock Photo
116 Painting of a Roman cavalryman © Graham Sumner
123 Birdoswald granary Adrian Goldsworthy
127 Painting of third-century soldiers © Graham Sumner
130 Painting of dominate soldiers © Graham Sumner
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906, quoted from Penguin Popular Classics [London: 1994]), p. 124.
2. Scriptores Historia Augusta, Hadrian 11.2; for Vallum Aelium, see Roger Tomlin, Britannia 35 (2004), pp. 344–345.
CHAPTER 1: BRITANNIA: OUTPOST OF EMPIRE
1. Cicero, Letters to Atticus 4.17.
2. Tacitus, Annals 1.11.
3. Horace, Odes 3.5.2–4 (Loeb translation, slightly modified); Strabo, Geography 2.5.8.
4. Alan K. Bowman and J. David Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing Tablets, Vol. 2 (London: British Museum, 1994), 154, line 23, and 164 for the Brittunculi; Anthony R. Birley, ‘A New Tombstone from Vindolanda’, Britannia 29 (1998), pp. 299–306.
5. For a good survey of the evidence for the peoples of the north, see Ian Armit, Celtic Scotland, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016).
CHAPTER 2: HADRIAN: THE MAN, THE EMPEROR, AND THE GRAND DESIGN
1. Historia Augusta, Hadrian 10.2–11.1.
CHAPTER 3: BUILDING AND MANNING THE WALL: LEGIONS AND AUXILIA
1. R. G. Collingwood, R. Wright, and R. Tomlin, eds., Roman Inscriptions in Britain (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), 1471 and 1475. Hereafter cited as RIB. This work is now available online at https: //romaninscriptionsofbritain.org.
CHAPTER 4: FRESH MINDS: ANTONINUS PIUS TO SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS
1. Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.43.4.
2. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.36, 8.5.
3. Dio 73.1.1, 8.2, 6 (Loeb translation).
4. Dio 73.9.1–4; Historia Augusta, Pertinax 3.5–10.
5. Dio 76.9.4 (Loeb translation). On coin hoards, see Fraser Hunter, ‘Denarius Hoards Beyond the Frontier: A Scottish Case Study’, in Ángel Morillo Cerdán, Norbert Hanel, and Esperanza Martín Hernández, eds., Limes XX: Estudios Sobre la Frontera Romana (Roman Frontier Studies), Vol. 1 (Madrid: Anejos de Gladius, 2009), pp. 1619–1630.
CHAPTER 5: THE ANATOMY OF HADRIAN’S WALL
1. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People 1.12.
CHAPTER 6: FORTS AND TOWNS: SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS
1. Some archaeologists now question whether we have exaggerated the extent to which the vicus outside an army camp was truly granted formal status as an independent community. Instead they use the phrase ‘extra-mural settlement’ for the area beyond the ramparts of a fort. In a general overview like this, it is impossible to cover this debate, and I have preferred to use vicus instead of the longer phrase.
2. On the Antonine Wall and in some other cases, such as Newstead, bathhouses were constructed inside forts, or at least inside an annex to the main fort, which was also protected by rampart and ditch. Sadly, in a book of this length, there is not space for a detailed comparison between Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall.
CHAPTER 7: LIFE ON THE WALL
1. Ammianus Marcellinus 27.2.11.
2. Alan K. Bowman and J. David Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing Tablets, Vol. 3 (London: British Museum, 2003), 574.
3. Robert O. Fink, Roman Military Records on Papyrus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 87, 99; B. F. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt, H. I. Bell et al., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London: Egyptian Exploration Society, 1894–), 39; R. Tomlin, ‘The Missing Lances, or Making the Machine Work’, in Adrian Goldsworthy and Ian Haynes, eds., The Roman Army as a Community, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 34 (1999), pp. 127–138, with M. P. Speidel, ‘The Missing Weapons at Carlisle’, Britannia 38 (2007), pp. 237–239, esp. 238–239 on the subarmales.
4. Bowman and Thomas, Vindolanda Tablets, Vol. 2, 154, 225.25.
5. M. P. Speidel, Emperor Hadrian’s Speeches to the African Army—a New Text (Mainz: RGZM, 2006), pp. 12–15.
6. Josephus, The Jewish War 3.73–76 (Loeb translation).
7. Bowman and Thomas, Vindolanda Tablets, Vol. 3, 628.
8. Bowman and Thomas, Vindolanda Tablets, Vol. 2, 301.
9. The skeletons at Housesteads were found at an early excavation and are no longer available for analysis, which means that we must register a degree of caution about the estimates of their age and gender, but the presence beneath the floor still makes murder the most likely explanation.
10. RIB 1065.
11. RIB 1062, 1064, 1180, 1181, 1182.
12. RIB 829 from Maryport.
13. RIB 1544.
14. RIB 1041 for Silvanus; for Cocidius, see 985–989, 993.
CHAPTER 8: HOW HADRIAN’S WALL WORKED: UNDERSTANDING THE EVIDENCE
1. RIB 1142.
CHAPTER 9: CHANGING TIMES AND THE END OF EMPIRE
1. Ammianus Marcellinus 20.1.1, 27.8.1–9.
2. Eugippius, The Life of St. Severinus 20.1–2.
3. Gildas, The Ruin of Britain 1.15–19; Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.12.
4. G. von Bülow, ‘Journey Through England and Scotland Made by Lupold von Wedel in the Years 1584 and 1585’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9 (1894), p. 239. I am very grateful to Christopher Sparey-Green for bringing this reference to my attention.
INDEX
accounting, 89–90
aedes, 77
Aelius, xvii
See also Hadrian, Emperor
Agricola, Cnaeus Julius, 8
ala (auxiliary cavalry unit), in forts, 38
Allectus, 125
Ammianus Marcellinus, 87, 126
Antonine plague, 48
Antonine Wall, 44 (map)
construction, 42
decommission, 43, 111
food at, 97
sculpture of cavalryman, 11, 13
Antoninus Pius, 38, 41–42, 43
archaeology of Hadrian’s Wall, xvii–xviii
army (Roman Army)
access through Hadrian’s Wall, 111–112
Antonine plague, 48
changes of third century AD, 119–121, 124–125, 130
and citizenship, 29, 33
clothing, 121, 127, 130
defense of Hadrian’s Wall, 113–115
documentation, 89–91, 92
equipment, 91, 121, 127, 130
ethnicity, 31
in fourth and fifth centuries AD, 131–132, 134–135
irregular units, 119–120
officers, 33–34
organization, 29–30, 31, 33–34
and power struggles in Empire, 128–129, 131–132
purpose at Hadrian’s Wall, 111
recruitment, 33
roll call, 88–89
service and conscription, 33, 120–121
slaves, 84
titles, 31, 33
Attacotti, 126
Augustus (Caesar Augustus), 4–5
Aulus Platorius Nepos, 18
Aurelian, Em
peror, 53
auxilia (auxiliaries and auxiliary units)
construction of Hadrian’s Wall, 35
description, 29–30, 31
food, 96
in forts, 38
pay and deductions, 89
auxiliary cavalrymen, 116–117, 116 (drawing)
auxiliary cohort in forts, 38
auxiliary infantryman, 46, 46 (drawing)
Axius, 78
ballista (‘scorpions’), 65
balneum. See bathhouses
Barates, 101–102
barracks, 22 (drawing), 51 (drawing), 83 (photo)
description and life in, 80–82, 83
bases along Hadrian’s Wall, 16 (map)
bathhouses (balneum), 51 (drawing), 80, 98–99, 98 (drawing), 100, 100 (photo)
battlement, on Hadrian’s Wall, 62
Bede (monk), 25, 60, 137
berm, 58, 60
Bewcastle outpost fort (Fanum Cocidii), 104
Birdoswald fort
changes at, 123, 124, 134
construction, 24, 27
at end of Roman rule in Britain, 134
granaries, 123 (photo), 124
Bonnie Prince Charlie, 136
Boudica of the Iceni (Queen), 7–8
Bowness-on-Solway, xx, 20
See also Turf Wall
Brigantes, 41
Britain (Britannia)
in civil wars of Roman Empire, 52, 53, 128–129
climate, xiii
conquest of, 1–2, 5
decline and end of Roman rule, 128–129, 133, 135
division by Severus, 124–125
fourth and fifth centuries AD changes, 131–136
Hadrian’s visits, xvi, 18
invasion by Claudius, 7
legions in, 7, 8–9, 10, 18, 29, 31
northern areas and peoples (see northern tribes and peoples)