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Archaeology Slave room discovered at Pompeii villa. Heritage The fall of the Knights Templar. Load more. Popular stories. The fort itself is the rectangular playing card shape to the right. Underlying the stone fort however was an earlier fort, built of timber, and set at a different angle, marked by a shadow outline. The writing tablets were found bottom centre — outside the later stone fort, but along the main road inside the earlier fort. The writing was made in ink on small slivers of wood.
Here we see a 4-page letter, written in Roman cursive script that is very difficult to read, unless one is very experienced in it. The content however is very modern:. I have bought 5, bushels of grain, and unless you send me some money, I shall lose my deposit and be embarrassed. The hides which you write about are still at Catterick.
This is the first contemporary reference to a Roman road, and it complains how bad it is! Reconstructions The old house is now a museum, and in the garden several Roman buildings have been reconstructed. I visited Vindolanda in and was fascinated by it.
The remains of the third-century bath-house on the site give a very good idea of what Vitalis' bath-house must have been like. Other trades attached to the fort were two vets called Virilis and Alio, a shield-maker called Lucius, a medic called Marcus and a brewer called Atrectus. Most of these must have been soldiers, though we shall see later that civilians also played their part within fort life. Atrectus the brewer owed money to the local pork butcher for iron and pork-fat, which smacks of a little economic diversification on the butcher's part.
It is not at all clear whether the butcher was a civilian or a soldier. He is likely to have been a civilian, if two other documents are anything to go by. The first is an intriguing account of wheat which, to me, paints a marvellous picture of everyday life at the fort. It is a long account, so I have excerpted only the clearest entries. Account of wheat measured out from that which I myself put into the barrel: To myself, for bread To Lucco, in charge of the pigs To Primus, slave of Lucius To Lucco for his own use In the century of Voturius To father, in charge of the oxen Likewise to myself, for bread, modii?
The document is clearly the account of a family business run by two brothers, whose father occasionally tends the oxen. II Octavius to his brother Candidus, greetings. The hundred pounds of sinew from Marinus, I will settle up.
From the time when you wrote about this matter, he has not even mentioned it to me. I have several times written to you that I have bought about 5, modii of ears of grain, on account of which I need cash. Unless you send me some cash, at least denarii, the result will be that I shall lose what I have laid out as a deposit, about denarii, and I shall be embarrassed.
So, I ask you, send me some cash as soon as possible. The hides which you write are at Cataractonium, write that they be given to me and the wagon about which you write. And write to me what is with that wagon. I would have already have been to collect them except that I did not care to injure the animals while the roads are bad. He has not credited them to my account. Know that I have completed the hides and I have ? Make sure that you send me some cash so that I may have ears of grain on the threshing room floor.
Moreover, I have already finished threshing all that I had. A messmate of our friend Frontius has been here. He was wanting me to allocate? I told him I would give him the hides by the Kalends of March. He decided that he would come on the Ides of January. He did not turn up, nor did he take the trouble to obtain them since he had hides.
If he had given the cash, I would have given him them. I hear that Frontinius Julius has for sale at a high price the leather ware? Greet Spectatus and I have received letters from Gleuco. Candidus was obviously so well known in the fort that his brother did not need to put his name on the back for whoever was delivering the note. The two seem to have the supply of grain to Vindolanda sewn up which is interesting when you consider that the military granary of Corbridge was just down the road.
The regular allocations to Macrinus and Crescens are probably rations doled out to individual unit centurions: since a Crescens is named as a centurion of III Batavorum.
In that case, who are Firmus and Spectatus? Clearly Firmus is a key individual, as he has the authority to allocate grain to a detachment of legionaries in the fort; yet does this mean that he is a senior centurion of one of the cohorts, or is he just a middle-man? Since Spectatus uses grain as a loan to Victor, it seems most likely that they were agents of the brothers though this does not necessarily stop them being soldiers.
I think it is clear that the two brothers were civilian entrepreneurs, and when you consider that the annual pay of an auxiliary soldier at this time was about denarii , they were obviously not in the little-league if they could fork out denarii for their grain supplies.
The fact that they had Roman names can tell us little, since anyone who wanted to get on is likely to have 'Romanised' by this time. One possibility does come to mind. Given the Roman penchant for farming out public services like tax-collecting and mining to individual entrepreneurs, it is possible that these two men had the contract for supplying grain to the army from Corbridge. This news article appears in issue of Current Archaeology. To find out more about subscribing to the magazine, click here.
A lead vessel recently found amid the remains of a 6th-century Christian church at Vindolanda had early Christian iconography etched across its entire surface. Share this Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email.
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