Roman Military in Britain: Frontiers, Forts, Cultural Diversity and Pubs | Early European History And Religion

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ROMAN MILITARY PRESENCE IN BRITAIN

model of a Roman soldier

After the initial conquest and the Boudiccan Revolt, the Romans had a relatively small military presence in Britain. But later, a tenth of the Roman army was based in Britain. Dr. Neil Faulkner of the University of Bristol wrote for the BBC: “Elsewhere, the empire's frontiers were under attack. Reinforcements were needed. Troop numbers in Britain had to be reduced. A phased withdrawal was carried out from the far north, eventually bringing the army to a line that stretched across modern Northumberland from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle on the Solway. This was the line along which Hadrian's Wall was constructed in 120s and 130s AD. [Source: Dr Neil Faulkner, BBC, March 29, 2011 |::|]

“Here, and across the empire, the Romans were drawing symbolic lines across the map. On one side 'civilisation', on the other 'barbarians'. On the ground, the lines were made real in stone, earth and timber. The line stretched for 73 miles across northern Britain – a ditch, a thicket of spikes, a stone wall, a sequence of forts, milecastles and observation turrets, and a permanent garrison of perhaps 8,000 men. |::|

“The rest of the Roman army was also stationed in the west and the north - in lonely auxiliary forts in the Welsh mountains, the Pennines, or the Southern Uplands of modern Scotland; or in one of the big three legionary fortresses at Isca Silurium (Caerleon), Deva (Chester) and Eboracum (York). |::|

“Here, through some 350 years of Roman occupation, the army remained dominant. Settlements of craftsmen and traders grew up around the forts, sustained by army contracts and soldiers' pay. Local farms supplied grain, meat, leather, wool, beer, and other essentials. But change was limited. The land was impoverished and sparsely populated, and the army took what little surplus there was, so there were few of the trappings of Romanised life. |::|

Websites on Ancient Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com

Book: “Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier” by Alan K. Bowman

Hadrian's Wall

Emperor Hadrain (A.D. 76-138) ordered and oversaw the building of Hadrian’s Wall near the present-day border between Scotland and England to protect the unstable British provinces from fierce tribes such as the Caledonians, Picts and "Raiding Scots" in present-day Scotland. Hadrian's Wall was a Roman frontier built between A.D. 122 and 130. Running for 117 kilometers (73 miles) between Wallsend-on-Tyne in the east to Bowness on the Solway Firth in the west, it makes use of ridges and crags, particularly Whin Sill, and offers goods view to the north. A deep ditch reinforced some parts of it. Other parts were built on the top of cliffs.

Hadrian's Wall

Probably largely built by Roman troops and slaves, Hadrian’s Wall is the most lasting and famous monument left behind by the Romans in Britain and remains a powerful symbol of Roman rule. Stretching from the North Sea near the east coast town of Newcastle to the Irish Sea near Carlisle in the west, the 2000-year-old wall snakes through treeless valleys and over bluffs in a land as big as the sky. The 12 best preserved miles of the wall are located in Northumberland National Park where hills gently rise and fall like waves in a calm sea.

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: “That “outermost island” was where Hadrian built the monument that bears his name, a rampart of stone and turf that cut Britain in half. Today Hadrian’s Wall is one of the best preserved, well-documented sections of Rome’s frontier. Remnants of the 73-mile barrier run through salt marshes, across green sheep pastures, and for one bleak stretch not far from downtown Newcastle, alongside a four-lane highway. Miles of it are preserved aboveground, lining crags that rise high above the rain-swept countryside. [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, September 2012 ]

“More than a century of study has given archaeologists an unparalleled understanding of Hadrian’s Wall. The wall, perhaps designed by Hadrian himself on a visit to Britain in 122, was the ultimate expression of his attempt to define the empire’s limits. In most places the stone wall was an intimidating 14 feet tall and 10 feet wide. Traces of a 9-foot-deep ditch running the length of the wall are still visible today. In the past few decades excavations have uncovered pits filled with stakes between ditch and wall, one more obstacle for intruders. A dedicated road helped soldiers respond to threats. Regularly spaced gates were supported by watchtowers every third of a mile.”

Frontiers of the Roman Empire

“Built frontiers were quite unusual in the Roman world as the army typically relied on natural boundaries such as rivers or mountains,” Dr Fraser Hunter, principal curator of Roman Collections at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, told the BBC. “The Antonine Wall, therefore, gives us rare insights into the Roman Empire’s attempts to control the edges of its world.”

But in Britain they did build walls. According to UNESCO: “The ‘Roman Limes’ represents the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD. It stretched over 5,000 kilometers from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast. The remains of the Limes today consist of vestiges of built walls, ditches, forts, fortresses, watchtowers and civilian settlements. Certain elements of the line have been excavated, some reconstructed and a few destroyed. The two sections of the Limes in Germany cover a length of 550 kilometers from the north-west of the country to the Danube in the south-east. The 118-km-long Hadrian’s Wall (UK) was built on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian c. AD 122 at the northernmost limits of the Roman province of Britannia. It is a striking example of the organization of a military zone and illustrates the defensive techniques and geopolitical strategies of ancient Rome. The Antonine Wall (See Below) constitutes the northwestern-most portion of the Roman Limes. [Source: UNESCO World Heritage sites website =]

“The Roman Empire, in its territorial extent, was one of the greatest empires history has known. Enclosing the Mediterranean world and surrounding areas, it was protected by a network of frontiers stretching from the Atlantic Coast in the west to the Black Sea in the east, from central Scotland in the north to the northern fringes of the Sahara Desert in the south. It was largely constructed in the 2nd century AD when the Empire reached its greatest extent. This frontier could be an artificial or natural barrier, protecting spaces or a whole military zone. Its remains encompass both visible and buried archaeology on, behind and beyond the frontier.”=

The site “consists of three sections of the frontier: Hadrian’s Wall, the Upper German- Raetian Limes and the Antonine Wall, located in the northwestern part of the Empire, constituting the artificial boundaries of the former Roman provinces Britannia, Germania Superior and Raetia: Running 130 kilometers from the mouth of the River Tyne in the east to the Solway Firth, Hadrian’s Wall was built on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian in AD 122 as a continuous linear barrier at the then northernmost limits of the Roman province of Britannia. The frontier extended a further 36km down the Solway coast as a series of intervisible military installations. It constituted the main element in a controlled military zone across northern Britain. The Wall was supplemented by the ditch and banks of the vallum, supporting forts, marching camps and other features in a wide area to the north and south, linked by an extensive road network. It illustrates an ambitious and coherent system of defensive constructions perfected by engineers over the course of several generations and is outstanding for its construction in dressed stone and its excellent use of the spectacular upland terrain through which it passed. =

Antonine Wall

The Antonine Wall, a 60-km long fortification in Scotland started by Emperor Antonius Pius in 142 AD as a defense against the “barbarians” of the north. It is northwestern-most portion of the Roman Limes. Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology magazine: “After Hadrian’s death, his successor, Antoninus Pius, reinvaded Scotland. Like Hadrian, Antoninus Pius did not have military triumphs to call upon to gain prestige, but unlike his predecessor, he turned to territorial expansion. He then built his own wall 100 miles north of Hadrian’s, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. The 37-mile-long “Antonine Wall,” was made mostly of turf on a stone foundation, was 10 feet tall, 16 feet wide, and had 17 forts and additional fortlets. As many as 7,000 soldiers were stationed along the Antonine Wall, but this far northern frontier proved difficult to defend and troops may have been needed to face more pressing needs on the continent. Soon after Antoninus Pius died, the new emperor, Marcus Aurelius, moved the frontier back to Hadrian’s Wall, where it remained until the end of Roman rule in Britain nearly 250 years later. [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2017]

According to UNESCO: “The Antonine Wall was built under the Emperor Antoninus Pius as an attempt to conquer parts of northern Britain and extends for some 60 kilometers across central Scotland from the River Forth to the River Clyde. Through its military and civil constructions, it demonstrates cultural interchange through the extension of Roman technical skills, organisation and knowledge to the furthest reaches of the Empire. It embodies a high degree of expertise in the technical mastery of stone and turf defensive constructions. [Source: UNESCO World Heritage sites website =]

As it was in use for only a single generation, it provides a snapshot of the frontier at a particular point in time and offers a specific insight into how the frontier was designed and built. Together, the remains of the frontiers, consisting of vestiges of walls, ditches, earthworks, fortlets, forts, fortresses, watchtowers, roads and civilian settlements, form a social and historical unit that illustrates an ambitious and coherent system of defensive constructions perfected by engineers over the course of several generations. Each section of the property constitutes an exceptional example of a linear frontier, encompassing an extensive relict landscape which reflects the way resources were deployed in the northwestern part of the Empire and which displays the unifying character of the Roman Empire, through its common culture, but also its distinctive responses to local geography and climate, as well as political, social and economic conditions.”

Hadrian's Wall may be older, bigger, stronger and better known, but Antonine Wall was the real final frontier of the Roman Empire. Extending from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde across central Scotland and built by legionnaires stationed there, It once rose as high as three meters and was lined by a defensive ditch as much up to five meters deep. But today there isn’t that much ‘wall’ to see. Kirsten Henton wrote in for BBC: Originally one continuous barrier of earth and clay it layout was similar to Hadrian’s Wall, sprinkled with forts, gateways and watchtowers, but the Antonine Wall never benefitted from the addition of stone to the same extent, ensuring fewer remains. Today, unlike the solid sections found at Hadrian’s Wall, the remains comprise mainly of disjointed turf mounds and complex earthworks. [Source: Kirsten Henton, BBC, 28th May 2019]

Dr Louisa Campbell, postdoctoral fellow in archaeology at the University of Glasgow told the BBC that the wall was a show of force, “a massive and labour-intensive physical presence. The wall would most likely have been perceived as an intimidating structure and a hostile imposition to the cultural landscape, separating groups stretching back many generations” concluding that it was “unlikely to have been particularly welcomed by the locals”.

The wall’s route through Scotland's central belt covers much lowland territory Bar Hill is the highest point along the Antonine Wall and has a good view. Rough Castle was the second smallest fort along the wall but is still impressive, Whether walking along the boggy bottom of the ditch or high on the ridge of the rampart, the sheer scale is overwhelming.

Hadrian's Wall west of Housesteads

It’s generally accepted that the Antonine Wall was abandoned within two decades Speculation continues about precisely why it was abandoned. “This was a difficult edge of the empire,” Hunter stated, “partly from the landscape, partly the hostility which they encountered in places, but also from the logistical point of view, meaning that extended supply lines were needed.” Campbell agrees. “A combination of pressures elsewhere in the empire, less receptive locals, challenging terrain and environmental conditions probably contributed to Rome’s decision to withdraw from the Antonine Wall and re-garrison the previous frontier at Hadrian’s Wall,” she said.

Unsurprising, really, when you consider that these locals resided in a land ruled by warriors and tribes deemed to be beyond the grasp of Rome. Despite various incursions, encampments and even some mutually beneficial trading relations, Caledonia, the Roman term for the unconquered lands to the north, remained a thorn in the side of many an emperor. The Antonine Wall marked the outer limits of what Rome saw as civilisation. What’s more, it was an uncommon one at that.

Roman Defensive Strategy in Britain

Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology magazine: ““Although not its only purpose, Hadrian’s Wall was a major component of the empire’s frontier military strategy. “Undoubtedly the wall must have been used to define and regulate points where people from north of the wall could come to trade and have contact with the empire,” says Nick Hodgson, principal archaeologist of the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums. “But I see its primary purpose as a physical barrier to slow up the crossing of raiders and people intent on getting into the empire for destructive or plundering purposes.” [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2017]

To this end, the entire length of the wall was built with an alternating series of forts, most for both cavalry and infantry, each housing as many as 600 men, manned milecastles for between 12 and 20 men, and lookout towers. “It’s important to be clear that the wall isn’t the sort of defensive line where the whole of the Roman army would have stood together to repel some kind of siege like a medieval fortress,” says Hodgson, “but rather that it would allow the instant observation and slowing down of an attack or movement towards the province, and give time to bring extra troops from the nearest milecastle or fort, or even from other locations. It’s not a place where you make a final stand.”

But the forts and milecastles, and even the wall itself, were only part of what Hodgson describes as a multilevel system of defense that also included outpost forts as far as 70 miles north of the wall, as well as a network of forts south of the wall housing major military installations. During excavations of the fort and wall at Wallsend, whose Roman name may have been Segedunum, Hodgson’s team uncovered a particularly interesting feature of this system — rows of holes in the ground between the wall and the defensive ditch. At first the team believed that the pits, which likely held branches or small tree trunks entangled with sharpened branches to form a nearly impenetrable obstacle, were a local feature designed to give extra protection to the town outside the fort. But a few years later, more of these pits were found farther west along the wall, and it is now thought that they are a general feature of Hadrian’s Wall, at least along the first 12 miles of the eastern section where the terrain is quite flat. Says Hodgson, “This new part of the wall’s anatomy has been a fascinating discovery because this extra, very sharp-looking set of obstacles immediately in front of the wall has reignited the discussion of the purpose of the wall and demanded a reconsideration of the long-held interpretation that it had no defensive or tactical role.”

Roman fort

Dr Mike Ibeji wrote for the BBC: “The Roman army at this time was in a period of retrenchment. In A.D. 84, Agricola had defeated the Caledonii of south-eastern Scotland at Mons Graupius, and was (according to his somewhat partisan biographer Tacitus) poised to conquer the rest of Britain when his army was recalled by the emperor Domitian, who needed it for his Chattan wars on the Rhine. Large detachments of troops were withdrawn from the province, and those that were left established a frontier zone called a limes [pronounced leem-ays] along the military road of the Stanegate which ran from Carlisle to Corbridge (approx.). | [Source: Dr Mike Ibeji, BBC, November 16, 2012 |::|]

“The fact that the limes was not fixed at the narrower neck of land between Edinburgh and Glasgow suggests strongly that the Scottish tribes had not been quite as comprehensively trounced as Tacitus would like us to believe, as do tombstones and snippets of official correspondence which hint at troubles in the north during this time. |::|

“However, it would be a mistake to view the limes as a static defensive line. Even when Hadrian's Wall was erected some thirty years later, it was never that. It was a permeable frontier, designed to control the movements of the tribes within the border zone and to regulate commerce between Roman Britain and its barbarian neighbours. As such, the troops within it fulfilled a similar sort of police function as those British troops who used to guard Hong Kong. Pivotal to this system was the fort of Vindolanda, which sat at the approximate centre of the frontier.” |::|

Roman Forts Near Hadrian’s Wall

Situated a few miles behind Hadrian’s Wall was a string of forts, evenly spaced a half a day’s march apart. Each fort could house between 500 and 1,000 men, capable of responding quickly to any attacks. Housesteads Roman Fort is one the best preserved forts in the country. Located on a high ridge. It covers an area of five acres. Within its walls are a number of buildings including the fort's headquarters and commander's house, granaries, barracks, a hospital, and latrines. |::|

Vindolanda was a Roman auxiliary fort just south of Hadrian's Wall in northern England. Archaeological excavations of the site show it was occupied by the Romans roughly from A.D. 85 to 370. Artifacts found b archaeologists have included Roman boots, shoes, armour, jewelry and coins. Perhaps the most interesting discovery has been the Vindolanda tablets, which contains letters and notes by soldiers stationed there, found in a waterlogged trash pile.

Adrian Goldsworthy wrote in National Geographic History: Stone structures, like Hadrian’s Wall and the forts along it, are the most visible Roman remains, but in the early phases at Vindolanda, construction was in timber, with wattle-and-daub walls. Archaeologists have found the early bathhouse—no doubt the one mentioned in the text—which was most likely the first building made in stone. [Source Adrian Goldsworthy, National Geographic History, June 8, 2023]

Vindolanda was a frontier outpost. The later building of Hadrian’s Wall makes clear that some form of military threat was perceived by the empire. Perhaps surprisingly, given the siting of the fort and its military nature, it is not known how much, or how little, fighting occurred in the region. Among the tablets, there is scant evidence. The First Tungrian cohort had six men in its hospital listed as volnerati, which most naturally translates as “wounded,” although might just mean “injured in an accident.”

Multicultural Diversity of Hadrian Wall’s Soldiers

According to CNN: The Roman rule of thumb was not to post soldiers in the place they came from, because of the risk of rebellion. That meant Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural melting point, with cohorts from modern-day Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Algeria, Iraq, Syria — and more. “It was possibly more multicultural because it was a focus point,” Frances McIntosh, curator for English Heritage’s 34 sites along Hadrian’s Wall, told CNN, who says that the surrounding community might have included traders from across the empire. [Source: Julia Buckley, CNN, May 26, 2024]

Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology magazine: ““The troops stationed along Hadrian’s Wall came from across the empire — from modern Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria — and also included local recruits. According to the Notitia Dignitatum, a list of available civil service jobs in the empire dating to around A.D. 400, which refers to a unit of Tigris River boatmen stationed at Arbeia, some even came from much farther afield. As a result of this diversity, there is, says Newcastle University archaeologist Ian Haynes, considerable evidence of a range of religious practices, much like there was in Rome. “Religion is everywhere along Hadrian’s Wall — in the scratched figure on the wall of a local house, on soldiers’ belt plates, in small and smoky temples, in omens read into the flights of birds, and in the marshes and bogs a short distance away,” says Haynes. “It’s also in votive statues and altars, and at the heart of the fort where even the military standards have a godlike quality and their own spirits.” [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2017]

At various sites, artifacts have been found representing the full panoply of deities — Roman, Eastern, Romano-Celtic. The fort of Maryport, Roman Alauna, which was part of an extension of the empire’s defenses south along the Cumbrian coast, has been a particularly rich source. There, Haynes discovered two cult buildings, one of which is the northwesternmost classical temple in the Roman world — the northeasternmost being in Armenia. His team also reinvestigated one of Maryport’s best-known religious features — the more than 20 sandstone altars dedicated to the supreme Roman deity Jupiter Optimus Maximus that were first excavated in 1870. These altars were bestowed annually — perhaps on the anniversary of an emperor’s succession or his birthday — by the fort’s commander, and this was common practice at forts both along the wall and across the empire. Haynes’ team’s work shows that the altars had not been ritually deposited, as had been believed for more than a century, but rather were reused supports for at least one later timber-framed building from what he calls the “twilight of Roman imperial power.”

Images of Lions Used as Psychological Warfare by the Romans in Britain?

images on the keys described to the left

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In 2016, under the floor of a large second century CE town house in Leicester, England, archeologists unearthed an unusual key handle. It shows a grizzly scene: a barbarian in the process of being eaten by a lion while four barbarian boys — their eyes practically bulging out of their heads — look on in fear, perhaps anticipating their fate. The cruelty is matched by the unpredictability of the find: lions are unknown in the British Isles. Does the key offer evidence that this form of execution was exported to Roman England? [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast., August 29, 2021]

“The bronze handle was separated from the actual key long before its discovery but, even so, the conspicuous 5-inch handle weighs in at 11 ounces. It offers enough space for the artist to vividly depict the emotions of the barbarian victims (easily identifiable from their hairstyles). The key was discovered by the University of Leicester Archeological Services and jointly studied with a team at King’s College London. The results of these investigations were published in August 2021 in the archeology journal Britannia. Dr Gavin Speed, one of the coauthors of the study, said in a press statement that “nothing quite like this has been discovered anywhere in the Roman Empire before.”

“Dr. John Pearce of King’s College London, the lead author of the newly published article, said that the imagery on the key “illuminates the brutal character of Roman authority in this province.” The scene is hardly hypothetical, after all, Romans did execute criminals and enslaved people by condemning them ad bestias as a form of public entertainment. The ferocity and brutality of these modes of execution did not just debase and dehumanize the victims, it also served as a warning to others of the high costs of resistance and rebellion.

“Lions, of course, were not indigenous to Europe and were exported to Rome from Mesopotamia and Africa at considerable expense. For both the Romans and, later, the English they had a particular status as “king of the beasts.” A top-quality lion cost as much as 600,000 sesterces while a second-class lioness fetched 400,000 (Compare this to the mere 1000 sesterces going rate for a bear). Roman emperors found other uses for them as well. The emperors Caracalla and Elagabalus kept lions; the latter’s pets were de-fanged and de-clawed and Elagabalus enjoyed unleashing these modified predators upon his dinner guests as a heart-attack inducing prank. They had other uses, too. According to Aelian, Queen Berenice kept a pet lion who acted as a part time aesthetician; he would lick her face with his tongue and “smooth away her wrinkles” (Aelian Nat. an. 5.39). Given the expense and manifold uses for lions, actually killing one in the arena for entertainment was a way of saying that you had money to burn.

“Though excavators in Leicester have found no signs that people were condemned to the beasts in Roman Britain, the authors of the study suggest that this might have been a possibility. At a minimum, however, the key is a sign that knowledge of this iconic form of punishment had travelled throughout the empire and was well-known enough to be used as threat.

“The potency of the imagery is only amplified by the function of the object that it adorns. While keys today are small objects that help us conceal secret spaces and objects and work largely for self-protection, ancient keys were large items that operated as displays of power and wealth. In addition to being used to secure the entryway to a home, keys were often used to constrain enslaved workers. As ancient historian Sandra Joshel has written, the Romans used “geographies of containment” to control and subjugate their enslaved workers, “the greatest assurance of the control of slave movement, especially at night,” she writes, “was the locked door.” Keys weren’t just for keeping people out they were also for keeping the enslaved “barbarian” population in their quarters. For the despot there was no better reminder of the costs of attempting to secure one’s freedom than the image of one’s countryman being eaten by a lion.

Romans and Caledonians Drank Together as a Pub in Northern Britain

Roman shoes found at Vindolanda

In 2012, archaeologists surveying the world’s most northerly Roman fort announced they had found an ancient pub there. George Mair wrote in The Scotsman: “The discovery, outside the walls of the fort at Stracathro, near Brechin, Angus, could challenge the long-held assumption that Caledonian tribes would never have rubbed shoulders with the Roman invaders. Indeed, it lends support to the existence of a more complicated and convivial relationship than previously envisaged, akin to that enjoyed with his patrician masters by the wine-swilling slave Lurcio, played by comedy legend Frankie Howerd, in the classic late 1970s television show Up Pompeii!. [Source: George Mair, scotsman.com, September 8, 2012]

“Stracathro Fort was at the end of the Gask Ridge, a line of forts and watchtowers stretching from Doune, near Stirling. The system is thought to be the earliest Roman land frontier, built around AD70 – 50 years before Hadrian’s Wall. The fort was discovered from aerial photographs taken in 1957, which showed evidence of defensive towers and protective ditches. A bronze coin and a shard of pottery were found, but until now little more has been known about the site. The archaeologists discovered the settlement and pub using a combination of magnetometry and geophysics without disturbing the site and determined the perimeter of the fort, which faced north-south.

“Now archaeologists working on “The Roman Gask Project” have found a settlement outside the fort – including the pub or wine bar. The Roman hostelry had a large square room – the equivalent of a public bar – and fronted on to a paved area, akin to a modern beer garden. The archaeologists also found the spout of a wine jug. Dr Birgitta Hoffmann, co-director of the project, said: “Roman forts south of the Border have civilian settlements that provided everything they needed, from male and female companionship to shops, pubs and bath houses.

““It was a very handy service, but it was always taught that you didn’t have to look for settlements at forts in Scotland because it was too dangerous – civilians didn’t want to live too close.“But we found a structure we think could be identifiable as the Roman equivalent of a pub. It has a large square room which seems to be fronting on to an unpaved path, with a rectangular area of paving nearby. We found a piece of highquality, black, shiny pottery imported from the Rhineland, which was once the pouring part of a wine jug. It means someone there had a lot of money. They probably came from the Rhineland or somewhere around Gaul.” We hadn’t expected to find a pub. It shows the Romans and the local population got on better than we thought. People would have known that if you stole Roman cattle, the punishment would be severe, but if they stuck to their rules then people could become rich working with the Romans.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024