Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier : Vindolanda and Its People

by Alan K. Bowman

Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and Its People

Genres: History, Roman Britain, Archaeology, Nonfiction, Roman, Classics

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 1994

About the author

Alan Bowman is Principal of Brasenose College and Emeritus Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University. His research interests focus on papyrology, the Vindolanda Writing-Tablets, and the social and economic history of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt and the Roman Empire.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the casual reader, but presents a detailed introduction of the Roman fort at Vindolana in the north of England and what the Vindolana letters (amazing Roman letters written on wood and first discovered in 19730) tell us. I found the earlier chapters, which discussed the Roman military system and general themes, hard going, but the later chapters that discussed the actual people that wrote the letters and documents very interesting. Even if you have no interest in reading this book, if you are ever in London, check out the letters at the British Museum.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Rome reached a certain point in its conquest of Britain -- around the end of the governorship of Agricola in AD 85 -- a policy decision was reached that the Picts in the far north of the island (against whom Agricola had led several expeditions without much effect) simply weren’t worth the trouble. Eventually, the result was Hadrian’s Wall, begun about AD 122, but before the construction of that permanent boundary, the Roman army established a string of forts of assorted sizes somewhat farther south and stretching across Britain from the River Tyne to the Solway Firth. These constituted Roman Britain’s northern defenses for thirty-odd years -- which, in historical terms, is a pretty thin slice of time. The best preserved of the forts is Vindolanda, about thirty miles east of Carlisle, which has attracted antiquaries and archaeologists since the late 16th century.

But then, in the early 1970s, a systematic and well-founded program of excavation was begun and a discovery was made that turned our understanding and appreciation of that period of British history (and Roman military history) on its head: The recovery of several hundred very thin wooden shingle-like tablets with texts written in ink. Before this, it was assumed that the reports and accounts of the Roman army in Britain -- something that every army in human history has produced in quantity -- would have been written on papyrus, as they were in the eastern part of the empire, and which could not be expected to have survived. But any papyrus in Britain would have been imported, and at considerable expense, so, in retrospect, a substitute made from local timber makes perfect sense.

Bowman is a paleographer and the man responsible for the translation and explication of most of the tablets. For this volume he has selected thirty-eight of the most important, often fragmentary, texts and provided the original Latin and the modern English translation of each, plus a discussion of the context, interpretation, and implications. (Many of the tablets found are redundant in their routine subject matter, of course, which is the nature of military bureaucracy.) For instance, it was always assumed that specific units from particular legions were assigned to each of the forts in the line and stayed tidily put -- rather like the colonial British Army in the 19th century. The strength report of the First Cohort of the Tungrian auxiliaries, however, makes it obvious that each fort was home to a number of much smaller and more diverse detachments from a wide scattering of legions and their auxiliaries, and that these assignments changed regularly as units were redeployed-- not unlike a late-20th-century army, actually. Other tablets include commissary inventories, correspondence between officers and their families (often including discussions of commercial transactions under way), and even invitations to birthday parties from officers’ wives to their friends at the post. In fact, there turns out to have been a surprising degree of literacy among all ranks, and in their families.

The book includes chapters outlining the Roman army’s occupation strategies, the technical terminology found in the tablets, and the deduced lives of the officers, men, and associated women at Vindolanda. There are plates of all the tablets under discussion and a lengthy bibliography to guide further study. All this should be of interest to anyone with a background in Roman Britain or roman military studies. And there are still new tablets being found!

[Victor Tatarskii · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly interesting academic analysis of the Vindolanda tablets.
A military strength report, a grocery list, a birthday invitation - the Vindolanda wooden tablets - a mix of personal and bureacratic documents excavated in one of the Roman forts in Britain, are a small glimpse into life of the Roman provincial garrison. For an untrained eye it's a interesting source, but no more. In "Life and Letters" Alan Bowman expands this small glimpse into an open window, not only in Roman life, but also into how archaeological and textual analysis of ancient sources is done. It is almost fascinating to see how every word, name and place gets picked apart, to extract every bit of information possible: for example a name could state the origin and social background of the soldier, the time of his family enfranchisement (gaining of citizenship), be cross-referenced against known literal sources, headstones, military movements etc. Handwriting, diet, social interactions, romanization of provinces, military movements during peace, military and civil society interactions, logistics - almost everything that could be tied to information in the tablets gets reflected in this book."Life and Letters" is by no means a comprehensive account of Roman life, Roman military or even life in the Vindolanda fort, yet, it is surprisingly informative, and illuminates a lot of aspects that never make it to more generally written books. As a lot of narrow academic books it has a high price for a mere 167 pages, but I can safely recommend it to lovers of Roman Empire history.

[Evin Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was thoroughly researched by an academic - which can sometimes mean it's fascinating for the general public, or fascinating only for the author. In this case, it was a mix of both. If you are as huge a nerd about Roman culture as I am, then you would find it interesting.

The two largest takeaways from my end were: 1) the education level of Roman soldiers on the frontier was high; communication was as important to the Roman military as organization; 2) The soldiers had respect for nature and animals around them. You could argue it was because they had to - that man was at the mercy of nature during ancient times. But we still are today, and it is remarkable to see these battle-hardened men empathize with forms of life they used for labor and as companions in battle:

"I would have already been to collect them except that I did no care to injure the animals while the roads are bad." (p.138)

Related to 1), many of the soldiers on the front were not descendants of traditional Roman families - they were the newer class, ethnically and geographically less connected to the nucleus of Rome. This may have impacted their ethic on the frontier - Vindolanda was just about as far as Rome made it north (close to Hadrian's Wall). Bowman comments in the introduction: "The main instrument of domination and romanization included units and officers whose origins were not at the romanized center of the empire (Italy, Spain, southern Gaul) but in regions that were still only tenuously controlled at the end of the Julio-Claudian period, a mere 30 years before the appearance of Cerialis and his cohort at Vindolanda." (p. 27) Perhaps this is akin to a non-native speaker of a language teaching that language: the newer Roman citizens may have been motivated to prove their loyalty further, becoming more "fluent", serving the empire on the remote frontier. But perhaps, as may be observed in their frequent correspondence ordering beer - they were a bit less attuned to developments on the front beyond their social standing back home, and therefore less invested in the glory of the Roman empire. There are many parallels to the United States today and how we interact in the world - are we there because we care, or because we can be there?

There is an etymological relationship between "ethic" and "ethnic", and we live at a turning point in human history where are able to choose both our identity and biology. There is a resulting blur between the ethnic and our collective ethic - what binds us together, and what motivates us?

[Jess Williams]

had to read the whole bloody thing so might aswell put it on goodreads

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan K. Bowman writes well; the subject matter is fascinating; both combine to make a good book. I am still amazed that Vindolanda gave us nearly 2000-year-old letters between soldiers, friends, and officials on the northernmost Roman frontier. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Vindolanda, the Roman army, classical antiquity, or the power of primary source material.

[Daniel Bennett]

This is a great book about a very interesting topic. It is a secondary/tertiary source which discusses the wooden inscriptions written by Roman soldiers from the Vindolanda excavations. Its analyses are logical, and it deals with the evidence in a balanced and fair approach.