Vindolanda
About
Vindolanda anchored the Stanegate frontier decades before Hadrian's Wall was built alongside it. Its timber-and-turf forts were rebuilt at least nine times, and the waterlogged ground beneath preserved hundreds of ink writing tablets from around 100 CE, including a soldier's letter recording the oldest known handwritten Latin by a woman, Claudia Severa's birthday invitation to a friend.
What happened here
Five hundred men, sometimes a thousand, recruited from a province rather than from citizens, and often stationed a long way from where they were raised. Cavalry units get a bigger fort and far more stabling; the smell tells you which kind you are in before the plan does. The layout copies a legionary fortress at a quarter of the size — headquarters, commander's house, granaries, barracks, a bath house usually built outside the walls because of the fire risk. Duties are patrolling, escorting, customs, and policing rather than pitched battle. After twenty-five years a man is discharged with citizenship for himself and his children, recorded on a bronze diploma he keeps for life. A village grows outside the gate within a decade.
In ancient writing
- Claudia Severa, Vindolanda tablets Tab. Vindol. II 291
A birthday invitation from the wife of a nearby commander, written on wood in the 90s CE — the earliest known writing in a woman's hand in Latin.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →