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Roman Military Records from Vindolanda*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Alan K. Bowman
Alan K. Bowman
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Abstract

The following group of wooden writing tablets is part of the discovery made by Mr. Robin Birley at Vindolanda during the summer of 1973. A brief description of the size and nature of the find is given elsewhere in this volume (pp. 471-4), along with some examples of tablets in the collection. It is planned that the tablets will ultimately be published as a corpus in a volume of the Excavation Report for the site of Vindolanda. In the meantime, however, it is sensible and desirable that some information about the contents of this unique discovery should be made available. The following items are therefore offered as a forerunner to the eventual full publication of the corpus. The aim is to give some account of the progress so far made with these difficult documents and, not less important, to offer scholars an opportunity to scrutinize, criticize and add pertinent information in the hope that they might be later republished in a fuller and better form. This preliminary edition inevitably contains many imperfections and blemishes, as well as problems to which no adequate solution has yet been found. But it is hoped that the importance of the documents justifies the desire to make them available as speedily as is possible, without unduly hampering the completion of what will inevitably be a fairly long-term project.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 5 , November 1974 , pp. 360 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Alan K. Bowman 1974. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 For further items, see below, pp, 471-80. For a general guide to the collection see also A. K. Bowman and J. D. Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing Tablets (1974). A duplicated catalogue of the collection, with brief descriptions of each item, will also be available to interested scholars.

2 For further details about the location of the deposit see below, p. 472.

3 For Neratius Marcellus see Pliny, Ep. 3·8; R. Syme, Tacitus (1958), Appendix 14, No. 27; Birley, A. R., Epigraphische Studien iv (1967), 68.Google Scholar

4 For a similar tablet see Turner and Skutsch, JRS 1 (1960), 108–11Google Scholar. For a stylus tablet written in ink see Turner, JRS xlvi (1956), 115–18Google Scholar. The Vindolanda collection contains a single example of the latter and several examples of ordinary stylus tablets.

5 My formulation of this hypothesis owes a great deal to Professor Eric Turner, who clarified several points which were obscure to me. This topic will be treated in greater detail in a separate article.

6 Notches cut in the edge of a set of tablets to indicate the order of the leaves are a well-known feature of wooden tablets, see for example Parsons, P. J., JEA lvii (1971), 165.Google Scholar

7 For an illustration of the normal form of the codex see W. Schubart, Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern 3 (1961), 29; and for discussion of diptychs and triptychs formed of stylus tablets see Bell, H. I., JRS xxvii (1937), 31Google Scholar, Sanders, H. A., AJA ser. 2, xxxii (1928), 310–12Google Scholar. The suggestion of an intermediate, concertina form, based on Eastern examples, is to be found in Encyclopedia Britannica (tenth edition), s.v. Bookbinding, S. Jennett, The Making of Books (1951), 154-5, cf. E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri, an Introduction (1968), 173, n. 32.

8 Detailed palaeographical discussion is avoided here, because this is best done on the basis of the collection as a whole and is hence reserved for the final publication. The two hands in this document can be described as competent and workaday, with no pretensions to elegance (which can be observed in a few of the Vindolanda tablets).

9 See G. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, (1969), 189-90.

10 For deposita see e.g. P. Gen. Lat. 1 (= R. O. Fink, Roman Military Records on Papyrus, 1971, No. 68.iii. 10). For contributions ad signa, interpreted as payments towards a burial fund or for the cult of the signa, ibid. ii.19). For seposita, P. Fay. 105 = Fink, RMR, No. 73, a.iii.28. But none of these involves the use of the word sacrum; perhaps the word is most likely to turn up in the context of the signa, see Fink, RMR, p. 14.

11 Deductions for saturnalicium K(astrense), P. Gen. Lat. I = Fink, RMR, No. 68.ii.7, iii.7; for the belief that this is a pay record of auxiliary soldiers see most recently Speidel, JRS lxiii (1973), 144Google Scholar. Compare the allowance for epulum in P. Hamb. 39, P. Dura 105 b.i.9 (cf. Davies, , Bull, of the American Soc. of Papyrologists v 1968, 33Google Scholar). If we accept that P. Gen. Lat. I and 4 are auxiliary and not legionary pay accounts, then the epulum cannot be the auxiliary equivalent of the legionary saturnalicium (see Davies, loc. cit.). The ritual aspects (and hence the possible use of a word like sacrum) which such a banquet might have are illustrated by Josephus, , BJ vii, 16.Google Scholar

12 P. Rylands II 223 = Fink, RMR, No. 82. Cf. The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Preliminary Report ix3, 50 f., No. 956. Under the heading ‘Records of Materiel’ in Fink, RMR, there are only five documents listed, which emphasizes the importance and value of the Vindolanda text.

13 However, the evidence for such military depots, postulated by R. Cagnat, L'armée romaine d'Afrique (1913)) 311 ff and followed e.g. by Berchem, D. Van, L'annone militaîre dans l'Empire romain au llle sièkle (Mem. Soc. Nat. des Antiquaires de France, ser. VIII, 10, 1937)Google Scholar, 181 ff., seems extremely dubious (see G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings, 1971, 139-40, 282 f.).

14 For example PSI 683 (A.D. 199).

15 Davies, R. W., ‘The Roman Military Diet’, Britannia ii (1971), 122–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereinafter cited by author and page number only). On food in general see J. André, L'alimentation et la cuisine à Rome (1961), hereafter referred to as André, L'alimentation. For information relating to the military diet see also Daremberg-Saglio, s.v. cibaria militum.

16 Davies, pp. 125-6.

17 See 47.ii + 62.vi.2 and my note ad loc.

18 This suggestion was made to me by Dr. J. P. Wild. Not that its use as animal fodder is excluded, since a military unit of whatever kind would have some horses and pack animals.

19 Davies (op. cit. note 15), pp. 138-41.

20 Davies, pp. 123-8.

21 Davies (op. cit. note 15), p. 124.

22 As illustrated, for example, by P. Gen. Lat. I (Fink, RMR, No. 68).

23 For the festival of Fors Fortuna see CIL i2, p. 320; Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, p. 473; W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals (1899), 161 ff.; Otto, , RE vii.I (1910), 16 ffGoogle Scholar.

24 Davies (op. cit. note 15), p. 124, 11. 15.

25 Davies, pp. 134-6.

26 Davies (op. cit. note 15), p. 136, n. 96. Perhaps the official responsible for producing the present document was the earlier equivalent of the actuarius, who appears at the beginning of the third century and whose responsibility for keeping records (authentica pittacia) is illustrated by C. Theod. 7.4.11, 13, 16.

27 Compare AE 1925, 126 b (c. 93), giving the normal price of grain as 8 or 9 asses per modius and fixing a ceiling price of one denarius.