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A Military Strength Report from Vindolanda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Alan K. Bowman  and
J. David Thomas
Alan K. Bowman
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
J. David Thomas
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

The text here published has a claim to be the most important military document ever discovered in Britain. It was found during the 1988 season of excavation of the pre-Hadrianic area at Vindolanda. The archaeological context in which it was found is the earliest level in which tablets are present; it was located in the ditch by the west wall of the earliest phase of the fort, beneath four successive buildings of the later periods. The ditch appears to have been filled by A.D. 90/92 and the tablet is therefore most probably to be dated c. A.D. 90 (unless it was part of a deposit of rubbish put into the Period I ditch by the builders of the Period II structures). It would thus reflect the situation at Vindolanda only a few years after Agricola's departure from Britain, presumably just before the enlargement of the fort which made this area the site of the praetorium in the southern sector of the central range of buildings. The small amount of relevant evidence from other writing-tablets confuses rather than clarifies the picture. The commanding officer named in the strength report is Iulius Verecundus and there are five or six other texts associated with a man named Verecundus who may or may not be the same person (in only one case is the gentilicium (Iulius) preserved).

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 81 , November 1991 , pp. 62 - 73
Copyright
Copyright ©Alan K. Bowman and J. David Thomas 1991. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 We are grateful to the Vindolanda Trust and to the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to publish this text. It was included in a selection of texts discussed at a seminar in Oxford in March 1989 and we are indebted to the participants for their helpful suggestions. We are again particularly grateful to Robin Birley, not only for his advice on archaeological matters; and to Dr J. N. Adams for some notes on linguistic and philological points.

The following works are referred to in abbreviated form:

Britannia 1987: Bowman, A. K. and Thomas, J. D., ‘New Texts from Vindolanda’, Britannia 18 (1987), 125–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Britannia 1990: Bowman, A. K., Thomas, J. D. and Adams, J. N., ‘Two Letters from Vindolanda’, Britannia 21 (1990), 35–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

ChLA: Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, ed. A. Bruckner and R. Marichal.

P. Brooklyn 24: Thomas, J. D. and Davies, R. W., ‘A New Military Strength Report on Papyrus’, JRS 67 (1977). 50–61Google Scholar.

RMD: Roxan, M. M., Roman Military Diplomas 1978–84 University of London, Institute of Archaeology, Occasional Publication no. 9 (1985)Google Scholar.

RMR: Fink, R. O., Roman Military Records on Papyrus (1971)Google Scholar.

Tab.Vindol.: Bowman, A. K. and Thomas, J. D., Vindolanda: the Latin Writing-Tablets Britannia Monograph IV (1983)Google Scholar.

2 See R. Birley, Vindolanda: the Early Timber Forts English Heritage Publications (forthcoming).

3 Inv. nos 85/157, 86/396.1, 87/711, 88/839, ?88/884, 89/951. The name also occurs in what appears to be the body of a letter and is therefore probably a third-person reference (Inv. no. 89/929).

4 The dendrochronology established by J. Hillam of the University of Sheffield reveals that the timbers used in the buildings of the Period IV fort were cut in A.D. 103/4.

5 Birley, E., The Roman Army: Papers 1929–86 MAVORS IV (1988), 137–8Google Scholar. See further lines 5–6 note.

6 RMD, 97.

7 Robin Birley informs us that the leaf is made of oak.

8 See Tab.Vindol., pp. 55–60.

9 The military Twentieth Cohort of Palmyrenes is equitata, see Welles, C. B., Fink, R. O. and Gilliam, J. F., The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Final Report V, Part I: The Parchments and Papyri (1959), 28–36Google Scholar.

10 e.g. Vegetius 11.19 and cf. HA, Sev Alex. 21.

11 BC, v.46.

12 RMR, pp. 179–82.

13 ChLA IV, 270.

14 RMR, p. 181. See below, no. 3.

15 The word pridianum occurs in RMR, 63.24, 64.1 and ChLA XI, 501.2 (see below, no. 4 (e)).

16 RMR, pp. 181–2.

17 Tomlin, R. S. O., Britannia 17 (1986), 450–2Google Scholar.

18 Britannia 1987, no. 2.

19 cf. Britannia 1987, 133.

20 See Britannia 1987, 134–5.

21 Polybius, VI. 34.7–36.9.

22 Tab. Vindol., 30. There remains some doubt about the dating. In Period IV the place where the tablet was found was in a barracks building which would not be expected to contain the correspondence of a commanding officer. If not from Period IV, this text (and the whole of the Archive of Priscinus) will belong to Period III.

23 We originally read the name as Crispinus. For the correction see Britannia 1987, 129. For the Ninth Cohort of Batavians, ibid., 134 and note that the reference to a reading of coh vii ba[t is a misprint for viii.

24 CIL, XVI.48.

25 CIL, XVI.69–70. For the fragility of the evidence for removal to Noricum see RMD, 97, line 4 note. See also Smeesters, J., ‘Les Tungri dans l'armée romaine, état actuel de nos connaissances’, in Haupt, D. and Horn, H. G. (eds), Studien zu den Militärgrenzen Rams: Vorträge des 10. internationalen Limeskongresses in der Germania Inferior, BJ Beih. 38 (1977), 175–86Google Scholar.

26 RIB, 2155 (Castlecary), RMD, 97.

27 Birley, op. cit. (n. 5), 349–64.

28 RMD, 97, line 4 note.

29 See below, p. 68 and note that this strength report is the basis for the remark by Frere, S. S., Britannia 20 (1989), 273CrossRefGoogle Scholar about the sequence of units in garrison at Vindolanda.

30 Notably in Britannia 1990, no. 1.

31 See Frere, S. S. and Wilkes, J. J., Strageath, Excavations within the Roman Fort 1973–86 Britannia Monograph IX (1989), 118Google Scholar.

32 Hassall, M., ‘The Internal Planning of Roman Auxiliary Forts’, in Hartley, B. R. and Wacher, J. S. (eds), Rome and her Northern Provinces (1983), 99–100Google Scholar.

33 For another London connection in the Vindolanda tablets see Britannia 1990, no. 1.

34 At RMR, 63.ii.11 they are included among losses, not absentees, and at P.Brooklyn, 24.U.5 they are the last entry before summa qui decesserunt.

35 See Daniels, C., ‘The Flavian and Trajanic Northern Frontier’, in Todd, M. (ed.), Research on Roman Britain 1960–89 Britannia Monograph XI (1989), 31–5 at 35Google Scholar, cf. G. S. Maxwell, ‘Excavations at the Roman fort of Crawford, Lanarkshire’, PSAS 104 (1971/1972), 147–200 at 178.

36 See R. Jackson, ‘Roman Doctors and their Instruments: Recent Research into Ancient Practice’, JRA 3 (1990). 5–27 at 13.

37 Frere and Wilkes, op. cit. (n. 31), 120–1.

38 idem, 117.

39 Frere, S. S. and St Joseph, J. K., Roman Britain from the Air (1983), 123–6Google Scholar.

40 For a clear statement of the position see Maxfield, V. A., ‘Pre-Flavian Forts and their Garrisons’, Britannia 17 (1986), 59–72 at 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.