Ready to Hike Hadrian’s Wall

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Resting above Saanich Inlet

For our last Hadrian’s Wall training hike this past Sunday, April 29th, we hiked the Gowlland-Tod Park trails high above the Saanich Inlet on Vancouver Island. We’re now all heading off in different directions and will meet again in a couple of weeks for our eight day walk along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England.

Hiking in the Mist

The trail was more rugged than Hadrian’s Wall Path will be but the misty views were worth it. And because we hiked around 12 kilometers, I qualified for the Automattic Worldwide Word Press 5k.

Arbutus Tree above the Inlet

 

Cena Romana

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Wall Painting from Pompeii

Last Saturday night my Hadrian’s Wall hiking group got together for a Roman feast potluck. We dined well on dishes based on ancient Roman recipes adapted in the book, The Classical Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger.

Our menu included:

Honeyed White Wine

Garlic Cheese with Bread

Olives

Parthian Chicken

Shoulder of Pork with Sweet Wine Cakes

Barley with Figs

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Patina of Nuts

Pineapple Upsidedown Cake with Cream (not Roman but very good)

Figs and Dates

We began our dinner by mingling over the Honeyed Wine aperitif, which was sweet, peppery and surprisingly very good, followed by the very, very garlicky and very popular Garlic Cheese.

The Shoulder of Pork with Sweet Wine Cakes recipe included a barley and fig side dish which was also a surprise hit. When discussing our experience with the recipes, we decided honey and wine were prominent ingredients in most of them. Fortunately there weren’t too many ingredients we couldn’t source, although I failed to get any rue for my red wine sauce so I am not sure how it was really meant to taste.

Not having the space for dining couches nor the slaves to serve the dishes, we dined as poorer Romans might by sitting on chairs and stools. Nor were there any dancing girls for after dinner entertainment but I did my best to bore (I mean amuse) my guests with a slideshow lecture on Roman life along Hadrian’s Wall.

Women of Roman Britain

Posted by margo in General

In honour of International Woman’s Day, here are a few women I’ve discovered while exploring Roman footprints in Britannia.

Boudica

The most famous, or infamous, woman from Roman Britain is Boudica, the Iceni warrior who led an army of native Britons on a rampage in AD 61, destroying the Roman towns of Camulodunum (Colchester) and Verulamium (St. Alban’s) before being stopped by the Roman army. Her story was written, from the Roman perspective, by the writer Tacitus.

Statue of Boudica in London

But there are others, not so famous, whose names have come down to us through inscriptions and other writings which give us little glimpses into their lives.

Claudia Severa and Sulpicia Lepidina

The Vindolanda wooden writing tablets were first unearthed in 1973, having survived in the anaerobic soil at this fort site near Hadrian’s Wall. They reveal correspondence from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina. Claudia lived at a fort called Briga on the northern frontier of Britannia probably not far from Vindolanda. Her husband, Aelius Brocchus, was the prefect there. It is easy to imagine her loneliness in a place populated with hostile native tribes, soldiers, slaves, merchants and very few women of her own kind whom she could befriend. But she found a friend in Sulpicia Lepidina, the wife of the Flavius Cerialis, prefect of Vindolanda from the late first to the early second century AD.

Her letters include arrangements for a visit and a birthday party invitation. You can read the tablets (291 and 292) at http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/

Regina of the Catuvellauni

At Arbeia Roman Fort, located in South Shields near Newcastle, we discover Regina through a gravestone erected by her husband, Barates who had come from Palmyra (Syria) and had owned her as a slave before he freed her and married her. She belonged to the Catuvellauni tribe from southern England. She is shown sitting in a wicker chair wearing a fashionable Romano-British dress, holding her spinning on her lap and opening her jewelry box. Below the Latin is a line of Palmyrene text in Aramaic.

This is the translation of her tombstone:

To the spirits of the departed (and) of Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barates of Palmyra, Catuvellauni by birth, died aged 30.

In Palmyrene the inscription says: Regina, the freedwoman of Barates, alas.

Funerary Stele of Regina

Hermione, Daughter of Quintus

This inscription comes from Maryport on the western coast of Cumbria. Below the translation is her story from the interpretive sign at the Senhouse Roman Museum.

To Imperial Virtue … Hermione, daughter of Quintus, gladly, willingly, and deservedly fulfilled her vow.

“Hermione was a freeborn citizen of Greek extraction who, at the time she dedicated two large altars, was probably not married. Her choice of gods for veneration, Imperial Virtue and Juno, wife of Jupiter, shows that she followed mainstream Roman religion. Hermione was unusual, but not unique, in having enough money to commission two expensive altars, and in dedicating them without involving any of the men of her family. Usually, women relied on the head of their family for public demonstrations of faith.

It might be expected that Juno, who oversaw the lives of women and offered protection during marriage and childbirth, would have been a popular choice with the women of the province. However, the Maryport altar is the only one found so far in Britain which is dedicated to Juno by a woman.”

 

 

Ruminating on Roman Roads

Posted by margo in Britannia 2010, roman britain and tagged with , , , , ,

Wade's Causeway on Wheeldale Moor

I’ve always wondered where some of the names of Roman Roads in Britain came from; they’re obviously not Latin – Watling Street, Dere Street, the Stanegate, etc. Today I was doing some research and found an answer in the book, Roman Roads in Britain by Hugh Davies.

We don’t actually know what the Romans called their roads in Britain but the names we do have derive from the Anglo-Saxon and Norse invaders who came after the Romans. Watling Street evolved over the centuries to its present form from the Anglo-Saxon Waclinga straete, meaning road leading to the Waclinga tribe. The Stanegate near Hadrian’s Wall comes from stane meaning stone and gate, the Norse for road, so it was known as the stone road.

The section of Roman road on the Wheeldale Moor in North Yorkshire that I visited in late 2010 is part of Wade’s Causeway that travels from Whitby on the east coast. Its name may come from a Norse legend about the sea giant, Wada or Wade. The sign at the site tells us that “he is said to have built the road for his wife, Bell, to herd her sheep along the way to moorland pastures.”

Some of Bell's Sheep on the North York Moors?

We certainly saw a lot of sheep on the moors that day, perhaps they were some of hers.

Fording the modern road on Wheeldale Moor

We also forded several streams going through the desolate, heather-covered moors. There is always lots of adventure and great scenery to discover along ancient Roman roads.

 

Forte or Fortissimo? Fort-itude on the Wall

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Creating a slideshow on the Roman fort sites along Hadrian’s Wall this past weekend for the group that is hiking the wall in the spring started me wondering which site or sites I would choose as must-see and which ones I would pass by if I didn’t have the time.

Number one to see has to be Vindolanda. The artefacts in the Chesterholm Museum alone are worth the visit. And I haven’t been there since they updated the museum in 2011, so I think it might even be better now.

Replica Milestone at Vindolanda

Number two would be Chesters with its interesting museum and diversity of remains including the extensive bath house ruins.

Which sites could I go by without seeing again if I didn’t have the time? Probably Birdoswald, because it has the fewest ruins and the best parts of the wall there are outside the site.

And if time was tight in Newcastle, I might choose the Roman exhibit at the Great North Museum over Segedunum Roman fort.

Luckily for our group hiking along Hadrian’s Wall, the wall itself and its setting are the biggest attractions, especially between Walltown Crags and Housesteads Fort, and there will be no missing them.

Let’s party like it’s AD 85!

Posted by margo in General, roman history

Two thousand years ago Romans didn’t hold back celebrating. Especially during December.

According to a book I’ve just read, Roman Timetable by Simon James Young, here is a list of Roman festivals just for December:

3/12/11 – Bona Dea (the good goddess) for women only; games, music and dancing.

5/12/11 – Faunus (god of the wild countryside)

8/12/11 – Tiberinus (spirit of the river Tiber) and Gaia (Earth)

13/12/11–24/12/11 Saturnalia (god Saturn) gift-giving, feasting, decorating.

13/12/11 – Tellus (ancient earth goddess)

15/12/11 – Consualia (Consus, god of the granary connected with safekeeping of the harvest)

19/12/11 –Iuventas (goddess of youth,a celebration for all boys coming of age (14)

19/12/11 – Opalia (Ops was the personification of abundance)

21/12/11 – Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun, festival held on the winter solstice)

23/12/11 – Larentalia (possibly related to the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus).

Saturnalia was by far the biggest celebration lasting many days and giving people the excuse for many excesses. Here’s how Seneca the Younger described it, in a Scroogy way, in the late first century AD:

“This is the month of December, when the whole city is aglow with excitement. License has been given for intemperate behaviour by the general public. Everywhere you can hear the sound of elaborate preparations, as if there were some differences between the Saturnalia and regular business days. The distinction is fading. I think that man was quite right who said, ‘December used to be a month; now it’s the whole year.’”

This festive season waned during the bleak Middle Ages with the advent of Christianity and the banning of Roman gods and festivals. But the human spirit can’t be kept down and we have revived winter celebrations to Roman proportions in the last couple hundred years. Now we call it Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanza; whatever we call it, let’s embrace the joy of the season.

Bring on December!

For ideas for your next festive dinner party, here’s a funny little video about Roman dining:

Roman Come Dine With Me

No TV? No Internet? Trajan had an app for that.

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Trajan erected his famed column in AD 113 and it was an original and memorable way to broadcast his success in defeating one of Rome’s long-time enemies, the Dacians and their ruler Decebalus. The column was covered in carved depictions of events that happened during his campaigns in Dacia (modern Romania) on the Danube frontier in AD 101-102 and 105-106, and these have been very useful to historians, leaving behind a wealth of visual details about Roman military and social history.

Trajan's Column Base

The column stood between the two libraries of the Forum in Rome and people could read the painted graphic scenes almost the entire height of the column. These scenes wind up for a total length of 656 feet (200 m) and include 2500 figures. The column was built of Parian marble and has a height of 125 feet (38 m) and a base diameter of 13 feet (3.83 m).

The story goes round and round

Trajan’s column still stands today in Rome and I must have seen it 30 years ago when I last visited, though I don’t remember because I didn’t know what I was looking at then. But I recently saw a life-size reproduction of the column at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Of course it is on my list of must-sees when I return to Rome. The pictures here are from the V&A.

Victoria and Albert Trajan's Column Copy

You have to love the V&A – it looks like there is some kind of medieval pajama party going on beside the column!

A Stone’s Throw

Posted by margo in Britannia 2010, roman britain, roman history and tagged with , ,

One September morning last year two older couples were enjoying their morning coffee at St. Swithin’s church in Lincoln, UK when I had to ask them to move. Problem was their little card table in the church hall was right beside a 2,000 year old Roman altar and I couldn’t get a good picture of it without disturbing them. They were very accommodating, though, even inviting me to join them for coffee.

To the Goddesses, the Fates and the Deities of Augustus Caius Antistius Frontinus, being curator for the third time, erects this altar at his own cost

People over the years, including the Romans themselves, recycled stones in later buildings. This altar, dedicated by Augustus Caius Antistius Frontinus, was reused in the fourth century for Lincoln’s East Wall and only discovered in the 1870s when St. Swithin’s was built. Other signs of recycling in Lincoln include Roman bricks in a cottage chimney and a Roman wall incorporated into a much later shop front.

Lincoln Cottage Chimney with Roman Bricks

 

Lincoln Shop with Roman Wall

I started thinking about the recycling of Roman stones when writing about Maryport on England’s west coast. Here the entire fort of Alauna, built in AD 120s, was dismantled in the 18th century to build the new town of Maryport. Thankfully at the time Colonel Humphrey Senhouse hired a man to record and rescue any inscribed or carved stonework, adding to a collection started by his ancestor John Senhouse in 1570. Today the Senhouse Roman Museum has the largest collection of Roman military altar stones and inscriptions in Britain.

All that remains of Alauna Fort

Another example is found in Caerwent, Wales, where inside the village church is a statue base with one of the most important inscriptions from Roman Britain, the Paulinus inscription. This early 3rd century dedication by Tiberius Claudius Paulinus, commander of the Second Augustan Legion, gives details about military and civilian careers, as well as civil administration in Roman Britain. It had been part of a post Roman building in the village.

All these moving stones are pieces in the puzzle of ancient history, and one never knows where they’ll turn up.

Roman Witches

Posted by margo in General, roman history

Hideous women performing strange and perverse nocturnal acts, summoning the power of the demons who dwell between the earth and the underworld, between life and death. Witches haven’t changed much in 2000 years and we have no trouble recognizing the witches of Roman literature.

Canidia and Sagana – Horace wrote two poems about these witches, one slightly humorous and the other quite sinister.

In Satire 1.8, Canidia and Sagana are dressed in black, have pale skin, long nails and wild hair. They shriek and cackle. They come to a graveyard at night when there is a full moon and pick herbs, tear apart a lamb and pour blood on graves to conjure up spirits. They bury a wolf’s beard and the fang of a spotted snake and burn a wax doll. But everything turns slightly farcical when the Priapus statue, who is narrating the poem, farts. The startled witches run away, one losing her false teeth and the other her wig.

In Epode 5, the two witches are uglier still. Canidia has locks entwined with twisting vipers and Sagana’s hair stands on end like the bristles of a charging boar. They are about to kill a boy in order to make a love potion. Canidia wants to ensnare Varus and needs a powerful potion using the liver and marrow of a boy.

As well as these, the witches need many other bizarre items for their potion: barren wild-fig wood that sprouts from gravestone cracks; cypress from a dead man’s door; screech owl’s eggs besmeared with gore of poison-toad; herbs produced in Iolchos and Hiberia abundant in the weeds of bane; and bones snatched from the jaws of starving dogs.

Erichto – In the Pharsalia, Lucan created Erichto to be the most hideous of all witches, who frightens the very gods themselves. Erichto shuns other witches for being too tame. Not only does she desecrate dead bodies, she creates her own. Lucan lists her crimes against humanity: she steals the bloom off the face of a child; she cuts the hair of a dead adolescent; she snatches babies from their mothers’ wombs; and she bends over a dead body to kiss it, opening the mouth with her teeth, biting the tongue, then sending a hissed message of terror down the throat to the shades of Styx.

Dido – When Dido, in Virgil’s Aeniad, is abandoned by Aeneas, she enlists the help of a priestess who can control the desires of others and the forces of nature. The priestess chants spells to stop the flow of rivers, to make stars move backward and trees walk down mountains. Dido herself puts a curse on Aeneas and all his descendants by calling on both gods and demons, including Juno, Hecate and the avenging Furies, to do her bidding.

Simaetha – Simaetha in Virgil’s Eclogue 8, drones incantations to bring her lover, Daphnis, back home to her. She carries out rituals around a fire, twisting three strands of three threads around his image and carrying it three times around an altar. She puts clay and wax figures of Daphnis into a fire, sprinkling barley meal and laurel twigs, so Daphnis will return to her again.

Pamphile – In Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Lucius is curious about magic and travels to Thessaly in Greece, famed for its witches. He stays at the home of Pamphile, a woman reported to be a witch and skilled in all forms of necromancy. She can plunge the light of heaven into darkness simply by breathing on twigs or pebbles. Lucius drinks one of her potions and turns into an ass.

Happy Halloween!

 

Palma Non Sine Pulvere

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Hadrian's Wall along the crags

Over the weekend I put on a slideshow for a group who want to hike Hadrian’s Wall next spring. What struck me as I was putting it together was that most of the remains are in the hilly parts of the walk. The flat lands on either coast, from the west coast at Bowness-on-Solway and east of Carlisle to Walton, as well as west of Newcastle, have very few remains.

This makes sense once you think about it because over the centuries people would have taken the stones for building material from the parts of the wall where they were easiest to move, the flat parts. Also they would have used many more stones closest to the large settlements of Carlisle and Newcastle.

So to see the best remains – the forts at Birdoswald, Housesteads and Chesters, the many milecastles, turrets and Carrawburgh Mithras Temple, as well as seeing the stunning views of what is left of Hadrian’s Wall snaking along the craggy Whin Sill – our group will have to get in shape over the winter to do the necessary hiking up and down the hills of Cumbria and Northumberland to see the Roman footprints of Hadrian’s Wall.

Palma Non Sine Pulvere – No Reward Without Effort, as my old high school motto says.