Although this wall is the most famous such structure, it is neither the longest nor the most architecturally sophisticated. Longer and more complex walls, parts of border systems which include watchtowers and garrisons, stretch across central Europe, mainly in the gap between the Rhine and Danube rivers.
These central European Limes were built both by Hadrian and by his immediate successors. Rome had overextended itself by attempting settlements northeast of this natural boundary line. The empire executed a strategic retreat, pulled the settlements back to the Limes, and dug in to hold this border permanently.
On the island of Great Britain, the Scots to the north of England were simply too fierce for the Roman military. The wall was erected along what seemed to be the outermost possible expansion of the empire. Historian Andrew Curry describes the structure:
In most places the stone wall was an intimidating 14 feet tall and 10 feet wide. Traces of a 9-foot-deep ditch running the length of the wall are still visible today. In the past few decades excavations have uncovered pits filled with stakes between ditch and wall, one more obstacle for intruders. A dedicated road helped soldiers respond to threats. Regularly spaced gates were supported by watchtowers every third of a mile.
The gates in the wall offer interesting possibilities. Did trade occur between the Romans and the Scots, once a border seemed to be in place? Did Scots nearer the border seem content to coexist with the Romans, but those further north organize occasional attacks? The wall had gates, yet also had defensive forces ready to repel attempted invasions:
A couple miles behind the wall, a string of forts was evenly spaced half a day’s march apart. Each fort could house between 500 and 1,000 men, capable of responding quickly to any attacks. In 1973 workers digging a drainage ditch at Vindolanda, a typical frontline fort, uncovered piles of Roman trash under a thick layer of clay. The wet layer held everything from 1,900-year-old building timbers to cloth, wooden combs, leather shoes, and dog droppings, all preserved by the oxygen-free conditions.
Written texts from the Romans who staffed the border defenses give insight into their lives. They apparently were stationed there for years at a time, and so settled in and considered these places to be home, even though they were, from a Roman perspective, the remotest possible outposts.
To some extent, there were family settlements, not merely barracks for soldiers. Roman children were born and raised along Hadrian’s Wall.
Digging deeper, excavators came across hundreds of fragile, wafer-thin wooden tablets covered in writing. They provide day-to-day details of life along Hadrian’s Wall: work assignments, duty rosters, supply requests, personal letters. There is even a birthday party invitation from one officer’s wife to another, the earliest surviving example of women’s handwriting in Latin.
The extensive development of Roman settlement along the wall was, in part, the cause of the wall, and, in part, caused by the wall: settlement caused the wall, inasmuch no wall would have been built, were there nothing to protect; the wall caused settlement, inasmuch as significant manpower was needed to plan, build, and maintain the wall, and to keep a standing army ready to defend.
The extensiveness of Roman settlement near the wall is indicated by the presence of goods provided for more than mere subsistence or survival.
The tablets suggest that watching over the “wretched little Britons,” as one Vindolanda writer describes the locals, was no picnic, but the fort wasn’t exactly a hardship post. Some soldiers lived with their families — dozens of children’s shoes, including baby booties, are among the footwear recovered. And the wall’s patrollers ate well: Bacon, ham, venison, chicken, oysters, apples, eggs, honey, Celtic beer, and wine were on the menu. There was even garum, a fermented fish concoction that was the Roman version of Worcestershire sauce. Homesick soldiers received care packages too. “I have sent you ... socks ... two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants,” writes one concerned correspondent.
How big was the threat from the Scots? In Europe, the Limes fortifications were built in the face of massive and skillful groups of Germanic warriors, who had already proven, in 9 A.D., that they could best the Roman military.
Were the Scots, while fierce, less likely to mount direct attacks on Roman positions? Or was a Scottish invasion into Roman territories in southern Britain a real threat?
Scholars today ask a key question that must have crossed the minds of Roman soldiers shivering through long watches in the English rain: What were they doing there in the first place? The scale of the wall and its system of ditches, ramparts, and roads suggest that the enemy could be deadly.
Perhaps the wall wasn’t primarily designed to deter a large-scale invasion force. Perhaps, instead, it was designed to stop smugglers or small-scale raiding parties.
Yet reports from Vindolanda hardly portray a garrison under pressure. Aside from a few scattered clues — like the tombstone of luckless centurion Titus Annius, who was “killed in the war” — there are no direct references to fighting anywhere on the British frontier. The big building project to the north isn’t even mentioned. “You get a sense something’s up. Colossal amounts of supplies are being ordered,” says Andrew Birley, director of excavations at Vindolanda and Hadrian biographer Anthony Birley’s nephew. “But they don’t refer to the wall itself.”
Hadrian’s wall in Britain, and the Limes in central Europe, would have been quickly overwhelmed by a large force. While Roman soldiers were stationed along these borders, they were perhaps not present in large enough numbers to repel a major invasion force. Instead, they might have been a border patrol force, looking to stop those who attempt to move goods without paying an import-export tax.
