The Wall

by Alistair Moffat

  Cuthbert, leaning on his staff, was listening to Wagga the Reeve of Carlisle explaining to the Queen the Roman wall of the city . . . the citizens conducted him around the city walls to see a remarkable Roman fountain that was built into them.

  Wagga and his people (still called citizens by Bede) must have maintained whatever aqueduct or pumping or piping systems continued to bring water to this fountain. The walls were intact, and they enclosed a Roman street grid which was still being adhered to. Some time after 698 when a church dedicated to St Cuthbert was built in the city, the east–west alignment was altered so that it fronted onto a Roman street. Much later, a large arched stone building was still standing when the twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury described its inscription to Mars and Venus.

  Archaeologists have found grand relics under modern Carlisle. Stone columns and capitals are kept on display at Tullie House Museum, and hypocaust flooring used under the houses of wealthy citizens has been uncovered. They also displayed their wealth in death.

  Since it was illegal to bury the dead inside the walls of Roman towns, the habit was to set up tombs by the roadside. Not only do these allow the line of the roads out of Carlisle to be plotted, but two in particular offer valuable information. A Greek merchant, probably with a specialised trade and who followed the Roman army as a supplier, died in the town. His wife, Septima, left a valedictory verse:

  To the spirits of the departed

  Flavius Antigonus Papias

  a citizen of Greece, lived

  60 years more or less, and

  gave back to the Fates his

  soul lent for that time,

  Septima Do . . . set this up.

  Later an elaborate tombstone with a sculpture of the deceased was found by the west road passing through Denton Holme. Wearing rich and expensive drapery, the lady sits on a high-backed armchair holding a circular fan and with a pet bird on her lap. A child stands beside her. It is a confident, stylish memorial to a luxurious way of life not seen again in Carlisle until the twentieth century.

  It has been argued – convincingly – that Christianity was the only substantial historical legacy of the Roman occupation of southern Britain. One of our greatest saints almost certainly had his origins in the countryside around Hadrian’s Wall and the civitas of Carlisle and its early Christian community. St Patrick was born in Britannia, not Ireland, and in his writings he left several tantalising snippets of information about himself and his early life. These have been brilliantly analysed by Professor Charles Thomas.

  All of the episodes in Patrick’s young life point to origins in the north-west of Britannia. He was abducted by Irish slavers and sold into captivity in Northern Ireland, becaming a shepherd for six years. When Patrick escaped, he eventually returned to Britannia to train as a priest before finally returning to Ireland to begin his great mission of conversion and thereby leave an indelible mark on history.

  Patrick wrote that his father was Calpurnius, a deacon in the church and a decurion in the ordo of a civitas. He was wealthy enough to have both male and female servants and to own a villula, a small estate in the countryside. According to Patrick, it lay near Vicus Bannavem Taberniae, a place-name which appears slightly corrupted. Vicus is simple enough, a civil settlement outside the walls of a fort. But Calpurnius was also the decurion of a city – and where in Britannia was there a city close to forts with vici? If the text is taken to read Vicus Bannaventa Berniae, then the location comes slowly into focus. Banna is the distinctive name for the Wall fort at Birdoswald, and venta is a market, the market held at the vicus. So – was Calpurnius’ small estate near Birdoswald? The last element in the puzzle of the place-name is Berniae, and that appears to be a transliteration of an Old Welsh word bern for a defile or a narrow pass. Near Birdoswald, there are several candidates. Perhaps the river-cliff at Greenhead, perhaps the steep banks of the burn at Poltross? In any event, the fort, and by extension the villula, are near Carlisle, the city where Calpurnius may have been a decurion.

  Patrick also wrote that his grandfather, Potitus, was an ordained priest. This implies an organised church with a hierarchy (able to conduct ordinations) around 360, and this in turn strongly suggests links with a developed town. All of the elements seem to fit. Charles Thomas is certain that Patrick was born and raised in Carlisle and the countryside through which Hadrian’s Wall runs. Perhaps the conversion of Ireland ought to be seen as part of the Wall’s legacy.

  Carlisle’s new status as a civitas was first mentioned during the reign of the breakaway emperor, Postumus. After the shocking affront of Valerian’s capture in the east, rebellions at the opposite end of the Empire saw the provinces of Spain, Gaul, Germany and Britain form what was known as the Gallic Empire. Under Postumus, it lasted little more than a decade before the Empire was put back together again by the energetic Aurelian. Britain appears to have been unaffected by these continental convulsions. But reform was in the air. After his accession in 285, Diocletian began the process of dividing the Empire in four. There were to be two senior emperors, the Augusti, including himself, and two junior figures, the Caesares. As Roman Europe settled down into this new pattern of power, Britain rebelled.

  ZENOBIA

  When the antiquary William Stukely first gazed upon Housesteads Fort in 1775, he proclaimed it the Tadmor of Britain: a reference which escapes most modern readers. Stukely used it as a comparison with the recent discovery of the magnificent city of Palmyra in the Syrian desert. By 271 the Empire of this remarkable place had all but eclipsed Rome in the east. Under their warrior-empress, Zenobia, the Palmyrenes had conquered Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and much of Asia Minor. The Historia Augusta was dazzled: . . . in the manner of a Roman emperor, she came forth to public assemblies, wearing a helmet and girt with a purple fillet . . . Her face was dark . . . her eyes were black and powerful . . . her spirit divinely great, her beauty incredible. The oasis city of Palmyra had ingathered fabulous wealth as a consequence of its position astride several long-distance trade-routes from the east to the cities of the Syrian coast. Zenobia’s amazing empire lasted only a year. The Emperor Aurelian defeated the Palmyrenes in three bloody battles and successfully besieged the city. Caught while fleeing to Persia, Zenobia was brought to Rome and rode a camel in Aurelian’s triumph. Instead of the dark horrors of the Mamertine Prison, she retired to a villa near the city – and no doubt thought often on her year as Empress of the East.

  The English Channel had become badly infested by pirates and barbarian raiders. Having been successful against them, the admiral of the Classis Britannica, Carausius, was thought to have done rather too well out of the proceeds of captured booty. Diocletian’s co-emperor, Maximian, summarily condemned Carausius to death. With nothing to lose, the admiral declared himself Emperor of Britain. Not as overblown as it sounds, for the south of the main island had been redivided into four provinces (from the Wall southwards, these were Britannia Secunda, Flavia Caesariensis, Maxima Caesariensis in the south-east and Britannia Prima in the south-west); Carausius also controlled parts of northern Gaul. In 293 Maximian’s junior imperial partner, Constantius Chlorus, drove Carausius out of Gaul and, crucially, retook the base of the Classis Britannica at Boulogne. A secondary coup d’état then occurred when Carausius was assassinated by the unlikely figure of his Financial Secretary, Allectus. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an imperial palace he had time to build in London before a Roman army invaded Britain. At a battle near Silchester, Allectus was killed, and the short-lived British Empire died with him.

  Discord and weakness in Rome once again stirred predatory instincts in the north. After four generations of peace, of generous subsidies, of basking in ancient glories – what their kings probably saw as a victory against the vast army of Severus and his son – the Maeatae and the Caledonii once more talked of war and of great raids in the south. In 296 warbands crossed the Wall, or sailed around it, and they were recorded riding far to the south, even att
acking the legionary fortress at Chester. They must have been numerous, well organised and confident. And they were given a new name. Writing of the victories of Constantius Chlorus, a historian noted a fearsome people he called the Picts.

  Picti, meaning ‘the painted or tattooed people’, was probably a soldiers’ nickname, perhaps coined in 296 by those garrisons on Hadrian’s Wall who had not seen the northern warbands before. It stands in a tradition of noms de guerre which called the Saxons after a short-bladed knife they carried, the Franks, whose name means ‘the wreckers’, or the Vikings who did exactly that, dodged in and out of creeks, or viks.

  The nickname stuck and almost certainly applied to a federation of Maeatae, Caledonii, a people called the Verturiones (probably from Strathearn and Menteith) and other groups. These came to include the Scots from the Argyll coastlands and a people called the Atecotti. This name translates simply as ‘the Old Peoples’ and they may have originated from the Hebrides. St Jerome believed the Atecotti to be aboriginal savages and claims to have witnessed them practicing cannibalism.

  When the first raiders broke through into Britannia, they encountered much less resistance than in former times. By the beginning of the fourth century the Roman army had reorganised. Gone were the old distinctions between legions and auxiliaries. Now the frontier garrison was known as the limitanei, and under imperial command was a mobile field army called the comitatenses. Control over the men on the Wall was removed from the Governor of Britannia and given to a soldier known as the Dux Britanniarum, the Duke of the Britains (meaning all four provinces).

  The accent was firmly on defence in Britain, and while strong archaeological evidence found at Cramond and Carpow suggests that Constantius led an expedition to Scotland to quieten the Picts in 306, that was the exception. Numbers seem also to have declined markedly; units with the names of the old legions attached only had 1,000 or so, compared with 4,800 or 5,000, and cavalry troops were 150 rather than 460 or 500. And soldiers were conscripts, not volunteers, with the sons of veterans now being compelled to join the army. The decline was reflected in the occasional fraud, when commanders continued to claim dead men’s pay by failing to report casualties in their units. On paper the Roman army sounded a great deal more formidable than it was in the field.

  One solution was the co-option of mercenaries, and by the fourth century these were mainly German warriors. Some estimates put the proportion at a quarter of the total strength in the western Empire. When Constantius returned to York in 306, like Severus a century before, he died and was immediately succeeded by his son. Diocletian’s power-sharing arrangement remained in force, but when Constantine was proclaimed at the legionary fortress, he needed solid support from his father’s army, and prominent was a German mercenary king, Crocus. He commanded a band of Alemanni, men who had presumably fought against the Picts in Scotland.

  Along the Wall repairs and refurbishment took place at the beginning of the fourth century. Work is recorded at both Birdoswald and Housesteads forts, and a new garrison arrived at South Shields. The Numerus Barcariorum Tigrisensium, or the Tigris Bargemen, originated in modern Iraq, but by the time they reached the mouth of the Tyne, they may have lost that specific function. But they probably still recruited in the Middle East because they gave the fort a new name. It was called Arbeia, the fort of the Arabs.

  It took Constantine the Great until 324 to establish himself as sole emperor and his long reign produced two significant shifts of policy: the transfer of the focus of the Empire from Italy and Rome to the east and Constantinople, and the official adoption of Christianity as the state religion. The new religion had probably been imported into Britain by soldiers, and in the third century martyrs were killed at St Albans and at Caerleon. The beautiful church plate found at Water Newton was made in the early fourth century and Christian-inspired mosaics at the villas at Hinton St Mary and Frampton a little later. These finds were made in the south, but on the Wall the signs of the new faith are sparse and of uncertain date. Chapel-like buildings have been identified at Vindolanda and Housesteads, but they were probably built after the end of Roman Britain.

  FORGERIES

  Clay moulds for making counterfeit Roman coins have been found both north and south of the Wall. This shady trade was made possible by the continuing debasement of the currency of the Empire. By the middle of the third century the imperial budget was running at 225 million denarii per annum and hundreds of millions of coins were being struck to feed it. There was not enough silver in the Empire to make what was needed and consequently coins were primarily minted from base metals. The Emperor Diocletian attempted to check the runaway inflation by issuing an Edict on Prices in 301. It listed cereals, beer, meat and other commodities and attached standard measures and prices to each, as well as the rates of pay for different sorts of worker. Like all attempts at a prices-and-incomes policy, it failed immediately. The market corrected the situation with characteristic crudeness. Exchange was based on bullion, silver or gold, no matter what form it came in. The Roman Empire ultimately fell because it ceased to produce sound money and became less and less able to pay for itself.

  For the first half of the fourth century, the province appears to have been calm and prosperous. No raiding from the north is recorded for almost forty years after Constantine’s accession at York. But in 342 the long period of peace was broken. The Emperor Constans arrived with detachments of the field army and immediately moved up to the Wall. It seems that Pictish warbands, perhaps in concert with their Scots allies, had attacked the outpost forts at High Rochester, Risingham and Bewcastle. All three were burned. Constans encouraged the areani, a new name for the scouts formerly called exploratores, to take a more actively defensive role, and the most northerly fort, at High Rochester, appears to have been abandoned. A treaty, and probably subsidies, were accepted by the northern kings.

  By 360 these arrangements no longer held. The Pictish federation mustered and sent its warbands to raid an area north of the Wall, and perhaps behind it. Four regiments from the field army (including a unit of Batavians) in Europe were sent by the Emperor Julian to deal with the emergency. No details of the campaign have survived, but it was certainly not decisive. More attacks from the Picts, the Scots, the Atecotti – and a new group of barbarian raiders, the Saxons, came in in 365. Serious though they seem to have been, these assaults on Britain were only a prelude.

  In 367 the province suffered as it had never done before – even during the rebellion of Boudicca. In a concerted series of incursions, coming from several directions, the Picts, the Scots, the Atecotti, the Franks and the Saxons descended on Britannia. Known as the Conspiratio Barbarica, the Barbarian Conspiracy, it saw the Pictish army pour through the Wall, the Scots and probably the Atecotti invade from the west, across the Irish Sea and the Solway, and the Franks and the Saxons attack the coasts of Gaul and perhaps the south of England. A pre-arranged plan was being put into action. Having communicated well in advance, raised the necessary forces, been in possession of good military intelligence, and worked out a timetable for invasion, the barbarian kings swept Britannia’s defences aside and tore into the province. For two years they burned, looted and killed without check and over a wide area. It was a catastrophe, and a hammer-blow to an ever-weakening western Empire.

  In the north there had been betrayal and collusion. The Pictish kings had bribed the Roman areani, the scouts operating forward of the Wall, to report nothing of the preparations for war, and probably to supply crucial intelligence on the state of the defences and troop dispositions. It seems likely that the great conspiracy was co-ordinated and planned in Pictland, an operation of considerable sophistication which modifies the usual image of screaming hordes, for once allowing that savagery could be accompanied by brains.

  Once the Pictish army had broken through the Wall (they would not necessarily need the co-operation of the areani to sail around it), they sought out units probably deployed on the east coast, what was known as the Saxo
n Shore, and defeated them and killed their commander, Nectaridus. Then they turned on the Dux Britanniarum, Fullofaudes, and either killed or neutralised him. It was a triumph, a sweeping and comprehensive victory – complete mastery of the province. All the riches of Britannia, the villas and the prosperous towns, lay at the mercy of the fearsome barbarians.

  Roman reaction was at first hesitant. The Frankish and Saxon attacks on the coast of Gaul were probably partly designed as a screen to prevent the continental field army from reaching Britain, and the two-year delay might simply be explained by difficulties in reaching the Channel. But by 369 a capable and experienced soldier arrived at last. Theodosius brought four regiments of the field army and his first action was to proclaim an amnesty for deserters (there had been many) from the limitanei and to swell his ranks with their numbers. Never intent on invasion, only interested in raiding, the barbarian army had broken down into small warbands. Theodosius was able to mop them up or chase them out of the province and restore some sort of order. Longer-term security depended on shoring up the northern frontier and, as soon as the south seemed more settled, Theodosius and his men set out for the Wall.

  Because of the treachery of the areani, a new approach was needed. Two years before, in the North African provinces, Theodosius had dealt with the incursions of Berber tribesmen by creating alliances with buffer kingdoms between them and Roman territory. It looks as though he did something similar beyond the Wall.

  The Picts, the Scots and the Atecotti all originated beyond the Firth of Forth and the Clyde Valley. Culturally distinct from the kingdoms between the two Walls, the Picts spoke a language which survives only in tiny scraps and elements of place-names. No one can now utter a sentence in Pictish, but philologists have deciphered enough to show that, while it formed part of the P-Celtic family of languages, it was different from the Old Welsh or Brittonic dialects spoken in the south of Scotland. The Scots talked to each other in Q-Celtic, the ancestor of modern Gaelic, and the Atecotti may have lived to the north of them, perhaps in the Hebrides. It is therefore likely that the Damnonii of the Clyde and the Votadini of the Lothians and the Tweed basin had more in common with the peoples who lived south of Hadrian’s Wall than those beyond the Antonine.