The Vindolanda Tablets are ancient Latin wooden-writing tablets found around the Roman fort of Vindolanda, which lies a mile south of Hadrian’s Wall in the Tyne valley of Northumberland. The fort contained a large Roman garrison that was intended to guard the frontier along Hadrian’s Wall. In addition to the fort, there was an extensive civilian settlement attached to the fort with the soldier’s families, artisans, merchants, and slaves. The tablets depict what life was like for the Romans on the frontier of the empire.

Men of Vindolanda

Robin Birley was the first to discover the ancient wooden writing tablets in 1973. However, many of the tablets were broken into smaller fragments, splintering, or warped to such an extent that they couldn’t be saved. Since the initial discovery, A.K. Bowman and J.D. Thomas are among many who began to decode the tablets at Vindolanda. They divided them into three categories: military documents, private correspondences, and accounts or inventories, of the first garrison of Tungrians at Vindolanda. Most of the tablets date between the years AD 90-125.

Variations of the Tablets

In the years following the initial discovery, well over a thousand tablets depicting the lives of Romans on the frontier have been unearthed. Around three hundred of the tablets discovered are wax tablet, which are flat wooden tablets with indents at the top to create a wax writing-surface. The rest are leaf tablets shaved (approximately 2 mm thick) from birch or alder logs into rectangular sheets to be used with carbon ink. The reason leaf tablets were more common is because they were more clearly visible when first applied, but tended to fade under conditions of intense light exposure.

==Historical Importance==

The historical importance of theses tablets educates modern scholars of common Latin speech at frontier forts (especially Vulgar Latin usage on the frontier) and ancient Roman cursive in the first and second century. Many of the tablets weren’t stored systemically in Vindolanda, but rather were discarded notes and personal letters. As for military administration, most of the tablets concerned military organization, accounting procedures, and building technicalities. The most common military documents found among the tablets were strength-reports of the various cohorts garrisoned at Vindolanda. One tablet outlines the the strength of the Third Cohort (Cohors III Batavorum). On May 18, the Third Cohort had 246 men stationed at Vindolanda, with 31 unfit.

Bibliography

Bowman, A.K. and J.D. Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing Tablets, London: The British Museum Press, (1994)
Bowman, A.K. and J.D. Thomas, Vindolanda 1985: The New Writing-Tablets, The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 76. (1986)
Robin Birley, On Hadrian’s Wall. Vindolanda Roman Fort and Settlement. (New aspects of Antiquity). New York: Thames and Hudson. 1977
Anthony Birley, A New Tombstone from Vindolanda, Britannia, Vol. 29. (1998)

External links

The tablets are currently being digitised and made available online at http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk

Memoirs of Hadrian film

Memoirs of Hadrian is a future film adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar's novel of the same name. It tells the life-story of the Ancient Roman emperor Hadrian, including his love-affair with Antinous.

Production

Its IMDB entry lists location filming as occuring in Morocco, and as still being in production (as of February 2008), with a script by Ron Base, Valerio Manfredi and Rospo Pallenberg, and directed by John Boorman.{{imdb title|0467470|Memoirs of Hadrian}}

Antonio Banderas and Paz Vega were reported to be in talks to appear in the film by Production Weekly on October 21 2005, with Banderas as Hadrian.Cited at [http://www.comingsoon.net/news.php?id=11655 www.comingsoon.net]

References

External links

{{imdb title|0467470|Memoirs of Hadrian}}

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