To the Letter. Simon Garfield
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the glee upon discovery of the same letter in the age of the moon shot and mobile phone. Partly it is the simplicity and brevity of the letters themselves, and their relentless politeness, with so much of each one concerned with greetings and farewells. Partly it is the sense of efficiency they convey: the successful conquest and running of this vast Roman outpost depended on these tiny, delicate scraps.
And partly it is because we see ourselves on those tablets. We all still need warm clothes, hearty food, reassurances of health. And, as is the case in at least one letter, we still value bedspreads.
We do not know precisely how the soldiers at Vindolanda received their mail, but it does appear to be an ordered process orchestrated initially from Rome and then adapted to the spreading network of Roman roads in Britain. The primitive Northumberland postal service would have seen deliveries along the Stanegate road supplemented by personal messengers to and from London (in this sense the fort may have served as a central sorting office). Indeed, the Vindolanda network may have been one of the testing grounds for the new postal carrier service. A book called The Antonine Itinerary suggests that postal carriers would have had a detailed system of inns or stables on a network of roads where they could rest or change horses, and these ‘posts’ – the markers along any route that signified a resting place, storage place or a place to feed and maintain horses – gave the mail network its other name. The roads carried far more than mail, of course, but there is evidence that successive emperors ordered that military mail should take precedence over, say, the movement of clothing or cattle – an early example of express delivery.
However it travelled, we can imagine the anticipation, delight and relief experienced by the recipients of mail at Vindolanda, just as we can still locate the emotions felt by their families as the wooden tablets were folded over and trustingly dispatched. And it is worth considering that the letters that have been discovered, possibly purposely discarded 2,000 years ago, were not those held most dear; those may have perished in the possession of the owner and, of no value to looters, been left to rot. What value, for instance, would anyone place on a collection of birthday letters?* ‘Clodius Super to his Cerialis greetings. Most willingly brother, just as you had wanted, I would have been present for your Lepidina’s birthday. At any rate . . . for you surely know that it pleases me most whenever we are together.’
Beyond the fact that he was a centurion, and once requested a large supply of cloaks and tunics for his slaves, Clodius Super is little known to us. But Flavius Cerialis is a frequent presence in these tablets. An equestrian prefect (local governing general) of the 9th cohort of Batavians, he was married to Sulpicia Lepidina, who also features regularly. His presence enables scholars to date the tablets to AD 97–104. There was much coming and going among his men across the frontier, and there appears to be a lenient attitude towards sick and compassionate leave. The upper crust of his troops, if not the entire cohort, also appear to be generally well fortified: their larder included not only the goat and young pig from the earlier account, but specifically also pig’s trotters, roe deer, goose, garlic paste, pickling liquor, anise, fish sauce, thyme, caraway, cumin, beetroot, olives, beer and wine (alongside the staples – wheat, cereal, butter, barley, eggs and apples). Several letters reveal a fair supply of kitchen utensils and what is believed to be a recipe from Lepidina’s kitchen (involving an early mise-en-place food arrangement involving a small dish, a cup and a tray).
We learn that the soldiers’ wardrobe contains a large ensemble of clothes and sandals of all weights for all weathers (galliculae, abolla, tunicae cenatoriae – a Gallic shoe, a thick cloak, a fine wool tunic), along with decorative fabrics, blankets and cubitoria – an elegant evening ensemble. There is certainly an element of fashion consciousness: use of the term de synthesi indicates items of clothing that were part of a collection, items that could be worn either as separates or as a coordinating costume.
But having hosted a birthday party of one’s own, what should one wear to Claudia Severa’s?
Claudia Severa to her Lepidina, greetings. On the 3rd day before the Ides of September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send you their greetings. [In another’s handwriting:] I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail.
This letter alone carries an undue weight of history. The bulk of it was written by a scribe, almost certainly a man. But the signature is by another hand, believed to be Claudia Severa herself, the earliest example of a woman’s handwriting in the Roman world.
The letters are usually isolated items, and only occasionally – as with notes to Flavius Cerialis and Lepidina – do they appear to form part of a logical sequence. But they should generally be considered as part of an ongoing correspondence, and the visible hiccups in these exchanges (the chiding for failing to reply) are as much a part of letters in the first and second century as they are of our own.
Solemnis to Paris, his brother, very many greetings.* I want you to know that I am in very good health, as I hope you are in turn, you neglectful man, who have sent me not even one letter. But I think I am behaving in a more considerate fashion in writing to you . . . to you, brother . . . my messmate. Greet from me Diligens and Cogitatus and Corinthus . . . Farewell, dearest brother.
Chrauttius to Veldeius his brother and old messmate, very many greetings. And I ask you, brother Veldeius, – I am surprised that you have written nothing back to me for such a long time – whether you have heard anything from our elders or about . . . in which unit he is; and greet him from me in my words and Virilis the veterinary doctor. Ask him [Virilis] whether you may send me through one of our friends the pair of shears which he promised me in exchange for money. And I ask you, brother Virilis, to greet from me our [?] sister Thuttena. Write back to us [?] how Velbutena is [?]. It is my wish that you enjoy the best of fortune. Farewell. [The back of the letter carried instructions to deliver it to London.]*
The letters at Vindolanda – so valuable to us now – were not written with an eye on posterity, and no one handling them in, say, AD 105, would have thought for a moment about their future value. Their brevity, immediacy and mundanity may appear to us closer to mobile phone texts or tweets than full letters. And no one would claim they were beautiful pieces of writing, or instructive beyond their specific historical details. They are often charming, but they rarely convey anything of a philosophical nature. For that we need to go back to other excavations, to letters written on papyrus and rediscovered in the last three centuries, and to the undisputed first masters of the form.
* Octavius was an import-exporter; the sinew he mentions is believed to have been an important element in the building of catapults. The word ‘brother’ in these greetings should often be read as ‘comrade’.
* See Chapter Fourteen.
* Both Solemnis and Paris are believed to be slaves in a cohort of Batavians, one of the two principal units at Vindolanda in the period AD 85–130. The other was the Tungrian cohort.
* The number of question marks in this passage exposes the translator’s dilemma. But the word ‘translator’ is in itself inadequate: a phalanx of historians, palaeographers and linguistic experts have pored over these texts in the past decades, analysing the smallest curvature on the faintest letterform, cross-referencing indistinct names and locations, and piecing together logical textual and physical combinations – the ultimate lexicologist’s jigsaw. And then there is the problem of wider contextual interpretation, a task akin