Women of the Northern Frontier

by Lindsey Alison Jones

It was a Woman's Hour interview that set Lindsey off on this study. She was asked about the life of women on Hadrian's Wall, and at that time she had no ready reply.

Lindsey began with Regina, whose tomb dating to the end of the second century tells that she was a slave from St Albans, and that Barrates, a merchant from Palmyra, married her. His own tombstone survives from another part of the Wall, with most of the writing in Latin, but with a bit of ancient Palmyrene at the bottom.

The question is, how did Regina come to be a slave? The most usual reason for enslavement was capture in war, but Regina was born in a time of peace. Had she committed some crime, and been enslaved as a punishment? There is a record of a woman to whom that happened, and she was captured by 'aliens' (by which the Irish were probably meant). Her master, Cocceius Firmus, sued the Roman authorities for letting her be captured. Or had Regina been sold by her very poor family for some other couple to adopt?

Whatever her origins, she was freed and married by Barrates. Mixed marriages were common in Roman Britain.

On her tombstone Regina is shown wearing earrings, a torc, a bracelet of three strands, and what seems to be a wedding ring. Customs about wearing rings varied; Mediterranean brides wore an iron ring, whereas in Germany an iron ring was the badge of a slave. Did Regina's ring show her past as a slave, or her status as a wife? Her clothing is perhaps a compromise between what a woman of St Albans would have worn and what a Palmyrene would have imagined a woman wearing. Her dress has a layered effect. The colours are missing, but if Ovid's suggestions for women's clothing are followed, they would have been bright. The Christian writer Tertullian, on the other hand, writes attacking bright colours. If God had intended us to wear brightly coloured wool, he claims, he would have created multi-coloured sheep! The clothing is held in place by a disc brooch on the shoulder, and Regina wears a woollen cloak over a linen shift and apparently a petticoat under that. She holds a distaff and spindle, as every good wife should, and has a wool basket beside her chair, as every good wife should. Her chair is of basket-work, its discomfort relieved by a cushion. Only women are shown sitting in basket chairs.

A second woman considered was Julia Belva from York, who lived most dutifully. She is shown with another women, possibly her mother-in-law, and they are both wearing caps. Her heir is named as Aurelius Mercurialis. Lindsey took the opportunity of observing that there were no fashions in clothing. To be fashionable, women did their hair in the latest style, which they discovered from coins showing the empress.

A nameless woman from Carlisle holds a fan.

The tomb of Titullinia Russita (I may well have the name down wrong) raises an interesting question, because no man is mentioned. Could it be that this was the wife of a Roman soldier, who could not acknowledge her, even after death? Soldiers were certainly married by native custom, but the army did not recognise such marriages until AD 192. The woman cane from Germany, and probably lived in a vicus outside a Roman fort. Recent excavations have established that some vici were ten times as big as the forts they surrounded. Soldiers also sometimes had their sisters and mothers living in the vicus. A widowed mother or sister would be the soldier's responsibility.

Another tomb bears these words:

Tancorix mulier vigsit annos segsaginta.

The name Tancorix was Celtic, and it is not immediately obvious whether it is a male or a female name - hence the addition of 'mulier'. Such Celtic names tended to be one-offs, peculiar to the individual, and to have a meaning. Boudicca, for instance, is said to mean 'Victory', so one might says that Boudicca was the first Queen Victoria.

From Corbridge comes the stone of a child wearing a tunic and carrying a ball. This was Atola, nicknamed Thalybia. She died at the age of four years and 60 days.

Flavia Augustina lived in York. She was from a very Roman family. A British woman of 20 usually married a Roman of 40 or 45, who by that stage in his life would have saved a good deal, so the woman could look forward to a fairly comfortable life. The records show that families tended to have no more than three children. Family planning was known and was effective - see the writer Sorranus on the subject. Many of his remedies, such as alum, vinegar and olive oil, would have worked, though there were others that were mere superstition. Sorranus tells midwives to wash their hands - for social rather than medical reasons - and so few women died of puerperal fever. Small families meant there was more for each child, and less strain on the mother, so everyone was healthier. Flavia Augustina's children, unfortunately, both died when they were only two years old. This was unusual. Sorranus was the Dr Spock of his age. Roman Britain had a better record in childbirth and infant mortality than Leeds Infirmary had in the 1920s.

Julia Lucilla lived with her soldier husband in an isolated fort north of Hadrian's Wall. Everyone expects to hear than the Commanding Officer had his wife with him on active service, but centurions also had that privilege. Centurions' wives were tough women. They had to travel far from home. We know of an African woman on the Wall. We learn that wives stayed to clear up the home, and only then followed their husbands to a new posting. Julia Lucilla would have had a confined life in enemy territory, and so would have looked forward to visiting a friend for her birthday celebration, as we learn from the Vindolanda writing tablets. She had to ask permission of her husband, the Commanding Officer, before accepting the invitation, and he told her she would have to make her own travel arrangements, which would very likely in such hostile territory have included an armed escort.

After considering these individuals, Lindsey Alison Jones turned to more general factors affecting a woman in the north. She invited us to imagine Birdoswald fort, not in the clear air we see now, but covered with a smoky pall from the open fires used for cooking, and smelling strongly of unpleasant things. It would have been a thoroughly cosmopolitan place.

Life in a town like Corbridge would have had its strangeness and difficulties. From the grid pattern visible from crop marks we know that it was a huge town, extending much further than the part that has been excavated. Living there would have been a new experience for British women used to living in villages, where they knew who they were, knew all their neighbours, lived in a round house. In the town there was a rectangular house to live in, and foreign neighbours probably. Food would have to be bought, not grown; they would have to go out to work to earn unfamiliar money. The psychological problems must have been like those faced by people moving from a neighbourhood of back-to-back houses into high-rise flats.

The typical museum display of a Roman kitchen does not give the reality of a dark, fuggy room, filled with fumes from the open fire, as if someone lit a barbecue indoors. There was no fridge. Most Britons were riddled with worms. Beneath the oven was stored the grain, and in the damp, warm room it would sprout and weevils would abound.

As for museum displays of Roman living rooms, they all, wherever they are, use evidence from Hadrian's Wall, but the artefacts they copy come from the homes of the rich, and the effect is too luxurious for the Wall.

Lindsey chose two other objects to illuminate a woman's life in Roman Britain. The first was a ring with letters cut from the metal to read 'Aemelia zoseis'. This has been interpreted as a Christian sentiment. The second was a single sole from a woman's shoe, whose wear pattern shows that she suffered badly from bunions.