Hadrian’s Wall AD 122–410

According to Tacitus, Britain’s reduction to a province was only achieved ‘gradually’ (Agricola 14.1). Indeed, some 80 years after the Claudian invasion, Roman Britain had no effective northern frontier that could be compared to the Rhine, Danube or Euphrates. Although the Stanegate, the Roman road connecting Corbridge with Carlisle, marked the northern limit of military occupation in Britain by the reign of Trajan, it was not a frontier system.

Since the reign of Claudius (AD 41–54), the security of the north had been founded on a treaty between Rome and the Brigantian queen, Cartimandua. In AD 69, however, her consort Venutius ousted Cartimandua and friendly relations between Rome and the Brigantes came to an abrupt end. In the cutting words of Tacitus, ‘the kingdom was left to Venutius, the war to us’ (Historiae 3.45). At a time of civil war in the empire, the governor, Marcus Vettius Bolanus (AD 69–71), was able to do little more than rescue the client-queen. There are hints of rather more military activity during his period of office than Tacitus reveals, but it seems highly improbable that Bolanus operated in Caledonia as the contemporary poet Statius implies (Silvae 142–9). The arrival of the new governor, Quintus Petillius Cerialis (AD 71–73/4), saw renewed activity in Brigantia. Tacitus (Agricola 17.1) fleetingly refers to Cerialis winning bloody battles against the tribe after campaigning widely in their territory. Although he built upon the successes of his energetic predecessors, credit for the eventual subjugation of northern Britain is rightly given to Gnaeus Iulius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus and governor of Britannia for seven years (AD 77/8–83/4). The new governor was neither a stranger to the province nor unaware of its problems, having served there as a military tribune during the Boudican revolt (AD 60–61) and later as legate of legio XX Valeria Victrix.
However, although the northern border may have appeared to be secure Hadrian’s Wall did not stand in isolation. It was built in reaction to something or someone. Hadrian (r. AD 117–138) had a general policy of defining fixed limits for the empire, but a fresh outbreak of conflict in northern Britain at the outset of his reign might have been the immediate reason why the Wall was built. A tombstone from Ferentinum in Italy names Titus Pontius Sabinus, erstwhile primus pilus of legio III Augusta, who commanded vexillationes of legiones VII Gemina, VIII Augusta and XXII Primigenia on the ‘expeditone Brittanica’ (ILS 2726, cf. 2735) – see the glossary on pages 62–63 for a full explanation of terms. A reference in the text to his decoration by the deified Trajan makes it probable that this expedition to Britannia occurred in the latter part of Trajan’s reign or under Hadrian.
For further evidence of a conflict in Britannia under Hadrian we can cite the tombstone inscription of Gaius Iulius Karus, prefect of the auxiliary unit cohors II Asturum, decorated bello Brittanico before his transfer to Egypt to serve as a tribune in legio III Cyrenaica (AE 1951.88). This revolt is also registered, albeit briefly, in a late fourth-century source as being one of the numerous troubles to afflict the new emperor, whereby ‘the Britons could not be kept under Roman control’ (SHA Hadrian 5.2). Further evidence is found in a letter written some 40 years after the event by Marcus Cornelius Fronto. Addressed to Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180), his former pupil, Fronto consoles the emperor for the heavy losses his army had sustained in Parthia by recalling ‘what a large number of soldiers were killed under your grandfather Hadrian by the Jews, what a number by the Britons’ (22.2). A fragmentary tombstone from Chesterholm suggests that fighting took place precisely in the area where Hadrian was to have the Tyne–Solway system established:T · ANN[IVS…] CENTVR[IO…] TVNGR[ORVM…] … INBELL[O… INTER]FECTVS…

Titus Annius, a centurion of a legion serving as acting commander of the auxiliary unit cohors I Tungrorum at Chesterholm, may have been one of the casualties of this revolt (inbell[o … inter]fectvs) that flared up at Hadrian’s succession.
As for reasons for the uprising in Britannia, a Chesterholm–Vindolanda writing-tablet offers stark evidence for what could have caused local resentment. The derisive attitude to the Brittunculi, a previously unattested word that means something like ‘nasty little Brits’, and the derogatory comments on the fighting qualities of the ‘naked Britons’ (nu[di] Brittones) contained in the letter, suggests no great sympathy for the subject population (Tab. Vindol. II 164). From the turn of the second century, this memorandum presumably refers to Britons who had been recruited into the Roman army to form irregular units (numeri). The inscription of Titus Haterius Nepos, a prefect of cavalry, shows him holding a census of Britons in Annandale, just across the Solway Firth, not far from Chesterholm (censito[ri] Brittonum Anavion[ens(ium)]: ILS 1338). It may be that he was conscripting them into numeri for service on the frontier in Germania Superior, where ten numeri of Brittones were present at about the same time that the Brittunculi piece was written (CIL 13.8493, 16.49). The same Nepos was a correspondent of the Chesterholm prefect Flavius Genialis, the commander of cohors I Tungrorum, and asked him to come to Corbridge where he was probably stationed (Inv. 93/1379). According to Tacitus (Agricola 29.1, cf. 32.1) Britons had already been serving in the Roman army since the reign of Domitian. Indeed, Tacitus (Agricola 31.1) has Calgacus, the leader of the Caledonii at Mons Graupius, complaining of the forced levy (dilectus) whereby units were being raised in Britannia for service overseas.

The personification of Britannia appears for the first time on coins in the reign of Hadrian. One in particular, an as of AD 119 (BMC III Hadrian no. 1723), shows her in military garb, and in what appears to be a ‘dejected’ pose. This is often taken to imply the crushing of the rebels in Britannia by Quintus Pompeius Falco, Trajan’s governor who had been left in the province.
Hadrian himself came to the province in AD 122 and, according to his biographer, ‘he put many things to rights and was the first to build a wall, 80 miles long, to divide the Romans from the barbarians’ (SHA, Hadrian 11.2). The line chosen for the Wall lay a little to the north of an existing line of forts along the Stanegate. This road had been constructed during the governorship of Agricola to link Corbridge on Dere Street, the arterial route up the eastern side of the province from the legionary fortress at York, with Carlisle on the western route north from the legionary fortress at Chester. Forts are known west of Carlisle and one east of Corbridge, but we cannot point to a frontier system across the Tyne–Solway isthmus prior to the construction of Hadrian’s Wall.
Two fragments from an inscription, reused in a church in Jarrow just south of the Tyne, nicely encapsulate the whole business of the origins of the Wall and Hadrian’s personal involvement:Son of all deified emperors, the Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, after the necessity of keeping the empire within its limits had been laid on him by divine command … once the barbarians had been scattered and the province of Britannia recovered, added a frontier between either shore of Ocean for 80 miles. The army of the province built the wall under the direction of Aulus Platorius Nepos, Pro-Praetorian Legate of Augustus. (RIB 1051)As a military tribune, Hadrian had seen service on the Danube and Rhine frontiers, and had first-hand experience of the Euphrates frontier as governor of Syria. Thus he was to some extent an expert on frontier defence. He also exhibited a keen interest in architecture. His reign opened with a crisis in Britannia and it was surely the Brigantes, with support from people across the Solway, who caused the trouble. This revolt was suppressed by Falco, but only after heavy Roman losses. Hadrian’s subsequent visit to Britannia was part of a grand tour of the empire to supervise his policy of consolidating its frontiers as well as to reform training methods, ensure discipline and remove abuses in the army. Nevertheless, Roman attitudes to the Britons, the forced conscription and ensuing revolt, was at least part of the reason why Hadrian ordered the Tyne–Solway system to be built.