Academic Reading — Test 77

Reading passage

When the emperor Hadrian visited Britain in the early second century AD, he ordered the construction of a continuous barrier running roughly from the mouth of the Tyne in the east to the Solway Firth in the west, a distance of some eighty Roman miles. The wall that bears his name was never intended to function as a simple defensive rampart from which soldiers fought off massed attacks. Instead, it operated as a regulated frontier, a line through which the movement of people, livestock and goods could be observed, taxed and, when necessary, halted. To make this possible, a remarkable system of installations was distributed along its length, and behind the visible stonework lay an equally remarkable apparatus for keeping the garrison fed, clothed and equipped. The architecture of the frontier followed a deliberate pattern. At regular intervals of approximately one Roman mile stood small fortified gateways, known today as milecastles, each capable of housing a modest detachment of soldiers. Between every pair of milecastles were two smaller turrets, which served principally as observation posts. Somewhat later in the building programme, larger forts were added directly onto the line of the wall or just behind it, and these became the true centres of military life. A fort might accommodate an auxiliary unit of five hundred or, in some cases, a thousand men. These auxiliaries were not Roman citizens by birth but recruits drawn from across the provinces of the empire, and a single garrison could include soldiers whose homelands lay hundreds of miles apart. Feeding such a concentration of men in a cool, northern landscape presented a genuine challenge. The staple of the soldier's diet was grain, and the quantities required were substantial. Much of this grain appears to have been gathered as tax from the surrounding countryside, but the local farmland alone could not reliably meet demand, particularly after a poor harvest. Supplies were therefore brought from further afield, moving by sea and river to depots before being carried inland by road. Excavations have recovered evidence of a strikingly varied diet that extended well beyond cereals. Soldiers consumed beef, pork and mutton in large amounts, and the bones discarded around the forts testify to herds being driven to the frontier and slaughtered there. Imported foodstuffs such as wine, olive oil and fish sauce arrived in pottery containers, demonstrating that the tastes of the wider Mediterranean world were maintained even at the empire's furthest edge. Among the most illuminating discoveries are the thin wooden writing tablets unearthed at the fort of Vindolanda, situated a little to the south of the wall. Preserved in waterlogged ground that kept out the oxygen which would otherwise have destroyed them, these documents record the everyday business of the garrison in ink. They list quantities of wheat, barley and beer; they note requests for additional clothing such as socks and underwear to ward off the British cold; and they reveal the names of merchants and the prices of commodities. One celebrated tablet is an invitation to a birthday party, often described as among the earliest surviving examples of handwriting in Latin by a woman. Together the tablets show that the frontier was sustained not only by soldiers but by a busy commercial network of traders, contractors and craftsmen. The logistical effort behind the wall was therefore as impressive as the masonry itself. Roads were laid to connect the forts, allowing messages, men and materials to pass quickly along the frontier. Granaries were built with raised floors and ventilation gaps so that air could circulate beneath the stored grain and keep it dry, a design that reflects a sophisticated understanding of how to prevent spoilage. Workshops within the forts produced and repaired weapons, leather and metal fittings, reducing dependence on distant manufacturing. Civilian settlements, known as vici, grew up outside the fort walls, housing the families of soldiers, as well as the shopkeepers and artisans who supplied their wants. In this way the military frontier generated an economy of its own, drawing population and trade towards a region that had previously been thinly settled. For all its apparent permanence, the wall did not remain in continuous use throughout the Roman occupation of Britain. At one point the frontier was advanced northwards and a new turf barrier, the Antonine Wall, was raised across the narrower neck of land in what is now central Scotland. This forward position was held for only a generation before the army withdrew and Hadrian's Wall was reoccupied. Such shifts remind us that the frontier was a living system, responsive to political decisions made far away in Rome, and that the logistics which kept it functioning had constantly to adapt to changing circumstances. When Roman authority in Britain finally collapsed in the early fifth century, the elaborate supply network dissolved, and the forts that had once consumed wine from distant vineyards fell silent.