Construction of Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian ordered a wall built across northern Britain in 122, and much of it is still there. He had come to the throne in 117 and immediately abandoned Trajan's conquests in Mesopotamia, which was unpopular in Rome and militarily sensible, and spent his reign travelling the frontiers and marking where the empire stopped. The wall runs some 117 kilometres from the Tyne to the Solway. It was about three metres wide and perhaps five high, with a ditch in front, a broader earthwork called the vallum behind, a fortified gateway every Roman mile, two turrets between each pair, and sixteen forts along the line. It took three legions about six years. Its purpose was not primarily to stop an invasion. Nothing north of it could field an army, and a wall of that height is not a serious obstacle to a determined force; what it did was control movement — traders, cattle, raiding parties, people — through gates where tolls could be taken and travellers inspected, and mark the limit of Roman authority in a way visible to everyone on both sides. The garrison was auxiliary rather than legionary, recruited from Gaul, Spain, Syria and the Danube, and the writing tablets found at Vindolanda are the best evidence we have of ordinary Roman military life: duty rosters, a birthday invitation from one officer's wife to another, and a complaint about a shortage of beer. The frontier moved north to the Antonine Wall for twenty years and came back. Its afterlife is largely as a quarry and a metaphor. Farmhouses and churches for miles around are built of its stone, and it has been used as a border in the popular imagination for centuries despite running entirely inside England and never having been the frontier between two countries.
- Year: 122 CE
- Category: Political
