Reidezel Mendoza

In 1973 an archaeologist digging at Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern England, found something that wasn't supposed to survive. It was a pile of thin wooden slivers, about the size of a postcard, covered in faded ink. They turned out to be letters. Hundreds of them, written by Roman soldiers and their families around 100 AD, before Hadrian's Wall was even built. They survived 1,900 years because they'd been dumped in wet, airless ground where nothing could rot them. What do Roman soldiers on the edge of the empire write about? The same stuff soldiers have always written about. One soldier gets a care package and a note telling him it includes socks, two pairs of sandals, and two pairs of underpants. Somebody back home was worried he was cold. Northern England will do that to you. A cavalry officer named Masclus writes to his commander asking for orders for the next day. Then he adds a P.S.: his men have run out of beer, and could the commander please send some. A supply contractor complains that the roads are so bad he doesn't want to risk his animals on them, and he's waiting on money he's owed. Logistics have always been a nightmare. One report sizes up the locals. The writer notes the Britons have no armor, that they have lots of cavalry, and that they don't mount up to throw javelins. Then he calls them "Brittunculi." Roughly "little Brits." It's a Roman insult, and it's the only time that word has ever been found anywhere. But the most famous one is a birthday invitation. A woman named Claudia Severa writes to her friend Sulpicia Lepidina, the commander's wife at Vindolanda, inviting her to her birthday party on September 11. A scribe wrote most of it. At the bottom, Claudia added a few lines in her own hand, telling her friend she'll be waiting for her and calling her "my dearest soul." That scrawl at the bottom is believed to be the oldest surviving example of handwriting by a woman in Latin. Two officers' wives at the end of the known world, a long way from Rome, trying to get together for a birthday. The tablets are now at the British Museum. In 2003 the British public voted them the country's top treasure.