Hello and Welcome to the Dropout Classicist Newsletter! Today, we will take a rare glimpse into a life on the edge of the known world. Claudia Severa’s letter survived by chance, but its rediscovery altered our knowledge of the Roman World forever. If you enjoyed this article, and aren’t already, feel welcome to subscribe for free weekly articles on the Ancient World!
The biggest problem faced when studying the lives of people in the past is the rarity of literature about everyday life. What they assume to be normal is often what we wish to learn about. Any texts we can get our hands on have either been carefully selected and edited over thousands of years, or survive by sheer chance. Occasionally, collections of letters survive, like those of Pliny the Younger or Cicero. However, no groups are affected more by the selection processes of time and chance than those whose voices struggled to be heard, especially women.
In the late 1980s, amongst the grey and green of the Northern English hills, a series of revolutionary and fantastic discoveries were made. The Roman fort of Vindolanda, just south of the infamous Hadrian’s wall, is not the sort of place one expects to discover Roman writings. Those sort of discoveries are typically made in Egypt or Syria, where the arid desert sands protect papyri fragments from decay. However, the mud and soil of this site was fortunately perfect for preserving something very different: wooden writing tablets.
Organic materials from antiquity are rare, and this site held more than had ever been found from Roman Britain before. There was of course all the stuff you would expect from a site like this: supply documents, tent scraps, official communications, reports, et cetera - I am sure these are all very interesting to the right person. However, as well as all this, they also found women’s shoes, children’s socks, and letters from civilian residents at the site. This is fascinating, and contributed massively to our understandings of Roman settlement, as well as the lives of normal people in the ancient world.
There is one sole letter from the many found that struck a chord with me. It is, in many ways, one of the most valuable and rare artefacts found on the site, if not in Britain as a whole. The letter in question does not reveal any hidden information about emperors, religion, military strategy or anything that would have been deemed of consequence upon its composition. It was, to its writer, nothing more than a birthday invitation.
The invitation is brief and serviceable, but the words exude charm and emotion. Claudia Severa, the celebrant, names the intended recipient Lepidina as sister, begging her to come to her birthday on the Ides of September. This would be the 11th of September. We do not know the relationship between these two women, sister could be a literal connection or just indicate the closeness of their friendship. Claudia then eloquently phrases how much better the day would be with Lepidina present, before expressing the wishes of her husband (likely stationed at a nearby fort) and son, in inquiring after Lepidina’s husband (we know from other writings that he was captain at this fort). She then signs off with her well wishes.
Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings.
On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him their greetings. I shall expect you, sister.
Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail.
Tr. retrieved from Roman Inscriptions of Britain
This piece is short and touching, but the most important discovery doesn’t just come from the words written. The entire letter is written in latin cursive, but the last sentence, where Claudia signs off with her love to Lepidina, is in a noticeably different hand. It was very common practice in the ancient world to have a scribe (normally enslaved) to write up letters.
Sending letters or messages, especially over distance, was an inherently elite practice. Those with less money likely could not afford to learn to write, though literacy was decently high in the Roman world when compared to even as recent as the 1600s. However, literacy rates amongst women have always been an unknown. We know for a fact that a decent amount of wealthy women could read, and quite a few composed poetry (tragically none survives, to my knowledge). However, it is often assumed that most were just dictating to a scribe. Claudia’s letter blows this expectation out of the water, as she has signed it herself.
The expectations held prior about the education of Roman women was thus blown out of the water, so to speak. To discuss why, we must try to imagine the world in which she is writing. The letter has been dated to ~100CE, around the same time as the construction of the fort at Vindolanda. We know Claudia was writing from within the settlement there, thus she must have been attached to the immediate family of a high ranking officer within the fort. Though Roman towns often sprang up in the decades after a fort’s construction, Vindolanda at this time was still just a wooden outpost on the soggy northern frontier. This is not to diminish her husband’s status, but he then cannot have been overly high ranking. So she, a moderately well-off woman in the rain-soaked hills of the furthest reaches of empire, could compose elegant latin and write cursive. The only reason most of the letter is done by scribe must be because she had those resources at her disposal, not, as commonly assumed with other works by ancient women, that she had no ability to write it herself.
Claudia’s handwriting is the oldest known latin written by a woman, and one of the few documents we have from antiquity written by a woman’s hand. Selpicia Lepidina, the recipient, was also the recipient of a few other letters found at the site. From them, we know the names of a few other non-military personnel in the local area, showing a network of civilians socialising, writing and caring for each other.
Claudia’s invite has even more implications than just her own literacy, especially in light of the rest of Lepidina’s letter stash. A Roman citizen, married to a solider, typically did not follow him out on expedition. Thus, Roman presence in the area was not to conquer and go home, as we often imagine. They were there to stay. Claudia’s husband had dragged her and her, presumably young, son along with him. This, along with the countless shoes and scraps found at Vindolanda, shows a much more domestic presence than the term fort typically invokes. Within a few years of its founding, it must have resembled a domestic presence in the area as well as a military one. This is the side of history often missed in popular depictions of Roman Empire. The soldiers were not fighting automatons, they were people with families and loved ones. Those families cared for each other and, as demonstrated by the mention in Claudia’s letter, inquired after each other whenever they could.
Human nature does not cease, no matter the distance in time or location. Claudia’s presence at Vindolanda, and her delight at the thought of celebrating her birthday with her friend, is a beautiful reminder of this. It is easy to get lost in the indefensible atrocities of the Roman Army when studying ancient history, in fact it is one of the few factors I aim to veer away from, so we can often forget the individual people it affects. The soldiers and their families, possibly thousands of miles away from home, were still living a life. What’s more, Claudia draws back the shroud of time for a moment to give us a glimpse into a life we rarely get to see, that of the women caught all up in this. And not just any woman, but one that seems happy and content, living her best in the beautiful hills of Northern England, and celebrating her birthday in the company of those she loved.
Post Scriptum
Writing this post struck me quite deeply. I visited this site frequently as a child, as my family is relatively local to the area. Furthermore, the ides of September is close to my own birthday! This post is written as I am trying to put off the existential dread of entering my 20s. So hopefully together we can celebrate Claudia’s birthday, as this post is scheduled to go out a few days before what would have been approximately her 1944-1964th.
Sources and Wider Reading:
Roman Inscriptions of Britain, https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabVindol291#translation
Bahn, Paul G. “Letters from a Roman Garrison.” Archaeology 45, no. 1 (1992): 60–65.
Pearce, John. “Archaeology, Writing Tablets and Literacy in Roman Britain.” Gallia 61 (2004): 43–51.
Hallett, Judith P. “Ancient Roman Women’s Writings: Sub Specie XXV Annorum.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26, no. 1 (2007): 61–65.
Adcock, F. E. “Women in Roman Life and Letters.” Greece & Rome 14, no. 40 (1945): 1–11.
Vindolanda Trust - not really a citation, but a site well worth the visit and an organisation worth supporting