Trevor Bloom – Author

Went down to Dorchester for a couple of days for Emma’s birthday and took the opportunity to pay a visit to Maiden Castle, the Iron Age hill fort south west of the town. (Image: Geo. Allen – Ashmolean)

MC was built around 600 BC and is probably the largest hill fort in Europe. It was expanded around 450 BC when new ramparts and ditches were added. At the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, the site was occupied by the Durotriges. Such a huge site would have been difficult to defend and must have served primarily as a statement of power and control. After the Roman occupation, the site was eventually abandoned. The population moved to Durnovaria, ie Dorchester and apart from a small Roman temple built in the late 4^th century the site reverted to pasture.

I first learnt about the site when I was about ten. I was a Roman history nut even then and I can remember being fascinated by the discovery of the remains of an ancient Briton with a ballista bolt lodged in his spine. The archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler concluded that this man and others found in a ‘war grave’ near the gate had died during a bloody storming of the fortress by the Roman General Vespasian in AD 43-47.

Disappointingly, modern archaeologists are more sceptical. Some 14 bodies found in a grave bear signs of a violent death, they say, but there is no evidence they died during a Roman siege.

Ah, well… there is always a temptation to embellish narrative history and Wheeler’s imaginative storytelling helped to put Maiden Castle on the tourist map. On a beautiful spring day, the hill fort with its multiple ramparts and defensive ditches (originally up to 7 metres deep in places), and intricate gate defences is a magnificent place to visit.

We visited on a very foggy and bitterly cold end-of December day. A very different experience.

The story of Vespasian’s legions pushing remorselessly through the early morning mist, whistles blowing, swords clashing, slingshot whirring over wicker walls, scaling ladders rearing up against ramparts defended by desperate barbarians, may well be just so much hokum – but it was not difficult to imagine.

How many slaves were there?

photo © 2010 Jun | more info (via: Wylio)As the Roman empire expanded, slavery grew and became a vital part of the imperial economy. Most slaves were acquired through military conquest, although poor people occasionally sold their children into slavery and creditors could claim insolvent debtors as slaves. When Caesar conquered Alesia over a quarter of a million Gauls were enslaved. Slaves, particularly war captives, were economically more profitable than paid labour and were readily available, at least while the empire was expanding. At the empire’s peak, slaves accounted for 25-40% of the population of Italy, ie about 2-3 million slaves in Italy alone. Estimates for the whole Roman empire vary hugely between 10-18 million.

A wealthy landowner might acquire huge numbers of slaves to run his estates and businesses. The owner of Chedworth Villa owned 400 slaves who lived in slave barracks on site. Some ultra-wealthy people owned up to 20,000 slaves who did everything. Even the simplest jobs such as getting dressed or bathing required the helpf of slaves. The number of slaves made the poorest of the free working population redundant and created a mob of unemployed which had to be fed and constantly distracted – bread and circuses – if social strife was to be avoided.

How were slaves sold?

photo © 2007 freeparking | more info (via: Wylio)Slaves were bought and sold by wholesale slave dealers who followed the army’s conquests and shipped war captives back to the slave markets. Slaves would be sold naked, classified according to gender, age, health and character, by the quaestor, the army quartermaster and financial officer. Young male slaves were the most sought after and constituted the bulk of slaves. There was also demand for young females and slaves with particular skills, but older slaves were less valuable. At Pompeii a slave was sold for 1500 sestertii, three times the cost of a mule. Another, presumably more highly skilled, was sold for over 6,000 sestertii.

What work did they do?

Slaves worked as unskilled labourers in the mines, on farms and as on public works as porters, diggers, bricklayers and masons. They built aqueducts, roads, bridges, and public buildings and cleared sewers and roadside ditches. In commerce, slaves worked as agents, moneylenders, traders or as shopkeepers. Well educated or very able slaves might work as secretaries or accountants or agents, collecting funds and making receipts. One young slave in Yorkshire was entrusted with the management of a goldsmith’s shop. Others, particularly Greeks, might work as doctors or tutors. Many slaves managed the households of rich families as butlers, cooks, maids, hairdressers, wet-nurses and seamstresses. Soldiers often used slaves to manage their private affairs. Some slaves became gladiators.

How were slaves treated?

Slaves had no legal status; they were property, ‘tools with the power of speech’. A master’s power over a slave was absolute. Life as a slave depended on the type of work the slave did and whether they lived in the city or the country. Life as a gladiator or in the mines was especially hard and dangerous. Farm slaves did better while household slaves, particularly if they worked for a wealthy family, might live in conditions that would have been the envy of the working poor. Slaves could become well-off in their own right and employ their own slaves. Marriage between slaves was possible but had no legal force; the children of a slave couple belonged to the slave owner and could be sold at any time.

Physical punishment and sexual abuse must have been commonplace, but relations between master and slave could be close. The Latin word familia does not mean family in our sense but the wider household, and included slaves and ex-slaves. Pliny believed that slaves were naturally savage and should be treated accordingly, but Seneca argued that slaves would work harder if they were well-treated. Some slaves were allowed to be buried in the family tomb. At Pompeii an expensive gold bracelet found on the body of a woman was inscribed ‘From the master to his slave girl.’ Slaves wore poorer clothes than their owners and ate poorer food. They slept at the top of the house, or on the floor.

In the later empire, conditions nominally improved with the advent of Christianity and new laws, but these changes were routinely ignored and many priests continued to keep slaves.

Slaves and sex

The bodies of slaves, both men and women, were there for the taking. No-one minded if a man slept with a slave. That was, in part, what slaves were for.

Could slaves become free?

Domestic slaves might raise enough money to buy their freedom or might be granted their freedom through a process known as manumissio. This was not an act of generosity so much as a way of reducing costs as the master no longer had to pay to feed and support them. Freed slaves were called liberti and formed a separate class in Roman society. Most ex-slaves remained attached to the household and continued to work for their former master. Some grew rich and influential, although they did not enjoy the same status as citizens.

Did slaves resist?

The size of the slave population meant that Romans lived in constant fear of a slave uprising. Slave rebellions carried the severest penalties. The Thracian slave-gladiator Spartacus led a revolt of 70,000 slaves which was put down by Crassus with great brutality. If a slave murdered his master, all the master’s slaves could be legally executed; four hundred slaves were put to death when one master was murdered. Stocks or leg irons have been found at a number of farms outside Pompeii. At one villa human leg-bones were found in shackles, suggesting that the fettered slaves had been unable to escape when Vesuvius erupted, and had died where they lay.

When slaves did attempt to escape, bands of slave hunters were employed to hunt them down. Recaptured slaves were branded with the letter ‘F’ for fugitives and were required to wear iron collars

Researching Roman food at the moment for my second novel. It’s fascinating stuff. Most Romans ate simply. Bread or porridge (puls) made from ground wheat was the staple food, flavoured with salt or olive oil and eaten with cheese, eggs, home grown vegetables and whatever cooked meat, fish or shellfish could be afforded. Food varied across the empire, depending on local produce and custom, distance from the sea, and ease of transportation.

A typical Roman’s day:

Breakfast (ientaculum) if eaten at all would be taken very early and would probably be bread or wheat pancake, with salt, dried fruit, honey, eggs or cheese.

Lunch (prandium) was a light meal eaten around noon, usually salted bread. A more elaborate meal might include meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, eggs or salad, or perhaps the left-overs from the previous day.

The main meal of the day (cena) was eaten in the late afternoon after work. This varied between classes. The poor might eat a simple meal of porridge or bread flavoured with meat and vegetables. The rich could afford to eat more meat or fish and more exotic food.

An appetizer (gustatio) could be salad or egg dishes. Sea food (sea urchins, clams, raw oysters or mussels), stuffed dormice and snails might also be served. Petronius mentions eating dormice, dipped in honey and rolled in poppy seed.

An upper class dinner could be a simple affair. Martial described a dinner party where he served sow’s udder marinated in tuna fish brine as a starter, lamb with beans and spring greens and a left-over chicken and ham as a main course, followed by fresh fruit and vintage wine. The poet Horace ate a meal of onions, porridge and pancake.

But the rich could also afford to hold elaborate dinner parties with a variety of courses that lasted for hours. Meat dishes included beef, poultry, wild boar, venison, mutton, lamb and sausage. Hares and newborn rabbits were a delicacy. Poultry and wildfowl dishes were also common: crane, thrush, pigeons, doves, geese, swan and duck. Fish was more expensive than meat and included bream, hake, mackerel, mullet and sole. Vegetables included cabbage, parsnips, lentils, marrows, asparagus, onions, marrows , radishes and beans.

On special occasions, exotic dishes such as flamingos, porpoise and peacocks might be served. Goatfish (mullus), considered a delicacy because its scales change to a bright red colour as it dies, was served alive at table and allowed to die slowly. Trimalchio’s feast, described by Petronius, featured a roasted whole boar, suckled by cake piglets, and stuffed with live thrushes.

Dessert could be fruit, cakes and puddings, or nuts. Grapes were the most popular fruit, followed by figs, dates, pomegranates, apples, peaches, cherries, berries, pears, plums, strawberries and melons. A wide variety of breads, cakes, pastries and fruit tarts were consumed.

Spices, especially pepper, were imported on a large scale. Garum, a fermented fish sauce made from decomposed salted fish, was added to almost everything. More than 400 recipes attributed to Apicius required fish sauce.

What did they drink?

Wine was consumed by all classes and was usually drunk watered down. It was also drunk spiced, flavoured with honey, or heated. The poor drank watered sour wine mixed with herbs (posca). Beer and mead were drunk in the northern provinces of Britannia and Gallia. At Saturnalia, the December festival, copious amounts of wine were drunk by all social classes, including slaves.

How did they eat?

On formal occasions during the Roman Republic, high-status males ate reclining on their left elbow on three couches (lecti) drawn up in a horse-shoe around a table, either in the Triclinium or outside. Women and lesser guests ate sitting on chairs. By imperial times, high-status women had joined the men on the couches. During dinner entertainment (musicians, acrobats, poets) would be provided.

Romans ate with their fingers, except for soup which they ate with a spoon, and shellfish which they ate with a long-pronged spoon (cochlear). Slaves washed the guests’ fingers after each course. Bones and shells were thrown on the floor for the slaves to clear away.

What did soldiers eat?

photo © 2006 Erich Ferdinand | more info (via: Wylio)
As with civilians, the basic foodstuffs for the Roman army were bread, bacon and cheese, supplemented by vegetables, meat, fish, shellfish, salt and olive oil, together with beer or a thin wine, normally mixed with water. Officers ate better than the men, legionaries ate better than auxiliaries. Bread was baked by the soldiers themselves in ovens built into the fortress walls. Bacon and ham were popular with troops because salt meat could be preserved and easily carried. From remains found at Caerwent and Vindolanda, soldiers also ate lots of broiled chicken, sausages and oysters. In garrison towns, food and wine or beer could be bought from bathhouses, taverns, shops and street vendors. Soldiers were permitted to cultivate the land around their forts. Supplying the army was a massive undertaking that required a complex organization of food collection and delivery. Amphoras for transporting wine, olive oil and fish sauce are common at military sites.

Had to go to Lancing on some family business, so took the opportunity to nip over to Portchester Castle.

Saxon raids on Britain increased in the 3^rd century and the response was to establish a naval command under the Count of the Saxon Shore based on the ‘system’ of fortified ports and installations which had grown up piecemeal on both sides of the channel. Opinion is divided whether the ‘Saxon Shore’ referred to the Germanic mercenaries hired to defend the coast or the Saxon raiders which threatened it. Personally, I think the Saxons gave their name to the coastlands they were attacking.

Portchester or Portus Adurni was probably built between 285 – 290 AD on a low-lying tongue of land that projects into Portsmouth harbour. It is the most complete example of a Roman fort north of the Alps.

The fort was laid out as a rectangular ditched enclosure with thick tall walls and 20 massive D-shaped external towers. Set midway along each wall was a gate. The present landgate is a reworking of the Roman north entrance. The walls stand to their probable original height which gives a strong impression of what the fort would have looked like.  There is no evidence of the closely-packed stone-based buildings found in earlier forts, such as those at Caerleon or on Hadrian’s Wall. Any buildings were probably wooden.

Portchester could have been a naval base from which ships intercepted pirates as they sailed towards the straits of Dover. Carausius who built the fort had a reputation for attacking Saxon pirates as they returned home loaded with plunder and stealing their loot.  Alternatively, the fort could have been used as a huge warehouse for securing trade goods en route to and from Gaul.

In the late Roman empire military units were smaller and more likely to be out-posted and it is possible Portchester was garrisoned only intermittently. By the late 4^th century occupation of the Saxon Shore forts was declining and by the early fifth century they had been abandoned. This might explain why there are more female finds at Portchester, eg women’s shoes, than military.

Excavations have revealed a Germanic presence and it is possible that a detachment of Germanic mercenaries or laeti shared the fort with sub-Roman Britons. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle says that in 501 a Saxon chieftain came to Portesmutha and killed a young Briton of high rank. Fascinating to speculate whether these two warriors knew each other. And was this moment, when control of the fort passed from the Romano-British to the Germanics, brought about because the Germanics were already living inside?

A well-preserved Roman helmet, found in a Cumbrian field, has been sold for £2.2 million at auction at Christies, almost eight times its estimated price.

The helmet was found in May 2010 by a metal detector in a field near Crosby Garrett, south of Appleby. One of only three such helmets found in Britain, the helmet was a bronze cavalry parade helmet used for exhibitions or sporting events and had no military or combat function. The helmet dates from the late 1st or 2nd century AD.

Local people were hoping that the helmet would remain within the Cumbria area as a tourist attraction. A fund raising campaign organized by the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle attempted to raise enough to buy the helmet, but it was not enough.

You have to wonder how such an extraordinary piece could have been lost by its owner, presumably a high-born citizen or cavalry officer. Was the helmet a gift, an award, or a personal investment? And what were the circumstances in which it was lost? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, but it’s fun to speculate. (Image: Christies)

Exciting news report on BBC Wales about Caerleon (Isca Silurium), site of one of Britain’s three permanent Roman legionary fortresses, where a team of archeologists has been excavating a masonry-built military store building or warehouse at Priory Field. There have been lots of small finds, including a head of Minerva, which has raised the issue whether these artefacts were stored in the warehouse or dropped by people using it.

The latest discovery however was not accidentally dropped. The team has found part of a soldier’s body armour, the lorica segmentata, or banded armour usually associated with images of Roman soldiers, as well as weapons and possibly some items of parade or ceremonial equipment.

Caerleon, which means ‘fortress of the legions’ in Welsh, was occupied for more than two centuries by Legio II Augusta, so it is possible that the armour found belonged to that legion.

Images are of the barracks at Caerleon: the ovens built into the wall; the amphitheatre.