The Builders of Hadrian's Wall
Phil Kennedy, Impearls' correspondent in the far north of England, at Wallsend, sent this photograph of a plaque commemorating the names of the builders of this portion of Hadrian's Wall, a massive complex of stone wall and fortifications erected by the Romans starting in 122 A.D. across the isthmus of northern England (the northern limit of their province of Britannia) as a barrier against the barbarians of what is now Scotland.
(At the time, incidentally, the “Scots” themselves [Scoti] still lived only in Ireland.)
As Phil writes:
I had nothing to do last Sunday afternoon so went to the Segedunum site (about 5 minutes walk from my front door), the end of the Wall itself (hence Wallsend, where I live), and I noticed a mock wall there with umpteen roman names.
When reading the placard beside it, it said that the names were taken from a part of the wall nearby, where the names were listed as men involved in the building of the wall here — back in 122.
So I got a pic or two with my camera and the names are interesting to read, and you wonder what sort of people they were.
Like:
Antonius Felix, Caecilius Clemens, Flavius Bassus, Julius Proculus, Valerius Flavus and so on.
Below are shown the complete list of names on a larger scale.
Notice the many two-letter and even longer ligatures (beyond the “Æ” that we're still somewhat used to today) that for longer names were often used to save space in the inscription.
UPDATE:
2005-10-02 23:25 UT:
Changed image hosting; minor additions to wording.