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Hadrian's Wall: Some Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

David J. Breeze  and
Brian Dobson
David J. Breeze
Affiliation:
Department of the Environment, Edinburgh
Brian Dobson
Affiliation:
Department of Extra-Mural Studies, The University, Durham
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Extract

‘Hadrianus) … murumque per octoginta milia passuum primus duxit, qui barbaros Romanosque divideret’ (Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Hadrian xi, 2). ‘Hadrian was the first to build a wall, eighty miles long, to separate the Romans from the barbarians’.

It is salutary to recall that this is the only statement from an ancient source on the function of Hadrian's Wall. Like all literary evidence, of course, its credibility may be weakened by its author's ignorance, prejudice or misunderstanding, but it offers us an interpretation. All other evidence, from structures and finds, is mute on the question why the Wall was built—even the inscriptions which tell us that Hadrian, with or without Platorius Nepos, built a number of structures unnamed. The answers so far offered to this question are the interpretations of modern scholars, needing constantly to be reviewed and not to be allowed to acquire a false validity by reputation or repetition. The explanations offered here have no special claim to acceptance; they are merely suggestions that may be considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Britannia , Volume 3 , November 1972 , pp. 182 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson 1972. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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