Hadrian's Wall

by Adrian Goldsworthy

Overview

From an award-winning historian of ancient Rome, a definitive history of Hadrian's Wall

Stretching eighty miles from coast to coast across northern England, Hadrian's Wall is the largest Roman artifact known today. It is commonly viewed as a defiant barrier, the end of the empire, a place where civilization stopped and barbarism began. In fact, the massive structure remains shrouded in mystery. Was the wall intended to keep out the Picts, who inhabited the North? Or was it merely a symbol of Roman power and wealth? What was life like for soldiers stationed along its expanse? How was the extraordinary structure built — with what technology, skills, and materials?

In Hadrian's Wall, Adrian Goldsworthy embarks on a historical and archaeological investigation, sifting fact from legend while simultaneously situating the wall in the wider scene of Roman Britain. The result is a concise and enthralling history of a great architectural marvel of the ancient world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541644427
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	252,049
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Adrian Goldsworthy received his DPhil in ancient history from Oxford and has taught at Cardiff University, King's College, and the University of Notre Dame in London. The author of numerous books, including Pax Romana, How Rome Fell, and Caesar, he lives in South Wales, UK.

Table of Contents

Chronology vii

Introduction xi

1 Britannia: Outpost of Empire 1

2 Hadrian: The Man, the Emperor, and the Grand Design 15

3 Building and Manning the Wall: Legions and Auxilia 29

4 Fresh Minds: Antonius Pius to Septimius Severus 41

5 The Anatomy of Hadrian's Wall 57

6 Forts and Towns: Soldiers and Civilians 73

7 Life on the Wall 87

8 How Hadrian's Wall Worked: Understanding the Evidence 109

9 Changing Times and the End of Empire 119

10 Visiting Hadrian's Wall 139

Acknowledgements 143

Suggestions for Further Reading 145

Appendix: The Known and Probable Garrisons of the Forts on Hadrian's Wall 149

Credits 153

Notes 155

Index 159

Editorial Reviews

"For those touring the wall or armchair travelers, this book will be an excellent guide and entertaining read for Roman military history fans."—Library Journal

"An appealing, detailed history of the largest monument left by the Roman Empire."—Kirkus Reviews

"Adrian Goldsworthy has done it again! He has taken a well-known topic in Roman history and breathed new life into it. Goldsworthy has given us an easily-accessible study that takes the best and most up-to-date scholarship on the subject and has put it into an eminently readable narrative for the general public. If you can only own one book on Hadrian's Wall, this is it." —Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute

"Hadrian's Wall is a short and sparkling introduction to the great wall of the Roman Empire, written by a master historian. Adrian Goldsworthy cuts through the myth without losing the magic. This is a lucid account of the people, purpose and places of one of the world's most famous military structures."—Barry Strauss, Cornell University, author of The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Greatest Assassination

"They must have wondered, those rude Picts and Caledonians, when they looked up at Hadrian's Wall, at what sort of a giant serpent had come into their land. And we still wonder at the Wall, as every generation of excavators digs up more puzzles than they solve, and our confident, modern, small questions-How was it built? -have monstrously transformed over the generations into those that the awed barbarians themselves might have asked: What did it intend? What was it for? And so, we are thankful for the guidance of Adrian Goldsworthy, for his clear thinking, his calm judgment, and his crystal prose. If anyone can explain the vast Roman Wall, if anyone can answer the barbarians' questions, it is he." —J. E. Lendon, University of Virginia, author of Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins and Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity

From the Publisher

2018-01-23
A slim, tight history of a Roman fortification that "is special because it is unlike any other Roman frontier."An award-winning British historian of the classical world, Goldsworthy takes time out from big subjects (Augustus: First Emperor of Rome, 2014, etc.) to write a short book on a more obscure subject, with equally satisfying results. Roman armies had mostly conquered Britain by 43 C.E., but they never occupied the Scottish Highlands, whose tribes persistently raided south. In 122, Emperor Hadrian, who reigned from 117 to 138, ordered a defensive wall constructed across northern Britain. Extending only about 73 miles, it took 20 years to build and remained in use for more than three centuries. Goldsworthy admits that this is trivial compared to the immense Great Wall of China, which served far longer, but it is a historical treasure nonetheless. "Nowhere else were the defenses so elaborate or monumental in scale," writes the author, "nor is there so much archeology to see in so small an area." Existing ancient documents rarely mention the wall, but Goldsworthy is an old hand at filling historical holes. The barrier itself was dotted by forts, towers, and military bases that were often surrounded by towns that served the needs of the soldiers. Parchment was expensive, so Britons wrote official documents and even personal letters on wood or clay slabs, many of which survive. Trash piles and even latrines turn up archaeological gems. The narrative, following a capsule history of Rome and its conquest of Britain, is comprised of 100 pages of richly complex details of late empire life along the wall. Goldsworthy concludes with a brief guide to visiting the wall.Readers will learn perhaps more about the wall's engineering than they want to know, but this is an appealing, detailed history of the largest monument left by the Roman Empire.

Kirkus Reviews

Derek Perkins has narrated nearly all of Goldsworthy’s popular histories of ancient Rome. This author-narrator match is particularly fortuitous in this case in which the material lacks a central action or compelling historical figure. In just four hours we learn everything we would ever need to know about Hadrian’s Wall and the Romans who built and maintained it. Much of that relies on archaeological evidence and learned conjecture, and a kind of academic sifting that this author performs with distinctive grace and authority and that Perkins voices with his own distinctive command. Author and narrator together evoke a now and a then—the wall as it is now, and what it tells us about life at the border of civilization two thousand years ago. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile