Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/385

HADRIAN S WALL 365 The Munis or stone wall extended from Wallsend on the Tyne to Bowness on the Solway Firth, a distance of fully 73 English miles. No portion of it now remains as when finished, so that its original height cannot be accur ately determined. Bede gives 12 feet, an estimate that our chief modern authority on the Wall, Dr J. Collingwood Bruce, deems too low, for some parts of its course at least. Its thickness varies, being 6 feet in some places and 9- in others. The northern face of the Wall was continuous, but the southern had numerous outsets and insets, as if portions of the work had been carried on at the same time but without definite instructions as to a uniform breadth. In this way when sections met differences in width often showed them selves, though the junction was so managed that the irre gularity was confined to one face. It is not improbable that a similar discretion was allowed as regards height. Both sides consisted of blocks of freestone 8 or ( J inches thick, 10 or 11 broad, and from 15 to 20 long. These had been sometimes quarried near the spot, sometimes brought from considerable distances. The interior was filled with rubble firmly cemented with mortar of a peculiar tenacity. In pursuing its course from sea to sea, the Wall seldom deviated from the shortest and straightest course it could follow, and then only with the evident design of seizing neighbouring elevations that would otherwise have com manded its position. Along the whole length of its northern base, and adding greatly to its strength as a defensive work, was drawn a ditch or fosse of varying breadth and depth, 36 and 15 feet respectively being probably its average dimensions. In some places the difficulties to be overcome by its excavators, owing to the rocky nature of the soil, must have been enormous in an age when blasting with gunpowder was unknown. But none of them have been shunned. South of the Murus ran the earth wall or Vallum, con sisting, as has been already stated, of three ramparts and a ditch. Of these mounds the most northerly was raised at a distance from the base of the stone wall varying, accord ing to the nature of the country, from 30 yards to half a mile. Time and the spoiler have dealt so hardly with it that its original dimensions cannot now be accurately stated. It seems, however, to have been about 20 feet broad at the base and at least 10 feet high. The materials of which it was made up consisted of earth largely intermixed with fragments of stone of all sizes and shapes. 24 feet or so further south was a ditch apparently somewhat inferior in breadth and depth to the ditch of the Murus, though otherwise of the same character. On its southern edge was a rampart much smaller in size than the one just noticed, while the series was completed by a third mound, approaching in its dimensions the larger of the other two, and raised at nearly the same distance as it from the centre of the included ditch. Along the wall, at intervals averaging 4 miles, were stationary camps strongly fortified. According to the Notilia Utriusque Imperii, which contains a brief record of the civil and military arrangement of the empires of the East and West, and is supposed to have been compiled in the beginning of the 5th century of our era, there were 23 such stations. The names given areas follows : Segedunum (Wallsend), Pons ^lii (Newcastle), Condercum (Benwell Hill), Vindobala (Rutchester), Hunnum (Halton Chester), Cilurnum (Chesters), Procolitia (Carrawburgh), Borcovicus (Housesteads), Vindolana (Chesterholm), ^Esica (Great Chesters), Magna (Carvoran), Amboglanna (Birdoswald), Petriana, Aballaba, Congavata, Axelodunum, Gabrcsentum, Tunocelum, Glannibanta, Alionis, Bremetenracum, Olen- acum, and Virosidum. It is somewhat strange that not a trace of one of these names survives in the local vocabulary of the present day, though the exact positions of a number of the stations have been identified beyond all doubt by other means. The sites had been chosen with great care, and much labour must have been expended in their con struction. They were in fact military cities, "suited," to use the words of Dr Bruce, "to be the residence of the chief who commanded the district, and providing secure lodgment for the powerful body of soldiery he had under mm." It is not clear, however, that more than 18 of the 23 were situated per lineam valli, the others beino- probably supporting stations. The Wall was further strengthened by quadrangular buildings called mile-castles as well as by smaller watch-towers or sentry-boxes of stone ; while con necting the whole was a military way made in Roman fashion and protected by the other parts of the fortification. By means of this road the garrisons of the different stations Plan of Hadrian s Wall. could be quickly and safely concentrated on any point along the line that was threatened by an enemy. " It is some times asked," remarks the authority just quoted, "How long would the Wall be in building 1 ? From calculations that have been made, founded upon the experience gained by the construction of the vast works connected with modern railways, it is considered that, in the existing cir cumstances of the country at the time, the Vallum and the Murus could not be reared in a shorter period than 10 years. The cost of it in our present currency would be about 1,000,000. Above 10,000 men would be required to garrison its stations" (Wallet Book of the Roman Wall, p. 37). Several of the ancient writers allude to ramparts and lines of forts raised by the Romans across the island during the time they had a footing in it. Of these notices some refer to the .barrier on the isthmus of the Forth and Clyde (see ANTONINUS, WALL OF, vol. ii. p. 139); the others probably apply to the more important works now described. In his Agricola Tacitus states that the Roman general during his operations in the north of England (79 A.D.) compelled many states hitherto hostile to lay down their arms and surrounded them with garrisons and castles. A hundred years later two contemporary historians, Dion Cassius (as abridged by Xiphiline) and Herodiao, vriting of events in Britain that occurred in their own day, both notice the former in two places the existence of a wall

in Britain, separating the Roman territory from the uncon-