Roman letters discovered

I thought others might find this interesting, looks like around 25 Roman letters from 1st century AD were just found.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...25-personal-Roman-letters-discovered-pit.html

One piece, 'One of the letters was written by a man called Masclus, who is best known for a previous letter to his Commanding Officers asking for more beer, this time asking for leave from work.'. Shocking I know, soldiers haven't changed much in 2,000 years

 

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Thats neat!

 

kool! ole Masclus, without meaning to or knowing it, is now purdy much a famous ancient! thanks for sharing

 

85 to 92 AD? Perhaps it should be called Domitian's Wall.

 

kool pieces..they'd look good on my board

 

"Our Top Ten Treasures was a 2003 special episode of the BBC Television series Meet the Ancestors which profiled the ten most important treasures unearthed in Britain, as voted for by a panel of experts from the British Museum."

 

Yes, archeologists seem to get more excited about shards of pottery, broken shoes and even the remains of ancient sewage and garbage dumps (for example old wells used in antiquity to dispose of goods no longer needed in households), than they do about gold and silver coins and ornaments.
I think I understand why that is.

 

I can see why too. It's nice to see everyday items be found then the usual "wealth". I think it's cool to see things like this still survive.

Now I couldn't be the archeologist that digs in old human feces just to find old goodies.

 

Neat. Soldiers, like myself, have not changed a bit. More beer!!!!!!

 

High quality images can be found below.

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/47992

 

They have some of the tablets, found earlier, on display at Vindolanda. They are hard to see with very low light levels. I bought the book which is fascinating. Did I read that they were found in the foundations of the fort? Last I heard they had discovered 9 forts on the site.

Human poo is probably easier to handle if you call it coprolite.

 

..a rose by any other name...^^

 

Very cool!

 

I think Masclus is getting a bad wrap with the whole order of beer and asking for time off. We don't have the context for both letters. However, we know that Roman soldiers received rations of beer daily to drink. It was often safer than regular drinking water from some stream or river. Up until the late 1800s, it wasn't unusual for people in Europe to drink light beers instead of water, as one drink of water was liable to give you cholera or another nasty decease and kill you. Remember, sewers from towns and cities led to rivers, so the water in streams and rivers were almost as bad in quality as untreated sewer water would be today. And the beer that they drank for these purposes was extremely low in alcohol, mostly 1% or 2%. It was not meant to get anyone drunk. That's what the beer in the pubs was for, with it's higher alcohol content.

In fact, most colleges and universities, and even factories, had daily beer rations for their students and workers up until the late 1800's or even the early 1900's when water quality was finally sorted out by the construction of water treatment facilities and water quality testing.

I think if the Roman soldiers in Masclus' unit were running short of beer, that was a serious health concern that needed to be brought up to the attention of the officers immediately. And after dealing with such a crisis effectively, don't you think old Masclus was right to ask for a little time off as a reward? I certainly think so.

PS: Why do you think the Romans were so keen in importing water via aqueducts into Rome from remote mountain areas far away from any human settlement when they had a huge river running right through their city? Because the waste was dumped in the Tiber, and experience would have taught them that a Roman bath with water drawn from the Tiber was a recipee for suicide, while untouched water from remote areas was safe.

 

For you folks who are in a coin club and have an active web site, this is the type of material that members might be interested in. We are in the process of updating our club site and I can wait to add material like this for the members. Thanks for posting this most excellent news item.

 

You can read translated letters from Vindolanda here:

http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/index.shtml


Example: “send me some cash”

http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/4DL...isplayImage=1&displayLatin=1&displayEnglish=1


Tablets have been discovered at Vindolanda since 1973 (says Wikipedia). The recent tablet find may not have been included at this site yet because I was unable to find a reference to “Masclus” on the site search engine.

 

Translations won't be available for around 3 months.

 

Anything Roman