It's been over a month since the last post. The reason for this is simple: I've been writing. The bad news is that I haven't been writing the book I should have been writing.
I'm sorry! I know most of my readers enjoy my historical fiction. I enjoy researching it and I've loved writing it, but for the past few years I seem to have been running into the sand, and I finally got irretrievably stuck.
Perhaps it was a mistake to change period? My training is as a classicist, and that is still the period I love most. I did feel, though, that I was getting stale, recycling some of the same material from book to book, and that I needed to challenge my brain with a completely different period--hence the English Civil War. I did like my two Civil War novels, but I don't think they're as good as the best of my classical books. On the other hand, I don't feel my last few classical books were as good as my best, either, which is why I made the change in the first place.
I should spell this out: I have always done my very best with every book I've written. When a book is not as good, this isn't because I've cut corners or failed to invest the time and energy it needed: it's because I was unable to make it any better. Sometimes there were structural elements pulling in different directions, sometimes I couldn't get the plot quite right, sometimes the lightning just failed to strike where it was needed--but the failures have never been down to will and commitment. If any readers have been disappointed, I can only apologize and say that I did the best I could.
My last published book, A Corruptible Crown was particularly demotivating: the publishers cut it by ten percent to save printing costs. Now, I don't think my words are holy writ; in fact, I believe that most books, including mine, benefit from cutting. In the past I've been happy to cut: Dark North is only about three fifths of its original length. A Corruptible Crown , however, was not a fat book--it was quite pared down to begin with--and my publishers weren't pretending that the cuts they made were to improve the novel: they were made explicitly to save money. I suppose even so about 30% of what they did improved the book and another 20 or 30% was neutral. That did leave, however, 40 or 50% of the cuts being into red meat--things which were in the book for a good reason, and which caused damage when they were taken out. I know that they, like all publishers, are struggling with the harsh economics of printing in an increasingly digital world--but for me this was, as I said, extraordinarily demotivating. Why should I sweat and struggle to make a book as good as I possibly can, if the publishers are willing to cut it to a Not-what-it-should-have-been?
My first response to this was to e-publish a couple of fantasies that I'd written to unwind, liked a lot, but failed to sell. (No printing costs! I can put in as much or as little as I like!) They earned very little, but the books got more stars and more reviews than the printed ones. I still didn't feel like tackling the next historical, so I wrote a couple more. Then I started another historical, intended to finish off the 17th C. themes I'd dealt with in the two civil war novels. I did a lot of research, embarked on it--and got stuck on chapter two. I then wrote nothing for about a year--which was unprecedented for me, and depressing.
Now, as I said, I'm deep in another novel and happy as a cow in clover--except, as I said, it's not a book I should be writing, it's another bloody fantasy, and probably destined to go straight to Kindle. It's different from the last ones, it lets me play around with different viewpoints and some fun ideas--but it's not what I wanted to write or what my small band of followers wanted to read.
So, if you're a member of that small but elite band--I'm sorry! Maybe after this I'll be able to do a proper book again.
Thursday, 23 August 2012
Saturday, 14 July 2012
Overwhelmed
It is something I'd wanted to do for a long time, but the reality was vastly greater than my imaginings. To begin with, I hadn't anticipated the exhiliration of descent: one sinks slowly beneath the waves and keeps breathing! It defies millions of years of evolutionary history, and the shock is glorious. Then there's the weightlessness: one hovers mid-water, rising and falling with a breath, flying in a way otherwise experienced only in dreams. Finally there's the world undersea--and here I was particularly lucky, because I was diving in the Red Sea, where the coral gardens form one of the richest ecosystems on the planet.
By the end of the week I was beginning to make distinctions again: those fish are common, but that one is unusual; look under that ledge, there might be lionfish! I suspect that with experience I'd start to feel as expert as some of the other divers I met--but I very much doubt I could ever feel jaded. They certainly didn't: the woman with 656 dives in her log seemed just as enthusiastic as me with my 7 or 8.
Diving in the Red Sea is popular--probably too much so, for the safety of the reefs. I was told that there used to be corals close to the beaches, but that they were all killed by the process of building all the tourist hotels which now make Hurghada and its environs a 60 km long building site. Now divers go out to the reefs by boat, and six or seven dive boats frequently moored at the same spot--even in these days when tourism in Egypt is suffering. All along the coast are hotels with swimming pools, shops selling souvenirs, restaurants and bars. Most of the guests at these hotels don't dive, but for those who do diving is readily available, and not all the operators are as responsible and careful as those who introduced me to the world underwater. (For the record--since one of the pleasures of blogging is being able to acknowledge debts--I am very grateful to Regaldive, to the Divers' Lodge at Hurghada, and to my able instructor Reda Elshishtawy, who took the photographs.) One does worry about how well these marvels can survive, between the pressures of climate change and the careless minority of sightseers. Their loss would be inestimable, like the destruction of a great museum or superlative cathedral--worse, because we would have records of the art works lost, but the reefs are living things which could never be restored.
Thursday, 21 June 2012
A song of unsung heroes
I've recently added a new item to the list of sites I check every day. It is, to my surprise, the Olympic Torch Relay. When I first looked at the route it was taken and saw that it was going to go everywhere, I thought that this was overkill; what was more, I thought that it would devalue the whole enterprise, because--as W.S. Gilbert put it in The Gondoliers, 'If everyone is somebody, then no-one's anybody.' If you have 8000 torchbearers what's the distinction worth?
I was quite wrong. I love the relay. In part it's the pictures: the torch abseiling down bridges, riding steam trains, crossing Hadrian's Wall, up the summit of Snowdon and over the Giant's Causeway, like some stupendous campaign to persuade people to visit Britain. Most of it, though, it's the torchbearers. It's true that some of them are the usual suspects--B-list celebrities, the nominees of corporate sponsors and the relatives of IOC members--but most of them are people who have made a difference in their local communities but who we would never otherwise have heard of at all. Many are sportsmen and women--but not the sort who win medals. They are, instead, the people who make sport work: PE teachers, coaches in local football or rugby, the secretaries of running and cycling clubs, people who put in long hours of effort for no money and little recognition. There are schoolkids, too, who put in hours training and show huge sportsmanship, but are never going to win anything outside their hometown.
Other torchbearers--the kind I find most inspiring of all--are ordinary people who have shown extraordinary courage or generosity. They have raised thousands of pounds for charity, worked with disadvantaged children, set up support systems for families dealing with crippling diseases. Some have had the fortitude to cope with some of those same diseases, and are carrying the torch despite Parkinsons, or MS; carrying it in wheelchairs or on crutches.
Every day uncovers uncelebrated stories. A Josephine Loughren who carried the torch yesterday loved running, but gave up half of a lung to help her sister, who had cystic fibrosis. Lucy Gale, a hired car driver, came across a car accident on a railway line, and, in the two and a half minutes available before a heavily-laden freight train arrived, managed to get both cars and drivers off the line, saving, certainly, their lives, and, possibly, the lives of others in the passenger train that would have been derailed if the freight train had crashed. Mia Rathband, daughter of PC David Rathband who was blinded in the line of duty and killed himself, ran blindfolded in honour of her father.
The Torch Relay is on the BBC website, and it's a strange experience to go from the rest of the news, which is, almost by definition, bad, to this bald account of altruism and quiet heroics. I don't dare read it in public, because I cry too easily.
The torch arrives here in Coventry on the 1st of July. There will be a celebration in the park across the road, and I will certainly be there, cheering.
I was quite wrong. I love the relay. In part it's the pictures: the torch abseiling down bridges, riding steam trains, crossing Hadrian's Wall, up the summit of Snowdon and over the Giant's Causeway, like some stupendous campaign to persuade people to visit Britain. Most of it, though, it's the torchbearers. It's true that some of them are the usual suspects--B-list celebrities, the nominees of corporate sponsors and the relatives of IOC members--but most of them are people who have made a difference in their local communities but who we would never otherwise have heard of at all. Many are sportsmen and women--but not the sort who win medals. They are, instead, the people who make sport work: PE teachers, coaches in local football or rugby, the secretaries of running and cycling clubs, people who put in long hours of effort for no money and little recognition. There are schoolkids, too, who put in hours training and show huge sportsmanship, but are never going to win anything outside their hometown.
Other torchbearers--the kind I find most inspiring of all--are ordinary people who have shown extraordinary courage or generosity. They have raised thousands of pounds for charity, worked with disadvantaged children, set up support systems for families dealing with crippling diseases. Some have had the fortitude to cope with some of those same diseases, and are carrying the torch despite Parkinsons, or MS; carrying it in wheelchairs or on crutches.
Every day uncovers uncelebrated stories. A Josephine Loughren who carried the torch yesterday loved running, but gave up half of a lung to help her sister, who had cystic fibrosis. Lucy Gale, a hired car driver, came across a car accident on a railway line, and, in the two and a half minutes available before a heavily-laden freight train arrived, managed to get both cars and drivers off the line, saving, certainly, their lives, and, possibly, the lives of others in the passenger train that would have been derailed if the freight train had crashed. Mia Rathband, daughter of PC David Rathband who was blinded in the line of duty and killed himself, ran blindfolded in honour of her father.
The Torch Relay is on the BBC website, and it's a strange experience to go from the rest of the news, which is, almost by definition, bad, to this bald account of altruism and quiet heroics. I don't dare read it in public, because I cry too easily.
The torch arrives here in Coventry on the 1st of July. There will be a celebration in the park across the road, and I will certainly be there, cheering.
Monday, 4 June 2012
Pageants
Ancient cities were fond of pageants and processions. Athena, Demeter, Dionysos, Zeu, Isis--they all seemed to have liked elaborate parades. Statues of the gods would be dressed gorgeous draperies and carried throughout the city, accompanied by handsome young horsemen got up in their best on neighing steeds; priests in magnificent robe;, musicians playing lyres, flutes, sistra; celebrants crying 'euoi, euoi!' or 'ite Bacchai, ite Bacchai', as the case might be; sacrificial cattle with gilded horns, garlanded with roses or ivy; incense and offerings. Hellenistic kings paid for floats on wheeled carts, showing scenes from mythology or of battles where they'd defeated their enemies; crowds would be showered with coins, or flowers, or nuts and sweetmeats. The Rhodians, and other naval powers, went in for naval processions, with their magnificently decorated ships processing past the cheering crowds on shore. The Romans were as eager as the Greeks: their triumphal processions were probably the most elaborate of all ancient pageants, and were so intoxicating to the triumphing generals that a slave had to be appointed to whisper in the victorious ear, 'Remember that you are mortal!'
When the Roman Empire went Christian, the processions carried on, though the excuse for them switched from gods and glory to God's glory: North Africans used to celebrate saints' days by processing round the churches, drinking heartily at each, a kind of sanctified pub crawl which drew occasional criticism from their bishops. Byzantine basileis and medieval kings eagerly seized any excuse for show and display, and Renaissance geniuses contributed mechanical contrivances, playlets, and painted backdrops; gunpowder allowed fireworks.
It all seems very jolly, but recent experience has left me wondering how much the average woman in the street actually saw of all this cheerful vainglory. We went down to London yesterday to watch the Diamond Jubilee river pageant, but the crowds were so thick I couldn't even see the river. I did just about glimpse the queen, because the royal barge was tall enough that the top was briefly visible through binoculars as it departed downstream. All the rest--the flotilla of rowboats; the barges of bells and musicians; the fire brigade's working boat imitating a moving fountain, the Dunkirk little ships--was hidden behind a wall of backs. I only know about them because I looked at the BBC website afterwards.
I'm not really sorry I went, though. It's something, to be able to say 'I was there' at what may prove to be the monarchy's last hurrah, and there was entertainment in looking at the crowds--the girls with the union jack lipstick; the children waving flags; the people in the queen and Prince Charles masks; the man opening a bottle of beer against the curb. A brass band emerged twice from a private party on a moored boat and played 'Rule Britannia', 'Land of Hope and Glory', and 'God Save the Queen', which the crowd sang lustily. I just wonder how many people at, say, Augustus's triumph, saw no more than the top of the model of the Pharos going slowly past above a sea of heads.
When the Roman Empire went Christian, the processions carried on, though the excuse for them switched from gods and glory to God's glory: North Africans used to celebrate saints' days by processing round the churches, drinking heartily at each, a kind of sanctified pub crawl which drew occasional criticism from their bishops. Byzantine basileis and medieval kings eagerly seized any excuse for show and display, and Renaissance geniuses contributed mechanical contrivances, playlets, and painted backdrops; gunpowder allowed fireworks.
It all seems very jolly, but recent experience has left me wondering how much the average woman in the street actually saw of all this cheerful vainglory. We went down to London yesterday to watch the Diamond Jubilee river pageant, but the crowds were so thick I couldn't even see the river. I did just about glimpse the queen, because the royal barge was tall enough that the top was briefly visible through binoculars as it departed downstream. All the rest--the flotilla of rowboats; the barges of bells and musicians; the fire brigade's working boat imitating a moving fountain, the Dunkirk little ships--was hidden behind a wall of backs. I only know about them because I looked at the BBC website afterwards.
I'm not really sorry I went, though. It's something, to be able to say 'I was there' at what may prove to be the monarchy's last hurrah, and there was entertainment in looking at the crowds--the girls with the union jack lipstick; the children waving flags; the people in the queen and Prince Charles masks; the man opening a bottle of beer against the curb. A brass band emerged twice from a private party on a moored boat and played 'Rule Britannia', 'Land of Hope and Glory', and 'God Save the Queen', which the crowd sang lustily. I just wonder how many people at, say, Augustus's triumph, saw no more than the top of the model of the Pharos going slowly past above a sea of heads.
Monday, 21 May 2012
The Netherlands
I've just returned from a weekend in the Netherlands. Every time I visit that fortunate country, I'm struck afresh by what a nice place it is.
The first time I visited was in March 1984. I had two very small children in tow, one in a pushchair and one in a babysling. I was amazed and delighted by the Dutch response: they liked small children. In restaurants, instead of frowning or saying 'we don't admit children', they would ask 'May we give the little boy an ice cream?' (yes!) I did a lot of travelling on trams and buses, and not once did I carry the pushchair onto the bus: if there was no one else waiting beside me to pick it up and carry it carefully aboard, a passenger would leap off the tram to do the office, grinning at the suspicious toddler and trying to talk to him. It was no wonder, I thought, that the Dutch grow up so sensible and well-adjusted.
I've been back several times since. I've even read up quite a lot of the history for the stalled next book. (Now I know where they get it from: they were founded by a guy who was in favour of religious toleration despite living in the 17th C., and they had the most developed social care in the world, with a comprehensive system of welfare back in 1650--which, pace the right wing, was a Golden Age economically as well as culturally.) Every time I go I'm struck by:
1) bicycles! They seem to outnumber cars ten to one. All the civic amenities that other countries build only for cars the Dutch build for cycles as well: parking at station and in city centres, tracks and roads, etc.
2) public transport. Trains and buses are frequent, cheap, and reliable.
3) cleanliness. The air and water are so unpolluted that during the last visit--to South Holland--I saw in the city centres, breeding wildfowl that included crested and little grebes, white storks, herons, tufted ducks, coots, moorhens, barnacle and greylag and Canada geese, as well as a couple of exotics and ubiquitous mallard.
4) the way everybody speaks perfect English. It's uncanny. I don't speak perfect Dutch. I speak some French, a bit of German and modern Greek--but nothing of it as well as everybody spoke English.
5) how livable it all seems. In fact, the question I'm always left with after I return from the Netherlands is why other countries aren't more like them.
The first time I visited was in March 1984. I had two very small children in tow, one in a pushchair and one in a babysling. I was amazed and delighted by the Dutch response: they liked small children. In restaurants, instead of frowning or saying 'we don't admit children', they would ask 'May we give the little boy an ice cream?' (yes!) I did a lot of travelling on trams and buses, and not once did I carry the pushchair onto the bus: if there was no one else waiting beside me to pick it up and carry it carefully aboard, a passenger would leap off the tram to do the office, grinning at the suspicious toddler and trying to talk to him. It was no wonder, I thought, that the Dutch grow up so sensible and well-adjusted.
1) bicycles! They seem to outnumber cars ten to one. All the civic amenities that other countries build only for cars the Dutch build for cycles as well: parking at station and in city centres, tracks and roads, etc.
2) public transport. Trains and buses are frequent, cheap, and reliable.
4) the way everybody speaks perfect English. It's uncanny. I don't speak perfect Dutch. I speak some French, a bit of German and modern Greek--but nothing of it as well as everybody spoke English.
5) how livable it all seems. In fact, the question I'm always left with after I return from the Netherlands is why other countries aren't more like them.
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Conventions that suspend reality: 1 Injury and illness
There are some conventions in popular fiction that are so well-established that we don't even notice how much they defy real-life experience unless we sit down and think about it.
My favourite is the knock on the head. There are any number of books, films and television programs where the hero is knocked on the head, and, after a spell of unconsciousness, climbs to his feet, defeats the bad guy, and gets the girl--or, alternatively, where he knocks a couple of bad guys on the head, who get up a bit later, rub their skulls, and set off in hot pursuit. Nobody blinks at this--despite the fact that in real life we regard being knocked unconscious as a very serious matter, one that requires a trip to hospital and an X-ray and bed-rest. We know very well that head injuries are dangerous, but we do not apply that knowledge to the world of fiction.
Of course popular fiction has a strange attitude to illness and injury in general. Try to imagine James Bond catching a cold! Infected cuts, conjunctivitis, piles, diarrhea and the other ills that flesh is heir to are, I am sure, found far more frequently in real life than in fiction. Even more interesting is the way characters are unimpeded by injuries which I, for one, would find disabling. I have to take the evening off if I have a tooth out, but some heroes can scale a cliff after being shot through the shoulder--and, of course, operatic sopranos and tenors can sing gloriously while suffocating to death or dying of tuberculosis.
There are, of course plenty of books that deal honestly with injury and illness and make every effort to get medical details right. What is strange is that the books which don't get away with it so easily. The world of these books is, after all, ostensibly our own--but we don't apply our own rules to it, and usually don't even notice that omission.
My favourite is the knock on the head. There are any number of books, films and television programs where the hero is knocked on the head, and, after a spell of unconsciousness, climbs to his feet, defeats the bad guy, and gets the girl--or, alternatively, where he knocks a couple of bad guys on the head, who get up a bit later, rub their skulls, and set off in hot pursuit. Nobody blinks at this--despite the fact that in real life we regard being knocked unconscious as a very serious matter, one that requires a trip to hospital and an X-ray and bed-rest. We know very well that head injuries are dangerous, but we do not apply that knowledge to the world of fiction.
Of course popular fiction has a strange attitude to illness and injury in general. Try to imagine James Bond catching a cold! Infected cuts, conjunctivitis, piles, diarrhea and the other ills that flesh is heir to are, I am sure, found far more frequently in real life than in fiction. Even more interesting is the way characters are unimpeded by injuries which I, for one, would find disabling. I have to take the evening off if I have a tooth out, but some heroes can scale a cliff after being shot through the shoulder--and, of course, operatic sopranos and tenors can sing gloriously while suffocating to death or dying of tuberculosis.
There are, of course plenty of books that deal honestly with injury and illness and make every effort to get medical details right. What is strange is that the books which don't get away with it so easily. The world of these books is, after all, ostensibly our own--but we don't apply our own rules to it, and usually don't even notice that omission.
Friday, 4 May 2012
The Vindolanda tablets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vindolanda_tablet_291.jpg#filelinks
Now that Mary Beard's 'Meet the Romans' series has, alas, ended, I've been reflecting on her achievement in making epigraphy--one of the driest disciplines--not merely exciting but televisual. It is unusual, and she and the BBC both deserve credit for it.
It is not ever thus. A couple of years ago 'Time Team' held an audience vote to decide the most important find from Roman Britain. I don't remember all the items, and, indeed, so un-memorable was the winner that it's already disappeared from the first four or five pages of Google. There was the bas-relief from the Antonine Wall, I remember, the one that proudly proclaimed the (short-lived) Roman expansion into Scotland, which is now in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. I think the Medusa head from Bath was on the list as well, and the beautiful Ribchester cavalry helmet, and the sculptures from the Temple of Mithras in London--all beautiful objects, and if you're not familiar with them, google them and have a look. What struck me at the time, though, was that the most important Roman find wasn't even on the list.
I can see why 'Time Team' didn't like them. I have to admit that they don't look like much. You can't even read them in their natural blackened state: the texts only emerged when they were photographed using every available trick of light and filtering; when they did emerge, their cursive scrawl was so hard to read that at first some people doubted whether they were even in Latin. Nonetheless, few historians would deny their enormous significance.
To begin with, until they were found it was thought that--as their discoverer, Robin Birley put it-- 'the prospect of ink writing from the Roman period being found in Britain was. . .impossible.' There were inscriptions, some graffiti, a handful of references in Roman texts, but actual Roman documents? They would surely have rotted away in the damp climate! It's counter-intuitive that waterlogged soil, sealed from the air, can actually preserve wood and leather.
Next, there's the form of the tablets: thin sheets of wood, scored down the center and folded. There had been a couple of obscures references in Roman texts, but not enough to shake the view that Romans generally wrote on papyrus or not wax tablets. The Vindolanda finds were the first indication that in northerly climes the Romans normally wrote on wood. More and more tablets have turned up in other sites, now that archaeologists know what to look for--though none as well-preserved or as rich as the finds from Vindolanda.
The main thing that makes the Vindolanda tablets so important, though, is what is written on them: a glimpse into Roman life on a border fort that we simply couldn't have obtained any other way than time travel. Letters of recommendation; letters of complaint; lists of supplies, with prices. There's an 'intelligence' report about the local British warriors, dismissing them contemptuously as ill-equipped 'Brittunculi'--a sneering diminutive. There is a letter to an ordinary soldier from his family, saying that they've sent him socks, two pairs of sandals, and two sets of underpants--'subligariorum duo'. Underpants! Now we know what all those stern centurions wore beneath their tunics! This is the only Latin reference to them!
The letter I love most, and perhaps the most famous of them all, is an invitation to a birthday party. As Birley points out, it would be remarkable anywhere it was found, because it contains the earliest writing known to have been penned by a Roman woman: while the main text has been penned smoothly by a scribe, Claudia Severa has added a note in the corner in her own spiky handwriting: 'Sperabo te, soror. Vale, soror, anima mea, ita valeam, karissima et (h)ave.'--'I will expect you, sister, Farewell, sister, my soul, as I hope to prosper, dearest, and greetings'.
You still get plenty of textbooks telling you that Roman girls didn't go to school and that few of them outside the most aristocratic circles would have been able to read : here we have a woman on the far fringe of the Roman Empire, the wife of the prefect of a mere auxiliary cohort--a man who was himself probably the first in his family to obtain the citizenship--sending gushing personal notes to her friend. Its mere existence puts that notion of female illiteracy in doubt. Beat that, you marble statue-hunters!
Now that Mary Beard's 'Meet the Romans' series has, alas, ended, I've been reflecting on her achievement in making epigraphy--one of the driest disciplines--not merely exciting but televisual. It is unusual, and she and the BBC both deserve credit for it.
It is not ever thus. A couple of years ago 'Time Team' held an audience vote to decide the most important find from Roman Britain. I don't remember all the items, and, indeed, so un-memorable was the winner that it's already disappeared from the first four or five pages of Google. There was the bas-relief from the Antonine Wall, I remember, the one that proudly proclaimed the (short-lived) Roman expansion into Scotland, which is now in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. I think the Medusa head from Bath was on the list as well, and the beautiful Ribchester cavalry helmet, and the sculptures from the Temple of Mithras in London--all beautiful objects, and if you're not familiar with them, google them and have a look. What struck me at the time, though, was that the most important Roman find wasn't even on the list.
I can see why 'Time Team' didn't like them. I have to admit that they don't look like much. You can't even read them in their natural blackened state: the texts only emerged when they were photographed using every available trick of light and filtering; when they did emerge, their cursive scrawl was so hard to read that at first some people doubted whether they were even in Latin. Nonetheless, few historians would deny their enormous significance.
To begin with, until they were found it was thought that--as their discoverer, Robin Birley put it-- 'the prospect of ink writing from the Roman period being found in Britain was. . .impossible.' There were inscriptions, some graffiti, a handful of references in Roman texts, but actual Roman documents? They would surely have rotted away in the damp climate! It's counter-intuitive that waterlogged soil, sealed from the air, can actually preserve wood and leather.
Next, there's the form of the tablets: thin sheets of wood, scored down the center and folded. There had been a couple of obscures references in Roman texts, but not enough to shake the view that Romans generally wrote on papyrus or not wax tablets. The Vindolanda finds were the first indication that in northerly climes the Romans normally wrote on wood. More and more tablets have turned up in other sites, now that archaeologists know what to look for--though none as well-preserved or as rich as the finds from Vindolanda.
The main thing that makes the Vindolanda tablets so important, though, is what is written on them: a glimpse into Roman life on a border fort that we simply couldn't have obtained any other way than time travel. Letters of recommendation; letters of complaint; lists of supplies, with prices. There's an 'intelligence' report about the local British warriors, dismissing them contemptuously as ill-equipped 'Brittunculi'--a sneering diminutive. There is a letter to an ordinary soldier from his family, saying that they've sent him socks, two pairs of sandals, and two sets of underpants--'subligariorum duo'. Underpants! Now we know what all those stern centurions wore beneath their tunics! This is the only Latin reference to them!
The letter I love most, and perhaps the most famous of them all, is an invitation to a birthday party. As Birley points out, it would be remarkable anywhere it was found, because it contains the earliest writing known to have been penned by a Roman woman: while the main text has been penned smoothly by a scribe, Claudia Severa has added a note in the corner in her own spiky handwriting: 'Sperabo te, soror. Vale, soror, anima mea, ita valeam, karissima et (h)ave.'--'I will expect you, sister, Farewell, sister, my soul, as I hope to prosper, dearest, and greetings'.
You still get plenty of textbooks telling you that Roman girls didn't go to school and that few of them outside the most aristocratic circles would have been able to read : here we have a woman on the far fringe of the Roman Empire, the wife of the prefect of a mere auxiliary cohort--a man who was himself probably the first in his family to obtain the citizenship--sending gushing personal notes to her friend. Its mere existence puts that notion of female illiteracy in doubt. Beat that, you marble statue-hunters!
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