Heavy-handed Writing
| Housesteads | 55 00 48.21N 02 19 48.97W | I wish all the pictures on Google Earth were this clear. You can see every detail of the forst and its excavated buildings. |
A recent widely reported court case in Britain revolved around the fact that a policeman's notebook recorded certain damning admissions allegedly made by the individual in the dock. Had these been substantiated, there would have been no question about the person's guilt, even though he loudly protested his innocence.
A clever lawyer, however, observed that the officer involved had a heavy hand, pressing down on his pen with such force as to leave discernible indentations on the page beneath the one on which he was writing. He therefore subjected each of the supposedly consecutive pages to a special form of photography which highlighted these indentations and was thus able to show that the indentations on page 7 (or whatever it was) did not match the writing on page 6. This proved that the alleged confession had not been written at the time the officer said it had been and so discredited the policeman‘s evidence that the suspect was cleared of the crime.
Having a fairly light hand myself, I detest people like that policeman. I remember one individual I met during my college days who pressed down on his pen with such force that he was obliged to carry a piece of card around with him to place underneath the page on which he was writing, otherwise he would spoil the next couple of pages. Some of my friends who loaned him their fountain pens complained that they came back with ruined nibs and the only time I lent him anything — a pencil, as it happened — it broke before he had written half a dozen words. He handed the pencil back to me with a look of reproach, as if it were my fault for not investing in stronger lead!
Archaeologists in Britain, however, are feeling very grateful to ancient Romans who wote with a heavy hand. Although both paper (in the form of papyrus) and parchment (thin leather) were available as writing materials, the cost of both was so exhorbitant that it was out of the question to use them for everyday writing purposes. Instead most people carried around with them two thin, flat pieces of wood about the size of a short-hand notepad, which were hinged together down the long side. The inner surfaces of the wood was coated with wax, which was protected when the "book" was closed. Suetonius, in his The Twelve Caesars tells of a litigant who became enraged at the way the emperor Claudius was conducting his case. "He hurled a stylus and set of wax tablets in his face, shouting, 'A curse on your stupid, cruel ways!' Claudius‘ cheek was badly gashed."
In use the writer would open out his tablet and scratch his message into the wax using a metal stylus. Later on, when the writing was no longer needed, he could smooth the wax ready to be used again or, if the wax was too badly cut up, he could warm the tablets over a fire and melt the wax, thereby completely erasing whatever had been written.
| |
| Housesteads is one of the most popular of the forts along Hadrian's Wall. |
A large number of these tablets have been found in various places in Britain and elsewhere. A particularly rich collection was discovered in the ruins of the Housesteads legionary fortress on Hadrian's famous wall. After so many years, of course, the wax was completely gone, dissolved or eaten, and the tablets were merely put on display as curiosities. Now, however, archaeologists are turning to medical technology to re-examine the inner wooden surface. Sophisticated scanning devices are able to detect the slightly damaged fibres where a metal stylus was plied with enough force to penetrate all the way through the wax and down to the wood itself. With the right combination of care and luck, it is possible to read the ancient words.
Alas, nothing earth-shattering has emerged. Most of the messages are fairly mundane commentaries on army life. The only interesting thing is that some of the tablets appear to have been used rather like we might use an aerogramme: a message was scratched in the wax, the tablets were folded together and secured in place with string, and then they were sent as letters to distant places. One wonders what the policy of the Roman postal service was towards enclosures as they transported these wooden aerogrammes along the Roman roads.
