Coda

CODA

“Thereupon, having reformed the army of the Rhine in regal manner, he set out for Britain where he put many things straight and was the first to build a wall, eighty miles in length, by which Romans and barbarians should be divided.”

In the year 122 A.D. emperor Hadrian visited the Isle of Britannia and ordered the building of a wall eighty miles long. The stated reason given in Scriptores Historiae Augustae was to separate the Roman empire from the barbarians of the north. That was it. Unlike most frontiers, this wall, with its many forts along it, would tend the border and allow access to only ones they wanted to the empire. While that came as an official reason, defense was the clearer one put to the senate. However, as many observed firsthand, the wall sat in rather strange locations for a good defense, and cavalry units serving in forts there would have no real point, save for patrols.

Men of the II Augustus, VI Victrix and XX Valeria Victrix Legions, built the wall over t