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+--- Thread: Hadrian\'s Wall "vallum" (/showthread.php?tid=18137)
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Re: Hadrian\'s Wall "vallum" - Ron Andrea - 01-10-2011
Color me confused. :oops:
Re: Hadrian\'s Wall "vallum" - PhilusEstilius - 01-11-2011
I think the confusion may have come from some of the earlier Antiquarians where various references were being made to the Linium Vallii. It is where just a few hundred years ago there were even those who thought that the Vallum was built by Hadrian and the Wall belonged to Severus, then also in the Notitia we are given the Garrisons as per Linium Vallii.
I think a Vallum was considered a defencive line as in Earth mound or Wall very similar to the mound that went around the inside of a Roman Fort to help against Battering Rams, indeed there is the intervallum road which runs around the complete fort on the inside of such a mound.
Then over the years many have just taken it to mean this ditch that runs along behind Hadrian's Wall without thinking of the two mounds of earth, then where the Roman road is concerned it does travel on the north mound here and there where the two structures converge simply from the fact there was nowhere else to put it other than on the Vallum.
Re: Hadrian\'s Wall "vallum" - D B Campbell - 01-11-2011
Quote:I think a Vallum was considered a defencive line as in Earth mound or Wall very similar to the mound that went around the inside of a Roman Fort.Indeed. Vallum just means "rampart". The Romans referred to both Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall as a vallum. (The legions building the Antonine Wall even recorded the different lengths they had completed of "the work of the rampart", opus valli, presumably excluding the work of building the forts.)
I believe that it was the Venerable Bede, writing centuries after the Romans, who mistakenly identified the linear earthwork which runs along behind Hadrian's Wall as "the vallum". (He was probably confused by the fact that Hadrian's Wall was technically a murus, "stone wall".)