09-17-2010, 01:56 AM
It'll be fascinating to see if forensics can give any answers to the circumstance. The Vindolanda Trust's original report ([url:2u5lgam3]http://www.vindolanda.com/downloads/vindolanda_skeleton_press_release.pdf[/url]) shows that the sex is so far indeterminate.
What do we know about Roman army practices for having younger people around? One could suspect that vicus urchins and orphans (as well as children of the soldiers) would spend time with the soldiers -- for reasons both pure and nefarious. But is there documentary evidence of this? Or of how the movements of such children would be monitored within a fort's walls? It appears to have happened in the mid-3rd Century -- the time of the flowering of Vindolanda's civilian vicus and a long period of peace (and relaxed military rules?) on the frontier. As of now, this could be officially sanctioned rape and murder of a young girl. Or it could be an accidental death of an orphaned servant boy that was covered up by a few men in a barrack and who had no loved ones to miss him when he was gone.
Whichever it is, it's always sad -- but sobering -- to remember that human life in Roman times could be inconceivably cheap.
- Harry
http://www.wedigvindolanda.com
What do we know about Roman army practices for having younger people around? One could suspect that vicus urchins and orphans (as well as children of the soldiers) would spend time with the soldiers -- for reasons both pure and nefarious. But is there documentary evidence of this? Or of how the movements of such children would be monitored within a fort's walls? It appears to have happened in the mid-3rd Century -- the time of the flowering of Vindolanda's civilian vicus and a long period of peace (and relaxed military rules?) on the frontier. As of now, this could be officially sanctioned rape and murder of a young girl. Or it could be an accidental death of an orphaned servant boy that was covered up by a few men in a barrack and who had no loved ones to miss him when he was gone.
Whichever it is, it's always sad -- but sobering -- to remember that human life in Roman times could be inconceivably cheap.
- Harry
http://www.wedigvindolanda.com
Everything old is new again.
