V-Mail: Letters from the Romans at Vindolanda Fort Near Hadrian's Wall: Letters from the Romans at Vindolanda Fort on Hadrian's Wall - Softcover

Discover V-Mail - the Roman empire's equivalent of the email or text message! The letters discovered at Vindolanda were written on small flexible "postcards" of wood, which were tied together in zigzags and carried by couriers from all over the empire. They include a birthday party invitation, shopping lists, and gossipy letters between friends; also work assignments and orders for the soldiers in the fort, and accounts of the food they ate, the equipment they were issued, and their medical prescriptions. People write demanding money for goods they have supplied, or asking for a job, or begging an officer not to flog them for a crime they did not commit. A Roman officer even writes a memo describing how the native Britons fight! This book includes translations of a selection of these fascinating and fun documents. Each one is accompanied by illustrations - reconstruction drawings of Roman life in Britain, and photographs of artefacts from the British Museum's collections. Short, simple descriptive text explains the background to the letters and the world in which the writers lived.

Katharine Hoare works in the Department of Learning and Audiences in the British Museum. She is the author of several books for children including "The British Museum Pocket Timeline of Ancient Rome" (under her unmarried name of Katharine Wiltshire).