usual rubble and concrete formation that has already been described. Inscribed stones built into the face of the wall still show how the work of construction was divided between the legionary detachments, and variations in the thickness of the wall indicate where their work was connected, the break in the alignment being on the southern face. Supporting the wall were eighteen fortified stations of the usual quadrilateral form, the masonry of which resembles that of the wall itself. Their enclosed areas vary from 3 to 6 acres, and they were crowded with official buildings, store-rooms, and barracks. In some stations that have been carefully explored the main streets are found to have been from 10 to 14 feet wide, and the minor streets or lanes only about 3 feet wide. Many of the stations had suburbs, villas, and other buildings outside their own walls and south of the great main wall. Between the stations, and at intervals of approximately a Roman mile (about seven furlongs) were castella or mile-castles, eightyone in number, which were about 60 feet square in places, and had gateways, originally 10 feet wide, on their north and south faces. No important remains of buildings have been found inside them, and they possibly only held guard - rooms to give temporary shelter to their garrisons. The position of the castella depended to some extent on the natural features of the ground, a gorge or river-bed being always protected by one of these fortified posts. Between every two castella were placed at regular intervals four turrets, some 12 feet square in plan, which assisted in establishing a complete system of sentries along the course of the wall. In many places, especially in the more populous districts, the masonry of the wall and fortresses has now been almost entirely removed for building material, and elsewhere it has been used for roadmaking. General Wade in particular in some places nearly obliterated the wall to make his great military road from Newcastle to Carlisle in the middle of the eighteenth century. In front of the wall, and on the north side, ran a ditch, 36 feet wide and 15 feet deep, which has been cut through earth, sandstone, or basalt, and has only A TURRET OF THE ROMAN WALL AT THE NINE NICKS OF THIRLWALL. On been omitted when the natural defence of a cliff or riverbed made this additional protection unnecessary. the south side of the wall, at a varying distance from it, ran the military road, some 18 feet wide, which connected the stations on the wall, and intersected the great highways which led to and through it from Southern Britain. It can still be clearly traced in many places, and till the middle of the eighteenth century was in occasional use for pack transport. The Itinerary of Antoninus gives evidence of the importance of the stations on the wall and of the military road that united them; but the most difficult problems in connection with the subject arise from a vallum which at some time was constructed on the south side of the murus or wall at a distance varying from only a few yards to half a mile, and consisting of another fosse and three parallel earth and stone mounds or aggers, which are still in places 7 or 8 feet in height. In section the fosse is not unlike that on the north side of the wall, but is considerably smaller, being about 7 feet deep and 17 feet wide, and the spoil' from it has been formed into the three banks or aggers, one of which is about 24 feet to the north of this southern fosse, another on the southern edge of the fosse, and the third about 24 feet still further south. This fosse with its triple row of banks generally approaches the wall near the fortified stations, and while the wall proper as far as possible follows the ridge line of the hills, the vallum is usually on the reverse slope towards the south. It appears certain that a chain of forts was constructed across this district by Agricola prior to his campaigns in Scotland, and they probably occupied the sites of some of the later walled stations. Some authorities have seen in the mysterious vallum an earth-wall defensive line of Hadrian's, and attribute the stone wall to Severus. The position of the vallum, however, is better adapted for defence against the South than against the North, and this theory has few advocates. Another school claims that the wall and vullum are contemporaneous, and attribute them to Hadrian. The object of the vallum would be the protection of the wall and its garrisons against raids from partially subdued tribes to the south of it, and it would also secure the military way and a certain amount of grazing ground. There are difficulties in the way of this explanation-the position of the banks, for instance-but it certainly has more to recommend it than the final suggestion that the vallum was a purely civil boundary, and only denoted the limit of a province. We know with certainty, however, that the wall and the fortresses were repeatedly altered and repaired. If it dated from Hadrian, A.D. 119, it was broken through from the north about A.D. 180-184, and repaired in the latter year. It was strengthened by Severus about A.D. 207. Again broken through in A.D. 363-364, it was repaired, probably for the last time, in A.D. 369, by Theodosius. Two at least of the stations were at some time enlarged, their ground-plan being altered from square to oblong, and the extensions being made to project beyond the northern face of the wall. The use of Roman tombstones for repairs and other discoveries made in the process of excavation make it certain that repair or reconstruction at one period at least was done in a hurried manner. Many problems thus await a solution which may never be attained, but it is worth recording that, according to one computation, the labour of 10,000 men for at least two years would be required for the construction of the entire work in the present day, and that its cost would exceed £1,000,000 of our money; and to quote Mr. Bruce, the historian of the wall, as this work in grandeur and conception is worthy of the mistress of the nations, so in durability of structure is it the becoming offspring of the "Eternal City.""* *The Roman Wall,' p. 1. 6 |