Women on the Wall

1 The slave who married her master

A second-century tombstone highlights the contradictory nature of relationships in Roman Britain

As is so often the case when exploring the past, we have a clearer picture of the lives of men – particularly Roman soldiers – on Hadrian’s Wall than of the women who lived alongside them. Yet artefacts found on the frontier reveal much about the varied experiences and backgrounds of women in the society that emerged in Britain’s military zone.

One most intriguing example is an elaborate gravestone of the mid-to-late second century AD, from the cemetery outside the Roman fort of Arbeia (South Shields). It depicts a woman, dressed in all her finery, sitting with her spindle on her lap. The Latin inscription beneath this picture of domestic comfort and industry tells us this is Regina, a freedwoman, wife of Barates from Palmyra (Syria) and a member of the Catuvellauni tribe, who died at the age of 30. Beneath, a line in Palmyrene laments: “Regina, freedwoman of Barates, alas!”

This tombstone reveals the complex and ambiguous nature of relationships in the Roman world, particularly in Britain, on the empire’s north-western frontier. Here