Five Vindolanda Tablets, Soldiers, and the Law

Abstract

That the Vindolanda tablets have provided us with an extraordinarily stimulating body of evidence is a truism, if ever there was one. But in particular, these inscribed scraps of wood offer the rare and tantalizing opportunity to compare many aspects of daily life (largely military, but also civilian) in the far northwestern corner of the Roman Empire with conceivably similar goings-on elsewhere.