I Shall Expect You, Sister

At some time around the years 97-105 AD, a small piece of wood roughly the size of a post card traveled from a house in the north of Roman Britain on the Stanegate Road to another house. This piece of wood was approximately 223 mm wide and 96 mm tall. It was folded down the center and contained a message in black ink. The house that received it belonged to the military commander at Vindolanda Fort, a fort built on the Stanegate Road, and a generation prior to Emperor Hadrian building his Wall. The woman who received it was Sulpicia Lepidina, the wife of Flavius Cerialis, Prefect of the Ninth Cohort of Batavians. The woman who sent it was Claudia Severa, the wife of Aelius Brocchus, a military officer stationed close enough to travel to her home. Claudia Severa invited Sulpicia Lepidina to attend her birthday celebration.

This piece of wood ended up in the fort's trash. Because the ground into which it was thrown was waterlogged and therefore lacked oxygen, it preserved both the wood and the ink for nearly twenty centuries. It was unearthed by archaeologists in 1985. Today it sits in room 49 of the British Museum and is cataloged #1986,1001.64. Additionally, it is cataloged as Tab. Vindol. 291 in the published corpus of the Vindolanda Tablets. The majority of the content of the tablet is written in a formal and professional script running across two columns. At the bottom of the tablet, near the right margin after a space left vacant by the first writer, the handwriting changes.

The scribe's section is rendered as follows in my translation of the editors' version:

Claudia Severa to her Lepidina, greetings. On the third day before the Ides of September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I ask you warmly to make sure you come to us, to make the day more pleasant for me by your arrival, if you will be here. Greet your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him their greetings.

Next comes the second hand:

sperabo te soror / uale soror anima / mea ita ualeam / karissima et haue

There are twelve words. "I shall be looking for you, sister. Farewell, sister, my soul, as I hope to be well, dearest, and hail."

Alan Bowman and David Thomas describe the first-hand writing style as elegant, with pronounced ascenders and descenders and few ligatures. They believe that this handwriting is probably that of the same writer who authored three other letters in the Cerialis correspondence, including one co-authored by Brocchus himself; the British Museum catalog states it outright, identifying the scribe as the writer of the letter from Niger and Brocchus to Cerialis. The scribe who wrote Severa's invitation, then, wrote at least one of Brocchus's letters as well. The second hand belongs to Severa herself. Severa uses her own handwriting in a closing in Tab. Vindol. 292, and again in Tab. Vindol. 293. Based upon these three closings, Bowman and Thomas identify these as almost certainly the earliest surviving examples of Latin written by a woman. The British Museum catalog describes Severa's handwriting as "less elegant" than that of the scribe.

This observation is worthy of consideration since there is a significant difference between the two hands beyond just their respective styles of handwriting.

First read the scribe's Latin. Rogo libenter facias ut uenias translates to "I ask you warmly to make sure you come," the courteous formula of a well-run household. The expression sollemnem natalem ("customary birthday") is found by Bowman and Thomas in Horace and in Fronto. Interuentu tuo ("by your arrival") they find an example in Cicero's letter to Atticus. The salutations to Cerialis, the salutations from Aelius and from the little son, and the address on the back using a spindly script that is reserved for addresses: each element has a parallel. The scribe's letter is a good letter and it is good in much the same way that professional writing is good - by being of a type.

Next read hers. The commentaries by Bowman and Thomas that provided matches to parallels throughout ten lines thin out when they reach the eleventh line. Sperabo te: according to Latinist J.N. Adams (whom they cite), spero does not seem to be used anywhere else in the active voice with a personal object in this sense. The closest thing to this example is a participial form of speratus (i.e., "longed-for"), which Plautus places in Amphitruo greeting his wife; Severa took an adjectival form used in Plautine Comedy and turned it into a verb. Anima mea ("my soul") as a vocative: Bowman and Thomas observe that while Roman Comedy (which contains numerous instances of mi anime, mostly from women) does not employ this form, Cicero employs this form twice in writing to his wife and daughter in the plural (meae carissimae animae; animae meae). In January 49 BC, with Caesar across the Rubicon, he addressed Terentia and Tullia in the salutation of one letter as duabus animis suis ("his two souls"); he requested that they write to him as frequently as possible; Shuckburgh translates meae carissimae animae as "dear hearts." Ita ualeam ("so may I be well") is an oath; Bowman and Thomas indicate that they were unable to locate an exact parallel to it; however they did identify similar oaths: e.g., ita uiuam ("thus may I live"), ita sim felix ("may I thus be fortunate"). And finally haue at the end of it all ("hail") strikes them as peculiar because she had already said farewell with a uale. The O.L.D. identifies only one parallel to this word as a closing: a haueto in Sallust. She spelled karissima with a K.

Therefore: in twelve words three expressions the reference books cannot precisely locate and only one can be located only in letters written by Cicero to the women of his household. There are roughly forty words in the scribe's Latin that can be compared to all existing Latin letters. The twelve words written by Severa can only be compared to one item: her other letter.

Severa's other letter Tab. Vindol. 292 survives in three pieces, narrow strips far smaller than the single leaf of Tab. Vindol. 291. The scribe handles the formal business: Severa has asked Brocchus for permission to visit Lepidina because she had previously agreed to do so; she intends to go whenever she can; she has certain things that need to be done; she will be staying at Briga; greet your Cerialis. Then on the back of one of the pieces in Severa's hand: uale mi soror karissima et anima ma desideratissima ("Farewell, my dearest sister and my most longed-for soul"). The hand-writing is the same; so is the vocabulary; so is the placement after completion of business. Desideratissima corresponds to sperabo (above). Both contain an anticipation.

Because the object illustrates this point more clearly than any general assertion regarding women writers might, the statement that this represents the oldest known Latin written by a woman depends entirely upon the lines in her own hand: these twelve words, and the closings of 292 and 293 that match them. Additionally, all forty words represent Severa's wishes, i.e., she selected Lepidina as her guest; she determined the date; etc., etc...; consequently, if authorship means composition then all forty words would belong to Severa exclusively; therefore, it would be easy to consider this claim unimportant.

This claim refers to something else - specifically, how evidence is produced from surfaces. A letter composed from dictation informs about an individual; it indicates what she wished expressed. However, a line created directly by her own hand produces evidence regarding her (similar to how footprints produce evidence regarding individuals); and such evidence includes pressure from her hand. Bowman and Thomas possess no terminology to express this difference since their apparatus demonstrates it: parallels abound for the scribe but almost none appear for her.

The same explanation applies for why "less elegant" script is important - elegance in a hand means conformity with a model; and conformity is what allows the scribe's handwriting to be interchangeable with writing in 243, 244, & 248. Her hand-writing is distinctively her own since no one else possesses handwriting like hers; similarly, her Latin writings are distinctly hers since no one else's writings resemble hers. The idiom forms that dictionaries cannot determine are forms of speech that reside primarily in comedy and family letters, but only enter written records when someone who speaks that way takes up a pen herself. The postscript provides entry for Severa's Latin (as opposed to her household's) into written history; and it enters at a juncture when professional writing ceased.

Furthermore, unlike an invitation providing a specific date asking for attendance on that date, a postscript continues past a specific date - sperabo te is a future tense and extends past September 11th; further, it states: I will look for you; it expresses itself via a verb whose usage in this manner by anyone else has not yet been documented. The scribe wrote about occasions; she wrote about want.

She calls Lepidina sister - sister between Roman women of high social status may imply affection rather than familial relationship; moreover, neither letter presents sufficient information either to confirm or disprove whether Claudia Severa calls Sulpicia Lepidina sister due to kinship or friendship.

We have no image or face of Claudia Severa; we have no dates associated with Claudia Severa; we have no tombstone associated with Claudia Severa; we have a birthday; we have a husband; we have a young son; we have Briga (an unknown location); we have twelve words written by Claudia Severa herself. These twelve words provide our sole reason for saying we know Claudia Severa existed.

The scribe completed the greetings from Aelius and from Severa's little son and put down his pen leaving remainder of leaf blank - today we see this blank on wood as well.

Works Cited

Bowman, Alan K., and J. David Thomas. "Tab. Vindol. 291. Birthday Invitation of Sulpicia Lepidina." Roman Inscriptions of Britain, romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabVindol291. Originally published in The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II), British Museum Press, 1994.

---. "Tab. Vindol. 292. Correspondence of Sulpicia Lepidina." Roman Inscriptions of Britain, romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabVindol292. Originally published in The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II), British Museum Press, 1994.

British Museum. "Writing-Tablet, 1986,1001.64." Collection Online, britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1986-1001-64.

Cicero. Epistulae ad Familiares, Liber XIV. The Latin Library, thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/fam14.shtml.

Cicero. The Letters of Cicero. Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, George Bell and Sons, 1899–1900. Book 14 letters hosted at pages.pomona.edu/~cmc24747/sources/cic_web/cic_fam_14.htm.