The graffiti left by the Romans working on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland

ChronicleLive ^ | March 2020 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

Dangling from an abseil rope 30ft up a river gorge rock face, archaeologist Jon Allison certainly felt close to the Romans who had worked on that same spot 1,800 years ago.

They left their mark in the shape of graffiti composed of inscriptions and carved faces, and studying the messages produced the sensation of the quarry work gang communicating across the centuries.

The carvings reveal that soldiers of the Second and 20th legions were detailed to operate in the quarry as part of the major repairing and re-building of Hadrian's Wall.

And as a serving soldier himself for 22 years, Jon imagined how the Roman troopers would have felt about being assigned to a task which was both hard graft and risky...

Jon, a former Army rock climbing instructor, took photographs of the inscriptions, which were used to create a 3D record of the writings near Gelt Wood, 5.5km south of the Wall near Brampton.

"...the inscriptions had not been inspected in detail since the early 1980s, when the path that led to them dropped into the river below.

[GOPJ]

Classic Latin and Church Latin are rather static, whereas the graffiti on walls and Roman baths throughout the Empire show how modern languages developed. The curses, “dirty words” and misspellings can show how people really spoke. There are wall writing over 2000 years old which translate “Caesar sucks”.

Waaaaa cool... Thanks for sharing.

[dsc]

Great googly moogly!

1,322 references, most of which contain yet more references.

Is there another Internet resource like FR?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

It says "for a good time call Julia Agrippina".

[SunkenCiv]

Not that I’ve seen.