Hadrian's Wall: The North-west Frontier of Rome

280 Pages·1995·40.912 MB·English

by  David Divine

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THE NORTHWEST FRONTIER OF
ROIVIE
DAVID DIVINE
1
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"It was never a simple wall."
DAVI D DIVINE
HADRIAN S WALL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT
surviving memorial to the military power of
Rome. In the brilliance of its original concept,
in the monumental character of its construc-
tion, it is altogether superior to the defended
frontiers of Germany, of the Drobruja, and of
North Africa. France might profitably have
studied it in the planning of the ill-fated
Maginot Line.
David Divine's historical outline of the
wall is concise, clear, and readable. But it is
also a history of the Roman occupation of
Britain through four centuries of its exis-
tence. Examining the wall as a military
critic, he attacks tradition vigorously. It is his
premise that the wall was a military triumph
but a political disaster. The failure to pacify
the Caledones produced a military situation
that compelled the establishment of a
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HADRIAN'S WALL:
Tbe NoRtb-WesC pRonfleR of Rome

HADRIAN'S WALL:
The NoRfb-West pRonffcH of Rome
Daoi5 Diuine
Barnes
&.NOBLE
BOOKS
NEW YORK
Copyright © by David Divine
All rights reserved.
This edition published by Barnes 8c Noble, Inc.,
by arrangement with Harold OberAssociates, Inc.
1995 Barnes & Noble Books
ISBN 1-56619-757-0
Printed and bound in the United States ofAmerica
M98765
43
2
Author s Note
Hadrian's Wall —is the essential element in an elaborate
military complex a frontier developed to a higher level of
defensive efficiency than any other in the history of Rome. In
the two separate and distinct plans which brought it to com-
pletion, it incorporates two revolutionary concepts in military
theory. Triumphantly successful for more than three and a
half centuries of effective occupation, it was nevertheless over-
run twice as a result of the disorder of the internal govern-
ment of the Province of Britain, and once by the coincidence
of provincial corruption and external alliance. This book is
an analysis of its military effectiveness. It is not an archaeo-
logical study. For its necessary content of archaeological des-
cription I have borrowed from a list of predecessors which
begins with Caesar and Tacitus and runs through Gildas and
Bede and Camden to the great moderns, Simpson, Richmond
and Birley, and my debt to the Handbook of the Roman Wall
is unlimited as must be that of any writer who comes in from
the outside. I have endeavoured at all times to acknowledge
that indebtedness. For the book's military interpretations I
acknowledge no debt. When, upon rare occasions, I agree with
the scholars, it is by the necessity of the inescapable parallel.
When I disagree it is because I believe that the military
realities have been repetitively misappreciated.
ToJanet Campbell