Shropshire Routes to Roots

3. The lettering

The script

The inscription is written in Latin, the language of the Romans. The type of lettering (called the script or typeface) used in the inscription is known as Roman Square Capitals, which apart from being used on stone was also sometimes painted directly onto walls. The capitals were a later development from earlier, more 'rustic' forms of the script, which lacked any shading or serifs. Because the letter-cutter was working with stone and not paper, he was limited by the space and material which gives the lettering several characteristics:

Imperial Roman capitals used contrasting thinness or thickness in each letter...The Romans also emphasized the use of serifs - light lines or strokes crossing or projecting from the end of a main line or stroke in a letter - much more than the Greeks ever did, allowing improved legibility and generally enhancing the beauty of the script.

Fischer, A History of Writing, p144

The tools

Because the letter-cutter was using a hard surface to write on, he would have used special cutting and carving tools to achieve the lettering. A variety of hand-held chisels would have been used:

1. Large ones at first, including a point chisel (a carving tool with a single point)
2. Finer tools such as tooth chisels (with multiple small points)
3. A flat chisel (with a sharp straight blade at its end) might have been used to bring the stone to a fine, smooth finish.

This would have been highly skilled work and stonemasons were probably in great demand throughout the Roman world. Have a look at Trajan's Column (opens in a new window) for what is perhaps the most celebrated example of their work.

The readers

But who could read the inscription? Without modern education, paper, pens and all the tools for reading and writing that we have around us now, it might be imagined that very few ordinary people would have been able to actually read the dedicative inscription above the forum at Viroconium. However, quite recent archeological evidence seems to prove this idea to be mistaken.

Near Hadrian's Wall, the ruins of a Roman fort called Vindolanda yielded an extraordinary collection of Roman-era written documentation, mostly in the form of carbon ink on wooden leaves. Unlike the writing on the forum inscription and the tombstone, they are written in a cursive script, a handwriting style which is familiar to us today. The Vindolanda Tablets have revealed a surprisingly high level of literacy. If so much day to day correspondence can be found at a forgotten outpost of the empire, it is probable that many of the inhabitants of Roman Wroxeter would have been able to read and understand the forum inscription.

• Compare the styles of writing of the Forum inscription and the Vindolanda Tablets by visiting the Vindolanda Tablets Online website (Opens in a new window).

More Roman writing

Roman lapidary writing wasn't just used for grand inscriptions on large buildings. It was also used in more ordinary ways, such as on tombstones. We'll look at some more evidence from Wroxeter.

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