Professor Rob Collins

And in terms of scholarly use, that's the one we've used because there's not always a river, but there's always soldiers.

So we can apply that to all those late Roman soldiers.

And they have a distinct...

legal status, and I suppose structural position in Roman law.

It is, you're right that these are soldiers and their families living in the frontiers.

They, at some point in the early fourth century, we don't know exactly when, that status was given to them.

And with that also comes inheritable status.

So the sons of soldiers are legally obliged to also become soldiers.

So you can't just think of it as, well, who are the guys who are willing to go and join the army and stand guard at Hadrian's Wall?

you have entire communities of multi-generational families who have been serving in the Roman army.

And when we look at some of our sources across the Roman period and compared to some of our inscriptions from Hadrian's Wall, we do know that most of the units at the forts based on Hadrian's Wall

have been there more than 100 years, often 150, even 200 years in some cases.

They definitely own land.

And this is actually, there's an older debate, which is now mostly resolved, but it's still something that will be found in certainly more popular history books.

There are some Roman laws that talk about the limitine and their ownership of land and farming or

charges that are brought up against soldiers because they're not doing their military duties, they're too busy running their farms.

A lot of those are later, like the sixth or possibly even seventh centuries, and they're often more Byzantine than Western Roman.

But we also know that the Roman army is a major landowner in and of itself.

And there are things that we do not fully understand, but that we can get at.

So the Roman army would own land.