The story of the ill-fated British leader, Vortigern, is familiar to most serious students of the history of Britain. This is true whether it be viewed as a last melancholy episode in the Roman period or as an initial and important chapter in the Saxon era. But to appreciate fully the significance of the events of this tempestuous time of transition one should have a clear idea of just what Vortigern was and what he was not. In this short study I shall consider successively a number of important questions about Vortigern, finishing with a rapid reassessment of his role in the final collapse of Roman Britain.

The attributes of Mercury include his purse and winged sandals and one of his animal companions is the cockerel. Purse brooches are few in number, but shoe sole and cockerel brooches occur at Temple 10 at Colchester, a centre of the god's cult, and at other temples, and both also occur in graves, reflecting Mercury's role as the guide of dead souls. Fly brooches have been found at both Temple 10 and Uley, also a centre for Mercury worship, and in a grave, and may be a fourth type associated with the god.

Dudley and Webster state that Vespasian left Britain in A.D. 44, the year following the invasion, in order to attend Claudius' triumph in Rome and receive the triumphalia ornamenta. Webster adheres to this view in a recently published article, and it has been adopted elsewhere. Such a view drastically curtails the duration of Vespasian's command in Britain. This in itself is not perhaps a serious objection to it, even though Suetonius' record of Vespasian's campaign suggests protracted operations. There are other objections that are far more serious.

In the Jubilee volume of the Journal of Roman Studies (1960), Dr Kenneth Steer surveyed a quarter century of excavation and research on the Antonine Wall, starting from the publication in 1934 of the second, definitive, edition of Sir George Macdonald's The Roman Wall in Scotland. The following pages aim to discuss in brief compass how our knowledge has been extended in the twenty years that have followed, and suggest some things which the next two decades could and should be aiming to achieve. As 1960 also marked the publication of the first edition of Professor Anne Robertson's indispensable handbook to The Antonine Wall and its visible remains, that year is a doubly appropriate starting point. The last two decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of excavations taking place along the line of the Antonine Wall, in the amount of money available to do this (most of it from government sources), in the number of full-time archaeologists concerned with its study and preservation, and in the number of students working on the problems of the frontier line at university level; there has also been a greater awareness of the Wall in relation to the general development of Roman defensive works. All this activity culminated in 1979 in the first ever full visit to Scotland of the International Limes Congress.

A military diploma of 2 July a.d. 133 (RMD I, 35), first discovered in 1960 but published several times since, has provoked a debate concerning the origin of the discharged soldier, with commentators proposing either Corinium in Britain or the Cornacates in Lower Pannonia. The new reading presented here suggests that the soldier was actually Cornovian, allowing a reassessment of the recruitment of Brittones in the Roman auxilia.

The excavations were sponsored by the then Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments (Wales) – now CADW: Welsh Historic Monuments – when permission was given to erect a new dwelling on land formerly occupied by an orchard attached to Alstone Cottage. The cottage dated from the seventeenth century and it was anticipated that no serious disturbance had occurred to the Roman deposits on the site since that date. The cottage grounds were known to overlie Barrack XII of the Prysg Field series, which flanked the western side of the via decumana. No previous excavation of the barrack had been undertaken. Thus the opportunity arose to check the validity of the conclusions arrived at by V.E. Nash-Williams, who had wholly or partly excavated ten of the twelve barracks in this area, as to the structural and occupation history of this quarter of the fortress. At the same time the opportunity was given to investigate the history of the via decumana itself.