When Traveling....

[Carlton Bach]

What are the demensions and details on the leather wallet? It sounds extremely interesting.

I'm missing the photocopies right now, but basically it was a leather 'walletlike' container (sheepskin) about 30 cm wide and 15 deep. It was made by folding over a 30x45cm oblong and sewing oval insets into the sides (does that make it clearer?). Before sewing it, the large oblong was rounded along what would become the 'flap' and sewn all around with a reinforcing strip folded over the edge. This is not necessary if you ar using stronger leather than sheepskin, but looks rather fetching.

The find was published in Yigael Yadin: Finds from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters. There is also a good illustration on page 226 of his more easily accessible 'Bar Kohkba - the Rediscovery of the legendary hero of the last Jewish revolt against Imperial Rome' (London 1971).

This wallet was found containing the so-called 'Babatha archive', the legal documents, title deeds and important correspondence of a wealthy provincial woman. This may not have been its original purpose, though.

On the question of eques being a 'knight', that is merely a ceremonial title by the imperial period. To be an eques, you had to be seriously wealthy (the Augustan census figure commonly quoted is 400,000 sesterces, and that is the minimum amount, not a rule-of-thumb). If you are looking for a rich businessman, that may be a good choice, especially for a family tradition of classical education. However, there would also be the option of a wealthy freedman (though these often did not have or aspire to the kind of education that marked you 'upper class') or a curial from a provincial city rather than Rome. These men could also be very wealthy without belonging to Rome's ruling aristocracy, and their education and culture was broadly similar (though, of course, more modest in monetary terms without the opportunities afforded by the capital).

As a curial, it would be perfectly credible for you to be travelling in the company of a single slave and a pack mule, much reduced circumstances by the lights of the equestrian class accustomed to carriages and small caravans. But of course that would depend on the city in question. I can't see one of Alexandria's city fathers travel like that.

Have you looked at the finds from Pompeii? The small items excavated, especially in the early stages when they were looking for 'treasure', give you a good impression of what kind of portable artifacts surrounded the wealthy in the Roman world.