Claudia Severa was a literateRoman woman, the wife of Aelius Brocchus, commander of an unidentified fort near Vindolanda fort in northern England. She is known for a birthday invitation she sent around 100 AD to Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Flavius Cerialis, commander at Vindolanda. This invitation, written in ink on a thin wooden tablet, was discovered in the 1970s and is probably the best-known item of the Vindolanda Tablets. The first part of the letter was written in formal style in a professional hand evidently by a scribe; the last four lines are added in a different handwriting, thought to be Claudia's own. The translation is as follows: The Latin reads as follows: The Vindolanda Tablets also contain a fragment from another letter in Claudia's hand. These two letters are thought to be the oldest extant writing by a woman in Latin found in Britain, or perhaps anywhere. The letters show that correspondence between the two women was frequent and routine, and that they were in the habit of visiting one another, although it is not known at which fort Severa lived. There are several aspects of Severa's letters that should be regarded as literary, even though they were not written for a wide readership. In particular, they share several thematic and stylistic features with other surviving writings in Latin by women from Greek and Roman antiquity. Although Severa's name reveals that she is unlikely to be related to Sulpicia Lepidina, she refers frequently to Lepidina as her sister, and uses the wordiucundus to evoke a strong and sensual sense of the pleasure Lepidina's presence would bring, creating a sense of affection through her choice of language. In the post-script written in her own hand, she appears to draw on another Latin, literary model, from the fourth book of the Aeneid, in which at 4.8 Vergil characterises Anna as Dido's unanimam sororem, "sister sharing a soul", and at 4.31, she is "cherished more than life". Although this is not proof that Severa and Lepidina were familiar with Virgil's writing, another letter in the archive, written between two men, directly quotes a line from the Aeneid, suggesting that the sentiments and language Sulpicia used do indeed draw on a Virgilian influence. The Latin word that was chosen to describe the birthday festivities, sollemnis, is also noteworthy, as it means "ceremonial, solemn, performed in accordance with the forms of religion", and suggests that Severa has invited Lepidina to what was an important annual religious occasion.
The invitation was acquired in 1986 by the British Museum, where it holds registration number 1986,1001.64. The museum has a selection of the Vindolanda Tablets on display, and loans some to the museum at Vindolanda.
