Sulpicia Lepidina

Sulpicia Lepidina was the wife of Flavius Cerialis, Prefect of the Ninth Cohort of Batavians, stationed at Vindolanda[Note 1] in Roman Britain in the early 2nd century AD.

Sulpicia Lepidina received two letters from Claudia Severa, wife of Aelius Brocchus, commander[Note 2] of a nearby fort.

[1] One of the letters from Severa is an invitation to a birthday party, which is perhaps the best-known of the Vindolanda tablets now at the British Museum.

Along with another tablet (a fragment with a closure[Note 2] written in Severa's hand), the invitation is thought to be the oldest extant writing by a Roman woman found in Britain, or perhaps anywhere.

The letters were written in ink on wooden tablets[Note 3] found during excavations at Vindolanda in the 1970s.