Sulpicia Lepidina

Sulpicia Lepidina was the wife of Flavius Cerialis, prefect of the Ninth Cohort of Batavians, stationed at Vindolanda in Roman Britain about the turn of the 1st century AD.

Her notability is the result of receiving two letters from Claudia Severa, wife of Aelius Brocchus, commander of a nearby fort. 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. The invitation is partly written by a scribe and partly by Severa herself. Along with another tablet (a fragment with a closure written in Severa's hand), the invitation is thought to be the oldest extant writing by a Roman woman found in Britain, or indeed anywhere. The subject-matter of the letters is social and personal, and Severa calls Lepidina her sister.

The letters were written in ink on wooden tablets found during excavations at Vindolanda in the 1970s. Their preservation was due to the waterlogged soil conditions on parts of the Vindolanda site.