Handbook to Roman Legionary Fortresses

Handbook to Roman

Legionary Fortresses

Frontispiece. Traditionally (but mistakenly) known as the Praetorium, this structure is actually the groma that stands in front of the headquarters building of legio III Augusta at Lambaesis (Tazoult-Lambèse, Algeria). An inscription (AE 1974, 723) records the restoration in AD 267/8 of this building, which was erected over the point from which the fortress was laid out. This nineteenth-century woodcut, based on a photograph, shows the western and southern facades of the structure before Cagnat’s excavation of the principia (which lay to the right; one standing column is visible) and subsequent modern consolidation had taken place.

Handbook to Roman

Legionary Fortresses

M.C. Bishop

First published in Great Britain in 2012

By Pen and Sword

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Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Plates

Preface

This book came about for a very simple reason. I found I needed a reference book on Roman legionary fortresses, yet one did not exist.¹ Nor did anybody appear to be particularly keen to write one. It provides facts, pure and simple, with a light smattering of ideas and notions, a few mine, mostly those of other and better scholars. Not only the dimensions, dates, units garrisoning, and the like, but published references and, most importantly, a standardized series of drawings using all the available (and frequently disparate) published information.

The drawings themselves, included here as part of each gazetteer, have proved problematical for reasons readily familiar to anybody who has attempted to work with the drawn products of others. Consistency, scale and conventions are all richly varied and, at times, enviably imaginative. Plans of fortresses can be distorted in the process of drawing and publication, so that comparing two superimposed plans frequently reveals stretching in one dimension, skewing or shearing, and possibly a little rotation. Thus an element of fudging has been necessary to get the various elements to fit, a phenomenon that will be recognized by all archaeological illustrators (and not a few surveyors). A citation for a principal published plan is offered for most sites, but these are seldom the only source and in one or two cases (notably Nicopolis and Sura) I have derived my plans from (frankly, very limited) published sketches and descriptions. Nevertheless, the results reproduced here will hopefully allow the comparison of these various sites in a way not previously possible to such a degree. As has become customary with my drawings, I am making all of the fortress plans contained within the volume available with a Creative Commons license as PNGs, albeit with the caveat that these are book illustrations not surveyed plans, and derived from published plans not excavation site drawings or surveys. Open source software and data was used to create them: Inkscape for the master vector drawings, The GIMP for processing all bitmaps that have been derived from these, and the Natural Earth 1:10m dataset and QGIS to plot the overall location map. Thus I hope my making the plans available may be seen as a practical way of contributing something back to the open source ‘community’.²

Many published fortress plans are quite clearly palimpsests, as the Koenenlager at Neuss so plainly reveals: not only are there buildings superimposed upon one another, but even within apparently homogeneous structures partitions change with phases and the composite plan is, at best, confusing. Some cannot now be unravelled without further work, usually because they were excavated long ago when stratigraphy was imperfectly understood. Others hold out more hope and, where determined work has been undertaken to separate phases, one particular manifestation has been chosen for illustration here (although others should be present on the accompanying website).³

Several interesting (and, frankly, perplexing) decisions have to be made about what to include and what exclude. As an example, for the bibliography of a particular site, should references that deal just with finds be included? And what exactly constitutes the catchment for a legionary fortress: the base itself (so excluding extramural features like exercise grounds or amphitheatres), the base and accompanying establishments, the canabae, the territorium, the cemeteries? And so it goes on. Whatever decision is made is bound to be open to criticism, so rather than attempt to anticipate what you want (which is probably different to what she or he wants), I have (almost) unashamedly reflected what I want (since the original impulse to write the book was the absence of a reference volume I would find of use).

An equally fraught, if seemingly trivial, dilemma is what to call a fortress. Whilst ‘Vindonissa’ or ‘Aquincum’ may be familiar to many, would ‘Isca’ represent Exeter or Caerleon to most readers? The European penchant for associating modern and ancient names, as with Neuss–Novaesium, is useful, but potentially tree-costly in a work that frequently rehearses the names of camps. Thus, once again, I have made arbitrary decisions in nomenclature and can only point out that the index will cross-reference alternative names and the gazetteers present both ancient and modern placenames (including ambiguities), where known. The scope of this work has been deliberately restrained to what has been published, although that term has been interpreted broadly, as this has included material that is available on the internet and not elsewhere.

For the sake of consistency, I have chosen to number legions using the subtractive principle, e.g. Legio IV Macedonica, rather than Legio IIII Macedonica, although both were evidently acceptable to the Romans.⁴

There are a number of people I should like to thank for their help with various aspects of this project. Both Jon Coulston and Duncan Campbell were kind enough to read and comment upon a draft of the text (naturally all remaining errors, idiosyncrasies, and examples of bloodymindedness remain my sole responsibility), whilst Jon also generously permitted the use of a variety of his photographs in the plates section.

I began my career as an excavator digging for Viv Metcalf and her supervisor Simon Tomson, first at Usk (Market Street) and subsequently at Caerleon (Roman Gates) and from them I learned much; thanks, too, to their planning supervisor, Andy Marvell, who later went on to run the unit which then employed him, and who taught me how to plan a legionary base on a stone-by-stone basis. My good friend and sometime PhD supervisor, Prof David Kennedy, patiently answered many niggling questions I directed at him, and he was good enough to solicit the help of Ross Burns in my initial enquiries about the then-undiscovered fortress at Raphanaea. As a former junior library assistant, it would indeed be remiss of me not to acknowledge the assistance of the staffs of the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and Institute of Classical Studies in London, the Robinson Library in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, the Reid Library at the University of Western Australia, and the Library of the University of St Andrews. Additional help in obtaining badly needed literature, answering questions on specific (and sometimes obscure) points of detail, or providing guided tours of fortresses they were excavating was, over the years, kindly provided by Joaquin Aurrecoechea, Ivan Bogdanovic, David Breeze, Piotr Dyczek, Phil Freeman, Emilio Illarregui, Sonja Jilek, Lázsló Kocsis, Boštjan Laharnar, Željko Miletić, Ivan Radman-Livaja, Angel Morillo, Tom Parker, Liviu Petculescu, Mirjana Sanader, Tadeusz Sarnowski, Guy Stiebel, Domagoj Tončinić and Willem Willems. The aerial photographs of Lejjun and Udruh courtesy of the Aerial Photographic Archive of Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME – archive accessible from: www.classics.uwa.edu.au/Aerial_archaeology). My editor, Phil Sidnell, has shown tolerance and forbearance beyond the call of duty, as has Lorraine Marlow, who has now seen more of legionary fortresses than she probably ever dreamed was necessary (or even advisable) in the life of a normal human being. This book is for all of them, but it is also for you and, lest it be forgotten, me.

Figure 1: Conventions used in the site plans.

Chapter 1

Introduction

What was a legionary fortress? The simplest answer may be that it was the winter quarters of a legion that housed the legionary eagle standard. That is, however, an assumption. Detachments sent out from that base would march behind a vexillum standard (and be known as a vexillatio, like those based at Corbridge, Northumberland), but the core of a legion would remain where its eagle was situated. An entire legion might have campaigned in the summer with its eagle and be temporarily based in a castra aestiva, but it would return to its castra hiberna. Such a definition works well in the Principate, but what of the Dominate? Our evidence suggests that in the later Empire legions became fractured into subunits of around 1,000 men, some on frontiers, others in field armies. Did they all have their own unit standard or did they still respect one original eagle?¹

Terminology

What should one call a legionary base? Whilst ‘camp’ might suffice for some, and even find resonance with modern English-language military usage, it might be thought that there are too many parallels with camping and the temporary nature of related establishments. In German, Lager and its specific compound noun Legionslager seem less controversial than ‘camp’. Even the term ‘legionary fortress’ comes with a perceived subtext in English. It has been argued that such bases were never intended to offer the sort of defensive capabilities implied by the term ‘fortress’. This is a modern meme that resurfaces in similar arguments on how Roman defensive structures like Hadrian’s Wall were not intended to be defended at a tactical level. However, it might be countered that the valiant – yet ultimately futile – defence of Vetera I by legiones V Alaudae and XV Primigenia during the Batavian uprising of AD 69 negates this objection nicely, and just because legionary bases did not normally require defending this did not mean they were not capable of it. In fact, ‘base’ is itself a good compromise term, but it has been decided to use camp, fortress, and base interchangeably to mean the same thing.²

The modern scholarly terminology of Roman legionary fortresses is ultimately largely derived from the text De Munitionibus Castrorum, often (and probably wrongly) attributed to the writer Hyginus Gromaticus, and thus sometimes rather awkwardly known as ‘Pseudo-Hyginus’. The assumption is made that the campaign camps for armies with many units that this work describes were basically the same as legionary fortresses, but it is important to understand that it is just that: an assumption, albeit a not unreasonable one. Since the Pseudo-Hyginean terms are now so deeply embedded in the subject, a short glossary has been included (as Appendix 2) to explain these and other technical (or pseudo-technical) words the reader may encounter, along with their sources.³

Terminology is a complex area, not helped by the Latin language’s all-too-common lack of specificity. Nor is it made any easier by the fact that the substantive castra is a plural form, so ‘a camp’ is in fact ‘camps’ (the singular form castrum or kastrum returns to popularity in the Late Empire). In order to understand what a Roman would have called a legionary camp/fortress/base, we must turn to our sources. Historians tell of the use of castra aestiva and castra hiberna, the first being summer campaign camps, the latter winter quarters. A rhythm of occupying campaign camps with other legions and auxiliaries, then returning to their own winter quarters, is evident for the early first century AD in the writings of Tacitus. Vegetius groups castra aestiva and castra hiberna into a class together, castra stativa: permanent bases (thus distinguishing them from more temporary fortifications, such as those dug when on the march). The term stativa is also found in other writers such as Tacitus. An inscription of AD 142 from Gerze (Egypt) names the castra Augusta hiberna, recording legio II Traiana Fortis sharing its base (otherwise known as Nicopolis, near Alexandria) with ala I Thracum Mauretana. The sub-literary record provides confirmation in AD 157, by which time that legion was sharing with ala Gallorum veterana. Another inscription, this time from Mainz, identifies that fortress as the hiberna of legio XXII Primigenia.⁴

Size

Beyond terminology, there is the vexed question of dimensions. As has already been indicated, published plans can vary slightly. Moreover, the definition of the size of a site varies between scholars and many do not define what is being measured when dimensions are cited. For the purposes of this volume, dimensions are taken from the outer face of the defensive curtain wall of each fortification (thus excluding projecting towers or ditch complexes), so the area quoted for any site is the area enclosed within those defensive walls as defined by the outer face of its walls – often termed ‘over the ramparts’ – and this may be termed the maximum area of the fortress. This is very different from, say, the usable area within any rampart (or the functional area) that accompanies the defensive wall – the two figures for the Koenenlager at Neuss are 25.8ha and 22.9ha respectively, and if the intervallum is excluded and just the area available for accommodation allowed for, this drops to 20ha (this may be termed the minimum area, only 78% of the maximum area of the fortress).⁵

The subject of dimensions becomes even more perplexing when advocates of modular systems of layout and their critics confront each other. Those who think the Roman army used such a system have as a powerful ally the centurio with his decempeda, a ten-foot ranging pole used to check soldiers’ work when digging camps. Unfortunately, there is no agreement on what sort of feet were used, whether the pes Monetalis or Drusianus. This issue can best be characterized as undecided, not least because it is plagued by the same sort of mensural uncertainties evident when trying to draw up definitive plans of fortresses. Similar complexities (and little clarity) arise over issues of orientation of camps.⁶

Sources

The source material, as with so many areas of the study of the Roman army, falls into four broad categories, each with their own particular strengths and weaknesses: the excavated, the written, the depicted, and the commemorative.

Archaeological

Archaeology provides us with both standing and excavated remains of legionary fortresses. The fact that some have been comprehensively explored (Carnuntum, Lauriacum, Lambaesis and, albeit by selective trenching, Inchtuthil) and others (most Eastern and many key Danubian sites) left virtually untouched is reflected both in the amounts of information contained within the gazetteers (see below, Chapter 9) and in the archaeological examples cited below. The quality of excavation, in terms of its practice, recording, analysis, and publication, varies widely both in time and space. The availability of any given site for examination is also dictated by circumstances. Open (or rural) sites are often easily accessible, but prone to severe stratigraphic degradation through subsequent agricultural practices. Urban sites, on the other hand, are encumbered by overlying structures, but cumulative deposition can mean that Roman military levels are sometimes better preserved than is the case for their rural counterparts. Moreover, the pressures for development will nowadays normally lead to opportunities (albeit limited) to examine the archaeology. Some sites fall victim to poor placement and the dynamic behaviour of the river systems next to which they were inevitably placed, and here we might note Ptuj and Vetera II.

Figure 2: Map showing the fortresses. 1 Inchtuthil; 2 York–Eboracum; 3 Chester–Deva; 4 Lincoln–Lindum; 5 Wroxeter–Viriconium; 6 Caerleon–Isca; 7 Usk–Burrium; 8 Gloucester–Glevum; 9 Colchester–Camulodunum; 10 Exeter–Isca; 11 Richborough–Rutupiae; 12 Nijmegen–Batavodurum; 12 Nijmegen–Noviomagus; 13