Pojejena Roman Fort
About
Roman troops built this fort near the entrance to the Iron Gates gorge at the end of the 1st century AD, right where the un-navigable rocky stretch of the Danube begins. Geophysical surveys have since mapped its embankment, wall, and ditch in detail without settling every question archaeologists have about it. Historians still debate whether the garrison here answered to the governor of Moesia or of newly conquered Dacia, since the fort sat almost exactly on the border between the two. Its ancient name survives only as a best guess, reconstructed from fragmentary references to a place called Ad Herculem or Castra Herculis.
What happened here
Five hundred men, sometimes a thousand, recruited from a province rather than from citizens, and often stationed a long way from where they were raised. Cavalry units get a bigger fort and far more stabling; the smell tells you which kind you are in before the plan does. The layout copies a legionary fortress at a quarter of the size — headquarters, commander's house, granaries, barracks, a bath house usually built outside the walls because of the fire risk. Duties are patrolling, escorting, customs, and policing rather than pitched battle. After twenty-five years a man is discharged with citizenship for himself and his children, recorded on a bronze diploma he keeps for life. A village grows outside the gate within a decade.
Sources
Nearby
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