Beniane Roman Fort
About
A cavalry unit called the Ala Miliaria gave this fort its name and established the garrison in the year 201, nearly a century after Trajan's death, making it a clearly Severan-period addition to the Mauretanian frontier. Inscriptions document soldiers from this post turning up at other sites across the province, including Cherchell, Portus Magnus, and Sig, tracing personnel movements across the whole military network. The fort was important enough to later become a bishopric under the metropolitan see of Caesarea, with two named Donatist bishops recorded in the early 5th century. Early 20th-century excavations at Beniane uncovered the inscriptions that let historians reconstruct this whole picture.
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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