Pöchlarn Roman Fort
About
The cohors I Astrum gave Arelape its name and built the first wood-and-earth fort here in the closing decades of the 1st century AD. A military diploma dated to AD 106 lists that same cohort among the units serving in Noricum, confirming a garrison was still in place a decade before Trajan's death. Troops held this Danube post continuously for roughly 400 years, from the 1st century clear through the 5th. Archaeologists have since documented the site so thoroughly that an entire monograph in the Austrian limes series is devoted to Arelape alone.
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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