Dunaújváros Roman Fort
About
Trajan's engineers raised the first palisade fort at Intercisa on a 165-meter-wide plan, planting a garrison on the Pannonian limes that would later host the famous Syrian archer unit, the cohors I milliaria Hemesenorum. The stone fort that replaced it kept troops here for generations, and the attached vicus grew into a real riverside town. Intercisa is now counted among the most thoroughly excavated Roman forts on the entire Danube frontier. Its Mithraeum finds and prismatic glass bottles fill display cases in Hungarian museums today.
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
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →