Burghöfe Roman Fort

Submuntorium

Auxiliary FortRaetia · Burghöfe, Mertingen, GermanyBuilt 50 CE

About

Legionaries planted this garrison on a promontory above the meeting point of the Danube and Lech rivers around AD 50, giving Rome eyes on both waterways 30 kilometers north of Augsburg. The timber fort anchored one of Raetia's most important early military sites and kept soldiers stationed there for more than three and a half centuries. Munich archaeologists spent 2001 to 2007 excavating the site and turned up successive phases of barracks and a civilian vicus that grew up alongside the garrison. A late Roman fortification eventually replaced the original camp around 300, long after the fort's first Trajanic-era occupants had moved on.

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.