Photograph via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Y Gaer, Brecon

Cicutio

Auxiliary FortBritannia · Aberyscir, near Brecon, Powys, WalesBuilt 75 CE

About

Five hundred Spanish cavalrymen recruited from the Vettones tribe garrisoned this earth-and-timber fort at a crossroads in the Usk valley from around 75 CE. Its ramparts were still the original turf and clay in Trajan's reign; a stone rebuild would not come until decades later, under men of the Second Augustan Legion. The site controlled a key junction of Roman roads through the Brecon Beacons. Excavated gateways and wall footings remain visible in the surrounding fields 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.

In ancient writing

Antonine Itinerary, Antonine Itinerary Iter XII
Lists Burrio (Burrium), the Usk-valley station 9 Roman miles from Isca Silurum on the road north to Gobannio.