Arnsburg Fort

Castellum Arnsburg

Auxiliary FortGermania Superior · near Lich, Hesse, GermanyBuilt 90 CE

About

Arnsburg held the northernmost bend of the limes as it curved through the Wetterau plain, built under Domitian before 90 CE to anchor the frontier's most exposed salient. A cohort of auxiliary infantry, the Cohors I Aquitanorum, was based here for the better part of two centuries, watching the open farmland beyond the frontier line. Excavations begun in 2020 in the fort's southern cemetery uncovered a richly furnished bustum burial, a grave where the body was cremated directly in the pit it was buried in, which archaeologists identify as the grave of one of the cohort's own commanding officers. The exceptional grave goods recovered there have opened a rare window onto funerary ritual on this stretch of the northern Wetterau frontier.

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.