Banasa
About
Augustus founded Banasa around 33 to 25 BCE as one of three coloniae planted in Mauretania Tingitana for veterans who had fought at Actium, granting them farmland along the Sebou river valley. The town anchored the coastal road connecting Tingis to Sala, giving Rome a garrisoned waypoint deep in the Atlantic province. Marcus Aurelius later upgraded its status to Colonia Aurelia Banasa, decades after this map's snapshot. Its ruins lie at Sidi Ali Bou Jenoun in Morocco's Kénitra region.
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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