Campona
About
The ala I Tungrorum Frontoniana, transferred from Aquincum, built the first palisade camp here under Domitian before it was rebuilt in stone as a 178 by 200 meter fort. Triple ditches and paired corner towers ringed its walls. A Mithraic relief turned up among the finds from its vicus, now buried under modern Nagytétény. The fort's eastern and southern gates remain visible on site 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
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