Carsaga
About
A Roman milestone found here, raised in 76 CE by governor Gnaeus Pompeius Collega, records construction of the frontier road linking Rome's new bases in Cappadocia and Armenia Minor. The station sat roughly ten Roman miles east of modern Refahiye, on the route running toward Satala. Its garrison would have policed a stretch of highland road built barely four years after Vespasian annexed the region's client kingdoms. No structural remains beyond the milestone have been securely identified.
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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