Egeta

Auxiliary FortMoesia Superior · Brza Palanka, SerbiaBuilt 50 CE

About

Three successive fortifications on this stretch of the Danube, spanning the 1st through 6th centuries, made Egeta one of the longest-used military sites on the Iron Gates limes. By the 2nd century it housed the cohors I Cretum along the road linking Viminacium to Aquae. Excavations recovered cult objects tied to the Syrian god Jupiter Dolichenus from a shrine on site. Its large civilian settlement has since been repeatedly flooded by the Danube.

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.