Gerulata Fort
About
Gerulata held a bend of the Danube just downstream from Carnuntum, its earth-and-timber fort raised under Domitian in the late first century. During Trajan's reign the cavalry unit Ala I Cannanefatium took over the garrison, part of the general strengthening of the Danube frontier during the Dacian Wars. Excavations across four cemeteries and the fort's civilian quarter have recovered tombstones, altar stones, coins, and a Roman officer's helmet, its dome crushed by a hard blow, along with sandstone ballista projectiles from the vicus. In 2018, work beneath the grounds of the Rusovce manor house uncovered a 2nd-century aqueduct, the first Roman-era water supply system ever identified in Slovakia.
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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