Margum
About
Positioned where the Great Morava river meets the Danube, this fortified customs post controlled river traffic and trade through the 1st to 4th centuries. Excavations between 1947 and 1949 identified three separate building phases at the site. Roman houses with painted walls and hypocaust heating were later uncovered in its civilian quarter. Marcus Aurelius eventually elevated the growing settlement to a municipium.
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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