Ulpia Oescus

Oescus

FortMoesia Inferior · Gigen, BulgariaBuilt 10 CE

About

Legio V Macedonica held this fortress at the meeting of the Iskar river and the Danube on and off from around AD 10, making it one of the oldest continuously garrisoned legionary bases on the whole Moesian frontier. The legion marched off toward Troesmis in 101 to fight in Trajan's Dacian campaigns, and Trajan rewarded the site by elevating it to Colonia Ulpia Oescensium in AD 106, naming it in honor of his victory. By 117 the old fortress had become a full Roman city rather than a working military camp, complete with its own civic institutions. Excavations have since recovered a mosaic of Menander's comedies and inscribed statue bases now housed in the Pleven regional museum.

What happened here

A legionary fortress holds five thousand men and is laid out to the same plan everywhere, so a transferred soldier knows his way around on the first day. Two main streets cross at the headquarters building, where the standards and the pay chest are kept in a sunken strongroom under guard. Around it: the commander's house with a courtyard garden, granaries raised on stone piers, a hospital, workshops, and long barrack blocks divided into rooms for eight men who cook and mess together. Training is daily, and building work is constant — soldiers make their own bricks, tiles and boots. A civilian town grows against the walls, with bars, traders and the unofficial families of men who are not legally allowed to marry.