Pincum
About
Rome folded this Thracian-Dacian settlement at the mouth of the Pek river into Moesia Superior in the 1st century CE, garrisoning it with troops of legio VII Claudia. It administered the nearby Aeliana Picensia mining district and gave its name to the local Pincenses community recorded by Ptolemy. A 2nd-century marble funerary relief of Achilles dragging Hector around Troy's walls survives from the site. A matching fortification stood across the river to cover the opposite bank.
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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