Pons Vetus Fort
About
Pons Vetus sat on the left bank of the Olt at the mountain gateway into Dacia, recorded on the Tabula Peutingeriana and by the geographer of Ravenna as a customs station. Its name, meaning Old Bridge, points to a crossing the Romans found already standing here, built by the local Dacian population before the conquest rather than raised by Roman engineers themselves. An inscription of 102 CE naming it a statio vamalis, a customs post, places it firmly in the opening years of Trajan's Dacian frontier, and by 117 CE it had spent over a decade taxing traffic moving along the Limes Alutanus into the newly annexed province.
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
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →