Quadrata
About
Trajan's engineers raised a timber-and-earth fort roughly midway between Ad Flexum and Arrabona to close a gap in the limes road. Hadrian's visit to Pannonia in 124 CE prompted its rebuild in stone, with a near-perfect 99 x 99.5 meter square plan that later gave the post its name. Excavations exposed a corner tower and the right-hand gate. Its precise identification remains debated among archaeologists, but Barátföldpuszta is the leading candidate.
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 →