Sala
About
Sala Colonia held the southernmost fortified position on Mauretania Tingitana's Atlantic coast, its ditch, rampart, and line of watchtowers facing the unconquered tribes beyond the Bou Regreg estuary. Rome absorbed the existing Mauretanian town around 40 CE under Claudius, and by Trajan's reign builders had raised a forum, a monumental fountain, a capitolium, and a triumphal arch along its decumanus maximus. Excavations begun in 1929 uncovered these Trajanic-era structures still standing beneath later fill. The Roman remains now sit inside the walled Marinid necropolis of Chellah on the edge of modern Rabat.
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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