Teutoburgium
About
Built near the Drava's confluence with the Danube in the 1st century CE, this fort at various times garrisoned the ala II Hispanorum Aravacorum and the ala I civium Romanorum. Stray finds of javelin heads and horse-harness pendants trace its cavalry garrison across the 1st and 2nd centuries. A 19th-century brickyard built directly over the site destroyed most of its structural remains. Ongoing riverbank erosion continues to eat away what is left.
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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