Tubusuctu
About
Augustus settled veterans of Legio VII at Tubusuctu in the Soummam river valley, giving the colony the formal name Colonia Iulia Augusta Legionis Septimae. Local kilns turned out distinctive amphorae carrying the region's olive oil across the Mediterranean, and examples of these jars have turned up in excavations throughout the Roman world. An aqueduct and a well-preserved bath complex still stand among the ruins at Tiklat, near modern El Kseur. The colony sat inland from its sister port of Saldae, both founded in the same Augustan veteran-settlement program.
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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