Fortress of Legio VI Ferrata (Legio/Caparcotna)
About
Legio VI Ferrata's permanent camp on this Jezreel Valley hill above Kefar 'Otnay gave the later settlement its name, Legio, and eventually modern Lajjun and Megiddo Junction. The legion did not arrive here until decades after Trajan's death, moving in only after the Bar Kokhba War of 132-136 shifted Rome's Judaean garrison, with an inscription fixing its presence by 152. At the moment of this map's snapshot the legion was still stationed on the Euphrates at Samosata, and the camp here was empty ground.
What happened here
A legionary fortress holds five thousand men and is laid out to the same plan everywhere, so a transferred soldier knows his way around on the first day. Two main streets cross at the headquarters building, where the standards and the pay chest are kept in a sunken strongroom under guard. Around it: the commander's house with a courtyard garden, granaries raised on stone piers, a hospital, workshops, and long barrack blocks divided into rooms for eight men who cook and mess together. Training is daily, and building work is constant — soldiers make their own bricks, tiles and boots. A civilian town grows against the walls, with bars, traders and the unofficial families of men who are not legally allowed to marry.
Sources
- David Kennedy, "Legio VI Ferrata: The Annexation and Early Garrison of Arabia", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 84 (1980)
- Ritterling, "Legio", Realencyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_(Roman_camp)
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