Castra Hierosolyma

About

Legio X Fretensis garrisoned the ruins of Jerusalem continuously from the city's destruction in 70 CE, encamped on the southwestern hill (the former Herodian Upper City), incorporating the Phasael/Hippicus/Mariamne towers of Herod's palace into its camp wall. It was still Jerusalem's sole legionary garrison in 117 CE; the refoundation of the city as the colony Aelia Capitolina is usually dated c. 130 CE under Hadrian (one late source, Epiphanius, gives 117, but mainstream scholarship treats that as a chronological error), so at the 117 CE snapshot this is still a legionary camp on Jerusalem's ruins, not yet the colonia.

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.

In ancient writing

• Josephus, Jewish War 7.1–5

  Titus levels the city but leaves the towers and part of the west wall standing, to quarter the Tenth Legion behind and to show what had been taken.

Sources

• https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rome-an-empire-of-many-nations/camp-of-the-legion-x-fretensis-and-the-starting-point-of-aelia-capitolina/AF8DA85224D4C1F7AC1A180A2CA7B3E3
• https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1943/legions-of-judea/