City Walls and Citadel of Theveste
About
Justinian's general Solomon rebuilt Theveste behind a massive square citadel wall in the early 6th century, studded with twelve towers and four gates. Roman column drums scavenged from older buildings were built directly into the new Byzantine masonry. The older Arch of Caracalla was absorbed into this wall as a gate. In 117 CE no fortification ring yet enclosed the young colonia.
What happened here
A town wall is a claim as much as a defence. It is faced in stone, cored with rubble and concrete, and pierced by gates that are more decorated than the rest of it put together. Towers project so that anyone at the base can be shot from the side. In most of the empire in this century the walls are old, unmanned, and half built over — shops lean against them and houses are cut into them — because the frontier is a long way off and the danger is not here. On the frontier itself a wall is something else entirely: a continuous barrier with ditches, gates at intervals, patrol tracks and manned turrets, built to control movement rather than to stop an army.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →