Rheinbrohl Limes Watchtower (Wp 1/1)
About
Watchtower Wp 1/1 marked the caput limitis, the exact point where the Upper Germanic frontier left the Rhine and struck out overland toward the Taunus hills. Soldiers raised the first wooden tower here under Domitian, planting post number one of a chain that would eventually run more than 550 kilometers to the Danube. From its post above the river a sentry watched both boat traffic on the Rhine and the road climbing away from the crossing. Later garrisons rebuilt the tower in stone, but the site kept its role as the anchor point of the entire Upper Germanic-Raetian frontier.
What happened here
A small stone tower with a timber top, sited so that it can see the next one along the line. Half a dozen men live in it. They watch the ground in front, and they watch the tower on either side. A signal — fire and smoke at night, something visible by day — passes a warning down the chain far faster than a rider can, though it can only carry a message that was agreed in advance. The rest of the time it is a lookout post on a road, a river crossing or a frontier line, and the work is boredom punctuated by inspections. Supplies come up from the fort behind. Towers on a frontier stand within sight of each other for hundreds of miles.
In ancient writing
- Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 12.6
Describes Hadrian separating Roman territory from barbarian lands in regions without a river boundary by driving great timber stakes into the ground and binding them into a continuous palisade, the building program to which this stretch of the Germanic limes belonged.
Sources
Nearby
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