City Walls of Caesaraugusta (Augustan-Tiberian circuit)
About
A defensive circuit roughly 3 kilometers around almost certainly enclosed the colony from soon after its Augustan founding — traces of opus caementicium from this earliest phase survive bonded into the rear face and foundations of the standing wall. But the fabric actually visible today near the Torreon de la Zuda and Calle del Coso is a major rebuild dated to the second half of the 3rd century into the 4th, well after 117 CE. Map this as the earlier, largely non-surviving Augustan-Tiberian phase, not the handsome ashlar-faced monument a visitor sees today.
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 →