Tim Copeland - Life in a Roman Legionary Fortress

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Tim Copeland Life in a Roman Legionary Fortress
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The Roman legions were the formidable, highly organised and welldisciplined backbone of the Roman army, vital to maintaining order and control of the borders of the Empire and its subjugated peoples. The fortresses that were the bases of the legions reflected their values: purposeful, hierarchical and an intimidating display of Roman culture.But what was it like to live in one of these fortresses? What was the everyday experience of the legionary, centurion and commander? Life in a Roman Legionary Fortress provides a fascinating insight into the inner mechanisms of the castrum and the people who maintained it. Using the fortresses at Chester, York, Caerleon and across the Empire, Tim Copeland reconstructs the complex workings of these legionary camps and provides readers with the archaeological and literary evidence that gives us an insight into life behind the high walls.

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Acknowledgements For Genie and her Gamma Anne I have to thank Jeremy Knight - photo 1
Acknowledgements

For Genie and her Gamma, Anne

I have to thank Jeremy Knight and the late George C. Boon, both of whom took time to talk to the young boy who haunted their excavations. David Zienkiewicz provided much support in the writing of my Isca Education Guide (1993), the forerunner of this book. Mark Lewis, the curator of the National Roman Museum at Caerleon, discussed his ideas about aspects of the fortress of Isca and provided continual encouragement. Gill Dunn of Cheshire West and Chester Council provided me with access to images of the Chester fortress. Peter Guest provided sources and answered my many enquiries. Caro McIntosh kindly, as always, drew the maps and plans of the fortress. Louise Clough and Claire Shadwell helped me with updating my ancient historical skills on my laptop, and Dave Brookes produced miracles with my illustrations on his PC. Don Henson took photographs, and, unless designated otherwise, the colour images are all from the authors personal collection taken with the permission of CADW. The reconstruction of the Prysg Field barracks is courtesy of Julia Sorrell. Of course I take responsibility for all errors (and hopefully the joys) contained in this book.

First published 2014

Amberley Publishing
The Hill, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 4EP
www.amberley-books.com

Copyright Tim Copeland, 2014

The right of Tim Copeland to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 9781445643588 (PRINT)
ISBN 9781445643939 (eBOOK)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typesetting by Amberley Publishing.
Printed in Great Britain.

Introduction

This book is largely based on the Roman fortress of Isca, the administrative headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion (Legio II Augusta) under the village of Caerleon The Camp of the Legions near Newport in South Wales. I first visited Isca when I was eight years old. At ten, I was peeping over a fence at Jeremy Knights excavation at Cold Bath Road and was invited to join his team as the pot washer, or as I like to think of it now, finds assistant. One of my most formative experiences was Jeremy showing me around the preserved Prysg Field Roman legionary barracks in the south-west corner of the fortress, which remain the only examples on display in northern Europe, and seeing Alan Sorrells reconstruction of them. Here I began my journey of understanding the archaeology of the everyday lives of legionary soldiers in their fortresses. It is from these barracks that the named individuals in this book originate, and it is also the part of the fortress from which they will lead their daily lives. Vital evidence will be used from the sites of the other permanent legionary fortresses in the Province of Britannia at Deva/Chester, the base of Legio II Adiutrix and later Legio XX Valeria Victrix, and at Eboracum, now present-day York, the home of Legio IX Hispana followed by Legio VI Victrix.

THE EVIDENCE BASE

Surprisingly, there is no surviving contemporary history of the Roman Imperial Army by an ancient author, and little contemporary, detailed examination of military practices. We have the evidence of only five writers, some of which might be applicable to the period of the Principate from 27 BC to AD 284, which is the focus of this book. The Greek historian Polybius in his Histories described the Roman army in the second century BC, but unfortunately this was before Augustus reforms, which reshaped much of the military, including the reduction of the century to eighty men. Then there is Titus Flavius Josephus De Bello Judaico (The Jewish War) c. AD 75, which extolled the achievements of the Roman army putting down a Jewish revolt in AD 6670. In the late first or third century AD (it is contested), we have De Munitionibus Castrorum (About the Foundation of Military Camps), written by an unknown author, usually referred to as Hyginus or Pseudo-Hyginus. It is mainly about the building of campaign forts; however, some parts might be applicable to a permanent fortress. A Roman jurist, Publius Tarruntenus Paternus, wrote a four-volume work, De Re Military (On Military Matters), of which only two fragments survive in the Digest of Justianian, a compendium of Roman law compiled for the Roman emperor of that name (AD 530533), and identifies the immunes, those who were excused from general tasks because of their specialist skills. Finally, there is Vegetius, a fourth century AD commentator who attempted to restore the Roman army to the military practices and virtues of the earlier years of the Empire with his Epitomarei Militaris, also referred to as the De Re Militari (The Military Institutions of the Romans), which is the most valuable source about the everyday military experience of the legionary. He probably also used Tarruntenus Paternus as a source.

Why is there so little? The reason is simple: the educated did not want to hear about the peacetime activities of the ordinary soldier, as they saw the army as a threat to their property as it had been on many occasions and wished the legions to be kept on the frontier, as far away as possible. They often saw the military as bridging the gap between barbarians and the Empire, and therefore of low status.

So, in literary terms, we are thrown back on the very scarce epigraphic evidence inscriptions on monuments, dedications on altars, repetitive and formulaic lives on tombstones, graffiti on pottery and writing on wooden tablets. None of this evidence is dramatic, but it can get us closer to individuals. From the eastern part of the Empire, however, much was written about everyday life and duties of the Roman legionary on papyrus, which, due to the hot, dry climate, has survived. Vegetius tells us that the administration of the whole legion, whether services, military duties or financial transactions, was written down every day, including their daily peacetime guard duties and watches, and each mans leaves of absence and duration recorded. We are fortunate in having the identity of a centurion (we dont know the first part of his first name, his praenomen), Petronius Fortunatus, who served with the Legio II Augusta and later in Alexandria with Legio III Cyrenaica, and we can use this to demonstrate standard military organisation and practices across the Empire. While we know the names of a large number of centurions and their career paths, we know little of their everyday duties. Conversely, we can identify few legionaries, but know more of their everyday work.

In Britain, we are nearly wholly reliant on the archaeological evidence gained from excavation, field walking and surveying (especially with the recent increase in the use of geophysics at Caerleon) as our principle source of data to examine the predominantly anonymous people who lived in the barracks, and in the higher status areas of the legionary base. There are sound archaeological reasons for using Caerleon with its large, relatively recent and well-excavated sites, and the lack of buildings on an extensive area of Isca. However, Caerleon does have a rival in Inchtuthil in Scotland (its Latin name is not known), the northernmost fortress in the Empire. Here is a completely open site where the entire plan of the timber fortress has been revealed by aerial photography and trenching, which tells us a lot about how a fortress was laid out. However, the very short occupation, which probably only lasted for three years between AD 8386, and the limited excavation, has resulted in a lack of finds, which does not give us the detail for the current study. While these other bases will be used to give us a deeper understanding of daily life, it is Isca that will provide the unrivalled collection of objects that we need. The evidence from the other British fortresses suffers from being sealed below important medieval buildings, themselves of great historical value, and excavations and observations have been the result of opportunistic interventions before modern buildings or water pipes and electric cable have been laid. The evidence retrieved is still vital to our understanding of the working of fortresses, especially as these bases were laid out differently. There will also be excursions around the Empire, especially at Novae, the base of

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