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M. C. Bishop
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It has long been assumed that, except under unusual circumstances, legions lived in legionary
fortresses, auxiliary units in forts,2 and that these components of frontier systems fended off
potential invaders, and also enabled the Roman army to oppress, tax, and police the empire.
Unfortunately, this functional interpretation of Rome’s ‘garrisoning policy’ is deeply flawed.
The purpose of this paper is to call into question accepted notions of garrisoning, how it worked,
why it existed, and to discuss the nature of our conceptions or misconceptions.
1 When originally presented, this paper had the same title with the exception of the first word, which was
‘Garrison’. Some scholars seem to have an aversion to that term, as was evident at the conference, so I
have avoided using it in the title. So far as I can tell, this antipathy arises from the implication that a
force is intended to defend a site, whereas it is accepted orthodoxy that Roman fortifications were not
meant to be defended (curiously, given the advanced nature of many Roman defensive devices). This can be
countered by pointing to the effective defence of Vetera mounted by Legiones V and XV during the
Batavian uprising (Tac., Hist. 4.21–36). Be that as it may, I feel no qualms in translating praesidium as
garrison (Lewis and Short 1879, 1429 q.v. ‘praesidium’) and can find no happy synonym or
circumlocution for the term ‘garrisoning’, so I have retained it in most instances. The English word
‘garrison’ derives from the Old/Mediaeval French ‘garison’/‘guarison’, which in turn comes from
the Old French ‘guarir’ and Mediaeval French ‘garir’, to defend (Partridge 1966, 796–97 q.v. ‘warn’,
para. 5). Partridge notes the further influence of the Mediaeval French ‘garnison’, a means of defence.
2 Webster 1985, 175; Luttwak 1976, 46–47.
3 Keppie 1984, 44.
4 Engels 1978.
5 Ibid., appendix 1.
6 Reynolds 1979, 61.
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scale alone makes the point: a large standing army over-wintering exerted a thoroughly
heterodox strain on the resources of a locale.
Logic dictates that a stationary army had to be broken up to reduce strain on one focal point
and to increase the efficiency of the supply distribution by reducing the overall distance
required for transport. This is why one of the abuses corrected by Agricola – forcing civitates to
deliver grain to distant destinations instead of to local hibernae7 – would have seemed so
extreme. Caesar broke up his army in Gaul in this way when over-wintering, notably at the end of
campaigning in 53 B.C. in the territory of the Eburones: he split up a 10-legion army amongst the
Treveri, Lingones, and Senones.8 Fragmenting field armies in discreet winter-quarters was a
strategic and logistical decision, not one dictated by a policy of conquest and subjugation. There
may well have been ‘benefits’ to this practice, as will be discussed below, but they were
subordinate to the main purpose.
Another important aspect of this relationship between garrisoning and supply is brought out
in one of the few clear statements by Vegetius on the function of praesidia:
Amongst the things for which it is thought a commander must make provision, whether based
in castris or in a city, are that pasturage for the animals, the transport of grain and other things
– watering, gathering of wood, and foraging – are rendered safe from attack by the enemy. Because
otherwise, if garrisons (praesidia) are not distributed at appropriate points, whether these
should be cities or walled forts (castra murata), our supply convoys cannot pass to and fro. If
suitable places have not been fortified previously, they are strengthened; forts (castella) in such
places are quickly surrounded by large ditches. For forts (castella) are named from the
diminutive term for camps (castra). The many infantry and cavalry based in these are responsible
for maintaining a safe route for convoys. For only with difficulty does an enemy dare to approach,
once he is hindered from in front and behind.9
This passage was thought by Schenk10 to derive directly from a now-lost work of the general
and writer Sextus lulius Frontinus (governor of Britannia 74–78), although the aside on the
origin of the term castellum seems typical of Vegetius himself.
It is as if the supply mechanism set up to maintain the standing army had in turn come to
require that army to defend it. There were other consequences of garrisoning too, including the
location of troops in civilian contexts – castella were only to be built where there were no
existing cities (hence the fondness for placing troops within cities in the eastern empire). There
was a need to establish elaborate chains of fortifications in far-off places like Britain where
towns were just beginning, but sites like Sheepen,11 Hod Hill,12 Hembury,13 or Brandon Camp,14 and any
number of other pre-Roman settlement sites15 were also used for military bases. By the 2nd c.
A.D., the Romanization of the Celtic west had introduced cities and had provided ‘suitable
places’, as Vegetius calls them, for garrisoning.16 It is probably no accident that the distribution
of forts and towns in Britain in the High Empire is largely mutually exclusive, yet
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military equipment is recovered from both types of sites.17 Old notions of separate military and civil
zones are now redundant.18
There are important implications here for those prone to reduce military studies to symbols
on maps: one person’s frontier can easily be another person’s line of communication. So it is with the
‘Fosse Way frontier’19 or the Stanegate.20 Defensive systems, grand strategies and the like come
into21 and out of22 fashion in scholarly interpretations of garrisoning patterns, but they imbue the
Romans with modern motives, levels of intelligence, and communication which we have no way of
confirming.23 There does not seem to be any good reason for not believing that Vegetius (or
Frontinus) perceived his explanation of garrisoning to be the correct one.
Another by-product of a standing army was its manpower. The documentary evidence shows us
that the Roman army was devoted to keeping the troops occupied and out of mischief. As
Vegetius pithily remarked, ‘an army benefits from hard work, but decays through idleness’.24 Most
of the soldiers’ work was logistical in nature and concerned with the incestuous maintenance of
the supply edifice it had created for itself, with the domestic chores necessitated by the
standing army’s very existence, and with the supply of material to aid the true, if only half-
remembered, function of the army: conducting warfare.
17 Bishop 1991.
18 Salway 1981, 261.
19 Breeze 1982, 24.
20 Ibid. 68–72.
21 Luttwak 1977; Jones 1979.
22 Ferrill 1986, 23–25.
23 Millar 1982.
24 Vegetius, Epit. rei milit. 3.26.
25 Woolliscroft 1993, 295; Breeze 1982, 61–62.
26 Tac, Ann. 14.33.
27 Tabraham and Grove 1995,19.
28 Luttwak 1977, 61.
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be met with a field army, but garrisoning is effectively the antithesis of a field army. Perhaps
the scale of the threat was reflected in the size of the praesidia: so-called vexillation fortresses if
war-bands wandering around in winter were anticipated, cohort forts if only brigands and small
groups, fortlets and towers if footpads and muggers. This is pure speculation of a simplistic nature,
of course, but it serves to illustrate at least one aspect of the effect of garrisoning. Such sites
could be interpreted as oppressive by a subjugated people, even though the motive in establishing
them was logistic.
How can a legionary base be viewed in these terms? Surely only as an administrative centre. It
does not matter whether 5,000 or 1,000 legionaries were based there, their tactical usefulness (or
lack of it) remained the same. Moreover, the implications of small legionary vexillations, such as
those attested for the 2nd and 3rd c. at Corbridge, must be logistical. The two legionary compounds
at Corbridge were placed at the nodal junction of the Stanegate and Dere Street and were probably
not large enough for any sort of fighting force. Although it is always assumed that Corbridge
looked strategically to Scotland29 rather than to Hadrian’s Wall, one must wonder whether
there was not some dual purpose.30 Such legionary detachments occur at Carlisle31 and probably
at Newstead,32 and might have been extensions of a legion’s administrative structure, to deal with
the particular needs of a distant region.
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infantry were used as close-order troops or heavy infantry. Auxiliary infantry were far more
versatile, capable of skirmishing as open-order light infantry – harrassing and attempting to
provoke an enemy with missiles (particularly the lancea or javelin), or forming a close-order line
as at Mons Graupius.38 Legionary infantry of the traditional kind were incapable of this dual
function, hence the evolution of legionary lancearii during the Principate.39 There is no room to
deny differentiation in arms between legionaries and auxiliary infantry during the early
Principate.
If so, then the fragmentation denied by Maxfield must have occurred, and for good reasons.
Although organised around the familiar structure of centuria/cohors, turma/ala, Roman military
units did not exploit any form of sub-unit hierarchy. There were certainly contubernia within a
centuria, but these were not normally recognised as working sub-units. A Roman soldier inscribing his
name on a helmet viewed himself as such-and-such of the centuria (or turma) of so-and-so. The
only piece of evidence that might be interpreted to the contrary is found at Pseudo-Hyginus 1:
‘Since 16 men from each centuria are on guard duty at any one time, they do not pitch more than
eight tents per centuria’. The contubernium was apparently part of the sleeping arrangements,
and a contubernalis was (originally at least) a mess-mate. Fragmentation of the unit’s structure is
most evident in the documentary record: the rosters from Dura-Europos40 make it plain that
men from the same centuria or turma were sent off to various places to do a variety of things
(see further below). Likewise in P. Gen. Lat. I, those men not outposted or exempted are assigned
to a variety of duties within and outwith their base. 41 The heterodox composition of detachments
is evidenced elsewhere, as in the Vindolanda pridianum,42 where decidedly odd mixtures of troops
are attested at Londinium (1 centurion and perhaps the 46 men serving as singulares legati), Coria (2
centurions and a possible 335 men), or Vindolanda itself (1 centurion and at least 270 men,
perhaps 295, but including 31 not fit for active service).
Outposting was vital to the scheme of things, regularly attested in the Dura rosters. Men are
supplied to Appadana (up to 63 men), Barbalissus (6), Becchufrayn (up to 93), Birtha (8),
Castellum Arabum (7), Chafer Avira (up to 7), and Magdala (up to 11), and up to 58 serve as
singulares,43 In this way the army was able to man the fortlets, towers, and other paraphernalia
of garrisoning. A similar picture is given by the Vindolanda pridianum.
The mixing of units within a single base is well attested, and not just in the case of large
field armies sharing aestiva. M. Hassall has spoken about the prevalence of cavalry units within
legionary bases,44 as attested by the epigraphic, documentary, structural, and artefactual
records at various ‘legionary fortresses’ around the empire. This association is confirmed, for
example, by P. Fouad 1.45 which mentions Alexandria as the winter-quarters of Legio II Traiana
and Ala Gallorum Veterana,45 by the excavated remains of cavalry barracks at Neuss,46 and by a
stamped saucepan handle47 and the less known but plentiful cavalry equipment 48 from the
base of Legio II Augusta at Caerleon. The presence of cavalry equipment on supposedly
legionary sites cannot be dismissed as having belonged to legionary horsemen or
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officers’ horses, for good probabilistic reasons.49 The association of cavalry with legionaries
becomes important when discussing the tactical, as opposed to strategic, aspects of garrisoning.
Berlin Pap. 676550 which records two days of activities of the fabrica of a legion (probably II Traiana)
includes amongst its staff immunes, legionarii, and cohortales, the last presumed by the editors to
represent auxiliary infantry.
Vegetius described the strategic role of a garrison, but this is clearly not the same as its
tactical role. Patrols were required as part of the security framework for policing supply-routes.
Small groups of legionaries, alone and unsupported, would have been fairly useless for such
purposes, although adequate for general guard duties (e.g., at the towers of the Gask Ridge) that
any infantryman could have undertaken. The very notion of a legionary base is a tactical
anomaly unless provision is made to support its main occupiers, though it does serve a purpose in
terms of concentrating administrative capabilities and an unskilled and semi-skilled labour
force. Cavalry are the obvious element to provide wide-ranging mobility in a garrison, as well as
support for tactically disadvantaged legionaries. Thus the so-called vexillation fortresses in
Britain show a close association of legionaries with cavalry.51 Cavalry were not there to fight, for
legionaries could do that best, lined up in a field army. A legionary like M. Papirius Rufus (P. Gen.
Lat. I) could expect to be despatched to the granaries at Neapolis for 3 months in A.D. 80, to another
granary in 81, and a further detached duty in 85, before returning to the Mercurium granary in 86 or
87.52
The evidence used to fix a garrison at any given place is varied and may be less reliable in
the early Empire when monumental stone inscriptions were not as popular as they became later. In
the absence of such inscriptions, we might turn to tile stamps, although at Corbridge they attest
but one legion, the VI Victrix, the only producer of stamped tiles at the site.53 The artefactual
record is more reliable, although it usually supplies answers to the question ‘what?’ rather than
‘who?’, except in rare circumstances such as the helmet of a man of legio XVI found near the
fortlet of Burlafingen (Raetia),54 or the various named legionary breastplates from Antonine sites
north of the Danube.55
Our view of the garrisoning practices of the Roman army has for too long followed what
might be termed the ‘Hadrian’s Wall model’: one fort for a single cohors or ala.56 It is not my
intention here to consider whether this was indeed largely the practice on Hadrian’s Wall, but it
may not be correct to project this model back onto the army of earlier times without
considering whether it actually reflects a development that recognized the supremacy of the
cohort fort in the strategic deployment of troops.
Conclusion
Thus we should accept the concept of fragmented garrisoning, manifested in the almost infinite
divisibility of any one unit to meet particular needs. Such practices are accepted on a
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macro scale, with field armies being composed of core detachments of some units and drafts from
others, so there is good reason to see the same idea in operation in the garrisoning of provinces. It
also seems that we must modify our view of any particular castra or castellum as the location of just
one unit. Clearly, any one establishment could contain parts of more than one unit as units were
spread around through outposting. For administrative purposes, one hiberna would still be viewed
as the notional home of a unit, just as cohors I Tungrorum kept its records and its wounded at
Vindolanda, whilst maintaining more than a passing interest in the primary base at Corbridge,57
where the ala Petriana was also probably to be found in the 90s.58
Garrisoning was the solution to a simple problem. Like many of the Roman army’s problems,
its origins lay in the Republican period when the military might of Rome was in the ascendant. It
was never intended to do everything that has come to be associated with it. Garrisoning was not
designed to meet the needs of a concerted frontier ‘policy’ (if such a thing existed), to be a
mechanism for tax-collection or policing, or to provide focal points for the spread of Roman
culture and recruitment of indigenes. The need for garrisoning first arose when a Roman army
was kept in the field in winter-quarters; from that point onwards, the distinction between
aestiva (campaign bases)59 and hiberna (winter-quarters)60 was fixed in Roman thinking. From this
need for a permanent or semi-permanent base during the months when campaigning was not
feasible there arose a whole host of by-products, by virtue of the fact that nature abhors an idle
army.
Chirnside, Duns, Berwickshire, Scotland
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to P. W. M. Freeman who read and commented upon a preliminary draft of this paper,
and who has, over a period of several years, discussed with me the topic at great length and
offered practical assistance and bibliographic suggestions. Needless to say, all faults remaining
are the sole responsibility of the author.
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