The Roman Legionary Fortress at Caerleon, Monmouthshire

By V. E. Nash-Williams

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473356290

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MONMOUTHSHIRE

I. THE FOUNDING OF CAERLEON.

Caerleon in Monmouthshire was in Roman times, as its name suggests, castra, ‘the fortress,’ legionis, ‘of the legion,’ actually of the IInd Augustan Legion, whose name appears on innumerable stamped tiles (Fig. 1) found freely scattered about the site. This legion, as we know from the Roman historians, was moved to Britain from its station at Strasbourg on the Rhine frontier to form part of the army of invasion dispatched to these shores by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43. Its arrival at Caerleon some thirty years later marked the culmination of the Roman conquest of southern Britain and was the first step in the organization of what is now Wales as part of the imperial frontier. The total strength of the legion was nearly 6,000 men, all heavy-armed infantry except for a small squadron of 120 mounted men used mainly as dispatch-riders. The legion was organized, as usual, in ten cohorts (or battalions), each comprising three double companies (maniples) or six single companies (centuries) of 100 men each; the mounted squadron was divided into four troops of 30 men each. In command of the whole was the legionary legate or general, assisted by his second-in-command, the camp prefect, and six tribunes or staff-officers of various grades. But the real work of command devolved upon the sixty centurions commanding the centuries, each of whom had under him a staff of N.C.O.’s. The Caerleon fortress, as will be shown, was founded about the year 75. Thence forward for the next three centuries it constituted with Chester and York the main bulwark of Roman military power in the west. Like Chester in North Wales it was placed at the eastern end of the coastal plain adjacent to the mountain zone, and on a navigable river-estuary. Tactically it was strongly sited; the observer standing today on Christchurch hill overlooking Caerleon from the south can easily visualize the fortress lying below him on the valley floor on a sheltered tract of gently shelving ground clasped by a wide-swinging loop of the tidal Usk and its tributary, the Afon Lwyd (Plate III). Such a situation accorded closely with the recommendations of the Roman manuals on field fortifications.

2. HISTORY.

The Roman conquest of Wales had begun in the year A.D. 47, when the invading legions, having successfully overrun the lowlands of southeastern England, had reached the edge of the hill-country to the north and west, with the IXth Legion entrenched at Lincoln, the XIVth and XXth Legions at Wroxeter, and the IInd Augustan Legion at some station in the lower Severn region, probably Gloucester. Under the vigorous leadership of a future Emperor Vespasian, the last-named legion had already effected the subjugation of southern England, carrying the Roman arms as far west as Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum). The operations against the Welsh tribes were entrusted to the three westerly legions, the Roman plan being apparently to crush native resistance between two forces striking from north and south simultaneously. Two sharp campaigns and several years of guerrilla warfare were needed to bring the tribes of South Wales