72 SOME FEATURES OF ROMAN FORTS 



well with other specimens of these vaults, and we may 

 fairly consider that it was built as a strong room." 



So far we are on safe ground. If now, by a comparative 

 study of the plans of forts already excavated, we attempt 

 to reconstruct the interior of the fort at Melandra, we 

 shall find the task quite impossible. Even the order of 

 the important buildings that faced the principal street 

 would not seem to be the same in any two cases. A careful 

 examination of a number of plans will, however, enable us 

 to make certain predictions with a tolerable degree of 

 safety. The existence of a strongly buttressed building 

 with a raised floor, which there is good reason to suppose 

 was used as a storehouse or granary is very common. 

 The position varies so much that it is quite impossible to 

 say where this building stood at Melandra. At 

 Borcovicium, Camelon and Castlecary, it stands on one 

 side of the so-called Prsetorium, at Lyne such buildings 

 stand on both sides of it, at Cilurnum it is behind, and at 

 Gellygaer it is separated from it by other buildings. At 

 Birrens again there are three such buildings, un- 

 symmetrically placed on both sides of the Via Principalis. 

 The importance of the building is clearly shown by the 

 references to it in the classical writers. In the Agricola 

 there is an exceedingly graphic passage, which may well 

 apply to a fort situated as Melandra was. The Britons 

 are represented as being "compelled to endure the farce of 

 waiting by the closed granary and of purchasing corn 

 unnecessarily and raising it to a fictitious price." ^'^ 

 Agricola not only removed this abuse, but also put a stop 

 to the practice of compelling those Britons who had a 

 winter camp close to them to carry their tribute by 



40. Tac. Agric, 19. The meaning seems to be that if they had no 

 com they had first to buy the corn at an exorbitant price, and then pay 

 it as tribute; the corn never leaving the granary at all. The passage, 

 however, is one that has given considerable trouble to the commentators. 



