ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



and some securing the roads which led to them or which traversed the 

 restless hill country in the north or in Wales. 



It must be observed that in this system it was not only the forts that 

 were permanent, but also their garrisons. Our English regiments relieve 

 one another periodically at brief intervals in India or South Africa. The 

 Roman legions or cohorts were not thus moved about. The same Roman 

 corps stayed in the same province and in the same garrison for scores of 

 years, and possibly for centuries. Thus the three British legions 

 mentioned in the last paragraph remained in the same places for over 

 two centuries each, and the cohorts and ' alas,' which are named as 

 garrisoning the Roman wall between Tyne and Solway near the end of 

 the Roman dominion, are largely the same that we find there in the 

 second century. 



The whole of this arrangement was based on the presumption that 

 the principal task of the troops was to act as garrisons. For this purpose 

 it served well enough. But it allowed no provision for a large field force. 

 When such was required it was collected by reducing the strength of 

 individual garrisons or by withdrawing troops from quieter provinces. 

 This, however, was a temporary makeshift. The crisis over, the detach- 

 ments went back to their forts and fortresses and resumed their permanent 

 duties. Here we touch the characteristic point of the system. The 

 Roman army in each province was a garrison army, and the essential 

 feature was the fort or fortress in which each unit was stationed. 



These forts and fortresses were laid out according to one model. 

 Their internal arrangements were not left to the genius or the whims 

 of particular commanders, but followed a prescribed and uniform pattern. 

 The origin of this pattern may be found in the fixed scheme used since 

 Republican days by the Romans for the encampments of their soldiers 

 in the field. Under the Empire this pattern may be said to consist of a 

 square or oblong enclosure with four symmetrically-planted gates and four 

 main streets running from the four gates towards the centre of the whole. 

 At the centre stood the headquarters buildings, the offices, and the 

 residence of the commanding officer. Near these came the quarters of 

 other high officers and various storehouses, while the rest of the enclosure 

 was filled with barracks and other buildings for the use of the common 

 soldiers and lower officers. No provision was made for traders or for 

 womanfolk. In this, as in many other points, the plan of the permanent 

 fort or fortresses preserves the tradition of the encampment of the 

 marching army, and exhibits the strictness of Roman discipline. But 

 traders and women were none the less inevitable, and there usually grew 

 up outside the fortress gates a ' civil settlement ' of camp followers, and 

 not unfrequently old soldiers settled here after their discharge, preferring 

 to remain in the familiar scenes of their active life. 



This general plan of fortress was used equally for the large legionary 

 fortress and the smaller fort of an ' ala ' or cohort. But the great 

 difference in area naturally produced differences in internal detail. A 

 fortress intended for 5,000 men with important officers and elaborate 



'95 



