Marching camps to limes

[Anonymous]

Does it make sense that marching camps were meant or evolved to be more than temporary? Did legions on the move, security considerations noted, tend to retrace previously traveled and known (defensible) paths and therefore utilize the practicable remains of previous structures or sites? Were “hardenedâ€ÂÂ

[mcbishop]

Like beauty, temporariness is in the eye of the beholder. It is always instructive to remember that, to a Roman, everything was covered by the (plural) term *castra*. In Britain, where a good number of 'temporary' sites are known (and it must be stressed that the word 'camp' in English has connotations of temporariness that are not shared by the Latin *castra* or the German 'Lager'), only one site (Arosfa Gareg, in Wales) really matches descriptions of a 'marching' camp (ie one with comparatively slight defences, built every night by a unit in transit). Everything else is more substantial and probably closer to what Pseudo-Hyginus would term a *castra aestiva*, a campaign (or summer!) camp. Much of the riverine frontier area of the Rhine/Danube lands saw an oscillation between *castra hiberna* in the winter (what we would term forts of fortresses) in 'frontier' zones, and *castra aestiva* in advanced positions (read Tacitus' accounts on the Julio-Claudian period in the *Annals*) beyond these frontiers (and the concept of 'hardened frontiers' was an alien one during the principate, since even linear barriers like Hadrian's and the Antonine Walls were arguably doubly porous).<br>
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Thus many of the temporary sites would have been used for more than one night and perhaps for several weeks or even months at a time. Many of the upland sites in Britain, where there has never been cultivation (mostly land exhausted in the Bronze Age) are still upstanding earthworks, so would have been in the Roman period. I know of at least one of these sites that shows clear signs of re-occupation (although not many have been excavated - temporary camps are notoriously unrewarding to dig!). They were certainly slighted upon abandonment, but seldom (I suspect) razed to the ground - it took more recent agricultural techniques to achieve that on lowland sites.<br>
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As for temporary camps 'evolving', one might cite the case of Rhyn Park where a temporary site (without a gate but with a *titulus*/*tutulus*) had its ramparts reinforced with a sort of poor-man's Holzerdemauer ('box rampart' to non-German speakers) and one need only think of cases like Corbulo, who infamously kept his troops in the field during winter or, I think, Suetonius Paullinus, who did something similar in the aftermath of the Boudican rebellion.<br>
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Adaptability was always the key to the success of the Roman army, and this is also the case in their attitude to fortifications. I always prefer to see 'forts' and 'fortresses' as congealed temporary camps, rather than 'permanent' establishments (the Roman term *castra stativa* lacks the force of the English term 'permanent' - you could just interpret it as 'the one we leave standing to go back to', but - interestingly enough - it seems to have applied as much to *castra aestiva* as to *castra hiberna*).<br>
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Mike Bishop <p></p><i></i>