Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society (Volume vol 14 no 1) online

If we turn to the account of the military arrangements
in Britain given in the Notitia Dignitatum, it seems clear
that this new system was not so throughly carried out



* According to Dio. 71, 14 Marcus Aurelius sent 5500 Iazyges to serve in Britain.
These conscripts must have been distributed among the existing corps in the
island. We may suspect that some corps retained their original territorial
character longer than others.

t Mommsen. Hermes, 24, pp. 105, 309. gives a clear summary of the post-
Diocletian military system.

there



THE ROMAN FRONTIER SYSTEM. 1S3

there, as it was elsewhere. We get, indeed, the funda-
mental distinction between the field army, and the frontier
army. But the field army in Britain was comparatively a
small one. It consisted of one legion, one corps of
auxiliary infantry, and six of cavalry, and was throughout
formed on the new lines — both ihe legion, a fragment of
the old Second Legion, and the auxiliary corps, being of
the new pattern. *

Very different was the case with the frontier army. It
contained in all forty-six corps as against the eight of the
field army, nine being in the south under the command of
the " Count of the Saxon shore," and the rest in the north
under the " Duke of Britain." The southern portion of
the force had, judging from the names borne by most of
the troops composing it, been organised in post-Diocletian
times, t The northern portion, on the other hand, was
clearly of far older standing. The corps of which it was
composed, the names they bear, even the posts at which
many of them were stationed, seem to have been the same
in the fifth century that they were in the second.^ The
command-in-chief has passed, indeed, to new hands. The
"dux Britanniarum " has replaced the " legatus," but the
sixth legion is still at York, having escaped the fate
which befell the second. Of the thirty-six auxiliary corps,
twenty-one are styled in the old fashion, " alae " and
" cohortes," the majority of them having been in Britain
since the second century, and eleven are " numeri," of
the kind common in the third century. § The natural



* Not. Dignit. Occ. vii and xxix. the field army was immediately under the
command of the "Comes Britanniae." It had no fixed stations.

t Not. Dig. Occ. 28. the only corps of old standing are the Second Augustan
Legion, part of which had been transferred to the field army and which was now
stationed at Richborough, and " cohors 1 Baetasiorum " which was in Britain
early in the second centuiy.

+ Not. Dign. Occ. 40.

§ " Numerus," in the second and third centuries, denoted a detachment of
non-Roman auxiliary troops. In the fourth and fifth centuries it was used
indifferently of any corps, Roman or non-Roman. Mommsen, Hermes, 19.

inference



Plan showing the course of the Stone Wall, the Turf
Wall, and the Vallum between Wall Bowers and
Birdoswald ; from the Ordnance Map, corrected
from Survey by T. H. H., December, 1895.

Scale 6 inches = 1 mile.



M



in




PLATE I.




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