reached on the third day. Here we halted for twenty-four hours while I inspected the camp and made a short reconnaissance down the road that led to Boudobrigo. At Bingium the river Nava joined the Rhenus, and the fort was protected on two sides by water with hills to the back of it. From the camp as you looked down-river great cliffs of rock towered high on the left bank, making an impregnable barrier against those who might wish to cross from the east. The cliffs continued along the south bank of the stream and it was at the foot of these that the road ran till it joined the bridge leading to the camp. If Bingium were captured, those at Moguntiacum would find their retreat cut off, it being an easy matter then for the enemy to break the bridge while, at the same time, commanding the road to Augusta Treverorum. From there the way into Gaul would lie open. Here I left another mixed cohort under the charge of a senior tribune while the diminished legion continued its march to its headquarters at Moguntiacum, which was reached on the fifth day.
Moguntiacum had once been the capital of Germania Superior but that was in the great days of our power when the province had possessed a civil as well as a military administration, and the legions held the east bank in strength. On the rising ground behind the town was the old camp. It had been built to hold two legions, but that was in the time of Domitian. It was abandoned later when the town was fortified, and the garrison now lived in huts on the city side of the river wall. The town had grown up along the river and had once been a place of some splendour. It boasted a number of wide streets, still lined with open-fronted shops, and there was a forum, a christian church, a ruined theatre, innumerable abandoned temples, and a carved column to Jupiter, now covered with grime. Outside the town walls, along the river bank, there was a string of wooden huts, some of which hung over the water on stilts and which were occupied by the very poor. A market fair was held occasionally but trade was lethargic, for the town had so often been sacked by raiders from the east that it was no longer a place in which the energetic and the ambitious wished to stay if they could move elsewhere. Those who remained were a mixed population of Franks, Burgundians and Alemanni whose blood was inextricably mixed by the confusion of marriage with the descendants of legionary veterans who had come from Hispania, Pannonia, Illyricum and all the parts of the empire. The harbour lay a little way down-river outside the protection of the town walls, and around it was a small settlement, occupied mainly by veterans and their families.
The Twentieth had been stationed at Novaesium in the time of Claudius. It was from there that they had been sent to Britannia, so their return to the Rhenus was, in a sense, a home-coming; though the only part of the legion that had ever before seen this river was the bronze Eagle that had been given us by the first emperor of Rome.
I ordered Aquila to pitch camp in the ruins of the old fort for the night and rode, with a handful of officers on an inspection of the town. Barbatio, the praefectus of the auxiliaries, was expecting me. He was a heavy young man of about thirty, already running to fat and as obviously out of condition mentally as he was physically. He looked frightened when he spoke to me; and he had cause. His cohort was a rabble of unshaven, scruffy looking individuals who appeared never to have done any drill in their lives. Their quarters were crammed with their wives, their children and their cattle, and the remaining contents of their huts seemed to suggest that the majority spent the greater portion of their time in mercantile activities.
In answer to my questions he told me, hesitantly, that there was little traffic across the river in boats because the current was difficult (this at least was true) and the Alemanni hostile, but traders on their way to Borbetomagus,
Moguntiacum had once been the capital of Germania Superior but that was in the great days of our power when the province had possessed a civil as well as a military administration, and the legions held the east bank in strength. On the rising ground behind the town was the old camp. It had been built to hold two legions, but that was in the time of Domitian. It was abandoned later when the town was fortified, and the garrison now lived in huts on the city side of the river wall. The town had grown up along the river and had once been a place of some splendour. It boasted a number of wide streets, still lined with open-fronted shops, and there was a forum, a christian church, a ruined theatre, innumerable abandoned temples, and a carved column to Jupiter, now covered with grime. Outside the town walls, along the river bank, there was a string of wooden huts, some of which hung over the water on stilts and which were occupied by the very poor. A market fair was held occasionally but trade was lethargic, for the town had so often been sacked by raiders from the east that it was no longer a place in which the energetic and the ambitious wished to stay if they could move elsewhere. Those who remained were a mixed population of Franks, Burgundians and Alemanni whose blood was inextricably mixed by the confusion of marriage with the descendants of legionary veterans who had come from Hispania, Pannonia, Illyricum and all the parts of the empire. The harbour lay a little way down-river outside the protection of the town walls, and around it was a small settlement, occupied mainly by veterans and their families.
The Twentieth had been stationed at Novaesium in the time of Claudius. It was from there that they had been sent to Britannia, so their return to the Rhenus was, in a sense, a home-coming; though the only part of the legion that had ever before seen this river was the bronze Eagle that had been given us by the first emperor of Rome.
I ordered Aquila to pitch camp in the ruins of the old fort for the night and rode, with a handful of officers on an inspection of the town. Barbatio, the praefectus of the auxiliaries, was expecting me. He was a heavy young man of about thirty, already running to fat and as obviously out of condition mentally as he was physically. He looked frightened when he spoke to me; and he had cause. His cohort was a rabble of unshaven, scruffy looking individuals who appeared never to have done any drill in their lives. Their quarters were crammed with their wives, their children and their cattle, and the remaining contents of their huts seemed to suggest that the majority spent the greater portion of their time in mercantile activities.
In answer to my questions he told me, hesitantly, that there was little traffic across the river in boats because the current was difficult (this at least was true) and the Alemanni hostile, but traders on their way to Borbetomagus,
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