Cohors Breucorum

Map showing the location of Cohors Breucorum, just southwest of Caesarea of Mauretania

Cohors Breucorum was a Roman settlement (with a fort) located on the Limes in Mauretania Caesariensis. It is now called Takhemaret, a small city located in northwestern Algeria.

History

Romans used to name their military fortifications with the name of the units that built it. So, for example, Numerus Syrorum is a settlement near Altava that obtained the name from a unit of cavalry from Roman Syria. The same happened when a legionary unit (called in Latin cohor) -made of Dalmatia soldiers of the Illyrian tribe named "Breuci"- created a castrum with a supporting "vicus" (village) on the Mauretanian limes.

The forces which defended the land (of Mauretania) were detachments drawn from the non-Roman allies. Some of these corps gave their names to the civil settlements which sprang up round about their stations. Thus on the edge of the desert was 'Cohors Breucorum,' where dwelt a regiment recruited in Illyricum from a nation which in the time of Augustus fought valiantly against Rome. Here has been found an interesting soldier's epitaph in hexameter verse. It records that the warrior "everywhere among these mountains conquered and laid low many unspeakable foes and endured perilous wars".... James Smith Reid

Probably the "castrum" (with annexed village) was built under Trajan with the name Kaput Urbe [1] and abandoned under Diocletian, but the vicus survived (even if reduced to a small village of Christian Berbers) until the Arab conquest of the Maghreb in the second half of the seventh century. Some inscriptions related to Cohors Breucorum were found in the 1800s by the French colonists[2]

Cohors Breucorum was located on a military road called "Nova Praetentura" and on the interior of actual northcentral Algeria. This road started on Aras near Numidia and in 201 AD (under Septimius Severus) connected 16 roman forts until Mauretania Tingitana[3] as a defensive system.

Notes

  1. ↑ Kaput Urbae - Cohors Breucorum
  2. ↑ Antoine Heron de Villefosse: "Inscriptions milliaires des environs de Tagremaret (Algérie)". Persee
  3. ↑ Cambridge Ancient History; p.258

Bibliography

See also