Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > Roman Coins Discussion Forum

Campgate Question

(1/5) > >>

Hermes III:
I know that this coin is called a campgate.  But it doesn't seem right to me...Wouldn't a Camp Gate be a temporary structure?  But the campgate coin shows a type of masonry fortress.  Doesn't this coin depict a type of outpost fortress, with a number of  warning fires on its high points, used to let the empire know of barbarian invasions?  Or maybe it is a depiction of a an inner fortress, a citadel?  I just can't see this as a camp gate.

Bill

ADMIN NOTE:  See the campgates theme page in Forum's shop

Nico Creces:
A nice link to another site about campgates.
 ;)
Nico
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/campgate.htm

bruce61813:
These have in various publications been discrbed as the face of one of the permanent winter camps. During th esummers or campaign seasons, the legions would build temporrary earthwork or wooden camps that could be abandoned, thaen move back to more permant stone camps for the winter. It may have ocurred that the permantnet camps were used year around for keeping supplies and central communications.

Bruce

slokind:
Don't forget that place names like Chester, or ending in Chester (just sticking to English) are from Castra, the neuter plural form that, however, means a single Camp.  An army or a legion semi-permanently assigned to a place will have a solidly built castra, and castra have gates and towers.  San Francisco's beloved Presidio, over the years, acquired very handsome permanent buildings.  In the Empire the stock basic form of castra and gates of castra exist all over the place.  Some of these places evolved into cities before the middle ages and got gates more like urban gates, but the gates might still have somewhat military form (Trier--or, for that matter, in Rome herself, gates in bad times, as in the Aurelian Wall).  New cities usually were laid out like camps (Timgad, Split).  But in the Greek-speaking world, as we see on Greek Imperial coins, even new cities quite promptly were adorned with honorific-looking gates with traditionally architectural details (pediments over entrances, etc.) and sometimes with some of the accourtrements of honorary arches (triumph, or no triumph); these are not like camp gates.  But the term camp gate, is indeed hard to pin down: it doesn't mean just what one of Caesar's legions were trained to erect in jig time, as we've all read in the Gallic Wars, or Trajan's, as we see in that wonderful military encyclopedia, the Column of Trajan, though the real continuity between the instant and the permanent and the plan of many a new town shows how fundamentally military Roman traditions really were.  The permanent winter camp is essential to understanding.  Pat L.

Robert_Brenchley:
If you look around Hadrian's Wall, the permanent camps in the area were stone-built and very permanent indeed; at least one was still in use well after the Romans left. But at the same time there are many more examples of temporary camps which have left mere traces in the fields around the Wall.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page