Fortifying a Roman Camp: The Liber de munitionibus castrorum of Hyginus

Hyginus’ Liber de Munitionibus Castrorum is an important document about the Roman army. It considers how a camp for an imperial field army (emperor and retinue, praetorians and equites singulares, legions, auxiliaries and other contingents) should be laid out, depending on the size of the army, the nature of the terrain and proximity of the enemy.Hyginus details the defences of the camp: ramparts, ditches, artillery platforms by the gateways, and obstacles like ‘cervoli’ (little stags – “tree trunks with many branches”). The internal layout of the camp, and where and why the various troops pitched their tents or tethered their horses, is described at length. We are informed that legionaries, being the most faithful of provincial troops, should camp next to the ramparts and act as its guards. Hyginus stresses that the number of places “for ascending the rampart” should be doubled in enemy territory. He reveals specific information that we would otherwise be ignorant of: the military ‘centuria’ (century, the basic infantry subunit) was 80 men strong, and the first cohorts of the legions were double-sized. The text is littered with other nuggets, such as the soldiers calling rough ground ‘noverca’ (step-mother), praetorian guardsmen having bigger tents, or how it was difficult to hear trumpet signals during a ‘tumultus’ (emergency) in a very large camp.Campbell’s new edition, comprising the definitive version of the Latin text (with apparatus criticus) and facing English translation (rendering previous translations obsolete), makes this gold mine of information available to all students of the Roman army.