in each tent were allowed a space of ten feet, five feet were allowed for arms and equipment, and nine feet for packhorses or other beasts of burden.
While it is certain that in the great legionary fortresses, and also in Newstead, the principle of the system described by Hyginus underlay the whole arrangement, it is quite clear that considerable latitude was permitted in its application, both as regards the space covered by the strigae and as regards the number of huts which they contained. At Novaesium we find thirty-one of these double lines each longitudinally divided by its street or court. Twenty-one of the hemistrigia contain eleven rooms. In this respect they resemble the blocks at Newstead. There is, however, an important difference. At one end of each line is a larger house projecting beyond the line of huts, in some degree resembling the projection at the end of Block No. I at Newstead. This is generally recognised as the dwelling of the centurion. The two projections belonging to each pair faced one another, while on either side of the road beyond there ran a line of posts or pillars, which must have supported a verandah. Attention has already been drawn to the fact that both of these features are to be seen reproduced in the first century fort of Gellygaer. At Lambaesis, which originally dates from the reign of Trajan, the barrack blocks have thirteen huts in each line, and the line terminates in a larger dwelling like the houses believed to have been occupied by the centurions at Novaesium. M. Cagnat thinks it possible that ten of the thirteen huts at Lambaesis were occupied by the eighty men of the century, each hut being allotted to a contubernium of eight men, while the three that remain might have been used as offices,[1] or as the quarters of the officers of lower grade, such as the optio or the tesserarius. It is to the shrines of these barrack blocks that he attributes three inscriptions found at Lambaesis, dedications to the genius centuriae by the optiones or by veterans.
The eleven huts of the Newstead row might have been distributed ten to the men and one to the inferior officers, but we have no trace of the centurion's dwelling. It seems probable that, in the interval that elapsed between the erection of the buildings at Lambaesis, Novaesium, and Gellygaer, and the final occupation of Newstead in the second half of the second century, some modification had been made in the plan of such barrack buildings. Discipline was to a certain extent relaxed, and probably greater space allowed to troops. Certainly in the barrack lines at Lauriacum[2] on the Danube, a legionary fort dating from the time of Marcus Aurelius, the
1 Cagnat, Les deux Camps, p. 54.
2 Der Römische Limes in Österreich, Heft viii, Taf. ii.
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