eighty men, and that in each of its ten tents eight men were quartered, making a total of 480 for the legionary cohort. Accordingly, if we assume that the inscriptions found at Newstead give us a clue to the nature of the garrison in its final period, we must place in the barracks of the Praetentura two cohorts of 480 men, in all 960, and in the barrack blocks of the Retentura the horsemen of the Vocontian ala.
Of the history of this ala we know little. At some time in the first century it appears to have been stationed in Lower Germany. But it was specially associated with Britain, for an inscription found at Hemmen in Germany bears a dedication by a decurion who styles himself 'decurio alae Vocontiorum exercitus Britannici,'[1] a descriptive title doubtless used to distinguish it from another ala Vocontiorum which was stationed in Egypt. If we assume that it was a force nominally of 500 men, an ala quingenaria, it would probably consist of 480 men divided into sixteen turmae or troops each containing 30 men, and each commanded by a decurion. As the officers of each troop—the decurion, the duplicarius, the sesquiplicarius—had each more than one horse, the horses of the ala might number as many as 544. Now, if we assume that the men of the ala occupied the barrack buildings of the Retentura, and that the long building to the north (Block XIX) was their stable, we are met with the difficulty that the accommodation for the horses would obviously be insufficient, unless indeed we were to assume, from the single foundation trench lying to the west, that a second block of the same size lay beside it—an assumption which the evidence is, perhaps, too slender to justify.
If, again, we suppose that the garrison was, during the last period of occupation, a purely auxiliary force, the numbers must be estimated on a somewhat different basis. The auxiliary cohorts were either miliariae or quingenariae, that is, they had nominally a strength of 1000 or 500 men. They were primarily infantry forces, but most of them were equitatae or furnished with a certain proportion of mounted men. A cohors miliaria equitata was composed of 240 horsemen, or ten turmae of twenty-four men, and of 760 infantry. The infantry were quartered in ten centuries. On the other hand, a cohors quingenaria equitata was composed of 120 horsemen and 360 infantry, or 480 men in all. The infantry were quartered in six centuries, each of sixty men. Now the twelve barrack blocks of the Praetentura at Newstead were not apparently constructed to hold a cohors
1 C.I.L. xiii. 8805.
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