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Vortigern Studies > Fectio > Roman Sites > Limes 1973 |
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Yes, that's me above, I warned you of hideous pictures didn't I? Note the shining squamata, the tight-fitting Praetorian cassis and the accurate sagum with the safety-pin fibula..
The tower lies just north of the village of Gailsbach, next to the gasthof 'Römergraben'. It was my brother who after 30 years (almost to the day) still remembered that and set me on the right track in re-discovering ancient memories. Thanks, bro. On the map (right) I've marked the site with a purple marker. Anyway, here's a few of the old pictures with some modern ones as well:
The tower, by the way, is pure conjecture. A tower is expected, but no remains were ever found - most probably were the stones re-used. The wooden reconstruction of the tower that was built here presents a nice view of the surrounding countryside, but it is a fake - there never were any completely wooden towers on this section of the border, all had stone ground floors. Also, the ground-floor door is wrong (there was none, the entrance was reached by a ladder), and the concrete base I won't even spend words about. Of course, for a 9-year old those things don't matter one bit.. We went
on that day along the section of the Limes from
Öhringen to south of Mainhardt, but we did not see most
of the remains along the way. Apparently we took the
wrong road and missed the museum as well as the remains
of the fort in Mainhardt itself. South of the town we
took again to the Limeswanderweg (the Limes long
distance footpath) and into the forest just north of
Grab. This area lies just south of Mainhardt, near the
ruins of the Hankertsmühle (Click to enlarge
the map). There were
more pictures of that visit, just not of any Roman ruins.
And there were plenty! Not only the remains of several
smaller forts, the woods are littered with the
foundations of the earlier and later phases of many a
watchtower. once in a while a section of up to hunderds
of metres can still be traced quite nicely through the
woods. I've included two modern ones below to give you an
idea. Some ruins have been carefully conserved or
reconstructed, even up to a height of 6 metres! The wall
and ditch of the border itself have long gone in most
places, but every once in a while a section of up to
hunderds of metres can still be traced quite nicely
through the woods.
The last picture of WP9/51 show the modern remains of the only 6-sides tower on the Limes. When it was excavated in 1893, it still stood 1.4 metres high, but the extraordinary constructing has experts speculating that it's original height may have stood way above the normal 8-9 metres. Views from here may have extended to 45 kilometres in both directions of the border. A curious change of direction at this point has led to the conclusion that this was one of the measuring points. Also, it was close to the house where we stayed that holiday! The picture right is from what we assumed to be a Roman column. However, it's from the Hankertsmühle, not a Roman castellum, but a 19th-century mill... Anyway, this is a good area to visit the Obergermaniche Limes, as there are large sections which are very well preserved. The bank runs south in an almost straight line, with many towers guarding it (or rather, their sparse remains). Very beautiful countryside as well. At Graben, just south of the ruins of the small castellum Hankertsmühle, is a reconstructed tower with a few metres of palissade, showing how it could have looked in Roman times. The Obergermaniche Limes was the northern part of the frontier, and this section, known as the Odenwaldlimes, was the last to be completed in about 150 AD. This frontier was built as a bank-and-ditch, with a low palissade in front of the ditch, and wooden or stone towers behind it at intervals. The Limes was not a defended wall, but rather more like a guarded frontier and a clear statement. That statement continued to tell until the mid-3rd century, when civil unrest within the Empire made a continuous defence of the Limes impossible. Although the German tribes, the Alamanni in front, moved in quite slowly and hesitantly, and retained much of Roman agriculture and money, the lands lost by 260 AD were never recovered and the Empire drew back beyond Rhine and Danube.
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My very first
visit to a Roman ruin. here's where the trouble started,
so to speak. I had just turned 9, we were on holiday in a
very small village in Germany by the name of Gleichen. To
my brother, my sister and me this was very far from home,
and everything was a big adventure. Today, memories sort
of blur into each other and remembering all the details
proves not so easy. Luckily, there's still the holiday
scrapbook. We stayed in a house outside the village,
which was only half a mile from the Limes, best
translated as the Roman border with unoccupied Germany.
For me, this was just sheer fantasy; wandering through
the forest in search of the inevitable heap of stones
(see last picture on this page), which I was told were
the remains of Roman towers! Wow! What better for the
vivid imagination of a 9-year old?
