Registered auxiliaries of cohors IIIAlpinorum equitata in Humac

Abstract

This paper analyses epigraphic monuments on which there is mention of soldiers and non-commissioned officers on active service and veterans of cohors III Alpinorum equitata stationed in the camp at Gračine (Humac) in the 1st century. To date seven such monuments
have been discovered, with mention of six soldiers, two non-commissioned officers and one veteran of this auxiliary cohort. The highest ranking auxiliaries known from funerary inscriptions of this cohort from the Trebižat valley were signifer Valerius and optio
Lucius, who were second in the chain of command of a century, immediately below the centurion himself. They are styled heir (heres) on the monuments, i.e. persons who, in cases where a deceased soldier had no family, were responsible for his burial. Prosopographic
and onomastic analysis of the funerary inscriptions led to the conclusion that most of the soldiers were of Celtic origin, and thus of the first generation of auxiliaries recruited into this cohort from the western Alpine regions (Tres Alpes). From the latter half of the 1st
century new recruits came from the local areas where the cohort was stationed, in which regard the wider lower Herzegovina region was probably no exception. The third Alpine cohort left at the end of the 1st century, when members of cohors I Belgarum equitata
most likely replaced it as the permanent garrison in Humac.