Qualla: Segontium

Segontium: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. In AD 77 or 78, the Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola - the same Agricola whose son-in-law Tacitus would write his biography and so make him immortal - completed his campaign against the Ordovices in north Wales. He then planted a fort on a low ridge above the estuary of the Afon Seiont, overlooking the Menai Strait. He called it Segontium. It would hold its place at the edge of empire for over three centuries. When the Roman coinage finally stops appearing in the archaeology at this site - around AD 394 - Britain is still officially Roman, but only just. Segontium had outlasted whole dynasties of emperors.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Segontium: Strong Place

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is older than the fort. Segontium is a Latinised form of the Brythonic seg-ontio, which scholars translate as 'strong place', probably first applied to the river Seiont itself or to a British settlement on its banks. The Romans took the name with them. The fort was the p...

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Image: Wolfgang Sauber | CC BY-SA 3.0

Segontium: Who Was Stationed Here

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. An inscription on an aqueduct from the reign of Septimius Severus - that hard, scarred African emperor who died at York in 211 - tells us that by the 3rd century Segontium was garrisoned by 500 men of the Cohors I Sunicorum. The Sunici were a Germanic people originally levied fro...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Segontium: Constantine's Mother and Macsen's Dream

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Swales, CC BY-SA 2.0. Welsh medieval tradition layered legends thick over Segontium. The 9th-century History of the Britons, attributed to Nennius, listed it among the 28 cities of Britain and recorded that the emperor Constantius - probably the father of Constantine the Great - had died here. The his...

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Image: Nigel Swales | CC BY-SA 2.0

Segontium: What Remains

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RevDave, CC BY-SA 3.0. The A4085 to Beddgelert now cuts straight through the fort. The Normans built a motte nearby in the 11th century, and Edward I's masons replaced everything around it with Caernarfon Castle in the 13th. But Segontium's foundations are remarkably preserved. You can walk the rectang...

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Image: RevDave | CC BY-SA 3.0