Boglárka Fábián

In the locality of Sopianae, Pannonia Inferior, at the east corner of the settlement, there was a presumably customs station built at the end of the 2 nd century which existed till 258–260 AD. From one of the rooms of the building excavated on Kossuth Square, Pécs, a fresco depicting a Genius, an inscription belonging to it, two pedestals – probably bases for statues – and a statue of an eagle came to light. Based on the assemblage the room may have been the sanctuary (sacellum) of the official building. The rare but formal telonium or teloneum expression may have been used for this customs station which, as such, belonged to the organization of the Publicum portorium Illyrici. The only surviving inscription may have been dedicated to the genius of the employees or the armed guards of the customs station: Genio | cu(stodiarum?) tel(onei?). On the pedestal bases probably emperor statues were situated. On the eastern wall of the west–east oriented room, based on its own pedestal and generally because of its quality, there was the relief of an eagle placed in a niche personalizing Iuppiter and the imperial power. In this case the eagle can be taken as a state-imperial symbol found in its own context and thus belonged to the rare Roman Age relics of the administration. The sanctuary must basically serve the official imperial cult.

In the Central Danube region, the largest number of Roman temporary camps is known from the surroundings of Brigetio (Komárom-Szőny). In the southern foreground of the legionary fortress, aerial reconnaissance has revealed traces since the 1990s, and in parallel, their growing numbers on the northern side, in Slovakia, have become known. The camps are basically related to the Marcomannic Wars, but this could only be stated on the basis of analogies, since, unlike our northern neighbour, their verification took place only in 2015-2016 by geophysical survey and trial trenching in some cases in Hungary. In parallel with the excavations, small-scale metal detecting survey helped in their dating. Our investigations mostly confirmed the Roman origin of the phenomena, and we were also able to obtain data on the structure and stratigraphy of the V-shaped ditches. The small number of finds from metal detecting partly coincides with the observations on the other side of the Danube, however, a broader spectrum beyond the Marcomannic Wars could be identified, which may be partly related to Roman land use.