The Legate's 4,000 Denarii at Deva Victrix
You are a clerk to the legate at Deva Victrix (Chester) in Roman Britain, winter 120 CE. The legion's granary holds 1,100 modii of wheat; a convoy of 800 modii is due in 40 days. Last winter, damp ruined 15% of stored grain; this year a fire destroyed the north granary. A complete stone inscription from the forum records that a local merchant gave 4,000 denarii for a bathhouse, dated 90 CE. Nearby, excavators found a hoard of 1,200 denarii buried beneath charred wheat and a broken writing tablet listing road repairs deferred for three years. The legate has 4,000 denarii and asks whether to fund the bathhouse, as the inscription's donor intended, or to build a timber granary and repair the road. The merchant's heirs now sit on the town council and have offered to match any funds for the bathhouse.
1. Which evidence is more trustworthy for assessing current supply risk: the inscription or the charred-grain deposit? Explain using provenance, date, and function.
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The inscription is a commemorative monument, not an administrative record. It is complete, but it dates to 90 CE, thirty years before the decision, and it records a donor's gift, so it tells us what the merchant wanted remembered, not what the granary held in 120 CE. Its function was civic prestige; the heirs' offer to match funds shows that the family still has an interest in the bathhouse. The charred grain and coin hoard are direct physical traces of the fire, and the writing tablet is a routine administrative list of deferred road repairs. For current supply risk, the tablet and the burned deposit are more probative because they are contemporaneous and were not made for display. However, the charred grain proves only that a fire happened; it does not quantify total storage loss. The inscription is useful for social context and for predicting council resistance, not for estimating spoilage.
2. Recommend how the legate should allocate the 4,000 denarii. State the strongest counterargument and the one piece of new evidence that would reverse your recommendation.
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Recommend the granary and road. The granary holds 1,100 modii and a 15% damp loss would destroy about 165 modii before the convoy arrives; a fire has already destroyed the north granary, and road repairs have been deferred three years, which raises the risk that the 800-modii convoy is delayed. Military supply failure would be worse than losing civic prestige. The strongest counterargument is that the merchant's heirs will match 4,000 denarii, so a bathhouse could be built without exhausting the legate's funds; baths also support garrison health and urban goodwill. That argument fails unless the match is legally committed and does not divert granary labor. Reverse the recommendation if the convoy arrives early with 800 modii intact and the legate's engineers report that the existing south granary can hold the combined stock; then the marginal supply risk is low and the bathhouse's legitimacy benefit might dominate.