ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a concrete situation concerning the needs to control and to assure an important road junction – Grumentum and its territory – which connected the center to the south, and the Tyrrhenian to the Ionic and the Adriatic coasts. The soldiers, stationed in Grumentum, being almost entirely absent in the rest of the regio Lucania et Bruttium, were perhaps appointed specific duties, such as surveillance of the villa and the security of the emperor and of his family members when they were there. By joining the information provided by the inscriptions of soldiers and those of slaves and freedmen of Bruttii Praesentes, it is questionable whether the strategically important area that Andermahr called "the triangle between Tegianum, Cosilinum and Grumentum" had its centre northernmost at Atina rather than at Cosilinum. In that case, the discovery in the same area of small sepulchral altar in limestone in which a praetorian and miles urbanus are commemorated could be interpreted differently.
