BINGIUM
(Bingen) Rhineland Palatinate, Germany.
A Roman settlement on the right bank of the
Nahe (ancient Nava) where it joins the Rhine. A bridge
of the Roman Rhine valley route which crossed the Nava
at this point was protected by a castellum for auxiliary
troops in the first half of the 1st c. A.D. Particularly important in the Roman road network was a route from
Bingen to the imperial town of Trier, which is marked
in the
Peutinger Table. Stationed at Bingen were Cohors
IV Delmatarum, Cohors I Pannoniorum, and Cohors I
Sagittiariorum, which is attested by gravestones, as well
as the Legio XXII Primigenia Pia Fidelis. In 370 the
Roman writer Ausonius mentioned that the town was
surrounded by a wall which the emperor Julian had built
in 359 (Amm. Marc. 18.2). There is evidence of milites
Bingenses under a praefectus ca. 400.
Many graves from the civil settlement are preserved.
The most notable is a doctor's grave from the beginning
of the 2d c. A.D., containing a rich assortment of bronze
instruments: basin, scalpel, trapan, pincers, spatula, etc.
(exhibited in Burg Klopp, Bingen).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Behrens,
Bingen (=
Katalog westund süddeutscher Altertumssammlungen 4) (1920)
49
MPI; id.,
Die Binger Landschaft in der vor- und frühgeschichte (1954); Como, “Das Grab eines römischen
Arztes in Bingen,”
Germania (1925) 125ff; H. Klumbach, “Bingen zur Römerzeit,”
Führer zu vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Denkmälern 12 (1969) 127-30.
H. BULLINGER
