A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion

by Gary M Burge

  A WEEK IN

  THE LIFE OF A

  ROMAN

  CENTURION

  GARY M. BURGE

  www.IVPress.com/academic

  For my parents

  * * *

  InterVarsity Press

  P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426

  ivpress.com

  email@ivpress.com

  ©2015 by Gary M. Burge

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

  InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version™ Copyright © 2001 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.

  Cover design: Cindy Kiple

  Image: The Confession of the Centurion, illustration from “The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” by James Jacques Joseph Tissot / Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York. Purchased by Public Subscription / Bridgeman Images

  ISBN 978-0-8308-9773-5 (digital)

  ISBN 978-0-8308-2462-5 (print)

  Contents

  Characters

  1 From Emesa to Raphana

  2 From Raphana to Dura-Europos

  3 From Dura-Europos to Raphana

  4 From Raphana to Caesarea

  5 Caesarea

  6 From Caesarea to Capernaum

  7 Capernaum

  8 Capernaum’s Midwife

  9 Capernaum’s Synagogue

  10 One Week in Capernaum

  Maps of Galilee and Syria

  Notes

  Image Credits and Permissions

  Praise for A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion

  About the Author

  More Titles from InterVarsity Press

  Characters

  Albus A centurion and primus pilus of a Roman legion in north Syria. A career centurion assigned to the twelfth Roman legion called Fulminata. An old friend of Appius.

  Amazon A female Roman gladiator traveling with blood-sport shows in the eastern Mediterranean.

  Antipas Known as Herod Antipas, he was the son of Herod the Great. At his father’s death in 4 B.C., he gained rule over western Galilee, while his brother Philip ruled eastern Galilee and portions of southern Syria. Known best for killing John the Baptist (Mk 6:14-28) and his appearance at the trial of Jesus (Lk 23:6-12). He ruled until A.D. 39.

  Appius A centurion and primus pilus of a Roman legion in south Syria. Originally from Attalia in south Anatolia on the Mediterranean Sea. A career centurion assigned to the third Roman legion called Gallica (based in Raphana, Syria).

  Axius A legionnaire stationed in Caesarea, striving to become a centurion. Originally from Carthage in north Africa.

  Chuza A Jewish bureaucrat who owns a concession to collect taxes in the district of Capernaum. Also the financial minister of Galilee under the local rule of Herod Antipas. During this period, he lives in Sepphoris. His wife is Joanna, a secret follower of Jesus. See Luke 8:1-3.

  Gaius The Arab household slave of Appius who manages Appius’s villa as well as his slaves.

  Livia The female slave/concubine of the centurion Appius.

  Marcus Appius’s personal military assistant, assigned to him in Caesarea. Originally from Sardis in west Anatolia.

  Mariam The midwife of Capernaum and the wife of the only physician/healer in the village.

  Maxilla A female Roman gladiator traveling with blood-sport shows in the eastern Mediterranean.

  Onias The father of Tullus, an oil trader who lives in Emesa, Syria. Today this is Homs, Syria.

  Pilatus Known as Pontius Pilatus (or Pontius Pilate), he was the fifth governor of Judea under Roman rule. He was responsible for the finances of the province and had at his command four or five military cohorts. Appointed by the Emperor Tiberius in A.D. 26 from the Roman upper middle class (or equestrians), his rule was severe and notorious for its violence. His murder of many Samaritans and the outrage that followed led to his ouster in A.D. 36.

  Tobias The leading elder of the Jewish village of Capernaum who negotiates diplomatic connections with the Romans. He is likely a Pharisee and committed to resistance against Rome.

  Tullus The slave/scribe of Appius, captured in the siege of Emesa, Syria.

  1

  From Emesa to Raphana

  Tullus never imagined he would see a Parthian standing this close, armed and clearly intending harm. The Parthian would make fast work of him. How in the name of the gods, he wondered, had the Parthians breached the fortress of Dura-Europos?

  Tullus remembered what he had learned about the Parthians. In the Roman barracks they talked about them almost every day. And the Romans hated them. They mocked them and shared endless jokes about them. Parthians were just another breed of barbarian, with an uncivilized culture and undisciplined ranks. Killing them was easy, or at least that was what the centurions told the soldiers as they drilled them daily on the fort grounds. The javelin-targeting pole in the courtyard usually wore a Parthian uniform, torn from some unfortunate victim in a recent skirmish. It was riddled with holes. Everyone knew the enemy was Parthian.

  Tullus was not made for battle. He had neither the instincts nor the physique. He could have been an archer. Maybe. Archers were different from infantry, more refined, perhaps even smarter. He imagined them making mathematical calculations as they fired their arrows in careful paths through the sky. Arrows were graceful. Swords were not. But he never imagined himself as a legionnaire, who could march endlessly, carrying armor, supplies and weapons, and then at day’s close begin a siege work.

  Tullus was literate. And this alone saved him. The truth is, he was lucky to be alive at all.

  The Parthian Empire

  Parthia was the first-century name for the great Persian Empire, which reached back into Old Testament times (Cyrus the Persian king liberated the Jews following the exile). The Parthians had their capitals at Ecbatana and Ctesiphon, not far from Babylon. The empire desired expansion west into Mesopotamia because of the prosperity of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. And yet it could go no further, due to the Roman Empire that blocked it. The desert region west of Mesopotamia (and south of the Euphrates) was called Syria. Parthia dreamed of controlling Syria. But western armies (both Greeks and Romans) always stopped them.

  Two years earlier Tullus had been captured during the siege of Emesa on the Orontes River in Syria, when the Emesani tribes revolted. He was not one of the Emesani—Tullus’s father was from the coast, a trader in olive oil—and when the siege of Emesa was finished, Tullus was found hiding in the ruins of his school. He had heard about Roman sieges before. But nothing could have prepared him. He believed that the Romans were the true barbarians of the world. And Syria had been under Rome’s control for more than seventy-five years.

  As the pillaging of the town wound down, Tullus found himself tied to hundreds of other petrified young men and paraded before the Romans. Slavers who shadowed the legion were offering the officers sizable sums to take the young men away to slave markets in Antioch. The young women had already disappeared. And now, with the bartering pounding loudly in his ears, his senses dulled. Tullus was in shock. Behind him the city of his childhood lay smoldering. The smells of a burning city and the cries of the defeated would never leave his memory. He coul
d not imagine the fate of his family—in fact, he pushed these thoughts from his mind—and now, as he stood in the hot desert sun, he listened to men from distant places putting a price on his life. He would become a laborer, a household servant, or perhaps a sex slave in a large and distant Greek city. He considered praying. But to whom? The Roman gods were obviously powerful. He knew their names. He’d grown up with them.

  Just then Tullus spotted the Roman officer Appius for the first time. He was an impressive sight. A large man, likely from Rome, Appius bore the stature of an infantry commander. He walked as if he owned Emesa. His clean armor gleamed. His helmet, with its wide, feathered crown, was resting beneath his arm. His sword was still in hand. Clearly he did not like what he saw: the undisciplined looting of the town, the slavers muscling in on opportunity, and the hordes from other towns waiting to pick over what remained of Emesa when the legion departed. Emesa was prosperous, and the surrounding villages both thrived from it and resented it. Tullus recognized many of the looters as those who had been friends of his father and profited from his trade in olive oil. Here they were poised to steal what they could from Emesa.

  The Roman Army

  The Roman army had undergone an extensive reorganization with the rise of Augustus (or Octavian) in 27 B.C. and the growth of autocratic rule. The army became professionalized and was organized into twenty-eight “legions” that made up a fighting force of about 300,000. These were professional soldiers.

  Figure 1.1. Bust of a centurion with helmet

  Each legion had about 5,500 men, and these were divided into ten “cohorts.” Each of the cohorts from the second to the tenth mustered about five hundred men each. The legion also had various auxiliary troops, such as cavalry, scouts, horn blowers, medics, scribes and dispatch riders. These nine cohorts were then subdivided into six “centuries,” each with eighty to a hundred men. One centurion led each century, along with his assistants (principales). Finally, each soldier belonged to an eight-man “unit” (contubernium): they ate together, shared a tent, sometimes shared one mule, and, when in barracks, lived in the same block.

  The tactical fighting force was made up of the legion’s highly mobile ten cohorts with their staff of centurions. These were numbered and named: each bore its own standard, which was carried whenever the cohort moved.

  The “first cohort” was elite. Each of its five centuries was double in size (they held 160 men, not eighty, which is why the first cohort could muster at least eight hundred). It was filled with veterans, and its centurions were the most skilled. The primus pilus who led it held immense prestige: he was the top centurion of the leading cohort of the entire legion.

  Figure 1.2. A relief frieze of first-century Roman soldiers

  The legion also had senior officers (tribunes), and above them the legion commander (the legatus), who often had senatorial rank and was appointed by the emperor. Often the legion had one highly honored officer, the camp prefect (praefectus castrorum). He was an older man who had given the army a lifetime of service and had once been a primus pilus. He could lead the legion if the legatus and the senior tribunes were absent.

  Senior officers enjoyed remarkable privileges. Despite an official ban on marriage, senior centurions frequently kept families at or near the legion barracks. Some had concubines and slaves. Legionary life was an enormous commitment. In the imperial era legionnaires were committed to twenty-five years of service to the army.

  Appius was not there for personal gain but for security: assuring Rome that its eastern flank was secure, that the Syrian tribes would not challenge Roman control and, above all, that Parthia in the far east would never make its way to the Mediterranean Sea. For Appius violence was a necessary tool for bringing safety to the citizens of the empire. And therefore it was virtuous.

  Appius walked up to Tullus, looked him over carefully and said, “I’ll take this one.”

  Tullus was immediately pulled from the ranks, and the ropes holding him were loosened. Appius ordered him to follow as they walked through the gathering formations of the legion. Legionary soldiers were lodging standards in place that displayed the emperor’s name. And there for the first time Tullus saw the legion’s double-bull standard, lifted high above the cohort that Appius served. This was the Legio Tertia Gallica, the third legion, called Gallica. It had been stationed in Syria for decades. And its bull symbol was known throughout the empire. It was a frontier legion that rarely knew the comforts of a Roman city, a legion that sought out battle. It attracted a certain type of soldier or mercenary, one who liked combat. The legion’s members were proud of their imago: Taurus, the bull. Coins represented the legion with a double bull.

  Legio Tertia Gallica

  Gallica (legion three) was one of twenty-eight legions operating in the first-century Roman Empire, and it was distinguished by having been founded by Julius Caesar himself in about 49 B.C. Each legion had a legionary standard and symbol, and Gallica was known as “the bull.” Mark Antony had sent Gallica to the east to subdue the Parthians, who were threatening to conquer Syria. Gallica had done well and so remained, based in Syrian Raphana, south of Damascus. Sometime in the late first century Gallica was transferred to the Danube River region in the Balkans.

  Tullus followed in a daze. The landscape was familiar, but it had been overrun. Fires burned everywhere. He walked past corpses that no one planned to bury. Children over the age of five were being herded and handed over to the slavers for free. Younger children were being left behind and would likely be taken by local villagers, only to become slaves. The pungency of war and Roman arrogance were in the air. They had proven themselves again.

  Tullus had his sandals and a now-filthy tunic, but that was all. Everything had been lost the instant four armed men in red tunics stormed his school and killed his teacher. His mind kept returning to the moments before the end of life as he knew it. They had been reading a comedy by Chuza Maccius Plautus in Latin, and everyone was laughing. Then their teacher read Plautus’s legendary epitaph from two hundred years earlier. It was the last thing the teacher read in his life:

  postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, Since Plautus has met death

  comoedia luget, Comedy mourns,

  scaena est deserta, Deserted is the stage.

  dein risus, ludus Iocusque Then Laughter, Sport and Wit,

  et numeri innumeri simul And Music’s countless numbers

  omnes conlacrimarunt. All together wept.1

  The Latin was difficult, but with coaching they had understood. Now laughter had indeed left his world. And Tullus wondered whether he would ever laugh again. He was ready to write his own eulogy.

  Appius led Tullus to his tent, where other soldiers and centurions were standing. Tullus’s stomach knotted in dread. It was a world of horses, weaponry and men constantly testing each other. And now a new and different laughter began, with legionnaires asking whether they could borrow “the boy” for the night, or did Appius have plans of his own? But Tullus noticed it again: a look that invited no levity, a look of displeasure and threat. Appius glanced at them menacingly, and almost immediately they fell silent. The boy was off-limits, and they knew it.

  Appius was the primus pilus, the leading centurion of the first cohort of one of Rome’s foremost legions. No centurion outranked him. Most feared him. And, yes, he had other plans for the boy.

  “So what can you do?” Now seated in a beautifully crafted camp chair of carved wood and leather, Appius was peeling off his armor, drinking occasionally from a dented chalice of barley beer. He never looked up at the boy.

  “Anything, Lord.” Tullus stood motionless. He stared at the ground and then looked at the centurion’s short sword, lying on top of the small pile of leather and bronze armor. It was a personal weapon, and its handle was intricately carved from an exotic, dark wood. Bands of bronze decorated it every few inches. He had never seen anything like it.

  “I know we found you in the Greek school. Can you read?” Appius lifted the chalice an
d drained it. He spit some of the beer’s pulp into the sand.

  “I can read. And I can write. Is this your need?”

  “It is my wish. I need a slave who can assist with my writing. Otherwise I will sell you and find another.”

  But writing would wait. Tullus soon found himself working alongside other slaves belonging to the first-cohort centurions. The first task was packing tents and provisions and loading them on mules that would follow the army on its march back to its home in Raphana.

  Appius had now joined his cohort to lead it across potentially dangerous terrain. It would take them five days of following the western Syrian mountains south before they came to the oasis of Damascus. Each night was the same. They erected the camp, built fires and posted sentries on a defensive perimeter. Appius held an assembly with the fifty or so centurions from all ten cohorts. Then he would depart to meet with the legion’s half-dozen tribunes and the legion prefect, an older man who himself had been primus pilus once. Meanwhile Tullus learned to cook, clean and remain invisible. He slept on the ground outside Appius’s tent. And he never considered flight. Syria was filled with Roman soldiers, and the penalty for a runaway slave was death. Tullus could have stolen a sword or a lance easily. But then what would he do with it?

  Raphana was Gallica’s permanent camp. It was a Greek city located in a high desert, and once you stepped inside, signs of Greek culture were everywhere. Its theater, markets and temples belied its remote setting. These were like people who wished to be elsewhere. Tullus learned that Appius lived in the city in a villa remarkable in size and splendor. High stone walls enclosed inner courtyards and gardens, completely disguising them from the public. An aqueduct fed the city with a generous supply of water, making Raphana one of the better cities of the Syrian desert. This water supply furnished not only fountains in the public squares but also residences such as Appius’s villa.