The Collected Prose

by Zbigniew Herbert

  The situation is turned around by Comes Theodosius, sent out by emperor Valentinian at the head of a mighty army. He restores order, rebuilds the destroyed wall of Hadrian and a number of forts on the Saxon Coast; he also carries out the traditional punitive expedition into Scotland. However, this is the final optimistic scene before a tragic epilogue.

  In the first years of the fifth century, the last Roman divisions leave the island, setting off for war against the Goths. The islanders are alone, left to their own resources. Pleas for Roman aid remain unanswered. The empire’s mighty ship is sinking and no one cares now about the island in the north. The last Roman—emperor Aetius—must have read the Britons’ appeal and description of their plight with impotent irony: “the barbarians are pushing us toward the sea and the sea casts us back upon the barbarians.”

  Christianity—“the religion of slaves”—takes on the Roman inheritance and the role of defender of civilization. Toward the end of the 420’s Saint Germain of Auxerre arrives on the island on what one might call a theological mission, namely to do battle with the heresy of the British monk Pelagius, of whom Saint Jerome said with truly senatorial disdain that “stuffed with Scottish oatmeal, he suffers from a failure of memory.” In 429 no Roman centurion but this very Saint Germain leads the British militia into battle against the Picts with a cry of Halleluiah.

  II

  SO GRZESIO TAUGHT US Latin; I would be lying if I said the subject was easy and that we devoted ourselves to it with joyous zeal. But first I want to describe our preceptor. He was a man in his prime, tall, strapping, with a finely proportioned build. He had olive skin, like the peoples of the Mediterranean (later we found out he came from Colchis). A stern face, a large eagle’s nose whose bridge supported a pince-nez, the only element of the face that belonged not to Antiquity but to Galicia. Black slightly wavy hair and large, penetrating eyes.

  For us he was the personification of manliness, and also of Romanness, and it was easy for us to imagine him in a purple-lined toga or at the head of legions. He seldom smiled, and when he did it was sardonically, the scale of his wrath on the other hand was unequaled in its wealth and nuance—from an ironic hiss through a rhetorical tirade on the duties of youth, to a thunderbolt falling like Jove’s: Sit down, you blockhead! We bore these blows with humility, knowing well that qui bene amat13, bene castigat.

  The first lessons in our textbook in its innocent green cover with the title Puer Romanus, were childishly easy. Short sentences in the indicative, like Terra est rotunda (this statement would have worried the Romans), did not trouble even the most hardened barbarians. We plodded through five declinations without great effort (the favorite being the fourth and simplest), by the method of choral recitation of all singles and plurals, always with the inseparable adjective—puer bonus, servus miser—and these litanies repeated out loud quickly engraved themselves on our minds.

  The conjugations presented a much greater problem because of their—in our view—exaggerated elaboration of tenses, so we hung strips of paper above our beds on which we wrote in red pencil the magical spells of endings: -o, -as, -at, -amus, -atis, -ant; -abam, -abas, -abat, -abamus, -abatis, -abant; -abo, -abis…and lulled by them as by bells we sailed into our anxious school dreams, in which Grzesio appeared in the guise of a god or tyrant.

  Until finally we came to the highest degree of initiation—syntax—and here began the forest, the lair, and the gnashing of teeth. These were no banal little phrases thought up by kind-hearted pedagogues to familiarize us with the tongue of our cultural forefathers, but the periods of classical orators and philosophers, splended as porticos and long as sleepless nights.

  “Gavius hic14, quem dico, Consanus, cum in illo numero civium Romanorum ab isto in vincla coniectus esset et nescio qua ratione clam e lautumiis profugisset Messanamque venisset, qui tam prope iam Italiam et moenia Reginorum, civium Romanorum, videret et ex illo metu mortis ac tenebris quasi luce libertatis et odore aliquo legum recreatus revixisset, loqui Messanae et queri coepit se civem Romanum in vincla coniectum, sibi recta iter esse Romam, Verri se praesto advenienti futurum”. Argh!

  So we crawled over these texts like a flock of stray birds, pecking at the subject, predicate, and then the attributes, objects, and adverbials. From the thicket of dependent clauses we pried the main clause, we ordered tenses according to the consecutio temporum15 and deviations from the consecutio temporum. The lazier among us used ponies, but this generally ended disastrously (with infamy, worse than a bad grade), because for Grzesio it wasn’t all about a smooth translation but an effort to enter into the spirit of the language and its internal architecture. Whoever translated too freely or failed to explain grammatical structure was unmasked as using someone else’s work and invariably fell from a candidate for Roman citizenship to the ranks of a slave. To avoid this we wrote notes in the margins of our texts: “accusativus cum infinitivo, ablativus absolutus, gerundium…”, which was meant to protect us from trick questions. In vain. Our professor condemned cribs, erased all helpful notes in our books with a great big eraser and simply demanded that we have Latin in our blood.

  In those days no one (or almost no one) important questioned the use of teaching classical languages in schools. Nor did anyone promise us any material benefits flowing from reading Plato or Seneca in the original. It was simply an exercise of the mind, and also a molding of character, as we were struggling with difficult things and to this day I’m not sure—for no one has proven it—Latin isn’t better than solving linear equations.

  Our pedagogues, and Grzesio was a classic example, did not adhere to the novel discoveries of the Freudian school and paid absolutely no attention to whether or not they were cultivating complexes in us. They were probably right. The cruelty of school prepared us for the cruelties of life. And later it also turned out that complexes are valuable and enrich one’s inner life.

  So we learned Latin from Grzesio. How? In torment. There was a virtually military drill in the classroom, and the air was full of F’s. When the atmosphere became unbearable, our centurion-professor would raise us up from our desks and allow us to shout at the top of our voices (anything as long as it was in Latin), most often “Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.” So we cried and uniting in the cry, we conquered our fear and weakness of spirit.

  ONE OF THE FOUNDATIONS of Roman power and its main guarantor was the Roman army. It has been compared to the empire’s heart and its backbone. Truly, it was a military force without equal in its own time, and it is difficult to find an army resembling it in later history. So it is worth asking ourselves what was the secret to its successes. But before we try to answer that question, let us return for a moment to the legions in Britain.

  The invading Roman forces in 43 A.D. were made up of four legions, as I have said; two more landed on the island later. How long did the particular legions remain in Britain and where should we look for their main concentration points?

  The II Augusta (the legion was called this because it was formed during emperor Augustus’s rule) was initially stationed at Gloucester (Glevum), but it was transferred to the fortress of Caerlon (Isca) in southern Wales in 71 in connection with an offensive in the west; it stayed there until the end of the third century. After the military reorganization of Diocletian’s time it was partly transferred to the Scottish coast, and stationed at Fort Richborough (Rutupiae) not far from what is now Sandwich in the county of Kent.

  The IX Hispana (brought over from Spain, hence the name) was at the fortress of Lincoln (Lindum) until 71, then farther north in York (Eboracum), the main Roman settlement on the island, where the emperors resided during their visits to Britain. Around 120 A.D. this legion is withdrawn and replaced with the VI Victrix—which remains in York until the very end of the occupation.

  The XIV Gemina (Gemini—probably the fusion of two legions) will remain on the island until 70, after which it is sent to Germany.

  The XX Valeria was probably stationed first at Gloucester and transferr
ed to Chester (Deva) in Wales around 78. Its exact fate is not known. Most probably it was withdrawn toward the end of the fourth century to defend the northern border of the empire.

  The II Adiutrix (created by emperor Vespasian on the Adriatic coast as a reserve legion), sent to Britain in 71 occupies the fortress of Lincoln (left by the IX legion); later it is transferred to Chester and withdrawn to the Danube in 86. All this is said to do away with the traditional picture of legions frozen and motionless on the borders of the empire.

  The vast expanse of the Roman Empire (3,340,000 square kilometers under Hadrian), its land border stretching across ten thousand kilometers, its wars and conquests may all lead to the assumption that Rome was a military state, in which every other citizen was under arms or employed by the military. This is an erroneous supposition. The Roman army’s numbers, even in the period of its greatest development, are estimated at less than half a million. Taking into account that in Augustus’s time—statisticians calculate—the total population of the empire was 54 million, we get an indicator of less than 1 percent of citizens in arms.

  It was therefore quality, not quantity—training, organization, strategic ability, that determined the supremacy of the Roman eagles. On the battlefield the Romans encountered noble volunteers, horsemen who were defending their freedom. They themselves entered the ranks of a standing army based on recruitment, and each soldier was a specialist in his art.

  The number of legions and thus of front line divisions shows a remarkable constancy during the long history of the empire: it barely wavers between 27 to 33 (or as other authors would have it, 25 to 35). The ranks of the legions were made up of Roman citizens; they were usually stationed on the empire’s borders. In the capital there was only the Pretorian Guard, the bodyguards of the emperor who accompanied him on his campaigns. In the empire’s later period it was a powerful political player and often exerted an influence on the election and bloody removal of emperors.

  The legions were supplemented by allied forces, the so-called auxilia. They came from neighboring provinces and were under the leadership of native commanders, who initially retained some strategic autonomy, since they did battle in their own way, as for example the Syrian archery divisions or the heavily-armored Sarmatian cavalry. From the time of Augustus these divisions were an integral part of the Roman army, subject to its chief command.

  The legions were also accompanied in battle by irregular units of footsoldiers—numeri—and cavalrymen—cunei, who were recruited from among the warriors of newly conquered borderland tribes. These were not choice divisions, they were most often poorly trained, but nevertheless they could be very useful in some situations. Historians have discovered that an exotic division was stationed in Lancaster in Britain and later in South Shields—Numerus Barcariorum Tigrisiensium—which as its name indicates, came from the banks of the distant Tigris. At the time of the ephemeral conquest of the land of Parthians by Septimus Severus this numerus was formed and later transported to Britain, where it worked on the construction of military barges across the river Tyne and Morecambe Bay, because their wide and shallow bankside waters were reminiscent of the water conditions of the Tigris.

  The commander of the legion and the auxiliary divisions attached to it was the legatus legionis—invariably a senator of about thirty years old, who normally exercised the duties for three years. His deputy was the praefectus castrorum, responsible for training, internal organization, equipment, and provisions. The highest ranking officers subordinate to the legate were six tribunes. Tribunes (an institution conceived as a preparation for a political career) were not in direct command but occupied with administration and jurisdiction.

  The praefectus castrorum stood at the head of the professional officer corps. He was usually an experienced commander with thirty or more years of uninterrupted military service. The backbone, the firm skeleton of the army were the centurions, sixty of them to each legion—directly responsible for battle training and in direct command of the subordinate centuries, which counted 80 men. The majority of centurions were drawn from the regular soldiers, but also from the auxiliary forces. The highest ranking centurions, called primi ordines, commanded the first cohort of the legion (a cohort—one tenth of the legion—was the basic strategic unit and was made up of six centuries). The head centurion—the primus pilus—elected annually, rarely reached this status before he was fifteen or sixteen.

  Legionaries spent the greater part of their lives far from their families and native parts. They were like a small itinerant society, so the legions did not only include those who took direct part in battle but also those concerned with the satisfaction of the needs of ordinary life. These administrative and economic functions were often carried out by retired soldiers, the so-called immunes. The century’s ensign was traditionally the treasurer of the soldiers’ loan office and funeral fund, but apart from him other professional civil servants worked to collect contingents of grain, and many diverse librarii and exactores corresponding to our cashiers and accountants, for they distributed the soldiers’ pay, ran the food storehouses and, finally, took care of the wills and estates of soldiers killed in battle.

  Military operations on remote and difficult terrain required what we would now call elaborate technical back-up, above all experts able to conduct engineering work ranging from the most straightforward to the most complex. And so each legion had an architectus, a specialist in ground and surface works; a mensor or geometer who drew up maps of the camps; and a hydraularius responsible for water supply to the camps and drainage of bogland. They were furthermore accompanied by a plentiful number of artisans: builders of catapults and siege instruments, ship carpenters, glaziers, arrowmakers, and lastly lumberjacks who cleared the soldiers a path through dense woodlands.

  Spiritual guidance for the legions was in the hands of priests and fortune-tellers called haruspices. These were not equivalents of priests in a modern army, and for that reason the description “spiritual guide” doesn’t really fit. Rather, their task consisted in securing the beneficence of the gods and foretelling the fate, not of particular individuals, but of the army as a whole. Trajan’s Column, that gigantic film reel and invaluable iconographic source for knowledge about the lives of the empire’s soldiers, in one of its scenes portrays an animal sacrifice at a battlefield altar: priests with cloaks thown over their heads accompanied by soldiers holding big curved trumpets and horns receive a procession of sacrifice sacrificers.

  The army command concerned itself as much with the physical health and fitness of its soldiers as with their arms. The food was healthy and almost entirely vegetarian: cheese, vegetables, noodles made from grain; meat appeared only rarely, but wine flowed freely into the parched throats. The many amphoras and huge clay recepticles found in Britain bear witness to the fact that this was one of the first imported articles on the island.

  Every military unit of any size had its own doctor of officer rank; he was usually a Greek, like the Hermogenes whose votive altar we can now examine in the museum in Chester. Subordinate to the doctor were the medics (medici) and the nurses (capsari), whose name came from the capsa, the “first aid kit” with which they were equipped on the battlefield. A fragment of Trajan’s Column portrays a soldier in the auxiliary forces laying a bandage on the thigh of a legionary. The art of Greek doctors was unequaled: they deftly carried out complex operations, extractions of foreign bodies; amputations were the bread and butter of the surgeons, who used tar, terpentine, and various decoctions of herbs as antiseptics. Hospitals were founded at many campgrounds and fortresses.

  The Roman army’s successes—as the majority of authors agree, even enemies of Rome—were not the work of chance or favorable fortunes of war. The extraordinary skill and effectiveness of this military power was based on every campaign, every battle being prepared in the finest detail, and the plans drawn up by the army staff were carried out by soldiers at all levels with iron consistency. Strenuous marches (the late Roman author Vege
tius says that at least three times a month they had a ten-mile march in full armor), a muster, called armatura, and exercises for the employment of weaponry and tactics were the daily routine of the legionaries both in peacetime and in war. Josephus Flavius, a man who dared to meet the power of the imperial army head on, captures it in a lapidary phrase. He compares the exercises to a bloodless battle, and battle he calls a bloody exercise.

  Of course, the training was not always on the highest level, and changed in different periods. In Republican and early imperial times responsibility for it fell to individual commanders—so it depended on the military knowledge and talent of the particular commanders. Under Caesar the Roman army was incomparably superior to what it was in Augustus’s time. The outstanding Roman commander Corbulo (active under Claudius and Nero, made famous by the victorious war against the Parthians), when he arrived in Syria found the Roman troops in a deplorable state. They were stationed not in military camps but quartered in private residences in town, abandoning themselves to life’s pleasures. Corbulo assembled the effeminate legion soldiers and had a gigantic march conducted in mid-winter on barren mountainous terrain lashed by an icy wind, during which many perished from cold and exhaustion; but in the spring he could then lead a brilliant and victorious campaign in Armenia at the head of those who withstood this monstrous trial. In the times of Trajan the legions attained a high level of training thanks to the introduction of muster experts called lanistrae on the model of the “trainers” at gladiatorial schools.