by R. W. Peake
It was during our first year at Narbo that Caesar was made Consul, and what is now referred to as the First Triumvirate began ruling Rome, and by extension, my life and those of all of my comrades in the army. Because of the quiet state of affairs, many of the men started relationships with women in the town, and despite marriage not being allowed, they took wives in everything but name. These men were easy to spot, all of them being exceedingly anxious to be secured from duties for the day so that they could rush back to town to be with their women. Naturally, it was not long before the women got pregnant and families began to sprout. These de facto families, no matter what their legal status, would be a regular feature of our lives and the officers almost always turned a blind eye, their only requirement being that the small army that followed the larger one as it marched never impeded the progress of the Legions. Many of these women would help their men carry their loads for them, trooping along behind the Legion marching drag, putting in just as many miles as we did, and in many ways enduring more hardships. As much as I cared for Juno, I was hard pressed to see her living like that, and I was glad that Vibius resisted the temptation to send for her, because I knew that she would come without hesitation.
The second enemy struck towards the end of our first year in Narbo, in September, during the Consulship of Caesar and Bibulus, although for all intents and purposes Caesar ruled alone, since Bibulus despised Caesar so much that he refused to serve with him, prompting the joke that this was the Consulship of Julius and Caesar. An illness swept through camp, a horrible affliction that saw men dying while spewing the most noxious fluids from almost every orifice of their bodies. Even all these years later, I still find myself questioning the Fates about the justice of allowing men to live through battle, only to be struck down by some invisible phantom, denying all that it strikes from the clean death that a soldier deserves. As I have mentioned before our tent section, while suffering from wounds, had escaped the loss of one of us in battle during the campaign against the Lusitani. We were not to escape unscathed from this enemy, however. Remus contracted the affliction, dying after only a few days, at the end deliriously calling for his mother and telling her that he was done with his chores. Romulus sat next to him, clutching his hand and weeping, begging him not to die, while the rest of us frantically made sacrifices to every deity we could think of, all to no avail. The illness raged for weeks, striking fully a tenth of our numbers, and killing well more than half of those afflicted. The doctors and medici did what they could, which was little more than making men as comfortable as possible, with the rest of us searching for anything that would help us ward off the horrible disease. There was a small industry of quacks and false healers who made a small fortune off of all of us, myself included, peddling amulets and potions that they swore would save us. I took to wearing the claw of a hawk around my neck, which a man who claimed to be Greek swore would protect me from the ravages of the disease. While I am of a mind to sneer at this, I am still here many, many years later, so there is a part of me that thinks perhaps it was not such quackery after all.
Although this was the first such outbreak I would witness, it certainly would not be the last, and because I tend to try and observe the world around me as much as possible, by the third or fourth time this type of disease struck I had noticed some similarities in conditions. Even after I witnessed other afflictions, notably the plague, strike armies while out on campaign, this particular disease never seemed to occur while we were on the march. It only happened when we stayed in one place, and it seemed to be only after a period of months in that place before it struck. It also seemed to strike those who were less fastidious in their habits and used the baths or otherwise cleaned themselves less often than the others. I am not inclined to speak ill of the dead, particularly those I consider friends; however, Remus was notorious for not bathing, and even his brother would chastise him severely for it, to no avail. Not once did I speak of these ideas to Romulus, or anyone besides Vibius for that matter, but when I finally made the rank of Centurion, I earned a reputation for forcing my men to bathe more often than most of the other officers, for which I took a fair amount of teasing and ridicule from my fellow Centurions. Until, that is, I pointed out after a sufficient period of time passed that I consistently put less men on the sick list, and suffered far fewer losses when this particular disease would strike, whereupon the others followed suit.
Only now were we down to the more traditional eight men in our tent, or our hut in this case. For a period of several days, there was a sense of tension among us as we waited for another of us to be struck down, but we luckily did not suffer another loss. Despite getting an idea of what caused this affliction, I have never understood what makes it stop, but it does, seemingly leaving as quickly as it arrives. Before long our routine was back to normal, with the life of the Legion in garrison continuing as if nothing had happened, leaving only grieving comrades and brothers behind to wonder at the unfairness of it all. For his part, Romulus was never truly the same after that, like a part of him had been torn out of his soul, which perhaps is not far from the case.
Part 2
Conquest of Gaul
Chapter 5- First Campaign in Gaul
“Caesar’s sent for us!”
The word shot through the camp like a lightning bolt striking a tree and making its way to ground, with the effect being almost the same. After two years of routine and boredom, we were convinced that the return of Caesar meant that we would be put to use and see action again. At the time, there was no evidence of this other than our belief in Caesar, but it was not long before that faith was justified. After serving as Consul, Caesar was given the governorship of what at that time were two of the Roman provinces in Gaul; Transalpine and Cisalpine, along with the province of Illyricum, for a then-unheard of period of five years. Once it was confirmed that this was no idle rumor as was so often the case, the camp went into an immediate hubbub of activity as we tidied up, repainting the huts, and otherwise showing Caesar that we were still soldiers. The two years in garrison had seen other changes, besides the inevitable softness and slacker discipline that was the opposite of the first campaign season in the Legions. For my part, I had filled out even more, my frame heavily muscled throughout the chest and arms, along with bulk added to my thighs. According to Vibius and the others, I had also grown at least two more inches, standing more than four inches over six feet. As part of my training, I began concentrating more on technique than just brute strength, so that during the Legion games, I was able to avenge my loss in the wrestling match to become Legion champion, and second place in the army, something I was intent on correcting at the earliest opportunity. If anything, I was even more confident than when I joined the Legions, the difference being that I had learned that as talented as I might have been, I was still not invincible. That I had learned the hard way, with the scars to prove it. It was the result of this knowledge that saw me train more than almost any other man in the Legion, using every spare or idle moment not only working on my technique, but watching other more experienced men, looking for moves that I thought might be valuable.
There was also a change that impacted our entire Century, however, coming about as a result of the sickness that had hit the army. Not just ordinary Gregarii were struck down, and because of the death of a Centurion in the First Cohort, Pilus Prior Crastinus was promoted to the First Cohort, and was now the Primus Hastatus Posterior, the Centurion of the Sixth Century. In those days, whenever there was a vacancy in other Centuries in a more senior Century or Cohort, the normal procedure was that the Centurion in the next most junior Century moved up one slot. Therefore, the Primus Princeps Posterior, the Centurion of the Fifth Century of the First Cohort, who was the man who died, was replaced by the Primus Hastatus Posterior, with our Pilus Prior moving up to the Sixth Century to replace the Centurion moving up. For us, this meant that the Secundus Pilus Posterior now became our Pilus Prior. His name was Aulus Vetruvius, and he was competent enough,
yet I would be lying if I said that we felt the same towards him that we did for Pilus Prior Crastinus. To be fair, Vetruvius was in a very tough situation filling his predecessor’s boots, a fact that Rufio kept reminding us about. For his part, Rufio at least was staying put, since he had not been Optio long enough to be considered for one of the junior Centurion spots in the Tenth Cohort. Being selfish, that was fine with all of us, because it was difficult to adjust to the styles of two new officers. Tesseraurius Cordus left us as well, being promoted to Optio of the Sixth Century in the Tenth Cohort, but our Signifer Scaevola also remained with us. Although he technically should have been considered for one of the Centurion slots in the more junior Cohorts, Scaevola was one of those men who, despite being a great fighter and a solid man to have relaying orders, had not developed into the leader that was expected of a Centurion. Even so, I could think of no man besides Vibius who I wanted pressed against my back should things go badly in battle. And courtesy of the Helvetii, Caesar handed us a war that would go down in the annals as one of the greatest feat of arms in the history of Rome.
Caesar ordered the 7th, 8th and 9th to prepare to march from their base in Aquileia, planning on sending them northwest towards the Helvetii. By the time one of Caesar’s Tribunes arrived in our camp, we were well into the packing up of all that would be required for the upcoming campaign, Caesar having sent word ahead that we were needed. Interspersed with all the various tasks to be done, the Centurions increased the pace of our training, having us go on twice as many forced marches as normal, with the difference being that the two extra were half-day affairs so that we could still do all of the other things that had to be done to prepare to move. For example, our artillery had to be refitted with new torsion ropes, with every other piece of equipment having to be inspected for wear; even in garrison, equipment suffers wear and tear just through our constant training. And truth be told, there is a huge difference between having everything adequate for training purposes and for going to war. Vibius stayed busy repairing or making new bits of leather gear, while I pushed the men of the Century harder than ever during our weapons training, making sure that nobody left the training field without fresh bruises and cuts, myself included. No matter how hard I pushed them, nobody except Didius and a couple other men like him in other sections complained, since everyone knew by this time that more work put in here meant the better chance of seeing another sunrise after a battle. Once more we prepared to leave camp to go on campaign, except this time was more difficult for a lot of the men. Now that they had set down some roots and were starting families, it was all that much harder to leave them behind, which is why a good number of their women and small children refused to be left. The day we formed up in the forum of the camp to begin the march north to face the Helvetii, there was a second, albeit smaller and worse equipped army waiting immediately outside the gates.
(Diocles: To ensure accuracy, my Master has instructed me to use Caesar’s account of the campaigns against the Gauls to provide the relevant facts and dates that are crucial to his account of his experiences with Caesar.)
The whole problem with the Helvetii started because they had decided to move from their homes to find new places to live. One difficulty posed by this idea was that the place they were interested in moving to already had people in it, and they were people that we were told had asked for Roman protection. The Helvetii had already begun the process of migrating, burning their own towns, farms and fields in order to ensure that they would not lose heart and turn back. The other consequence of this decision was that they were not liable to be persuaded, either by reason or force, a fact that we would soon discover when we faced them. First, however, we had some distance to cover to face them; being honest, the first three or four days marching at the pace Caesar had ordered was almost enough to do almost all of us in, and I was just as exhausted at the end of the day as the rest of my comrades, barely having the energy to speculate about what we were marching into as we listlessly chewed our evening meal. One of the more valuable lessons I took from this experience was that, no matter how hard you may train in garrison, there is still a large gap between the type of fitness and endurance that the army tries to maintain in peacetime, and what is needed to survive and thrive during a campaign season. Some of the hardest hit were the immunes who were excused from normal training duties, the result being that they were in even poorer condition than the rest of us. Poor Vibius looked more dead than alive at the end of the first day’s march, as I literally had to force him to eat his meal, shoving his bread down his throat and commanding him to chew. I am convinced that even as he complied, he was asleep while doing so, and was only marginally improved the next day. Regardless, he did not fall out as a straggler, ending every day’s march with the rest of us, for which I was very proud of him.
The country we were introduced to was different than anything I had ever seen in my life. Even in the far north of Hispania, the land is not nearly as lush and green as what we passed through. These provinces were prosperous and peaceful, with everyone giving us a cheerful greeting and a wave as we passed by, the only exception to this being men with daughters, who despite their best efforts would lose some of them to the allure of the Legion tramping by. It never failed that people, not just girls but young boys and some men as well, would attach themselves to our column as we moved, using the Legion in the same manner one would hitch a ride on a bypassing cart to take them somewhere else. For our part, this would engender endless speculation on the motives of these people. Not so much with the boys, it being a foregone conclusion to us that they were lured by the romance of life as a Legionary, a fact at which we all heartily laughed, conveniently ignoring the fact that for many of us, it was the same siren call we had heard. Such is the easy disdain those on the inside show for those on the outside of something like the army. However, for the girls and women who joined the camp followers it was harder to understand, but their actions helped pass many watches spent on the road as we discussed the topic. Not that we were complaining, since almost all of these women either became the women of formerly unattached Legionaries at best, or whores servicing the rest of us at worst.
Fortunately, much of the march was on good Roman roads, so our progress was rapid, although to hear the cursing it was hard to tell. As we had experienced and would learn until it was ingrained as an expectation that we had for ourselves, nothing was fast enough for Caesar. If we marched 28 miles in a day, it should have been 30; if 30 then it should have been 35 miles. Despite learning this was his nature, some of us never grew accustomed to it, and one of them was Vibius.
“There’s no pleasing that man,” he muttered one day.
The 10th was now a week into our march, and were within two or three day’s march of the latest place we had been told to be by Caesar. We were barely into the first watch of the march when Vibius made his comment, but I knew the reaming we had taken from the Primus Pilus that morning was still fresh on his mind, as it was with everyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, with our Cohort waiting our turn to start the march, the Primus Pilus spent that time telling us how disgraced he was at our “sightseeing” pace and how we were letting Caesar down. This was not only shocking to us, it was bewildering, and our confused glances at each other confirmed I was not the only one who felt this way. We could only go as fast as the pace set for us and since our Cohort was not in the lead the day before, we were not sure where this was coming from. As we learned later, the same tongue-lashing was given by the Primus Pilus to every Cohort, along with the cavalry and the men who ran the baggage train. It made us feel somewhat better, at least as far as our feelings, yet the pace set that day was cracking and we instantly knew it was going to be a hard one. Glancing over at Vibius when he made his comment, I could see that even so early he was struggling more than he should have been, and I could only hope that the gains he had made in his fitness over the last few days did not dig so deeply into his reserves that he would have to drop from the march. His face wa
s already red, and the sweat dripped from his nose in a steady stream, despite the coolness of the day. I replied, but even as I did so it was with some surprise, being sure I knew who “he” was referring to, and it was not the Primus Pilus.
“He’s just trying to get us there as fast as he can because he wants his best to send into battle”, I reasoned.
“Fat lot of good it'll do if when we get there, we’re too exhausted to pick up a javelin, let alone throw one,” he snapped, impatiently swiping at the sweat rolling into his eyes.
For my part, after the first few days of struggle, I adjusted fairly easily back into the campaigning rhythm, which I suspected was another reason for Vibius’ irritation. I shrugged, knowing by this time that there were times to argue with Vibius and times not to, and this was the latter. He had made up his mind that Caesar was the cause of his misery, and nothing I could say would change that. It was in this frame of mind that we kept moving, the only sound for many miles the thud of our boots and the jingling of our gear bouncing around. One thankful aspect of this country, I mused, was that it did not kick up as much dust as Hispania, something a Legionary learns to appreciate. Also, the nights were much colder than even in Narbo, so we woke up every morning shivering, and it was not unusual that there was a thin skin of ice on the water buckets that were used to water the livestock. Marching up the valley of the Rhodanus (Rhone), we passed through a number of towns and bypassed the larger ones if possible. Despite the fact the folks in the town, at least in a Roman province, might like the spectacle of an army marching by, towns and cities provided a wealth of temptation for a lot of us. In turn, this inevitably brought trouble in one form or another, so invariably whenever possible we passed them by on an outer road. After a few days, despite the area immediately along the river staying relatively flat, it was still taking a noticeably upward tilt, and the river valley soon was surrounded by hills that grew in height as we moved. The timing of the Primus Pilus’ chastisement was unfortunate in that sense; the main reason for our tardiness, if it was indeed real, was more a result of the land over which we marched than any lack of fitness on our part, at least by this point. None of this made an obol’s worth of difference to us, of course, and while I was not willing to condemn Caesar to the degree that Vibius had, I will say that even his most ardent supporters were somewhat muted when they discussed him with their comrades. At the end of the day that we received the warning from the Primus Pilus, it was like being on the first day of the march again, at least if one were to judge simply by the obvious level of fatigue. Little did we know, we were relatively as refreshed as it was possible to be, given the circumstances and what Caesar planned for us.