The drill instructors arrived before dawn, canes swinging, iron shod sandals booting the startled bleary eyed recruits out of their warm cots. They were herded into the dark street and driven like cattle to the stores, where they were stripped of their civilian identities.
Stark naked, the shivering men lined up at the long counters, where the quarter master’s assistants handed out their new clothes and equipment - tunics, jerkins, woollen breeches, heavy cloaks, mess tin and, most importantly, a pair of heavy sandals soled with iron studs. As no attention had been given to sizing, men hurriedly swapped various garments they had been issued with. Eventually standard issue tunics were dragged over standard issue rough wool breeches. Sandals were laced and heavy leather jerkins pulled over heads and buckled fast at the sides.
Centurian Gaius arrived with a blast of cold air from the door he kicked open and a roar that silenced the room. “OUTSIDE - NOW!”
With the drill instructors mercilessly hammering them with their canes, the hapless recruits staggered into the cold dawn, to be driven onto the parade ground where they spent a long and painful day learning the basics - to move and to stop on command, to march in step and to turn left, right and about. They had to stand to attention and to memorise their position in the rank allotted to them. They ended their first day marching to the armourer’s stores, to receive a mail shirt, a helmet and a dagger. Barely having time to try out their new possessions, the armourer’s assistants issued training javelins, large rectangular shields made of cane and wooden swords weighted with lead. These weapons were greeted with incredulity by the new recruits. They were the object of much ribald comment until Gaius put in an appearance.
The weeks that followed were filled with endless drilling. The dawn trumpet called the recruits to assembly dressed and equipped for inspection, followed by a breakfast of barley porridge and watered wine. Then back to the parade ground to learn the complicated parade drills.
Gaius and his teams of drill instructors stalked their ranks. Every mistake was punished with a savage blow from the thick canes they carried and a volley of curses. Painfully they learned to stop and turn, to wheel and to march in step with perfect precision. Then they learned the battlefield drills, unique to Rome’s legions; their complex formation changes, open order to close, line to square and back to line. They learned how to form the tortoise formation and the wedge. Without breaking step they learned the difficult but vital manoeuvre performed within the square, whereby men in the middle and the back move forward and the men at the front move back out of the front line, thus presenting the enemy with a rested adversary. In a battle that could rage all day, this manoeuvre was of incalculable value to the Romans.
During a close engagement, visibility could become a problem as they and the opposing armies stirred up great clouds of dust. Noise was another element which, combined with poor visibility, caused confusion, making communication difficult. Commanders used standards as rallying points, but moving their forces tactically as a battle developed was difficult. Using voice commands was ineffectual. To overcome this, the Romans had designed a trumpet, the cornicon, with a particularly penetrating note. They also developed signals to manoeuvre their forces across the battlefield. So important were these trumpeters that they never entered the thick of battle, staying close to the overall commander and protected by his bodyguard, ready to sound out his orders which would ring across the battlefield.
Instantly recognising these signals was so important, that Gaius simulated the noise and dust of battle by turning out the cavalry to mill around his trainees, churning up dust. The noise was supplied by a military band!
The recruits, blinded by dust, bumped and barged by the cavalry’s horses and deafened by the enthusiastic band, were forced repeatedly to respond to the blare of the cornicons and carry out a series of complicated battlefield manoeuvres.
From a wooden tower Gaius appraised their performance. Nothing less than perfect was acceptable. “They are” he observed drily to one of his aids “only playing - nobody has any weapons!” Importantly, burdened with the weight of their equipment, they had built up the muscle and the endurance to do this for hours on end. This was just as well for, six weeks into their basic training Gaius started to lead them out of the camp four times a week on punishing route marches which started after three long hours on morning parade. At the day’s end they trudged back to base in the dark. Disgruntled and bone weary, they would wait to be dismissed by the old man who had been with them all day. Even the toughest among them grudgingly acknowledged Centurion Gaius’ fitness and wondered if they would ever match it.
It was at about this time that Gaius and his drill instructors started to talk to the recruits. At first the men found this somewhat unnerving, having been subjected almost exclusively to curses and invective screamed at them for the last two months. They had also become accustomed to being struck hard, without warning, for the slightest failure or slowness to respond instantly to an order. Anybody foolish enough to indicate, by lifting so much as an eyebrow, that any of this was unwarranted, could double around the parade ground ten times carrying a fifty pound log above his head, or spend a week filling in full latrines and digging new ones. Offences warranting more serious punishment escalated rapidly - stoppage of pay, double guard duty, flogging, and as a last resort, execution.
During brief rest periods Gaius and his drill instructors began to educate their charges, explaining how the Roman army functioned; getting the men to understand why it was so successful; what their part in it would be and, very importantly, other than their pay what they could expect to get out of it. Which was a pension after twenty five years’ service, free land and slaves to work it if they were prepared to colonise the most recent of Rome’s conquests. Plus, if you were not a Roman citizen, you were granted citizenship.
At this point in their training, the recruits were introduced to camp construction, which took place outside the walls of the fortress. Under the ever present drill instructors and Gaius’ watchful eye, their first task was to observe. A circular arena had been marked out with coloured pegs. Outside the marked arena a cohort of regular troops from the barracks was standing easy. With them were several wagons, their contents sheeted over. The mules that hauled them had been hobbled and turned loose to browse.
“From now on at the end of the day you build a camp, which is a defensive position. As we are in not hostile territory, this requires a considerably less complicated structure – which means less work!” What had really registered with the troops was not the amount of work necessary to achieve the task that lay ahead of them. It was what they would be required to do it at the end of every day, including those days they had forced marched thirty miles!
While Gaius had been addressing the recruits, the regular troops had unloaded a quantity of picks and shovels. After each man had been issued one of each, they were ordered to take up a position within the outer circle marked by white pegs. Gaius ordered them to start digging. Each man was allocated a section of circle six feet in length and six feet wide, which he was required to excavate to a depth of four feet. “The spoil of which”, Gaius growled, “is to be piled up on the inner side of the ditch and stamped down”. Even though they were toughened by months of exercising, marching, and weapons training, the recruits found the digging hard going.
After two hours hard graft, the trench was completed to the centurion’s satisfaction and a thirty minute break called. During the time they had been digging the regular troops had unloaded the supply wagons. The result was a vast quantity of stores stacked in piles, each marked with a different coloured pennant.
“Right, on your feet, listen and learn - or you can fill that bloody trench in and dig another”. Gaius’ words brought the weary recruits to their feet with alacrity. “You now have to construct the camp – your camp – which may well be the thing that ensures your survival.
“You will be split up into teams. Each team will be assisted by three regular troops.
You will obey them in all things or answer to me. Teams will be allotted different tasks. These will take place in an ordered sequence. First, the commander’s tent will be set up in the centre of the camp on the spot marked. All of the commander’s equipment will be placed inside it. Second, all the animals and wagons and stores will also be placed in the centre. Latrines will be dug, a cookhouse established and the hospital wagon made ready.
“Next, the officers’ tents will be placed in an inner ring around the centre. Fourthly, streets have been marked out radiating from the hub of the commander’s tent. Along these streets you pitch your tents in the allocated spaces. Outside each tent you will set up a tripod and every man will place his weapons on it ready to hand. Fifthly, every man will know exactly where he is to go if an alarm is sounded.
“Finally, the optio will establish a sentry roster and set the password for the day. Sentries will be posted immediately. When the camp has been established to my satisfaction, and only then, will work cease and you will be free to take your ease”.
This last brought an ironical cheer from the recruits, who were beginning to have a grudging respect for the man who could march them into the ground, outfight any two of them and never show any sign of fatigue. Meanwhile, an NCO was preparing another phase of their training, the building and working of artillery, plus the setting up and use of ladders and towers to scale obstacles and rams to batter down walls. More sophisticated machines and methods were the province of the legion’s engineering core and the legion’s architects who designed war machines.
All of this weaponry was capable of construction at field level and was prefabricated for easy transportation. Gaius’ men would eventually become expert in the use of a wide variety of these weapons. There were machines called tormenta that catapulted a variety of materials at defenders on the walls. Incendiaries and rocks could be hurled in large quantities with devastating effect. Used in conjunction with the tormenta were the ballistae, powered by two horizontal arms which were stressed with tightly wound ropes of horse hair. The arms were drawn to the rear with a lever to provide the torsion power to hurl a large stone with tremendous force. Often the ballistae was hauled up into a tower and protected by snipers armed with slings or bows.
Similar to the ballistae was the onogar. Because of its size the onogar, which had a frame of solid timber, was used at ground level. A type of catapult, it hurled huge stones, often covered with pitch and set alight before being flung over the walls to destroy buildings.
A weapon used very effectively against defenders manning city walls was the Scorpio, a crossbow like device that fired heavy, metre long arrows with great accuracy and tremendous force.
While the defenders were under attack, battering rams were brought up to hammer the walls. Each was a huge beam, similar in size to the main mast of a large ship. One end of it was capped with iron shaped like a ram’s head. This was suspended from a second beam with cables around its middle, which in turn was supported at both ends by posts fixed into the ground. Drawn back by a team of men, it was then swung with all their power, so that its head hit the wall. This was done repeatedly, day and night, with teams of men ensuring its force never waned. When operating the ram, the whole structure and its operators were encased in a mobile shelter called a tortoise – the testudo - from which the ram would swing out of the shelter, similar to a tortoise’s head appearing from its shell. The frame of the testudo was covered with uncured hides which rendered it fireproof.
Roman infantry, who were to assault the walls as well as having ladders, used siege towers. These came in a variety of sizes and designs, often with different devices attached to them such as artillery, drawbridges and rams. Towers were between fifty and seventy five feet high and often sheeted with metal plate to protect them from fire. Occasionally they would be fitted with leather hosepipes into which water could be pumped.
Walls could also be attacked by mining. Sometimes tunnels would be dug in secret under the walls as a means of entering the city. Alternatively, caves would be dug under the walls’ foundations and underpinned with wood. Inflammable materials were then packed in and fired; all of which was designed to cause their collapse.
Building and maintaining this array of weapons, was an army of auxiliary specialists who were attached to every legion. Highly skilled engineers, they would go ahead of the advancing army, building a road on which the legions advanced.
Late into the night Gaius sat with the optio, drawing up the recruits’ training schedules that would cover every aspect of the transportation, assembly and use of this devastatingly effective weaponry.
What the Centurion Gaius didn’t know was that he and the optio, along with his recruits, would soon see active service in Judaea - to fight a war that would last seven bloody years and change the course of history.
20
Ananus had been ill for days. Nothing the physicians dosed him with could alleviate his diarrhoea. His frequent trips to the latrine had been replaced by a hastily constructed commode. Bowel movements were a scalding pain in his gut. “It is”, he gasped to his doctor, “like a piece of kinked wire being pulled out of my arse every time I shit - which is every few minutes”.
In spite of the shivering and the sweating that accompanied his condition, the High Priest was forced to stay on duty. In the wake of the mayhem that had descended on the Holy City, a power struggle was taking place. Even in his present incapacity, exercising the power of his office as High Priest of all Israel was paramount. Ananus knew that he had to establish some form of government before Eleazar succeeded in having him murdered.
For the moment he was relatively safe in his private quarters deep within the Temple complex. With him, other than his doctor and several Temple police who were there as a bodyguard, was one of the city’s senior prefects, Joseph ben Gorion. “Call an immediate meeting of the Sanhedrin and the city elders”. The stricken Priest paused to expel a gaseous blast that added to the already malodorous stink that pervaded the room. “The agenda for the meeting is to determine a new government to replace the defeated Roman authority. If we don’t establish the rule of law, this city will descend into chaos within the week”.
It said much for the power of his office that, sick or not, within the hour the seventy members of the Sanhedrin had been assembled, along with the rich and influential and the city’s councillors.
They met in the great chamber normally reserved for meetings of the Sanhedrin. Ananus was carried in on his reeking commode. By his side in constant attendance was the chief physician, who by now had wisely acquired several assistants. In the event of a tragedy, the blame could not just be shared but shifted.
Bolstered by a little warmed wine, a haggard Ananus passed the agenda he had scribbled to ben Gioron to read out. In a sombre voice he read, “Let us set aside the wisdom or not of rebelling against Rome. What is done is done and will not easily be undone. If Israel is to survive, if we who hold the land of Israel are to survive, we must not just face the armies Rome will send against us, we have to defeat them. Or parlay a peace. To do this we need not just an army; we need a well-trained, well equipped, well led army. We have none of these things yet.
“We need a central government here in Jerusalem to uphold the law, to administer justice, to run the country and”, there was a pause, “to determine a strategy to wage war, which is not the same thing as deciding the tactics for an individual battle. This army that we raise will have to be fed. That means providing a hundred thousand meals three times a day, every day and a hundred thousand gallons of water every day. Not here in the city, but in the field, in the desert, in the mountains, in the heat, in the cold and the wet. You will need the same again for the pack animals. I could go on with what you will need if you are to avoid dying, let alone winning – but the point I hope is made.
“Before you leave this meeting you have the responsibility of doing at least three things.
Firstly, appoint a supreme commander and deputy to run the g
overnment and the country.
Secondly, you must immediately organise the repair of those city walls which are incomplete.
Thirdly, you must divide the country into regions; I suggest six. This has been done in the past and was successful. Then you must appoint men to govern them. Men who can rise, train and lead a peasant army; these must be generals to match those that Rome will send against you. Finally, the civil war raging in the city must stop. If it doesn’t, it will do the job for the Romans. All they will need to do is pacify the countryside and wait for Jew to kill Jew in the Holy City - which is what is currently happening”.
There was a long silence following this announcement. Before it could be broken, the stricken Ananus was born away.
The Jews in the great hall, after having a collective sigh, already traumatised by the horror of what was happening in the streets, would have gladly gone home there and then but Ananus had anticipated this. The Temple police, armed with clubs, informed them that the doors of the hall would be locked and only reopened when they had reached decisions on who would be the supreme commander, who would be his deputy and who would be the governors of the designated regions. In the meantime refreshments would be served.
It took the remainder of the day and the best part of the night, but come dawn the weary councillors and the Sanhedrin reached a consensus, sending Ananus a list of who would do what. In doing so they gave him the wooden spoon. He was made supreme commander with Joseph Ben Gorion as his deputy. Their first task was to provide Temple funds and raise twenty thousand men to be employed repairing and strengthening the wall against the inevitable siege.
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