“Ala commanders are always Romans. I know him well.”
“Good. Whom will you select to go?”
“Me. I always trust myself best.”
“Take the First Cohort with you.”
“Three centuries should be enough.” He stood up. “One of my centurions has a broken foot and another has some kind of bowel sickness. Another just retired and hasn’t been replaced yet. I’ll leave their centuries here.”
“Very well. Prepare for your trip.”
Carbo was almost at the door when Sabinus called after him.
“Commander?” he asked, turning.
“I need you, Carbo. Stay healthy.”
His huge face split in a grin. “Commander, I plan to die healthy.”
After a full hour with Trogus, Sabinus was still perplexed. He had assumed the man was a Romanized German, but that did not really seem appropriate garb to hang on him. Nonetheless, one could not maintain that he was a coarse-mouthed barbarian. He was too cultivated to be a forest-prowling Suebi, but too—too something—to be just another eager aspirant to Roman citizenship.
The two men, dressed in white tunics, reclined on couches in Sabinus’s living quarters and dined on smoked fish. Sabinus had decided to meet with Trogus here in the casual atmosphere of the Praetorium in the hope of reading his man more accurately. It had been a vain hope.
Sabinus gestured to one of the slaves, and he refilled the bronze goblets with the straw-colored wine from Latium that Sabinus favored.
“So you’re convinced that this Barovistus is determined on war?” Sabinus said.
“He hungers for these plump green fields.” Trogus set down his cup. “You must understand that the Suebi are bred to war. If Gaul were a desert, they would want that, too.”
There was a hint of pride in Trogus’s half-smile that Sabinus did not like.
“You are Suebi. Why are you different?”
Trogus vented a laugh that was unreadable. “I was meant for nobler efforts than spilling my entrails in a war for Gallic dirt.”
“How many men do you think he can gather to him?”
“I’d estimate he can have at his command—within a month—two thousand warriors.”
“That’s less than five cohorts.”
“Don’t be so relieved,” Trogus said with that annoying half-smile. “Two thousand armed Suebi cannot be judged in Roman terms.”
“Then how should I judge them?”
Trogus shrugged but said nothing.
“Are all of them battle-hardened fighters?”
“Oh no. Many are surely young and untested. But isn’t that true of your men as well?”
Sabinus eased back down and draped his arm over the end cushion on the couch. “Would you be willing to return to the other side of the river to verify all this?”
“Certainly. As long as the gratitude of Caesar continues to be spoken in Roman gold.”
25 THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY APPEAR TO BE.
Phaedrus
______
I am amazed that there is not more petty squabbling among the soldiers. Opportunities for amusement are rare out here and boredom is an insidious instigator. True, discipline is severe. One day on the way in from a route march, I saw a soldier leaning forward against one of the training stakes and being savagely caned by his centurion. I was told he had lost his dagger in a game of dice. Nonetheless, the threat of the vinewood is not enough. Self-discipline must also restrain the unruly nature of man.
I hear there are forts with small arenas for gladiatorial combats or wild beast fights, but we have none. Off duty soldiers spend most of their leisure time sleeping or gambling with their tentmates. We have horse races on the parade ground, and they are well attended. Wrestling matches are the favorite forms of competition. I cannot imagine more enthusiastic spectators than these.
Official festivals are an important part of everyone’s relaxation here, as well as an opportunity for moderate revelry. Augustus’s birthday and the anniversary of the founding of the legion are two of the most notable. There is also the Rosaliae Signorum, as deeply felt a religious festival as I have ever attended. This feast is for the purpose of venerating the standards. The golden legionary eagle and the silver capricorn of the Twenty-fifth Legion, as well as the standard of each individual cohort, are set up together outdoors by the senior signifers, and the entire garrison is mustered before them. After words by the commander, the standards are anointed with holy oil and adorned with woven crowns of roses, and public thanksgiving is made. One might not think of soldiers as religious men, but the cult of the standards means more to them than any soft-bellied civilian could ever imagine. They are kept, along with a statue of Augustus, in a shrine in the Principia next to Sabinus’s office. Beneath the shrine is the strongroom housing the legionary treasury. Guards are posted at the shrine all day and all night, and this is not just to make sure the money is safe. The veneration of the standards binds these soldiers to each other with a tie of iron.
Occasionally we are entertained with plays—of a sort—by troupes of traveling mimes and what are rather broadly referred to as “actresses”. Actually, these well-rouged nymphs can swiftly drain a man’s testicles and his purse with equally wondrous facility.
And, of course, there are the brothels. The number of prostitutes living in the civil settlement could capsize a bireme. Never in my life have I seen so many doubtful maidens in so small an area at one time. There seems to be at least one prostitute for every strand of pubic hair of every soldier in the legion. Naturally, the men make good use of them, a fact about which only a Stoic with a dead branch would complain. Yet I sometimes think that if any of these cohorts should give way before the charge of an enemy, it will not be because of a lack of training or a failure of discipline. It will be a collapse brought on by simple copulatory exhaustion.
Diocles silently thanked Rufio for all those rank hours spent shoveling out the stables. The shield he was expected to wield must have weighed about fifteen pounds. Just a few months earlier he never would have been able to manage it.
A damp breeze was blowing down from the north when the recruits assembled on the parade ground. The sky was darkening, but Diocles could not imagine anything as trivial as weather having any effect on Rufio.
Diocles rested his shield on the ground in front of him. It was curved and stood slightly over three feet high. The edges had an oval contour, but the shield was squared off at the top and bottom. Because of the curvature, Diocles suspected it was not a solid slab, but several thinner layers of strip wood glued and laminated together. The shield was covered with calfskin, and a bronze rim reinforced the entire edge. The number of the cohort and century had been scratched inside the top rim. A spindle-shaped iron boss was nailed to the center. The leather covering was dyed bright blue. Two painted pairs of large white wings flanked the iron boss. Shooting out from the center toward the four corners were four lightning bolts.
Thunder threatened in the distance as Rufio directed every man to take a sword from the cart. Diocles knew enough about the customs of other peoples to be intrigued by the Roman attitude toward weaponry. Coolly professional, the Romans had no hoary legends or pious rituals on the subject. If the Spanish produce a superior blade, adopt it. What matter where it comes from? The Roman’s weapon matched his outlook on life, which is to say it cut very deep indeed.
The swords distributed now were not in the best condition. Their edges were gouged from much use, and an occasional rust pit showed here and there.
“I want every man to work at the stakes just as he did with the wooden swords,” Rufio said. “Work at your own pace. Don’t disappoint me. Show me what you’ve learned.”
The young soldiers attacked with confidence. Iron bosses slammed home hard, and swordpoints thrust at the wooden torsos. They thrust and circled and thrust once more. Again and again they sought to achieve maximum effect with minimum effort. “Battles can last for hours,” Rufio had drilled into them. �
�Squander your strength and you squander your life.”
Rain began to pelt the young warriors, but Rufio gave no order to halt. He stood in the thickening mud with folded arms and got as wet as everyone else. Soon the parade ground was as slick as grease. Some men fell as they lunged. They pulled themselves from the sucking mire and attacked again.
The storm worsened and the spring rain soon had everyone shivering. As all knew, the immense forehall of the Principia was designed to be used for training in foul weather, but Rufio seemed to have forgotten that. So the mock battle continued, accompanied now by grumbling that several men did not care to keep to a whisper.
Some of the soldiers’ lips were turning blue from the chill when Rufio said, “I believe I hear a murmur of complaint.”
The men paused in their miniature war.
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” he went on above the pounding rain. “We can return to the fort and drill indoors—if one of you can promise me the Germans will attack us only at noon in June in sunshine.” He placed his hands on his hips and waited.
The shivering men could only stare at him in silence.
“Fight!” he shouted in an angry guttural.
They wheeled on their wooden enemies and savaged them.
The harsh contact with the stake felt good to Diocles, especially when he pretended it was Rufio.
After another half-hour of this ordeal, the centurion barked an order for them to stop.
“I want those weapons cleaned and dried. I want to see no rust. Then one last order—everyone is to go to the baths and cook himself until he’s crisp.”
The men looked at one another and smiled.
“Well done,” Rufio said with satisfaction.
He turned and led them back, slicing through the mud and rain as if he did not feel either.
Perhaps, thought Diocles, he really did not.
Among the centurion’s cluster of rooms at one end of the barracks was a room set aside for the signifer, where he could tend the century accounts. Rufio had decorated it with tapestries and rugs he had brought from the East. A desk squatted at the far end. Its front had been adorned by some ingenious craftsman with a relief of Herakles slaying the Nemean lion. Racks overflowing with rolled documents lined the two walls flanking the desk.
For the past several weeks, most of the talk in the barracks had been about money. Now the thrice-yearly payday had come and Metellus was awash in paperwork.
“I’m the only one who can compete with their preoccupation with fornication,” Metellus said to Diocles, and he unlocked the ironbound money chest on the floor next to the desk. “Only the veterans get paid today. The new men aren’t entitled to a stipendium until they take the sacramental oath when their training is done.”
“But don’t they need money, too?”
“They were given seventy-five denarii in traveling money when they enlisted. More than enough to hold them over.” He placed a bag of silver in front of him and organized the documents on the desk. “First tent group!” he shouted, and eight veterans hurried through the doorway.
They joked and jostled one another and commented on each other’s ugliness and on how much silver it would take to find a willing Gallic bedmate.
“See what I mean?” Metellus said to Diocles. “Italians and lust—a matched set.”
Diocles smiled but was careful not to laugh aloud.
“Remember, Salvius,” Metellus said to the burly soldier before him. “This has to last until September. Spend it with care.”
“Yes, Metellus,” he said with fake seriousness. “With a good officer like you, we need no mother.”
“Get out of here, you rank stag.”
Diocles looked down at the papyrus sheet. Beneath the name of Lucius Salvius was a column listing bedding, rations, boots, arms, and Saturnalian feast, with corresponding figures for some of them, no amounts for others. There was even an entry for “burial club”. Perhaps, Diocles thought, a man fought with greater valor if he knew he would be taken care of if he fell for Rome. Toward the bottom, the expenses were totaled. Underneath were notations of the remainder on deposit, the previous balance carried over, and the total present balance.
“I don’t understand,” Diocles said. “Why didn’t you give him all he’s entitled to?”
Metellus gestured the next soldier forward as he spoke.
“Out of his seventy-five denarii, I hold on to sixty-two against future expenses and as a forced savings. That way these stoats cannot squander their money on mindless debauches. Isn’t that right, Primus?”
“Oh yes, Metellus,” answered the scarfaced soldier now standing before him. “And we love you for it.”
“When they come to retire, they’ll thank their officers for their foresight,” Metellus said to Diocles. “Now, they’d prefer to piss in my ear.”
After the entire century had been paid, Metellus spent time going over all the accounts once more.
“I was taught mathematics by a Greek. I take pride in never making a mistake in these matters.”
As Metellus was finishing, Rufio walked in. He seemed distracted and distant.
“I want all the recruits advanced twenty denarii,” he said and threw a large bronze key onto the desk
He turned and left as quickly as he had come.
Metellus stared after him for some time.
“What is it?” Diocles asked.
“Herennius would never have thought to do that. Rufio may be a centurion, but he remembers what it’s like to be a recruit. How miserable you feel when you see the other men get paid. How you feel like only half a soldier. He knows the recruits couldn’t have spent their traveling money yet. And he also knows that’s not the point.”
Diocles picked up the key. Scratched on one side was Q FLA RUF.
“That’s the key to his personal strongbox,” Metellus said. “In the floor of his living quarters.”
“It’s his money, then?”
“Yes. How could anyone claim this century is cursed? I say we were all born under very good birds indeed.”
The spring storm had fled as quickly as it had arrived. Varacinda sat on the damp grass near the swimming cove and brushed up some small white flowers that had been flattened by the rain. The glare of the sun off the beads of water on the grass was as cutting as the edge of a knife, and she squinted and looked away.
Flavia placed a hand on her shoulder and sat down next to her.
“You seem troubled today,” Flavia said with a voice that could have soothed a torrent.
Varacinda looked at her with the fear and helplessness of a small child who has somehow lost her clothes and has no idea where she put them.
“What’s wrong?” Flavia asked.
“I feel so bad,” she answered with guilty eyes.
“Tell me why.”
“Last night . . . last night I dreamed of a Roman. We did things in my dream—intimate things—and I loved it so.”
The younger woman stared at the older one with bafflement. “What does it matter?”
Varacinda sank her teeth into her lower lip and looked away.
“What does it matter?” Flavia persisted, placing her hands on Varacinda’s forearms.
“Because I’m awake now,” she whispered. “And every time I think of that dream I grow wet inside.”
Flavia laughed with that wonderfully musical laugh of hers.
“Stop it!” Varacinda shouted as she glared at her in a flash of anger.
“Oh Vara,” she said, still laughing and wrapping her arms around the other woman’s shoulders. “I’ve had dreams like that, too.”
“But not about this man.”
“How can you know that?”
Varacinda stared at her.
“We’re not stone, Vara. We’re women. And as much as men may drive us mad, there are some who can also drive us wild. So what does it matter that we dream of them?”
“But I’m married. I love Adiatorix more than my life.”
&n
bsp; Flavia took her right hand and leaned forward until she was just a few inches from her face. “Adiatorix is a great chief and a noble warrior and a loyal husband”—Flavia squeezed her hand tenderly and whispered—“but he’s not entitled to the secrets of your dreams.”
“Oh Flavia, I love you so very much.”
Flavia’s blue eyes smiled her love in return.
Varacinda shook her head in wonder. “I wish I could be like you.”
Flavia’s dark brows knotted in puzzlement.
“You take everything so easily,” Varacinda said. “All of life’s passions and troubles. You’re very much like your name, you know—more like a Roman than a Sequani.”
Flavia placed the palm of her right hand against Varacinda’s face and pushed her back onto the grass. And then they both laughed together like children.
26 AMID ARMS THE LAWS ARE SILENT
Cicero
______
Rufio had slept just a single hour. His breakfast had tasted like leather and mud. Every sound annoyed him this morning, and the skin on his arms felt itchy and tight.
He reined about and stared down from the low rise. His century stretched out on the stone road below. That soothed him. Still six short of a full century, but they would do. Seventy-four men in full armor, gear-heavy cross poles held in one hand and extended over a shoulder, two pila in the other hand and resting on the opposite shoulder. Covered shield hanging down the back. Twelve pack mules laden with equipment and provisions. Metellus riding at the head with that relaxed competence he wore so well.
The rising sun brightened their off-white tunics and lit up the bronze helmets. The shattered century of Herennius was a dying memory. Yet there was still much for them to learn. And there was little time.
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