* * *
Tribune Quintus Cassius Longinus lay in the darkness in indescribable pain. The medicus had been less than comforting and careful with his ministrations. The man had pronounced in a fairly offhand manner that not only would Cassius live, but he may well learn to walk again, though he would never be whole. He would always lurch and limp, dragging the one leg whose knee was irreparable. He would rely upon a crutch his whole life. Luckily the one arm that still worked was the one that would be needed for the crutch. Tremendous comfort.
The medicus had delivered all this information as though reeling off a list of supplies from a tablet. He was a military physician and would have seen this damage and much worse in his time. Soldiers who were crippled in the line of duty could be given missio causaria and be honourably discharged with part or full pension, but those who could not put their pension into a new career because of their wounds would inevitably end up begging on street corners.
That would not happen to Cassius, of course. His family were of ancient patrician blood and had money aplenty. His cousin Gaius was Tribune of the Plebs in Rome, and another cousin, Lucius, held a powerful post. He would never need to work and would be looked after well enough.
Quintus faced a choice. A life of twisted reliance upon others, and likely constant pain was not to be desired, but it would grant him the opportunity of revenge someday. But that would also mean he would be interrogated. He was under no illusions as to Caesar’s willingness to press him for information, and he had plenty to give. No. He would go like a Roman and take his information to the grave. Caesar would be angry and would blame Fronto. And Gaius Cassius would blame Casear and Fronto. Revenge would come one day, he knew. His cousin, the man who had survived Carrhae – the battle that killed Crassus, would make Fronto and Caesar pay one day.
With no small amount of agony, he bent the elbow of his left arm and removed the two items he had carefully purloined over the days of his treatment. The coin he pushed between the jagged shards of his ruined teeth, sliding it under his tongue. With difficulty, as long moments passed, he manoeuvred the doctor’s blade. It was not long – slightly longer than his index finger – but it was the best he’d been able to shuffle aside without being seen. The blade was lifted with the damaged arm, the other too broken to even move. He positioned it, feeling the tip scraping the skin where it dipped between the two ribs.
A defeated officer fell on his sword. It was the way.
Quintus Cassius Longinus rolled off the pallet and expired with a cruel but satisfied smile.
THE END
Historical Note
49 BC, the first year of Caesar’s account of the Civil War, is a tough proposition for a Roman military novel. It is the biggest year of non-battles and non-sieges to be found in his accounts. Almost everything in this year was resolved with diplomacy and negotiation, despite a little to-ing and fro-ing of the legions to achieve it. Despite the constant threat of mass battle and dreadful sieges, there is surprisingly little bloodshed.
Caesar crosses the Rubicon (we all know that moment), and embarks upon a campaign across Italy in which almost every town falls without a fight. Sometimes, just to build up the tension for a non-event, Caesar describes for us days or weeks of constructing siege works and cutting off forage before the town simply surrenders and everyone moves on. Oh, and for the record I have gone with the phrase ‘Let the die be cast’ which is historically and linguistically far more accurate than the more common phrase bandied about.
Massilia is no different to the Italian non-sieges. It was the focus for a sizeable part of Caesar’s army for most of the year but, when it all comes down to it, there was surprisingly little bloodshed once again. In the end the city surrendered and Caesar was lenient as usual – ever the damned politician, eh? Some of the most interesting and ingenious siege works ever created – no one knows whose idea they were, but Mamurra seems the likely culprit – and nothing much ever comes of them but their being burned by the enemy. The one real shining glory of Massilia, and I would say the one thing that stands out for me having written this book, is the victories of Brutus at sea (I’ll come back briefly to those shortly.)
Then Ilerda… which I count among my least favourite battles to read, to be honest. It spans many weeks and involves a great deal of manoeuvring and minor disasters, but there is only really one big fight, for the middle hill top, and that is far from conclusive. Yet again, that huge campaign ended with negotiation. For the Romans these non-martial conclusions were all good, of course, and I hope to have got something of that over in the story. No Roman really wants to see fields of Roman dead. But from the point of view of a man writing a military novel, it is somewhat frustrating when every fight becomes an argument and then a handshake and everyone goes home to eat beans and talk about the old days.
Still, there is action to be found on smaller scales, and it was nice to put Fronto back in control, even if age is beginning to make him take a slightly less active role. And the chance to portray old friends was good, too.
I think you know most of the main characters. Ahenobarbus is new, but is a true historical character, as are Petreius and Afranius. Letting them all go free was probably not Caesar’s wisest decision, for you’ve not seen the last of any of them. Salvius Cursor is my own invention, and I enjoyed writing him. The world of literature needs fewer goodies and baddies, and a lot more interesting grey characters, I feel. The bad guy, the unnamed Pompeian tribune, was also my own creation, and he was a later addition to the plot who became all the more central when it became clear that nearly everyone involved was neither hero nor villain.
I made a number of notes as I wrote which I wanted to address here, but several of them are pretty much the same thing, so I will give a blanket nod in their direction. More than once I took a series of passages, in Caesar’s own version of the tale, and compressed them. There was an exchange of letters with Cicero, for instance. Brundisium dragged out for some time. The cavalry campaigns across the Sicoris went on interminably. But these are stretches of the same thing going on for many days, and would be rather tedious to read, so I took the liberty of editing them out.
Toward the start, when Caesar sends his men south in secret from Ravenna, Plutarch has them move under a man called Hortensius. I have unashamedly replaced him with Salvius Cursor. Mea Culpa. And I am unrepentant. In Ilerda, when there are so many conflicting calls within the enemy camp, I have extrapolated the division in command from a few small comments into something more major. There does, to my mind, have to be more to it than a series of arguments, else those two officers, who were both eminently qualified veterans, would have made Caesar fight for control of Hispania much harder.
I have given my own slant on the bridges and ford at Ilerda. There is plenty of description of these events in the sources, but precious little explanation. I have tried to take the descriptions of Ilerda’s bridges and ford and make them make sense in terms of both strategy and topography. There is no physical evidence remaining of any of them. I have also shuffled the distances involved here and there between bridges and camps to make sense of a bewildering array of largely uninteresting information. Once more I hold up my hands. Mea Culpa. Better to write an interesting novel that includes much fact than a blow by blow account of the war that includes a yawn a minute. And I have never knowingly changed history beyond shuffling a few days or a few miles to make things more sensible.
In fact, when it comes to Ilerda, reading Caesar’s account, there is little clear reason for much of what he does. It is, as I said before, somewhat bewildering. It all looks reasonable until you try and reconstruct the great man’s words in the face of geography, at which point I teat out what little hair I have. This, to my mind, suggests that much or all of this source material was probably not written by Caesar but by one of his close colleagues – possibly Hirtius, who likely wrote the last book of the Gallic Wars. Caesar in his Gallic Wars tends to be much more revealing. The burning of the Ilerda granary is
my own addition to the tale to add a little motivation to what follows. Again, I am unrepentant. I write novels, not textbooks.
I moved the second naval battle of Massilia by a few days in order not to ruin the flow of the story. In truth, the battle actually happened before the capitulation of the forces at Ilerda, but it fit the story much better to move it a couple of days and made no great historical difference. Oh, and I moved the centre of action for Brutus’ second victory from the town of Tauroentum to somewhere closer to Massilia on the way because the idea of describing a forty mile sea chase before the battle makes me yawn, so there’s not much hope for the reader. Similarly, Ahenobarbus had seemingly fled Massilia just before Caesar arrived (though the storm winds did happen and the two ships did turn back to port.) But I felt it would be robbing the reader of a satisfactory conclusion if the man had just gone without it being part of the tale.
For reference, at the siege of Massilia, the burning of the siege works is put forth by Caesar as the enemy being devious and untrustworthy and breaking the truce. Interestingly (and the basis for my attack at the tower with Salvius) Cassius Dio tells a different tale, making their attack a response to a push by the Caesarian forces. I liked this idea and went with it.
There is a wealth of scholarly material to peruse over this year, and all of Caesar’s life. As always, I primarily used Caesar’s campaign records, with additional comedy material by Plutarch and Cassius Dio. But there are more modern writings that deserve a mention. Adrian Goldsworthy. Pat Southern and Tom Holland form a core to my understanding, while Leonard Curchin’s book on Roman Spain and, perhaps surprisingly, the Les Voyages d’Alix book on Massalia/Massilia aided my understanding of the regions and towns involved. There are many others, of course, but these are the core.
I would like to take a moment to thank in particular the wonderful Jona Lendering who maintains Livius.org. Jona solved a problem I had with the timing and dates of the campaign and pointed me in the direction of further material.
Finally, before I sign off and consider moving to the 2nd century AD to pick up the story of young Rufinus in Praetorian 3, I would like to note that Fronto will be back in Marius’ Mules XI next year. I am always faintly surprised when I read a review of the latest Marius’ Mules book to see so many people being sad that the series has ended. It hasn’t. I suspect when I conclude the series on book 15, people will review and tell me how much they’re looking forward to the next one.
Heh heh heh.
Until then, Vale, my friends.
Simon Turney
23rd May 2017.
If you enjoyed Marius’ Mules X, please do leave a review online, and also checkout another great book that was also released this month:
Legionary: Empire of Shades
By Gordon Doherty
379 AD: Thracia has fallen to the Gothic horde… With the ashes of Adrianople still swirling in the air, the Eastern Roman Empire is in turmoil. The emperor is dead, the throne lies empty and the remaining fragments of the army are few and scattered. Numerius Vitellius Pavo, now Tribunus of the XI Claudia, tries to hold his patchwork ranks together amid the storm. One of the few legions to have survived the disaster at Adrianople, the Claudia do what they can to keep alive the dying flame of hope. When word spreads of a new Eastern Emperor, those hopes rise. But the coming of this leader will stir the Gothic War to new heights. And it will cast Pavo headlong into the sights of the one responsible for the East’s plight – a man mighty and seemingly untouchable, and one who will surely crush any who dares to challenge him. From the ashes of Adrianople, new heroes will rise… with dark ghosts in close pursuit.
Table of Contents
Marius’ Mules X
Also by S. J. A. Turney:
Maps
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Legionary: Empire of Shades
Table of Contents
Marius’ Mules X
Also by S. J. A. Turney:
Maps
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Legionary: Empire of Shades
FIELDS OF MARS Page 48