by R. W. Peake
That was when the secret enemy first showed up, an enemy that we had been warned about by the veterans, except until we faced it we did not know exactly how vile a foe it is. In reality it is a combination of two different enemies, working together. They are the twins of despair known as boredom and illness. Once the camp is finished for winter and all the resulting tasks are complete, there is not a whole lot for an army to do, despite the Centurions doing their best to find things to keep us busy. Unfortunately, a substantial number of duties that are considered punishment duties, such as the cleaning of latrines, are reserved for Legionaries who fall afoul of the many rules and regulations needed to ensure the smooth running of the Legions. For those of us who stayed out of trouble, as hard is it might have been to do, that did not give us a lot to occupy our time. A good number of us, by virtue of skills we acquired before joining the Legion, had been given the status of immunes; Vibius, for example, worked in the leather factory, making and repairing all the various bits of leather gear, like our harnesses and the tack for the livestock. I had the status of being the weapons instructor after the death of Vinicius, yet there is only so much training one can do in a given day. Therefore, a good number of the men filled their spare time with the pursuit of wine, women and gambling, each man putting the three vices in their own order. Fairly quickly I observed that those pastimes carried their own sets of risks, and more often than not, when a Legionary fell afoul of the regulations, it was a direct result of one or a combination of those three. In our tent section, there were two men who seemed to find themselves on the wrong side of the Pilus Prior’s vitus, or even worse punishment, on a regular basis. One received more official punishment, while the other’s tended to be more unofficial in nature, and more likely than not was at the hands not of the officers, but from his fellow soldiers.
Atilius was a type of soldier that I came to know well during my time in the Legions, and is a fairly common sort in the army, having an extreme fondness for wine and by extension, the joys of revelry and debauchery that tend to come with it. He possessed a talent for finding drink under the most unlikely circumstances and was quick to take advantage of his finds, although I never once saw him drunk when his lack of sobriety meant that it endangered himself, or more importantly one of his tentmates or the Century. However, once the rigors and dangers of a campaign were left behind, Atilius was one of the first over the wall in search of Bacchus. Compounding the problem for Atilius was that he possessed no skill, other than fighting, so he did not have the status of immunes, which would have occupied more of his time. He was the type to start out as a happy drunk, but as the night progressed some evil numen would inhabit his soul, and anyone participating in revels with him was guaranteed to find themselves in some sort of melee, particularly when there were men from another Legion around, or even worse, civilians. For reasons I never discovered, Atilius hated civilians, which was not a real problem when we were tramping about the countryside. But Narbo, for example, was a well-established town by this point, replete with all the hangers-on that can be found in every town in the Empire that has a Legion present. Pimps were a special problem for Atilius, although in the interest of accuracy, it would be more precise to say that Atilius posed a real problem for pimps. Early on during our time in Narbo I made the mistake of accompanying Atilius, Romulus, Remus and Vellusius on a night on the town. I will not go into detail other than to say I found myself shivering in a ditch that I later found out was used exclusively for the drainage of waste, as I attempted to avoid attentions of the provosts and a party of particularly angry associates of a man that Atilius had thrown headfirst through a wall. Now, I liked a good brawl as much, if not more than any man, particularly because I tended to win. However, I could see fairly quickly that my goal of raising myself up from my current status, both in the sense of promotion in the Legion and the even larger one of improving the lot of myself and my descendants, might be permanently damaged if I continued to attend Atilius’ romps. No more than a month had passed at Narbo before Atilius found himself confined to the camp, with a portion of his pay taken, not to mention the thrashing he was given by the Pilus Prior that left him with an especially prominent black eye. However, if any of us hoped that this would serve to warn him off the path he was taking, they were in vain. His second offense happened no more than a week later, when he was caught trying to sneak back into the camp shortly before dawn. Because this was his second offense, the punishment was more severe, and he was given ten lashes, fortunately not with the scourge but the regular lash, and put on latrine detail for a month. This did serve to curtail his activities for a couple of months, and when he finally regained the chance to go back out in town, he was more circumspect, for a while anyway. Regardless, Atilius was destined to never reach above the rank of Gregarius and was not even considered for duty as immunes because of his problems with wine and debauchery.
The other miscreant in our group did not run afoul of the Centurions, his crime being the type that goes unreported and never appears in his permanent record. By this time, gentle reader, it should not surprise you when I reveal the identity of this individual, and I recognize that at this point you may have suspicions that I am being somewhat unfair to the man. I assure you that if anything, I am being kind. Didius loved to gamble, but more than he loved to gamble, he loved to win, and was not one to scruple much over how he did it. His favorite game was dice, and his gravest crime was that he was too stupid and greedy to know that it did not take long for others to suspect that his winning streak might not be attributed to the many sacrifices he supposedly made to Fortuna as he claimed. Yet he did have a certain amount of skill, because for the greater part the most that he aroused was suspicion since nobody could quite catch him in the act of cheating, as it were. Until one day in early spring, when his run of “luck” expired, courtesy of an “accidental” jostling of his person just as he was making a throw, a bumping that caused the extra pair of dice he was hiding in his other hand to fall to the ground, followed down immediately by Didius himself. It was only because Romulus and Remus were there to intercede that he was not beaten to death; there are few crimes considered more heinous to Legionaries than cheating a fellow soldier, in any fashion, at just about anything. The only exception to that are attempts made to get out of any kind of extra duties of some sort; the ability to do so is universally admired by every soldier I have met, until you gain the vitus of course. Even then, I found I held a grudging admiration for the ingenuity that some of the men under my command displayed in their attempts to avoid shoveling manure or some such. And it was due to the fact that, as much as we may have despised Didius ourselves, he was one of our tent section that required Romulus and Remus to come to his rescue. Now one might think that, under the circumstances, a man who found himself rescued under such dire straits would express gratitude to his rescuers, and view himself as forever in their debt. Perhaps the fact that Didius expressed no such gratitude will be an indicator that when I speak of him, I am not judging him too harshly. Not only was Didius ungrateful, to hear him tell it the brothers had stopped Didius from exacting revenge for the unfair accusations made against him by thrashing the half-dozen or so men who had set upon him. The fact that his face was massively swollen, his nose now going in a different direction, with the rest of his body covered in greenish-purple bruises, was a contradiction if one were to listen to his words. Apparently, however, he was simply lulling his antagonists into a false sense of security by allowing them to appear to beat him senseless, and was just about to unleash his master stroke counter-attack when the brothers so rudely interrupted. It took the intercession of Calienus to keep the brothers from finishing the job that the other men had started, with both of them making a solemn oath, swearing on Jupiter’s stone that they would never come to his rescue again, no matter what the circumstances. For my part, I must admit that I took some vindictive pleasure in paying particular attention to some of his sorer spots during our weapons drill, in which he had to
participate because of an awkward situation, at least for him. Didius could not exactly present himself for the sick and injured list, since the circumstances of his condition would prompt a series of questions that he really had no wish to answer. Despite his protestations of innocence in the matter, Didius was at least smart enough to know that on the face of it the evidence was not in his favor, so there was a relatively good chance that there would be some official punishment. Because the penalty for cheating a fellow Legionary at anything is extremely severe; it is not uncommon for men to be sentenced to death for particularly egregious offenses, Didius’ reticence was understandable. Much later in my career there was a case of a Tesseraurius who stole the money of the men he had been charged with banking and the punishment for him was the same as when a unit is decimated, except that nobody had mixed feelings about beating him to death. Therefore, Didius was forced to perform his normal duties, including giving me a chance to beat him senseless with a wooden sword, something I enjoyed immensely.
Every morning, either in winter quarters or in garrison, starts with a formation, where the orders of the day are announced before everyone goes about their business. The winter had passed, the spring had come and gone, and we still performed our normal duties, with no prospects of action. In short, the situation was disgustingly peaceful. We still did our forced marches twice a month so we maintained a certain level of fitness, but to keep Legions honed to a sharp edge for long periods of time is practically impossible. No matter how hard the Centurions tried, those of us stationed at Narbo lost all of the edge that we gained during the campaign in Lusitania. However, one man was prospering; we followed the rise of Caesar’s career with great interest, jumping onto every scrap of news about his fortunes. Other officers came and went but the army, particularly the 10th, thought of themselves as Caesar’s men, even in those days of inaction. Rarely a day went by where his name was not mentioned, a fact that I imagine the other nobles who were assigned to command us at that time did not particularly care to hear.
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.