SPQR VI: Nobody Loves a Centurion

by John Maddox Roberts

  I heard a hiss beside me and Lovernius muttered: “I thought so! Those Helvetii aren’t migrating because they have itchy feet. They are being pushed! These Germans have told them to clear out or be exterminated.”

  Caesar leaned forward in his proconsul’s folding chair, his arms relaxed along its elaborately carved arms. “Honored envoy, I am not pleased by this news. Rome is not pleased. Rome has two policies which are not to be flouted and which I am here to enforce: the tribes of Gaul are to stay within the borders of their own ancestral territories; and the Germans are not to cross to the west bank of the Rhine.”

  “Caesar, we are already west of the river, and have been for years, and intend to stay.” For all his barbaric aspect, Eintzius spoke with the effortless authority of an envoy of the Senate ordering some Oriental despot to cease and desist from whatever activity displeased Rome. Between him and Caesar I sensed a collision of two implacable forces. Suddenly, the Helvetii did not seem to be such a threat. I could almost pity them, caught between the millstones of Rome and Germania.

  “That I will deal with when the matter of the Helvetii has been settled,” Caesar said.

  The other German stood. “Go fetch more men. What you have here will not provide a morning’s amusement for us.” For a skin-clad savage, Eramanzius was unbelievably arrogant. Of course, it helped that he was close to seven feet tall. People that tall tend to assume far more importance than they actually possess.

  Nonetheless, both of them were intimidating in the extreme, in a way that the colorful Gauls were not. Partly, it was their outlandish habit of wearing furs. Gauls, and Romans visiting cold climates, sometimes wear fur inside their clothing, for warmth. But Germans wear it on the outside, as if they were trying to imitate the appearance of their totem animals. Among civilized people this is done only for purposes of ritual, as with the leopard-skin capes of Egyptian priests and Greek Bacchantes, or the lion, bear, and wolfskin worn by legionary standard-bearers. It is unsettling in the extreme to see people wear animal skins as their everyday attire.

  Caesar regarded the man coldly. “Do not provoke me. There is no power on earth like Rome. From the soil of Italy the legions rise up like grain after the spring rains. If you truly wish it, we will provide you with entertainment up to your highest expectations, although we must forego the pleasure of hearing your applause afterward.”

  These were fierce words for a man with a single legion and some auxiliaries, but Romans love to hear that sort of talk. Even knowing the reality of the situation, I felt a jolt of good old-fashioned Roman steel stiffening my somewhat nervous backbone.

  Nammeius stood, and with him stood the Gallic contingent. “We have accomplished all that words may accomplish, and it has been nothing. Henceforth, we shall speak with arms.”

  The Gauls and the Germans swept out. Last of all went the Druids, who had not spoken a single word. Caesar glared angrily after them, but I saw that his most malevolent expression was not directed at the chieftains. It was reserved for the Druids. When they were gone, he addressed the officers.

  “Gentlemen, from now on we may expect serious hostilities. However, work on the rampart is now complete and we are receiving daily reinforcements of troops levied from the Provincials. These will man the strongpoints along the rampart. The legionary guard is to be doubled. Go now and rejoin your units and prepare for action.”

  I got up to leave with Lovernius, but Caesar beckoned me.

  “Decius Caecilius, attend me.”

  I waited while the other officers left. Titus Vinius favored me with an ugly smile as he walked out with his even uglier slave. Caesar went into his tent and I joined him there. It was divided into two sections, the smaller being Caesar’s sleeping quarters, the larger containing a long table for staff conferences when weather should preclude holding them outdoors. A silver pitcher stood in the middle of a platter with cups and at Caesar’s gesture I poured for us. It was first-rate Falernian. Caesar wasn’t denying himself all of the pleasures of life while on active service.

  “Word has come to me of your little run-in with Titus Vinius,” he said without preamble.

  I had been expecting it. “A legion is like a small village. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “In this Province there is only my business,” he said. “You are not to interfere with my centurions in the performance of their duties.”

  “Duties! Caesar, the brute was flogging a boy, a client of mine, for no reason whatever. I could not permit it.”

  “That was no boy, nor is he your client. He is a Roman soldier, bound by his oath of service like every other legionary. When he returns to civilian life in some twenty years, he will become your client again. In the meantime, he is under the authority of his centurion, unless he attains the centurionate himself and gets to flog his own subordinates. I’ll not have Vinius provoked. He is my most valuable soldier.”

  “He is an oversensitive man, where his property is concerned.”

  Caesar smiled faintly. “Ah, you’ve met our Freda, I take it. A stunning creature, is she not?”

  “She is that. Why do you permit him to keep her in camp? He is so jealous he needs his own personal executioner to follow her around and behead gawkers.”

  “I permit my centurions a certain latitude, including a small number of personal slaves, even mistresses.”

  “Every general does, but in barracks and winter quarters, not in a marching camp.”

  “When we march, they walk with the baggage train. If they can’t keep up, they are abandoned. Not that there is much danger of that happening with Freda. I suspect she can outrun a racehorse.” He waved a hand to dismiss the subject. “I did not call you here to justify my policies, Decius. I have duties for you. I mentioned when you arrived that you would have more work here in the praetorium than with your ala.”

  “Whatever you command,” I said, always alert for a nice, cushy staff job while other people were out slogging through the mud, getting things stuck in them. Heroes belong in poems and old myths, not in the boots of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.

  “Soon I will be leaving for Italy by the most direct route, over the mountains. Labienus will be in charge during my absence. My fine, ringing defiance of the barbarians will prove most hollow without the legions to back them up. I am going to find them and drag them up here by the nose if I have to.”

  “A couple more legions would be a comforting presence,” I agreed.

  “While I am away, I want you to organize my dispatches to the Senate. I intend to provide a detailed history of the campaign for the Conscript Fathers, as Cicero likes to call them, and you are the only man here with the education to be of assistance. Also, I know that you detest the Asiatic style of rhetoric as much as I do, so you won’t be tempted to throw in a lot of nymphs and obscure Paphlagonian deities and salacious affairs of Zeus.”

  So I was to be a glorified secretary. No argument there. At least I would be under a roof when it rained. “You speak as if it will be a long campaign.”

  “Why do you think I wanted five years to finish it? The Helvetii were already on the move when I reached Gaul. Now the Germans are involved. Before I am done, I may have to subdue Gaul all the way from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. I may have to go all the way to Britannia.”

  I almost choked on my Falernian. “That is a large chunk of territory to take on. Not to mention a large population of extremely warlike barbarians.”

  He shrugged. “Alexander used to take as much territory in a year.”

  There it was: Alexander again. I wished the little Macedonian bastard was alive so I could kill him all over again. Just one such maniac in all of history and he inspired fools forever after. Well, Macedonia is part of the Roman Empire now, which ought to teach people something.

  “Gauls aren’t Persians.”

  “No, and I thank Jupiter for it. I doubt that Persians would ever make good citizens.”

  It was as if he had abruptly switched to a langu
age with which I was not conversant. “I don’t believe I follow you, Caesar.”

  He fixed me with that intense, lawyer’s gaze. “Rome needs new blood, Decius. We are no longer the people we were in the days of Scipio and Fabius. Once, we could raise ten strong legions from the regions within two or three days’ march around Rome. Now we have to scour all of Italy to make up three or four good legions. In a generation or two we may not even have that. Where, then, will we find our soldiers? Greece? That is absurd. Syria; Egypt? The idea is laughable.”

  What he said was not totally unreasonable. “If we could just clear the multitude of foreign slaves out of Italy and put natives back to work on Italian soil, we would not have this problem,” I asserted.

  He shook his head. “Now you sound like Cato. No man can undo history. We must seize the moment and bend the present to our will. You have served in Spain. What is your impression of the Iberians?”

  “Wild and primitive, but they make first-rate soldiers.”

  “Exactly. And many of them are Gauls of a sort. I think these people of the Gallic heartland can be civilized. If they can be made to give up their seminomadic habits, settle down and stop fighting one another, and acknowledge the mastery of Rome, they could contribute immeasurably to our strength and prosperity.”

  This was radical thinking. To conquer barbarians was one thing: everyone approved of that. But make citizens of them?

  “They can’t even make good wine, although I admit their racehorses and charioteers are as good as any bred in Rome.”

  “I knew I could depend on you to have a firm grasp of the essentials.”

  “But, Caesar, not so long ago we fought a bloody war over the right of Italian communities to hold the franchise! Those were our cousins, most of them Latins or at least Oscans who shared most of our customs and traditions. If it took a war to give those people full citizenship, what would it take to convince Romans that Gauls deserve the honor?”

  “Good sense, I would hope,” he said impatiently. “That, and fear of the Germans.” He had a point there. “You know as well as I do that they are not howling savages, they just look and sound like it. They are marvelous artificers and halfway decent farmers. They even have rather attractive architecture, although they don’t build in stone. But they are politically primitive, still in the tribal stage, feuding endlessly with one another.”

  “And they have no writing,” I pointed out.

  “No, they do not. What they have instead is Druids.”

  “I fail to make the connection.”

  “How powerful would a priesthood be if it had a monopoly on literacy, Decius? Think about it. I know that you are not as dense as you pretend.”

  It was flattery of a sort. “You mean like the Egyptians before they learned Greek writing?”

  “Something like that. But imagine a society in which only the priests could read and write while even the nobles and the kings were illiterate. The Druids have a position almost like that.”

  “Lovernius told me they were repositories of law and tradition as well as intermediaries between the Gauls and their gods.”

  “Exactly. And as such they are arbiters on all matters of contention between the petty kings and chieftains, not that they stop much of the fighting. They wield great influence where the Gauls must cooperate to deal with a non-Gallic people such as the Germans. Or Rome. There are twenty or more major Gallic nations and a hundred petty chieftains and their tribes, with no unity among them. But there is a single cult of Druids from the Pyrenees to Britannia all the way to Galatia. They are the sole unifying force among the Gauls. If I am to subdue the Gauls, I may first have to break the power of the Druids.”

  Well, I held no brief for the Druids. Hereditary priests have always struck me as a parasitical lot. Our forefathers showed great foresight in making the priesthoods a part of political office.

  “Good riddance to them, then,” I said.

  Caesar sat and leaned forward. “And, Decius, they are not just bards and lawgivers. Their religion is a dark and bloody one. Their great festivals involve human sacrifice. In their groves they erect great effigies of men and beasts made of wicker. At important rituals these are filled with men and women and animals and set afire. The screams are said to be appalling.”

  I felt the thrill of horror that we usually feel when the subject of human sacrifice is mentioned. Of course, the Gauls would have to exert themselves to come up with human sacrifices as horrifying as those of our old, implacable enemies, the Carthaginians. But these wicker immolations would certainly suffice to characterize the Gauls as savages. Our own very rare human sacrifices were always carried out with great dignity and solemnity, and we used only condemned criminals for the purpose.

  “Your plans do not lack grandeur,” I admitted. “But then, ambitious men predominate in Rome just now, not safe, conservative plodders like my own family.”

  “Nonetheless, I would welcome the support of the Caecilians.” This was the Caesar I knew; the Forum politician who was so adept at building a coalition to back his schemes.

  “You are talking to the wrong one. I am by far the least of my family. Nobody listens to me.”

  He smiled. “Decius, why must you always behave like a dutiful boy? The great men of your family are getting old and soon will step down from public life. By the time you hold the praetorship, you will be high in the family councils. Bonds forged in the field are lasting, Decius.”

  It was a fine sentiment but not altogether true. Old soldiers cherished a certain good fellowship, but only as long as their ambitions did not clash. Marius and Sulla and Pompey had all been great comrades-in-arms in many campaigns. Until they vied for power, at which time they became deadly enemies.

  4

  THE NEXT DAY I BEGAN MY TEDIUS work in the praetorium while Lovernius and the rest of my ala conducted their patrols and sweeps and escort duties. Most of these duties were performed by the regular auxiliary cavalry, of which we were acquiring a prodigious number. Caesar wanted an immense cavalry force for this campaign and was most insistent that the province provide every able-bodied man and beast for this service. We Romans have always been rather contemptuous of cavalry, but the more horsemen you have, the more Gauls respect you.

  At least my duties kept me safe. As safe as one may be in a tiny legionary camp in the wilderness surrounded by overwhelming multitudes of howling barbarians. They were not yet ready to mount a concentrated offensive against us, but that was only a matter of time. In the meantime, it was certain that their nocturnal assaults would grow in frequency and boldness. Everyone’s principal worry was that they might call upon German reinforcements to help them drive us from their path.

  In obedience to Caesar’s orders, I had to wear my armor and keep my weapons handy even when engaged on clerkly tasks. To make things worse, he forbade any drinking during the day. I thought this was carrying things a bit far, but I knew better than to protest.

  Before settling down to my papyrus, pens, and ink, I found one of the legion’s sword instructors and arranged for him to teach Hermes the rudiments. Like most such men he was an ex-gladiator and the fact that he had lived to retire proved his proficiency with weapons. The scar-faced brute immediately set the boy to thrusting at a six-foot stake like any other tyro on his first day in the lndus. I knew that within minutes he would feel as if his arm was ready to fall off; but the instructor would not be satisfied until he could keep it up all day, and hit a spot the size of a silver denarius every time. He was already starting to sweat when I left for the praetorium.

  From all around I heard the bawling of the centurions and their optios as they drilled their soldiers. The hammers of the armorers made a continuous din and the hooves of the cavalry clopped on the hardened surfaces of the streets as they rode out to patrol or back in to report. I smiled to hear it all, because I was no part of it. I had a task that would keep me sitting, and it would not be in a saddle.

  While Caesar and Labienus conferred with a
delegation of semi-Romanized Allobrogians, I sat in a folding chair at a field table and drew my sagum close against the chill morning breeze. Clouds blocked what little warmth might have been gleaned from the remote, Gallic sun. Thus wrapped in cold iron and warm wool, I opened the first scroll of Caesar’s reports to the Senate.

  It contained bald and uncomplicated notes concerning Caesar’s doings from the time he left Rome: how he took charge of his legion in Italy and marched north into Gaul, picking up his auxilia along the way. At first I took this to be the sort of preliminary notation any writer may make in preparation for the serious work of writing a history or a speech.

  I despaired of the task Caesar had set me. Not only were these mere, skeletal notes, but there was a difficulty I had not foreseen: Caesar’s handwriting was astoundingly bad, so that I had to strain my eyes just to make out the letters. To make things worse, his spelling was more than merely atrocious. Among his many eccentricities, he spelled some of the shorter words backwards and transposed letters on many of the longer words.

  I thought of the times I had seen Caesar at his ease, usually with a slave reading to him from the histories or the classic poems. Of course, most of us employ a reader from time to time, to spare our eyes, but I now realized that I had rarely seen Caesar with his nose buried in a scroll. It was an incredible revelation: Caius Julius Caesar, Proconsul and darling of the Popular Assemblies, would-be Alexander, was nearly illiterate!

  I decided that I would first have to copy Caesar’s notes verbatim. His literary oddities were so distracting that making any sort of sense of them was a daunting task in itself. I spent most of the morning copying the first scroll into my much more polished hand. When I had it rendered into acceptable form, I went over it again. Then a second time, then a third.

  After the third reading I put the scroll down, aware that I confronted something new in the world of letters. Having copied the notes into readable form, I realized that I could do nothing to improve them. I was, as Caesar had said, no admirer of the ornate, elaborate, Asiatic style, but Caesar’s prose made mine seem as mannered as a speech by Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. He never used a single unnecessary word and nowhere could I find a word that could be excised without harming the sense of the whole.