The show must have been mind-boggling for the locals. Certainly, by the time the camps were complete, in the late morning, the number of native men, women and children watching them intently from across the river had grown to number in the hundreds. Caesar had deliberately kept the army from interacting with them; every centurion and optio had their orders. Whether these Belgic folk shouted disparaging things at the men, or even enticing ones, the soldiers barely glanced at, let alone acknowledged, them.
The afternoon had set in with the legions setting watches and passwords, creating their temporary workshops, mucking out the horses and all the regular daily camp duties. Everything the general did here was designed to both worry and impress the leaders of the Remi.
And it must be working. For now, as the sun began to sink from the sky and afternoon began to give way to evening, many of their civilian observers had become bored and left, but a number of well-dressed and armed warriors had taken up stations on the far bank and the bridge. Fronto stood on the rampart of his camp and watched them with interest. With the quality of their armour, they were likely the chieftain’s own men. He was just wondering how long they would watch before trying to force some sort of interaction, when a commotion began up the hill in the centre of the town.
From here, Fronto could see up the main road between heavy, low buildings and scattered oak trees. Up there must be some kind of centre; perhaps a marketplace even? And something was happening there. Between the branches and trunks of the trees, he could see light; the flickering light of many torches. The legate dithered for a moment as to whether to alert the command, when a noise like a bull being castrated sprang up on the hill.
Fronto jumped slightly at the sudden cacophony, before realising it was supposed to be music; a fanfare presumably. And there was movement high on the hill.
He reached across to the legionary next to him on the bank.
‘Leave your weapons here. Get to the principia as fast as you can and inform the general and his staff that we’re about to have guests.’
The soldier saluted and turned, dropping his shield and pilum, and ran as fast as he could toward the rear of the huge camp. The three fortifications had been carefully placed in a horseshoe around the near end of the bridge, such that each rampart was the same distance from it. The central camp, that of the Ninth and the Tenth, also accommodated the senior staff.
Fronto watched with fascination from the rampart as a procession of sorts began to make its way down the main road of the oppidum toward the Romans. The group numbered around a hundred and at first glance appeared to be some sort of strange parody of a Roman military column. As they got closer, Fronto gradually picked out more detail, though the awful noise was setting his teeth on edge and forming the beginning of a headache.
First came four men blaring out ‘dying goose’ sounds through tall bronze horns with flared ends shaped into the likeness of wolves. Behind them came four more with a horrifying instrument that involved the squeezing of some sort of bag. The resulting noise sounded like a deflating ox. Fronto stared at them with a strange mixture of horror and amusement. Behind the ‘musicians’ came the standard bearers. No flags here, just poles with bronze animals on them; boars, wolves and bears. And behind that was a crowd of warriors in what Fronto presumed to be their ceremonial gear, surrounding two well-dressed tribesmen on white horses. The warriors on either side of the column lit the way in the dusk with burning torches.
The Remi probably thought it was impressive. Indeed, it might have been impressive if it were not for the deflating animal sounds. Fronto, trying to keep his men in position with a straight face, had to bite his lip gently to refrain from sniggering.
Suddenly the worst of the noise stopped. Fronto breathed deeply in relief and then realised with horror that it was only a moment’s grace. The airbags were now empty, and the musicians reinflated them with a sound like a hundred men farting in a cave.
No amount of lip biting could prevent the laugh that came then and, even as the players began the full blare of the awful noise once again, all around Fronto on the rampart men burst out laughing. Indeed, as he listened carefully over the cacophony, he was sure he could even hear men laughing at the other camps.
He gave them a few moments of laughter, but this sort of thing looked bad, even if it was his own fault.
‘Silence!’ he bellowed along the line, and the men of the Ninth and Tenth Legions fell quiet and straightened themselves.
By the time the Belgae had reached the bridge, the staff were approaching Fronto’s position inside the camp. Caesar, Sabinus and Labienus climbed the slope with long strides and stopped next to the legate of the Tenth.
‘What is the name of Charon’s teeth is that noise?’ asked Sabinus, a horrified look on his face.
Caesar smiled at him.
‘Ceremonial music. I’ve heard those pipes before at Celtic gatherings. Aren’t they awful?’
He turned to Fronto.
‘Pass the word along here and to the other camps as quickly and quietly as you can. I want silence from the men. Not a word or movement. In fact, tell the other legions that their officers are to remain in their camps.’
Fronto frowned.
‘Are we not going out to meet them? I thought they wanted to be our allies?’
Caesar shook his head.
‘I don’t know how trustworthy they are, and this is our first show to the Belgae. We want to be as powerful and impressive as Rome can possibly be. I want word to spread from here. If we can make the Remi tremble and fall in line, then it’s possible other tribes of the Belgae will follow suit. Every tribe we can frighten into submission means fewer warriors that the leaders can call on against us. This is the time for a show of strength, not diplomacy.’
Fronto shrugged and gave the word to two of his tribunes who began to make their way along the wall, passing on the details.
The noise was becoming unbearable now that the chieftains’ party had reached the near bank. There was a brief pause then; trying to decide where they should go, Fronto guessed. The two men on horseback consulted for a moment and then the column moved on, heading for the central camp. As they approached, finally reaching a position where the men, their night vision blinded by the guttering torches, could make out the Roman installations, Caesar stepped back from the wall, gesturing for the other officers to do so.
As Fronto dropped back down the slope, he raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘Let them be challenged by the guards as though they were nobodies,’ the general smiled.
‘Do we open the gate?’
‘Most certainly not.’
Fronto frowned. As the officers waited behind the stockade, they heard someone address the legionaries on guard in the strange language of the Celts.
The guard, drawn tonight from the Ninth, answered in clear Latin.
‘Approach and be recognised.’
There was a long pause and some heated discussion in that odd language again. The centurion at the gate took a deep breath.
‘For the last time, advance and be recognised!’
As the squabble among the visitors intensified, the centurion called along the walls: ‘make ready!’
Two dozen men on the embankment turned sideways and raised their pila into the discharge position. The argument among the Remi intensified, and finally a voice called out in intelligible Latin.
‘Friends. Remi are friends of Rome. We must see your commander. Bring your commander.’
The centurion turned to look at Fronto and the officers nearby. Caesar made smoothing motions with his hand and put a finger to his lips. The centurion and his men stood silently.
‘Roman?’
Caesar tapped Fronto on the shoulder and leaned close to whisper.
‘Go tell him we’re too busy to see him tonight. We’ll visit him tomorrow when we have more time.’
Fronto stared, unsure whether to smile or not. It all seemed so childish, somehow.
Ta
king a deep breath, he climbed the embankment slowly. When he reached the top, he looked down at the assembled warriors and tried not to laugh. They looked decidedly uncertain and, having lost the impetus of the parade, were now milling around aimlessly below the stockade.
‘Greetings to the Remi’ he called. ‘Unfortunately, we do not have time to consult with you at the moment. Please return to your village and we will call on you as and when the opportunity arises.’
The speaker on horseback seemed to inflate as though he would explode. Fronto couldn’t quite see in the bad light, but would be willing to bet the man’s face had gone red with rage. The man raised his hand and pointed at Fronto, opening his mouth to speak, but the legate had already left the wall without waiting for a reply.
As he returned to the staff, Sabinus was rocking with silent laughter. Labienus bore a wide grin and even Caesar greeted him with an uncharacteristically genuine smile.
Patting Fronto on the shoulder, Caesar chuckled.
‘Well I wanted to make them feel inferior, but that surpassed all my expectations. I hope you haven’t pushed them so far they get angry instead of frightened!’
Sabinus grinned, taking a deep breath.
‘Village?’
Fronto shrugged.
‘It hasn’t even got a stockade.’
‘But village?’ Sabinus laughed again. ‘It’s the capital city of their tribe, and you just called it a village. And turning your back on his answer? Good grief, man!’
Fronto shrugged again.
‘To hell with them.’
Leaving the baffled and irritated Remi outside the gate, Caesar and his staff strode off toward the principia. Fronto smiled at the centurion.
‘Let’s not be too mean. If they’re still there in an hour, take them out some cheese and bread.’
As he walked off to catch up with the general, he could hear the centurion chuckling behind him.
* * * * *
It was after lunch the next day when the messenger arrived at Fronto’s tent.
‘Caesar calls his staff to the main gate, sir.’
Fronto nodded and grabbed his helmet and sword before striding out of his tent. He had been dressed and equipped now for two hours in order to be ready when the general called. He strode outside to find Priscus standing irritably nearby, tapping his vine staff on his greaves.
‘What’s up with you?’
The primus pilus grumbled.
‘I’m getting sick of all this camp building and diplomacy crap. If our lads don’t get to kick some Gauls soon, they’re going to have forgotten which end of a sword goes into the enemy. They’re getting soft!’
Fronto laughed lightly and patted Priscus on the shoulder as he walked past.
‘Only you, Gnaeus. Only you could stand in unknown territory, facing possibly ten to one odds in our very near future and be bored.’
‘Pah!’
The centurion watched Fronto irritably as he walked off toward the camp’s north gate. The legate of the Tenth was hardly recognisable. Knowing the general’s desire to make an impression, Fronto had not only bathed, combed and shaved, but his armour was buffed to brilliance and his clothes freshly laundered. He looked every inch the Roman officer, an effect only slightly muted by the faint waft of stale wine that followed him.
Caesar was already at the gate as Fronto and Rufus converged from different directions. Most of the staff officers were present.
‘Good afternoon, general,’ Rufus addressed Caesar, nodding respectfully to Fronto.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. Are you prepared?’
Fronto grumbled.
‘Depends what for.’
‘Are we not to be mounted, Caesar?’ enquired the young legate.
The general shook his head.
‘Firstly, I don’t want them to think we’re soft; secondly, I want to approach at a steady marching pace; and thirdly…’ he gave a sly smile in the direction of the Tenth’s legate. ‘Thirdly, after Fronto’s performance last night, I don’t want to present too easy a target for any irritated assassin!’
The staff officers chuckled quietly, which caused Fronto to grind his teeth.
‘Let’s just get this over with so we can go and kick someone’ he grumbled. ‘Priscus is bloody right.’
Ignoring a number of questioning looks, he strode out of the gate. In front of the fort, Aulus Ingenuus had formed up Caesar’s bodyguard without their horses. In the distance, he could see Balbus and Plancus striding from one camp and Crispus, Galba and Varus from the other. So; all the senior commanders in the army in one place. He frowned and addressed Ingenuus as he reached the honour guard.
‘I hope your men are alert! Caesar’s got every senior officer walking blindly into that place. If the Belgae really wanted, they could end this campaign in one fell swoop. It’d probably only take a couple of dozen men if they planned it right!’
Ingenuus laughed and held up his hand in salute, the remaining three fingers on his right hand spread wide.
‘I’m very careful these days, Fronto!’
Fronto stood watching with his customary sour face and grumbles as the officers assembled. As usual, when he cast his eyes around his companions, he felt like the badly-dressed poor relation. Caesar arrived next to him, clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously.
‘Bear in mind, everyone, that we have a fine line to walk today. I don’t want to actually insult the Remi any more after Fronto’s excellent display, but I do want to appear powerful enough that they feel as though we’d be doing a favour by letting them join us.’
He smiled benignly at them.
‘Which, of course, we are.’
There was a chorus of laughs.
‘Alright, Ingenuus. I think we’re all here. Lead us out.’
The young officer saluted and formed up his dismounted cavalry. The guard fell into a heavy step as they marched toward the bridge, the commanders striding along roughly in time in the centre of their protective unit.
At the bridge, the locals hurried out of the way of the iron, bronze and red linen column of men that shone and impressed in the early afternoon sun. Fishermen at the far end grabbed their lines and moved off the wide bridge and down to the adjacent river bank. Indeed, as the Roman party, some hundred strong with their guard, arrived on the far side, the road cleared ahead of them all the way up the oak-lined avenue to the centre.
Fronto examined the Remi and their town of Durocorteron. While Caesar and most of his staff officers marched on, their eyes straight ahead and their sight locked on a future of Roman domination with their own backsides firmly planted in the curia in Rome, Fronto could see past his own career progression. For Caesar and his cronies to secure their future, all they required was a conquest, but Fronto’s thoughts went deeper than that.
He doubted the general had devoted a moment’s thought to what would happen to Gaul once he’d had his triumph and climbed to the top of the ladder. If Caesar could actually pacify Gaul, would he set about its Romanisation? Would he care? And, of course, would it work? Cisalpine Gaul has been a province of Rome for a century and a half and was, in truth, as Roman as his homeland around Puteoli. Africa, on the other hand, had never truly settled since the days of Carthage, with occasional uprisings that kept the governor on his toes.
No matter how much the Belgae might think of themselves as a separate people to the Gauls, Fronto could see just how similar they were as he met the defiant gazes of the men and women in the gardens and doorways of the houses they passed.
Their clothing and armour appeared to be the same, their hair braided the same way; the language in which they exchanged comments about their visitors was, to Fronto’s ear, identical to those of the Helvetii and the Aedui, and very similar even to the Ariovistus’ Germans, if less guttural. As his gaze swept across Durocorteron itself, he realised that even their towns were the same; their oppida. The houses were constructed in the same fashion, the lower courses of heavy local stone, with
a timber upper. The towns were organised in much the same layout.
He smiled to himself. If there was one thing that Rome could learn from the Gauls, it was trees. Roman cities were well organised and efficient. Everything was built to a pattern that kept the streets clean and clear of traffic. Paved roads and gutters; side streets, kerbs and rings for tying horses; the front doors of blocks of housing opening onto the roads. But there were no trees. Flowers and trees were planned in Roman cities, but restricted to parks and gardens in set and usually private enclosures.
But there was something about striding up this packed-earth street. It was probably horrible in rainy winter time, but the houses were all set back with a well maintained garden fronting the road and a small path. Trees gave the road shelter and kept him cool.
If Gaul could be Romanised, he mused, it might be a nice province to retire to one day.
He became aware that Crispus was staring at him with his eyebrow raised.
‘Just taking it all in. Know your enemy, eh?’
The young legate gave him a light, unconvinced, smile.
‘Whatever you say, Marcus. Pretty gardens though, aren’t they?’
Fronto rolled his eyes and shifted his gaze to the front once more. They were almost at the top of the hill; the long, sloping road stretching back behind them to the bridge and the Roman camps, now obscured by the branches of the trees.
As Caesar’s guard reached the open space at the centre of the oppidum, Ingenuus gave orders, and they fanned out into a protective cordon. Caesar and the staff strode into the centre and came to a halt. Clearly, the arrival of the Roman party at the bridge and their march up the street had been enough to draw the leaders of the Remi from their houses. Two men, whom Fronto would be willing to bet were the two riders from last night, stood with their arms folded opposite the Romans, their warriors armed and armoured behind and beside them. For a moment, Fronto wondered whether he had gone too far last night and turned the Remi against them. He briefly considered trying to become less visible in case of reprisals, but quickly chastised himself. These people had no idea who he was, and they certainly would not recognise him, given the low torch light last night.
Marius' Mules Anthology Volume 1 Page 60
