Give Me Back My Legions!

by Harry Turtledove

  “What you saw at the steading, sir.” Aristocles did not bother with a libation. Whatever he could gather, he kept

  “Oh, yes. That’s right. Of course. And this barbarian was one of the rich ones, as they reckon such things here. Poor dog! He and his weren’t hungry, I will say. Past that…”

  “I suppose they insist they would sooner be free. Aristocles lip curled in a bravura display of scorn. “Freedom is over rated, I assure you. ”

  “It is, eh?” Varus said, thinking a man from the great days of Greece would have said no such silly thing. “So you’d turn it down if I offered it to you?”

  “I am confident you will offer it to me, sir – in your will.” the pedisequus replied. “Till then—and the gods grant that time be far in the future—-I am content with my lot. A slave not lucky enough to have such a kind and generous master might see things differently, I confess. ”

  Of course slaves flattered. A slave who didn’t flatter might find his master less kind and generous than he would otherwise. But Varus had heard the same thing from other men he owned. No matter how much he discounted each individual flattery, they added up to something; when taken all together.

  He’d even heard the same thing from Women he owned, and not all of those women had been too old or too ugly to keep him from bedding them. Slavery was harder on women than on men Well, what in this life wasn’t? If a nice-looking woman happened to be your property, why wouldn’t you enjoy her? Your own property couldn’t very well refuse you. And if a slave conceived, that was pure profit.

  Still, Varus didn’t want his slave women hating him afterwards. He was a cautious, moderate man, and didn’t want anybody hating him. People who hated sometimes struck out without worrying about what it would cost them afterwards.

  Some men Varus knew didn’t care. Some of them took extra pleasure from laying a slave girl who would have spit in their face were she free. Some men liked hunting lions and bears and crocodiles, too. And quite a few hunters died younger than they would if they didn’t go after dangerous game.

  How many men died sooner than they would have if they’d kept their hands off slave girls who couldn’t stand them? Horrible things happened to slaves who murdered openly. That was necessary; it kept other slaves from getting nasty ideas. But not all poisonings, for instance, were easy to detect. If someone came down deathly ill or slowly wasted away, maybe it was fate. On the other hand, maybe it was somebody else’s revenge.

  Quinctilius Varus didn’t want to worry about things like that. He also didn’t want Aristocles brooding that he might not be manumitted. And so he murmured, “You’re quite right—I’ve provided for you. I’m sure you’ll do well.”

  Aristocles might have dispraised freedom, but he blossomed like these German flowers in springtime when Varus affirmed he would gain it. “Your Excellency is very kind—very kind!” he said in Greek. Falling into his native tongue was often a sign he’d been touched. “I thank you so much!”

  “You are welcome,” Varus answered, also in Greek. As far as grammar went, Varus spoke it perfectly. But his accent still proclaimed him a foreigner.

  Romans reckoned everyone but themselves and Greeks barbarians. As far as Aristocles was concerned, Varus was as much a barbarian as Arminius or Segestes. The pedisequus probably wouldn’t say that out loud—his sense of self-preservation worked. Varus had talked with plenty of other Greeks—free men—though. He knew what they thought, even if respect for Rome’s might made them mind their manners.

  “Things are different for you and the Germans,” Varus said. “You understand freedom. You know what it really means. The Germans are free like so many wolves in the woods. We have to be good shepherds, and make sure they don’t slaughter our flocks and run wild.”

  “A nice figure, sir,” Aristocles said.

  That might have been flattery, too. If it was, Quinctilius Varus didn’t notice, because he also thought it a nice figure. He would have thought of the Germans as wolves even if they weren’t fond of draping themselves in pelts like aquilifers and buccinatores. Since they were, the comparison sprang even more naturally to his lips.

  Except for his visit to the friendly chieftain, he hadn’t seen many of them since Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX plunged into Germany. That didn’t surprise him. Even in provinces the Romans had ruled for years, locals made themselves and their livestock scarce when legionaries marched by. No doubt the farmers in Pericles’ Greece had done their best to disappear when phalanxes full of hoplites came near their holdings.

  Varus laughed. Back when the Pyramids and Sphinx were new, Egyptian peasants must have tried to steer clear of the Pharaoh’s soldiers. Some things never changed.

  “What’s funny, sir?” Aristocles asked. Varus told him. The pedisequus dipped his head in agreement. “I expect you’re right,” he said.

  “I suppose Pharaoh’s armies went through Syria every now and then,” Varus said musingly. “That’s old, old country there in the East. Maybe not so old as Egypt, but older than Greece and Rome.”

  “Yes.” Aristocles’ mouth tightened as if he’d bitten into an unripe persimmon. Pride in their own antiquity was one of the few edges Greeks had on Romans. Varus’ slave couldn’t even complain, because the Roman had already admitted that Syria was older than his own homeland, too.

  Then Quinctilius Varus’s mouth also tightened, but for a different reason. “From a land as old as time to one where time doesn’t seem to have started yet… A bit of a change, isn’t it?”

  “Just a bit. Yes, sir.” Aristocles looked around at the oaks and elms and beeches and chestnuts coming into leaf, and at the pines and firs and other conifers whose needles darkened the German forests’ aspect. “It is a pity Augustus didn’t name you Augustal prefect. Then you could have seen the Egyptian antiquities at first hand. As you say, there’s nothing old here except the woods.”

  “Yes. Indeed.” Varus’ mouth got tighter yet. A clever slave could get back at his master, as the Greek had just proved. Augustal prefect of Egypt was the most important administrative post in the Empire – after the one Augustus held himself, of course. It was also the post Varus had craved after governing Syria. And it was the post his wife’s great-uncle had chosen not to give him.

  “I have to do the best I can where Augustus decided to send me,” Varus said. “The decision was his.” Everything in the Empire was Augustus’ to give or to withhold as he saw fit. That was what winning all those civil wars meant. Oh, he’d built up a fine Republican facade to operate behind, but it was a facade, as anyone with eyes to see knew.

  Aristocles sighed. “If only the Pannonians hadn’t rebelled…”

  “If, if, if,” Varus said, not because the pedisequus was wrong but because he was right. If Tiberius weren’t putting down the rising within the Empire’s borders, he would hold this post now. And if stern, unsmiling Tiberius were whipping the Germans into line, Augustus might well have sent Varus to Egypt.

  Had Augustus sent Varus there, Aristocles would have gone along. The Greek sighed again, this time on a more resigned note. “Oh, well. What can you do, eh, your Excellency?”

  That question looked for the answer, Not a thing. But Varus surprised his slave: “If I’m to make this a Roman province, I will make it a Roman province. The better the notion the natives have of what’s expected of them, the better Roman subjects they’ll make.”

  “Er—yes.” Aristocles blinked. No, he hadn’t been looking for that or anything like that. “May your efforts be crowned with success.”

  “I hope they will. I think they will. Centuries from now, I hope this will be as much Roman land as, say, Spain or Cisalpine Gaul. We’ll need hard work to make that happen, but I don’t believe any Roman here fears hard work,” Varus said.

  Plenty of legionaries worked no harder than they had to. Varus took that for granted; legionaries were men like any others, but he also took for granted that their superiors would keep them working hard enough to do what needed doing. What
else were officers for?

  In his mind’s eye, Varus saw towns growing out of legionary encampments in Germany, as they’d done so many other places in the Empire. He saw gleaming marble temples to Rome’s gods—and to Germany’s, for, Druids and Jews aside, the Romans didn’t meddle with religion. He saw bathhouses and colonnaded market squares where citizens in togas talked over the latest news. He saw amphitheaters for chariot races and gladiatorial games and beast shows. He saw theaters where the locals could watch Plautus and Terence and mime shows. He saw schools and shoemakers, millers and scribes.

  It could happen. It would happen, once the Germans got used to the idea of being part of something larger than themselves. What would stop it then? Nothing he could see.

  True, the Germans still nailed the heads of men they’d slain to trees, as an offering to the spirits inside. But the Gauls had done the same thing till Caesar conquered them. For that matter, the untamed tribes in Britannia and Hibernia still did. The ones within the Empire’s borders were surprisingly civilized these days.

  The Germans could be, too. All they needed was a firm hand and a little time.

  VIII

  Arminius had found himself another forest-screened vantage point from which to watch the Romans encroach on Germany. This one didn’t lie hard by the Rhine—the border between Germany and Gaul since Caesar checked the Germans’ westward wandering. This one was in the heart of his own folk’s fatherland. Now that spring had returned, so had the storks, rebuilding their old nests in dead trees. And so had the Romans, rebuilding their old encampment at Mindenum.

  This time, Sigimerus had come with Arminius for a firsthand look at the men who aimed to despoil the Germans of their freedom. What Arminius’ father saw impressed him—against his will, but it did. Arminius understood that grudging respect; it was a large part of what he felt about the Romans, too.

  “They work hard, don’t they?” Sigimerus said. “And they work fast.”

  “So they do, both,” Arminius agreed.

  His father scowled. “If you go behind a tree to ease yourself and them come back to watch them again, the palisade will have grown some while you were pissing.”

  “They wouldn’t be so dangerous if they didn’t have a good notion of what they were doing,” Arminius said. “They’ve conquered many other folk. They know how to go about it. If they don’t make any mistakes, I fear they’ll win here, too. They’re winning in Pannonia, no matter how-strong and how stubborn the rebels are there.”

  “And you helped them.” Sigimerus sounded reproachful.

  “I did.” Arminius nodded. “One man more or less made no difference in how the war would have turned out.”

  “A hero -” his father began.

  “No.” Arminius cut him off, even if that was rude. “One of the things I learned is that heroes don’t matter much, not the way they fight. Their soldiers might as well be farmers or potters. Everyone has his particular job to do, and he does it, and their armies mostly win.”

  “Not here, by the gods!” Sigimerus exclaimed. “We’ve taken plenty of Roman heads.”

  “I know, Father,” Arminius said gently. “But they’ve won their share of fights, too. If they hadn’t, would they be running up this encampment again? It’s a long way from the Rhine to here.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Sigimerus sounded glum. Arminius couldn’t blame him. Roman matter-of-factness at work had a daunting quality to it. The Romans went about their business no matter what, as if convinced nothing could withstand them as long as they kept at it. No, not as if: they were convinced of that. Arminius’ hitch as an auxiliary had taught him as much, along with many other things.

  Here, some Romans felled trees. Others trimmed them. Others hoisted them into position on the palisade. Others dug a trench around the ring of sharpened tree trunks. Others took the spoil from the diggers’ work and shaped it into a rampart. And still others stood to arms, ready to ward the laboring legionaries against surprise attack.

  “How can we stop them?” Sigimerus seemed gloomier still. “They’re like ants or bees, aren’t they? A big hive of Romans…” He ruefully shook his head.

  “They can sting, all right,” Arminius said. “But you put your finger on it yourself—so can we. Somehow, we have to arrange it so we meet them on ground that gives us the edge. Then… we strike!”

  “That sounds good, son. But a lot of things that sound good aren’t so easy to bring off,” Sigimerus said. “Just look at the swinehounds. They’re ready for anything. You can tell. They’d almost thank us for wading into them. It’d give them the chance to make us sorry we were ever born.”

  “Too right. I remember an ambush in Pannonia. The Pannonians thought they were ambushing us while we made camp, but it turned out to work the other way around,” Arminius said. “Minucius—the military tribune who led us—picked a spot near some woods, so the enemy could gather there and think he was safe. But we figured they were in there, and we were out in the open, so we had plenty of room to deploy when they showed themselves. Oh, we made them pay!” He smiled at the memory—he’d fought well and his side had won, even if it was also the Romans’ side.

  His father’s expression came closer to despair. “If they always take such pains, how will we ever beat them?”

  “I said it before—they have to make a mistake,” Arminius answered. “They aren’t gods, Father. They’re men, and little men at that. They make mistakes all the time, just like us. We have to get them to make the kind of mistake that serves our need.”

  “Yes, you said that before, too.” Sigimerus sounded like a man talking to a young, foolish son, trying to get him to see his foolishness. “What you haven’t told me is how you propose to do it.”

  “I haven’t told you how because I don’t know.” Arminius sounded like the young, foolish son, admitting what he would sooner deny. “But there has to be a way.”

  “Why?” Sigimerus asked relentlessly. “You want the Romans to be stupid, and you’ve just spent all this time explaining to me how clever they are. Clever people are clever because they mostly don’t do stupid things.”

  “Mostly!” Arminius seized on the word like a drowning man grabbing hold of a log. “That doesn’t mean they’re perfect. They aren’t! No one is smart all the time.”

  “No one is smart all the time,” his father agreed. But he wasn’t looking at the Romans as they built their fortress-camp right in the middle of Germany. No—he was looking straight at Arminius.

  The younger man’s cheeks and ears might have caught fire. “We can beat them,” Arminius insisted. “We have to beat them. If we let them go on the way they’re going, they will enslave us.” He stuck out his chin in defiance: of Sigimerus, of the Romans, of everything in the world that dared opposed his will. “Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Sigimerus sighed. But this time he looked at the Roman soldiers chopping and sawing and hauling and digging and building. He sighed again. His face said a great many things, none of them happy. All he said, though, was, “If we try and we fail, Germany wears the chains of slavery forever.”

  “She wears them if we don’t try, too,” Arminius answered. “She’s bound to wear them then. But if we fight and win, she’s free, free forever!”

  His father looked at the Romans once more. This time, he said not a word.

  Quinctilius Varus didn’t like to sit up when he dined, but even a chair with a back was a luxury in Mindenum. A couch—a whole set of couches—would have made these bluff, straightforward soldiers grumble. Varus knew that, no matter how little he cared for it. He also knew he had to get along with the officers. It was not only that they were the men who carried out his orders. If he didn’t stay on good terms with them, he had no one but his slaves to talk to. In this straitened place, that wasn’t enough.

  Under the chief cook’s watchful and anxious eyes, two kitchen slaves—hulking Germans—carried a covered silver tray into the tent doing duty for a dining hall and set it on the tabl
e. One of them protected his hand with a big of rag as he grabbed the cover’s handle and pulled it off. Steam and savory smells filled the tent. Varus and the other diners exclaimed in delight. A couple of the soldiers even clapped their hands. What could you expect from such people?

  Relief in his voice, the cook said, “Roast boar, your Excellencies, with forest mushrooms, on a bed of cabbage and turnips.”

  “I’d never get bored with that,” Lucius Eggius called out.

  For a moment, Varus heard it as a hungry man’s commonplace. Then he caught the pun. He sent Eggius a look half respectful, half reproachful. Was the wordplay just luck, or was there more to the officer than met the eye?

  Varus decided he didn’t have to worry about it now. He was the highest-ranking man here, so he was entitled to feed himself first and take the choicest gobbet. He did, seizing a smoking chunk of pork generously outlined with dripping fat. His mouth watered.

  It tasted as good as it looked and smelled. Varus could imagine no higher praise. Smiling, chewing, he nodded to the cook. That worthy bowed in delight.

  Vala Numonius chose next. The cavalry commander’s right hand closed on a slice even bigger and fatter than Varus’. “Good,” Numonius said with his mouth full. “Wonderful!” The cook beamed.

  One by one, in order of rank, the Roman officers fed themselves. “Begging your pardon, friends,” one of them said as he took food with his left hand.

  “We know you, Sinistrus,” Varus said. The nickname told how thoroughly left-handed the legionary was. His right hand was as clumsy and useless as most people’s left—good only for wiping himself. Varus had known a few other men like that. They always apologized when they fed themselves with what was usually the wrong hand.

  The mushrooms were different from the familiar Italian varieties, and also different from the ones Varus had eaten in Syria. Not better or worse, the governor judged, but different. One of the officers spoke to the cook: “You tried these out on beasts before you tried them on us, right?”