R. Peake - Marching With Caesar - Conquest of Gaul

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.

“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.