Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

Five cohorts lay dead among the ruins of the camp, as did most of the centurions. Fifteen cohorts had survived. It took Mummius eleven days to track them down and muster them, not as difficult a task as Mummius for one had feared; their wits were more scattered than their persons. Clad only in tunics and sandals, the fifteen cohorts were marched to Crassus, now in camp outside Bovianum. He had caught a detachment of Spartacani which had wandered off to the west of the main body and killed six thousand, but Spartacus himself was now well on his way toward Venusia, and Crassus had not deemed it clever to follow him into country unfavorable to a much smaller force. It was now the beginning of December, but as the calendar was forty days ahead of the seasons, winter was yet to come. The general listened to Mummius in an ominous silence. Then: "I do not hold you to blame, Marcus Mummius," he said, "but what am I to do with fifteen cohorts of men who cannot be trusted and have no stomach for a fight?" No one answered. Crassus knew exactly what he was going to do, despite his question. Every man present understood that, but no man present other than Crassus knew what he was going to do. Slowly the mild eyes traveled from one face to another, lingered upon Caesar's, moved on. "How many are they by head?" he asked. "Seven thousand five hundred, Marcus Crassus. Five hundred soldiers to the cohort," said Mummius. "I will decimate them," said Crassus. A profound silence fell; no one moved a muscle. "Parade the whole army tomorrow at sunrise and have everything ready. Caesar, you are a pontifex, you will officiate. Choose your victim for the sacrifice. Ought it to be to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or to some other god?" "I think we should offer to Jupiter Stator, Marcus Crassus. He is the stayer of fleeing soldiers. And to Sol Indiges. And Bellona. The victim ought to be a black bull calf." Mummius, your tribunes of the soldiers will see to the lots. Except for Caesar." After which the general dismissed his staff, who moved out of the command tent without finding a single word to say to each other. Decimation! At sunrise Crassus's six legions were assembled side by side in their ranks; facing them, paraded in ten rows each of seven hundred and fifty men, stood the soldiers who were to be decimated. Mummius had worked feverishly to devise the quickest and simplest method of procedure, as the most important numerical division for decimation was the decury of ten men; it went without saying that Crassus himself had been an enormous help with the logistics. They stood as Mummius and his tribunes of the soldiers had rounded them up, clad only in tunics and sandals, but each man held a cudgel in his right hand and had been numbered off from one to ten for the lots. Branded cowards, they looked cowards, for not one among them could stand without visibly shaking, every face was a study in terror, and the sweat rolled off them despite the early morning chill. "Poor things," said Caesar to his fellow tribune of the soldiers, Gaius Popillius. "I don't know which appalls them more the thought of being the one to die, or the thought of being one of the nine who must kill him. They're not warlike." "They're too young," said Popillius, a little sadly. "That's usually an advantage," said Caesar, who wore his pontifical toga today, a rich and striking garment composed entirely of broad scarlet and purple stripes. "What does one know at seventeen or eighteen? There are no wives and children at home to worry about. Youth is turbulent, in need of an outlet for violent impulses. Better battle than wine and women and tavern brawls in battle, the State at least gets something out of them that's useful to the State." "You're a hard man," said Popillius. "No. Just a practical one." Crassus was ready to begin. Caesar moved to where the ritual trappings were laid out, drawing a fold of toga over his head. Every legion carried its own priest and augur, and it was one of the military augurs who inspected the black bull calf's liver. But because decimation was confined to the imperium of a proconsular general, it required a higher religious authority than legionary Religious, which was why Caesar had been deputed, and why Caesar had to verify the augur's findings. Having announced in a loud voice that Jupiter Stator, Sol Indiges and Bellona were willing to accept the sacrifice, he then said the concluding prayers. And nodded to Crassus that he could begin. Assured of divine approval, Crassus spoke. A tall tribunal had been erected to one side of the guilty cohorts, on which stood Crassus and his legates. The only tribune of the soldiers who was a part of this group was Caesar, the officiating priest; the rest of them were clustered around a table in the middle of the space between the veteran legions and the cohorts to be decimated, for it was their duty to apportion the lots. "Legates, tribunes, cadets, centurions and men of the ranks," cried Crassus in his high, carrying voice, "you are gathered here today to witness a punishment so rare and so severe that it is many generations since it was last exacted. Decimation is reserved for soldiers who have proven themselves unworthy to be members of Rome's legions, who have deserted their eagles in the most craven and unpardonable fashion. I have ordered that the fifteen cohorts standing here in their tunics shall be decimated for very good reason: since they were inducted into military service at the beginning of this year they have consistently fled from the scene of every battle they were asked to fight. And now in their last debacle they have committed the ultimate soldier's crime they abandoned their weapons and armor on the field for the enemy to pick up and use. None of them deserves to live, but it is not within my power to execute every single man. That is the prerogative of the Senate, and the Senate alone. So I will exercise my right as the proconsular commander in chief to decimate their ranks, hoping that by doing so, I will inspire those men left alive to fight in future like Roman soldiers and to show the rest of you, my loyal and constant followers, that I will not tolerate cowardice! And may all our gods bear witness that I will have avenged the good name and honor of every Roman soldier!" As Crassus reached his peroration, Caesar tensed. If the men of the six legions assembled to watch cheered, then Crassus had the army's consent; but if his speech was greeted by silence, he was going to be in for a mutinous campaign. No one ever liked decimation. That was why no general practiced it. Was Crassus, so shrewd in business and politics, as shrewd in his judgement of Rome's veteran soldiers? The six legions cheered wholeheartedly. Watching him closely, Caesar saw a tiny sagging of relief in Crassus; so even he had not been sure! The dispersal of the lots began. There were seven hundred and fifty decuries, which meant that seven hundred and fifty men would die. A very long drawn out procedure which Crassus and Mummius had speeded up with some excellent organization. In a huge basket lay seven hundred and fifty tablets seventy five of them were numbered I, seventy five were numbered II, and so on, up to the number X. They had been thrown in at random, then shuffled well. The tribune of the soldiers Gaius Popillius had been deputed to count seventy five of these jumbled little two inch squares of thin wood into each of ten smaller baskets, one of which he gave to each of the ten remaining tribunes of the soldiers to disperse. That was why the guilty cohorts had been arranged in ten well spaced rows, seventy five well spaced decuries to the row. A tribune of the soldiers simply walked from one end of his row to the other, stopping before each decury and pulling a tablet from his basket. He called out the number, the man allocated it stepped forward, and he then passed on to the next decury. Behind him the slaughter began. Even in this was order, meticulousness. Centurions from Crassus's own six legions who did not know any of the men in the guilty cohorts had been ordered to supervise the actual executions. Few of the centurions who had belonged to the fifteen cohorts had lived, but those who did live had not been excused the punishment, so they took their chances with the rankers. Death was meted out to the man who had drawn the lot by the other nine men of his decury, who were required to beat him to death with their cudgels. In that way no one escaped suffering, be they the nine who lived or the one who died. The supervising centurions knew how it should be done, and said so. "You, kneel and don't flinch," to the condemned man. "You, strike his head to kill," to the man farthest left. "You, strike to kill," to the next man, and so along the nine, who were all forced to bring down their knob headed sticks upon the back of the kneeling man's defenseless cranium. That was as kind as the punishment could be, and at least stripped it of any element of the mindless mob beating wildly at all parts of the victim's body. Because none of these men had the heart to kill, not every blow was a killing one, and some blows missed entirely. But the supervising centurions kept on barking, barking, barking to strike hard and strike accurately, and as the process proceeded down the line of decuries it became more workmanlike, quicker. Such is repetition combined with resignation to the inevitable. In thirteen hours the decimation was done, the last of it in darkness lit by torches. Crassus dismissed his footsore and bored army, obliged to stand until the last man was dead. The seven hundred and fifty corpses were distributed across thirty pyres and burned; instead of being sent home to the relatives, the ashes were tipped into the camp latrine trenches. Nor would their wills be honored. What money and property they left was forfeited to the Treasury, to help pay for all those abandoned weapons, helmets, shields, shirts of mail and legionary gear. Not one man who had witnessed the first decimation in long years was left untouched by it; on most its effect was profound. Now fourteen somewhat under strength cohorts, the wretched men who had lived through it swallowed both fear and pride to work frantically at becoming the kind of legionaries Crassus demanded. Seven more cohorts of properly trained recruits came from Capua before the army moved on and were incorporated into the fourteen to make two full strength legions. As Crassus still referred to them as the consuls' legions, the twelve tribunes of the soldiers were appointed to command them, with Caesar, the senior, at the head of Legio I.