Nobody Loves a Centurion(2)

First, I pulled on the lightly padded arming tunic, with its pendant skirt of decorated leather straps and matching straps hanging from the shoulders. Then Hermes buckled on my cuirass. There are two ways to acquire great muscles: one is through years of strenuous athletic exercise. The other is to buy them from an armorer. I had chosen the latter course. My cuirass was embossed with muscles that Hercules would have envied, complete with silver nipples and a meticulously sculpted navel. A Gorgon’s head scowled frightfully from between the massive pectorals, warding off evil.

Hermes attached my red military cloak to the rings flanking the Gorgon and unpacked my helmet, carefully mounting its crest of flowing white horsehair. The helmet was of the Greek style, with a peak that jutted out above my eyes, the bronze polished to blinding brilliance and decorated all over with silver acanthus leaves. Or perhaps they were ivy. Or even oak or olive. I have forgotten with which god I was trying to curry favor when I bought the armor.

Hermes latched the cheekpieces beneath my chin and stepped back to admire the effect. “Master, you look just like Mars!”

“So I do,” I agreed. “I may be an incorrigible civilian, but at least I can look like a soldier. Where is my sword?”

Hermes found my dress sword and I buckled it around my bronze-girt waist like one of Homer’s heroes. My position was unclear, so I left off the sash of command. We remounted and rode into the town, where I was received with suitable awe, but the nearest Roman official had disturbing news. Caesar had marched north into the mountains to deal with some people called the Helvetii. They had a town called Genava near Lake Lemannus. All officers and reinforcements were to report to his camp with utmost haste.

This was an unexpected development. I had never heard of an army moving with such speed as Caesar’s. He must have double-timed them all the way from central Italy to be at Lake Lemannus so soon. Knowing Caesar’s lifelong reputation for indolence, I took it for an ominous sign.

So we rode on without even pausing for a bath or a good night’s sleep. Our days of leisure were over, for Caesar had thoughtfully provided relay stations where his officers could acquire fresh mounts and have no excuse for tardiness. The punishment was unspecified but it was as certain as death, for only a Dictator has power like a Roman proconsul in his own province.

Our path took us north up the Rhone Valley, on the east bank of the river. The landscape had its attractions, but I was in no mood to appreciate them. Hermes, usually so insufferably cheerful, grew subdued. Massilia had been a civilized place, but now we were going into the Gallic heartland, where few but traveling merchants had penetrated before.

We passed a number of small, neat villages. Most of their houses were round, made of wattle and daub and roofed with thatch. The more pretentious buildings were framed in massive timber, the spaces between the timbers being filled with wattle, brick, or stone, all whitewashed to contrast pleasingly with the dark timber. The fields were well laid out, separated by low, drystone walls, but without the geometric rigor so familiar from Roman or Egyptian fields.

The people we passed watched us with curious interest but without hostility. The Gauls love color and their clothes are vividly patterned in contrasting stripes and checks. Both sexes wear massive jewelry, bronze among the poor, solid gold among the wealthy.

“The women are ugly,” Hermes complained, noting the freckled complexions, snub noses, and round faces, so different from the long, heavy features admired by Romans.

“Believe me,” I assured him, “the longer you are here, the better they’ll look.”

“These don’t look so frightening,” he said, trying to keep his spirits up. “The way people talk, I expected savage giants.”

“These are mostly peasants and slaves,” I told him. “The military class don’t dirty their hands much with farming or other labor. Wait until you see the warriors. They’ll live up to your worst expectations.”

“If the Gauls are that bad,” he said, “what are the Germans like?”

The question was like a dark cloud across the sun. “Them I don’t even want to think about.”

Caesar’s camp wasn’t hard to find. A Roman camp in barbarian territory is like a city dropped from the sky into the wilderness. It sat there, rectilinear as a brick, next to the handsome Lake Lemannus. Actually, the word “camp” fails to do justice to what a Roman legion erects every place it stops for the night. First the surveying team, marching an hour or so ahead of the legion, finds a suitable site, where they mark out the perimeter, the gates, the main streets, and the praetorium. With little, colored flags they mark out the squares where each cohort is to be situated.