Nobody Loves a Centurion(3)

When the legion arrives, the soldiers stack arms and get out their tools and their baskets for shifting earth. They dig a ditch around the whole perimeter and heap the earth into a wall just inside the ditch. The wall they palisade with the sharpened stakes they have been carrying on their backs all day. They post sentries and only then do they go into the now-fortified camp to erect their tents; one eight-man section to each tent, ten sections to the century, six centuries to the cohort, ten cohorts to the legion—all laid out in a grid so unvarying that, roused in the middle of the night by an alarm, every man knows exactly which direction to turn and how many streets he must pass to take his assigned place on the rampart. In a sense, a Roman legionary, no matter where he is, is always living in the same spot in the same city.

Just seeing a Roman military camp makes me proud to be a Roman, as long as I don’t have to live in one. It has been said that some barbarian armies have given up just watching a legion set up camp. Next to Caesar’s legionary camp was the somewhat less rigorous but still disciplined and orderly camp of the auxilia, the troops levied on the allies or hired as mercenaries: the archers, slingers, cavalry, skirmishers, and so forth. Roman citizens fight only as heavy infantry, helmeted and armored, with the big, oval shield, the heavy pilum that can be hurled at close range clean through an enemy shield, and the short sword that is awesomely effective in the hand of an expert.

“Look at that!” Hermes said exultantly. “Those barbarians will never attack a place this strong!”

“This is what Roman might looks like,” I told him, not wanting to dampen his spirits unnecessarily. Inwardly, I was less confident. A single legion and a roughly equal number of auxilia was not much of a force to pit against a whole barbarian nation. Perhaps, I thought, these Helvetii are not a numerous folk. That should have disqualified me for the office of augur then and there. It is with such comforting fictions that I frequently bemuse myself.

Beyond Caesar’s camp, hazy in the distance, I could just make out a sprawling, disorderly town, doubtless Genava. The men were also at work on another project; an earthen rampart that stretched from the lake out of sight in the direction of the nearest mountains. It lay between the camp and the town, and I calculated its purpose to be to discourage the Gauls from trying to overrun the camp with their favored tactic of a head-long charge. I fully approved. The more barriers there were between myself and those savages, the better I liked it.

Our path took us to a spot perhaps a quarter of a mile from the legion camp, where a work party toiled atop the long rampart under the supervision of an officer. Their spears were propped in tripods with their shields leaning against them, helmets atop the spear points. The slender javelins and narrow, flat shields identified the men as skirmishers. Their officer grinned broadly when he saw us.

“Decius!” It was Gnaeus Quintilius Carbo, an old friend.

“Carbo! I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you here! Now I know we’ll win.” I slid off my horse and took his hand, which was as hard as that of any legionary. Carbo was a long-service professional, from the rural gentry near Caere, and about as old-fashioned a Roman as you could ask for. Old frauds like my father and his friends put on a show of being traditional Romans, but Carbo was the genuine article, a man right out of the days of Camillus.

“I felt you’d show up, Decius. When I heard that Clodius was tribune and you were betrothed to Caesar’s niece, I knew it was just a matter of time before you’d join us.” Carbo, bless his iron-bound, martial heart, thought that I would be eager for action and renown.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked him. “Are you in charge of engineering?”

“No, I’m a commander of auxilia for this campaign.” He nodded toward the party working atop the wall. “These are some of my men.”

“You?” I said, astonished. “You’ve campaigned with Lucullus all over Asia and marched in his triumph! You should have a legionary command. Why would Caesar put a man of your experience and seniority in charge of skirmishers?” I felt it was an insult to him, but he shook his head.

“It’s not that sort of army, Decius. Caesar doesn’t do things like other commanders. He’s put some of his most experienced men in charge of the auxilia. You’ve seen this terrain, these forests? Believe me, it gets worse as you march toward the Rhine. You can’t march legionaries through that in any sort of fighting order. You have to take them through the valleys and to do that you have to have plenty of flankers out to clear the woods to either side of the line of march. Gauls like to fight at the run, too, so the advance skirmishers have to be the best, otherwise the barbarians will be on top of you before you see them coming. Auxilia are important in this war.”