We were shunted to a depot, an old stable, on the western edge of the town.

‘What happened to the officer from yesterday?’, Mattias wondered as we were herded into our new home. His question was rewarded with a stout smack on the side of his head.

‘Line up on this side, vermi!’ screamed a squat, ugly roach of a man who appeared to have emerged, fully formed, from the earth itself. He stank of garlic, sour wine, and sweat, a smell that we would become all too accustomed to in the months and years to follow.

A bored, dull-faced assistant registered our names, searched our packs, confiscating items that he fancied for himself or his mates, and provided us with a uniform tunic, hob-nailed sandals, and a rough canteen set consisting of a plate, a tin cup, and some crude cooking implements. I clung on to my satchel, glad that it had not been purloined as well, but my joy was short-lived.

‘Place everything you maggots brought from home here’, the roach bellowed, indicating a growing pile of satchels, packs, and general debris.

‘Thank the gods we ate the cheese’, Mattias whispered. The roach, who must have been at least twenty feet away, turned and glowered at him.

Everything we had brought from home disappeared, and I never saw any of it ever again. Our world was flipped upside down as the roach continued to strip us of our dignity.

‘All of you, take off your clothes and throw them here’, the roach commanded.

Now, we Romans are not squeamish when it comes to things like communal nudity—we bathe together, after all—but a moment of hesitation passed until the eighty or so of us carried out the instructions. We stood there, waiting for the order to dress, but instead the door to the barn was thrust open and in stormed two menacing assistants hanging back, holding short wooden rods.

        ‘Get down on your hands, maggots. Move!’ screamed the roach.

‘Bloody hell’, Mattias muttered, but did what he was told.

‘One… two…’ the roach counted out our push-ups as we went. He walked around, pressing on our backs with a rough-shod sandal as we tried to lever ourselves back off the dusty floor. One by one, dripping with sweat, our arms and shoulders burning, we succumbed to exhaustion. As I fell flailing to the ground, the roach grabbed a switch from one of the assistants and beat me with great enthusiasm. Naked, I had no defence against his blows. Only when he had succeeded in drawing blood did he move on. I heard a whelp from my left and saw Mattias curled up, trying to ward off the blows. The roach’s face twisted in a sadistic curl.        

‘Stand!’ he shouted, and we did so in trepidation. As we awaited his next explosion of anger or some new and devious exercise, I steeled myself. My father spoke to me inside my mind, from a long-ago conversation when he first went to war. Dressed in the uniform of a junior officer, smelling of leather and polish and oil, he had held me and Cottia.

‘We are Romans’, he had said, looking from me to my sister, and then back at me, knowing that I would most likely be called upon to fight in the legions one day.

‘Our nation was born in violence’, he went on, ‘when Romulus killed Remus. Warfare is in our blood. We have conquered all who have dared opposed us. As long as you carry the heritage of our great founders, none of you will be defeated by the obstacles that the gods place in your life.’

The roach stopped in front of me, jerking me from my daydream. As my father had taught me when he punished and disciplined me, I stood as still as a newly forged spear tip and gazed at a fixed point about a half foot above the roach’s right shoulder.

        ‘Listen to me, boys’, he said, drawing out the last word and swaggering along our pathetic line of sweat-drenched and bleeding figures.

‘Not a single one of you turds is worth even being considered for my beloved army! Gods, we must have reached a point of real desperation for scrawny shits like you’—he glowered at some poor soul, to whom one of his assistants administered a sharp thwack with his rod—‘to end up here.’ He swaggered along our line, doubling over one man with a punch to the belly.

        ‘Get up!’ he spat, and then kicked the man for good measure. Blood spouted from the poor fellow’s lip as he slumped in the dirt.

 ‘You must be better than any Republican warrior who has come before you, and I tell you, you vermin, there were men in this war who were some of the most courageous I have ever known, and still they forfeited their lives.’ At this, the roach glared in my direction. I remained rigid with attention, avoiding any eye contact.

‘If we are to win this war,’ he continued, ‘and win we must, then you must forget your pasts, forget your women, your home comforts, your pathetic existence up to this point. Your pitiful display here fills me with dismay.’

The roach walked up and down our lines in silence, goading us with it and rousing in me a fierce anger.

‘Do any of you have the balls to fight? Any of you?’

Once again the roach stopped in front of me. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed a tattoo of a charging boar snaking down one bulging bicep—the legionary mascot of the Twentieth. Instinctively, I recognized that the roach may well have known my father. The anger in my chest came to a boil, and without a thought, cocky and foolish, I stepped forward.

‘I will fight you, sergeant’, I said, with the conviction of a man condemned to Hades for eternity. A slow grin appeared in the roach’s face. Removing a knife from his belt, he tossed it to my feet.

‘Pick it up’, he said. ‘If you draw blood, then I will yield.’

I noticed that he did not take a weapon for himself. Warily, keeping my eyes on him, I bent my knees and picked up the knife. A ripple of anticipation went through the men around me, while Mattias whistled under his breath. I looked at Crispus, who was shaking.

The roach’s assistants stepped back a few paces, pushing the spectators into a rough circle around us. We began to stalk each other in this small place, me, with the haft of the knife in my palm, the blade protruding between two fingers, as my father had taught me, while the roach balled his fists in a fighter’s stance. I made a feint to the left and then came in hard, looking for the soft flesh under the armpit. My arm followed my eye but before I could finish the move I was on my back, the wind knocked out of me and the cool knife blade pressed into my cheek. I could smell the sour breath of the roach as he pinned me into the dust. His face got closer to mine and I turned to one side, in the dirt, and then he laughed. The blade kissed my face quickly and I winced, a stream of blood forming quickly and then draining from my cheek onto the floor.

‘This man has balls, but no skill.’ He laughed at me again, driving the blade into the dirt between my naked legs and then heaving a nailed sandal into my kidneys. I lay there for a moment in utter agony, and pissed blood for two days afterwards.

‘When you leave here, you will be ready. If you have to speak, you will address me as sergeant at all times.’ His tone softened a tiny bit.

‘We are all veterans of the war’—he gestured to his assistants— ‘and have been chosen to teach you what we have learned so that you might stand some tiny, miniscule chance of making it through the next year alive.’

He glared at Mattias. ‘You, shithead, pick up your friend.’

The next six weeks were a mess of enduring pain, suffering, and broken bones. The roach pushed us endlessly.

‘Get up, you useless worms!’ he would shout each morning, well before the sun crept over the horizon. He hounded us, making us run six miles each morning in woolen tunics that chafed in the early morning humidity and caused sores that refused to heal. The insides of my thighs became raw, resulting in a new layer of agony when running as they chafed against one another. He was particularly hard on Crispus, continually provoking him and pushing him harder than the others.

‘Move, you redheaded turd!’ he would scream in my friend’s ear, as he languished at the back of a pack on our daily runs.

A whimper would escape Crispus’ lips, lost in the rasping for air.

‘What did you say? Louder, turd!’ the roach would yell, more often than not caning Crispus behind the knees and causing him to trip and fall. He loaded Crispus with extra weight in his packs, delighting in his exhaustion. Turning to me he would yell ‘don’t leave a mate in the dirt! What is wrong with you? Pick him up!’

More often than not when I stopped to help Crispus I would be tripped and find myself flailing beside him, the rest of the group disappearing into the distance, hounded by the roach’s assistance.

After our morning run came calisthenics, directed by the more sadistic of the two corporals while the roach looked on, flaying those who lagged behind. We were tortured in ever more inventive ways: one day we were ordered to run in groups, carrying logs; on another, we were abruptly forced into one of the lakes that dotted the countryside, and ordered to swim to the far shore.

‘Um, sergeant, I don’t know how to swim!’ one poor lad protested. The roach laughed.

        ‘You’ll learn, boy!’ he said, heaving him in to the water with one giant-booted foot. By some miracle and with no small amount of help from the rest of us, he made it across.

        ‘Now, swim back!’ he ordered, at which the poor fellow collapsed whimpering in exhaustion, and would have sunk below the water if we hadn’t rallied to get him back.

Mattias was the toughest of the three of us, pushing to stay at the head of the group while I thought our lungs must burst under the intensity of the exercise. Days featured endless lessons, sword and javelin drill, marching, and indoctrination into the ethos of the Roman military.

‘You will never surrender, shitheads, you got that?’ the roach screamed regularly.

‘You pathetic turds know what I am talking about, right? Any of you know anything about what happened at Cannae? And I am not talking about the massacre.’

After some hesitation I raised my hand.

‘You’, he said, nodding in my direction.

‘Sergeant, there was…’

‘Yes?’ he provoked, his eyes drilling into my own. I gathered myself.

‘Sergeant, there was a large-scale surrender of the survivors’, I said as confidently as I could.

‘ “A large-scale surrender”, the roach said, his voice rich with sarcasm. ‘Well, that’s one way of putting it’, he said. ‘Try harder’, he added, although not unkindly. As I opened my mouth, I was interrupted by Mattias.

‘Sergeant, the survivors gave up and betrayed the nation.’

‘If you weren’t so bloody right in your answer I would cane you for your impertinence’ he shot back. ‘Wait until you’re called upon to speak, you arrogant toad.’

The roach relaxed slightly. And then something incredible happened. I glanced over at Mattias, and sure enough, he and the roach were smiling at each other. The moment passed and the roach returned his gaze to my own.

‘Your shithead of a friend is right. Those men stained their honour, their families, and the nation with their treachery. If I was in command I would have had them all killed and their bodies cut up and dumped in the sea. Their actual fate, to be sent to Sicily to serve out the war in punishment battalions, lets them off and sets a bad example.

‘Who from our illustrious history would set a better example?’, he asked. Hands went up; another recruit was picked.

‘Sergeant, Regulus’, he said. ‘When Regulus was captured in the first war with the Carthaginians, he was sent to Rome to demand surrender of the senate. Rather than take refuge in the city, he not only returned to face his execution at Carthage but demanded that the senate refuse all talk of surrender.’

Our classes followed this pattern, day after day. We all knew these stories from our past, but the roach was slowly stealing us from our families and teaching us how to be Romans in his own, fundamentalist and puritanical mould.

Despite his tough approach, the roach eventually won our respect. He was fair in his demonization of his recruits, so we all suffered equally. He was also determined to pass on the lessons he had so bitterly learned and attendance to which he urged was necessary to avoid the fate of so many of his friends.

        ‘Lads’, he began one morning, as we stood around him in the shade of a willow tree. ‘This beauty is your most important piece of kit as well as your best friend. You will sleep with it. You will take it to the latrine with you. You will never let it out of your sight. If you do, you’re dead, that I can promise you. Any of you caught without your weapon after the end of this training cycle will have to answer—to me. Now, take a look.’

        The roach drew the short sword, which we called the gladius, from its leather and metal sheath. He smiled as it hissed from its protective cocoon, and he turned it to show its keen point dapple in the sunlight that shone through the leaves of the willow. We looked on, entranced.

        ‘This is not a cutting sword. This is a disemboweling sword. This is a weapon to separate arm from shoulder, leg from groin, head from body. You understand? Yes, this is not for fencing or showy swordplay; nor for fancy gentlemen or pretenders. This, lads, is a sword for the bar room brawl, for the barracks fight, and for sending our enemies to the afterlife. You will learn how to use it, and you will use it well.’

        After this, fired by the daily indoctrination and steeled ever more to hate the Carthaginian invader, we yearned to get our hands on this exquisite brute of military art. We were disappointed instead to begin with blunted wooden implements, with which we punched and tore each other to pieces over and over.

‘Jab, Marcus!’, the roach yelled. ‘Shoulders! Groin! Under the armpits! All will disable and kill.’

I grunted and thrust, trying to push through Mattias’ defence. I was soon heavy with sweat, my arms leaden with the effort.

‘Your enemies aren’t men, remember this’—the voice rang in my muffled ears as the roach stalked up and down the line of us, pushing, groaning, thrusting, all seeking the same objective.

‘Sergeant!’ a voice shouted—Alexander, a Greek from the south, lay writing on the ground, another standing over him. Blood pooled as it seeped from under the sweat-stained leather jerkin that we all wore. The roach grunted.

‘Good work, Fronto. You broke his ribs.’ He looked around for one of his assistants. ‘Get this man to the infirmary.’ With difficulty, Alexander was hoisted to his feet and disappeared; we never saw him again. Fronto, meanwhile, grinned, as the roach held up his sword-arm like a champion in the arena.

        As time passed we learned about shields and javelins.

‘Like this,’ the roach explained, standing with an impressively large, curved wooden shield, covering his front and the sword arm of the man to his left.

‘Along with your swords, this, too, is a weapon to be reckoned with.’ Bound with hoops of iron and with a central boss, the shield could be rammed into an enemy and its mass used to push him over and bring disorder to the enemy line. With a grunt, the roach leveled Crispus, who was standing in front of him.

‘Medic!’ came the shout, and Crispus was carried away, returning later with a wicked bruise below his left eye.

We learned how to use our javelins to open an attack, raining a massed volley of these perfectly weighted projectiles down on the enemy, hoping not only to kill but also to rip shields out of the opposing line.

The hardest thing to learn came in our fourth week. As usual, we began our lesson standing in a semi-circle around the roach and his assistants, as the sun rose in the sky, the humidity growing, the insects singing to us from the grasslands and marshes nearby.

‘Lads: you’ve been working hard on this now for two weeks. You’re all fitter than ever before, and certainly fitter than you were when you came in through my door. Heck, even that runt has some muscles now.’ He made a rude gesture towards Crispus, who reddened.

‘But you have learned that no matter your fitness, a man can only last so long in the front line of the shield wall before he needs a break. This isn’t for your benefit; if you die, you die. But if you die because you’re too tired to fight, then you might get other men killed.

‘On average, a man can fight for only a very short time before he needs to be replaced. The army, in its infinite wisdom, has a way to deal with this.’

He looked at us for a moment. ‘Pick up your kit’, he commanded. We hefted our wooden swords and shields.

‘Form two groups of thirty, six lines of five apiece.’

We did so, dressing our ranks and assembling quickly. The roach nodded.

‘Make sure that your shield protects the open side of the man to your left, just like we’ve shown you. Front ranks, draw your swords, everyone else, stay buttoned up.

‘When I blow the whistle, you will fight. And when I blow it again, you will move. Like this.’

The roach strode towards our front line and demonstrated the correct movement, using one of my training mates as a prop. The idea was simple enough: at the sound of the whistle, the soldier would pull back with his shield at an angle while the man behind him took his place; as they passed the retiring soldier flattened his shield against himself and slipped to the rear to join the last rank, where he would then await his turn to be rotated into the front once again. The trick, we found out, was for everyone to move at the same time. This was easier imagined than carried out in the heat and dust of a training exercise. How we would do it on the battlefield seemed an impossible task.

A whistle blew, and there was a whirlwind of dust. The roach peered at me.

‘Marcus? Get up, lad’, he said. I was flat on my back, my opponent grinning over me. I had moved too late.

‘Again!’ the roach called, and so it went, and with it we drank in the essence of the Roman army: forwards, never backwards. Push, kill, move over their dead, kill again, and keep pushing until they cracked and ran.

        ‘Speed and flexibility are key to our strength, lads’, the roach reminded us as we stood in our lines, drenched in sweat, bruised and bloodied.

‘Move quickly. Move confidently’, he continued, walking up and down the line. ‘Make room for your mate to take your place. Our ability to pour rested troops constantly against the enemy is unparalleled. In battle you will be four deep. Four! That’s not much time to rest between shifts, and that fourth rank is really there only for emergencies. And don’t even think about it, shitheads, the veterans are in the fourth, to steady you bunnies and stop you from panicking.’

The blur of a punching shield boss entered my vision and I was on the ground once more. The roach looked down at me with exaggerated pity.

‘Always be ready, for no amount of training that we drill into you can prepare you for when the unexpected happens, and happen it will. The point when you move out of the line is one of the most likely times to be killed. Plug that gap.’

And with a swift action he turned and levelled Mattias, who had been directly behind me. He blew the whistle again.

‘One more time! See if you can earn your supper for once!’

Mattias levered himself off the floor with a grin, blood trickling from the side of his mouth, and took his place in the line.

        We continued this exercise day after day, week after week, until we were proficient. Sometimes I found myself twisting in my bunk, moving out of line in my sleep, occasionally falling to the floor. Nightmares of failure dogged me and I learned, as did the others, to fine tune the movements to take less time than it took to remember that once we had enjoyed a life before the army—that we once had mothers, girlfriends, hobbies. But our strength, and our determination, continuously drip-fed by the roach, continued to grow.

Lessons of all kinds filled our blistering schedule as the end of our training came closer.

        ‘Dress the lines! Dress them!’ bellowed one of the assistants. ‘Stay straight or you’ll give them a chance to break through!’

        Another humid morning, another lesson.

        ‘Your basic unit is the century, sixty men. You can form centuries into maniples, the infantry company. Who among you knows what a manipulus is?’

        A hand went up, a nod answering it.

        ‘Sergeant, it was a… well, if I remember correctly, a handful of straw.’

        ‘Ennius speaks the truth. And which people gave us this early standard, a battle flag of our military units?’

        ‘Sergeant, the Samnites.’

        ‘Correct again. And what happened to them?’

        ‘Well, we—’

        ‘Yes, we did. We wiped those murderous little shits off the face of the Campanian plains, raided their mountain hideaways, and exterminated them.’ The roach grinned viciously.

        ‘Now, maniples can move just as individuals move in a century. When you join your legions, you will be arrayed like a game of chequers, by maniple. Just like your last line is there for emergencies, lads, so your last maniple won’t fight unless all is lost. Now…’

        The work was relentless. At night we quizzed each other on the different formations, drawing diagrams in the sandy dirt, moving pieces around to simulate larger scale movements. As the weeks wore on, the roach intensified our time in the classroom. We were exhausted, each and every day, and we tottered as we tried to stay standing and listen the roach. Mattias passed out one morning, after we had spent the whole night out on a practice ambush.

        ‘You! Mattias!’ The roach flicked his head at one of his assistants, who dragged a snoring Mattias to his feet, slapping him hard on the cheek.

        ‘Now’, the roach went on. ‘Tell me what makes you different from the Carthaginian enemy?’

        The question caught many of us off guard.

        The roach glowered and paced a small rectangle between his assistants. Eventually a hand shot up. The roach nodded.

        ‘Sergeant!’ came the barked response. It was Crispus. ‘The Carthaginian army is made up of mercenaries, Spanish traitors, Gauls, criminals, halfwits, and defectors.’

        ‘Excellent. And what motivates them? What brings them success after success, but which will be their ultimate undoing?’

        An uneasy silence.

        ‘What motivates you, Mattias?’

        ‘Sergeant! The patria is what motivates me. Duty to the fatherland above everything.’

        If the roach saw Mattias roll his eyes, he didn’t react. Instead, he continued.

        ‘Yes, indeed. Duty, service: even the loftiest men in our nation, the consuls and the censors, the chief priests, the conscript fathers of the Senate… these men have at their fingertips such power as can only be dreamed of, but they wield it for the betterment of their fellow citizens and all of our Italian allies, for tota Italia.’

His arm swept the room in a grandiose gesture, showing us, Roman citizens and Italians, to be the opposite of the halfwits and defectors fighting for Hannibal.

        His chest swelling for another patriotic statement, he was interrupted when another hand went up. ‘Yes?’ the roach said.

Crispus again. ‘Sergeant,’ he began, ‘I have heard that Hannibal claims to be Hercules, that he communicates with the divine… that he has come to free the Italians and the Greeks of the south from Rome.

        Crispus withered in place as the roach held his gaze.

        ‘Crispus is correct. This is, indeed, the story that is being bandied about. How else can one man wield such authority over an ungovernable mob such as that which recently invaded our nation? How can a single man lead those whose tongues, governments, races, are different? He is their talisman, the torch that guides them. But there is his weakness. He cannot match our government—a government of the people, led by the citizens, the hallowed fathers of the Senate, and by the elected consuls and their assistants. No one man can wield absolute power. No kings in our society, lads, you know that; we threw them out well before any of you little shits entered this world. No demi-gods or heroes, either. Nobody like that weakling Alexander, or any of his moronic followers.’

Mattias stifled a yawn. The roach was just warming up.

‘Think of Cincinnatus!’, he continued. ‘A man who laid down his plough when the Senate called, served his term as dictator, vanquished the enemy, and then retired to his farm, his duty done. Absolute power lay within his grasp, control of the entire Roman army. And what did he do?’ The roach’s arms were outspread, like a priest calling on the gods to grant him victory over Hannibal himself.

‘He could have turned it against Rome, the city could have been his to spoil. But no; he went home, and farmed, like you will when your duty to the nation is done.’        

Well into his stride, now, the roach carried on like a cart that had lost its horses on a steep hill. ‘You will all remember Pyrrhus. Gaius’, he pointed at a squat brute in the front row, ‘I believe your grandfather died at Beneventum, correct?’

        ‘Yes, sergeant’, Gaius said with pride. ‘He was mauled by an elephant, protecting his company sergeant.’

        ‘A fine example of sacrifice pro patria’, the roach said approvingly. Gaius was beaming. I swear there were tears in his eyes.

‘Pyrrhus came to our nation in the times of your grandfathers, expecting a short fight. Expecting that one, two victories at most, which he in fact achieved, would cause us to fragment, to give up, to acknowledge the greatness of a man who, like Hannibal, carried about him a form of celebrity’—the roach shuddered at the word—‘who thought that he was a man who could command the state itself and who himself was the only government the men around him needed. When he yawned it was law! When he pissed, people clamoured to catch it in buckets so that they might anoint their first-born sons! When he took a shit it was a government decree! By the gods, what a turd.

‘As Romans and Italians, we look not to individuals for greatness, but to the commonwealth. Our strength is our nation, our gods, and our traditions. Tell me, Gaius, did your grandfather’s generation give up when they were bested by Pyrrhus?’

        ‘No, sergeant’, Gaius replied, standing, chest out, shoulders back. ‘They raised army after army, all of them—Romans and Italians together—unified and strengthened by defeat, made more dangerous and more angry as the war went on. The more they were bested by the trials of war, the greater their valour and fortitude. Pyrrhus could never win against such a generation.’        Mattias was falling asleep again, and I kicked him in the back of his shin. I knew he didn’t want to miss the roach’s greatest performance yet.

        ‘And where,’ the roach continued, ‘do we stand now? Three great calamities. Armies ground into a bloody pulp at the side of the frigid and frost-strewn Trebbia, drowned in the murk of Lake Trasimene, pulverized under the hot summer sun at Cannae. Is this not the same situation as the catastrophe the state faced against Pyrrhus?’

We all dutifully nodded our agreement.

‘And think, men, of even more recent history, the epic fight which your fathers waged against Hamilcar and the rest of the Carthaginians. Over twenty years of constant war, and yet Rome never laid down its arms in the face of mortal danger.’

The roach was pacing now, working himself up to a thundering climax.

        ‘You are all citizens. The men facing you belong to no state, no country, have no allegiance to government or honour. They fight for money, for their supposed demi-god Hannibal, but they cannot win; their victory over us is an impossibility. Hear me well, lads. They cannot win. For you have the great reserve inside you of your fathers and their forefathers, who even when forced under the Samnites’ yoke, not only refused to give up, but took to the field of Mars once more and made the Samnites pay for their crimes. When you face death, draw strength from your fellow legionnaire. Respect the skills of your enemy, but carry your swords into action knowing that your motivation can never be overcome by your foe.’

        It was a stirring lesson in the corporate traditions of the army, and even while my family had been stripped from me it reminded me of summer evenings spent talking with my father, who loved to lecture us on the clear and overwhelming superiority of our Republic.

Later that evening, Mattias, Crispus, and I were sitting on our bunks, after an hour of cleaning and polishing our equipment. Mattias poured out some of the meagre ration of sour wine we were allotted, and worked at a piece of dry bread and some goat’s cheese that he had pilfered from the mess hall. After a moment, I looked up at my two friends.

        ‘Surely you didn’t buy all that this morning?’ I said. Mattias looked up, one eyebrow raised.

‘I mean, do you think that the reason our fathers and grandfathers beat the Carthaginians and Pyrrhus was because of their fearless devotion to the state?’

        ‘Personally, I think it’s a load of crap,’ said Mattias, spitting out a piece of moldy cheese.

‘I’d fight for you two, and probably this lot as well’, swinging his arm at the room. ‘But I think it’s a mask. It explains for the dim-witted and uninquisitive how so many men are being fed into the meat grinder. How many is it now that have just vanished, that aren’t coming home to their families? Ten thousand? Fifty? A hundred? When does it stop? It’s just more fucking lies.

‘We don’t have some edge over the enemy because of some philosophy of government. Heck, what we have are people. Pyrrhus lost not because he was some demi-god celebrity. He lost because we had more men than he did, and because his allies in the south, like Tarentum, just gave up. They were smart! I mean, they got their arses kicked enough times that they decided to quit.’

        ‘Mattias! For the gods’ sake, don’t let anyone else hear you say that’, Crispus stammered.

‘Oh, I don’t mean that we should give up. I am just saying, that you can understand why others did. And look at the first war with Carthage. Why did they give up? We obliterated their navy. No navy, no way the army in Sicily could survive. That’s why Hamilcar came down from Mount Eryx, a position that we could never have taken in a hundred years’ of trying. He couldn’t get any supplies. Duty to the patria my arse, he gave up because he was beaten, and he knew it. I ask you, how many more will be fed into Hades before this is all over?’

        Mattias saw the look in my eyes and stiffened. ‘Attention!’ I barked, and shot to my feet.

        ‘At ease, lads,’ said the roach. ‘It’s an excellent question, one to which I can give you an answer.’

        He stared at Mattias, his expression unreadable.        ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘my father was censor not too many years ago.’ The roach smiled enigmatically, and I wondered how the son of such a high government official ended up here, in the back of beyond, training replacements for a lost cause.

        ‘According to the figures that my father compiled, just before the war, we could muster nearly seven hundred thousand infantrymen, and about seventy thousand horsemen. And so, Mattias, there are plenty more to be sent to fight the invader. Some of them will, as you so aptly put it, end up in Hades.

        ‘You are forgetting, as well, that Hannibal’s victories have been costly. He lost many at the Trebbia, and some say the old bugger himself has some kind of marsh sickness and has lost an eye. Plus, his fucking elephants are all dead.’

        The roach now looked at Mattias with a white-hot rage that barely simmered below the surface. Mattias himself was white with fear, and jumped as the roach reached out and hauled him to his feet, until he was within an inch of the roach’s pockmarked face.

‘So don’t let me hear any more defeatist talk, or pointless fucking questions about whether or not we can win.’

        ‘Yes sergeant!’ we shouted, and without a further word he left us. I shot a glance at Mattias, who was visibly trembling as the roach left. He put an arm out for his wine, and drank the cup in a single swallow

        ‘Dammit’, he said.

Many of the days with the roach blurred together, but, given what would take place in Spain many years later, one morning in particular stands out as clear as the day it happened in my memory. We were gathered once again in the shade of that willow tree, sitting on the grass with the roach at our front.

        ‘So far, lads, we have taught you the way the Roman army works; the way it does business, the way it kills the enemy. One thing I have learned in this war, however, is that the old ways of fighting have had their frailties exposed. Yes, at the Trebbia, the heavy infantry succeeded in destroying the ranks that opposed them. They were aggressive, tough, just as they were trained. They cut the enemy down and pushed through, hoping to seize his camp and destroy his equipment. But they did not know then that they were fighting an unconventional enemy. Do any of you know what happened?’

        Several hands shot up confidently.

        ‘Quintus.’

A young, freckled boy stood quickly to attention. A plumb bob hung by his side would have drawn a clean line from head to toe, so thoroughly had the roach’s discipline been instilled in us by this point.

        ‘Sergeant! The enemy front was a feint, to draw our infantry out. They had an ambush waiting in the rear, and this was how they won.’

‘That is part of it’, said the roach, gesturing for Quintus to sit. ‘But the rest is even more dangerous. Can another tell me, what is one of your most valuable characteristics as a Roman soldier? What gives you the confidence that you will prevail against any foe?’

The roach pointed. ‘Yes, Cornelius.’

        ‘Sergeant! Perseverance!’

        ‘Crispus.’

        ‘Sergeant! Our discipline.’

        He looked at me. I sat rigid, my palms sweating. ‘Marcus.’

        I sprang to my feet. ‘Sergeant! Our aggression.’

        ‘Yes’, said the roach. ‘All of these are correct. But the one thing above all that our enemy has learned to use against us is our own desire to fight. Our aggressive instincts, our lust for confrontation. Remember, a Roman army brings its foes to battle and destroys them. Utterly and completely. We annihilate those who stand against us. Total victory, no surrender. That is the very core of our being. Yet, at the Trebbia, the Roman line was lured into a premature action. They went forwards, across and through that frigid accursed river, while Hannibal’s trap lurked behind them.’        

        The roach looked at us, letting the silence grow. Mattias nudged me and I knew he was thinking that another rousing performance was just around the corner.

‘If we are to win, lads, then we must learn from our mistakes. Aggression! It is one thing that has always marked the successful Roman soldier. Recall again our fight against Pyrrhus. We fought, we persevered, as a single disciplined unit, we never gave up. But against Hannibal, we are facing an enemy who has not only studied our war with that Greek rogue, but who has studied our individual leaders. Who, tell me, commanded at Trasimene two years ago?’

        ‘Sergeant! The consul Flaminius!’        

‘And at the great disaster far to our south, at Cannae?’        

‘Sergeant! The consul Varro!’

        ‘Indeed’, the roach replied. ‘Two great men, both aggressive and talented. Ideal commanders. Flaminius himself launched his attack on Hannibal from Arretium, here, where you now train. The loyalty of both men to the state was unimpeachable and unquestionable.

‘But Hannibal took advantage of them both, by using their willingness to engage him to their detriment. We are not fighting Pyrrhus, nor are we fighting the Carthage of old. This man, Hannibal, while he fancies himself a demi-god celebrity’—the roach leaned to one side and spat in emphasis—‘is not the barbarian you have been led to believe, even if his army is a motley collection of desperate men, mercenaries, and criminals. He himself is educated, schooled in the arts of war, and knowledgeable of our traditions and methods. I tell you this not to praise him, for a man such as he deserves nothing but annihilation, but for your training.

        ‘The army you will be joining is changing. We will stay aggressive. We will keep our discipline. We will persevere. With the help of the gods, we will keep our duty and traditions, so that no man who went before you will not have earned your respect, and you, live or die, will earn the respect of those who come after you.’

        Mattias stirred, shifting his weight. He knew now, as did I, that this speech by the roach was different. And then, here it was.

‘One thing that I want all of you to remember, as you carry the fight to the enemy, is that you must possess a greater awareness of what—and who—we face. Look for the trap in the rear. When the enemy flees, be wary of what lies beyond the clouds of dust—or at your sides. When the track ahead seems clear, as it did to Flaminius at Trasimene, look to your flanks. Consider the landscape. Are you fighting with a lake to your backs? Expect to be driven into it. Do you have mountains to each side? Depend on the fact that the enemy’s goal is to have you penned and slaughtered. Do you have to cross a cold river in the snow, as the consul Sempronius did at the Trebbia? Expect that the cold river is part of the plan, conceived to sap your strength and will to fight. Recall the stories of our legionnaire brothers whose hands were so cold at the Trebbia that they could not even grasp their swords, and instead used their teeth against the enemy. And mark this point: the commanders at all of our three calamitous defeats acted impeccably, in the best traditions of our army. But all were deceived in their own way.’

        He looked at us slowly. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that a tinge of sadness crossed his otherwise expressionless face.

‘Most of you will die. Some of you will find yourselves to be leaders, and attain the rank of corporal. A pitiful few might make sergeant. But all of you will be fully prepared for what is to come, or I have failed in my duty to you.’

The last, final test of our training was a punishing night march—twenty-six miles over rough terrain, in full kit, which meant, aside from wearing our armour, we also carried a shield, sword, two javelins, pack with food, spare clothing, and equipment which we would use to establish a marching camp when we were finished. These we had built all over the countryside until even after a long day the extra work was second nature. The roach left nothing to chance.        

The afternoon before we set out on this grueling test of stamina—designed as a final measurement of our abilities—was spent in final preparations. I carefully distributed the weight in my pack, making sure that the straps fit snugly over my shoulders. I checked the soles of my sandals, replacing worn hobnails and adjusting the bindings to reduce the risk of a crippling blister. That done, I checked the equipment of my two fellows and they looked over mine. Satisfied, we ate a small meal and carefully filled canteens with water, attaching them to the straps on our armour. We didn’t have long to wait before the roach called us to formation on the parade ground. Like us, he was wearing full equipment, always ready to do himself anything that he asked of any one of us. Without a word, he turned on to the track that led out of our camp, and we fell in silently behind him.

        The first five or six miles went easily enough. The pace was brisk, without being too punishing. My pack was snug but not tight, the sandals I had carefully laced and supported with woven fabric protecting my feet and my legs. Here and there I adjusted this piece of equipment or another, as the need dictated, and took small sips of water, careful to avoid overfilling my stomach and giving me a cramp. It was a warm night, but with a clear hint of the coming autumn, and we could smell, as well as feel, the wetness of the surrounding marshes. The track wove its way along the side of this wetland, with a chain of dark hills to our right; a waxing moon provided light sufficient to march by, and our spirits had been given a youthful confidence by eight weeks of hard and disciplined training.

        At around midnight, we took a short break. I fell backwards onto my pack, sweat dripping down from every opening in my body. I drank a little more water and ate some of the oat biscuits I had packed for the march.

        ‘Mattias? Crispus?’ I called out hoarsely to my comrades. ‘How are you holding up?’

        Mattias gave me his best tough-guy look, with teeth bared and fist clenched. I laughed. Crispus was examining a boil that was growing on the side of his foot, where a piece of the sandal leather had broken, leaving the torn end to chafe wickedly against his instep. I crabbed slowly over to him.

‘Here’, I said, tearing some of the spare strips of cloth bandage that I carried.

‘Thanks, Marcus’, Crispus replied, as I bound my friend’s raw skin, tying the cloth off tight against the top of the sandal so that it would move as little as possible.

        There was a stirring up ahead and Mattias spat into the bushes. ‘Looks like the holiday is over’, he said.

I saw the roach signal us to rise, and hauled myself up. I held out a hand, and helped pull Mattias to his feet, and then we both helped Crispus.

        The rest of the exercise passed in a haze of tortured determination. Near the end, drunk with tiredness, it became almost impossible to place one foot in front of the other. The sun was rising as we crested a hill and then saw, in the valley below, a flat area of grassland where we would build our marching camp. A collective exhalation of air, rising into the damp morning, came from our exhausted group.

The scent of crushed grass as we descended rose from our bruised and bloody feet, smelling like the heavens themselves. A stream gurgled alongside, and some men stooped quickly to fill empty canteens.

‘No stopping!’ the roach bellowed, striding down the side of our lanes and caning the thirsty soldiers into line. ‘You’ve done well, lads, don’t stop now. Keep going!’

Crispus had now developed a pronounced limp, and the rags I had used to bind his feet were spotted with blood, but he pushed himself onwards. And finally, with a blessed mercy, the roach fell out of the column, and, grinning, signaled us to break our march. Almost stupid with fatigue, I fell backwards on to my ruck, next to a milestone planted in the verge of the track.

‘Look, Marcus’, Mattias said from his position flat in the grass, and gestured. ‘Twenty seven miles to Arretium. We fucking did it.’

        ‘Fifteen minutes’ break, lads, then get to work’, the roach ordered. ‘Don’t eat! Water only. You’re too tired, and you’ll puke. Wait to eat, you hear me?’

        We nodded our understanding and a few called out an acknowledgment. Climbing out of our packs, we rested for what seemed like the time needed for a well-aimed javelin to fly between shield walls, and before long we set to work. It was mid-morning before we were finished, but the view was splendid: a small and neat square, with our tents, carried with us through the night, erected in tidy rows, javelins and shields arranged along either side.

Finally, the roach called us to eat. And what a meal! The roach, in his final day as our drill sergeant, had dismissed his assistants early that morning. With some resentment we had watched them march off, leaving us to the work of completing the fortification. But they had returned with two wild boars, and our work had been spurred on by the wondrous smell as they were skinned, gutted, jointed, and roasted over a fire made from the broken spurs of a nearby dead oak tree. They had also collected fresh fruit, wild from a nearby hedgerow, and we ate greedily, fingers dripping with grease and stained with the juice of field berries.

        ‘Men’, the roach began, raising his canteen in a toast—‘you have done well, very well, to reach this point. We won’t be going back to Arretium. Rather, from here, you will be sent onwards to your units. Here I have the individual assignments, and the orders to carry with you.’

He indicated a neat stack of thin, waxed tablets in the shade of the training standards.

        ‘Cornelius!’ the roach called, handing out a tablet and shaking the man’s hand.

        ‘Quintus!’ he continued.

        ‘Crispus!’ he barked.

Crispus stood up with some difficulty, hobbling over to the roach. He took his tablet, shook hands with the roach, and then returned to our position. Mattias and I followed shortly. Afterwards the three of us looked at each other tentatively.

‘I’ll go first’, Mattias said. He opened his tablet.

‘Spain. Second legion.’ He spat out a bone contemptuously, looking incredulous. ‘Spain? What the fuck am I going to do in Spain? The war is in Italy.’

        ‘You?’ I asked Crispus.

‘Marines, assigned to the navy at Pisae.’

        ‘Close to home and your family’, Mattias nodded approvingly, ‘that’s good.’

        I opened my orders, and smiled.

        ‘I will be following you to Spain, it seems’, I said. I gave Crispus a reassuring clap on the shoulder.

‘I don’t think you’ll be staying in Italy long, my friend. Someone’s got to keep us safe on that sea voyage. Mattias and I are embarking from Pisae,’ indicating our orders, ‘and I’ll wager that you’ll be with us as we head west.’

        And indeed, so it turned out to be. As we arrived at Pisae three days later, Crispus received his billet as marine on board the troop transport Minerva, which would carry us to what, in our blessed innocence, we were certain would be a quiet, sleepy backwater of the war. For all his earlier talk about quitting, Mattias was now fuming, desperate for a fight.

‘Spain’, he declared with great conviction, as we pulled away from the docks. ‘What a shithole.’

Next Chapter: Chapter Three - Spain