Do as The Romans Do (Part One of Two)

Do as the Romans Do

My name is Spurius Clodius Crixus … or at least that was my name long ago. It’s been for some considerable time now that the people who live around here call me ‘The Ghost of Cowley Bridge’.

For nearly two thousand years I’ve lingered here, wandering in and out of a nether world inhabited by cursed souls like myself; ‘manes’ I would have called them in my younger days. Most of my fellow shades are like mere wisps of cold mist, dimly perceived by earthly folk but misunderstood and thought of merely as unremarkable manifestations of the local climate. But I, for a reason that only the Gods know, am sometimes able to reveal a more substantial shape, one that can be clearly seen by mortals. Whether that is just another punishment for my many earthly acts of impiety, I don’t know. Certainly there were several, and the Roman Gods are noted for their cruelty, so I’ll take it as read.

The fact that I can sometimes be seen has been my only amusement these many centuries. Scaring the shit out of the local barbarians has been the only way I’ve avoided going mad, if I wasn’t already mad of course, and presuming that going mad is something that ghosts can do.

But before I was condemned to haunt this muddy tract of land, I was a soldier in the Legions – 2nd Legion, 3rd Cohort, 3rd Maniple, 1st Century, if you’re impressed by that kind of bollocks. I joined up soon after Claudius became emperor. You’ll have heard of him I’m sure but Claw-Claw-Claudius is what we called him. I was twenty at the time and on the run from … well you don’t need to know that. The truth was, I needed to get out of Rome and damned quick. I was assigned to the Secunda Augusta which was stationed in Germania at the time. Not a place that I’d ordinarily have chosen to visit but it did have the benefit of being a bloody long way from Rome and, more to the point, out of sight of the fucking Tarpeian Rock which would likely have been my destination if I’d stayed.

Anyway, Titus Flavius Vespasianus was legate of the Second then, a soldier’s soldier and a right tough bugger he was, but a decent enough commander, I’ll admit. After I’d done my training, the legion and three others (the Ninth Hispania, the Fourteenth Gemina and the Twentieth Valeria Vitrix) were put under the overall command of Aulus Plautius and we were transported by ship to the bloody arse end of the world; Britannia that is. It was, and still is, cold, remote and forever fucking raining.

Well the Britons weren’t exactly pleased to see us and frankly, I’d have bloody avoided seeing them too if I’d had my way. Caesar famously described the way they painted themselves blue and fought naked and though they’d developed a bit more decorum over the century since he’d left in disgust, they were still fucking mad devils who fought like fiends. Their leader was Caratacus and they resisted us fiercely. But we’d had the better of a battle near a river in Cantium and the way to conquer the whole island was open to us.

Vespasian’s second legion was ordered to pursue Caratacus westward and we fought about thirty engagements, overrunning some of those hill-fort things and conquering the island of Vectis on our way. We eventually halted the campaign at an oppidum the Celts had built in good farm land on a large river in the lands of the Dumnonii. We settled there and began to build a permanent camp which we called Isca Dumnoniorium. Basically it means the river of the Dumnones, which just proves how fucking unimaginative we Romans really were.

Over the next few years we frequently left camp on punitive excursions and eventually subdued the whole area. It was an important place was old Isca. It was the gateway to the lands westward where lead, tin and copper was mined in thousands of bucketfuls. Of course, Rome expected gold to be found too but except for a few pockets here and there it didn’t amount to much. That of course was the main reason we’d occupied the bloody island in the first place.

It makes me bloody laugh - people over the years have peddled the lie that the Romans came bringing civilisation. Total bullshit! To the Emperors and those greedy sods in the Senate, it was largely a matter of loot. So, the biggest disappointment to our leaders in the whole sorry, fucking enterprise was that the rumours of valleys flowing with silver and gold proved to be wishful thinking.

Of course, no-one thought to apologise to us in the poor bloody infantry.

Anyway, I’d been lucky in the battles we’d fought and had distinguished myself enough to have been noticed by that tough-nut Vespasian. So after only five years or so in the army, I’d just been promoted above the other optiones to be the legion’s Aquilifer, that’s the standard bearer to ignorant sods like you. This meant I was next in line to be made up to centurion. I had hopes of it being in the first cohort which had the elite troops. It would only have been Hastatus Posterior in the sixth century but, if I kept my nose clean, I might make it all the way to Primus Pilus.

My luck had held out surprisingly well for five years but then Fortuna herself took a hand, and she’d never been a friend to me. The Primus at the time was a fat, brutish pleb called Arvina. He used to get endless, fucking amusement by making me parade in front of his thick pals and taunting me about my ancestor’s previous status as a patrician. Like a fucking idiot, I’d let it slip once that I’m descended from Publius Clodius Pulcher who was adopted into a low status family so he could become a Tribune of Plebs. Of course, that happened in the time of the First Triumvirate, over a hundred bloody years previously so you would have thought it was pretty old news by then.

It really pissed me off - so I decided that I couldn’t wait for Mars and the fortunes of war to eliminate all of the bastards in line before me and thought I ought to give the Fates a hand by removing one or two of ‘em myself. Arvina seemed a good place to start as I hated the fat fucker anyway.

I got my chance when, one day, instead of the usual bucellatum and stew, Arvina gave me a bowl of ground chick-peas and in front of the men, ordered me to eat it. He knew what he was doing; as a good Clodian boy, I hated anything to do with chick-peas (read a history book) and I refused. It got a little heated but I was just waiting for him to pull a weapon on me and I’d have him. He was too bloody fly for that though and continued trying to wind me up. Well, after a while I’d had enough of it and I threw the bowl in his ugly mug and followed it up with a punch to his fat gut. It was a lucky (or unlucky blow), I guess. He collapsed right in front of me and died on the spot.

By rights I should have been crucified for this but Arvina was hated by everyone and Vespasian knew that a mutiny was bad form, especially while on campaign, so he did the very least he could. He just had me flogged and reduced to the ranks. He was a decent bloke as I said. It was his parting gift to me because soon after, he was recalled to Rome and was awarded a triumph by Claudius. Of course, he later became Emperor himself; I wonder how he wangled that, the cunning bleeder.

So after all my hard work I was back at square one and a bloody, marked man to boot. The chances of me working my way up again were slim and I resolved to keep my head very fucking low in future and just play the game – I was damned if I was going to put my life on the line for the glory of idiot patricians, when none of ‘em could hold a candle to old Vespasian.

After the Arvina farce, I was dumped in the third cohort with the other time servers and just bumbled along. From time to time we got new recruits transported over from Rome or somewhere nearer to it, but the legion was never again up to its full complement of six thousand. It was a fucking bad joke. There were the Auxilia for the Peregrini but you were supposed to be a full Roman citizen to join a proper legion. That rule though was simply shoved aside when the army was on a fucking campaign and, after losses suffered in the early battles, I doubt whether much more than two thirds of the legion was genuine Roman born. The truth was, if you could stick a gladius in some poor Barbarians guts without chucking up your breakfast, then you were good enough for the legions.

When Claudius died I’d been in Britain for about ten years. Nero taking over meant nothing to us poor bleeders on the front line and bugger all changed so far as I could see. We still got bucellatum and a stew of rancid meat and mouldy veg for every meal. The posca was as sour as always – no caecuban or falernian wines for the likes of us. The pay was supposed to be 225 denarii a year but we actually saw precious little of that, even when we did get our pay. After deductions for food and equipment there was barely enough to indulge in a decent game of alea once in a while. And then, even when Fortuna did smile on me for a few rounds, it was only a fucking tease. I always lost the lot eventually.

No, the best I had to look forward to was the completion of my duty after 25 years when I’d get my praemium of 3,000 denarii and a plot of land. Knowing my bleedin’ luck, it would probably be on the edge of some cold, dark forest in Germania amongst a horde of trouser-wearing, axe-swinging Goths. All you could grow there would be bloody cabbages and brassica anyway. I’d be forty five by then and the only women available to me would be the leftovers in the local tribe. All I’d have to look forward to was a few years of never-ending toil and a muscle-bound woman with blond hair, half a head taller than me and sporting a moustache. I’d be damned lucky if it was only a moustache.

Until then it would be endless bouts of boring, fucking guard duty, lots of backbreaking construction work and the occasional murderous little skirmish which I might even welcome, if only to relieve the sheer fucking tedium. I remember, when we were under Publius Ostorius Scapula, we had a few set-tos with the tribes in Britannia Secunda; Wales you call it now. Caratacus had inflamed the tribes and the Silures gave us a fucking good kicking once. We eventually got the upper hand but Caratacus moved northwards to lead the Ordovices. We finally defeated them too and this time, Caratacus fled to the Brigantes but he was sold out by their queen, the treacherous bitch. I guess she was looking for a favour in return though knowing what bastards our leaders were she’d have had to wait a fucking long time. Anyway, the poor old sod was packed off to Rome. I heard that Claudius spared his life but you can never trust the propaganda from Rome, so I just naturally assumed it was bollocks.

Mind you, Caratacus was a right smart bugger and a bloody good fighter as were, to be fair, the Britons as a whole. I thought all they really lacked was proper training and a sense of discipline. Give me a few thousand and time to train ‘em and I reckon they could have taken Rome itself.

They would have had no bleedin’ problem with the Praetorian Guard – a bunch of pretty-boy poofters in my opinion, only good for parades and having it off with Roman matrons. More muscle than brains, them lot. Most of ‘em couldn’t add V and V to make X. The only weapon they knew how to use was the one hanging under their tunica. My eldest sister, Clio, married one of the fucking brutes. She had four boy children in just over three years and died giving birth to the fifth. The Gods know what happened to them – probably all buggered by Nero up the Capitoline Hill. I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if their descendants are still being buggered by the current Pontifex Maximus, or one of his bloody minions.

But … tempus fugit they say, and it was when I was approaching my twentieth year of this living hell that things took a turn, seemingly for the better though it didn’t end up like that. At the time, the eight men in my contubernium were a motley crew of idlers, chancers, thieves and murderers – I didn’t complain about that unduly of course as I met all four bloody descriptions pretty well myself. But, as the eldest and most experienced, the others took me as leader though the red-haired Briton, Calidus, fretted about it a good deal and I had to … er, chastise him a fair few times. Apart from us two there was an Armorican called Caepio, an ugly Thracian we called Rana, two slow-witted Roman plebs, Lentulus and Longus; there was also Talpa, who used to do all the spade work and a manumitted slave from Nubia called Eunuchus who … no, on second thoughts, I’ll leave it at that – it’s not a very pretty tale.

I think I mentioned that we’d never really defeated the Britons totally and the governor at this point, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was on campaign in the north of Wales, trying to wipe out the druids who’d been a thorn in our side ever since we’d landed. Apparently, he cornered them on the island of Mona and burned them all to Hades. Don’t let anyone tell you that the Romans allowed freedom of religion. If a creed didn’t fit with our interests, we just used to wipe it out. We used as justification that the druids were into human sacrifice. The usual, self-serving propaganda of course, but even if it were true, this came from a so-called civilisation who liked to see people killed for entertainment, so we hardly had a right to take the moral fucking high ground.

Anyway, while Paulinus was enjoying himself slaughtering the druids, a proper bloody revolt started out in the east of Britannia. The capital, Camulodunum, was put to the torch and two other towns were razed to the ground. The stupid sods in the ninth Hispania thought they only had to wave their swords around a bit to quell the riot, but the Britons gave ‘em a right going over and then had the cheek to make off with their precious bloody eagle – that made me laugh, I can tell you. There was talk of us going to the rescue but I for one didn’t fancy it. It was their bloody country anyway. What really appalled the commanders though was that the leader of the revolt was a bloody woman. She was called Boudicca as I recall, and I wasn’t the only one who thought that was terrifically bloody entertaining. You see, the patrician class thought that everyone else was beneath them, including their own bloody wives and daughters for fuck’s sake. It was a shame but I knew it couldn’t succeed as Rome wouldn’t really be happy till they’d raped and murdered everyone they could land their bloody hands on, whether in trousers or without.

To be continued