He bared thick teeth. ‘I am Zacchariah. My price will be right. You show me now?’In that moment, ten generations of horse-traders counted for more than half a lifetime in the legions. I was my...

Carthago delenda est

Are you pair mad? You pitch up as if you own the place, and then you offer to relieve me of two centuries’ worth ofequipment?’ He glared across the wooden expanse at Marcus and Qadir....

Horgias nodded, his lips drawn back in a smile that was a wolf’s snarl. ‘They want us all flogged. Why us?’‘Lupus,’ Syrion said. ‘The other centurions hate him, even among the Fourth. He’s too distant....

What you seem so unwilling to accept, even now, is this: that the ideals which supported the old Republic had no correspondence to the fact of the old Republic; that the glorious word concealed the...

The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It’s not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the...

But, new soldier that I was, I understood at last what Cadus had been trying to tell me all along: that life and love and rank were not enough. To be whole in myself, I...

I remember Cannae,” she said, raising her head, “when we thought all was lost. Carthage had defeated us, and there were those who gave up hope. Yet we survived, by our fortitude, and by believing...

The failure of the roman system to furnish decent minimal standards for the mass of people was a fundamental cause of instability, both political and economic.

The enemy came towards us thick as mercury poured into a channel; a simmering tide oozing from the furnace of the risen sun into the pass below us. I felt Syrion tighten his grip on...

But sometimes…sometimes I wake with a mad thought in my head: What if that boy’s life mattered as much as anyone else’s, even Caesar’s? What if I were offered a choice: to doom that boy...

Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.”If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is...

Governor Paetus…’ Lupus closed his eyes that we might not read the rage in them. ‘Governor Paetus has informed us that he will return to our camp at Rhandaea with the Fourth legion, there to...

Selene’s life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women’s equality hasn’t always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today; there have been setbacks...

I know not how the Christians order their own lives, but I know that where their religion begins, Roman rule ends, Rome itself ends, our mode of life ends, the distinction between conquered and conqueror,...

Corbulo: a name to conjure with, a name to follow into battle, wherever he led; a name to have a man marching to the gates of Rome, crying Imperator! until the crowds and the idiot...

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects...

One encounters in the streets, late at night on the evenings of fetes, the most strange and bizarre passers-by. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths...

Harder! Harder! Strike at it, for the gods’ sake! It’s a Parthian, not your grandmother! I swear if you don’t put some effort into— What?

Every day you live is a lesson in itself.

Oblige me by taking away that knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

We broke camp together and set off in our opposite directions: we of the XIIth and our allies marched east, towards the rising sun, combat and honour; the IVth went west, to the setting sun,...

A man leaves his great house because he’s boredWith life at home, and suddenly returns,Finding himself no happier abroad.He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,You’ld think he’s going to a house on fire,And...

A man who had the legions of the east marching at his back could be bred by a donkey on a mule and the senate would have no choice but to accept him.

I despised myself for my weakness. I may have dreamed all my youth of life as a horse-trader like my father; I may have railed against my conscription and loathed the legions on principle, but...

Do you have still the dye with which to turn your tunic red?’‘The madder? Yes, I do.’‘Enough of it for a century?’‘Enough for the entire cohort, if you want it.’He twitched a smile then; I...

They knew of the Vth, my legion, of their skill in battle, of how they had won Antium for Octavian, and then fought against Parthia for Tiberius; they were glad the Vth was not yet...

The Petriana’s tribune dismounted a dozen paces short of the gate and stalked up to the palisade wall with a grim smile, squinting up at Scaurus and his officers and then glancing back at the...

So we left the spear in the wagon and I dressed and still was not sick and together we walked to the head of the century. Tears had been ready to lead them. Macer was...

The camp offices stood in the centre, adjoining the shrine to Jupiter that held the legion’s Eagle. In the camps of the Vth Macedonica and the VIth Ferrata, these buildings were of grey stone, dressed...

Centurion! Would you like to be a cavalryman one last time? There are Venicones who escaped when your line was broken to be hunted down, and Tribune Licinius has ordered me to take the best...