After his father’s arrival, all of Lucius’s days were spent with his father and his budding business. By the time Imperator Traianus had ascended the principate’s throne and ordered two new legions to assemble and fight his first Dacian war in 102 CE, Lucius’s combat skills were a match for any of the ex-soldiers in his father’s employ. A few he could even best. He’d grown up tall, and the hours laboring alongside his father and friends had built a strong body. The education needed to assist with the company’s accounting had honed his mind and given him a practical set of skills that would help him advance more quickly up the ranks. His father used his connections as a former centurion of the auxiliary, and his trading connections as preferred vendor to the legions, to introduce his son at the many forts he traded with along the northern Rhenus River. By the time Lucius had neared his seventeenth year, his father had secured two recommendations—one from the Pilus Prior of the Second Cohort of the VI Victrix Legion and, most impressively, one from the Primus Pilus of the XXII Primigenia Legion.
When Gaius brought home the news that cohorts were being recruited and trained in the region before being sent off to join with the rest of the newly formed XXX Ulpia Legion in Brigetio in Pannonia Superior, Lucius eagerly received the news. He was excited for a chance to follow in his father’s footsteps, to at last seek adventure and fortune.
His mother was less than excited.
Although she fussed over her son, paying extra attention to him, he caught that sad look in her eyes more than once when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. Yet she never tried to talk him out of it. Verlia did her best not to cry but wasn’t quite successful as she embraced her son before sending him off to Rome’s war machine. Lucius, riding next to his father on the lead ox-drawn wagon laden with goods for Castra Vetera, turned as they crested the hill leading out of their village. His mother was still standing there, watching her son ride away.
Oxen were not fast creatures. Their usefulness laid in their strength, not their swiftness of foot. Each plodding step seemed to take forever. Lucius, who’d made the three-day journey many times before with his father, couldn’t believe how alternately fast and slow the trip seemed to be going. He knew this was what he was supposed to do, what he wanted to do. But the shift from boyhood to adult, from living with his family to training to kill with strangers, was a momentous life change he could barely grasp. They camped a few miles from Vetera the second night, and after a simple road meal, Lucius, his father, and his father’s friends sat around the cookfire.
“You ready, boy?” one of his father’s employees asked.
“Not really,” Lucius replied.
Several men chuckled.
“Smart answer. Follow directions, listen to your optio and centurio, and avoid the vine rod, although that’ll be next to impossible unless you get a particularly kind-hearted centurio. The first time the centurio’s rod kisses the back of your legs, that’s when you’ll know you’re in the legions.”
A few men nodded sagely.
“Were you in the legions? Not the Auxilia?” asked Lucius.
“Yup. VIIII Hispania at Eboracum. You’ll do fine, boy. You’ve had more training with gladius and fighting than I did before signin’ up.”
Lucius hoped he was right. He didn’t want to embarrass his father or any of his friends who’d helped train him and been his guides in the martial skills. He barely listened as the conversation drifted to memories of the older men’s time under the Eagle. When it came time to stop for the night, he was excused from his turn at the watch so he would be rested when adding his name to the lists. For all the good it did him—his sleep was fitful. When the camp stirred at first light, he rolled out of bed, sandy-eyed and groggy but ready to start his new life.
* * *
“Next!” a man in chain mail cried out from his seat at a table. A helmet bearing the transverse crest of a centurion rested next to him.
Lucius stepped forward.
“Name?”
“Lucius Silvanius, Centurio.”
“Proof of citizenship.”
Gaius stepped forward and pulled out his military diploma—two bronze tablets bound with rings. The centurio looked it over thoroughly before addressing Lucius’s father.
“You’re Ambeltrix Gaius Silvanius?”
“Aye. Served a full term with the Cohors I Tungrorum.”
“Were you with Agricola at Mons Graupius?”
“Aye.”
The centurion looked impressed. “Retired as a centurio?”
Gaius nodded.
The centurion gave him a respectful nod in turn as he returned Gaius’s citizenship diploma. “This seems to be in order. Place your hands on the table, Lucius.”
Lucius placed both hands on the table for inspection.
“Grip them… Now, touch your fingers with your thumbs.”
Lucius followed his instructions as the centurion endeavored to ensure they were in good working order. Next, Lucius was asked to read some symbols on a distant wall to ensure his eyesight was good. The final order was to perform various movements to establish his body was free of any lasting damage that would prevent him from meeting his future duties as a legionnaire of Rome.
“Very good. Do you have a letter of recommendation?”
Gaius presented two.
The centurio seemed surprised. His eyebrows worked their way up his forehead to the short hair favored in the legions as he inspected the signatures. He gave Lucius a more thorough inspection. “Can you read and write?”
Lucius nodded. “Yes, Centurio. I can also do math and maintain accounting and inventory ledgers.”
“An educated recruit, eh?” He scribbled more notes on his parchment. “Very good. Please report to the optio. He’ll assign you to your contubernium. After you’re settled, fall out into the forum where we’ll administer your oath. Next!”
Gaius and his friends followed Lucius into the fort, where a man in his late twenties holding the six-foot staff that marked him as an optio waited. “Am I finding tents for all of you?” the optio asked.
“Just the lad, Optio,” replied Gaius.
“Follow me, tiro.”
It was the first time anyone had addressed Lucius as a recruit. The optio turned and walked deeper into the camp until he got to a series of identical small barracks. Walking down the lane separating them, he eventually stopped at one. “You’ll share this one with the rest of your contubernium, tiro. Say your farewells and assemble in the camp forum.” The optio marched back to his spot near the gate.
Gaius’s friends surrounded Lucius to wish him fortune and health. When the last of them got in their final farewell, they began the walk out, allowing Gaius a final moment with his son.
“Son, I know you’ll do me proud, but see that you come home alive and in one piece, or your mother won’t forgive either of us.”
Lucius nodded, giving his father a nervous smile.
Gaius laid a hand on Lucius’s shoulder. “Listen to your centurio and optio. Learn everything you can from them. Earn the trust of your contubernium and centuria. And most importantly, learn who not to trust. That’ll keep you alive. Understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
Gaius smiled down at his son, who hadn’t quite caught up to his father’s imposing height. Though broad of shoulder, Lucius, had barely made it to six feet. As the silence hung between the two men, one past the twilight of his military career, the other at the beginning, Gaius pulled his son into a crushing hug. No words were spoken as Gaius walked away. He gave Lucius one final wave before he disappeared behind a tent and out of sight.
* * *
“This is your last opportunity to change your mind. If you take the oath, then decide to leave, you’ll be guilty of desertion for which the ultimate penalty is death,” the centurion who’d taken the small platform called out. A row of five other centurions and six optios stood behind him.
The recruits looked around at each other, nervously eyeing their future comrades to see if anyone would take the opportunity—a few hoping that someone would and give them the excuse not to be the first. Nobody moved.
The centurion pointed at Lucius, likely singling out him because of his position at the front and center. “Step forward, Lucius Silvanius, and raise your right hand. Do you swear by the gods an unbreakable oath that you will obey your commander’s orders and leadership without question? That you will relinquish the protection of Roman Civil Law and accept your commanders’ right to execute you without trial for disobedience or desertion. That you will serve under the Eagle for your contracted length of duty until you are discharged by your commander. That you will serve Rome honorably and will respect the laws regarding civilians and your comrades, even unto death.”
“I do, Centurio!” Lucius replied, his voice carrying over the silence of the assembly.
“Congratulations! You’re now an official tiro of the Roman Legions.” The centurion addressed the rest of the recruits. “Do you swear the oath you just heard?”
“I do!” came the enthusiastic reply.
“Congratulations, Tirones! Report to your contubernium for marking and enrollment.”
The new recruits waited at their tents until their commander could record any identifying scars, birthmarks, or moles which would be used to identify them if they deserted or their corpse on a battlefield.
Over the following weeks, Lucius got to know the men he shared a tent with, the men he’d likely spend at least a few years with, maybe more. They gave their caligae, open-toed military boots, a heavy work out as their centurions strove to get them in marching shape—twenty miles in five hours. If anyone lagged, a lick from the centurion’s vine rod would liven up their step.
Time not spent on the march was spent with a heavily weighted wooden training sword, running stab and slash drills against a post.
“Start slow, be precise! Speed will come with practice,” the centurion called out as he ran the tirones through the drills, critiquing technique.
Sword training was followed by scutum training, using weighted replicas to continue training their muscles. All the while, they kept increasing their marching distance until they could make forty miles in twelve hours. Each night, they poured themselves into their bunks, too tired to be thankful they weren’t yet sleeping on the ground. A vexillation several cohorts strong from the VI Victrix had left plenty of space at the permanent fort at Vetera for the new cohort that would eventually be assigned to the XXX Ulpia.
“Damn, no wonder Romans are so short. They marched their legs right off,” Cassius whined from his bunk.
“You’re a Roman now, Cassius,” Segomaros replied.
“Ugh. You know what I mean, Sego. Do you always have to be so literal?”
Several of their contubernium were already snoring, passed out from exhaustion.
“Enough with the bickering,” said Lucius. “I’m too tired for this.”
Sego and Cassius had enlisted together, claiming to be friends, though neither seemed particularly fond of each other. Cassius was tall and muscular with sandy brown hair, the prototypical Gaul. Sego, on the other hand, had just barely been tall enough and strong enough to be accepted, though he made up for it with endurance on the march. Lucius wondered how they’d fare the next day, when they returned to the twenty-mile march with the added weight of their full armor. He didn’t wonder long; sleep quickly overcame him.
Lucius was the first one suited up the following day, the only one who’d brought his own armor. His father had showed him all the tricks of gearing up quickly, a much-needed skill in case of emergencies. Some of his other tent mates weren’t faring as well.
Lucius reached over and adjusted Cassius’s scarf. “Set your focale like this. Then when you put on your lorica, it’ll protect your neck from the weight and chafing.”
The others watched and adjusted their scarves to match. Although some of them had fathers in the military, few were as active as Gaius had been in teaching them the tips and tricks of an experienced soldier. Fortunately, they had Lucius, who took the time to help each of them in turn, ensuring every plate was properly secured. Soon, the young men were pounding each other on the shoulder and bumping into each other to hear the clang of metal on metal, excited about their new armor.
Lucius stood back, enjoying his comrades’ horseplay. He’d had a few cousins but hadn’t spent much time with boys his own age when he was growing up. The only comradery he’d enjoyed was with aging veterans. He liked having companions his own age, even if they’d simply been tossed into the same tent together. This was his chance to earn friends as well as a career.
“Nicely done, Tiro Silvanius. Let’s see how enthusiastic they’ll be after our march today,” a quiet voice said. Lucius turned slightly to see Optio Brabo standing behind him.
He gave the optio a salute before answering. “Yes, Optio. Thank you.”
“Get them to the mess before the porridge gets cold, Tiro.”
“Yes, Optio,” replied Lucius, saluting again as the optio walked away.
Exhaustive training sessions with a variety of weapons filled the young men’s lives over the next several months. Soon, the other contubernia began to follow the lead of Lucius’s tent, seeking out him out with questions or listening closely when he advised his tent mates. Lucius often felt the eye of Optio Brabo—once he’d overheard the man say Lucius was helping his century increase its skill faster than all five others. Brabo’s century was catching the eye of the other officers, even if the centurion himself seemed oblivious to the excellent crop of recruits he’d been assigned, or the high marks the tribune was giving them. Centurion Antoninus ruled their century, but it was Optio Brabo who led the recruits.
When it came time to finally leave Vetera, Lucius’s contubernium was the first contubernium of the first century of the cohort. They’d have to wait until they joined up with the rest of the cohorts from their legion to learn how they ranked overall. They marched south and joined the vexillation from the XXII Primigenia and the VIII Augusta toward Pannonia and Moesia and the next round of war with the Dacians.