Quinta Macedonica Legio - completed and retitled in honour.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

IN MEMORIAM

PROF ANDREW ERASMUS HOLBEIN

It is with some regret that I pen these words and no little hesitancy.

I am sure many of you in this little community of ours were shocked as was I by the sudden death of my academic colleague Prof Holbein. For too long we academics and writers have lived in this past of Rome and her ruins and perhaps lost something of the wildness of the world around us. I know I had. And perhaps old Holbein had too. So that, one morning as I laboured over an obscure site along the banks of the Danube - fittingly as it turned out near the Bulgarian village of Gigen - with the sun on my back, word arrived on my mobile that Prof Holbein had died suddenly in a car accident the day before. I remember standing still in shock under that remorseless sun, my assistant asking what was wrong, hearing the sound of larks and swallows in the trees, and for a moment remembering all the digs and excavations we had shared; the stories we had unearthed; the fates of lost men and unforgotten soldiers - and I think a small part of me died then, near Gigen, by the Danube, in the old land of the Bulgars . . .

So it is with some hesitancy that I offer this up now to the wider community - perhaps in his honour, perhaps just to hold onto his memory, I don't know to be honest - this last paper of his. A little essay he had been working on in private for quite some time. I believe he had intended to show it to me as a surprise but of course that is irrelevant now.

I must confess to some shock when I found these files on his laptop. What he always joked was a little hobby - a minor solo, he once mockingly said - is nothing of the sort. His 'solo' instead stands as a major piece of research into our understanding of Late Roman military history. Quite unprecedented it must be said. I admit to feeling not a little jealous and so very sad also that it remained unpublished in his lifetime.

And as always with Holbein, the begining is also in some ways an end, I present his paper, notes and all, as both an unfinished work and a last testament to a unique scholar . . .

Prof Escher, April, 2011

THE NOWHERE LEGION

BY

Prof Holbein

(working title - to be amended once accreditation has been approved, I think - must seek Escher's opinion here.)


(I will be a little more flamboyant and write in that most disapproved style - that of the fiction writer! It will irk my more conservative colleagues but who cares? . . .)

So. Where to begin? At the end of course - that is the whole point - but where at the end? Escher would always know what to write - that was always his strength. Mine was in the detail, his in the sweep, as it were. Oh dear, I am rambling. Begin at the begining I have always been told but what if that begining is also the end? What then? How to tell a story which starts at its own end? I confess it was precisely that conundrum which drew me to this find in the first place. This old ruin lost in the desert and the dry papyri which it gave forth under my tender hands. Papyri which yielded up a story, a lament even, and an echo. Imagine digging into the past and finding a story which itself was also about uncovering the past!

A begining (note: damn Escher and his aptitude for words!) - an opening then.

A prologue of sorts - Ah, yes, that is the way in, I think. But would my old friend approve? Who knows! Time will tell, I think. Yes, a prologue then - a step back not to the story itself but to he who found the story - yes, Escher would like that. He would like that indeed!

The game is afoot! (note: edit all this out of course at a later date.)


. . . It was noon on the ninth day since leaving Constantinople that we crested a little hill and gazed down on the ruin of the old fort. I say ruin but it was not of course. It stained the valley below us not as a testament to the wrath of the Slavs across the Danube or the Avars further north but merely through our own neglect and abandon. This ancient fort or castellum lay cracked and tumbled down, its walls leaking rubble, the bastion towers home to crows, the gates flat on the earth like flaking portals. It was a sorry sight and one I was not eager to approach but the will of the Emperor cannot be spurned and so it was with a weary heart I urged my little train on - the slaves, the notaries and the small guard of Isaurians who boasted always that even the mountains trembled at their coming - and we wound our way down the hill and into the valley.

Colonii in the fields about our passing looked up in curiosity - some prostrating themselves when they saw my Imperial robes - while ahead, as we neared the fort, I saw a flash of sunlight from a helmet and knew we had been seen. I wondered then on the consternation that would flow through this fort, this little wreck of a Roman place, once known as Oescus, that guard and sentinel of the Danube, here in Dacia Ripensis, what worry would ripple among the forgotten men here behind these walls which were no longer walls? I smiled then in anticipation as we approached - passing the few hovels which clustered out from the fort like urchins around a miserly uncle - and without realising it, I adjusted my silk robes and the heavy cloak made of Gothic wool, sat upright on my Nissean mare, and motioned those about me - the slaves , the notaries, the Isaurians (who always smirked at God alone only knew what secret humour) to straighten up also.

It was important I thought even as we passed under the crumbling arch of the gateway, the hooves thudding on the fallen timbers, to show that we were the manifest Will of the Emperor, our Basileus, Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Augustus - and His Will resided in my hands, his aide, his messenger -

Even if that Will was the final dissolution of this fort from the List of the Army and the disbanding of that little knot of men who remained forever and always in its shadow . . .

I am Valerianus, no more than a scribe, a eunuch - despise me, yes, but who among all of you has ever held in his hand the end of a Legion as I do now?

Justinian wills and I act, no more. And this fort will be gone and its men vanished as if they had never existed - Oescus the castellum of the old V Macedonica Legio, now disbanded and removed forever more . . .

God save all their souls.

[Maximinus Thrax]

What an amazing and original introduction, it's obvious that we are in for a treat.

[Juvenal]

An intriguing and melancholy start to what promises to be a riveting saga.

I have to admit that I too am distraught at the news of Professor Holbein's death, if for no other reason than because it puts a final and irrevocable end to At The Limes. This was a story that many of us felt was cut off at the spate; and all for the want of a trifling amount of extra digging at the Venetoria Monastery!

Why can't some of the millions put into such things as Media Studies and Sports Psychology not be diverted to the much more tangible and worthy area of Archaeology? I really think that sponsorship is the way to go. With a little bit of business savvy we could soon be enjoying the benefits of "The Tim Henman Victory Excavation", or maybe even "The Simon Cowell Coprolite Midden"? The possibilities could be endless.

I cannot go on, the injustice of it all is just too appalling!

[Merula]

Interesting....

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thanks, guys - you are making me blush!

As for sponsorship, Juvenal, I hear that Prof Escher may have secured a tenure in Italy with a view to further digging . . . We shall see.

[juvenus]

some interesting piece of text mate!

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The Bitter Wind

(Escher would disapprove - I know he would - dropping the reader in without footnotes and digressions - that was always his forte, his signature, but no something about this glimpse into the past deserves another approach, I say. He will grumble, bless him, but we can always edit it later, I suppose, if this is too much . . .)

So where were we? Ah, yes, Dacia Ripensis, late in the reign of the emperor Justinian, (Dating? The Consuls? I must reference that later!). Our eunuch Valerianus has arrived at the old legionary fort of Oescus alongside the Danube with mandates from the Augustus . . . And we know his task was not one he was especially averse to . . .

. . . The guard that assembled before us as we rode into the wide empty space of the fort was worse than slaves dragged out to market. Their weapons were dull, unpolished, their armour nothing more than rags endlessly re-sown, their faces sullen and bruised by resentment. I almost had to stop myself from laughing at this ragged play of soldiers - legionaries in name only - as we halted amid the dust and the heat. I heard an Isaurian trooper at my back spit into the ground at his horse's feet and repressed a smile at his mockery.

So this was Oescus, the ancient home of the Fifth, that Legion forgotten and forlorn in this empire of ours. It was nothing more than an echo of imperial might - even the Slavs across the Danube were capable of building more imposing structures. For a moment, as I gazed upon the ramshackle buildings inside these walls, the rotting timbers, the overgrown carvings, the eroded lettering of Latin, and I thought again upon Constantinople, that mistress of cities, and longed for the perfumed baths, the cool atriums, the delicate mosaics riddled with dolphins and other delicate species. It was the smell which banished these thoughts and images though. A pervasive vinegary odour which seeped out from the ground and I realised even as I raised the hem of my Gothic cloak to my nose that this was decay itself rooted in the fort.

'Sweet Jesu', muttered a notary beside me. 'We have strayed into perdition.'

The Isaurians about us laughed in their mocking way.

It was then that I first saw him - he was striding out from a portico, flinging on an old scale cuirass, hitching his spatha to his military belt, while a slave hurried after him with a dull helmet and his shield. For a moment, I felt a smile growing upon me at the drabness of his garb, a smirk of disdain, but then he flung his head up, grabbed at the helmet from that slave - and in that moment, his eyes locked with mine. That smirk died upon my lips for his face was dark and empty. A cold mask like those the tragedians once wore but which was now thrown aside and left to abandon. His eyes were black as obsidian and seemed to glitter with a cruel light as if dark sparks flashed deep in his soul.

My Nissean horse whinnied then and I reached down to soothe her, patting her neck and mouthing old words of familiarity, even as I watched this man tie on his helmet and advance to meet we who were all assembled like conquerors in the empty space of his fort . . .

(I imagine all this of course - Escher would have a fit. I use dramatic license here. Of course I do. I have no knowledge of that first meeting between Valerianus, the eunuch of the Emperor, and that last man of the Legion, the final Tribune, Zeno, of the Fifth, of the Macedonica, he who smelled the acanthus one final time and put out the light across the Danube never to be relit . . . But perhaps in fiction we can stumble closer to the truth than mere notes and commentary can allow? Does that make me a romantic? Of course! It is why Escher always forgives me . . .)

In year of Our Lord 561 AD (according to the Syrian annals of Beshak - Indiction 9, year 34, the 20th post sole Consulship of Basilius) in the month of July, an imperial envoy from the consistorium of Justinian himself arrived at Oescus with sealed orders to dissolve the legion which none had remembered and whom all had forgot. The Tribune Zeno acted with alacrity as befitting an officer of Rome, may his name forever echo among the heroes of old . . .

(And there we have it - the annalistic comment and my own imagining. I know the Beshak chronicle carries historical weight but imagine that moment when these first met - the one who came to dissolve and the one who lived only to remember. Escher, Escher, you will berate me for this but my heart cannot but want to see into that window into the past - see and open! - note: must buy him an old bottle of tawny Port to give to him when he finally reads this - to soften the blow!)

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Both excellent and flowing, and reminiscent of Wallace Breem's writing...magnificent as your previous works.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Both excellent and flowing, and reminiscent of Wallace Breem's writing...magnificent as your previous works.

Ah, if only my writing were like his. On a side note, I am re-reading Rosemary Sutcliff's 'The Eagle of the Ninth' for the first time since my teens after watching the movie. I stand amazed that I never thought more highly of it back then and left it abandoned on a shelf so many years ago . . .

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Sunset at Oescus

. . . His name of course was Flavius Constantinus Zeno, Tribune of the Fifth, praepositus of this sorry fort, this Oescus by the Danube, and that was all I or any of us knew about him in the gilded palaces of Constantinople. Zeno, the last Tribune of the Fifth, a man who was a blank, a cipher, and in some ways a lost soldier - as were they all . . .

I bowed my head as he strode up to my horse to dutifully kiss the hem of my Imperial robes. It was a perfunctory act and his slight touch of lips to my hem seemed almost negligent - no more than a half-remembered gesture - but I allowed him that neglect. His eyes, black and enigmatic, remained hidden below the rim of his helmet and I think in my own way I was grateful for that. We eunuchs are forever held in scorn by so many that not to be looked at is sometimes preferable.

He stepped back then and spun on his heel to gaze along the lines of the men who had assembled before us. His slave hung at his shoulder, the shield ready to be handed over if needed. Behind me, I could sense the Isaurians dismounting casually, as if not caring about these soldiers, and I did not blame them or indeed even rebuke them. They were not wrong to be so dismissive. On my mare, above these poor men, I could see their old faces, their lined expressions, and empty eyes. These were lost men who had lived on beyond their time and I think as I let my eyes drift among them that they knew in their hearts all was at an end.

This Tribune nodded then to these men and a ragged shout rose up into the dust and that strange vinegary stench, a stench I was later mockingly to call the 'wine of Oescus' -

'We will do what is ordered - and at every command we will be ready!'

I was shocked - and I felt the notaries about me stiffen also. Barely had that last echo died away when the Tribune Zeno turned back to me and raised his arm in the old manner, the Roman way that one can still see on the arches and frescoes of Constantinople.

An old salute and an old oath - so be it. These men of the Fifth, of the Macedonica, that forgotten Legion, would have their final moment here in the castellum by the Danube. I would not begrudge them that - what fools they were though to hang onto ancient and now empty rituals.

It was then that the commander of my Isaurians - Balbiscus - touched my foot. He was smirking as he effected to adjust his baldric.

'Veterans or vagrants?' he mused almost to himself.

I motioned him to remain silent and then nudged my Nissean forwards a little.

'Legionaries', I shouted out, 'The Sacred Will of the Emperor is in my hands and I speak as He speaks. Hear me then and know now that this ancient Legion of Rome, this Fifth, the Macedonica, is now to draw its last donatives and retire its standards. The Emperor has deemed your honour satiated. Your valour full. Your oaths fulfilled . . . The Fifth is hereby ordered to discharge its men and stand no more among the ranks of the army and under the gaze of the Emperor. Justinian wills it so and so it shall be done.'

I did not mention that this pathetic legion, these last men, who had rotted here along this abandoned frontier, should have been pensioned off many years ago; I did not mention that no pay had reached them for almost a decade; that in the Lists of the Army no scribe even knew any longer that the Fifth still mustered here in this Oescus; that we in Constantinople had all but forgotten them. What gain would there have been in that? That we had lost this Legion? That Rome itself had misplaced them in that great epoch where Belisarius had reconquered Africa and Italy and Hispania? That in that turmoil of armies and frontiers shifting, we had misplaced this decrepit Legion and never even noticed? No, such shame should not be spoken aloud.

My words hung in the air more as a curse than anything else. I swatted a fly away from the hem of my Gothic cloak.

And there it was. The end of a Legion. What else was there to say on the matter? That Rome should end in such thin men; men dressed in rags, in dull weapons; that a once fearsome Legion should be now no more than these old and haggard faces - faces lined with hunger and want and neglect.

If the face of Zeno, his white face with those empty black eyes, was the stark mask of the tragedian then all I could see in the men about him, those last legionaries, was nothing more than the cracked masks of comedians who did not even know anymore the humour which flowed about them.

In that last silence, I think for a moment I almost pitied these empty men that I had taken away their last remnant of honour. Almost . . .

(Am I indulging here? I expect I am and Escher will berate me for this but I know this Valerianus better than my friend ever will! I have his words, his words, in my heart and my hands in those dry papyri - in that old ruin in the desert now so far away. That poor old eunuch who will weep soon and stagger away in despair clutching something that passed only from his hands and into mine many untold generations later - Oh Escher, that will always be your weak spot! You see always the mighty picture and never the heart which breaks in the midst of it all . . . Not indulgence at all but instead forgiveness, I think!)

[Justinian Australis]

Wow, riveting stuff SBH, will be anticipating more

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The Acanthus Flower

. . . What wills work around us as we drift full of melancholy along the broken path of this life? What ironies manifest like poorly played jokes in those litanies we call our lives? Only the True One God knows. His silence is all the more fearful for all that, I think.

The evening was upon us and we had all dismounted with undue ceremony in the fort - the slaves bearing away the camp impedimenta, the notaries carrying the scrolls and chests inside to whatever refuge they had found, and the Isaurians - my guard and biscuit-breakers, the bucellati, the men who owed me fealty and death - assembled around the ramparts - if such we may call them - and stood sentinel. Those poor men under this Tribune faded away to God only knew what dim refuge in this broken fort, this Oescus by the Danube.

I did not mourn their passing.

I stood now in the dim praesidium of the fort with Balbiscus at my shoulder. A lonely oil lamp cast light into the old space but not enough and shadows hung about us like a shawl we could not shake off. He sat in those shadows like a memory only half welcomed; an outline, a form dimly imagined and slightly feared. One hand lay upon a wooden table and by chance the light fell on it and made it seem apart from him - golden, corporeal, whereas the rest of him seemed almost reluctant to emerge among us.

The Tribune Flavius Constantinus Zeno sat there in the dark one hand alive only and I found myself drawing back to touch shoulder with my Isaurian, Balbiscus, if only to feel a warmth I knew this room did not offer.

I was talking quickly of course and at length. Was he listening all covered in those shadows, his face turned away as if in denial? I could not tell and that of course hastened my words. I told him that all the other stations of the old Fifth Macedonica Legion had been disbanded decades ago here among the limes of the Danube - the forts at Variniana, Cebro, and Sucidava had all been decommissioned long ago by order of the emperor, and the troops - those tired men who manned the Danube here in Dacia Ripensis - all retired or promoted into the field armies and sent abroad to war in Africa or Italy or Hispania or even east into the great deserts of the Persians. I told him all this as the words fell from me like pebbles from a cliff. I told him that even as those old forts had been broken up and their timbers carted away, their stones sold off, the nails and hinges and bolts all melted down, that this fort, Oescus, had somehow been forgotten, lost, from the orders and that unknown to the emperor and Rome itself this last detachment of the Fifth had stayed on not even knowing that its orders had ceased, its pay suspended, the donatives vanished. Only a diligent notary - his eye ever alert on the most obscure scrolls and lists - had noticed an old report from the Dux of the region regarding an 'Oescus' by the Danube, and referred to it as the Fifth - intrigued, he had borrowed away and to his horror discovered that indeed this fort existed and that these men, these soldiers, of the Fifth Macedonica Legion, had remained when all other detachments had long since been disbanded forever.

I babbled all this uneasy at his silence and watched his hand in that golden light as if it seemed a thing alone and apart from him. When I talked about the end of this Legion as being no longer worthy of the armies of Rome due to its age and its antiqueness, that indeed this Legion had outlived its time and was now nothing more than a ghost along the limes, I saw with a sort of uneasy horror his hand turn over - and in the palm rested a vibrant flower, full of bloom and petal.

I gazed transfixed upon that flower as it sat -an offering in his palm, the golden light falling about it like a halo -

It was then that this unknown Tribune leaned forward into the thinnest shaft of light and I saw his face - that cold white mask with its empty eyes - lean in as if to confess an old intimacy to me, a smile cracking that mask like the curve of a Persian blade.

'The acanthus flower, eunuch,' he said, his words devoid of colour and warmth. 'The ancient flower of Rome. Do you understand, scribe and notary of the Augustus?'

He placed the flower on the table and withdrew his hand into the shadows.

I heard my Isaurian half-laugh behind me and for a moment I was irked at that - at that distraction from what this Zeno was showing me. I did not understand. A flower? Of Rome? The acanthus was nothing special - a common enough plant, yes, but the flower of Rome? I was puzzled. The flower rested in the light and shimmered as if made of the purest silk. Something about it prompted a memory but I could not place it - yes, it did seem familiar somehow but I could not place the recollection and I frowned trying to remember.

The Tribune spoke again in the shadows. 'The Fifth was always first here, eunuch, and so now it is fitting that it shall be last here also.'

'The first?' I echoed uneasily.

He laughed at that - a bark which allowed no true humour in it. 'Pity the eunuch who does not understand! Do you not understand this Oescus is not just a fort which houses a detachment of the Fifth? Do you think perhaps that Oescus is another fort like Cebro or Variniana? Of course you do - I can see it written on your face!'

Balbiscus spoke up at my side then. 'And what is Oescus then that you laugh at our ignorance like a hyena,Tribune?'

Again his hand emerged across the table into the light and again my eye fell upon that flower and its bloom and its colour -

'Oescus is the Fifth as this flower is the head of the plant as the Tribune is commander of the Legion.'

I understood then. I think perhaps I had always known it but had never really acknowledged it or even indeed needed to. Oescus was not just another fort alone here along the limes, lost on the frontier of the Danube, a little pile of ruin with its few men standing forlorn upon the walls even as Rome itself abandoned them and did not even know it, no, there was something else here - else why did these men still stand and utter old oaths in the dying light? This fort was something else and the Tribune here - clothed in shadows like a dying myth - was showing me its true colour.

I reached out then and touched that lonely flower, my fingers fat with rings, my nails polished, the skin pale and milky - and to my surprise the acanthus seemed remarkably strong to my touch.

I looked to the Tribune then. 'This is the headquarters of the Fifth, isn't it?' I asked. 'The root and flower of the Legion? Isn't it?'

He did not need to answer. I already knew the truth. Oescus was not an old fort. It was and always had been the Legion no matter where its detachments were sent and where they fought and died. This was the ancient home, the repository of the heart and soul of the men who fought always under the Legion's standards, the secret temple to all its honours and scars.

The light flickered in the oil lamp then and for one moment light spread around the praesidium like dawn itself. I saw hung on the wall the shield of the Tribune which the slave had held out in the parade ground. It was a large oval shield, dished, with a boss of iron and on it was painted the emblem of the Fifth, the Macedonica, this forgotten Legion - and I knew now where I had seen that flower before . . .

The acanthus was the Legion . . .

And all I heard was God's silent laughter mocking us all in that old and broken room . . .

[Boustrophedon]

I'm in awe of your work here SBH Please keep up this marvellous treat +rep

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thanks, Boustrophedon, I appreciate the feedback! This is a slow burn AAR and and will take time to set up but hopefully readers will stay with it to see where it goes!

[Constantius]

Excellent, truly and A shame to hear of your tragic news

[legio_XX]

Put this in my Favorites so I can quick tab it. Keep it up SBH your talent shows through the life you put into your characters.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thanks Constantius - and you mean Prof Escher's tragic news surely?!

Appreciate the support, legio_XX!

[Constantius]

Thanks Constantius - and you mean Prof Escher's tragic news surely?!

Appreciate the support, legio_XX!

Yes of course

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The Beginning and the End

(Escher, I know you will want me to edit this but not yet, not yet. That is why I am not showing this to you until it is finished and you will have a chance to read those papyri I rescued from that ruin deep in Egypt. Remember that dig I went to last year? That student excursion from Glasgow University? Well, it unearthed more than I could possibly have dreamed of. Deep in the sands and the shifting ruins, we lifted apart the cracked stones and found - well, you will read in time and then you will edit as you see fit no doubt!)

And the acanthus? That ancient plant of the Mediterranean - to the Greeks and the Romans, it symbolized enduring life; displayed at funerals it heralded the future - while to the emerging Christians it was a symbol of pain and sin and punishment. Don't you see, Escher, how fitting that Valerianus, that Greek speaking eunuch, and Zeno, the last Tribune on the Danube, cross like foes over that flower on that table deep in the night? The old pagan and the neutered Christian? Yes, yes, of course you will want to edit - too flowery no doubt for your tastes, eh, old friend?)

. . . That shield glimmered in the sudden wash of light and I saw that flower emblazoned on it and wondered again on this forgotten legion - that we had allowed it to drift alone on the limes here in Dacia Ripensis so that its men fell into neglect and abandon and destitution. The flower of the acanthus rippled with colour on the shield and I saw how it mirrored almost perfectly that real flower which this Tribune had lain upon the table between us.

So this was the ancient head of the Fifth, the Macedonica, here in Oescus by the Danube, the first and last of the Legion, as all its other vexillations and detachments had over time been marched away - to Syria, to Thrace, to Africa and so on - this rump had remained always alone here in this fort, this castellum. Alone and steadfast.

I looked then at this Zeno, hidden in the shadows, a secret man, a cloaked man, and saw that he was watching me also, that mask of his hanging in the dark like a pallid doom.

He spoke then and even Balbiscus at my side remained quiet as his words filled the praesidium.

'This is the old headquarters of the Fifth, yes, eunuch of the Emperor. Here we stand as the Legion no matter where her sister detachments go. We always remain. Emperors come and go. Soldiers fall never to be remembered. Towns vanish into dust and ruin. Not this Legion. This Legion has always stood and always will. We are the Fifth, the Macedonica, and once we held to the Eagle of Jupiter, and the Boar also, but now it is the acanthus, blessed by Augustus himself before there were Emperors, a flower which is Rome, that is the symbol on our shields, in our hearts, as we stand here on a frontier all but forgotten. We men of the Fifth know no other duty. We were formed by Augustus himself and have always stood under the stern gaze of the Emperors and we have been loyal and faithful - not once, nor twice, but eight times we have that title inscribed upon our battle honours and scrolls, eunuch - pia VIII, fidelis VIII - the Fifth, ever faithful, ever loyal, can you imagine that, Valerianus? That the hand of eight sacred Augustii have written that epithet upon our memories? I doubt it. You travel in silk and wrinkle your nose at this place. And now this Emperor of yours - this man who sits upon the porphyry throne in Constantinople - wills the end of this Legion which has only ever obeyed and stood resolute - even as our pay has vanished, our orders ceased, our supplies whittled away. What else could we do? Now you come to disband us and we are now no more. Your words erase five hundred years of service and honour and loyalty, eunuch.'

I moved to protest - to say that I was nothing more than the Will of the Augustus, that it was His words, not mine - but I stopped knowing in my heart that in truth we had forgotten them all alone on this last frontier and were now simply wiping away a shame dimly remembered. I stopped and let my gaze fall again on that shield hanging on the wall.

It was Balbiscus who broke the silence finally. He was frowning and for the first time I think I could find no mockery in his voice -

'The Augustus formed you? Which one?'

Zeno laughed at that. 'Why Isaurian,' he barked back, 'Octavian himself! What other Augustus is there?'

He moved away from the table and reached up to open a large cabinet on the wall. The doors swung open and lay revealed was a seemingly endless shelf of scroll upon scroll - old scrolls covered in dust, ravaged by the ages, little tags hanging from them like medals. He reached up high and pulled out a scroll like a teacher in a school room. It was dusty not so old that it was cracked or rotting. I saw him unroll it slowly on the table and then point to an opening sentence.

'There, Isaurian, a scroll copied a dozen times down the decades and the centuries, and on it lies the origin of this Legion - "Recruited by the Consuls Gaius Vibius Pansa and Octavian, the Fifth is hereby assembled for the honour of the respublica . . ."

I saw Balbiscus frown at that as if not truly comprehending its import but it was to me that this Zeno directed his gaze now - and I understood what he was showing me. As Augustus founded the Empire of Rome, so too was this Legion, ever Faithful and ever Loyal, inaugurated; once holding aloft a Bull then an Eagle and now the acanthus, the root and flower of Rome . . .

Was I not then in some way cutting away the root of Rome itself, I wondered?

[Maximinus Thrax]

This is a slow burn AAR and and will take time to set up but hopefully readers will stay with it to see where it goes!

On the contrary, this is not an AAR since it's too good to be considered merely an AAR. Most excellent work coming from you, SBH, like usual!