Scipio Aemilianus arrived in Spain to command an army he did not yet trust. Rome had elected him consul for a second time in 134 BCE because the war around Numantia had dragged on through defeats, reversals, and damaged morale. Appian says Scipio understood the order of his problem: he could not overcome the enemy … Read more
The betrayal began as a school routine. Livy says a tutor at Falerii regularly took the sons of leading families beyond the city for play and exercise. He had done it in peace, so the gate opened for him during war. Short walks became longer ones. Conversation and games carried the boys farther than usual … Read more
Two hundred talents stood between Cato and the allies he needed. His officers heard humiliation in the price. Cato heard a bargain whose risk could be postponed until after battle. A large force threatened to drive him from his Spanish province. He asked neighbouring Celtiberians for help. They did not answer with sentimental loyalty to … Read more
The order did not send a Roman soldier to the whipping post or the execution ground. It sent him to have a vein opened. Aulus Gellius preserves the punishment in a chapter only a few sentences long. He calls it an old military penalty and says its purpose was disgrace. Blood was deliberately let from … Read more
The gilded horses above Trajan’s Forum were not trophies lifted whole from an enemy city. Their inscription pointed to a less visible route. Aulus Gellius remembered walking through the Forum with the philosopher Favorinus while a consul heard cases nearby. Along the roofs of the colonnades stood gilded horses and representations of military standards. Beneath … Read more
Marcellus brought a wooden assault tower toward Syracuse on paired ships. Plutarch calls the machine a sambuca, after a musical instrument its shape resembled. Before it reached the wall, a stone weighing ten talents struck it. Then another followed, and another. The blows crushed the engine’s foundation, shattered its frame and shifted it off the … Read more
The order named the larger of two masts. The engineer sent the smaller one. He had not confused the timbers. After learning that Publius Crassus Mucianus wanted a beam for a battering ram, the chief engineer at Mylatta judged the smaller mast better suited to the machine and easier to transport. His substitution addressed the … Read more
Rome’s most highly regarded military crown was not gold. It was grass gathered from inside a place that had nearly fallen. Aulus Gellius calls it the siege crown. The people delivered from encirclement presented it to the general who had saved them, and custom required the plants to come from the ground on which the … Read more
A Roman column stopped marching, chose its ground and built a boundary. Then, inside that defended perimeter, it left an enormous strip empty. Polybius places the tents 200 feet back from the entrenchment on every side. The distance was not a decorative margin. It protected canvas from missiles and night fire, let soldiers move without … Read more
A fire on a ridge can say something happened. It struggles to say what. That distinction irritated Polybius. A commander who saw one agreed beacon might learn that a fleet had arrived, but not its size, destination or condition. If citizens betrayed a town or soldiers deserted unexpectedly, no lamp in a short prearranged code … Read more
