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Ok you men, on your feet, stand up
Put your fist in the air, say Aue Caesar! Aue Caesar! Aue Caesar!
Optimae sedete!
My name is Fabius Lorius Tiburtinus and I work for the Imperator Vespasianus in Rome.
I'm here today because you men have an interest in joining the Roman legions.
You men enjoy a life of peace, but I'm here to tell you a fact of life.
Nobody can enjoy peace unless you know how to make war.
And that's the truth.
People throughout the world, barbarians everywhere you go, they don't get up in the morning and think to themselves
I think today will just be good to be doing something different.
They get up in the morning and they think we better be good today because if we're not
the Roman legions are going to smash our faces.
We've got 25 legions scattered throughout the world.
Each legion contains 4,800 professionally trained killers.
You can become a part of these teams.
The career is great. 25 years, that's all you have to promise.
25 years on your sacramentum that you're going to work for the Imperator.
We're going to pay you 225 dinarii to start out with.
That's a lot of money for you. All those silver coins.
You don't spend them all, you save some, but you've got plenty to live on.
As you move up through the ranks, your pay is going to increase.
If you're lucky, you'll become an optio, then pretty soon you can become a centurion.
Then your salary is going to go up to about 1,000 dinarii.
After that, if you become more lucky and you stick to it, you can become a centurio estatus.
Then your salary is going to go up to 10,000 dinarii.
And if you become like me, a military tribune, you can be earning 100,000 dinarii.
That's a lot of money, and it's a lot of money for a great career.
25 years, you can look forward to retirement.
When you join the Legion, we're going to train you.
Yes, we're going to train you to fight, but you're going to get something more.
You're going to get a profession.
Everybody who is a Legionnaire has some kind of trade.
When you go to live in a military camp, you don't just go there and get waited on by people.
You're not going to have servants to wait on you.
No slaves there. Officers do have beneficiaries to take care of them,
but the enlisted men take care of all of their own stuff.
Everybody has to contribute to the camp.
Some people have to learn how to work with leather.
Some people learn to be blacksmiths.
Some people are cooks.
Some people have to take care of the horses.
They become stratoris.
We need record keepers.
We need people called metatoris who know how to lay out camps and remove the camp.
We need speculatoris.
We need people to go out and keep track of where the enemy are.
If you can't do anything very well, you say, I'm not real talented.
We've got a job for you anyway, because we've got a lot of horses in each camp.
And horses, you know, you put food in one end and something comes out the other end.
Sterculinum, somebody needs to shovel a sterculinum,
so you can always become an excellent sterculinum shoveler.
We need people to dig, to build, do carpentry work.
You're going to learn a trade, and it will be something that you can use
after you retire from the army.
We're going to develop your mind and your body.
And when you're done, you're going to be men.
You're going to be part of the greatest fighting force the world has.
You're going to be Roman legionnaires.
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Men, behind me is the waxillum, the red flag that flies in every Roman camp.
It's one of the symbols that will inspire you.
It's one of the symbols that you should be ready to give your life for.
As you come up to a Roman camp, you're going to notice two things.
The design and the orderliness.
The design has been perfected over hundreds of years.
We've got the perfect design for the camp.
You're going to notice it's square.
Each wall on each side has one gate that goes into it.
As you approach a gate, on each side of the gate,
you're going to notice foci, or ditches down there.
And in the ditches are sharp stakes for defense purposes.
Toward the inside of the camp is a big pile of dirt called the agar,
and on the top there's all the stakes lined up there,
behind which the soldiers do guard duty.
Once you're inside the camp, you're going to look out
and you're going to see a grid pattern of streets,
all with the tents lined up very orderly.
Orderliness is essential to a Roman camp.
Nothing is left to chance.
Everything has a place.
Everything has to be precisely located.
Every street has a name, and on each street,
the various units are assigned with their tents.
Once your tent is located, you'll know where you live,
and whenever we move the camp to a new location,
you will find your tent on the exact same street,
in the exact same place.
One of the first things soldiers ask when they come into a Roman camp
is, where's the latrinum?
You'll find the latrinum on the inside, at each of the four corners.
There's always a group of men whose job it is to dig the latrinum
and set it up as soon as the camp is set up.
The best thing about having the same design for a Roman camp is
that no matter where it's moved in the world,
every time you enter it, you know exactly where your tent is going to be.
The streets are laid out in exactly the same positions relative to each other.
The grid pattern is always the same, and you can just enter through the gate,
and you go right to your street, turn down the street,
you'll find your tent in the same place.
The reason we do this is that every soldier needs to be absolutely confident
of where he is in the camp at all times.
Many times a Roman soldier has to get up in the middle of the night
on the second watch, the third watch, media nocte,
and he has to know exactly what the layout of the camp.
He needs to be thoroughly familiar with that.
So the camp stays exactly the same at all times, no matter where it's moved.
I notice some of you men have been looking at these ducks.
You must be getting hungry.
But don't worry, we're going to feed you well in the Roman Legion.
First of all, each of you is going to be issued about five pounds of grain,
and you're going to have a mortar and a pistol to grind this up.
When it comes time for the cana, or the main meal of the day,
each soldier's responsibility is to get some of that grain,
grind it up, make flour, mix it with water, and bake it into a flat piece of bread.
You come with that flat piece of bread to where the food is cooked in the camp,
and they will put some food on there for you.
That's going to be how your food is served to you.
You eat all that you want to eat for your cana.
Take the rest, save some, wrap it up in there,
and that's going to be your entaculum, your breakfast for the morning.
The actual food that's served depends on what's available to the cooks
as we move the camp from one place to another.
Sometimes we have what's called a pizza farcilis.
This is made with pressed peas, calf brains, pork bellies, leeks, and pine nuts.
They cook it together with olive oil.
It's a very good meal.
It's very wholesome.
It fills you up.
My favorite dish is minutalex praecoquis.
This is made with ham boiled in raisin wine with anise and mint and apricots.
It's delicious.
When that's served one time during the week, it makes the whole week worthwhile.
As you might expect, officers have a little different kind of food.
Their food's a little bit more expensive, a little more refined.
One of the favorite things they like to have is farciman.
You know that's a sausage, but it's not the sausage made with pork.
Officers' farciman is made with lobster, and they put in there some bread
and some eggs and some black pepper, all stuffed in the sausage casing
and fried up in olive oil.
Just delicious.
The officer's table is the best meal in the whole camp.
One of the first things that happens is you'll be issued your outfit.
You have to memorize every article of clothing, every piece of weaponry that you have.
I got my first outfit from an officer called Luscus.
He just had the one eyeball.
He was the centurion in charge of my ordo.
And he said, I'm going to give you all the different parts of your uniform, soldier,
and I want you to remember the names of everything.
He said, first of all, you got the lorica that you wear around your chest.
He was wearing a lorica scortia, like I am, and he began to explain to me
there are different kinds of lorica, depending on which part of the unit you're in.
He said there's one that's made with strips of metal.
They go wrap around your body, and that's called a lorica segmentata.
Most legionnaires will wear something like that.
Some people wear a lorica hamata, made with small round circles of wire,
all linked together, covering their whole body.
That's mostly the sagittari you wear that.
Some people wear a lorica called a lorica squamata,
and it's made with all like fish scales of bronze, sewn onto very soft leather.
The cavalry will wear that sometimes.
Depending on what part of the legion you're in, you get a different lorica,
but that's the most important part.
He was wearing a poludamentum, like I am, a red poludamentum,
but he gave me a gray sagum to wear,
and the poludamentum or the sagum is like your bedroll,
and this is what keeps you warm. You wear it all the time.
The officer's red, so you can spot the officer,
and the regular enlisted man just gets the undyed gray one.
The enlisted man gets a metal helmet that looks like this.
It's not covered with leather,
and it's got a neck piece back here to protect you from being chopped by the swords.
The point of a metal helmet is that when you put this on and stand in the hot sun,
your head becomes warm, and you turn into a hot-headed soldier.
That means you're going to be short-tempered,
and you will be willing to kill on command.
The officer wears a leather helmet called a gallia,
and it's got leather covered up here.
It's metal underneath, nice crista on the top, so you can identify the officer.
The leather covering keeps the head cool,
because the officers have to always be cool-headed.
Other parts of your uniform will include this belt right here,
which is called the balteus.
It goes over the left shoulder, comes down, and your sword hangs on your right.
You've got the wagina, and you've got your gladius in the wagina, hanging on the right side.
This belt here is called a kinggulum, and this is the one that you keep your pugio in.
Pugio is a suicide dagger.
You've got the tunica down here.
On your feet you wear a kaligai.
Underneath it all, you've got clean subligaculum that you put on every day.
Have one strict rule under the army, soldiers must be clean,
because soldiers who are not clean get sick.
After I got my first outfit from Luscus,
he told me there was going to be a test to see if I could remember all of these parts.
And I said, that's no problem, Domine. I'm a smart soldier.
I can remember all the parts of the outfit.
Well, the day passed, and that night I went to sleep in my contubernium with the other soldiers.
And the first watch took place, and they changed the guard, and I sort of woke up for that.
Second watch took place, and I didn't pay any more attention to that.
All of a sudden, the flap of the tent opens up.
In comes Luscus, he comes to the bed where I'm sleeping,
and he kicks my bed, wakes me up and says, hey, what's going on?
He said, Fabio, what do you call this?
And it was the middle of the night, I couldn't remember what it was called.
So he hits me in the face. He said, that's called a lorica.
He said, what do you call this here?
And I couldn't think of what that was called.
He hits me in the face again. He said, that's called a balteus.
What do you call this here?
And I began to realize, if I don't start to answer something, I'm going to be all bloody.
So I said, Domine, this here is called a kingulum, and that's the pugio,
that's the vagina, and that's the gladius, and that's the pallorumentum,
and that's your gallia, and that's your tunica down there,
and your calligae, and underneath it all, I used to have unclean subligaculum
before you start hitting me in the face.
He said, remember, when we tell you something, we only tell you once.
You have to remember it, otherwise we have one way to teach you.
Pain. We hit you. You learn with pain.
If you don't know the answer, you get hit.
And I began to remember everything after that, just like you will, too.
When you're told something, you remember it the first time.
That night, I didn't go back to sleep.
I was just awake all night trying to review all of the stuff that I learned.
Pretty soon, the corno went off. This is a horn they got in the army to wake the soldiers up.
When the corno goes off, everybody in the tent starts to get dressed,
and they said, we're going outside for inspection.
So I put all my outfit on, I put everything on, and we lined up in front of the tent, all eight of us.
We get out in front of the tent, and I'm standing out there like this,
waiting for inspection to come.
And Luscus is coming down the road.
He's stopping by each man, looking at each man, testing each man, seeing what he looks like.
And he's got this long stick in his hand.
When he walks, he kind of hits his leg when he walks, looks at each soldier.
And he came right up to me, looks me in the eye, and he said,
Fabi, are you ready for an inspection?
I said, yes, Domine, I am.
And he brought that stick up, brought it down, cut my lip open.
He said, soldier, you just failed your first inspection.
I looked down, and there my baltius was twisted.
He said, the better luck tomorrow.
But when he hits you in the mouth with that, you get a split lip.
The rest of that day, everywhere I went in the camp, the soldiers were all laughing at me,
saying, look at that new guy, he's a stultus, he's stupid.
He didn't pass an inspection this morning.
He'll never make it into the army.
So you learn real fast with pain.
That's the way we teach you.
After the inspection was done, they start to blow a horn again.
Now they had a bukina.
When they blew the bukina, we start to do different formations.
And I begin to learn, as you will, that the bukina has about 20 different songs.
Each one means you do something different.
Nobody's going to give you a scroll you're going to look at and say,
when you hear this song, you do this.
You hear the song, you see what the people are doing, and you remember it.
Because if you forget next time, somebody's going to hit you.
You're going to have a pain in your life.
They blew the bukina, and the eight men from my tent, we joined the tents.
Nine more tents, we all went together.
So now we had 80 guys all together, and Luscus was the centurion.
And the guy behind me said, soldier, you better memorize that officer.
He's the commander of this unit.
And I said, don't worry, I know Luscus already.
I met him many times.
He and I get along pretty well already.
Then the bukina blew again, and my ordo, with the 80 guys in it,
we joined another ordo from across the road.
And now we made a new unit.
It was called the manipulus, and now we had 160 guys.
In the front was a new officer, a man standing there with a big standard,
a high stick with all insignia on it, and he was the signifier.
Then they blew the bukina again, and this new manipulus,
we went together with two more manipuli.
We made up a new unit called the cohort.
In the cohort now we had 480 guys, all standing at attention, all lined up.
In the front was a new officer called the centurio hastatus.
And this man had a long, long spear with a wide blade.
The man behind me said, that's the commander.
He's the centurio hastatus of this cohort.
You better memorize him so you can recognize him into the battle.
Above him you got other officers.
You got a praefex castrorum, who was the disciplinarian in charge of the whole camp.
Each cohort has a number.
The commander of the first cohort is called primus pilus.
This is a man who has been in the legion for 25 years.
He could have retired and got all his benefits and been out of the army,
but he reenlisted for one more year for the great honor to be primus pilus.
This man gets double pay.
I told you the pay before, it's a lot of money when you are primus pilus.
And he gets to be the one when you go into battle.
Nobody can throw the spear until primus pilus decides it's time to throw the spear.
So you have to memorize primus pilus and know that man.
Above him you got the aquilifere.
This is the soldier who goes out and he carries the eagle for the legion.
The eagle is the life of the legion.
It is the soul of the legion.
No legion that loses the eagle can exist.
They tell stories in the army about the legion that lost the eagle.
Every soldier in that legion gets a dishonorable discharge.
No pay, no retirement benefits, disgrace for the rest of their lives.
You cannot lose the eagle.
So the aquilifere is a very, very special soldier.
He always leads the whole legion into battle.
Above the aquilifere you have six military tribunes, tribuni militum like me.
They're all dressed the same way you can spot us.
We are in the next in command under the commander of the legion, the legatus legionis.
He is the primary commander of each legio.
If you have a camp, if you get assigned to a camp where you got two or more legions stationed there,
then you're going to have another commander above that called a dux.
And he is the total commander of the two units of two legions or three legions together, however many you have.
But most of the time you work with just one legatus legionis.
Once you learn all of the officers and you know which one commands which unit
and which one has more authority than the next one, then they start to test you on this.
And anybody, any superior officer during the day will come up to a new recruit and they'll say,
quick soldier, your centurion was killed.
Who do you take your orders from?
And you better say signifere, because if you don't, pain.
He said, no, no, the signifere just was killed too.
Who do you look to now? You better say centurio hastatus.
But he's down. Who do you look to now? Primus Pilus.
He's dead. Who do you look to? Aquilifere. He's dead too. Who do you look to?
You better say the six military tribunes. He's, they're all dead too.
Now who do you look to? Legatus legionis.
And you have to be able to give all of these answers quick.
You have to know all of the officers, which one comes in what order.
When you get in a battlefield, you don't have time to think.
You don't have time to look at some notes that you made in some scroll somewhere.
Someone goes down, you just have to know and you have to have the man's image
memorized in your mind so you know who to look for.
Because one tiny moment of time that you waste trying to figure out who's in charge,
you could be dead. You have to know this stuff instantly.
And we train you, we work with your mind. If you don't learn your horn signals,
if you don't know your officers, if you can't remember your outfit,
we're not going to put a weapon in your hand because nobody likes us but the killer.
You have to be smart before we teach you how to kill.
Once the Roman army is sure that you're smart and you've got a quick mind
and you can remember your officers, you can remember your outfits,
you can remember all the signals, then we're going to start training you.
Training will start with marching, 14 miles, 14 miles every week.
Then when we got you in more shape than that, we're going to kick it up to what's called a magnumiter,
25 mile marches. You're going to be carrying a saccuma on your back
which has got all your supplies. In there is going to be your mortar and pistol
for grinding your wheat. You're going to carry about five pounds of wheat with you
to grind up for flour. You're going to have a little piece of chain
that you're going to carry with you. You're going to have an axe with you,
a shovel, and a couple of sharp pegs to put into the fossa once you dig it.
You have to be able to carry all of this and not faint along the way,
not lose your power, not become sick in any way at all.
Because if you do and you pass out along the way, you're going to be given a dishonorable discharge immediately.
We're not going to put more effort into you if you don't have the stamina to be a legionnaire.
Once you survive the marching, then we start with little things like jumping the ditch.
We have ditches in camps. Sometimes the ditches are filled with water like this.
Sometimes they're just empty fossa with sharp pegs on the bottom.
They line you up, one man after another, and they're going to give you the command.
When they say go, you get a good running start, head for the ditch, take a nice leap, and get to the other side.
If you don't move instantly under the word go, your centurion is going to count at you.
Centurions do not know how to count past three.
So if you hear him starting going unus, duo, tres, you know you're in trouble.
You better go on command of go.
One time we were training when I was a young soldier.
We were lined up by the ditch and was going one man after the other.
But it had rained the night before and the ground was all slippery.
So when it came time for the guy in front of me to go, the centurion said go, and the man slipped.
He fell down, and before he could get up off his hands and knees and get up and get ready to go,
the centurion had counted unus, duo, tres.
The man got upright, the centurion pushed him, he went into the ditch.
All those stakes went through his body, and you could hear him in there going ah, ah, ah, the gurgling noises
as one of the stakes pushed right through his throat.
And I thought, well, let's get down and get him out right away and try to save him.
The centurion said no, leave him in there.
He has to learn that when I say the word go, he has to do it on command.
The rest of you men, I want you to look in there and be sure that you know what's going on.
This is not the game we're playing here, this is life and death.
We left that man in there for three days, and it was hot.
And his body got all swollen up and puffed up, and the bugs came in and started to do their job on him.
Three days later, we came by, we were standing by the ditch and the commander said, okay everybody, this is an order.
Look into the ditch.
And we looked in there and we saw his fat body and the bugs and everything,
and then the commander said, okay, this is an order, take a deep breath.
And you breathe in that smell, and it's a smell that gets in your nostrils and sticks with you for life.
He said, do you soldiers want to look like that? No, domine.
Do you want to smell like this? No, domine.
Then you do what I tell you, on command.
Next comes the wall. The wall is eight feet tall.
When the centurion gives the command, the soldiers run over there, grab the top of the wall and pull themselves over.
He's going to start counting, unus, duo, tres.
These soldiers here will throw spears into the wall and they're going to try and get any soldier who's slow.
The centurion wants somebody to be killed climbing that wall.
He wants the soldiers being trained to confront death in the training rather than on the battlefield for the first time.
So they can get that shock over with and they can be more accustomed to what it feels like to hear and see someone dying.
Next comes swimming. We line up next to the water and on command you jump in and swim to the other side.
The first time I thought, well, we'll take off the lorica.
But no, nobody was taking off anything. They were all going into the water.
And I realized that the Sagatari here lined up next to the shore.
And on the command of three, they're going to do bow and arrow practice on anybody left on the shore.
You don't think you can make it with all your outfit on in the water.
But believe me, when you're faced with the possibility of death, in you go. You swim to the other side.
You get on the other side and you're up and you're safe.
Once the trainee survives all of these original exercises and proves that he's both mentally and physically strong and has the stamina,
then and only then do you start to give him weapons.
The first weapon you're going to get is a wooden sword that's twice as heavy as a real one
and a shield that's twice as heavy as a real one.
And then they take you and you practice with the thrusting motion.
Always like this, thrusting, pushing and stabbing back and forth, back and forth.
Your arm feels like it's going to fall off because the sword is so heavy.
But you do that for days and days and days and you get stronger and stronger and stronger.
After a while they think, okay, now your muscles are big and they finally issue you your real gladius.
Every time you take it in your hand you say, wow, this thing is light, you know.
And you realize how smart they are because they have over trained your muscles.
They built up your arms stronger than they needed to be.
But that's the point because now you're ready to fight for hours with the real sword.
I show this sword to some young recruits and they look at it and they say, no, it's too small.
They've seen different swords. They want something that looks bigger.
But I got to tell you, this is the best sword for hand to hand fighting.
This sword has been perfected for years.
The design is just perfect. It's sharp on both ends. It's a thrusting sword.
We can give you longer swords if you like.
If you'd like to be in the cavalry, you can have a sword that looks like this.
This is called a spatha and this is a very long sword, very narrow.
It's also sharp on both sides.
And this you have to have if you're on horseback because on horseback
you have to reach down and thrust and stab people in the neck who are on foot.
So you do need a long sword.
The spatha is mounted on the left side of your body
because it takes a long time to get it from the wagina.
The regular gladius goes on the right side of the body.
Some young recruits have seen the sword used by barbarians and they think they would like this.
This is called the falcata.
It looks like a vicious sword.
It's curved like this and curved on the inside.
This side is flat and heavy and this side is very sharp.
This sword is designed to be used with some momentum.
What you do is you put your arm way up like this, get your body motion in it,
and then bring it down like this.
It's designed to be pressured by movement of your body.
Now that's not good in a battle because it takes a lot of room to do this.
You take a lot of motion, a lot of space to operate.
When you get on the battlefield, the first thing you're going to learn
is that nobody fights fair.
They push, they shove, they crowd you.
What are you going to do?
You're going to say, hey, excuse me, I've got to get my sword up.
Hey, come on, guys.
No fair.
Give me some room to work.
This sword requires more space than you're going to have.
That's why we got the Roman gladius.
It's just perfect.
This sword is just the exact right size, the exact right length.
What you do like this, someone comes up, some German comes up against you
and pushes up against your stomach and breathes a breath in your face.
You put your arm back.
Your point of the sword is right there.
You say salve, and you stab him.
It's a thrusting motion like this.
When you're fighting on a battlefield, you've got your Lorica on,
you've got your helmet on, you've got your shield.
You're very safe, okay?
They can chop on your arm.
That doesn't matter.
They're going to make scars.
That's glory for you.
They can take your ear off.
You don't care.
You don't need ears.
They can chop fingers off.
That doesn't hurt.
What you want to protect is what's in here.
Everything that's important to you is right in here.
Well, almost everything.
If you keep your arm down, they're not going to be able to get in.
There are two ways to kill a Roman soldier.
One is get him on the ground, pull his head back, push it in his neck like that,
and pull it out, and he's dead.
Or else get someone who's a stultus, who's got his arm up in the air,
and you look at the armpit.
You go right into the armpit.
Just thrust into there and pull it out, and he's going to be dead.
The final training you're going to get is going to be with spears.
This style is called a verutum,
and this is your standard issue for the people in the front line.
This is the throwing spear.
It's very lightweight, and it's got a long iron shaft in the front
designed to bend very easily and a nice handle in the back.
They'll teach you how to throw it, how to hit your target,
how to give it a spinning motion when you throw it
so that it will fly more true.
And sometimes if the enemy is going to be far away,
we have a special leather tongue that we attach to the back
that can get like double the distance in the throwing spear.
That's the verutum.
The other spear that the soldier learns to use is called the pilum.
The pilum is not designed for throwing.
This is a thrusting spear.
It's very heavy.
It's got a thick iron shaft and a very, very heavy handle.
Sometimes the enemy comes at you with cavalry attack.
Then the people in the front row who have the verutum,
they are not going to engage the cavalry of the enemy.
Instead, when the cavalry gets very close,
that front row is going to open up.
Back here you're going to find the cohorts equipped with the pila.
And what you have is one man with the pilum,
and next to him a man with the flag,
and on his right a man with the flag.
This is all done on purpose.
It's very colorful when you look at it,
but if you know anything about horses,
you know that horses don't like moving objects.
If they see a flag blowing in the wind,
they're going to shy away from the flag.
So what we do is we let that enemy cavalry come right up against the cohort
where all the flags are, and when the horses get closer,
the men with the pila go down on one knee,
and you get the spear on an angle like this,
and you wait for the horses to come,
and the horses go right between the two moving flags,
and hopefully their chests go right on the front of the pilum.
This is very sturdy. It won't bend.
Just brace it against your knee and let that horse run right into it,
and then as soon as the horse is down,
then of course out comes the sword,
and then you can attack the rider.
With the use of these two spears,
you've got the perfect complement of weaponry,
everything that a soldier needs to have success in the battle.
All your training comes together and pays off
the first time that you have your battle.
I can remember my first battle.
It was against the Germani up in a place called Windonisa
where I was stationed.
We had got the word a couple days before that the Germani were coming.
We have the speculators who keep track of all the movements of the enemy.
And the night before,
we have the speculators who keep track of all the movements of the enemy.
And the night before, in the camp,
you can see the soldiers who haven't been in the battle before.
They're all busy writing their wills,
and they take them over and they give them to a man called Ibradius Caducorum,
the keeper of the wills.
That's just in case you get killed during the battle
and then they know what to do with your stuff.
You don't want to be a smart aleck soldier.
Some young guys, they say,
hey, I'm not going to be killed today.
I don't have to write my will.
Don't be stultus.
Because when you talk like that,
you commit the crime of hybris.
Any soldier who says he knows he's not going to be killed,
better look out,
because Jupiter knows who's going to be killed.
You don't know.
You write your will.
You deposit it.
That's the best way to go into the battle with a good omen that way.
That night, after you deposit your will with the Ibradius Caducorum,
you go back to your tent and you try to get some sleep.
You're not going to sleep all night.
You might just sleep for one or two watches.
Definitely, by the end of the second watch,
they're going to be blown to the cornu.
They're going to line you up for inspection.
You're going to go through the formations,
and you're going to be out on the battlefield before the sun comes up.
It was really an exciting day for me when that first battle came.
We got up in the middle of the night.
I passed the inspection.
I just looked perfect.
Everything was fine.
Luscus came by.
Nothing was wrong with Fabius today.
We got out on the battlefield, and all the ten cohorts were lined up.
In the front row on the far right side was the first cohort,
the best one, led by Primus Pilus.
Then the second, the third, and the fourth.
The row behind that was fifth, sixth, and the seventh.
And then way in the back was eighth, ninth, and tenth.
On each side of the cohorts were the cavalry.
125 horsemen on one side, 125 on the other side.
And behind these cohorts were the Sagittarii.
And these are all of the bow and arrow people.
They always shoot their arrows from behind the cohorts.
You line up on the battlefield, you look forward,
and you do what you spend hours practicing doing.
You look mean, and you wait for the enemy.
When the sun came up that day, we could see far, far over the hill.
The Germans were coming.
They were yelling and screaming and coming across the field,
and we just stand there, put our shoulders back, look mean,
and wait for something to happen.
They get closer and closer and get bigger and bigger.
And you begin to realize that behind the Germans in all of those wagons
is their whole families are back there.
They brought like their grandparents, their parents, their wives,
their children to watch them fight the Romans,
because that's what they do.
They want to show off each spring to see who's the bravest one,
who can go fight the Romans.
But we're ready for them.
Our training is the best.
We got the best weapons, and we're ready to go.
Stand there, you look mean, they get bigger and bigger,
and pretty soon you'll hear the litmus go off.
This is a special horn for the cavalry.
When that litmus blows, all those cavalry, 250 of them,
go charging across the field, and the ground just vibrates,
and you can feel that vibration come up in your spine,
and it tingles and make you feel strong, and you say,
oh, die mortales, I'm going to kill everybody.
You just get so strong from those horses.
You watch, and you look mean, and you can see them
charging across the field, going all the way up to those Germans,
and then they start to fight.
And you can hear the Germans screaming,
because the soldiers are stabbing them with the swords.
And the Roman horses, we teach them a special trick.
From standing still, a Roman horse can jump up
and kick out the front and back legs at one time,
knock down two Germans at once.
The Germans just say, hey, how do they do that?
After they fight about 15, 20 minutes, they blow retreat,
signare ferre, and back come the cavalry.
Now you're standing there, we stand there, look mean,
watch those Germans, they keep coming, they don't slow down at all.
Then the tuba goes off.
The tuba is the official horn that commits the legion to battle.
Once the tuba blows, there's no turning back.
That is the horn that makes your spine tingle.
When the tuba goes off, the tuba went off,
then the bukina goes off.
And the bukina gives individual instructions
to different parts of the legion.
So the first thing that happens after the tuba,
the bukina blew the signal for the Sagittarii.
And you stand in the front, and you look mean, and you wait,
and you watch, and you can see thousands of arrows
shooting over your head into the enemy.
And you watch those Germans coming,
the arrows are going down and hitting them,
and they're putting up their shields, trying to block the arrows.
You just stand there, look mean.
I had one German in my first battle.
He was a big fat guy.
He had animal horns on his helmet, big fur Lorica.
And he was running across the field right straight at me.
I'm looking him in the eye, looking mean.
And all of a sudden an arrow just by chance went down
and stuck in his foot, and his foot stuck to the ground.
And this big fat German, he fell on his face.
It was the funniest thing you ever saw, but you can't laugh.
Look mean, look mean.
Then the Bukina blew again, and they stopped.
Next signal was for the Beneficiari.
These are little boys who are in the Legion,
and they usually serve the officers.
They're like the helpers.
But in the battle, they can't wear armor.
They're too small for that.
So we don't let them wear anything.
We call them nudie.
And you give them a slingshot,
a handful of rocks and a slingshot,
and out they come and say, hey, nudie, go get them nudie.
And they run out there right against those Germans,
and the Germans will say, hey, look at that guy.
He's got no clothes on.
Pow, stone in the face.
Nudie, come back.
Good job, nudie.
Get back in there.
And now you wait.
The Germans are coming,
and they're getting closer and closer.
And they're mad, too,
because they've been stepped on by horses.
They've been stabbed with the cavalry swords.
They've had the arrows shot into them,
and they've been flashed.
And they're coming at you, and you can't do anything.
You just stand there and look mean.
No one can throw a spear until Primus Pilus throws the spear.
Primus Pilus is just standing there.
The man is a statue.
Somebody says, wake him up.
He's sleeping.
Hey, this guy's not sleeping.
This is the original Mr. Coolhead.
This man's been in the army 25 years.
He knows exactly when to throw the spear.
If he gives the signal one second too soon,
the spears will fall short.
If he waits too long, the spears will go over the heads.
He's waiting for just the right moment.
There's no line that says throw spears now.
He just has to know in his head from working with the soldiers.
He's waiting, waiting now.
He's ready.
Up go all the spears.
And all the soldiers, they just pick out their targets,
and you throw them.
And as soon as you get one,
don't be cute like some young enlisted guys.
They say, okay, left eyeball.
You're not going to get the left eyeball.
You go for the biggest part of the body.
Go for the chest.
Pick them out and throw your spear.
Give it a little spin to it.
And the spear is designed a special way.
This spear, when it goes through the air
and it hits the chest of the enemy,
it'll go through the chest and then stuck into the rib cage.
The weight of the handle is going to go down like this.
The tip is going to go like this inside the ribs and bend.
Now, you've got the German on the ground,
and the German says,
hey, I got a spear in my chest.
Pull it out.
And you pull it out.
Out comes the spear.
Out comes the heart.
Out comes the lungs.
You've got one dead German and one bent spear.
After the spears are thrown, it's time for sword fighting.
You put your shield in your left hand.
I never fight the guy in front of me.
You block him, and you go for the guy next to him,
because that German is going to be standing there
with his arm up into the air.
And you're going to see armpit, the perfect place to attack.
So what I do is block this guy and go over here right into the armpit
and pull it out and step backwards.
And then you go for the next man.
Right into the armpit, pull it out, and step backwards.
The first time you do that,
you're going to find there are bones in there.
And it's kind of hard,
so you have to practice going right between the ribs.
It's all into the wrist.
You just have to practice doing it right.
When we move, you're going to notice that we're fighting forwards.
We do something called a step and a stab.
You step forward, you stab, and then you go backwards.
And you step and stab, and step and stab.
People say, why do you go backwards?
Isn't that the coward's way to fight?
It's not the coward's way to fight.
I've got to tell you,
when you push this sword into somebody's side,
it's a wide blade, you pull it out,
the soldier's going to fall down, he's going to be bleeding,
he's going to be all slippery,
he's going to be squirming onto the ground.
You want to try to go forward and step on him,
you're going to fall down.
You go backwards, let the German step on that guy.
Just keep moving backwards and backwards.
Also, in the battle,
a little fact of life that you men have to learn.
It's very scary in the battle.
You may think you're a big, tough guy,
but once you get out there
and you see those people coming to kill you,
sometimes you have to go to the latrine real bad.
And you can't say,
wait a minute, I've got to go to the latrine.
You can't do that.
What you do, that's why we wear these little skirts.
Something's going to happen,
just let it happen right there.
Step backwards and let those Germans step in that stuff.
You know, Germans wear pants on the battlefield.
They have these big pants,
and you can always tell a German coming at you,
he's got a big wet spot there,
say, hey, first battle, you make fun of him,
but we don't have that problem.
The Romans got that all beat.
We've got a big problem though with this.
Get into the battle when the army's moving backwards.
If you happen to get wounded and you fall down,
you're going to be left behind.
The soldiers are going to be moving away.
The Germans are going to get you.
You don't want to be captured alive by the enemy.
Now you have to use your prugio.
This is your suicide dagger.
Your officers will train you how to use it.
You never get a chance to practice one time only.
You go for the neck, find the jugular vein,
and cut this way and then twist it,
and you'll be dead very shortly.
And believe me, that's better than being captured alive
by the Germans.
When you're fighting in the front line with the sword,
you have another advantage over the enemy.
The enemy comes at you in a phalanx,
and the design of the phalanx is that
the guys in the front fight until they're dead,
and then they're replaced by the people behind them.
There's no way for you to get for them to change places.
The Romans have this all worked out, okay?
You're only going to be expected to fight
for about 15 minutes at full strength.
We've carefully studied this.
We know that's how long you can do it.
After 15 minutes, you start to get tired.
You start to make mistakes.
You start to jeopardize your own life
and the lives of your friends next to you.
So after 15 minutes, they're going to blow the bukina,
and you're going to switch places with the guy behind you,
and he'll come up and take your place.
You go back and take a little rest to catch your breath
and be ready to replace him after 15 minutes.
By changing this often, by moving the different parts
of the legion around in the battlefield,
maybe moving one cohort here, one cohort there,
or breaking it up into different manifolds
and moving them around, sometimes they pull one ordo
from a manifold and move it there.
We're very flexible.
We don't have to fight until we're dead.
Once we're on the ground, we can have much more strategy
on the battlefield than the phalanx.
The phalanx is just a doomed organizational method
that doesn't work against the Roman legions.
We have the best fighting method in the world.
That's why we win all of the wars,
and you're going to be part of the winning legions.
Music
Every soldier dreams about getting glory and money
during his service in the legions.
The best way to get glory,
the best way to make a fortune fast,
is to be part of the sacking of a town.
You don't get this opportunity every week.
Maybe once or twice in your career,
you'll be part of a campaign that results
in the sacking of a town.
This is what your life in the army is like.
You just go on, battle after battle,
maybe one or two lootings of towns,
you make a fortune for yourself,
you earn glory for yourself,
and before you know it, 25 years is over
and you're ready to retire.
Now, when this happens, it all comes together for you.
If you've played the game right,
if you've made your deposits into the retirement fund,
if you've kept your officers happy with you,
25 years will be up, and then you'll get your free farm,
anywhere in the world that you want it.
Doesn't matter if somebody else is living on the farm.
You just tell the officer, that's the farm I want,
we're going to kick those people out,
and you are now a gentleman farmer.
Plus, you'll get free retirement pay
for the rest of your life.
Then you can say goodbye to your friends,
you can give your last goodbye to the waxilum,
and you can go on to live the rest of your life
in happiness and true peace.
For more information, visit www.fema.gov