Free Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins Page A

of 56–55 b.c. to take up a civil appointment in his father’s administration—he was consul for the year, along with Pompey the Great, in 55 b.c. The senior Crassus would travel to the Middle East the following year to take charge in Syria, and young Publius would go with him, becoming deputy commander of the force of seven legions that the elder Crassus was to take into Parthia in 53 b.c., when both father and son were killed at the infamous Battle of Carrhae, one of Rome’s most c05.qxd 12/5/01 4:55 PM Page 36
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    costly defeats, in present-day Turkey. The younger Crassus would die first, leading the advance guard. The Parthians put his severed head on the point of a spear and taunted his father and the rest of the Roman troops with it. Ironically, perhaps, young Crassus’s widow, Cornelia, soon married Pompey the Great, becoming his fifth wife. Pompey had been married to Caesar’s daughter Julia, but she was to die in childbirth in 54 b.c.
    So it was without the guiding hand and brave leadership of popular young General Crassus that the 7th went to Britain, and went in search of wheat this day. The first day of wheat-gathering had gone well, with the legionaries toting numerous sacks full of it back to the beachhead camp.
    After dawn, the men of the 7th marched back out into the fields. It was a pleasant, sunny late summer’s morning as the legionaries marched along, passing small groups of Britons on their way to the camp to do business with the Roman supply officers at the beach. Away in the distance, men, women, and children were working in the fields, tilling the soil, tending their cattle. To the Spanish legionaries this would have been a rural scene reminiscent of home.
    A few miles from the camp, and out of sight of it, they came to where they’d been working the previous day, a wheat field spreading to distant woods. Two-thirds of the wheat field had previously been leveled by the 7th, and just one section near the woods remained to be harvested. The men of the legion planted their standards in the ground, did the same with their javelins, leaned their shields against them, and removed their helmets. Then, taking scythes, wicker baskets, and empty sacks with them, they spread out in the rows of wheat stalks, cutting and collecting, chattering and laughing among themselves as they worked, closely supervised by their optios —sergeant majors—and centurions, who soon told them to shut up if they became too rowdy.
    The legion hadn’t been at work many minutes when, out of the blue, javelins began slicing into the ground around the feet of bent and toiling soldiers nearest the woods. Moments later, with terrifying war cries, thousands of Britons came streaming from the trees, brandishing their weapons, and after Roman blood. Legionaries closest to the woods were cut down before they knew what hit them. With centurions bawling orders, the men of the 7th dashed for their weapons. There wasn’t time for trumpet calls, no time to form up by squad, century, maniple, or cohort. The Roman troops could only form a rough, disorganized battle line, with stranger beside stranger and each man realizing how much he’d become accustomed to the habits and company of the comrades of his own unit.

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    The Britons had hidden in the woods all night, knowing the legionaries would return in the morning for the last of the wheat. Now, while their infantry streamed along the perimeter of the wheat field and closed around the men of the 7th like the jaws of a vice, surrounding them, the tribal chieftains signaled to their cavalry and chariots, which had been waiting some distance away. The chariots sped up. Running back and forth along the Roman line, the vehicles were hard-to-hit weapon platforms, with the nobles standing beside the drivers and hurling javelins on each pass. The noise of pounding hooves and drumming wheels would have