When not busy cooking I found myself greatly interested in the amazing company among which I was cast. In my rambles about our camp, when all were full-fed and groups sat or lay chatting about the slackening camp- fires, I became acquainted with most of the eighteen centurions from the legions quartered in Britain, and had talks, sometimes even long talks, with more than half of them. These bluff, burly frontier sergeants, like their corporals and men, treated all their volunteer associates as welcome comrades, even welted and branded runaway slaves acting as cooks. From them I heard again and again the story of discontent, conspiracy, mutiny, insurrection and attempt at protest about rectification of the evils they believed to exist, which tale we had all heard outlined by the sergeant-orator in the Forum of Placentia.
Among the eighteen centurions there was no sergeant-major nor any centurion of the upper rank. The highest in army rank was Sextius Baculus of Isca, a native of Britain and lineally descended, through an original colonist of Isca, from the celebrated sergeant-major of the Divine Julius. He had been twelfth in rank in the Sixth Legion, being second centurion of its second cohort. Not one of his seventeen associates had ranked so high: the next highest being Publius Cordatus, of Lindum, who had been second sergeant of the fourth cohort in the Twentieth Legion.
The totality of my mental impressions of what I heard from these two and other members of this incredible deputation of insurgent mutineers and of what I saw of the doings of the whole deputation, was vague and confused. From the confusion emerged a predominating sense of their many inconsistencies and of the haphazard irresponsibility and inconsequence of their states of mind and actions. They were, indeed, entirely consistent in one respect. Unlike Maternus and his men, not one of them blamed Commodus for anything, not even for having appointed Perennis to his high office and then having permitted him to arrogate to himself all the functions of the government of the Republic and Empire. One and all they excused the Emperor and expressed for him enthusiastic loyalty: one and all they blamed not only the Prefect's mismanagement but also his own appointment on Perennis. Consistent as they were in holding these opinions or in having such feelings, the notions were inconsistent in themselves.
So likewise was their often expressed and manifestly sincere intention to forestall the consummation of the alleged conspiracy and save the Emperor inconsistent with their slow progress from Britain towards Rome. Never having been in Britain and knowing little of it from such reports as I had heard, I could not controvert their assertion that the state of the roads and weather there had made impossible greater speed than they had achieved from their quarters to their port, yet I suspected that men really systematically in earnest might have accomplished in twenty days marches which had occupied them for fifty-one days. I was certain that it was nothing short of ridiculous for legionaries in hard fighting condition and well fed to consume one hundred and one days in marching from their landing-port on the coast of Gaul to Placentia: ten miles a day was despicable marching even for lazy and soft-muscled recruits; any legionaries should make fifteen, miles at day under any conditions, earnest men keyed up to hurry should have made twenty and might often march twenty-five miles between camps. These blatherskites were on fire with high resolve, by their talk, yet had loafed along for a thousand miles, camping early, sleeping long after sunrise, resting at midday and gorging themselves at leisurely meals. All this was amazing.
Equally astonishing was the condition of supineness, of all governmental officials in Gaul, local and Imperial, as their tale revealed it. Neither the Prefect of the Rhine, nor any one of the Procurators of Gaul, had, as far as their story indicated, made any effort to arrest them, turn them back, stop them, check them, hinder them or even have them expostulated with. As far as I could infer from all I heard neither had the governing body of any city or town. For all they were interfered with by any official they might have been full-time veterans, honorably discharged, marching homeward under accredited officers provided with diplomas properly made out, signed, sealed and stamped. Everywhere they had been fed at public expense, lodged free or provided with camping-grounds and tents; their pack-animals had been replaced if worn out, and everything they needed had been provided on their asking for it or even before they made any request. I could only infer that they had inspired fear by their numbers and truculence and that each town or district had striven to keep them in a good humor and to get rid of them as soon as possible by entertaining them lavishly and speeding them along their chosen way.
As they told of their own behavior there had been no consistency or system or method in their additions to their company. By their own account they had enticed men to join them or had ignored likely recruits in the most haphazard fashion, purely as the humor struck them. The like was true of their emptyings of ergastula in Italy. At Turin, as well as I could gather from my chats with this or that centurion or soldier or liberated slave, they had set free the inmates of the ergastulum by the Segusio Gate and had then turned aside to that by the Vercellae Gate, but had ignored the larger ergastulum by the Milan Gate; though they had marched out of Turin, necessarily, by that gate. Similarly at Milan, they had emptied two ergastula and ignored the rest; as at Placentia, where they had expended all their time and energy on the first ergastulum they happened on inside the Milan Gate and on ours, and then had ignored or forgotten the four or five others, equally large and equally well filled.
On our progress to Rome I saw similar inconsistencies in their behavior. They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma they emptied two ergastula and never so much as approached the others, repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia. Outside of Faventia something, I never learned what, enraged a knot of the veterans, so that their fury communicated itself to all the soldiery from Britain and inflamed their associates, Gallic and Italian. Whereupon we burst the Bononia Gate of Faventia, flocked into the town, sacked some of the shops, left a score of corpses in the market-place and some in the streets near it, set fire to a block of buildings, and burst out of the Ariminum Gate, tumultuous and excited, but without so much as trying the outer doors of any ergastulum.
Yet, after this riotous performance, we did no damage at Ariminum, not even entering the town, not even enquiring if it had an ergastulum, as it must have had.
Similarly at Pisaurum, at Fanum Fortunae, at Forum Sempronii, though these were small towns and could not have resisted us, we camped outside, accepted gracefully the tents and food provided for us and made no move to maltreat anyone or do any looting. But at Nuceria, at Spolitum and at Narnia we entered the towns and liberated the inmates of two of the ergastula, in each, though we never so much as threatened Interamnia.
Looking back over these proceedings I explain them to myself approximately as follows: the eighteen centurions from Britain treated each other as if they all felt on terms of complete mutual equality, none ever assumed any rights of superiority, seniority, precedence, or authority, none was ever invested with any right of permanent or temporary leadership. If some whim prompted any one of the eighteen to take the lead in emptying an ergastulum or breaking in a town gate, or sacking a shop, not one of his fellow-sergeants demurred or expostulated or opposed him; they all concurred in any suggestion of any one of them. And the soldiers followed their centurions with, apparently, implicit confidence in them, or a blind instinct of deference. So of submission to the request of any town decurion, that they stay outside: mostly, they were acquiescent. But if something irritated a sergeant, or even a soldier, the entire deputation flamed into fury and burst gates, sacked shops and even fired buildings until their rage spent itself, after which they were civil and kindly to all townsmen, whether officials, citizens, slaves or women and children. I never could detect any reason for any action or inaction of theirs.