Interlude: A Roman Problem
Centurion Bernulius Severus sat on the rough plank floor in front of his cot, meticulously cleaning his armor. He laid a clean cloth out before him and removed a brush and a small bag of sand from his haversack. He sprinkled the sand over his segmented armor and went to work with the brush.
He was glad the garrison was outside the city. He hated leading his patrols into different quarters of the unwashed. He wouldn’t have even been with the patrol last night if he hadn’t had to set an example for one of his men.
It was a reasonable assumption that some of the men in the garrison would convert to this new religion. The rankers weren’t the brightest bunch. He continued to clean his armor.
What he needed now was the heat of the baths, then food, and then sleep. He sighed as he put away his now gleaming armor. He gathered his supplies to perform his toilet and headed to the baths.
🗣️ Summoned
“Ben!” A familiar voice rang out. He turned from the basin in the bathhouse and looked at his friend Centurion Flavius Valdus. Flavius was powerfully built, with a long nose, a short blond haircut, and piercing blue eyes. He carried his helmet under his arm.
“I’ve been looking for you all over!” He exclaimed and turned his head back toward the door. “In here.”
Bernulius, or Ben as his peers called him, stared agape as a ranker entered holding his cleaned armor and a fresh tunic.
“Leave, Paulus,” Flavius commanded, giving the young Paulus a smack on the back of his head.
“What is happening that you brought my armor and tunic to me?” He asked.
“Commodus read your report,” Flavius said, grabbing his cloth and bending down to towel off Ben’s legs. “He’s got questions.”
“Stop,” Ben snapped. “I can do this. When does he want me?”
“Now,” Flavius said, yanking the tunic into place.
He helped Ben with his armor, hurriedly tying off the leather straps on one side while Ben tied the other side. Ben sat down and laced his sandals. Flavius stood patiently, holding Ben’s gladius in its shoulder harness.
Ben stood up and took the harness from Flavius, slipping it over his shoulder. He picked up his helmet, tucking it under his left arm.
“Well,” Ben asked.
Flavius walked in circles around him, looking for flaws. “I don’t see anything. Pretty good for five minutes, eh?” He broke into a wide grin.
Ben grinned back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He turned and walked out the door.
“Ben,” Flavius called. “Keep your wits. He wasn’t angry.”
Ben looked back and waved at his friend through the steam coming out of the bathhouse.
“That’s what worries me,” he muttered.
Ben stepped around the bathhouse and looked down the street that led to Commodus’s complex of command buildings. He squared his shoulders and moved out briskly.
“Of course, he wants to talk with me,” he thought. “I saw a little action last night, and besides, a good Legate will want to talk to all of his officers eventually.”
“So, I didn’t find anyone; it happens,” he continued under his breath.
He tugged at his armor and glanced down at his helmet. He glanced around and hastily put it on his still-wet head, tying the leather chinstrap tightly under his chin.
He approached the Legate’s guard detail outside the command complex and showed his order to pass through. Then he decided.
“Be straight. Be blunt.” He thought. “Say it plain. Say it clean. Don’t flinch. Don’t embellish. Don’t apologize.” He crossed into the chaos of the orderly building.
𓂃✍︎ The Orderly Room
“Name.” The clerk didn’t even look up. Ben looked at the scene before him. Clerks were bent over wax tablets, crunching numbers or reading personnel reports. Legionaries were sitting on stools, talking over pay problems with clerks or adjusting service times in preparation for retirement.
He looked down at the beneficiarius now staring up at him.
“Centurion Bernulius Severus,” he said evenly, calmly. “I was commanded to present myself to the Legate.” He handed over his orders.
The clerk looked at the parchment in his hand. “Very well, take a seat.”
Ben remained standing. The clerk looked back up at him and sighed.
“Centurion, I understand that you were summoned.” He waved his hand at the stools lined up against the opposite wall, all occupied. “So, were they all.”
The clerk rose out of his seat and tossed Ben’s orders on a pile that adorned the table behind him. He limped back to his chair. “Please take a seat, Centurion. When the Legate is ready, he’ll call for you.”
Styluses scratched steadily against wax, clerks muttered to themselves, cursing now and then. Legionaries talked with the tesserarius, or duty roster clerks, in hushed tones, laughing or joking about stories told on both sides. Couriers entered, breathing hard, and left, sometimes breathing even harder, depending on who they had the pleasure of talking to. Braziers smoldered in corners, and the scent of sweat, wax, and ink clung to the air.
And Centurion Bernulius Severus waited.
The door suddenly slammed open. The sun streaming through cascaded bronze flashes of the entrant’s armor. Two men unfastened their chinstraps, letting their helmets hang over their shoulders. Ben jumped to his feet, fist to chest.
The sudden silence in the room was deafening.
“Sit down, son,” said Quintus Varinius Maximus, the Primus Pilus or senior centurion of the Legion. “This isn’t my house anymore. That man is now in residence.” Beside him, Titus Helvius Rufus, the Garrison Prefect, chuckled.
Ben sat down as instructed. The second and third in command of the Legion were here. This had nothing to do with him, he convinced himself.
“Wait,” Titus said suddenly, clicking his tongue with recognition. “You’re Bernulius Severus, right? Ben. The other centurions call you Ben.”
Ben’s heart sank.
“You’d better come with us, Severus,” Quintus said. “You’re why we’re here.” Quintus moved down the line of waiting men.
“Come on, Ben,” Titus said quietly. “I don’t know him very well, but I do know that Commodus doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Ben got up and moved out behind Titus, back a step and a little to the left.
They moved out of the orderly room and made their way through the halls of the complex, silent except for the sharp clack of their sandals. Every twenty feet or so, guards snapped to attention as Quintus and Titus passed.
“No embellishment. The straight truth.” Ben thought. He still didn’t understand how his report, one out of hundreds, had brought the Legate’s attention. His ignorance of that bothered him more than anything.
They approached an ordinary door. Ben would have missed it for the small sign next to it, Legatus. Quintus knocked sharply, once.
⚔️ Before the Eagle-Green Eyes of Commodus
“Enter,” commanded a voice from the other side.
Ben followed Quintus and Titus into an office that he would become very familiar with over the next few years.
Commodus kept his seat. The three men in front of him saluted, fist to chest. He let them hold it for a moment longer than necessary. He continued reading the logistics report, handed to him by his chief clerk, Marcus. Marcus was more than a clerk, but no one needed to know that, yet.
Commodus waved his hand, dismissing the salutes, but continued to read the report. Ben dropped his hand smartly and studied his new commander.
He was a patrician for sure. His nose, as much as his rank, marked him as nobility. He carried a full head of black curly hair, graying at the temples and cut short, as was proper for a soldier of Rome. He was of average height, but compact and powerfully built. His shoulders were solid. Ben guessed that there wasn’t an ounce of fat around his middle. Two things caught his eye that he considered crucial; the man’s forearms were covered with nicks and cuts, much like his own, and those of Quintus and Titus. He trained. And by the looks of his forearms, the training was hard and often. Ben glanced at the gladius on the stand behind him. This wasn’t an army-issued sword. Ben could see Commodus’s issued sword in a harness hanging on a peg over a crimson cloak from a stand by the door.
His eyes were what caught most of Ben’s attention. They were deep green. This was so rare in Rome that people frequently equated green eyes and their owners as a spirit familiar with eagles.
He suddenly realized those rare green eyes were locked on him, and his gut tightened.
“Thank you, Marcus. You can go.” The chief clerk nodded and exited the room through another door.
Commodus picked up a wax tablet to his left and studied it for a moment.
“Centurion Severus, you’re here to give me an account in your own words, about what you think happened last night,” Commodus said, without looking up.
He looked up suddenly and directly at Quintus and Titus.
“Quintus. Titus. You’re here because his conduct reflects on your command.”
Ben cleared his throat. “The truth,” he thought.
“Legate,” Ben began, “in the third hour of the night, my patrol arrived on the eastern ridge in the Jewish Quarter, above the marketplace.”
Commodus was looking down, following along with the report.
Ben continued. “We had received intelligence that Christians were gathering in a house on the ridge belonging to a Jewish potter named Stephanas. We searched until media nox and found nothing.”
Commodus cut in quietly. “Did you question this Stephanas?”
“We did, Legate,” Ben confirmed.
“‘We.’ Interesting. Did your entire patrol conduct the questioning? Or did one man take the lead?”
Ben hesitated. “I did, Legate!”
A slight nod from Commodus. “Better.”
Quintus and Titus exchanged a glance
He gestured for him to continue.
“Finding nothing and receiving no useful information, we resumed our patrol and returned to the Garrion in the third hour of the morning.”
Commodus set the tablet aside.
“Thank you, Centurion.”
He leaned back.
“Now, a question for you.”
Ben stiffened.
“These Christians.” Commodus’s voice was almost conversational. “What do you think of them?”
“Sir?”
“Speak freely, Severus. I have other matters to attend to. One of your men converted, did he not?”
“Yes, Legate,” Ben confirmed.
“And you formed no opinion?”
“Legate, soldiers are superstitious. They call on every god that they know before they go into battle. The man in question is a citizen. He may worship as he chooses.”
Titus’s jaw tightened.
Commodus’s gaze sharpened.
“Indeed. And Stephanas, according to this report,” he tapped the tablet, “is also a Roman citizen.”
He paused. Then quietly: “So tell me, Centurion… On what grounds did you enter his home and lay hands on him?”
Ben looked at his Legate, stupefied.
Commodus softened his features. “You made a mistake, Severus. Nothing more.”
At last, he stood and walked to the sideboard. He lifted the pitcher and clay jar and poured a measured draught of wine. His motions were calm and unhurried.
He glanced at Quintus, then at Titus, inviting them into the game he was about to play, before settling on Ben.
“Wine?”
📜New Policy
Commodus handed a cup to Quintus and another to Titus. He then poured a one for Ben. He did not drink. He waited while the room stilled.
“Rome,” he began quietly, staring at the cup in his hands, “has never cared which gods a man worships.”
He paced deliberately back to his desk.
“We are not like the Judeans, clinging to one mountain and a temple. Nor are we like the Greeks, quarreling with their philosophers. Rome understands something deeper.”
He looked up at them.
“A man may have a dozen gods if it pleases him. We do not govern spirits. We govern people.”
He took a small sip of wine.
“Do you know why Rome endures? Because we only demand two things: taxes and loyalty. Pay one, swear to the other, and the Empire leaves you in peace.
He carefully set his cup down. His tone cooled.
“But these Christians…” the word curled upward like smoke. “They refuse sacrifice to the emperor. They call no man ‘Lord’ but their Christ. They swear allegiance to a kingdom not of this world.”
He scoffed. “What is a kingdom without territory?”
“It is an idea that takes root in households, slaves, soldiers.”
He turned his eyes on Ben.
“A people who will not kneel to Caesar cannot be trusted to stand for Rome.”
Commodus rose and walked behind the men, looking at a map of Syria pinned to the wall.
“I have seen this sect in the capital. Soldiers refusing to carry out sentences. Slaves defying orders, Wives preaching to their husbands. It is spreading through the Empire the way a fire spreads through dry thatch.”
He stepped back around to face them.
“And, when religion begins to behave like rebellion, men like me…” he paused. “Men like us are appointed to stop it.”
Titus shifted his weight. Quintus swallowed.
Commodus folded his arms. “If a handful of Judeans want to mutter prayers in their synagogues, Rome does not care. But this…” He tapped the wax tablet on his desk. “…this movement grows in secret. It recruits from every class. It claims a king. And every king is a rival to Caesar, even dead ones.”
His gaze was fixed on Ben.
“So, understand this: your mistake last night was not excessive force. It was ignorance.”
Ben stiffened but did not speak.
“From this day forward,” Commodus said, his voice low and precise. “You will treat Christians, not as harmless worshipers, but as a potential faction. A political threat.”
He turned to Quintus and Titus.
“You will watch them. You will not provoke them.”
He turned, and his eagle-green eyes bored into Ben.
“And you will not create martyrs. Martyrs multiply.’
Then with quiet finality.
“I will not permit this religion – this rebellion – to grow under my command.”
He calmly lifted his cup and took a sip.
“Are we understood?”
Next Week’s Post
👉 Part III: The Wound, the Rescue, and the Invasion