former, I heard myself swear in French. I began to develop a genuine appreciation for the prêt-a-porter, pee-on-the-go convenience of the Roman tunic. And I had not died – twelve times – in vain. Blow by blow, parry by parry, I was getting up to fighting speed, able to at least see who was killing me and how they were doing it.
It was during the third round of the second day's ruck, my already prominent hackles raised after Ross spat on my shield as I lay dead, that I noticed thoughts more focused than the white noise of panic and terror running through my head in battle. 'I'll fucking have you, you fuck-faced fuck-sucker,' was one such example. The discovery in that same encounter of a Gaulish reluctance to go down when killed translated these thoughts into loud words.
We still lost, of course, but fuelled by fury I rose from the dead in a state of let-me-at-'em euphoria. I slapped backs. I clenched my fists and yelled incoherent, steroid-faced encouragements, so pumped up that my tunic seemed a snug fit. I found my sympathy for the villagers replaced by a powerful desire to burn their filthy houses to the ground, to heave a dead goat down their well, to hurl their mewling, smut-faced young into the nettles.
If the Gaul's superior aggression in combat was authentic – when push came to shove, and then to stab and slash, you would after all expect a freedom-fighting warrior to out-brawl some tired mercenary a million cubits from home – then so too was my ugly lust for extracurricular vengeance. The morning after I made sure to get a couple of kicks in at our prisoner. And that sunset, assessing the benign arcadia beyond the lake, with its gentle smoke plumes, its comely thatched structures, its ambling, shirtless men ferrying water about in twin-bucket shoulder-yokes, I gazed at the shields stacked up against the longhouse and thought: One night, maybe not tonight, but one night, I'm going to get in there and piss all over those.
Dressing up in full regalia was a regularly indulged afterhours pastime, and, from that evening on, one chronicled with almost pornographic relish. Set-piece tableaux were painstakingly set up and photographed: Germain about to be ambushed by a pair of piratical pagans; a line of Gaulish warriors spread out across a hilltop, silhouetted dramatically in the gloaming; Vincent in Caesar-era kit staring flintily into a setting sun. As the primary instigators of these nightly pose-fests, the Gauls became an after-dark fixture in our camp. This proved useful in terms of keeping my hatred levels topped up. When the conversation strayed beyond social and military history in the first millennium, our guests seemed incapable of offering anything beyond belches and boorish unpleasantry; in war as in peace, the Gauls were always too near the knuckle. Ribald and cutting as my legionaries could certainly be, their banter was always underscored with a basic human decency, and offset by moments of pensive philosophy. It was the Roman way.
By the same token, when it was done belittling Hollywood depictions of ancient combat, and had run out of insulting adjectives to describe the plastic-helmeted centurions who badgered tourists outside the Colosseum, the legion would revitalise itself with a little experimental archaeology. One afternoon we cleared our tent of all rucksacks, sleeping bags and mobile phones – ' les affaires civiles ', as they were tactfully dubbed – and set about establishing whether such a structure could indeed accommodate the ten men that comprised each contubernium : eight legionaries, plus the two support servants who carried water and looked after the mules. We just about managed it with Francky decimated from the equation, and the servants doubling up as footrests, but the principal lesson for me was just how far the European definition of miserable discomfort has evolved over the last 2,000 years. In the ancient world, a good night's sleep meant one uninterrupted by violent
It was during the third round of the second day's ruck, my already prominent hackles raised after Ross spat on my shield as I lay dead, that I noticed thoughts more focused than the white noise of panic and terror running through my head in battle. 'I'll fucking have you, you fuck-faced fuck-sucker,' was one such example. The discovery in that same encounter of a Gaulish reluctance to go down when killed translated these thoughts into loud words.
We still lost, of course, but fuelled by fury I rose from the dead in a state of let-me-at-'em euphoria. I slapped backs. I clenched my fists and yelled incoherent, steroid-faced encouragements, so pumped up that my tunic seemed a snug fit. I found my sympathy for the villagers replaced by a powerful desire to burn their filthy houses to the ground, to heave a dead goat down their well, to hurl their mewling, smut-faced young into the nettles.
If the Gaul's superior aggression in combat was authentic – when push came to shove, and then to stab and slash, you would after all expect a freedom-fighting warrior to out-brawl some tired mercenary a million cubits from home – then so too was my ugly lust for extracurricular vengeance. The morning after I made sure to get a couple of kicks in at our prisoner. And that sunset, assessing the benign arcadia beyond the lake, with its gentle smoke plumes, its comely thatched structures, its ambling, shirtless men ferrying water about in twin-bucket shoulder-yokes, I gazed at the shields stacked up against the longhouse and thought: One night, maybe not tonight, but one night, I'm going to get in there and piss all over those.
Dressing up in full regalia was a regularly indulged afterhours pastime, and, from that evening on, one chronicled with almost pornographic relish. Set-piece tableaux were painstakingly set up and photographed: Germain about to be ambushed by a pair of piratical pagans; a line of Gaulish warriors spread out across a hilltop, silhouetted dramatically in the gloaming; Vincent in Caesar-era kit staring flintily into a setting sun. As the primary instigators of these nightly pose-fests, the Gauls became an after-dark fixture in our camp. This proved useful in terms of keeping my hatred levels topped up. When the conversation strayed beyond social and military history in the first millennium, our guests seemed incapable of offering anything beyond belches and boorish unpleasantry; in war as in peace, the Gauls were always too near the knuckle. Ribald and cutting as my legionaries could certainly be, their banter was always underscored with a basic human decency, and offset by moments of pensive philosophy. It was the Roman way.
By the same token, when it was done belittling Hollywood depictions of ancient combat, and had run out of insulting adjectives to describe the plastic-helmeted centurions who badgered tourists outside the Colosseum, the legion would revitalise itself with a little experimental archaeology. One afternoon we cleared our tent of all rucksacks, sleeping bags and mobile phones – ' les affaires civiles ', as they were tactfully dubbed – and set about establishing whether such a structure could indeed accommodate the ten men that comprised each contubernium : eight legionaries, plus the two support servants who carried water and looked after the mules. We just about managed it with Francky decimated from the equation, and the servants doubling up as footrests, but the principal lesson for me was just how far the European definition of miserable discomfort has evolved over the last 2,000 years. In the ancient world, a good night's sleep meant one uninterrupted by violent
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