lift their spirits and thus enhance their odds of survival.
The rest of our party was in surprisingly good humor as well, despite the fact that by modern Western standards, they had seen more than a lifetime’s worth of violent death. Once we pulled away from the scene itself, Bryson, Lavon and Sharon began to relate to each other their impressions of what they had witnessed.
Only Markowitz stayed out of the conversation. He just stared back in silence at the birds circling over the battle site.
After a little while, I grew concerned. “You OK there, buddy?” I asked.
He didn’t reply.
Without acknowledging me at all, he stepped over to Lavon and tugged on his shoulder. “Robert, can you ask this centurion what will happen to those bodies?”
Lavon did so, but the Roman officer just looked at him blankly and shrugged, as if unable to comprehend why anyone would care.
Quite frankly, I wondered the same thing.
Decius turned and said something to the men in the wagon. It must have been another joke, for the injured soldiers began laughing uproariously.
Lavon told me later what they had said.
“The dogs and vultures must eat, too,” replied one of the legionnaires. “Would the gods approve of us depriving them of their sustenance?”
As the soldiers burst out in laughter again, Lavon chuckled along with them. As for me, I put the issue out of my mind.
I shouldn’t have.
Chapter 18
We marched for close to an hour before Publius brought our column to a halt just outside a small village. As soon as we stopped, the Romans launched into a well-drilled routine. Two lookouts scrambled up the nearest hill, about twenty yards away, where they stood with their backs to each other, each scanning a semicircle for potential threats.
Two unlucky squads – the Roman term was contuburnia , Lavon explained – remained on guard while the others dropped their heavy burdens and quickly found shade underneath nearby olive trees, though an additional group of soldiers did not begin their break until they had erected an improvised cover to shield the wounded men in the wagon from the sun.
As the soldiers rested, four servants who had accompanied them carried jugs of water and ladled refreshment out to each man before scurrying back to the center of the village to fill their containers from a crudely dug well.
Like the soldiers, Bryson and Markowitz headed for some large rocks underneath a shade tree. By contrast, Lavon and Bergfeld ran straight up a small hill to the edge of a three-foot stone wall that enclosed a flat, hard-packed surface about twenty-five feet in diameter. I decided to join them.
Sharon trained her sight on what looked like a sled leaning against the opposite side. Pieces of it were flaking away at the edges, and compounding its bedraggled appearance, dozens of rock fragments were embedded into the wood on one side. To me, it belonged either in a landfill or as décor in a cheap, all-you-can-eat steak house.
“Wow, check that out!” she said.
Lavon seemed equally excited. I followed them around the wall’s perimeter but finally had to ask.
“What’s so interesting about that piece of junk?”
The subject of their enthusiasm turned out to be a threshing floor, and what I took for a sled was actually the threshing machine. Local farmers would pile their sheaves of grain on the hard surface and hook up the sled behind a donkey or an ox, fragment side down.
Then, they’d pile stones on top of the sled for extra weight, and the animal would drag the thing back and forth, shredding the sheaves and separating the grain from the straw. The whole process sounded terribly inefficient.
“I thought they just threw it up in the air and let the wind blow away the chaff,” I said.
“That was the next step,” Bergfeld replied.
I was right about the inefficiency, though. Lavon explained that anyone who could
The rest of our party was in surprisingly good humor as well, despite the fact that by modern Western standards, they had seen more than a lifetime’s worth of violent death. Once we pulled away from the scene itself, Bryson, Lavon and Sharon began to relate to each other their impressions of what they had witnessed.
Only Markowitz stayed out of the conversation. He just stared back in silence at the birds circling over the battle site.
After a little while, I grew concerned. “You OK there, buddy?” I asked.
He didn’t reply.
Without acknowledging me at all, he stepped over to Lavon and tugged on his shoulder. “Robert, can you ask this centurion what will happen to those bodies?”
Lavon did so, but the Roman officer just looked at him blankly and shrugged, as if unable to comprehend why anyone would care.
Quite frankly, I wondered the same thing.
Decius turned and said something to the men in the wagon. It must have been another joke, for the injured soldiers began laughing uproariously.
Lavon told me later what they had said.
“The dogs and vultures must eat, too,” replied one of the legionnaires. “Would the gods approve of us depriving them of their sustenance?”
As the soldiers burst out in laughter again, Lavon chuckled along with them. As for me, I put the issue out of my mind.
I shouldn’t have.
Chapter 18
We marched for close to an hour before Publius brought our column to a halt just outside a small village. As soon as we stopped, the Romans launched into a well-drilled routine. Two lookouts scrambled up the nearest hill, about twenty yards away, where they stood with their backs to each other, each scanning a semicircle for potential threats.
Two unlucky squads – the Roman term was contuburnia , Lavon explained – remained on guard while the others dropped their heavy burdens and quickly found shade underneath nearby olive trees, though an additional group of soldiers did not begin their break until they had erected an improvised cover to shield the wounded men in the wagon from the sun.
As the soldiers rested, four servants who had accompanied them carried jugs of water and ladled refreshment out to each man before scurrying back to the center of the village to fill their containers from a crudely dug well.
Like the soldiers, Bryson and Markowitz headed for some large rocks underneath a shade tree. By contrast, Lavon and Bergfeld ran straight up a small hill to the edge of a three-foot stone wall that enclosed a flat, hard-packed surface about twenty-five feet in diameter. I decided to join them.
Sharon trained her sight on what looked like a sled leaning against the opposite side. Pieces of it were flaking away at the edges, and compounding its bedraggled appearance, dozens of rock fragments were embedded into the wood on one side. To me, it belonged either in a landfill or as décor in a cheap, all-you-can-eat steak house.
“Wow, check that out!” she said.
Lavon seemed equally excited. I followed them around the wall’s perimeter but finally had to ask.
“What’s so interesting about that piece of junk?”
The subject of their enthusiasm turned out to be a threshing floor, and what I took for a sled was actually the threshing machine. Local farmers would pile their sheaves of grain on the hard surface and hook up the sled behind a donkey or an ox, fragment side down.
Then, they’d pile stones on top of the sled for extra weight, and the animal would drag the thing back and forth, shredding the sheaves and separating the grain from the straw. The whole process sounded terribly inefficient.
“I thought they just threw it up in the air and let the wind blow away the chaff,” I said.
“That was the next step,” Bergfeld replied.
I was right about the inefficiency, though. Lavon explained that anyone who could
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