Day 8

In 49 B.C., nearly six years after that massacre, Gaul is completely conquered. It is time for Caesar to return home, where he will finally stand trial for his actions. He’s been ordered to dismiss his army before setting foot into Italy.

This is Roman law. All returning generals are required to disband their troops before crossing the boundary of their province, in this case the Rubicon River. This signals that they are returning home in peace rather than in the hopes of attempting a coup d’état. Failure to disband the troops is considered an act of war.
But Caesar prefers war. He decides to cross the Rubicon on his own terms. Julius Caesar is fifty years old and in the prime of his life.

He has spent the entire day of January 10 delaying this moment, because if he fails, he will not live to see the day six months hence when he will turn fifty-one. While his troops play dice, sharpen their weapons, and otherwise try to stay warm under a pale winter sun, Caesar takes a leisurely bath and drinks a glass of wine. These are the actions of a man who knows he may not enjoy such creature comforts for some time to come. They are also the behavior of man delaying the inevitable.

But Caesar has good reason to hesitate. Pompey the Great, his former ally, brother-in-law, and builder of Rome’s largest theater, is waiting in Rome. The Senate has entrusted the future of the Republic to Pompey and ordered him to stop Caesar at all costs. Julius Caesar, in effect, is about to begin a civil war. This is as much about Caesar and Pompey as it is about Caesar and Rome. To the winner goes control of the Roman Republic. To the loser, a certain death.

Caesar surveys his troops. The men of Legio XIII stand in loose formation, awaiting his signal. Each carries almost seventy pounds of gear on his back, from bedroll to cooking pot to three days’ supply of grain. On this cold winter evening, they wear leather boots and leggings and cloaks over their shoulders to keep out the chill. They will travel on foot, wearing bronze helmets and chain mail shirts. All protect themselves with a curved shield made of wood, canvas, and leather, along with two javelins—one lightweight, the other heavier and deadlier. They are also armed with double-edged “Spanish swords,” which hang from scabbards on their thick leather belts, and the requisite pugiones. Some men are kitted out with slingshots, while others are designated as archers. Their faces are lined and weathered from years of sun and wind, and many bear the puckered scars from where an enemy spear plunged into their bodies or the long purple scar tissue from the slash of an enemy sword cutting into biceps or shoulder.

They are young, mostly between seventeen and twenty-three years of age, but there are some salt-and-pepper beards among them, for any male Roman citizen as old as forty-six can be conscripted into the legions. Young or old, they have endured the rugged physical training that makes the stamina of legionaries legendary. New recruits march for hours wearing a forty-five-pound pack, all the while maintaining complicated formations such as the wedge, hollow square, circle, and testudo, or “tortoise.” And all Roman legionaries must learn how to swim, just in case battle forces them to cross a river.
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They live off the land, pooling their supplies of grain and any meat they can forage. They have built roads and bridges, delivered mail, collected taxes, served as police, endured the deep winters of Gaul, known the concussive sting of a slingshot-hurled rock bouncing off their helmets, and even played the role of executioner, driving nails through the hands and feet of escaped slaves and deserters from their own ranks who have been captured and condemned to crucifixion. The oldest among them can remember the uprising of 71 B.C., when seven thousand slaves, led by a rebel named Spartacus, revolted, were captured, and were crucified in a 240-mile line of crosses that stretched almost all the way from Naples to Rome.

It is Caesar to whom these men have sworn their allegiance. They admire how he leads by example, that he endures the same hardships and deprivations during a campaign that they do. He prefers to walk among the “comrades,” as he calls his troops, rather than ride a horse. Caesar is also well known throughout the ranks for his habit of rewarding loyalty and for his charisma. His men proudly boast of the many women he has had throughout Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and they even make fun of his thinning hair by singing songs about “our bald whoremonger.” Likewise, Caesar gives his legions free rein to chase women and gamble when they are off duty. “My men fight just as well when they are stinking of perfume,” he says.

~~Killing Jesus: A History -by- Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard