The Field Of Swords

HISTORICAL NOTE

As with the previous two books, I think an explanatory note can be useful, especially when the history is sometimes more surprising than the fiction.

I have mentioned Alexander the Great throughout the book as a hero for Julius. Certainly the Greek king’s life would have been well known to all educated Romans, complementing their interest in that culture. Though the setting was Cadiz rather than a deserted Spanish village, the first-century biographer Suetonius provides the detail of Caesar sighing in frustration at the foot of Alexander’s statue. At the age of thirty-one, Julius had achieved nothing in comparison. He could not have known that his greatest victories would come after that point.

Apart from his wives, Julius is reported as having had a number of prominent mistresses, though Suetonius said Servilia was the one he loved most of all. Julius did buy her a pearl valued at one and a half million denarii. Perhaps one of the reasons he invaded Britain may have been to find more of them.

He was quaestor in Spain before he returned as praetor, which I have not gone into for reasons of pace. He was a busier man than any writer can hope to cover, and even a condensed version fills these books to bursting point.

He did stage a gladiatorial combat in solid silver armor and ran huge debts pursuing public fame. It is true that at one point he had to physically leave the city to avoid his creditors. He became consul with Bibilus and chased his colleague out of the forum after a disagreement. In Bibilus’s absence, it became something of a joke in Rome to say a document was signed by Julius and Caesar.

As a minor point, the Falernian wine Julius poured into his family tomb was so expensive that a cup of it cost a week’s salary for a legionary. Unfortunately, the grapes grew on Mount Vesuvius, by Pompeii, and in A.D. 79 the taste was lost forever.

The Catiline conspiracy was as important in its day as the Gunpowder Plot in England. The conspiracy was betrayed when one of them confided in a mistress, who reported what she had heard. Julius was named, probably falsely, as one of the conspirators, as was Crassus. Both men survived the upheaval without stains on their characters. Catiline left the city to take command of the rebel army while his friends were to help create chaos and rioting in the city. Part of the evidence against them showed that a Gallic tribe had been approached for warriors. After a heated debate as to their fate, the lesser conspirators were ritually strangled. Catiline was killed in the field.

The conquests of Gaul and Britain comprise most of the second part of this book. I have followed the main events that began with the migration of the Helvetii and the defeat of Ariovistus. It is worth mentioning that Julius Caesar himself is sometimes the only extant source for the details of this campaign, but he records mistakes and disasters as faithfully as his victories. For example, he tells quite candidly how a mistaken report made him retreat from his own men, believing them to be the enemy. In his commentaries, he puts the number of the Helvetii and allied tribes at 386,000. Only 110,000 were sent home. Against them, he had six legions and auxiliaries-35,000 at most.

His battles were rarely a simple test of strength. He formed alliances with lesser tribes and then came to their aid. He fought by night if necessary, on all terrains, flanking, bribing, and outmaneuvering his enemies. When Ariovistus demanded only cavalry at their meeting, Julius ordered the foot soldiers of the Tenth to mount, which must have been a sight to see.

I did worry that the sheer distances he covered must have been exaggerated until my cousin took part in a sixty-mile trek. She and her husband completed it in twenty-four hours, but soldiers from a Gurkha regiment completed it in nine hours, fifty-seven minutes. Two and a third marathons, nonstop. One must be careful in this modern age where pensioners seem able to ski down Everest, but I think the legions of Gaul could have matched that pace and, like the Gurkhas, have been able to fight at the end.

It was not such a great stretch to suppose that Adàn might have understood the language of the Gauls, or even the dialect of the Britons, to some extent. The original Celts came across Europe from an unknown place of origin-possibly the Caucasus Mountains. They settled Spain, France, Britain, and Germany. England only became predominantly Romano-Saxon much later and of course maintains much of that difference into modern times.

It is difficult to imagine Julius’s view of the world. He was a prolific reader and would have known Strabo’s works. He knew Alexander had traveled east and Gaul was a great deal closer. He would have heard of Britain from the Greeks, after Pytheas traveled there two and a half centuries before: perhaps the world’s first genuine tourist. While we have lost Pytheas’s books, there is no reason why they should not have been available then. Julius would have heard of pearls, tin, and gold to lure him over from Gaul. Geographically, he thought that Britain was due east of Spain rather than to the north, with Ireland in between. It could even have been a continent as big as Africa, for all he could be sure on that first landing.

His first invasion of Britain in 55 B.C. was disastrous. Storms smashed his ships and ferocious resistance from blue-skinned tribes and vicious dogs were almost his undoing. The Tenth literally had to fight their way through the surf. He stayed only three weeks and the following year brought eight hundred ships back, this time forcing his way through to the Thames. Despite this vast fleet, he had stretched himself too far and would not return a third time. As far as we know, they never paid the tribute they promised.

Vercingetorix would hold a similar place in history and legend as King Arthur if he had managed to win his great battle against Julius. He united the tribes and saw that scorching the earth and starving the legions was the only way to defeat them. Even his great host was eventually broken by the legions. The High King of Gaul was taken in chains to Rome and executed.

The exact details of the triumvirate with Crassus and Pompey are not known. Certainly the arrangement benefited all three men, and Julius’s term in Gaul went on for many years after his consular year had ended. Interestingly, when Pompey sent the order for him to return alone after Gaul, Julius had very nearly completed the ten-year hiatus the law demanded between seeking a consul’s post. If Julius had secured a second term at that point, he would have been untouchable, which Pompey must have feared.

Clodius and Milo are not fictional characters. Both men were part of the chaos that almost destroyed Rome while Julius was in Gaul. Street gangs, riots, and murder became all too common, and when Clodius was finally killed, his supporters did indeed cremate him in the Senate house, burning it to the ground in the process. If you go to the forum in Rome today, the Senate house is one they rebuilt after the fire. Pompey was elected sole consul with a mandate to establish order in the city. Even then, the triumvirate agreement might have held if Crassus had not been killed fighting the Parthians with his son. With the news of that death, there was only one man in the world who could have challenged Pompey for power.

Finally, I have made one or two claims in the book that may annoy historians. It is debatable whether the Romans had steel or not, though it is possible to give a harder sheath to soft iron by beating it in charcoal. Steel, after all, is only iron with a fractionally higher carbon content. I do not think this was beyond them.

I did worry that having Artorath, a Gaul, described as close to seven feet tall would be too much for some, but Sir Bevil Grenville (1596-1643) had a bodyguard named Anthony Payne who was seven feet four inches tall. I daresay he could have put Artorath over his shoulder.

There are hundreds more little facts that I could put in here, if there were space. If I have changed history in the book, I hope it has been deliberate rather than simple error. I have certainly tried to be as accurate as I could be. For those who would like to go further than these few pages, I can recommend Caesar’s Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins, which is fascinating, and also The Complete Roman Army by Adrian Goldsworthy, or anything else by that author. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius should be required reading in every school. My version is the translation by Robert Graves, and apparently which of the emperors you like the most is quite revealing about your own character. Lastly, for those who want more of Julius, you could do no better than to read Christian Meier’s book Caesar.

C. IGGULDEN