The Roman Centurion

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Riggs cold over the Rhine frontier.

Mist rises from the river, as hundreds of Roman soldiers waken their turf-walled camp.

Marcus, top centurion of the elite first cohort, gears up after 20 years of service, is

curved chest armor shines with metal discs from battles one, leg guards protect his shins,

and he grips a vine stump to keep his men in line.

His helmet's horse hair crest stands out, as he marches past his troops lining up, the

second in command optio at his side.

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dark, and punishments for any soldier he thought was lacking.

Tomorrow, a clash with German raiders awaits.

He is the Legion's backbone, ready to lead, and dish out harsh discipline.

Welcome to the ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes your host, and today we're exploring the story

of the Roman centurion, one of the most recognizable military ranks of antiquity that was so critical

to the Roman army's success. Our guest is Dr. Ben Cain, best-selling author and expert on the Roman

military.

Ben, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the show.

It's lovely to be here Tristan, thank you.

Oh, and to talk about the Roman centurion, is it fair to say that they are the real backbone

to the Roman army, and it's great success?

Yeah, 100%. There were 60 centurions for pretty much the whole Roman period in each Legion,

and they were the men who led soldiers into battle, and if they did badly, if the centurions

died, potentially the battle would go against them, but in desperate situations, they would

lead from the front. They were 100%. They're a linchpin to the whole system.

Yeah, definitely. So we had to be able to make decisions in the moment, and in extreme situations

would lay down his life if he had to. They were disciplinarians quite extreme at times as well,

but they were all sort of being men who rewarded their soldiers for their valor,

you know, with recommendations for bravery and so on. Yeah, they were the beating heart of the

Roman army. It seems like there's quite a lot of information that survives about these figures,

whether it's from stories, from ancient history, or archaeology, so we can actually explore those

various different strands that you mentioned just then in quite a lot of detail. We can, but we

also can't. So a lot of the details are interesting and fascinating and give us a little insight,

but often have nothing else to back them up. So frequently the detail is scant, which is really,

really frustrating, but I sometimes compare Roman history of all kinds, whether it's military or

social or religious or political, telling people it's like a thousand-piece jigsaw where you've got

maybe the four corners and some of the edge here and there, and in some areas you've got all the

pieces and other areas you've got gaps between the pieces, and then there are loads of gaps,

huge gaps everywhere else. So that's the really frustrating thing with Roman history. Well,

indeed, all ancient history. Well, we can explore the stories and then evaluate the quality of the

evidence. Yeah, that's fine. And in regards to their position in the Roman army, so

hierarchically wise, they're not right at the top of the chain command, but they occupy that sweet

spot in the center. That makes them so vital. Yes. So a century confusing, it wasn't a hundred

men. It was only 80. Okay. Centurion led those with four junior officers, and there were six.

Well, we've got to also say, when are we talking about? Because Rome's history ended on for more

than a thousand years. So most people who are tuning in are probably thinking about the imperial

army during the period of the Roman Empire being at his greatest expense from Israel and Syria to

Britain in the West and the whole of the Mediterranean world. And in that time, a legion had 60

centurions, six to a cohort, so 10 cohorts, each cohort had six centuries of 80 men. So that was

60 centurions. And they were the main middle men, almost senior commanders. Above them, you had

six tribunes. And then above that, you had the legate. And he was the man who commanded the army.

Although interestingly, he was sometimes only parachuted in at the very last moment. Like Julius

Caesar did made a legate appointed one the day before a battle. So it's likely that he wasn't actually

leading the legion at all that Caesar was telling the legion what to do. But certainly in situations

where they're operating independently, a legate would have been the commander. And you mentioned

there how a centurion is in command of 80 men and not hundreds, slightly confusingly. Do we know

why that comes about? Why they're called centurions? When in fact, they just controlled 80 men.

We do, but again, it's not guaranteed that this is correct. But one of the most prominent theories

is the word comes from the Latin senum, which is actually refers to an amount of land of which

is a hundred eugera, which is a subunit of land. And this would have been in deepest antiquity,

an officer would have been chosen according to his social status and his wealth and the ordinary

legionaries. And their rank was dependent on the social status and wealth as well. So one of the

ancient sources tells us that's where the word century came from. But at no point was a century

of men, a hundred men. It was always 80 men. Yeah, it's a hundred runs of cricket and it's a hundred

years, you know, if you're thinking about time. No, I certainly have to raise that question

earlier. So thank you for explaining it. You mentioned already how the nature of our sources,

I said, like the edges of a piece of a jigsaw, the edges of a jigsaw, and we have all these bits

missing. But can you elaborate a little bit on the types of sources that we do have surviving to

learn about the Roman centurion? So the fragmentary, usually, you've got two types of sources,

you've got the earliest sources we have, and then you've got the later ones who were often

potentially just copying what the earlier guys wrote. And you can tell that by looking at what

they've written. I'm sure you know this yourself. It doesn't replicate a lot of what was written

earlier. So you've got sources like Livy and Plutarch and Aryan and other sources, but they're

literally all quite fragmentary. One of the best ones for the size unit size and number of

legionaries and information about centurions is Polybius. So he refers to literally the Republican

army and what it was like. And then you've got someone like Josephus who was actually present

at the Spacians war in Judea. And there are quite a lot of nice details from that about Roman

soldiers like a centurion who was chasing some Jews who were running away during, I think it was

the siege of Jerusalem, and they were fleeing from them even though he was on his own, but his

hobnails slipped on the paving stones because it's like running on wet tiles with football boots,

and he fell over. And then the Jews came back and killed him. But it was an example of this.

They were running from the centurion because he was so scary, but then he ended up dead. And

another detail from Josephus is the marching order of a legion, which is one of the only examples

we've got. So you literally, with Roman sources, you take what you can get and you've got to treat

some with grain of salt, particularly if there are hundreds of years after the events are describing,

but when you've literally got only those pieces of a jigsaw and maybe some evidence from archaeology,

or from statuary or steels, you're literally, you know, it's like trying to assemble a

key piece of furniture without having the guide. And so those are funerary monuments, which

frequently in the background of the big figure, you've got lots of soldiers and so on and maybe

details of military equipment and so on and people's on in and then, oh, is that a centurion

helmet or is that an enemy helmet? And literally, you can have people, marine actors who are,

you know, passion, passion led people, but are really rigorous in their detail of how accurate

their replica equipment is. They will, they will be using images like that from all around the

Roman Empire and all the museums that they can get pictures from to make an accurate helmet,

you know, like this or whatever. So we're certainly, we're not going to avoid the helmet in the room

here. We've got to go into these details in a bit. But also, I want to pick up, you mentioned kind

of those two important literary sources there, Polybius and then Josephus. So there's about,

there's a few hundred years between the two, isn't there? So Polybius second century BC,

Josephus first century AD. And once again, that reinforces the point earlier that you made,

that this is a long period of time that we're talking about with the Roman centurion and their,

their role, their equipment, everything would have evolved over that period too.

Oh, completely. So I give a talk on everyday life in the Roman army and one of the first slides

of God as a picture of two men at arms from a hundred years war who fought the French interestingly

for 117 years, not a hundred years, but and then British infantrymen from World War II. And I say

600 years of history separates these two soldiers and their equipment's completely different. Well,

Rome was normally founded in 753 BC. I mean, probably a bit later actually, but it didn't fall

again, nominally until 476 AD. And that's nearly 1200 years of history. So to suggest that Roman

soldiers looked and dressed the same or their unit size or command structure was the same.

It didn't happen. And so the earliest Roman soldiers looked and dressed like Greek warriors

because of the heavy Greek influence. And then by the late empire, I mean, they looked totally

different again with spears as the main weapon, not swords and massive helmets and round shields,

not a scooter and so on. But the centurion did last a very, very long time. And indeed, it wasn't

until the very late Roman Empire that we have some evidence that it may have changed. But

also the titles of the centurion. So within the cohort, the six centurions in a cohort,

listeners may be aware that the Republican legions, for example, when the Romans were fighting

Hannibal, there were three types of legionary. The first rank were called the Hastati,

the second rank called the Prink Bay, the third rank called the triari, and they were dressed

in arm differently. And there were centurions of those in often in double century form,

which is called a manniple. And the names of those centurions survived for hundreds of years. So

even in an imperial legion, the six centurions in a cohort were called the Peelus Pryor as in

the first spear. And that would have been the centurion of the triari, the Peelus Posterior,

the second centurion of the triari, and then the Prinkeps Pryor and the Prinkeps Posterior

and the Hastatus Pryor and the Hastatus Posterior. So there were hundreds of years after those

forms of soldier disappeared. They were still known as that. We were history lesson as you're

learning. Yeah, I mean, I don't use those in my books because it was just, I mean, the Roman

names ending in US and all the little Latin words that I like to weave in, it just gets too

confusing if you're doing that kind of thing. But it's interesting. So it sounds like this idea

of a centurion in the Roman mindset in a Roman army does seem to stem back quite a long way.

I mean, do we have any ideas around the origins of the creation of this position of centurion?

Could it once again be influenced by the Greeks and maybe a position like the Stratégos or something

like that? Potentially. I mean, I'm not an ancient historian by profession, potentially. But it's not,

I mean, the origin that we think is a Latin word and the word tribune, which comes from that time

as well. That comes from the originally tribe and the word legio comes from the Latin word, which

means a levy. Because as again, as your viewers might realize during the Republic, it was your

civic duty to fight for Rome if there was war. You literally presented yourself on the plane of

Mars outside the walls of Rome and you were put into the army according to your wealth and social

status. And the centurion would have been just one of those men who had more potentially combat

experience. But they did exist from those early days. And if we can explore two key periods,

for a centurion now, and to kind of get a sense of what they looked like, what we should think of

when someone mentions the Roman centurion. And I guess we should do it alongside those two key

literary sources that you mentioned earlier. So Polybius, first of all, so that's the time of

the wars against Carthage, isn't it? And then Jacifus in the early Imperial period a bit later.

So if we focus on the time of Polybius, first of all, in the Republic, what do we know about the

Roman centurion at that time and how he would have looked? Very little. Very little.

We know that he wore a male shirt like two of his types of soldiers that bring a base in the

triari. We know that he probably carried a shield like they did, a skewed him. Now the

Republican shield was a good bit larger than most of yours are used to. It was curved top and bottom.

So it was a good six inches, 15 centimeters tall our top and bottom. So if you're an average

height Roman, which is five foot six, 1.65 meter, it literally comes up to about here. So he carried

one of those. When you get onto the subject of helmets, I mean, this is probably one of the most

iconic images of Rome in the world today. Most people of any knowledge of history will say that's

a centurion's helmet. What's curious is that there are very few images of centurions wearing these

tombstones of centurions, which are quite numerous. They're not wearing their helmets because

the viewers wanted them to see their face. And there are images of centurions wearing other helmets.

Now the earlier ones, they potentially didn't have transverse crested. They may have just had

like a top knot of horse hair, or they may even we've got at least one example of the centurion

with a forward to back crest as well, which again, a lot of your viewers will associate with an

optio, the second in command, but that's from later in the in the period. Oh, is that kind of a

distinguishing factor between the horizontal and the vertical? Yes, but it's not entirely certain

that optios had them. They may have had them. But you know, reenactors, that's the way they've

gone. So this is what increasingly that's what we think. And then you get textbooks with images

like that. And they just it's funny how these images just get anchored tighter and tighter into

people's awareness until it's quite hard to actually say, well, actually, it's not necessarily

based on a huge amount of evidence. It may have been something else. People go, no, no, no,

I've seen, you know, whatever program or. But from the time of Hannibal Barker, I mean,

this type of helmet we have in front of us now with that kind of great guard about. No, that was

that centurion. So the helmets were a lot, sorry, the helmets were a lot simpler. Most soldiers wore

a Montfretino. Right. What is this? That is a very simple bronze bowl helmet. Again,

your viewers would be familiar with with a very short neck guard and a complete cheek piece,

unlike this one, which has a cheekpiece, which allows you to hear. In other words, the,

and I can tell you from wearing that earlier helmet, when your cheek flaps are down,

you can't hear what the man beside you is saying, let alone the centurion 20 meters away.

So they would have worn one of those. They may have worn a pula Corinthian helmets. Again,

the history of that's not great. Some people think the triari wore that maybe centurions did.

It may well have been quite individual as well. If you look at any army in the field today,

you look at pictures of soldiers in World War II. When you're in the field, you do what fits,

you do what works, and actually your officers don't mind that much. But centurions did like to stand

out. So any of them that had awards for valor and these would have existed in the Republican period,

would have had filerate, which were literally medals, Roman equivalent of medals,

worn in a leather harness on the chest, and you could hold up to nine. So in three rows of three,

and they were frequently of silver or gold, but they could even be ceramic or glass. I've seen

glass ones in museums in Germany, frequently with images like the Medusa or something like that,

or a god, and these would have advertised the centurions bravery and his prominence to the enemy.

He would have carried a sword and during the Republican period that we're talking about,

the fighting sword of the legionary was the Gladys hispaniensis or the Spanish sword,

which was 25 centimeters or 10 inches longer than the sword most people think of as Roman

legaries using, called the Spanish sword because it was probably nicked from Spanish tribesmen

who'd been fighting for the Carthaginians in the First Punic War, and an immensely successful

weapon, not just at thrusting or stabbing, but also for slashing. There's a quote from

just after the Second Punic War when the Romans invaded Macedon about the Macedonian flangists

being so scared of the Gladys hispaniensis that it could remove arms, legs, and heads with ease.

I love to try and prove theories. I didn't go and attack someone with a sword, but I'm a vet,

so I know what a blade does to flesh, and I started to thread on now defunct sadly Roman army talk

forum, which used to be a website, it's now just on Facebook, and I started to thread about

as anyone ever seen someone killed with a blade in off topic, and I went dead for six months,

and I loved giving telling this in schools because the students' eyes are out on sticks.

The thread went dead for six months or so, and then I got a reply, it'd been answered. I mean,

I was straight on the computer. Anyway, there was an old American guy, now old compared to me,

because he was in Vietnam, he was in the Vietnam War in the 60s, and back then when you were

out in the jungle, the US army apparently, certainly maybe this was early days, they didn't

supply the soldiers with machetes, so they used to buy their own in the local towns, and they just

have them hanging on their belts, and they'd come in from close to an open country, they'd

been in contact with the vet, they were all mackered, they were lying around in the jungle clearing,

literally just zonked, and one of his buddies went nuts, didn't know a new it, the guy just got up,

took out his machete, walked across the clearing, and chopped one of the heads of their other

buddies off, and he said it was one chop of a cheap Chinese steel machete, casually swung,

and the guy's head just jumped off his shoulders, so his answer was 100% trained legionaries

who would come straight from Zama to Macedonia, they would have been chopping their heads off,

so to me that made the source much more likely to be true, because oftentimes I've noticed as

a non-academic, I don't know whether you experienced this, sometimes academics will say,

oh well the Romans couldn't have done that or the Egyptians couldn't have done that, it's way too

difficult, and then they find that they did, a good example is Alicia, people used to say that

there's no way Julius Caesar built a double circumvallation, he was attacking Alicia, I built a

wall around it, then the 200,000 goals came to attack him, so he didn't run away, built another

wall sandwiching himself in the middle, and still won the battle, and everybody said he couldn't

do it, and then they found it in the ground, so yeah, it went off topic there, but it was fun,

I'm very happy to feed you this once in a while, Ben, and it's also great because yes,

the classic idea is the kind of the stabbing, so it isn't it, I'll never, and that's realistically

probably what it was, when I'm giving the talks that I do, I draw the sword, and I hold up the blade,

and I say, you only need to stick about this much of this into somebody, and he's done,

15 centimeters. Yeah, 16, you know, what we see in films is totally skewed and totally

inaccurate, what we think humans are capable of, I know a thoracic surgeon, and you know, if someone

gets stabbed today in the abdomen, they're down and bleeding out, and they're not doing anything

else, unless they're superhuman, so you do expose yourself if you hack with a sword, it is far

more efficient just to stab somebody and keep yourself behind the shield, so they probably did

that most of the time, but they could hack when they needed to.

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And I know it's a bit of a generalisation, but if we imagine that the Centurions are usually

the figures with the more battle-hardened experience, and if they're using those same weapons as

the Legionaries, they're probably even more capable of using them in the front ranks. Imagine

one of Julia Caesar's Centurion standing out with the same equipment, but something showing them,

making them distinct from the rest, to show their rank, and yeah, being quite a sight for an

enemy, you know, to come up against. But shall we turn to the classic image of the Centurion today

when they're wearing helmets like this? So that's an Imperial Gallic. That is the standard helmet of

the Roman Legionary in the first and second centuries AD. So can you describe the features of it?

Yeah, sure. It's got brows here. Basically look like eyebrows. It's got a guard to protect the

forehead from a blow from a weapon there. You commonly hear this being referred to in all kinds

of four as being something that was brought in to protect against the Dacian Falks, which is a

sive-like brutal weapon from the Dacian tribes in Eastern Europe, which was wielded two-handed and

would split one of these, no problem. But it's not based on very much evidence. So it may have been

brought in for that, but possibly not. But it's certainly to strengthen the helmet. I was very

worried if you touch this, it will fall down here. So it's got various circular gilded discs. It's

got a really prominent earpiece for your ear. So you can hear what the Centurion is saying. It's got

a mount here for the crest. So even if it's an ordinary soldier who was wearing it, he could mount

a crest, which they potentially did on parade and so on. Yes, look at that. And it's got a loop on

the back of the neck guard. The neck guard's really big. It's about four inches, about 12 centimeters

in depth. And that's to protect you from blows from behind. And it's got a loop for a strap for

wearing it around your neck because they're really heavy. They're about two kilos, four and a half

pounds. So they're actually quite uncomfortable to wear when you're marching. And there are loads

of images, most famous of which is Trajan's column shows the legion he's marching along with their

helmets hanging around their necks. It's actually quite comfortable place. And when you're doing

agents, well, you can put your modern water bottle in there so that people don't see it. And

your mobile phone. The feathered crest is obviously for the Centurion. As I mentioned earlier,

we actually haven't got a huge number of images of Centurions wearing them, probably only a handful.

And we've got other images of them wearing front to back crests or even just top nut crests,

but they did wear these. And they we don't know whether they were painted the feathers,

but they quite likely were. And that would have been quite potentially cohort by cohort,

maybe even century by century, but that would have been probably too complicated. But there may

have been identifying cohort one to ten. Right. So distinctive beams on the distinctive

numbers. For sure. For sure. The Romans lived life in vivid technicality. When you go to Pompeii,

you go to a Roman museum and you see bare pieces of stone and so on. We think of the Romans

black and white, but modern science using fractured light and other techniques and pieces of wall

and fresco that have been buried underground, sometimes where there's no oxygen,

traces of paint can be found on those statues and the steels, for example. And so what has

happened in the last 15 to 20 years, which is really exciting is you get accurate reconstruction

painted images of things like bass or Roman soldiers or emperors and so on. So yeah, it's

highly likely. We know from the Noticia Dignata from the 4th century AD, which was the only

imagery of Roman shields that we've got with different shield, your army units. Beautiful source.

Yeah, beautiful source, but it's 400 years too late. But you can infer from that that

legions might have had different emblems and therefore some might centurions and they were very

brave men, but there were peacocks too. They were there to be seen. And just like any officer in

their dress uniform, they would have wanted to look good. And if these were painted in various

whatever patterns, red and white, I mean, you see a lot of the reenactors now, particularly

a Caesar, I can't pronounce the surname, sorry, Caesar Franski, I think it is from Legion 21

rap acts. He's kind of led the way in the world on the research of these. And if you see images

of him, I mean, he looks, he looks amazing. It's got blue and white feathers and red and white.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's interesting once again, the common idea is that they will have their red

plumes and like red is the big color of. Yeah, again, again, you know, that's open to conjecture.

We have paintings from Pompeii with soldiers in red. We know that generals were red cloaks and

generals were red boots and they had a red sash. But we also know Roman legaries were blue,

maybe Marines from in the Navy did. We also know that ochre was a very common color,

but certainly blues or reds or who knows? Anyone that tells you that they know this centurion

of that Legion had this color, they're lying. The thing is you find them out there.

Just describing as well to our audience who are listening who aren't looking at it, but I'll also

make sure that we get some lovely pictures of this stunning helmet that you've brought in for

us today, Ben. I mean, the feathers, they're black and white feathers that you've chosen for

this particular helmet. And are they glued in to the top? I know, as you saw, I said the studio,

they're not yet. So this mount was made from especially. I know so many reenactors now,

when I need something, I don't go and look for it. I just asked my reenactors. Somebody made

this for me and they sent it to me in pieces because you can't send that on the post or the feathers

that broken. So I think the feathers, they have to be glued in because they're forever falling out

and that wouldn't look good if I was about to go and parade or something. And is it also very

much conjecture around types of feathers they would have used? Yes, because we don't have any

surviving examples. I believe the only surviving example of a possible centurion's crest

is one in a museum on Hadrian's wall, which is horse hair. Otherwise, haven't survived.

But horse hair, I guess you can understand the logic behind that, especially with all the

horse barracks and the stables along Hadrian's wall. Indeed, but again, experimental archaeology,

when you're walking Hadrian's wall and you're wearing one of them in it rains, the horse hair

falls down like this and you look like you've got a central parting and they do not look good.

Where is that wouldn't happen with feathers? I love experimental archaeology. I've learned,

I've done Hadrian's wall twice in full Roman gear and the amount I learned is off the scale

with just reference to the kit and what it feels like and so on. Always being the drum for

experimental archaeology and all this stuff because they're the forefront of learning more about,

especially when we're talking about now, the kit of a Roman centurion. And if we go down the body

from the head, let's say in the Imperial period, you've got this stunning helmet. Further down,

can we imagine them wearing similar types of armor to the everyday legionary, the classic banded

iron armor, the segmentarter band? No, no, interestingly, they didn't wear that. It's called

the loraka segmentarter. It sounds Latin. It's a modern name. We don't know what the Romans

call it. They called male the loraka hamata. And interestingly, when the soldiers gradually

moved over to the plated armor, the segmentarter, the centurions did not. So from the early

printupate, the centurions looked different in uniform, not just when they were in their helmet.

So male shirt is actually very effective protection against weapons. You wear a padded tunic

underneath it, not just straight over the, the ordinary tunic. And together, they're like a stab

proof vest. If you have someone who's very powerful and they ram a spear into it, they might

break through, especially if it's not complete ring male, but it's actually still very, very

effective armor. And then sometimes it had doubling over the shoulders as well, but again,

that would have not necessarily been all the time. Then they would have worn, so they would have

had a very simple tunic. They would have had a focale or a neck neck cracheef. That is because

the, the open necks of Roman tunics are really wide. So your straps rub on your bare skin. I know

this again from its presentation. If you don't have a neck cracheef. And then, but then where they're

their tunic, padded tunic, male shirt, which goes down to just basically below groin level. And

then a metal belt. And the metal belt was basically the same as the soldiers, but often more or

eight. And this was a very distinctive feature of a Roman soldier. And so if you see someone in a

motorway service station in this country or wherever you live in the world, and they're in

combats and boots and they've just got out of a Jeep, you know, they're in the army. If you saw

a man in off dress, if you like, in the street, in the town, in anywhere in the empire, with it

wearing a metal belt, with its jingly groin guard that goes jingle, jingle, jingle, you heard that

noise. We have a Roman poem of a man standing in a shop, hearing that noise in the street.

And knowing a soldier is walking by. It wasn't a distinguishing that this is a centurion. No,

this is just a soldier. But again, Roman soldiers likes to individualize their kit. And they would

sometimes actually use precious metals, say in the, in the scabbard of their sword. So a centurion

may have had a really expensive sword scabbard and may have had a much more expensive, he may have

had silver or whatever in his belt and so on. And he then would potentially want to chest harness

with those filet array that I mentioned, the awards for bravery. And he would have had a pugio

or a dagger. He wore his sword on the, on the left or on the right, depending on the time, but often

on the left, which is different to the soldiers, soldiers, soldiers wore it on the right and drew

with the right, which was possibly because that's quicker to get out from behind your shield,

which is rather bigger, rather than drawing it across your body. But for whatever reason, whether

that was to do with the rank, we don't know, but centurions wore there as on a bulldrick, which is

a leather strap from the shoulder to the hip, not attached to the belt, like the soldiers did.

And then they would have had calligay studded sandals or potentially boots, officers tended to

wear boots. And I mean, if you're in a muddy country like Britain, you're going to wear boots.

But they still have the hub nails on underneath. It would still have the hub nails as well.

We've got examples of the hub nails being sharpened as well. So imagine that in muddy ground,

or on someone's head in the middle of a battle, a quick segue into the laces of Roman boots and

sandals. This would have applied to centurions as well. I only found this out recently. Fortunately,

never put it as a mistake in my books, because it just didn't happen. But all Roman sandals that have

been found with or boots that have been found with laces, they were laced at the back.

Okay. Because the laces are really long. When they're undone, they come up to your knee. And

that's possibly in case I reckon the leather parts. And you've then got enough to make,

you know, you don't have to replace it. But when they're new, before they've parted, they come

up to your knee. So you loop them around the bottom of your leg, loads of times, and then you lace

them at the back. Because when you see, you don't stand on one end in a battle. Yeah.

Oh gosh. Funny little things like the little details like that. So when I'm, again, when I'm

doing a talk, I say people, what do you think of my, and no one ever guesses it. But we haven't

come yet to the, the vine stick, which I knew you would. Ben, well, I was going to say I've two

other bits of equipment, which have become so linked to centurions today that want to talk about.

You've preempted the vine stick, but I'm going to save that for the last one. Okay. Because the

other one that has become big, and we talked about this before, it's the whistle. Ben, the whistle.

Yes. This is because of this TV series. Rome HBO Rome. Yes. There's that famous scene

right at the beginning where one of the centurions is using a whistle in battle. Is there any evidence

that centurions could well have carried whistles in battle? No. Okay. Moving on. I have a Roman whistle.

She and I didn't bring it with me. I have a Roman whistle. The original found in the

legiary fortress, Reagan's Berg in Austria, which has a little lead square on the end for scratching

your name on it. So it doesn't get lost. So it was found in a military context. But there is no

documentary evidence at all for whistles. They commanded by the voice at close quarters and by

trumpets and bugles at distance. And each century had musicians and each each legion had

musicians as well. So there's no evidence. It looks great, but we can't prove it. And so one of the

things that I'm constantly saying to my readers or people I'm talking to is just because we wanted to

have existed and it makes common sense that it might have existed. It doesn't mean it did exist.

You've got to have some evidence or else it's just a theory. And so often today, in whatever

period we're talking about, people want something to be true. And if enough people talk about it,

it almost becomes a fact. But we've got no evidence. So it's possible. But it's also possible

that it loads of other things. Don't completely kick it out the water. But yes, exactly. But

what we can talk about a bit better is the vine stick. And so describe the vine stick to us.

So the vine stick, it's basically a piece of the trunk of a vine plant, which grows grapes.

And it was the symbol of a Roman centurion. It's generally about two feet, two and a half feet long,

thicker at one end than the other and curved and polished. So it's quite curving, if you like.

And was a symbol of office, but also used as a weapon of punishment. So slightly smaller than

the average staff, more like a baton, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But so an umbrella, thinking of

a umbrella, it's probably slightly shorter than an umbrella, but without the curved handle.

So this wasn't something that was polished and kept on the mantle pieces centurion would have

kept with him pretty much all the time, not in battle, but so in camp. And when he was training

as men, and I mean, it's still used today in that until very recently, British Army officers

had what was called a swagger stick. And that's, you know, basically a descendant of the vine stick.

So this was something that he could beat his men with whenever he felt like it. And you've got

to try and take off your modern spectacles, your modern, put away your modern values. The world

was just a totally different place when you were being trained by a centurion to be a Roman soldier.

You swore your oath of allegiance to the emperor, your physical characteristics were recorded,

because when our cameras, your scars and so on, you signed X for your name, because you probably

couldn't write for to sign up anywhere between 16 and 25 years. And then you were handed over to

your centurion. And he was like, your mom, your dad, your boss at work, the biggest night club

bouncer you've ever seen, and God almighty rolled into one. When he said run, you said yes, sir.

When he said jump, you said how high, sir. And when he said charge those men and kill them,

you said yes, sir. And you didn't, if you didn't, he beat you with his vine stick. When he was

training you, this was the school of hard knocks, you know, if you got injured, you would be kicked

to your feet again. And if you said you needed to go to see the surgeon, you better not be shaming

because I will literally beat you unconscious. We know of at least four offenses that this

centurion could execute as men for. But before he got to that, he would, he would encourage his

men with his stick, whether it was just tapping them on the helmet or banging them on the shoulders

or literally beating them. And the most extreme example of that, which I'm sure you're, you know,

the guy's nickname in Latin was Kato Alteram. So this is a German centurion in Germany,

I should say, in the first century AD, who was so brutal that his nickname was Kato Alteram,

which means bring me another. In other words, he was so fond of breaking his stick on men's

backs, he would click his fingers and say to get Kato Alteram and his men would just get him

another. So nobody would stop him beating a man unconscious. And as I mentioned, four

offenses that we know of at least that he could execute a man for and they were falling asleep on

centric duty, running away from the enemy in battle, stealing from a comrade or taking your

sword off while digging a ditch, which means that you can't fight immediately if the enemy attacks.

Because that one feels a bit less, I don't want to say important, but compared to the three

previous that you mentioned, it feels a bit more like yes, no, but so, so let me put it into a

situation, Roman Legion on the march enemy territory, they come to the end of the day and again,

your listeners and viewers will know they dug out a camp every day. So half the Legion acts as a

screen, half the Legion digs, the guys that are digging say there's a sudden attack that broke

through the screen, they've got to be ready to fight. So it was just a few meters away. So the

example we have, again, these are that when we go to reference you at the beginning about the

things we know, they're only often just little vignettes that we have, but there is a

scene that is described from the second century BC, which is a Roman Legion digging out a camp

and the legged or one of his tribunes is riding along the ditch on his horse and he comes across a

sword lying on the side of the ditch and he says, who's is this sword and this unfortunate soldier

puts his hand up and he's taken out and executed on the spot. Yeah, wow. So and the the form of death

was not usually like that for the centurion. It was the first duarium, which is if it's a

contuberanium of men and I've just had a chat with an academic about this, the contuberanium

wouldn't have served on the line together. There wouldn't have been an centriotry together.

Okay, so we don't have time for that, but let's say it's these eight guys who were on

centriotry together and one fell asleep while you seven are going to beat him to death,

which is in front of the rest of the century. Hang on a sec, I'm in a really bad mood because

I was up all night on the wall checking up when you guys beat him to death with your fists

because that takes longer. I was going to ask, like, with the centurions, were they always the ones

who would deliver out the punishment? It sounds like they're sometimes they would give it actually

to the poor victims' mates. Yes, they did with it from those form of punishments we do, but

I have no doubt. I mean, we're talking about a world where infant mortality was potentially 50%

by the age of infant and child mortality, 50% by the age of five. We're talking about

people being used to killing their own chickens, to seeing animals slaughter outside temples,

to seeing crucifixes on the side of the road, to going to gladiator fights. The life was really brutal

and when you were a soldier, you, you know, that you basically would get very rough

just as there would be nobody would stop the centurion. So I have no hesitation in saying,

if a centurion felt that a soldier had done something severe enough and they executed them on

the spot, I don't think many senior officers would have done very much about it. That was the

question I was going to ask. Do you feel then that centurions had a lot of freedom over their

particular unit, over their particular soldiers? And there's not like they could petition the

legate higher up if they felt that they were, it was like undeserved. No, I don't think so at all.

I don't think so at all. The centurion's interesting here we didn't mention it, but it's worth

mentioning here were ranked one to 60. So in other words, the sixth centurion of the 10th cohort

was the lowest ranked. It's a hierarchy. It's a hierarchy. Within each cohort, and it goes all

the up in the first centurions, sorry, the centurions of the first cohort were the most senior.

They were known as the premier denays. They were more senior than anybody in the legion. But

even if you complain to a more senior centurion, again, unless this centurion had done something

really unjust, I don't think there would have been any come back at all. They were judged

during execution or quite likely, in my opinion.

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Also, keep on the hierarchy business all more, because centurions, you also have them commanding

the auxiliary units, so the non-Roman citizen units. Did that hierarchy extend to them as well?

If you were a Roman centurion commanding legionaries, would you see yourself as superior to a centurion

commanding if we've got a hundred percent? Generally, the only Roman officers in auxiliary

cohorts were the men commanding the cohort. The centurions would have been auxiliary

centurions, and they were very definite. They were very definitely inferior. Romans were

really quite racist, and that's the reason auxiliary's man, Hadrian's Wall, not real legionaries,

because you know, the less valuable soldiers, you put them nearer the danger, as it were.

So not to say there wouldn't have been a working relationship, and many of them might have been

friends if they were some campaign together, but there was a definite social difference between

auxiliaries and citizen legionaries. But you can imagine, can't you, the soldiers who are under

the command of that particular centurion who are being taught, you know, and making sure you avoid

those horrific punishments. Can you also imagine that individual soldiers would have gained more

potentially loyalty to the centurion that they were serving than actually the person right at

the top of the legion? Yes, yes. I mean, you can think of someone like Julius Caesar who led an

army for seven years in Gaul, and they won, and they won, and they won, and he gave them amazing

rewards. I mean, after Alisa, he gave every legionary in his army a slave. They took 50,000 slaves.

Here you go, guys, but certainly this centurion would have been the man to whom you owed your most,

most of your loyalty, because he didn't just beat you and train you. You know, he quite put, again,

this is just common sense. I can't prove it, but it is, I mean, from what we know, we know of

centurions referring to their men as boys, my boys, you know, like my lads. So they would, and in

desperate situations like Gogovia where Julius Caesar lost 300 legionaries or 700 legionaries,

but 46 centurions. This is the battle that he loses. Yeah, the one that no one talks about in

Astros. Yeah, so, but that massively high percentage of centurions and very little else has known

about the battle, but that tells you they were leading from the front. And so you just talked

any serving members of military today have been in combat. You know, you have to support your mates,

and if your officer is putting himself in danger to help you, you feel duty bound to do the same,

and if you survived, he's going to buy you a round of drinks. He's maybe going to put you

up for an award for Valor, whether that's the first man over the wall. These are Roman awards,

or whether it's saving the life of the fellow citizen, things like that, or a gold bracelet,

or something like that, or a silver bracelet. So, and he could quite possibly have been involved in

the, you know, when they were getting their pay, which is three times a year there to, I don't know,

but they would have loved and feared their centurions. And there were bad ones, but there were

probably some really amazing ones as well. Very charismatic leaders. And so that's how they're

expected to act on the battlefield. Is it there in the front ranks? They're leading their men.

As also you said earlier, they're peacocking at the same time. They are standing out. They are

showing like Alexander the Great's officers, you know, they are with the, they are at the front

ranks and risking in the lives of the men who they've tortured over well, Alexander famously used

to lead his own charges. I mean, he was nuts and leaders on cavalry charges and and survive.

Just crazy. But did centurions also have the freedom to command their particular kind of

their centuries in battle? Maybe they've presumably they've received their main orders from HQ

as what they're supposed to do. But if they see, as you know, all those best plans don't

often go to plan in the heat of battle, if they could see that the tide was turning or that

a new opportunity was rising, did the centurions also have the freedom in battle to make adjustments?

Possibly. I can think of an example of an adjustment being made in a Roman battle, but it was a

more senior officer than than a centurion during the battle of Kainas Kefilet, which was when the

Macedonian failings came up against the Roman legions, which were far more maneuverable than the

failings. Just to try and quickly paraphrase it, the failings was coming down a hillside and it wasn't

the two halves of it were not, I didn't have a common front rank. There was one was slightly

in front of the other. Yeah, I think like a big wall of spears, but part of that wall of spears

is not in the same position. And there were Roman soldiers advancing to meet the part of the

failings that was behind the other part. And when they were doing so, one of the senior officers,

I think he might have been a tribune noticed that the flank of the part of the failings that he

wasn't attacking, which he was now alongside, didn't have light infantry protecting its side,

which it needed. And they were therefore completely exposed. And he turned his manables only maybe

a thousand or two thousand men and they smashed into the side of the Macedonian failings and won the

battle. So centurions may have done that, but I've never read of an example. Again, I haven't read

all Roman histories, but I've read a lot. And pretty much every book about the Roman army has been

written in the last 30 or 40 years. And I can't think of an exact example. I can think of individual

examples of centurions, you know, leading from the front. So for example, the battle at Budica

was defeated at, which may have been near St. Olben's north of London. A very outnumbered Roman army,

the general picked the terrain with a hill at his back, woods at each side, open ground in front.

British tribesmen thought we're just going to slaughter them. And the Roman general had his men

form up in what the Romans called the saw, which may have been a multiple repetition of the kineas,

which we think was a wedge. In other words, a triangle like this pointing forward. So a century

forming a triangle with the centurion, he was the one right at the front of the wedge. So they

formed a saw. And that meant there were centurions at the front of every triangle. So you imagine how

dangerous that is with 50,000. I mean, the sources say 200,000. So I always say, look, divided by

four, divided by five. There were only 20,000 Roman soldiers though. So I say 40,000 British

tribesmen against 20,000 Roman soldiers. You think the British are going to win, but they came

up against the centurions. Obviously first and the rest of the legaries so tightly that the sources

tell us that they couldn't use their weapons. The British tribesmen couldn't use their

spears and the Romans just slaughtered them like fish in a baroque. But the death, we don't have the

deaths at the numbers of centurions, but it was probably higher than normal there, just because of that.

Leading your men, then that is literally leading from the front of this point of a wedge.

Terrifying. So much. Yeah, especially for us in the 21st century. And I'm also glad you mentioned

sign a cephaly there because that was the example I was thinking of in my head. I didn't realize

it wasn't a centurion. It was actually someone higher up. Yeah, it was someone watching you. I think

it was a Tribune. Okay. So outside of fighting, if they're not in an open

war zone, if they're not on campaign, let's say they're in a more peaceful part of the empire,

maybe even Hadrian's wall, but at a time where there aren't all these raids going across the wall

and nothing like that. Do we know much about how an everyday life of a centurion, how it would

have changed if they weren't in an active war zone? Yeah, we do. We've got some nice little snippets

from actually Egypt. So often in remote areas of the empire, like Egypt could be, you had centurions

who would have been operating more or less as a sole commander, and they acted as patrols,

but also for the collection of tax. And that would have been not throughout the empire. And also as

effectively judges. So there's a wonderful piece of pottery or a piece of papyrus actually. So

the oxy rinkus massive cash, 50,000 pieces of the pottery, yeah, the papyrian and pieces of pottery,

I think there are some as well. Astrakis? Astrakis, yeah. From Egypt, there are all these different

examples we've got that tell us things. And one of them interesting ones, which I always,

it's a little bit amusing, because we know so little about ancient women, because generally they

weren't taught to read and write. We know they were because of the famous images from Pompeii

of the woman with the stylus in front of her face and so on. But this one example of a centurion

is where a man's wife has run away to a town 20 or 30 miles away and has set up home with another

bloke. And he's written to the local centurion, who's presumably acting like the local justice,

asking for help to get his wife back. And we don't know anymore. Now clearly, probably nothing was

done, but it just, there's an example of a centurion as a, as a justice, if you like. And also an

example of ancient women might not have known how to read and write, but they did what they want to.

But yeah, a great example of how a centurion's duties could change between war and peace.

Yeah. And so being a quarter master and making sure that there were enough supplies for their

for their century, this would have, this is something that we've got from the Vindalanda tablets.

And although junior officers would have made, maybe been doing more of it, the centurion would have

been keeping an eye on. They had enough leather for their sandals. They had enough food. They had

enough, you know, this is the management. This is the logistics. The logistics, so often

have a look to you. And what's quite interesting about some of those letters from Vindalandas,

they show that in peacetime you can have a unit, there was one cohort, I think, the Tungrians,

and they were down to less than half strength with numbers of men that were all from different

vacillations or a sick or, you know, just not where they were supposed to be. And I guess overseeing

overseeing the pay for their men, you know, that must be very, very important to this.

Well, again, one of the junior officers that tended to the Tesserarius was in charge of the money,

but the centurion would have been in charge of that. And the men sometimes asked for advances

on their pay if they didn't have enough. And so they might have to get permission from that. And,

you know, there was, you would have been a sort of like a godlike figure. If the centurion says

you can have an advance, you can have an advance. If he says you can't, you can't, you know,

that kind of, he recommends you for a medal. If he noticed your bravery in bands or something like

that, so that's very good. Because what I was going to say was they weren't always promoted

from the ranks. There were three routes to becoming a centurion, one of which was really quite rare.

They were generally men who'd risen from the ranks. And if you joined the Legion at, say, 18,

approximately, you could have been younger and lied. And who's going to check? And I saw

a gravestone in France of a 15 year old boy died in World War One. So, you know, 2000 years ago.

So you joined the army at 18. If you did well and were, you know,

beautiful and so on, you could become an immunist as in the word immunization. And that meant you

didn't have to do certain nasty things like digging ditches and digging the trains. And if you

continued to impress, then you might be promoted through the ranks of Junior Officer, which were

Tesserarius, i.e. the man who has the Tesserat, which is the piece of pottery in the, sometimes,

which had the orders for the password and so on for the night. And then you had the Signifer,

who carried the standard or the Signum, and you had the optios, the second and command,

and then you had centurion. And if you worked away through those, you know, and not everybody did,

definitely everybody didn't, because we have examples of an optio and after his name,

it's written with as a candidate for the centurion, which means he was preferred to be

advanced to become a centurion. So you might just be a junior officer all your life. But

if you were one of those who did, you could become a centurion. It's thought by your early 30s.

So if you're a centurion six in cohort 10, you then in theory had to climb up the ranks. But

you didn't have to go through 60 promotions. You could, you could be leapfrogged.

But again, that would take years. You were usually secondited to another legion when you were

promoted as a centurion or moved as a centurion or fencing up the centurion ranks. Right. So

you wouldn't be commanding your, you previously served. You could be, we have examples from

tombstones where they did within a legion, but, but it was normal not to. And that may have been

something as common sense is from modern day, you don't want the guy who's been promoted from

the ranks telling 60. And also will they do what they're told, whereas you put him in a new unit

they don't know who he is. And then another route into the centurion rank was basically being

leapfrogged in because you were wealthy, wealthy status because daddy wants you to be a centurion.

And, you know, we've got lovely examples of that of it happening to various noble families.

So equestrians would frequently become centurions. And what must have been very frustrating for

men who were promoted from the ranks is that if you became the first spear, the primus penis,

which is the most important rank of centurion, you could be when you had that post done,

which was only a year, you then could be elevated into the equestrian level of nobility.

Yet these young guys coming in in the 30s say who were already equestrians,

they don't get that benefit. They don't get that. Yeah. Yeah. So they, what that means is that

because after after centurions retired, they were known as ex-premially,

they frequently then ended up getting jobs in urban situations, whether that was leading urban

cohorts or even as political appointees to governors and things, they could they could move

all around. And then we have great examples from tombstones, but those young equestrians who joined

as appointees would have been far. We've got evidence there are more of them who went higher

at the end than the guys from the ordinary. Wow. Yeah. So which is kind of understandable.

And then the third way, which was less common was you could move straight from the

Victorian guards. Obviously, this is during the empire. You could move straight from the

Victorian guard to become a centurion, but we haven't got as many examples of those.

So there's no equivalent of an officer training call back then. The closest thing is the equestrians,

the inexperience, but their rich backgrounds allows them to leapfrog. Yes. Yeah. A bit like,

you know, the the tribunes, that's what the tribunes were. And as I mentioned, that one example

of a legged with Julius Caesar, he had no military experience potentially, but he was suddenly

given command of a legion the day before a battle. And so what material benefits could you get if you

were a centurion? They were paid 15 times more than a legion. I love it now. That's a lot. It was

a lot. It was really was. And the primus penis was paid considerably more than that. And we have

an example of an amount paid, well, it was like a cash payment when they retired of a primus penis.

And there's been quite a bit of controversy about it because it was so big. But academics have

compared it with the level of pay that a primus penis has gotten gone. Well, actually, it wasn't

unreasonable. We're talking hundreds of thousands of sistercy as a cash payment to a primus penis

when you retired. So they were paid really, really well. And this is at this point worth mentioning

that because of all the things we've been talking about, their their leadership skills,

their bravery, the way that they welded their men into units, they stayed in the army for a very

long time. So soldiers, I mentioned 16 to 25 years. That's dependent on when we're talking about.

But say 20 years is an average, you know, you came in at 18. You could retire at 38 if you were

still alive, but centurions didn't leave after 20 years because they were climbing that that tree.

And they were also so valuable, presumably, that they didn't want them to leave, particularly because

wars frequently happened. So we've got this incredible example of again, a tombstone of a

centurion called fortune artist, which means lucky. He was lucky because he was 80 when this tombstone

was built. And he'd been in the army for 50 years. And he had served. It lists again,

any of your viewers listeners who are familiar with military tombstones, they often list

the legions that they were in. And it lists the legions he was in. Now, he may not have been in

all those legions, but he was probably in maybe an evacuation that was serving with those legions

because it's it's possibly didn't change legions that all.

So a vaccination, sorry, a vaccination is a subunit of a legion that sent from A to B to help

with something like rebellion or building a road or something. So it may have been that he was

just in a vaccination with that legion. But this guy served all over the empire literally

from Israel and Syria to Britain and Romania and North Africa. And and he was still in the army

in his 70s. He just kept climbing and just kept climbing. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't always climb.

They sometimes stayed a century and they didn't always become friends. Well, I was going to ask

are there actually any extreme cases where someone who was once a centurion could have risen and

become one of those army generals that ultimately became an emperor? I think yeah.

The Spacians grandfather was a centurion. He was a centurion. Okay. So you see the family line

and kind of rising. And we've got Maximineus Thrax in the third century AD. He's seven foot

the emperor if you believe that. Maybe was seven feet tall, but he climbed all the way up to the

top and became an emperor. Pertanacs in one nine two, the emperor, I think he was an ordinary

originally. So yeah, there was the you definitely very unlikely, but you could do it.

But there are those really interesting cases. Well, we're kind of centurion background. Ben,

I could ask so many more questions, but we're running out of time. Lastly, the legacy of the

centurion, how big an impact do you think this role that important role has had in the development

in the inspiration of army since the only opinion I feel able to give would be an opinion on

the effect on the British army because of my knowledge. I'm not obviously not British. I'm Irish,

but I have a reasonable knowledge of British military history, pretty good knowledge of some areas.

And from what I know during the period of the British Empire, it happened at the same time as

the first massive interest in ancient history happened with archaeology and texts being written

in the 1800s. In other words, and there was a definite identification by the British hierarchy.

Maybe the military as well of identifying themselves alongside the Romans who had been so successful

for so many hundreds of years with their military. So it definitely happened to some extent. But

what you've got to quickly add in is that the Roman army was different to the modern ones.

So we talked briefly about the Contaburnian, which was the 10th group of eight men. There were 10

and 10 groups in each century. They weren't a platoon. They weren't a sub platoon, which a lot of

people just got, you know, they like to break down a Roman army like a modern army. It didn't happen

like that. The difference in command was huge. You had these 60 centurions and then a massive gap

between them and above and a massive gap between them and below. But I don't know. I think just the

sort of overwhelming image would be the successful legion in battle marching forward. Nothing can stop

them. They all look amazing. They're really well trained. They're highly disciplined and they're

led by these centurions with the helmet. I think that's the biggest identifying thing. A military

historian might be able to give you more. It was a big question to ask. But Ben, this has

been absolutely great. It just goes me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back

on the show. Thanks, Tristan. Cheers.

Well there you go. There was fan favorite Dr Ben Kane returning to the show to talk all things

the Roman centurion. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And don't you worry, we're going to have

been returning to the show very soon for a follow-up episode on another awesome Roman topic,

a famous gladiator who led a revolt against Rome. That's to come in the near future.

In the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show

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That is all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

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