Nero's Killing Machine

Stephen Dando-Collins

Description

The 14th Gemina Martia Victrix Legion was the most celebrated unit of the early Roman Empire–a force that had been wiped out under Julius Caesar, reformed, and almost wiped out again. After participating in the a.d. 43 invasion of Britain, the 14th Legion achieved its greatest glory when it put down the famous rebellion of the Britons under Boudicca. Numbering less than 10,000 men, the disciplined Roman killing machine defeated 230,000 rampaging rebels, slaughtering 80,000 with only 400 Roman losses–an accomplishment that led the emperor Nero to honor the legion with the title "Conqueror of Britain." In this gripping book, second in the author’s definitive histories of the legions of ancient Rome, Stephen Dando-Collins brings the 14th Legion to life, offering military history aficionados a unique soldier’s-eye view of their tactics, campaigns, and battles.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Legio X
• Stephen Dando-Collins
• Roman army
• Julius Caesar
• Boudica
• Iulius Caesar
• Rome
• Ancient
• History
• Nero

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 25 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118040218
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
ATLAS
Acknowledgments
AUTHOR’S NOTE
 
I - FACING THE BRITISH WARRIOR QUEEN
II - WIPED OUT
III - RESCUE ON THE SAMBRE
IV - CICERO’S BLUNDER
V - THE UPRISING
VI - THE RULES OF PLUNDER
VII - THE HILL AT LÉRIDA
VIII - SPITTING IN SCIPIO’S EYE
IX - LEFT BEHIND
X - ANTONY AND THE ASSASSINS
XI - SEXTUS, SEA BATTLES, AND SUICIDES
XII - PAIN IN SPAIN, GLORY IN GERMANY
XIII - BLOOD AND GUTS IN PANNONIA
XIV - THE VARUS DISASTER
XV - MUTINY ON THE RHINE
XVI - GOING AFTER HERMANN THE GERMAN
XVII - SHOWDOWN IN GERMANY
XVIII - WRECKED
XIX - CLAUDIUS’S INVADERS
XX - CATCHING KING CARATACUS
XXI - BOUDICCA THE TERRORIST
XXII - LAST STAND ON WATLING STREET
XXIII - THE YEAR OF THE FOUR EMPERORS
XXIV - BLOODY BEDRIACUM
XXV - STORM ON THE RHINE
XXVI - THE GEMINA’S REVENGE
XXVII - GOOD-BYE AND APPLAUD US
 
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
APPENDIX D
GLOSSARY
INDEX

Copyright © 2005 by Stephen Dando-Collins. All rights reserved
Maps © 2005 by D. L. McElhannon.
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
 
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone].
 
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
 
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].
 
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com .
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data:
 
Dando-Collins, Stephen, date.
Nero’s killing machine: the true story of Rome’s remarkable Fourteenth Legion / Stephen Dando-Collins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-67501-6 (cloth)
1. Rome. Legion XIV Gemina Martia Victrix—History. I. Title.
U35.D3724 2004
355′.00937—dc22
 
2004001728
 

 
ATLAS

1. Britain and Gaul, 58-50 B.C.
2. The Civil Wars, Europe and North Africa, 49-43 B.C.
3. The Eastern Mediterranean, 42-30 B.C.
4. Britain, Gaul, and Germany, 25 B.C.-A.D. 71
5. The Roman West, A.D. 66-395
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the immense help provided over many years by countless staff at libraries, museums, and historic sites throughout the world. To them all, my heartfelt thanks. Neither they nor I knew at the time what my labor of love would develop into. My thanks, too, to those who have read my research material as it blossomed into manuscript form and made invaluable suggestions.
I wish to record my gratitude to several people in particular. First, to T. R. Fehrenbach, for his support of this project when it was taking shape and for his generous words about the first book in the series. Thanks, too, to Stephen S. Power, senior editor with John Wiley & Sons, for his continued enthusiasm, support, and guidance and senior production editor John Simko. Then there is the wise one, Richard Curtis, my champion of a New York literary agent, who has gone into battle for me time and again.
And my remarkable wife, Louise, my muse, my shield, my countess. We are now into our third decade together, and never once in all this time has her faith in me, my writing, or my aspirations slipped. She has guided, goaded, and guarded me all through this time, and never let me lose sight of the goal. As Seneca said of his wife, Paulina, “Can anything be sweeter than to find that you are so dear to your wife that this makes you dearer to yourself?”
AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is the second book in this series of histories of legions of ancient Rome, the result of thirty-two years of research and writing. Prior to the 2002 publication of the first book in the series, Caesar’s Legion, the story of the 10th Legion, never before had a comprehensive history of an individual Roman legion been published. In the process of those decades of detective work it was possible to identify the Augustan and post-Augustan legions raised between 84 B.C. and A.D. 231 and to compile detailed histories of many of them.
The works of numerous classical writers who documented the wars, campaigns, battles, skirmishes, and most importantly the men of the legions of Rome have come down to us. Authors such as Julius Caesar, Appian, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, Polybius, Cassius Dio, Josephus, Cicero, Pliny the Younger, Seneca, Livy, Arrian. Without their labors this book would not have been possible.
During the research for this series, light was shed for the first time on a number of issues relating to the legions, the most important of which was the reenlistment factor. The legions of Rome were recruited en masse, and the survivors discharged en masse at the end of their enlistment—originally after sixteen years, later, after twenty. Only on exceptional occasions, such as one described in this book, were replacements supplied to a legion before its new enlistment was due, to make up for battle casualties. By using the reenlistment factor it was possible to determine the exact years in which every legion and the Praetorian Guard underwent their discharges and reenlistments. This helps explain why particular units were crushed in this battle or that. In some, they were raw recruits; in others, they were weary men about to go into retirement after twenty years in uniform.
All speeches and conversations in this book are taken from dialogue and narrative in classical texts, and are faithful to those original sources. The exchanges at the officers’ conference at Atuatuca in 54 B.C., for example, are as Caesar recorded them in his memoirs. Likewise, the prebattle speeches of Boudicca, General Paulinus, Civilis, and General Cerialis are just as Roman historians Tacitus and Dio wrote them.
For the sake of continuity, the Roman calendar—which in Republican times varied by some two months from our own—is used throughout this work. Place names are generally first referred to in their original form and thereafter by modern name, where known, to permit readers to readily identify locations involved. Personal names familiar to modern readers have been used instead of those technically correct—Mark Antony instead of Marcus Antonius, Julius Caesar for Gaius Caesar, Octavian for Caesar Octavianus, Caligula for Gaius, Pilate for Pilatus, Vespasian for Vespasianus, etc.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was fashionable for some authors to refer to legions as regiments, cohorts as battalions, maniples as companies, centurions as captains, tribunes as colonels, and legates as generals. In this work, Roman military terms such as legion, cohort, maniple, and centurion have been retained, as it’s felt they will be familiar to most readers and convey more of a flavor of the time. Because of a lack of popular familiarity with the term “legate,” “general” and/or “brigadier general” are used here. “Colonel” and “tribune” are both used, to give a sense of relative status. Likewise, so that readers can relate in comparison to today’s military, when referred to in the military sense “praetors” are given as “major generals” and “consuls” as “lieutenant generals.” In this way, reference to a lieutenant general, for example, will immediately tell the reader that the figure concerned was a consul. I am aware this is akin to having a foot in two camps and may not please purists, but my aim is to make these books broadly accessible.
Enough material exists, from sources classical and modern—detailed in the appendices of this work—to write a number of books on the more interesting of Rome’s legions, and while growing armies of readers around the world, many of them new to Roman history, continue to enjoy these insights into the way the men of the legions lived and died, I shall continue to put together the legions’ stories.
This is the story of the men of the 14th Legion, later called the 14th Gemina Martia Victrix Legion. For more than a century its legionaries bore the shame of a terrible baptism of fire, until the legion became Nero’s killing machine and earned itself fame for a deed that would never be surpassed. These are the men who made Rome great. One or two extraordinary men, and many more ordinary men who often did extraordinary things. I hope that via these pages, you come to know them.
I

FACING THE BRITISH WARRIOR QUEEN
T