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Eighty Thousand Romans at the Bottom of the Hill
 

A novel of Julius Caesar's Siege of Alesia

Mediolanum, Northern Italia, 34 B.C.E.: it is eighteen years after Julius Caesar's conquest of the Gallic city of Alesia. Ronan Antonius, a Gallic survivor of the battle and Caesar’s former slave, is jumped by two men, both of whom had their hands hacked off after Caesar's victory. They blame Ronan for it because they believe he negotiated Alesia's surrender. Passersby intervene, the two handless men get hauled off to jail and Ronan is not seriously harmed. When the local magistrate consults Ronan about the attack, Ronan asks if he can tell his story to the two men so he can set them straight about his real role in the negotiations. The magistrate allows it on the condition that he too gets to hear the story.

 

Ronan once fought alongside Romans as an auxiliary archer in Iberia, and is a longtime friend of the Gallic leader Vercingetorix. He speaks Latin and has even met Caesar before. He acts as a go-between during negotiations between the two leaders. Due to a leg injury, Ronan cannot fight in a regular archer unit, so Vercingetorix asks him to teach archery basics to some boys to make them militarily useful for the coming battle. Each of the boys has a physical or mental shortcoming that limits his military capability. Undaunted, Ronan teaches them how to shoot and ponders the best way to deploy them in battle.

 

Meanwhile, there are thousands of warriors inside Alesia. At least a quarter of a million more warriors are coming but do not arrive before the Alesians run out of food. Soon no dog, cat, or mule is left in the city. There are accusations of hoarding and rumours of cannibalism. The allies’ delay is at least partially caused by Caesar, who exploits the tribes’ traditional disunity with bribes and promises to the various tribal leaders. Some allies send token forces that do not include their best men, and some barely fight at all. Unlike Vercingetorix and Ronan, they fail to see that the Romans are the greatest threat to all Gauls.

 

Ronan’s colourful special-needs archers surprise him with their courage in battle. Despite being outnumbered and surrounded, the Romans win the battle, although just barely. Ronan relays the final conditions of surrender: the Alesians will be enslaved but their lives spared if Vercingetorix personally surrenders to Caesar. 

 

Ronan also tells how he ended up in Iberia as an archer. He describes the single incident that makes Caesar remember him years later. After the battle, Ronan becomes Caesar’s slave but is treated better than most survivors. He translates for Caesar’s envoys when they contact other Gallic tribes. After Caesar’s death, Ronan is freed and thrives as a gems dealer, which makes some of his fellow Gauls suspect that he was in cahoots with the Romans all along. 
 

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VIOLENCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Suitable Cruelties is set in the era of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. The Western Mediterranean wasn't big enough for the both of them, so armed conflict was inevitable.

It was an age of everyday violence. Most judicial systems included not only gruesome executions but also legally-sanctioned punitive mutilation, such as blinding or cutting off body parts. Most such punishments were done in public. Attendance was high.

There was no notion of what we today would call war crimes. Slaughter of prisoners-of-war and civilians was routine. When an army conquered a settlement, the soldiers were often let loose to steal and rape with impunity-- this was, in fact, sometimes a promised benefit during recruitment. POWs might be enslaved, either retained by their captors or sold to slave dealers, but if it was too much trouble to arrange their sale, POWs could be killed without legal repercussions for the killers.

Slavery was practiced by all societies and there were virtually no objections to its legality anywhere. In some cases, slaves could rise in the households or businesses of their masters and end up free and financially comfortable--this was true of the Roman Emperor Claudius's freedman Narcissus--but this was by no means typical. Much depended on the ethics and whims of the slaves' masters. There were no legal requirements for masters to treat slaves with kindness, and few restrictions on whatever cruelties the masters considered suitable. There are also many documented instances of free persons kidnapped and sold to slavers. The enslaved became so through sheer wrong-place-wrong-time bad luck.

This is the world into which Marcus Torquatus Cincinnatus is thrust. While he eventually becomes hardened to the violence he sees, he never completely stops being affected by it and he remains shocked about the savagery of his captors--although to be fair, the Romans were also not particularly kind to slaves or POWs. The latter were often forced to fight each other to the death as the Romans wagered on the outcomes. This was a post-battle religious ritual that eventually evolved into gladiatorial combat.

The sacrifice of animals and the outpouring of their blood on a public altar were common rituals before community events or to elicit the will of the gods. In other words, people saw blood and death often and were less affected by it than we would be today. This helps explain why Marcus is cruel to animals when the need arises, but even then is bothered by it.

 

It is tempting to conclude from all this gore that humans are horrible. Yet if you look at this another way, it infers the opposite: yes, people did terrible things to others, but we have evolved. Executions, state-sanctioned mutilation and enslavement still occur, but most societies have outlawed them. When they do happen, they draw public outcry. Suitable Cruelties, therefore, contains an implicit message of hope. We are still far from perfect but we're actually getting better. Just give us another couple of millennia and we'll learn to be kind to everyone.

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