The Roman Centurion

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Door breaks cold over the Rhine frontier. Misturizes from the river as hundreds of Roman soldiers wake in their turf wood camp. Focus. Top centurion of the elite first cohort, gears up after 20 years of service. His curved chest armour shines with metal discs from battles one.

Leggards protect his shins and he grips a vine star 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 of Optiode at his side.

“And day they have a grueling 20 mile march with full gear followed by ditch digging until”

dark and punishments for any soldier he thought was slacking. 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 Kane, 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 too much the whole Roman period in each legion”

and they were the man 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 were linchpin to the whole system.

Definitely. So we had to be able to make decisions in the moment and in extreme situations would lay down in his life if he had to. They were disciplinarians, quite extreme at times as well, but the roles wouldn't be 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 that Roman history will indeed all ancient history. Well, we can explore the stories and then evaluate the quality of evidence.

Yeah, that's fine. And in regards to their position in the Roman army, so I remarkably wise, they're not right at the top of the chain command, but they occupy that sweet spot in the centre that makes them so vital. Yes, so a century confusing, it wasn't a hundred man, it was only 80 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 went 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 expanse 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 co-ord, so ten co-ords, each co-ord had six centuries of 80 men. So that was 60 centurions, and they were the main middlemen, almost senior commanders. Above them, you had six tribunes, and then above that, you had the legot, and he was the man

the very last moment, like Julius Caesar did, made a legot, 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 legot would have been the commander. And you mentioned there how a centurion is in command of 80 men, and not a hundred 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 that the word comes from the Latin "sanum", which is actually refers to an amount of land, of which is a hundred Yugurat, 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 man, a hundred man, it was always 80 men, yeah, it's a hundred

runs of cricket and it's a hundred years, you know, if you think about time, so. No, I certainly have to raise that question early. Yeah, 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 century? 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 Livvy and Plutarch and Aryan and other sources, but they're literally all quite fragmentary. One of the best ones, or the size unit size, and a number of legionaries and information about centurions is Polybius Livius.

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 Fespacians 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 him 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 literally with Roman sources, you take what you can get, and you've got to treat some with a grain of salt, particularly if there are hundreds of years after the events are described, 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 an IKEA piece of furniture without having the guide.

And still, so there's a few more. - Yeah, sorry, the scenery, the scenery, the 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 own in, and they're always at a centurion helmet,

or is that an enemy helmet? Literally, you can have people, every in actors who are, you know, passionate, passionate people, but are really rigorous in their detail of how accurate their replica equipment is. 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. - We're certainly, we're not going to avoid the helmet in the room here, we've got 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 geesefers. So there's about, there's a few hundred years between the two isn't there, so polybius, second century BC, geesefers 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 manned arms from a hundred years' war who fought the French interested me for 117 years, not a hundred years, but and then British infantryman from World War II, and I say 600 years of history separates these two soldiers and their equipment completely different. Well, Rome was normally founded in 753 BC, probably a bit later actually, but it didn't

fall again, normally 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, you know, it didn't happen.

of a 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 and not a scutum and so on, but the censure indeed last a very, very long time, and indeed it wasn't till the very late Roman empire that we have some evidence that it may have changed, but also the titles of the censure.

And so within the cohort, the six censure is 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 base, the third rank, called the triari, and they were dressed in arm differently. And there were a centurions of those in often in double century form, which is called a manapal, 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 prior, as in the first spear, and that would have been the a centurion of the triari, the

Peelus posterior, the second centurion of the triari, and then the Prinkups prior and the Prinkups posterior, and the Hastatus prior and the Hastatus posterior. So they were hundreds of years after those forms of soldier disappeared, they were still known as that. We were history lesson as you were learning.

Yeah, and 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 a 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 can be influenced by the Greeks and maybe a position like the Stratagos 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, 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 look like, what we should think of when some of our 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 war against Carthage, isn't it?”

And then just see first 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, the brink of Bayesian

and the triari, we know that he probably carried a shield, like they did, a skew to him. Now the Republican shield was a good bit larger than most of your viewers 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 on to 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 crests, they may have just had like a top knot of horse hair, or they may even, we've got at least one example of this centurion with a forward to back crest as well, which again, a lot of your

viewers won't will associate with an opTO, the second in command, but that's from later

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 opTOs 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 it's 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 and it may have been something else. People go, no, no, no, I've seen,

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

“that's material. So the helmets were a lot sorry, the helmets were a lot simpler, most soldiers”

wore a Montfortino. What was 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 on like this one, which has a cheek piece, 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 Polo Corinthian helmets. Again, the history on that's not great. Some people think the triari wore that, maybe

centurion instead. It may well have been quite individual as well. If you look at any

warm 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”

Valar and these would have existed in the Republican period would have had Felaire, 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 a 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 centurion's bravery and his prominence to the enemy. He would have carried a sword during the Republican period that we're talking about. The fighting sword of the legion was the Gladysus Paniensis or the Spanish sword, which was 25 cm or 10 inches longer than the sword most people think of as Roman legions 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 the 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 flanges being so scared of the Gladysus Paniensis 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 for them, 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 are his right and sticks. The thread went dead for six months or so and then I got a reply had been answered. I mean, I was straight on the computer. Anyway, there was an old American guy and I told him he 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 these to buy their own in the local towns and they just have them hanging on their belts and they're they come in from close to open country. They'd been in contact with the vehicle and they'd be the Royal Mac or they were lying around in the jungle clearing, you know, literally just zanked 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 cheap Chinese steel machete casually swung and the guy's head just jumped off his shoulders. So his answer was 100% you know trained legionaries who would come straight from Zama to Macedonia. They would have been chopping a heads off. So to me that made the source, you know much more likely to be true because oftentimes I've noticed

as a non-academic. I don't know whether you experience 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 circumvolution, you know, he was attacking Lisa, 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 and the ground. So yeah, I don't know if topic there, but it was fun. I've very happy to feed to you this once in a while Ben and it's also great because yes, the classic idea is they're kind of stabbing so it isn't it? 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. So I know 15 centimeters. Yeah, six, you know what we see in films is totally skewed and totally inaccurate. Well we think humans

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 beyond the shields so they probably did that most of the time, but they could hack when they needed to. Are you looking for the perfect podcast to hunker down with during the longer colder darker nights? Well, look no further than the award winning after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal with me, Maddie Pelling. And me, Anthony Delaney, we are historians and love all things gloomy and

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feel transported back in time on after dark. Out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get

your podcasts. And guess what, we're also now on YouTube after dark. A podcast from History Hit. 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, you know, and if they're using those same weapons as the”

legionaries, I mean, they're probably even more capable of using them in force in the front rank. I mean, 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 site for an enemy 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 ADs. And can you describe the features

of it? It's sure it's got brows here. Basically, look like eyebrows. It's got a guard to protect the forehead from a blow from the 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 daisy and fowks, which is a

“size like brutal weapon from the daisy and tribes in Eastern Europe, which was wielded to hand it”

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, very, very, if you touch this, it will fall down here as well. So it's got various circular gild discs. It's got a really prominent earpiece for your ears. So you can hear what the century is saying. It's got a mount here for the crest. So even if it's an ordinary soldier was

wearing it, he could mount a crest, which they potentially did on parade and so on. Oh, yes, look at that. And it's got a loop on the back of the neck, the neck guards really big. It's about four inches by 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, 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 the 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-not 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, yeah. Yeah, distinctive. Yeah,

for sure. But sure, the Romans lived life in vivid technical. When you go to Pompeii, you go to Rome Museum and you see bare pieces of stone and so on. It's, we think of the Romans in 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 base or Roman soldiers or emperors and so on. So yeah, it's highly likely. We know from the Noticia Dignata from the fourth century AD, which was the only imagery of Roman shields that we've

but you can infer from that, but legions might have had different emblems and therefore some might's insurance and they were a very brave men, but they 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 a surname, sorry, Caesar vanuski,

“I think it is from Legion 21 Rappax. He's kind of led the way in the world and the research of these,”

and if you see images of him, I mean, he looks amazing. It's got blue and white feathers and

blue and white. Yeah, yeah, because it's interesting once again, the common idea is that they have their red plumes and like red is the big color of war. Again, again, you know, that's open to conjecture. We have paintings from Pompeo 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 legions were blue, maybe marines in the in the navy did. We also know that Ocar was a very common

color, but certainly blues are reds or who knows? Anyone that tells you that they know this centurion of that legion had this color they're lying. And the things you find them out there, so 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 bought in for us today, Ben. I mean, the feathers, their black and white feathers that you've chosen

for this particular helmet, and are they glued in to the do it? I know it has, you saw it's at the studio, they're not yet, so it was 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 to somebody made this for me, and they sent it to me in pieces, because that was, you can't send

“that on the post or the feathers that broke. And 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 and Adrian's wall, which is also otherwise haven't survived, you know. But horses, I guess you can understand the logic behind that, especially

you know, we've all the horse barracks and the stables along Adrian's and D's. But you know, again, experimental archaeology, when you're walking Adrian's wall and you're wearing one of them and 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, whereas that wouldn't happen with feathers. Right. Yes. I love experimental archaeology. I've learned of Donald Hadrian's wall twice in full Roman

“gear, and the amount I learned is off the scale with just reference to the key to what it feels”

like. I can't so I'm always bang the drum for experimental archaeology, because you know,

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 the stunning helmet. Further down, can we imagine them wearing similar types of armour to the everyday legionary, the classic banded iron armour, the segmentarter? No, no, interestingly, they didn't wear that. It's called the Larka segmentarter,

it sounds Latin, it's a modern name, you don't know what the Romans call it. They called male the Larka Hamata, and interestingly, when the soldiers gradually moved over to the plated armour, the segmentarter, the centurions did not. So from the early print capate, 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

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 ringmail, but it's actually still very very effective armour. 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 kerchief. 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 experimentation. If you don't have a neck kerchief, and then but then wear their 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 ornate. 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 combat and boots, and they're 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, and anywhere in the empire, with it wearing a metal belt, with its jingley groin guard that goes jingled jingled jingled

and knowing a soldier is walking by. But it wasn't a distinguishing that this is a centurion.

“No, this is just a soldier. But again, Roman soldiers like to individualise their kit,”

and they would sometimes actually use precious metals, say, 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, and his belt, and so on. And he then would potentially want a chest harness with those filerie that I mentioned, the rewards 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. So soldiers wore it on the right and drew with the right, which was possibly, because that's quicker to get out from behind your shields, which is rather big 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 ball direct, which is a leather strap from the shoulder to the hip, not attached to the belt, like the soldier's

did, and then they would have had caligay, 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 hop nails on them. They would still have the hop nails as well, and we've got examples of the hop 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 replied to centurions as well. I only found this out recently,

unfortunately, never, but it is 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 and before they've parted, they come up to your knee, so you loop them around your, the bottom of your leg, loads of

times, and then you laced them at the back, because in me, so you don't stand on one end in a battle. Gosh, funny little things like that. A little details like that. So when I'm, 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 vying stick, which I knew you would. Ben, well, I was concerned, I have two other bits of equipment, which have become so linked to centurions today, that want to talk about, you've preempted the vying 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, I don't know. The whistle. This is because of this TV series. Wrong.

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, Shemba didn't bring away with me. I have a Roman whistle. The original found in the Legery Fortress, Reagan's Bergyn Austria, which has a little lead square on the end for scratching your

name on it, so it doesn't get lost. And 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. 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 of the water, but yes, exactly.

Yeah. But what we can talk about with you, a bit better, is the vying stick. And so describe the

vying stick to us. So the vying stick, it's basically a piece of the trunk of a vying plant,

which grows grapes. And it was the symbol of a romance interior. And 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 batten, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But so an umbrella, thinking of umbrella, it's probably slightly shorter than an umbrella, but without the

curve handle. So this wasn't something that was polished and kept on the mantle piece of centurion would have kept with him pretty much all the time, not in battle, but certainly in camp. And when he was training his men. And I mean, it's still used today in that up until very recently, British army officers had what was called a swagger stick. And that's basically a descendant of the vying stick. So this was something that he could beat his men with whenever he felt like it.

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”

and recorded because when I've 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 nightclub bands are you've ever seen and got all mighty 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 he didn't. He beat you with his vying 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'd better not be shaming, because I will literally beat you unconscious. We know that at least four offences that this ensuring could execute his 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 Alturam. So this is a German, a centurion in Germany.

I should say in the first century day, who was so brutal that his nickname was Kato Alturam, 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, hey, do Alturam and his men would just get him another. So nobody would stop him beating a man unconscious. And as I mentioned, four offences that we know of, at least, that he could execute a man for. And they were falling asleep on centrifuity, 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 and 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 even if 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 legot 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 this sword?" And it's an unfortunate soldier puts his hand up. And he's taken out and executed on the spot. Wow. Wow. So, and the form of death was not usually like that for the century. And it was the first dewarium, which is if it's a contibernium of men and have just had a chat with an academic about this, the contibernium wouldn't have served on the line

together, it wouldn't have been an centrifuge together. Okay. So we don't have time for that. But let's say it's these eight guys who were on centrifuge together and one fell asleep. Wow. You seven are going to beat him to death. Please take a seat to death 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 and 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 the poor victims mates. Yes, they do with it. From those formal punishments we do, but I have no doubt. I mean, we're talking about a world where infant mortality was potentially 50 percent by the age of infant to child mortality, 50 percent by the age of five. We're talking about people being used to killing their own chickens to seeing animals slaughtered outside temples to seeing crucifixes on the

side of the road to going to glad eight of fights. Life was really brutal and when you were a soldier, you, you know, that you basically would get very rough just as there'd 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 him 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

“centurion's had a lot of freedom over their particular unit, over their particular soldiers?”

And there's not like they could petition the leg at 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 of we didn't mention it, but it's worth mentioning it. We're ranked one to 60. So in other words, the sixth centurion of the tenth cohort was the lowest ranked. It's a hierarchy. It's a hierarchy with

court 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 you”

this centurion, it 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. Are you looking for the perfect podcast to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights? Well, look no further than the award-winning after dark myths, misdeeds, and the paranormal with me, Maddie Pelling. And me, Anthony Delaney, we are historians and love all things gloomy and Macarb.

From Tudor Executioners, an ancient Egyptian death rituals to which trials and folklore feel transported back in time on After Dark. Out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. And guess what, we're also now on YouTube. After Dark, a podcast from History Hit. [Music] Also, keep on the hierarchy business a little 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. It would be approximately 100%. I mean, 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. Yeah, they were very definitely inferior. I mean, Romans were really quite racist. And that's the reason auxiliaries, manned agents, wall,

not really legionaries, because, you know, the last valuable soldiers you put them near 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 a 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 goal and they won and they won and they won and he gave them

amazing rewards. I mean, after Elisa, he gave every legion in his army, a slave. They took 50,000 slaves.

Here you go, guys. But certainly the centurion would have been the man who to whom you owe your most most of your loyalty, because he didn't just beat you and train you. You know, he quite, again, this is just common sense. I can't prove it. But it is 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 Gargovia where Julius Caesar lost 300 legionaries or 700 legionaries,

but 46 centurion. This is the battle that he loses. Yeah, there's either one that no one talks about instruments. Yeah, so, but that massively high percentage of centurions and very little else is known about the battle, but that tells you they were leading from the front. And so, just talk to any serving members of military today, being in combat, you know, that 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 Vala, whether that's first man over the wall. These are Roman awards, or whether it's saving the life of fellow citizen, things like that, or a gold bracelet, or something like that, or silver bracelet. So, and he would quite possibly have been involved in the, you know, when they were getting their pay, which is three times, you know,

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. And so,

“that's how they're expected to act on the battlefield. Is it there in the front ranks? They're”

leading them in. As also, you said earlier, they're peacocking at the same time. They are standing out. They are showing, like Alexander the Greats officers, you know, with the front ranks in 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 lead his own cavalry charges, and survived, 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, is what they're supposed to do. But if they see, as, you know, all those best plans don't often

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. I haven't done a centurion. During the battle of Kindness, Kaffla, which was when the Macedonian failangs came up against Roman legions, which were far more maneuverable than the failangs, just to try and quickly paraphrase it. The failangs 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 it like a big wall of spears, you know, part of”

that one of the spears is not in the same. And there were Roman soldiers advancing to meet the part of the failangs 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 failang city 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 manpower's only maybe a thousand or two thousand men, and they smashed into the side of the mast that only in failangs, and won the battle. So, Centurion's may have done that, but I'm not

I've never read of an example. Again, I haven't read all along the histories, but I've read a lot,

and pretty much every book about the Roman arm, it's 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 Centurion's, you know,

“leading from the front. So, for example, the battle at Budico is defeated at which may have been near”

Centurion's north of London, a very outnumbered Roman army that General picked the terrain with a hill at his back, was 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 it, what the Romans called the Soul, 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 point. He was the one right at the front of the rise, but 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 would say, divided by four, divided by five, there were only 20,000 Roman soldiers, so say 40,000 British tribesmen against 20,000 Roman soldiers. You think that British are going to win, but they came up against the the Centurions, obviously,

the first and the rest of the legaries so tightly that the sources tell us that they couldn't

use their weapons, they were destroying them, 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 of the numbers of Centurions, but it was probably higher than normal there, but just because of that. Leading your men, then that is literally needing from the front at this point of a wedge, terrifying. Much, yeah, especially for us in the 21st century. And I'm also glad you mentioned sign of

Cephla there, because that was the example I was thinking of in my head. I didn't realise it wasn't a Centurion, it was actually someone higher up. Yeah, it was someone watching,

“I think it was a Tribune. Okay, I got it. 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, 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 a pirates actually. So the oxy-rinkus massive cash, 50,000 pieces of pottery, yeah, the parian and pieces of pottery, I think there are some as well. Struckers? If you are struck,

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 women with the stylus in front of a 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 any more.

Now clearly probably nothing was done, but there's an example of a centurion as a justice

but they did what they wanted. Yeah, a great example of how a centurion's duties could change between war and peat. Yeah, and so being a quartermaster, making sure that there were enough supplies for their, for their sanctuary, this is something that we've got from the Vindalanda tablets, and although junior officers would have, 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, so yeah, and what's quite interesting about some of those letters from Vindalanda is they show that in peacetime you

“can have a unit, there was one cohort, I think, the Tongrians, and they were down to less than half”

strength with numbers of men that were all from different vaccinations or sick or, you know, just not where they were supposed to be. And I guess overseeing the pay for their men, you know, that must be very, very important to them. Well again, one of the junior officers that tended to the testararius was in charge of the money, but the centurion would have been in charge of that, and they 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't 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 and basalt or something like that, that's very good, because what I was going

to say was they weren't always promoted from the ranks, there were three routes 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 over 15 year old boy died in World War I, 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 immunous as in the world immunization, and that then you didn't have to do certain nasty things like digging ditches and digging the trees, and if you continued to impress, then you might be promoted through the ranks of Junior Officer,

which were Tesseraris, IE, the man who has the Tesserat, which is the piece of pottery in the, sometimes, which had the orders for the past work and so on for the night,

and then you had the signal for the standard or the signal and you had the optios, second and

command, and then you had Centurion, 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 6 in cohort 10, you then, in theory, had to climb up the ranks, but you didn't have to go through six to your promotions, you could, you could be leapfrogged, but again, that would take years, you were usually seconded to another legion when you were promoted as a Centurion, or moved as a Centurion, or advancing up the Centurion ranks. So you wouldn't be commanding

your, you'd 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, 80, and also will they do what they're told, where as 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. Well, if he statused, 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's, must have been very frustrating for men who were promoted from the ranks is that if you became the first spear, the Primus Peelus,

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

which is 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. Yeah, yeah. So what that means is that because after Centurions retired, they were known as ex-Premi Peel, 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 move all around, and then we have great examples and tombstones, but those young equestrians who joined in 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 last common was you could move straight from the Victorian guard. So 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.

The closest thing is the equestrians, the inexperience, but their rich backgrounds, allows them to

“leapfroke. Yes. Yeah. A bit like the tribions, that's what the tribions were. And as I”

mentioned, that one example of a legot with Julius Caesar, he had no military experience potentially, but he was suddenly given command of a legion that 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 peel of his paid considerably more than that. And we have an example of an amount paid,

whether it was like a cash payment when they retired, of a primus peelus. 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 the primus peelus has gotten gone. Well, actually it wasn't, it wasn't unreasonable. We're talking hundreds of thousands of distoracy as a cash payment to a primus peelus when he retired. So they were paid really, really well. And this is this point worth

mentioning that because of all the things we've been talking about, their leadership skills, their bravery, the way that they weld, their man 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 as an average, you know, you came in at 18, you could retire at 38 if you were still alive. But since machines 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 war has frequently happened. So we've got this incredible example of,

again, a tombstone of a century 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 were 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 maybe in a vaxulation that was serving with those

“legions because it's, it's possibly didn't change the legions at all. Or a vaxulation, you mean?”

Sorry, a vaxulation is a subunit of a legion that sent from A to B to help with something, right? A valiant or building a road or something. So it may have been that he was just in a vaxulation with that legion. But this guy served all over the empire, literally, from Israel and Syria to Britain and Romania and North Africa. 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 as

injured and they didn't always become from this people. Well, I was going to ask other 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 kind of rising and we've got Maxime Maximini is throcks in the third centurion. He's seven foot. Yeah. Impressive. If you believe that.

Maybe was seven feet tall, but he, he climbed all the way up to the top of him an emperor.

“Pertenax in one nine two, the emperor, I think he was an ordinary legionary originally. So yeah,”

there was the, you definitely, very unlikely, but you could do it. But there are those really interesting cases. Yeah. Well, I think we have a kind of centurion background. Ben, I can 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 all me 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, I'm 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

Contabernian, which was the 10th group of eight men, there were 10 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 liked to break down a Roman army, like a modern, 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

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 us. Yeah, that was a big one, that's all right,

but then 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 for some tears. Well there you go, there was fan”

favourite doctor 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 on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts, that really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, what we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week.

Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That is all from me, I'll see you in the next episode.