United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The daily march of the heavily laden Roman legionary was fixed at twenty miles; but on this afternoon, though only half the distance had been accomplished, the silver trumpets blared out their welcome news that a camp was to be formed. As the men broke their ranks, the reason of their light march was announced by the decurions.
Thus, for example, the upkeep of the great roads and posts system, the lines of communication, falls upon a certain class called the Decurions, who in each district at their own expense have to maintain all in order.
They were as calm and well ordered as at a maneuver. The decurions indicated to their men the hostile crowds against which they must strike, and in the course of some minutes they covered them with a shower of stones and leaden bullets. The prince saw that after every such shower a Libyan crowd scattered and very often one man remained on the earth behind the others.
Her father had been the chief accountant of the decurions' college in his native town, and he had lived opposite the circus, where, being of a stern temper, he had never permitted his daughters to look on at the games; but he could not prevent their seeing the crowd streaming into the amphitheatre, or hearing their shouts of delight, and their eager cries of approbation.
'Ay, we shall see if his firmness will last over to-morrow. But what merit in courage, when that atheistical hound, Olinthus, manifested the same? 'The blasphemer! Yes, said Lepidus, with pious wrath, 'no wonder that one of the decurions was, but two days ago, struck dead by lightning in a serene sky. The gods feel vengeance against Pompeii while the vile desecrator is alive within its walls.
It has been said that as Augustin's father was a member of the curia, he must have been a ruined man. The Decurions, who levied taxes and made themselves responsible for their collection, were obliged to supply any deficiency in the revenue out of their own money. Patricius, it is thought, must have been one of the numerous victims of this disastrous system.
He found him in the best possible humour, laughing and making coarse jests amid a circle of decurions and optios as rude a Roman as marched with the standards, yet able, when occasion demanded, to play the man of fashion who had spent a year at Athens. The latter mood fell upon him when he descried Sergius. He came forward to meet him.
“But you don’t mean I must believe all this man says, because the decurions have put him here?” cried Arnobius. “Here is this Polemo saying that Proteus is matter, and that minerals and vegetables are his flock; that Proserpine is the vital influence, and Ceres the efficacy of the heavenly bodies; that there are mundane spirits, and supramundane; and then his doctrine about triads, monads, and progressions of the celestial gods?”
Patres conscripti, inclined to corpulence, taking their constitutional, exquisites lazily sauntering up and down the pavements; decurions discussing the affairs of the nation, and the last news from Rome; city magnates fussing, merchants chaffering, clients petitioning, parasites fawning, soldiers swaggering, and Belisarius begging at the gate.... It is a bright and animated scene.
The dukes appoint the residence of the millenaries, or commanders of a thousand men; the millenaries do the same with the centurions, or captains of hundreds; and the centurions direct in what place the decurions or commanders of tens are to dwell. Whatsoever order any of these officers receive from their immediate superiors must be instantly and implicitly obeyed.
Word Of The Day