United States or Iraq ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Of him it was said that he "built the world over," and the Romans themselves regarded him as the best, and perhaps the greatest of their emperors. He was a native of Italica, in Spain. The family to which he belonged was probably Italian, and not Iberian, by blood. His father began life as a common legionary soldier, and fought his way up to the consulship and the governorship of Asia.

When it is intended to signify that a knight has been created, it is stated that the individual has been girt with the cingulum militare. Here we find ourselves in full Roman parlance, and the word signified certain terms which described admission into military service, the release from this service, and the degradation of the legionary. When St.

"Aemilius had escaped the carnage on the right wing at the commencement of the battle. Wishing, according to the orders he had given, to be everywhere, and seeing that it was the legionary infantry that would decide the fate of the battle, he pushed his horse through the fray, warded off or killed every one who opposed him, and sought at the same time to reanimate the ardor of the Roman soldiers.

It would thus appear that the centurion only received twice the pay of the ordinary legionary. There was not therefore so much difference in rank between a private and a captain as in our day. There were no aristocratic distinctions in the ancient world so marked as in the modern. Our notice of the Roman legion would be incomplete without allusion to the camp in which the soldier virtually lived.

There were yellow and green and blue and black and striped bombs; egg-shaped, barrel-shaped, conical, and concave bombs; bombs that were exploded by pulling a string and by pressing a button all these to be thrown by hand, without mentioning grenades and other larger varieties to be thrown by mechanical means, which would have made a Chinese warrior of Confucius' time or a Roman legionary feel at home.

Actæon, while listening to the conversation of these various groups, glanced toward the temple and thought that he saw in the crowd streaming up and down the steps the Celtiberian shepherd who had killed the Roman legionary the night before. It was a swift vision; his dark sagum vanished in the multitude, and the Greek was uncertain if it were really he. The morning advanced.

That what made the loss of men the greater was, the reinforcements, necessary to support them when distressed, coming up too late from the reserve; and that, what enabled the enemy to slip out of their hands was, the signal being given too tardily to the legionary cavalry, and their not being allowed to pursue the fugitives."

No one, therefore, can believe, that men in the full practice of Pagan idolatry, as every legionary soldier must then have been, were real Christians, merely because it is recorded in history, that men, calling themselves Christians, were found in the army in those times.

The dissatisfaction given by this appointment to the officers, had induced him to resign his commission; but, thirsting for military fame, and zealous in the American cause, he obtained permission to raise a legionary corps, which he officered chiefly with foreigners, and commanded in person. In this corps, one Juliet, a deserter, had been admitted as an officer.

Further on were the wrecks of the citadel, where once the stern legionary had watched by day and night, and where Roman discipline and order had held sway, while the wall raised by Constantine, broken and imperfect, still rose on the banks of the river.