When not busy cooking I found myself greatly interested in the amazing
company among which I was cast. In my rambles about our camp, when all
were full-fed and groups sat or lay chatting about the slackening camp-
fires, I became acquainted with most of the eighteen centurions from
the legions quartered in Britain, and had talks, sometimes even long
talks, with more than half of them. These bluff, burly frontier sergeants,
like their corporals and men, treated all their volunteer associates as
welcome comrades, even welted and branded runaway slaves acting as cooks.
From them I heard again and again the story of discontent, conspiracy,
mutiny, insurrection and attempt at protest about rectification of the
evils they believed to exist, which tale we had all heard outlined by the
sergeant-orator in the Forum of Placentia.
Among the eighteen centurions there was no sergeant-major nor any
centurion of the upper rank. The highest in army rank was Sextius Baculus
of Isca, a native of Britain and lineally descended, through an original
colonist of Isca, from the celebrated sergeant-major of the Divine Julius.
He had been twelfth in rank in the Sixth Legion, being second centurion of
its second cohort. Not one of his seventeen associates had ranked so high:
the next highest being Publius Cordatus, of Lindum, who had been second
sergeant of the fourth cohort in the Twentieth Legion.
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