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same. Crassus, youngest son of Consul Crassus who conquered Spartacus and his slave army—a well-liked young man with a good head and great promise. And Balbus, the chief of staff, a Spaniard from Farther Spain, which would have pleased the men of the 10th, from a very wealthy family, loyal, dependable, a skillful mediator, and an excellent organizer. Later serving as Caesar’s private secretary and publishing his writings after his death, he would be made a consul by the Senate in 40 b.c., the first provincial ever to receive a consular appointment.
    As Crastinus took a quick glance to his right, he would have seen the faces of his men as they stood stock-still in their rows with their expressions set, their eyes to the front, some betraying their tension with pale, bloodless faces. The breeze rustled the yellow horsehair crests on their helmets, the sun glinted on the bravery decorations they’d put on for the battle on Caesar’s orders to awe the Celts. On their left arm, each legionary held his shield. Polybius tells us the legionary’s rectangular, curved shield was as thick as a man’s palm, curved, but with straight sides, four feet high and two and a half feet wide, made from two layers of wood covered with c03.qxd 12/5/01 4:53 PM Page 18
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    canvas and calfskin, the metal boss in the center fixed to the handle on the reverse. In these ranks, the shields were painted with the bull emblem of the 10th Legion. In his right hand each man held two javelins, straight up and down for now. On his right hip hung his sword. When the javelins had all been released, Crastinus would give the order for his men to draw their swords, in preparation for close combat.
    If Crastinus had looked to the sky, he would have seen that the sun was directly overhead.
    Walking along the front line, Caesar addressed his troops. Above him, the hill was covered with forty thousand men. Caesar had done plenty of public speaking, would even write a book on the subject. He chose his words with care, and he expertly elevated his voice so that even those in the rear ranks could hear him. He praised his men, and he urged them to victory. It had to be a short speech—the Helvetii had combined smaller phalanxes into one dense mass of spearmen, who were now advancing toward the hill.
    The phalanx, a formation developed into an art form by earlier Greek armies, had two strengths. The Greek phalanx had been sixteen men deep, so that a graduated wall of spear points protruded for some eight feet from the front of the formation like the spines of a porcupine. The men of the tightly packed formation also overlapped their shields, so that there were sixteen solid lines of shield from front to rear. We don’t know how deep the Helvetian phalanx was, but with no shortage of warriors it would have been as deep as was practicable.
    Caesar withdrew behind his second line and waited as the phalanx began to move up the lower slope of the hill toward the Roman front line at walking pace. Then Caesar gave an order. With a roar from thousands of legionary throats, his front line launched a volley of javelins. On command, another volley flew through the air.
    Coming up the slope, with the hill above them thick with Roman legionaries and the air full of missiles, the Helvetian warriors instinctively raised their shields to protect themselves from the Roman javelins. This, they quickly discovered, wasn’t as easy as just blocking them. Forty years before, Consul Marius had introduced a revolutionary change to the design of Roman javelins; since his time, they had been manufactured with soft metal behind the point. Once the javelin struck anything, the weight of the shaft caused it to bend like a hockey stick where shaft and head joined. With its aerodynamic qualities destroyed, it couldn’t be effectively thrown back. And if it lodged in a shield, it became extremely difficult to remove, as the Helvetii now found. What was worse, in