Read Rome 4: The Art of War for Free Online

priest threw more incense on to the altar; much more than before. A broad fan of smoke splayed out, cutting us off from the line of waiting men behind.
    I was alone then, with the priests and the altar and this man who remembered everything. I swallowed and heard my own larynx pop. Caecina looked at me as if I’d farted.
    From his side, the bass-voiced priest bellowed, ‘Choose! And may the gods guide your hand!’
    A black silk bag was thrust forward at waist height. As each man had done before me, I slid my hand through the bag’s narrow mouth, and felt—
    Nothing.
    I panicked,I will admit that now, to you. This was a lottery. I was eighty-fourth in a line of a hundred and sixty men. I was expecting to feel seventy-seven tokens of folded lead from which I was required to select one. For nearly a day, I had been steeling myself against this moment.
    But now it was here, my hand closed on empty air. In shock, I looked up at Caecina and read on his face such intensity of cold, flat anger that I shoved my hand back in again, fumbled about and – there! – felt a single filet of lead lying in the bottom, tucked into a corner hidden by the overlying fabric.
    It was the length of my thumb, folded over at either end and sealed in the middle with wax, and when I drew it out I saw that the wax was black and that the imprint of a chariot stood proud on the matt surface. Vitellius was favouring Nero, after all: the chariot had been his emblem, too.
    I didn’t break the wax seal; my orders – all our orders, given to us in the officers’ quarters just last night – were to wait, and open them later, in private.
    I held the tab out on the flat of my palm to show I had taken it. Caecina, restored to good humour, nodded briskly and I took my eight paces back and that was it: over.
    It wasn’t over, of course, it was only just beginning, but it felt like a huge step taken. I wasn’t alone in feeling heartsick, I think; it was on other faces as we shuffled on sideways and sideways and watched each man take his eight steps forward and pick his lead from the lottery.
    There was a tedious similarity to the proceedings broken by small differences in the rewards for our endeavours; Juvens, three men after me, was awarded a spear for personal valour, not an arm band, and Halotus, who came eight after him, was given on behalf of his entire century a disc to display on their standard.
    Whatever he was awarded, though, each man at the same time tooka folded token from the black bag and stepped back, keeping the seal unbroken.
    The lead grew warm and soft in the waiting. I kneaded it between my fingers; by the time the lottery came to an end, it was an acorn, which once had been a small, flat lozenge.
    ‘Gentlemen!’ Caecina held up a hand. His voice was high for a man’s, sharp and clear. ‘You each have a tab and, on it, a name. You know what to do. Know as you do so that we are, once again, a nation at war with itself.’
    That got our attention: I had heard the news the night before, but my fellow officers had not. All along the row, we stood more upright, our eyes fixed on our general.
    Caecina pitched his voice well; he knew how to play a crowd. ‘We have news from the east. On the first of July, the prefect of Egypt swore his oath to Vespasian as emperor. His legions did likewise and they were followed by the legions of Judaea and Syria respectively. He is appointing senators, prefects, praetors. He is minting coins in his own image and collecting taxes in his own name. He is choosing senators and consuls to serve his version of Rome and he is recruiting armies to march at his command. In short, he is behaving as if he were already emperor and we the traitors standing against him. He is preparing for war and we must be ready to fight.
    ‘Eight legions are ranged against us. There will not be any more, because our emperor is loved by his men, but they are enough for us to show once again that we are the best the empire can