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auxiliary legions, comfortable in a litter, surrounded by her husband’s personal bodyguard. Quintus, his eldest son, a year older than Claudia, rode ahead with Nepos, the cavalry legate in command of theadvance guard. Within a week they would be in the provincial capital of Saguntum, ready to begin the task of defeating Brennos. At that moment, everything in his life seemed perfect, his happiness unassailable.
     
    Aulus, trusting his horse not to stumble or leave the roadway, closed his eyes tightly as less pleasant memories surfaced, recollections of a truth he had ignored. A slave had stood behind him in his war chariot as, face painted red, dressed in the deep purple toga of a victorious general, he rode down the Via Triumphalis responding to the cheers of the crowd gathered to celebrate his Macedonian victories. The man was there to remind him, by whispering in his ear, that all glory was fleeting: that he needed to beware of the sin of hubris; that the gods would bring low any man who dared to forget he was a mere mortal, that they would not be mocked.
    Doing battle with barbarians was very different from engaging the disciplined army of a state like Macedonia. Formal combat, in which he would confront the entire enemy host was not something Aulus expected, despite their numerical superiority. His informants confirmed that the Celt-Iberians, at his approach, had withdrawn from the coastal plain and taken to the hills. This underlined his belief that it would be a war of ambush and raid. He had sethimself for a difficult task, with his legions broken up, operating in centuries and cohorts, trying to destroy the means by which the rebels sustained themselves. They would need to be ruthless and cruel, burning villages and destroying pasture and crops, taking hostages and enslaving women and children if the insurrection was to be brought under control. He in turn would need to be tough, to prevent his troops from descending into a rabble, if required, killing some to maintain discipline. Necessary in Macedonia, such measures, in Spain, would be even more indispensable.
    That whispering slave who had stood behind him had been right! It was foolish to assume anything in war, to be so sure that his enemies would wait in the hills for him to attack, just as it was unwise to rely upon his reputation to fight his battles for him. His name meant little to the Celt-Iberians and nothing to this Brennos, who was clever, and more powerful than the Romans had imagined. Somehow he had achieved what they thought impossible, the welding together of the notoriously cantankerous Celts into a single fighting unit. He had no intention of leaving Aulus to march peacefully to his base camp, appearing suddenly at the head of a multitude of braying tribesmen to attack an army that had not even begun to pursue him, an army strung out on the march.
    By their disordered tactics, really just a melee in which those who could engage did so, the Celt-Iberians had managed to split his forces, separating the auxiliary legions from the Roman troops. With his command structure shattered, disaster threatened, so putting himself at the head of his heavy infantry Aulus had ridden to the rear, cutting his way through, and rallied the Italian allies under his personal command. Now his experience and legionary drill told. Facing them about in copybook fashion, he fought his way back to join the remainder of his Romans so that they could present a united front to their adversaries. Nepos, well to the fore and out of touch with Aulus, had shown both courage and good sense when he declined to force-march his advance guard, which included the legion’s Numidian cavalry, back towards the main body. That would have brought him into contact with a massive screen of tribal warriors waiting to engage him.
    Instead he took his cavalry in a great arc, into the very foothills from which this Brennos had attacked, catching the Celt-Iberians unawares. An irresistible charge