Eagle in the Snow (47 page)

HISTORICAL EVENTS

PRINCIPAL PLACE NAMES

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ALA—a cavalry regiment, orginally 500 to 1,000 men, divided into 16 or 24 squadrons respectively.

AQUILIFER—the officer carrying the Eagle, the sacred insignia of the legion.

AUXILIARIES—originally provincial troops formed into cavalry regiments (alae) or infantry regiments (cohorts) 500 to 1,000 strong; later troops of the frontier army.

BALLISTA—a type of artillery for throwing heavy missiles. These varied in size and performance. The smaller ones were often called scorpions or onagers.

CARROBALLISTA—a type of mobile field artillery which fired 9 to 12 inch bolts with iron heads.

CENTURION—usually the officer commanding a century; a rank for which there is no modern equivalent.

CENTURY—the smallest unit (100 men) of the legion which originally contained 60 centuries.

COHORT—originally a tactical unit of the legion comprising six centuries; also an auxiliary regiment.

COMES GALLIARUM—Comes (Count) was an honorary title often conferred upon senior military and civil officers. In some instances the title carried special duties.

COUNT OF THE SAXON SHORE—(Comes Littoris Saxonici) the general commanding the defences of the south-east coast of Britain.

CURATOR—a civilian official who fulfilled the functions of a mayor.

CURIAL CLASS—the provincial class from which municipal and local government officers were selected.

DECURION—a junior officer in an auxiliary cavalry unit commanding a troop.

DUX—the commander in chief of a provincial army.

LEGION—originally a brigade of troops, 6,000 strong, commanded by a legate and recruited solely from Roman citizens. In the late empire the legion was smaller, was commanded by a praefectus and was part of the frontier army.

LIMES—a military frontier.

MASTER OF HORSE—(Magister Equitum) a subordinate general commanding all the imperial cavalry. The Magister Equitum per Gallias was the general commanding the Field Army of Gaul.

MILITARY MASTER—(Magister Militum) the general officer commanding all the imperial troops.

OPTIO—an officer junior to a centurion; often his second in command.

PRAEFECTUS—a general term for civil or military officials holding posts of varying degrees of responsibility.

PRAEFECTUS PRAETORIO—a civil official responsible directly to the emperor for the administration of a group of provinces.

QUAESTOR—a civilian official, often in charge of finance.

TRIBUNE—a senior officer of the legion; also an officer of the civil administration.

VALLUM—a broad ditch running the length of Hadrian’s Wall on the south side, defining the area under control of the military.

VICARIUS—the governor under the Praefectus Praetorio immediately responsible for the administration of a group of provinces.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baatz (D.) and H. Riediger, Römer und Germanen am Limes. 1966.

Baume (P. La) Die Römer am Rhein. [1964].

Birley (A.) Life in Roman Britain. 1964.

Bruce (J. C.) Handbook to the Roman Wall; 12th edn. 1966. Cambridge Ancient History vol. 12. 1939.

Cambridge Medieval History vol. 1. 1911 and vol. 2. 1913. Collingwood (R. G.) and J. N. L. Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements; 2nd edn. 1937.

Dill (S.) Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire; 2nd edn. 1899.

Frere (J. S.) Britannia. 1967.

Jones (A. H. M.) The Later Roman Empire. 3 vols. 1964.

Parker (H. M. D.) The Roman Legions. 1958.

Reusch (W.) Treveris: a guide through Roman Trier; 2nd edn. 1964.

Schleiermacher (W.) Der Römische Limes in Deutschland. 1961.

Starr (C. G.) The Roman Imperial Navy, 31 B.C.—A.D. 324; 2nd ed. 1960.

Vermaseren (M. J.) Mithras, the secret god. 1959.

Webster (G.) The Roman Imperial Army. 1969.

About the Author

Wallace Breem was born in 1926 and educated at Westminster School. In 1944 he entered the Indian Army Officers’ Training School and later joined a crack regiment of the North West Frontier Force. After the war he took a number of temporary jobs, eventually joining the library staff of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. By 1965 he had become the 11th Chief Librarian and Keeper of Manuscripts. He was a founder member of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians. He served the organisation in a number of senior capacities from 1969 until his death in 1990, when the Association and the Inner Temple jointly set up a Memorial Award in his honour.

By Wallace Breem

Eagle in the Snow

The Leopard and the Cliff

The Legate’s Daughter

Copyright

A PHOENIX EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 1970 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
First published in ebook in 2012 by Phoenix.

Copyright © Wallace Breem 1970

The moral right of Wallace Breem to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 7802 2537 1

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