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Legio DI — Description

“Have you ever heard the tragedy of Isis and Osiris? I thought not. It is not a story a pontiff would tell you. It's an Egyptian legend. When Osiris was ruling over Egypt as its lawful king, he was murdered by his brother Typhon, but Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, restored his body, and from this union they made Horus to be born, but Osiris remained dead. Ironic. He could give his son life, but not himself.”
“Is it possible to learn this power?”
“Not from a Senator.”
That is the exchange which persuaded Marcus Junius Brutus to overturn his allegiances, or at least that's how Plutarch would have us remember the story. General Roman consensus was that Julius Caesar’s relationship with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra was a pathway to many things some consider to be unnatural. To Brutus, however, the ability to keep the ones he cared about from dying was a desperate temptation. Medieval historians, following Plutarch, have rolled with the embellishment that Brutus suffered from divine visions, nightmares assuring him of the upcoming death of his beloved Portia. Slightly more historically verifiable is the fact that their infant son was an unfortunate, sickly thing, not expected to survive infancy. I wouldn't wish something like that on my worst enemies, so I could hardly blame Brutus for turning his back on the conspiracy he'd been selected for if he thought he could do something about it.
Frankly, desperation was the prey that Caesar was most adept in predating on. It's how he got himself into the position the Senate tried to undermine in the first place. Above all else, Caesar was a master populist. He was a war hero, and the fanciful idea of him as Rome's great unifier was practically gift-wrapped to him after defeating Pompey in their Civil War. The consuls granted him the title of dictator after his triumphant return, a position which should've only lasted a year, but the term was extended to ten years, and then again to life. This was unprecedented, but there were few with the power to stop his usurpation of the Republic's democracy. Caesar was even offered a king's crown at the Lupercalia festival, and honestly, the bastard only refused it at the time because he wanted the people to offer it to him, not Mark Antony. Soon though, they would, unless the Senate could interfere, of course. Historians waffle back and forth about just how many people were actually in on some big plot to assassinate Caesar and how many of them were just innocent names Caesar planted on his shit list because he didn't like them, but it's generally accepted that one Gaius Cassius Longinus and his closest circle of friends wanted Caesar confronted for what they perceived as treason to Roman values. They needed information for their scheme, however, so they went to one of the few mutual friends they had with Caesar: Marcus Junius Brutus.
This turned out to be a massive miscalculation. Brutus understood the Senate's fears, I mean Hel, he even pulled up with Pompey for a brief period. He was also, however, pardoned by Caesar after Pompey's fall. Caesar treated him like a son, and Plutarch hints that he may have actually been Caesar’s bastard son. Principles were difficult to adhere to in the face of what Brutus saw as the indisputable results of Caesar's aggressive amounts of charisma. This inner conflict plagued him right up until the Ides of March, when whatever form the conspiracy was to take would be launched. Cassius's plot relied on Caesar attending a gathering of the Senate, but Caesar’s wife Calpurnia felt a disturbance in the air and begged him not to go. Caesar agreed, which made the Senate desperate. The dictator was set to leave for his conquest of Parthia in just three days, and if he came back victorious like he always did, then there'd be no feasible way to remove him from office. Feeling that Marcus was getting too close to Caesar, they decided to send another Brutus, Decimus, to Caesar’s house to… address their complaints.
The Brutus everyone actually remembers from history class had been called to Caesar’s household previously that afternoon, so when Decimus rolled up and started drawing swords on the dictator, his dilemma was put on the spot. Initially, Decimus proclaimed that Caesar was going to be arrested and tried by the Senate for his abuse of power, a course of action Brutus could comfortably get behind. As Caesar declared that he was the Senate, and fought back against what he proclaimed was an invasion of his home and a dis of his hospitality, Decimus went a little vigilante and tried to shiv the bastard right there on his own floor. This was not the Roman way, and Brutus needed Caesar, so Brutus drew his own blade, and cut off Decimus's sword arm. Caesar, now gaining the upper hand (ha), pounced on Decimus, and stabbed him twenty-three times screaming “Plenitudo potestatis!” like a fuckin’ maniac, which seems excessively specific to me but I guess if you've achieved unlimited power, no one's gonna stop you from being extra.
Brutus, meanwhile, was reeling from being an accomplice to the murder of a senator, like hoooooly shit dude, the feds are gonna lock you up and throw away the key. Unless… the side he just chose to defend was the feds. Shit Caesar, Brutus said, I'll do whatever you ask! He pledged himself to his teachings, and for his allegiance, Caesar bestowed upon Brutus a new title which would carry a Hel of a lot more weight once they struck back against the Senate for “unlawfully trying to take control of the government” or however they'd decide to word it. Henceforth, Brutus was to be known as Dux Pater, a ceremonial father figure to all the troops of legionnaires of Caesar's loyal army, an army he'd secretly had on standby this entire time, just waiting for the excuse Caesar needed to spin against the Senate, waiting for Edictum LXVI.
Edictum LXVI was Caesar’s own conspiratorial back door into total dominion over Rome. At Caesar’s command, anywhere between 40 and 70 government officials in the city were persecuted and cut down, including their wives and children. A particularly brutal version of the story passed down to us by Cicero has Brutus drawing a gladius out of a burning fire pit and using the glowing red hot blade to slaughter the kids himself. Good sweet Freyr, man, there's overkill and then there's… overkill. Those who were able to get the Hel out of dodge fucked off to the as-yet uncrispified Pompeii. So, while Caesar proclaimed to a scared and confused Roman populace who cheered as he explained his extermination of the “traitorous” Senate, Dux Pater was sent to the resort town to exterminate any remaining opposition. Reportedly, Portia was in the audience when the populace gifted Caesar his fourth offer of a crown, observing coldly that “this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”. Cassius, who had… somehow slipped through the army's fingers, approached Portia at her home asking if she knew where Brutus had gone, and while she denied that she did, she rode out immediately for Pompeii to confirm for herself Cassius's accusations of Brutus’s involvement with this madness. Cassius, of course, quietly tailed her a discreet distance behind. Shhhh, don't tell anyone.
Portia met her husband at a villa situated on a volcanic hot spring, the sort of place I'm sure would have an incredibly scenic and definitely permanent view over the remainder of history. Portia was in tears as Brutus confirmed her deepest fears, that he'd developed this delusion that he could fix everything, save their family from death, maybe even overthrow the government himself, I mean hey fuck it why not! She tried to persuade him that he was going down a path she couldn't follow, that she loved him and that was enough, but Brutus called bitch a liar, because that's about when Cassius rolled up on the scene. Brutus, in his frustration, accused her of bringing Cassius to kill him, and in his anger, fuckin choked her with his bare hands like a total psychopath. Clearly, this did not serve to convince Cassius that Brutus could be redeemed. Brutus accused Cassius of turning his wife against him, and refused to be lectured about how he'd done that himself. He had brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to his new empire godsdammit, and if Cassius was not with him then he was his enemy! Cassius, appalled, asserted that his allegiance was to the Republic, to democracy, and that only a dictator deals in absolutes. Brutus had become the very thing he swore to destroy, and Cassius would do what he must. He would try.
Now, every ancient account we have of the ensuing duel makes it sound fucking awesome, just a solid ten minutes of sick flips, kicking ass, gayly staring into each other's eyes, and a surprising amount of not actually hitting one another, all taking place over an increasingly dangerous amount of molten rock as their fight took them deeper into the volcano. I'm not convinced this is how it went down in actual history, though. Most sword fights irl only last like a couple seconds at most and involve a lot less shouting exposition, but man it's gripping to imagine this duel of the fates. However much of it actually happened, even the most skeptical of us can accept it ended the same way at least. Brutus found himself situated on the edge of a magma reservoir, while Cassius “had the high ground”, whatever that means, I don't actually know. No one really does. The context would suggest that Cassius was literally positioned higher above Brutus and that somehow gave him a martial advantage over his opponent, but you'll see plenty of other historians arguing that no, that wouldn't make any sense in a realistic sword fight where height denies you reach, and actually it's like a metaphorical thing and he's just dissing him. It's a surprisingly pedantic argument that I frankly don't care enough about to contribute to in this blurb. Brutus evidently took it as a challenge, tried to lunge at Cassius, and man, I guess that high ground is OP as fuck afterall. Cassius fuckin’ hamstrung the bastard and sent him tumbling to the edge of the magma. While Cassius got all boohoo about how Brutus was their chosen one and how he was supposed to bring balance to Rome, not leave it in darkness, Brutus fucking ignited. And Cassius just fuckin left bro there to cook, like damn dude! I know you thought he was lost but that's not Bro Code compliant!
Since only one of them actually… had the ability to walk out of the active volcano, Cassius fucked off to parts unknown, while Brutus was eventually rescued and brought back to Caesar. Unfortunately, his burns had scarred him grievously and disfigured him permanently. With medical attention, Dux Pater could march with his legions again, but his burns and ragged lungs would forever be a source of self-conscious shame that he'd cover up with black robes and a helmet for the rest of his life. Getting turned into an overgrown rotisserie chicken wasn't even the worst blow to his psyche, however. When he was informed that he'd actually choked his wife to death, and that their infant son had perished in their absence, Dux Pater could do little more than let out a shrill defiant scream of agony as Caesar put a hand on his newly adopted son's shoulder. I'd say that's cold comfort but uh… I don't think that'd be the most appropriate adjective in this particular case.
Well that sucks buddy, and this has been a gas, but your new Rex Caesar has plans he's gotta get around to! Parthia has just been sitting there idly this whole time, asshole spread, ready to be conquered! Before Caesar could avenge what he saw as Rome's shameful loss at the Battle of Carrhae though, he had to get to Parthia, and to get to Parthia, he had to go through the Dacians. That wasn't a particularly difficult obstacle to overcome. A: the Dacians had done most of the work for Caesar already by assassinating their unifying king Burebista the same year Edictum LXVI was initiated (man imagine a timeline where Caesar got shivved instead, what a ride that would've been). And B: Caesar rolled up on their turf with 16 legions and 10,000 horsemen. The Dacians weren't destined to make it to the year's end in good shape. Honestly I think the only reason Caesar didn't bother to completely steamroll over them was because they weren't the target of his vendetta. No no, he had Parthians to piss off.
Crassus's big mistake eleven years prior was trying to gut punch the enemy through Syria, which was already crawling with Parthians on their home turf. Caesar instead took the long way around, striking southwards through allied Armenia where reinforcements would always be on his back and mountainous terrain would make Parthian cavalry useless. This route, while more grueling, led Caesar directly to the Parthian capital, Ctesipon, where one of his greatest victories forced the surrender of the royal family. King of Kings Orodes II was forced to concede to an exchange of hostages, handing over his granddaughter by Phraates, the only of his legitimate sons to survive the conflict. Once Caesar was done jerking himself off over definitively establishing himself as the new Alexander the Great, he took a victory lap back to Rome via the Euxine, and began drafting his plans for subduing those pesky Germans that are always a problem for everybody. His adrenaline was so high, he finally started slipping. Little did he realize that the first microscopic cracks were forming in his glass empire.
See, what the Romans thought they were doing with Orodes's granddaughter was raising her in Roman exile to become the perfect little puppet that could convince her people that Roman culture was awesome actually and they should totally all submit. The flaw in this plan is that as much as you can take the girl out of Parthia, you can't take Parthia out of the girl. The princess was smart and used her position to sneak inside information through the limited contact she was allowed with her family. It helped the Parthians strike back against the Roman occupation, but it also made her a target once the authorities started catching on. By the time that happened, Phraates had been king for three years after his father's death, and he wanted to get his daughter the fuck out of dodge. There was only one man he could trust to pull off that sort of heist, a name the princess heard whispered in the shadows of Roman society time and time again: a ghost named Gaius Cassius Longinus.
After turning his best friend into a briquette, Cassius had gone into hiding, eking out a merger existence under a fake name in the Numidian village of Tataouine. He was out of the game, and only Phraates’ famous plea of “Help me Cassius Longinus, you're my only hope” could haul his ass out of the course, rough, and irritating sand. Now, I could probably drag out Cassius's whole misadventure getting the princess out of Rome for six paragraphs, but come on, you all know I'm only bringing up this story because this is the first time in ten years that Cassius and Dux Pater came face to face again. Dux Pater, by this point, had largely been reassigned as Caesar’s head inquisitor, slaughtering anyone who would challenge his power when he wasn't joining him on military campaigns. It's a lot more effective as a scare tactic to have the hulking death machine in black robes hunt you down one on one than to have him tucked away in a battle line somewhere. Now that Dux Pater caught word that this son of a bitch was still alive and causing trouble for the Empire, ooooooooh man you know the fight they were in for must've been fuckin’ awesome. Cassius, either through the power of love or by triggering Dux Pater's asthma, you decide, miraculously made it out the victor. He tried desperately to appeal to Brutus, to apologize for failing him so badly, but Brutus obviously wasn't in a forgiving mood. He was not Cassius's failure, he insisted. Cassius did not kill Brutus, Dux Pater did. Since this metaphorical death of his former friend was about the closest thing Cassius was going to get to leaving on good terms, he bid his goodbye to “Dux”, and then fucked off back to his hole in Africa.
Interestingly, we find Dux Pater expressing a nearly identical sentiment in a story from Josephus. To set up the story, it's important to remember that Caesar’s conquests were often entirely on the back of Cleopatra's breadbasket. Rome's success was the Pharaoh's success, and Rome's failures were a bad return on Cleopatra's investment. Following the return of Phraates's daughter and the subsequent Parthian War, rebels began to spring up in the Levantine boundary between Caesar’s distracted army and Cleopatra's ambitions, and Dux Pater was dispatched to annihilate the queen's enemies. The most relevant incident occurred about five years after the Second Parthian War broke out, and Josephus provides us with what most scholars consider the most historically reliable account, albeit still interlaced with several mythological elements. His version goes that a Jewish rebel named Ezra bin Ephraim and his blind mentor Canaan were (a little sacrilegiously) investigating a ruined temple to the god Ba’al, basically looking for ways to fight the pagans with pagan magic. This is where Dux Pater found not just them, but also the rebel leader: a tired, aging Roman noblewoman named Claudia Pulchra.
This Claudia was, as it happened, the daughter of one Appius Claudius Pulcher, who was the father-in-law of Brutus once upon a time. The spicy drama that led to Brutus's divorce from Claudia ages ago was, tragically, lost to us from the start. That's part of why it was such a huge scandal at the time. It was fine for a man to divorce his wife, but to do so without any stated reason beyond “I just wanna hook up with Portia now” was unthinkable. If the dialogue that Josephus gives us is anything to go off of, though, the two clearly still had some unresolved emotions between each other. When Dux Pater once again pulled out the “Brutus was weak, I have destroyed him” card, Claudia drew a gladius and proclaimed that she would avenge her ex-husband's death. In the ensuing fight, her blade shattered half of his helmet, granting the former lovers one last glimmer of sexual tension as they stared into each other's eyes. Ezra and Canaan fled this godless place, while Claudia asserted to Brutus that she wouldn't leave him, not this time. Dux Pater, in turn, finalized the divorce by responding bluntly, “then you will die”. What exact fate befell Claudia afterwards is a bit unclear, as Josephus decides to follow Ezra's storyline instead. Later medieval chroniclers go off the rails with legends of her survival through some kind of weird time travel bullshit, but that'd be fucking stupid and nerf the potential to write any interesting interactions between these two characters who were once so close but split on similar yet irreconcilable paths forced to survive together one last time.
Over the next five years, rebel sects would spring up across Caesar’s many conquests, following in Parthia and Judea's footsteps. The Gauls had established a base of operations deep in the forest, from which they sought to launch a campaign against Lugdunum by way of Vindobona, but their alliance was weak and the Romans had an ace up their sleeves. Caesar conscripted his engineer Vitruvius to devise a blueprint for a new type of incendiary siege engine supposedly capable of annihilating an entire city in one fell swoop, reducing the settlement and all the citizens that may be “harboring rebels” to nought but ash. If the rebels wanted any chance of overthrowing the Roman war machine before the Empire could strike back, they needed a unifying figure, someone who could embody a new hope, and luckily, one had been raised over the past nineteen years. There was a reason Cassius chose the particular patch of desert that he did for his exile. Under his watch was a charge assigned to him with Portia's dying breaths, an unassuming farm boy that everyone back in his Roman birthplace believed had died long ago with his mother. You see, the light can never truly be extinguished, not forever. You can divert a river’s course, but it will always flow towards the sea. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, and even if one sun sets on the bleakest of days…
Another son will rise in its place.
Design notes, the majority of these uniforms are pulled straight from archaeological finds from the site at Andeua. Those masks in particular are obviously based off the famous Sturmtruppen Helmet which was likely worn by an Imperial soldier who fell in the Battle of Andora, six years after the battle at Vindobona. It's kinda impossible to mention this site without bringing up the hunt for Vitruvius’ siege engine. Many a treasure hunter has been convinced that the ruins of this hulking warship must surely lie at the bottom of the Tyrhenian waiting to be discovered, but little more than suggestive trinkets have been dredged up over the centuries. A lot of scholars are convinced nothing more can be found. Putting aside the debate about how realistic the logistics of constructing a sea-worthy vessel so large it makes you gasp “that's no mountain” would be, if we assume it did have a non-mythological counterpart, all of our accounts of the Battle of Andora remember Vitruvius's machine getting incinerated by the rebels. Now, we do find plenty of shipwrecks from this time period, which is why most scholars hypothesize that this detail was actually an embellished misremembering of a gigantic fleet, but then our primary sources also claim that this second draft of the siege engine was intentionally built to appear as incomplete to set a trap for the rebels, so I'm not sure how we'd be able to distinguish one giant scrap heap from a bunch of little ones anyway. I mean look, if it makes ya happy, get out there and get diggin’ man. May the Fates be with you.
Oh and, happy April Fools’ Day everyone.