'Sallustius, assume you were in my shoes. What would you do now?'
The man spoke as if he had been waiting for precisely that question.
'You are the Caesar. You have been legitimately appointed, duly invested. Regardless of your experience, or lack of it, you have been given command of a province. You must identify your opportunities, seize the authority due you, and fill your role — the role of a Caesar.'
Julian stared at him, wide-eyed, in silence. 'That's the first time anyone has honestly said, in so many words, what I myself have felt ever since I was appointed to this wretched post.'
'Because it's the truth. Your very survival depends upon it. And what is more — so does Rome's.'
Julian took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Already, I could see, he was beginning to like and, more important, to trust this stranger. A hint of a smile appeared at his lips.
'Since you seem to have no qualms about speaking frankly, Sallustius, I will ask you again, and perhaps this time you will be more specific: If you were in my place, what would you do?'
Sallustius met his gaze and spoke quietly and evenly.
'First, make this mob march like a Roman cohort, or we will be meat for the barbarian wolves when we descend through the Alps.'
'Can you do that?'
He thought for a moment. 'I am not a professional military man, but yes, I have served my tours of duty. We will need to take some time off from the march to train. I'll need three weeks.'
Julian scoffed. 'It will soon be December. The passes will be closed by snow in a matter of days. I'll give you one week.'
'Fair enough.'
'And what would you have me do — be a soldier as well?'
'That, Caesar, is up to you. If you order me to, I will.'
'I order you to. A good, solid Roman soldier. What should I do?'
'You may not wish to hear it.'
'I am a philosopher. I take what life gives me.'
The man paused and took a deep breath. Then he turned directly to Julian.
'Very well. First, get your ass out of that chair.'
Julian stared in astonishment, and then the wry smile crept back to the corners of his mouth. Reverting to Latin, he called out to his bearers to stop and set him down.
With a collective sigh of relief, the entire procession stopped immediately, and the ascetics collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, praising God all the while. Julian stepped out of his sedan chair. I noticed the curtains on Helena's chair part, and her gauzily veiled face peer out curiously.
Sallustius dismounted and stood before him, towering over him by a full head.
'Next, remove the toga.'
At this, Julian himself breathed an audible sigh of relief and stripped off the fussy ceremonial garment, with which he was forever fidgeting and tugging to keep properly aligned on his shoulders. He called to one of the sedan-bearers, who rummaged around in the duffel bag inside the compartment until he located an old, threadbare school tunic and a wool cloak, which Julian donned as protection from the air's coolness.
Sallustius stood appraising the Caesar's body critically, noting the thin chest and legs, the beginnings of a paunch.
'Are you fit?' he asked, somewhat doubtfully.
'I travel with my physician,' Julian answered confidently, nodding at me. Sallustius looked briefly at me and snorted.
'That's not what I asked,' he said. 'I need to know how strong you are. A weak body burdens the mind. The art of medicine has caused more harm in the world than all the sicknesses it claims to heal. I don't know what illnesses physicians are capable of healing, beyond binding up battle wounds, which I can do myself. But I do know the diseases they cause: laziness, credulity, fear of death. I don't care if they can make cadavers walk; what your crew needs is men, and your physician can't give us that.'
Julian stood thunderstruck at this diatribe. He glanced at me with uncertainty, though under Sallustius' fierce glare he seemed unable to pronounce a challenge. Finally he found his voice.
'Homer said that one physician is worth many men.'
'Then let Homer lead your troops.'
Julian sighed in resignation. 'What next?' he grumbled.
'No court sandals.'
He looked down in surprise at his feet. He had worn the thin-soled, loosely strapped footwear his entire life, and it had never occurred to him that any other might be necessary.
'I can't go barefoot.'
Sallustius looked back down the train and spied one of the supply wagons stopped a short distance away. Trotting over to it, he conferred briefly with the slave driving its mules, who flipped back a tarpaulin and began rummaging in some crates in the back, finally locating what Sallustius was seeking. He then trotted back to the Emperor, who was standing rather sheepishly before the staring crowd of ascetics and his wife, and handed him a pair of Roman army sandals.
Julian whistled audibly as he hefted them: a full half-inch of tanned ox hide, stiff as a board, with dozens of hobnails protruding from the sole for a better grip. Brass fittings protected the toe tips, and thick, pliable leather straps wrapped the ankle and calf almost to the knee. He tied the straps, then stood and stomped a few steps, stiff-legged.
'They feel like boats on my feet. Heavy boats.' Then he slowly smiled. 'Roman boats.'
'You asked me what you should do.'
'So I did. Now what?'
'Now march.'
III
Thus began peaceful, scholarly Julian's ascent as a soldier, and it is doubtful that there had ever been a more inauspicious beginning to a warrior's career since Telemachus, who was denied the firm guidance of his kingly father Odysseus until the day he was suddenly thrust into battle against Penelope's hundred thirty-six suitors.
His training under Sallustius commenced, and the difficulty of the master's regime was exceeded only by the student's stubbornness. The Caesar had never in his life experienced the slightest physical hardship. Until this time, all his training had been of the mind: courses of philosophy, rhetoric and composition, Greek literary works of good authorship. You may have heard it sometimes argued that children of lesser parentage should not be educated, on the grounds that their best hopes for advancement are in the military. As the old saying goes, 'A scholar made is a soldier betrayed.' Such people point to the most fearsome of the barbarian nations, the Franks and the Huns, whose leaders are all soldiers by training and custom, and who denigrate book learning as unworthy of their skills. To my knowledge, however, in almost all cases truly successful military leaders are educated to at least some degree, or if they are not, they are ashamed of their ignorance and seek to remedy it.
Certainly Julian's education had not neglected the military classics, such as Thucydides' recounting of the war of thrice nine years between Sparta and Athens, and Themistogenes' shameless embellishment of Xenophon's Persian campaign. Nor was he ignorant of the devastation that had been wreaked on the Roman people by the Germanic tribes over the centuries: the loss of five entire armies, all commanded by Consuls; the destruction even of the supreme general Varus and three legions; how though the Germanics had actually been defeated several times, by Caius Marius in Italy, Julius in Gaul, and Tiberius and Germanicus in their native territories, it had been accomplished only with great difficulty and enormous loss of Roman life. Julian was well versed in strategic theory, the uses and benefits of diplomatic policy and coercion to facilitate military aims, and other such grand issues as are discussed at length in the classics. But when one's entire marching force in hostile territory consists of three hundred sixty footsore ascetics, and one's very survival is at stake, such lessons in international political theory and strategic military alliances are of little import. What Sallustius would seek to impress upon him both now and in the
