Arriving at the city after a three-day march, he was greeted at the gate by an honor guard of Roman soldiers, who led him and his seven thousand troops through the thronging streets of the ancient city under the watchful eyes of its curious citizens. At the gates of the palace that Marcellus and Ursicinus occupied along with their staff, the two generals stood on the front steps, in formal greeting of their Caesar, who was nominally their direct superior. The word 'greeting,' however, does not adequately describe their attitude, for the term typically implies a form of welcome, and, in cases involving a direct representative of the Augustus himself, should involve at least a certain degree of supplication. There was nothing of supplication, however, in the expressions and stances demonstrated by the two generals waiting for Julian.
The bulk of his troops halted and stood at regal attention, arrayed by company, in the enormous courtyard in front of the forbidding palace, which was actually the former outer walls of an ancient military fortress that had been overtaken and encompassed by the growing city around it. The walls and battlements, themselves no longer performing the defensive task for which they had been built centuries before, had had their outer stones redressed and artfully plastered as befitted the elegant administrative headquarters of a sophisticated major regional city; yet they still retained the imposing height and thickness of the fortress they once guarded.
Julian's coterie of 'senior officers,' twenty or thirty grizzled centurions he had pulled out of retirement from their allotted farms around Vienne and pressed into service with a promise of promotion and double wages, walked their horses to the foot of the stairs with him, where he motioned them to halt, but to remain mounted. He himself dismounted, as did Sallustius, and side by side the two strode up the long flight of stone steps to the portico, where the generals stood at attention, watching them coldly.
If ever I have seen the eye of a dead man, and I have seen plenty, it was nothing compared with the cold, lifeless stare of Marcellus as he observed Julian approaching him from below. A short, stocky man of middle age, with a dark shadow of beard showing beneath the cheek plates of his ceremonial helmet, he stood squarely, chest thrust, shoulders back, drawn up to his full height, and utterly motionless with the exception of his small, dark eyes. His twitchy gaze as it passed between Sallustius and Julian was all the more bright and disturbing as it gleamed from under the dark foreridge of the headgear.
Ursicinus, the former commander whom Constantius had ordered kept in his position as an adviser to Marcellus, was easier to read. Several inches taller than his younger colleague, he too was stocky and swarthy, though his weight appeared not to be of the hard-muscled variety, but rather of the softness of age, of one having served too long in the military in regions requiring little physical challenge on the part of the local garrisons. His face was paler and somewhat plumper, and his eyes, too, darted back and forth between Julian and Sallustius, though with more than a hint of amusement in them, and a slight upturn to the corners of the mouth.
'Hail, Caesar!' Marcellus said loudly when Julian and Sallustius arrived at the top of the stairs. I noticed, however, that the general was facing Sallustius when he said this, and that Julian even stepped slightly to the side, perhaps out of amusement. 'As general of the Roman army in Gaul, I bid you welcome to the stronghold of Reims, which the barbarians tremble to approach and where the townspeople live in peace and safety under the protection of the twenty-five thousand troops serving the mighty Emperor Constantius. Greetings, Caesar, and all hail!' He then swept low and stepped to the side, beckoning for Sallustius to pass and enter the Great Hall.
To my amazement, I realized that General Marcellus had somehow confused the two men, though upon further reflection I admit that this is not as astonishing as it may sound. Sallustius had spent most of his career in the eastern theater of operations and was unknown to Marcellus, and of course Julian had never had any exposure to the military ranks at all before arriving in Vienne a few months before. Marcellus had most likely been apprised of Julian's promotion through a dry military dispatch, which lacked any sort of physical description of the new Caesar. Believing him to be a mere figurehead, there is really no reason why Marcellus should have been concerned with the prospect of meeting Julian personally. And when the occasion did arise, he simply assumed that the more regal- looking of the two men — Sallustius — was the Caesar.
Sallustius stared at Marcellus silently for a moment, deciding how best to disabuse the general of his misplaced identification, and then glanced slyly over to Julian. Julian gave Sallustius a quick, expressionless, almost imperceptible wink.
Sallustius nodded slightly to the two generals and strode imperiously past them into the Great Hall, and Julian began to step into place behind him. Marcellus and Ursicinus quickly closed ranks with their own bodies directly behind Sallustius, however, and marched him into the palace, leaving Julian to trail in the rear. As he disappeared behind the enormous, bronze-sheathed doors guarding the palace's entrance, he gave a quick look back at the troops, his face betraying only the slightest hint of amusement. Scattered titters rose from those in the front ranks on the steps below who were able to see and hear the brief ceremony of welcome, and then the palace guards stepped back into their places before the doors and snapped to attention, glaring haughtily down the steps at the battle-stained men before them. The troops broke formation and sat where they were in the middle of the forum, trading loud wisecracks with the starched and polished garrison, who remained at attention around them. The garrison troops' shining armor, clean-shaven jaws, and immaculately tanned strap leather were in sharp contrast to the grimy, sweat-drenched veterans who had accompanied Julian from routing the barbarians in three cities.
I regret, Brother, that I was unable to be a fly on the wall at this initial meeting with his army's two top generals, though I later heard snatches of what transpired from comments dropped by Sallustius. Although Ursicinus wisely remained silent for most of the conversation, in his role as observer, Marcellus, apparently, made a regular fool of himself. He spoke endlessly without letting the others get in a word, alternately fawning on Sallustius as the presumed Caesar, and patronizing him as the militarily ignorant cousin of the Emperor, who would be learning under the expertise of himself, the true military strategist.
The truth became apparent only when Marcellus stopped to catch his breath, preparing to dismiss his presumptive superior and the casually dressed young lackey tagging behind. At that point, Julian stepped forward.
'Thank you, General, for your warm welcome of both myself and my adviser Sallustius,' he said, and Sallustius bowed to Marcellus as the general stared in astonishment. 'I am indeed grateful for your military preparedness, though I might have been more impressed had you used your twenty-five thousand soldiers to rid your territory of barbarians, which I have somehow been able to do with a handful of retired veterans over the past four weeks.'
Marcellus mouthed silent protests like a fish gasping out of water, and the meeting only further degenerated from there. After an hour, I heard scattered shouts as the men around me began to gather their weapons and stand, and looking up I saw that the four leaders had emerged, though in quite a different order of appearance than before. Julian marched first out the brass doors, looking younger than before, if possible, his eyes flashing as he gazed down proudly at his troops. Sallustius stood just behind and to his right, his brooding presence impassive as ever, his dark eyes betraying no hint of any emotion as he stared calmly out at the men gathered in the forum.
Behind them walked Marcellus, stoop-shouldered and with a haggard face, like one whose diet consists of too much lard and insufficient fruit. His gaze avoided his own wondering troops lining the outside of the forum. He focused instead, with an expression of muted fury, on the animated face of Julian, whose arms were now raised as he motioned the troops to silence. Ursicinus, standing beside Marcellus, bore an expression of slight bemusement.
'Soldiers!' Julian shouted, and the men's shouts and calls gradually died to a subdued murmur. 'Soldiers! I address you not as 'gentlemen,' as did Xenophon when exhorting his troops, nor as 'countrymen,' as does the Emperor, but with the proudest title a Roman can bear: 'Soldiers!''
The men cheered lustily. Julian sought out my eyes in the crowd and smiled slightly. His stance and gestures as he stood before the troops were somewhat awkward and contrived, the pose of a student calmly debating a belabored point of sophistry before a like-minded crowd of academics. Still, I noticed as he raised his hands to quiet the troops that he consciously mimicked the broad, sweeping arm motions and commanding jut of the chin that had so well served Constantius, who himself was a master orator. Julian's trump was his youth and confidence, his open sincerity with his men. With a little practice and coaching, I reflected, young Julian would be giving even the Emperor a run for his money.
'For too long,' he continued as the men gradually fell silent, 'you have been serving inside your walls; for too long you have been on the defensive; for too long you have been eating preserved rations from the quartermaster, polishing your armor, maintaining your fitness by combat among yourselves, unable to prove your superiority against the barbarians just outside your gates. For too long, soldiers, the Alemanni have failed to feel the fury and the might of the Roman army. They have strayed with impunity beyond their borders, ravaging the countryside and
