Wrote this today. First draft. Anthropology day-in-the-life narrative assignment. Aint finished. Suggestions if you can/want. kthankz.



Rome.

Seven years in the Legion. Seven years spent serving the greatest civilization this world has ever known, declaring our greatness and triumph over the outer barbaric hordes. Spreading our will has taken diplomacy, it has taken democracy, it has taken the lives of thousands and it has been brought in meager part by my fist and gladius. As one of thousands I have marched with this duty. I have marched to the ends of Jupiter%u2019s earth. I have seen the fringe of his creations and I have sundered the abominations coughed forth from the bowels of the after lands. I have seen my brothers and fathers rise. I have seen them fall. I have seen the life drain from them, spreading as a crimson soak into the soil. My life has hinged upon appeasing the gods and serving the people of my homelands. Defending them, I have worked in tireless and honoring toil to uphold and preserve precious Rome. This has been my life%u2019s duty.

My name is Camillus Titianus and I am now no longer one of legions, not one of thousands, but one of hundreds. I am a Praetorian Guard. I am here to tell of my ascension to this position.

I had been home from the war with the western Gauls for a month, making my way as a laborer and butcher when I was approached by a messenger from the Forum. He was of slight build, meant for and apparently capable of nothing more tasking than senate foot work. The courier reached to me as I perused the market place under the hot mid day gaze of Apollo%u2019s skyward eye, wordlessly producing a small tablet etched with orders directly from the great Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus. As quickly as I accepted it the man had dissolved into the crowd, fleeting off for some other chore. My years of servitude, of unquestioning and abiding efforts in the name of Rome had been duly recognized by the leader of the empire.
Caesar was assembling a personal escort. One which would shadow his every step, guard his every slumber and forge his will in the city. The order told to report to the palace of Caesar within a fortnight for orientation. It told to expect considerable compensation for my work. It told to arrive in full Legion attire. It told that I would no longer live with my family.

This last mention told me that this was not a personal note, as if it were directed to me as a man it would know I had no family to miss. My mother%u2019s greatest sorrow after the death of my younger brother Lucius was that her children had produced none of their own. Years ago, kneeling beside her in the glow of the crackling hearth as she wheezed the last chokes of life into the air I ashamedly admitted that my life in the name of Rome gave no time for the romancing of a family.
Perhaps this is what gave me my determination on the field of battle. I had nothing to live for but the will of Rome. Most other men had families left behind in the trails of their marching. To some this gave strength, to others it sapped their drive. I have seen not just a few of my brothers lose the will to kill during a campaign only to be sent into the arms of Pluto by a more motivated foe.

I tucked the orders into the seam pocket of my tunic and continued my shopping. Plebeians screamed over the rush of the mixing market, casting calls for meats, breads, jewelry, beads and other goods. My grain stock had run low and so after ten minutes of walking I came upon the stand of a good friend of mine, the family farmer Nonus Maximillus. The Maximillus clan were broad and proud, a family of earth-workers who gained great favor in the eyes of the city by maintaining a generations old routine of not only selling for the common Roman but directly supplying the Legion and its administration with food stuffs at an admirable, almost sacrificially low price.

I%u2019d known Nonus since child schooling, he was a clever and energetic man who once had dreamt of serving Rome with sword and shield. This dream was shook from him a day after he turned sixteen. I was there to witness my friend%u2019s laming by a group of alley dwelling thugs led by one Terentius Crispus. Crispus had seen Nonus retire to his home with the beautiful Domitia Marina after a night of drunken revelry a week previous and burned with a jealous fervor.

As we walked forward to the arena one night, an unseen blow to the head drove me to the ground. I was drug from my momentary incapacitation by the screams of Nonus, who lay bleeding and clutching the ruin of his legs. In a broken blessing Nonus had remained lucid for the entire attack and after composing himself was able to identify the assailants. We knew Crispus as a lowlife who skulked about the seedier enotecas wiling the unwary out of their hard earned rations with rigged gambling games. A week later I silently introduced my father%u2019s utility dagger to Terentius%u2019s heart as he shuffled home, handicapped by his own excessive alcoholic debauchery. I disposed of his dead form through an opening to the cloaca maxima not twenty paces away.

Upon the sight of me, the seated Nonus shooed the other customers away from the front and emphatically barked a brotherly greeting. After our cursory greetings and conversation, the tradition of Maximillus generosity was demonstrated through a donated ten pound bag of grain. I informed Nonus of my very recent promotion to Praetorian, an achievement he deemed worthy of immediate celebration. Nonus had retained his ability to walk, or more appropriately plod, though not without heavy assistance from a cane.

I kept a slow pace with him and twenty minutes out of the city we turned to his farm home. Behind his respectably sized domus stretched ten acres of field filled with wheat, bean patches and a small vineyard. A number of goats and meat fowl strutted around the outside yard free of their pen to peck at weeds and worms. Upon entering his home, wife Domitia beamed with outward happiness and began preparing a meal. As we sat with the sun setting to our backs, Nonus called out for his sons to return from the field for the night. The brothers Vorenus and Antonius whom I hadn%u2019t seen since they stood at the height of a satyr were almost of age to hold their own home. They were quick to ask with youthful curiosity of my travels and times with the Legion. I told them of the recent battle of Actium, the confused fury in which Rome had lost its republic. I attempted to weave a scene of blood and brutality to null their aspirations of enlisting and remind them of the good life their old family had worked for years to provide.

Soon afterwards Domitia provided a bounty of lamb, honeyed bread and a strong home wine which had such a relaxing effect I do not recall the ensuing details of the night after my second glass. I spent the night at their stead and with the coming of the dawn glow left to return to my own home. An hour later I sat inside my house with my legionnaire%u2019s gear laid on the table. I painstakingly washed my bronze breastplate and used a bit of tallow to smooth the leather pauldrons. My sword, rinsed since its last killing, still had an encrusted gruel of viscera and blood near the hilt which would be seen as highly unsightly in the court of Caesar. I burnt a stick of incensing herbs under the brow of my helmet to rid it of the stench of the march. Armor washed and donned, I proceeded north to the marbled entrance of the citadel all the while steadying my own excitement for the circumstance to come.

Upon my initiating declaration and presentation of my orders, I was greeted by Celenius Falinos Commander of the 7th Legion, who led me past a courtyard filled with sparring soldiers and resting engines of war. In the great hall he brought me to were roughly five hundred other men, all clad in uniform, but not all the same. A horn blared and the mass of metal and men shifted into ranks. Revealed by the sudden organization was the man who had issued my re-engagement. At the head of the room Caesar stood in illustrious glory. A white toga flowed from his stance with a rich red silk embellishment running from shoulder to waist. Hail!