Lucius was thrilled when he learned of his father's plan to send him to the Legion to become a Centurion. When his father then engaged Pertinax, a former gladiator, to serve as Lucius' sword-fighting tutor, he could hardly believe his luck. On a business trip to Massilia (Marseille), Lucius gets lost in the harbor district, where a gang of street urchins assails him, beating and robbing him. Gnaeus, Lucius' father, is in such a fury over his son's weakness and public humiliation that he bans him to the family vineyards, located close to Arausio. There, Saxum, a retired Legionnaire, and Pertinax are to toughen him up, body and soul, in preparation for the Legion. Should Lucius fail to gain the rank of Centurion, he will be condemned to working on the winery for the rest of his life. After two years of torture, ridicule and hardship, Lucius survives training and enters the Legion. Now his problems begin in earnest. Soon, Lucius cannot be certain which threat to his life is more imminent, the one outside or the one inside the Legion encampment. While fighting for the Roman Empire against the Raeti, Vindlicans and Germani, the devious Centurion Titus Valens makes his life within the Legion a living hell.

A collection of 21 papers written by Keppie during the last 30 years which reflect his interests in the settlement of Veterans in Italy during the Augustan period and in the legions of Roman Britain. The essays, based on a detailed scrutiny of the abundant epigraphic evidence, examine the changing role of the legions during the transformation from Republic to Empire, imperial legions in Britain and the East and the evidence for veteran colonies. Each paper, all but three previously published, retains its original format.

One of Rosemary Sutcliff's acclaimed books set in Roman Britain. The Eagle of the Ninth tells the story of a young Roman officer who sets out to discover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of the Ninth Legion, who marched into the mists of northern Britain and never came back. Rosemary Sutcliff spent most of her life in a wheelchair, suffering from the wasting Still's disease. She wrote her first book for children, The Queen's Story, in 1950 and went on to become a highly respected name in the field of children's literature. She received an OBE in 1975 and died at theage of 72 in 1992.

Bestselling author Harry Turtledove turns his attention to an epic battle that pits three Roman legions against Teutonic barbarians in a thrilling novel of Ancient Rome: Give Me Back My Legions! Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman politician, is summoned by the Emperor, Augustus Caesar. Given three legions and sent to the Roman frontier east of the Rhine, his mission is to subdue the barbarous German tribes where others have failed, and bring their land fully under Rome's control. Arminius, a prince of the Cherusci, is playing a deadly game. He serves in the Roman army, gaining Roman citizenship and officer's rank, and learning the arts of war and policy as practiced by the Romans. What he learns is essential for the survival of Germany, for he must unite his people against Rome before they become enslaved by the Empire and lose their way of life forever. An epic battle is brewing, and these two men stand on opposite sides of what will forever be known as The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest—a ferocious, bloody clash that will change the course of history.

Osprey's study of one of the most important battles of the long-elasting Germanic Wars (113 BC - 439 AD). Arminius, a young member of the Cheruscan tribe under the Roman Empire felt that Rome could be beaten in battle and that such a victory would guarantee the freedom of the Germans as a confederation of independent tribes, led by the Cheruscans, who would - in turn - be led by him. Throughout AD 8 and the early part of AD 9, Arminius used his position under the governor of Germania Inferior well, ostensibly promoting Rome whilst in reality welding the tribes together in an anti-Roman alliance, agreeing with his confederates that they would wait until the Roman garrison had moved to their summer quarters and then rise up against the invaders. With the arrival of September, the time soon came for the Roman troops to return to their stations along the Rhine and as they marched westwards through the almost impenetrable Teutoburg Forest, Arminius sprang his trap. In a series of running battles in the forest, Varus' army, consisting of three Roman Legions (XVII, XVIII and XIX) and several thousand auxiliaries - a total of roughly 20,000 men - was destroyed. The consequences for Rome were enormous - the province of Germania was now virtually undefended and Gaul was open to a German invasion which although it never materialized, led a traumatized Augustus to decree that, henceforth, the Rhine would remain the demarcation line between the Roman world and the German tribes, in addition to which the destroyed legions were never re-formed or their numbers reused in the Roman Army: after AD 9, the sequence of numbers would run from I to XVI and then from XX onwards, it was as if the three legions had never existed.

In AD 9 half of Rome's Western army was ambushed in a German forest and annihilated. Three legions, three cavalry units and six auxiliary regiments - some 25,000 men - were wiped out. It dealt a body blow to the empire's imperial pretensions and was Rome's greatest defeat. No other battle stopped the Roman empire dead in its tracks. Although one of the most significant and dramatic battles in European history, this is also one which has been largely overlooked. Drawing on primary sources and a vast wealth of new archaeological evidence, Adrian Murdoch brings to life the battle itself, the historical background and the effects of the Roman defeat as well as exploring the personalities of those who took part.

Even though relations between the Jewish people and the Roman state were sometimes strained to the point of warfare and bloodshed, Jewish military service between the 1st century BCE to the 6th century CE is attested by multiple sources.