stration: FIG.99--A Roman General.]

Our friend Scius goes through the drill, the exercises, and the hard
work already mentioned. His pay will be somewhere about L8 a year, or
a little over three shillings a week, and his food will consist mainly
of wheaten porridge and bread, with salt, and a drink of thin sour
wine little better than vinegar. His wheat--the price of which is
deducted from his pay--is measured out to him every month, and it is
his own business to grind it or get it ground and converted into
bread. Vegetables he will procure as he likes or can; but meat, except
a limited amount of bacon, he will commonly neither get nor very much
desire. On one occasion indeed we find the soldiers complaining that
they were being fed altogether too much upon meat. It deserves to be
remarked that the results speak well for the wholesomeness of this
simple diet of the legionary. For his quarters he will be one of ten
sharing the same tent under the supervision of a kind of corporal.
There are no married quarters. Not only are women not permitted in the
camp, but the soldier cannot legally marry during his term of service.

[Illustration: FIG. 100.--CENTURION.]

Scius will meet with no gentle treatment while in his pupilage. The
grim centurion, or commander of his company, is a man of iron, who has
risen from the ranks; his methods are sharp and summary, and he
carries a tough switch of vine-wood, with which he promptly belabours
the idle or the stupid. Any neglect of duty or act of disobedience is
inevitably Punished, sometimes by hard labour in digging trenches,
sometimes by a fine, sometimes by stripping the soldier of his armour
and making him stand for hours in civilian attire as a butt for
ridicule in the middle of the camp, sometimes by a lowering of his
rank corresponding to the modern taking away of a "man's stripes." If
a soldier proves a hopeless case he is expelled with ignominy from the
camp and army. If he deserts or plays the traitor he may either be
decapitated or beaten to death with cudgels. If a whole company or
regiment gets into disgrace, it may have to put up with barley
instead of wheat for its rations, and if it is guilty of gross
insubordination, or of some crime which cannot be sheeted home to the
individual, it may be "decimated," or, in other words, every tenth
man, drawn by lot, may be condemned to death. The last, of course, is
an extreme measure, and is only mentioned here as belonging to e