FIC: Chosen Man (The Eagle, Esca/Marcus, NC-17)
Title: Chosen Man
Author: Sineala
Fandom: The Eagle
Pairing: Esca/Marcus
Rating: NC-17
Length: 116,551 words
Spoilers: Nothing beyond character backgrounds; you can probably read this without any knowledge of canon whatsoever. The characterizations are based on the film, though.
Disclaimer: Marcus and Esca were created by Rosemary Sutcliff; I wrote the rest.
Contains: Violence, in battle scenes, of an explicitness approximately equivalent to that of canon. Death of original characters, including an assisted suicide (battlefield triage). One scene of military discipline (corporal punishment; Marcus is required to beat Esca) that is very upsetting for all characters involved. I have therefore warned for Graphic Violence on AO3. If you would like more detail regarding any element of the story, please feel free to ask me. I will also say that the romantic relationship in this story is of a vaguely D/s flavor, in the way that penetration and dominance and so on are all conflated. So, yes, there is powerplay.
Summary: The son of the man who lost the Eagle of the Ninth would never be allowed a first command of his very own fort, would he?
Marcus is posted not to Isca Dumnoniorum, but to a wretched and run-down garrison north of the Wall. There he finds that he is the new centurion of a group of scouts and spies, all of them British. He has few supplies and no experience. His men distrust him. His superiors despise him. His second-in-command is an incompetent drunkard. And the local tribes are determined to kill all of them.
But the worst thing of all is one of Marcus' soldiers. He is an enigmatic, dangerous, and insubordinate man by the name of Esca, who makes Marcus yearn for terrifying things he has never before wanted and can never, ever let himself have...
Notes: I would like to thank all the people who helped me make it through the writing and editing of this, including but not limited to: ainsoph15, augustbird, carmarthen, gelishan, linaerys, lysimache, nikki4noo, piscaria, savvierthanu. At this point, most of you are no longer in this fandom, which is what I get for waiting two years to post a story. :) Thanks for (as applicable) brainstorming with me, looking up canon facts, cheerleading, handing me links to relevant articles, reading the draft and telling me to keep going, translating Livy and Vegetius, and sitting there listening to me whine. I couldn't have done it without you!
Some beta-editing courtesy of the truly heroic Lishan and Carmarthen. And special thanks as always to Lysimache (♥) for putting up with me, and also for supplying me with many, many books on Rome and Roman Britain. All remaining errors are my own.
Thanks also to motetus for the amazing, amazing artwork that accompanies this story. It depicts a scene approximately halfway through Chapter 4, but nonetheless is not really spoilery (it's Marcus and Esca in uniform), so if you want to go stare at it now, you should. And then tell her she did an awesome job, because oh my God the chain mail. I am not sure if she's making her own art post, so I have uploaded a copy here.
Oh, right, the story:
Read Chosen Man on the Archive of Our Own.
More Notes:
This AU springs from two points of canon divergence. The first should be fairly obvious from the summary: what if Marcus had a really lousy posting north of the Wall, instead? The other, more major change involves Esca's backstory and how he comes to be in the army -- since he is obviously not a slave. This is revealed in the course of the story.
This story portrays Marcus as fairly submissive, because, uh, that's pretty much the characterization I was into when I wrote this thing two years ago. I think it's a fun characterization! This would be submission as the Romans reckon it, with all attendant conflation. Plus, I figure AGH I WANT WHAT is a good way to increase dramatic tension.
I would like to say at this juncture that I am not a classicist and do not play one on TV; all my academic expertise is in linguistics. So, um, I tried!
Also, any similarities to the plot of Frontier Wolf are purely coincidental; I deliberately refrained from reading that until I'd finished writing this. I seem to have borrowed all the same locations and tribes. Whoops. And really, who doesn't like "disgraced dude gets Worst Command Ever" as a setup?
You may note that I have been very imprecise about exactly what cohort ("the tenth") Marcus' century is in. This is because it is entirely fictional. As far as I can determine from the Wikipedia list of Roman auxiliary regiments, there was never a tenth cohort of anything, anywhere, and I am fine with that. They are clearly sharing space with some of the unmounted Gallic units, though -- this would be something like V or VI Gallorum, not the IV Gallorum from canon (they're part-mounted, and furthermore were actually garrisoned at Vindolanda, as far as I can tell), not that I know if any of them were attached to Legio VI Victrix. VI Victrix was headquartered in Eburacum, so they are the likeliest affiliated legion for my imaginary cohort, or at least the furthest north). Besides, the tenth is clearly the Worst Cohort Ever and I don't want to besmirch anyone's good name.
There were Britons in the army, but after the revolt of the Batavi in 69, auxiliaries were no longer posted to the areas they'd been recruited in (IIRC the British cohorts were all in Dacia), therefore Esca's presence in the army proper (even the auxiliaries) in Britain is unlikely. Even as a spy or a scout, because as far as I can tell, intelligence units (which were, yes, made up of locals) were also commanded by locals in their own languages, and were probably a numerus rather than an actual century, and therefore not technically in the army in quite the same way. (My handwave-y explanation for story purposes is that Rome wanted local scouts, but they were paranoid enough about their loyalty that they wanted them in the official power structure so that they could be sure to get Romans commanding them on the ground. Whee, I am making stuff up.)
Right, so nothing about the particulars of the military structure is very likely. But, come on, I wanted Marcus in command of Esca in a command structure that is better-documented (and therefore easier to write about), so I'm hoping you can suspend disbelief.
Having said that, I would like to point out that there is epigraphic evidence for a man from the Brigantes serving in an auxiliary cohort in Britain at the approximate time of this story. North of the wall, even. Sometimes the truth really is that weird. (RIB 2142: "To the Spirits of the Departed. Nectovelius, son of Vindex, aged 29, nine years a soldier, a Brigantian, served in the Second Thracian Cohort.")
Also I totally made stuff up about what scouts do. You can probably tell.
More made up things: the temporary loss of an Eagle, because we are pretty sure which battles Rome ever lost standards in. (Most famously that would be Carrhae and Teutoburg, but there are a few others.) Furthermore, all the fighting here is invented anyway. Whee, fiction. Also I think generally the Votadini were actually friendlier than the Selgovae to Roman interests, but in a tip of the hat to Guern and his people, I thought maybe the Selgovae should be the nice ones. (Plus, have you read Frontier Wolf? Those Votadini are badass.)
You probably know this, but if Roman soldiers ever saluted they probably didn't salute the way we think they did. In this case, accuracy can bite me.
I was going to include a note here about how I was probably exaggerating Roman racism and general distrust of the various Celtic peoples for dramatic effect, but I have recently read a Livy passage where he invents a speech for a commander fighting the Gauls as saying that you cannot make them into allies once you've conquered them with arms, like the Latins or the Sabines: "We have drawn swords against wild beasts. Their blood must be drained or ours given." So, yeah, I'm willing to believe they could hate the Britons a lot. Wild beasts.
(Native Britons also tended not to be promoted very high, is my general impression; I have references for the tombstone of one centurion but that's all.)
They are at one of the temporary camps at the very small fort (no surviving name, as far as I know) at modern Cappuck, close to Trimontium (Newstead). This may actually have been closer to Votadini territory than Selgovae (maps: they are hard to read), but I figure if Sutcliff did it, so can I, and besides, I can spell Trimontium correctly. Also I am assuming that, this being 140, Trimontium was manned again; there is evidence of Antonine habitation.
Also there is no historical evidence, as far as I am aware, for the particular events of the story -- the treaties, the uprisings, and so on. (The super-big-picture historical events -- Cartimandua, Bar Kokhba, the Batavian revolts -- are all real, though.) Generally there were some problems around this time with "civilizing" the Votadini, so, hey, maybe something like this could have happened. But, you know, I made it all up. Including all the people. The VI Victrix was a real legion, though.
If Marcus learned to shoot at all, he probably really did learn the Mediterranean draw. However, I wanted to give him something he could be hilariously bad at first.
Foreign languages: What Latin there is is generally limited to titles and is, in my opinion, easy enough to figure out from context. There is some Greek that is perhaps a little less evident. The line in Homeric Greek is very famous and therefore Google-able, but Laetinianus' question in Koine to Marcus -- ἆρ᾽ οὐ μισεῖς αὐτούς; -- is not. It means "You hate them, don't you?" (Thanks to Lysimache and Thisprettywren for telling me what the Greek version of nonne was.)
Astute readers may also note that I have assumed Brythonic (British) to be SVO, possibly also V2. There is some evidence for this in Gaulish (see Koch (1991), "On the Prehistory of Brittonic Syntax," in Fife and Poppe, eds., Studies in Brythonic Word Order), even though one of the hallmarks of Celtic generally is that it is VSO. I am not now and have never been a Celticist. Or, technically, a syntactician. But I find Koch's argument convincing. Either way it's going to sound weird to Marcus, what with him being a native speaker of at least one and probably two SOV languages.
Also, there is one quotation from the Aeneid in a fairly apt place. Try to find it! Winner gets, um, my admiration.
Resources (Or: How to write about the Roman army using things you can probably find on your very own Internet, kids! Okay, also your public library! Or in my case, the used bookstore.)
Print:
J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary
Useful for dirty words and also a couple idioms that made it in.
Julian Bennett, Towns in Roman Britain
As the title suggests.
David J. Breeze, Forts in Roman Britain
Forts! With maps!
A. R. Burn, The Romans in Britain: An Anthology of Inscriptions
Or: how I found out, after writing the story, that I wasn't actually making it all up when I put some Brigantes in the auxiliaries north of Hadrian's Wall. (They were there! Really! Yes, in the army! It's so cool.)
Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts
I think this was the book where all the information on Celtic feast customs came from. And I didn't even put in the really wacky ones!
Paul Erdkamp (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Army
Hooray! All of the Blackwell Companions on every subject ever are really good. You know this is true. (Or at least, I can vouch for the linguistics ones; I am not a classicist, but these look good to me. My favorite part here is the article about record-keeping.)
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army
More army! More! More!
Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition
Because it's always good to look stuff up.
S. Ireland, Roman Britain: A Sourcebook
Basically, many many things written about or in Britannia, in translation. A lot of people built many sections of wall.
C. M. H. Millar (ed.), The Roman Army: Selections from Various Latin Authors
I am not sure this is widely-available, or useful to most people (it's in Latin), but I had a lot of fun with it. It is a reader for 1950s schoolboys with selections from Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Frontinus, Tacitus, and Vegetius, all about the army. It's divided into various sections about recruiting, famous battles, daily life, and so on. It is pretty awesome. Whee, primary sources.
Sara Elise Phang, Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate
It is more scholarly than most of the rest of these, but I was using it as a source for information on discipline -- what the punishments were and what they were for. (I know Eagle canon is way later than this, but I am hoping discipline didn't change that much.)
David S. Potter (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Empire
I really liked the Richlin article on sexuality here, but I would.
T. W. Potter and Catherine Johns, Roman Britain
Pretty pictures from the British Museum! Pretty pretty pictures!
Amy Richlin, "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law Against Love Between Men."
She has an awesome view of homosexuality as an identity as well as a behavior in Rome. I like it, so it shows up in my stories a lot.
H. H. Scullard, Roman Britain: Outpost of the Empire
Some pretty pictures, mostly a lot of text. Your basic history.
Rose Mary Sheldon, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods, but Verify
Weirdly, most of it wasn't relevant, as it is generally about domestic spying on other Romans as well as explicit wartime intelligence failures. It's a very good book anyway, though.
Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History
A decent general overview.
Graham Sumner, Roman Army: Wars of the Empire (Brassey's History of Uniforms)
If you like Roman armor, this is the best book ever. Armor! All armor, all the time! Glorious pictures! Discussions of who wore what! Did I mention the pictures? There's a picture of an optio. Optiones are my new kink.
Graham Sumner, Roman Military Dress
What the army wore when it wasn't wearing armor.
John Wacher, Roman Britain
This one had some good fort maps.
Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality
I think this is the standard reference on same-sex behavior in Rome. It has... a lot of information. Relevant bits for me were mostly the stuff about the Marian soldier (Trial of Trebonius), which... yeesh, Rome.
Websites
Celtic Personal Names of Roman Britain
Pretty much all the British names came from here, until I ran out of names and started composing them myself using a reconstructed Gallo-Brittonic Lexicon and a basic knowledge of morphology. My theory about Celtic names is that it don't count if it don't end in -rix, yo. Also one of my characters is named Penis King. (The Roman names mostly came from a list of attested cognomina. I just picked the ones I liked, and then afterwards it was pointed out that I have Tribune Piggy and Optio Love Happy. Oops.)
Lacus Curtius
Hooray, online encyclopedia! What did I take from here? Um. Possibly funerary customs.
Legio VI Victrix /Legio XX Online Handbook for Legionaries / Legio XXIV
Do you know who's already done the hard work figuring out what bits of clothing are period? That's right, the re-enactors! I hope they don't check their referral logs!
Roman Britain
More general information! This site is awesome. There is information on every fort ever. Check out the maps! Sure, OmnesViae and ORBIS have better, fancier route planners, but this has a page about every fort in Britannia.
Roman Scotland
More information, plus I think I got more fort maps from here.
Vindolanda Tablets Online
If you would like to read some daily correspondence from an actual fort on the Wall, the Vindolanda tablets are awesome. Come to my birthday party! Mommy, send socks!
Vegetius: De Re Militari
Okay, so Vegetius is many many many years post-period and he was never actually in the army, so therefore it may all be lies, but he wanted to write about what it was like in the army in the good old days when men were men and forts were built properly. Here is an English translation.
Wikipedia's maps: 1, 2, 3, 4
The Wiki maps are surprisingly good.
I am pretty sure I had more books than this, but I no longer remember them.
Hope you enjoy the story!
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments
Author: Sineala
Fandom: The Eagle
Pairing: Esca/Marcus
Rating: NC-17
Length: 116,551 words
Spoilers: Nothing beyond character backgrounds; you can probably read this without any knowledge of canon whatsoever. The characterizations are based on the film, though.
Disclaimer: Marcus and Esca were created by Rosemary Sutcliff; I wrote the rest.
Contains: Violence, in battle scenes, of an explicitness approximately equivalent to that of canon. Death of original characters, including an assisted suicide (battlefield triage). One scene of military discipline (corporal punishment; Marcus is required to beat Esca) that is very upsetting for all characters involved. I have therefore warned for Graphic Violence on AO3. If you would like more detail regarding any element of the story, please feel free to ask me. I will also say that the romantic relationship in this story is of a vaguely D/s flavor, in the way that penetration and dominance and so on are all conflated. So, yes, there is powerplay.
Summary: The son of the man who lost the Eagle of the Ninth would never be allowed a first command of his very own fort, would he?
Marcus is posted not to Isca Dumnoniorum, but to a wretched and run-down garrison north of the Wall. There he finds that he is the new centurion of a group of scouts and spies, all of them British. He has few supplies and no experience. His men distrust him. His superiors despise him. His second-in-command is an incompetent drunkard. And the local tribes are determined to kill all of them.
But the worst thing of all is one of Marcus' soldiers. He is an enigmatic, dangerous, and insubordinate man by the name of Esca, who makes Marcus yearn for terrifying things he has never before wanted and can never, ever let himself have...
Notes: I would like to thank all the people who helped me make it through the writing and editing of this, including but not limited to: ainsoph15, augustbird, carmarthen, gelishan, linaerys, lysimache, nikki4noo, piscaria, savvierthanu. At this point, most of you are no longer in this fandom, which is what I get for waiting two years to post a story. :) Thanks for (as applicable) brainstorming with me, looking up canon facts, cheerleading, handing me links to relevant articles, reading the draft and telling me to keep going, translating Livy and Vegetius, and sitting there listening to me whine. I couldn't have done it without you!
Some beta-editing courtesy of the truly heroic Lishan and Carmarthen. And special thanks as always to Lysimache (♥) for putting up with me, and also for supplying me with many, many books on Rome and Roman Britain. All remaining errors are my own.
Thanks also to motetus for the amazing, amazing artwork that accompanies this story. It depicts a scene approximately halfway through Chapter 4, but nonetheless is not really spoilery (it's Marcus and Esca in uniform), so if you want to go stare at it now, you should. And then tell her she did an awesome job, because oh my God the chain mail. I am not sure if she's making her own art post, so I have uploaded a copy here.
Oh, right, the story:
Read Chosen Man on the Archive of Our Own.
More Notes:
This AU springs from two points of canon divergence. The first should be fairly obvious from the summary: what if Marcus had a really lousy posting north of the Wall, instead? The other, more major change involves Esca's backstory and how he comes to be in the army -- since he is obviously not a slave. This is revealed in the course of the story.
This story portrays Marcus as fairly submissive, because, uh, that's pretty much the characterization I was into when I wrote this thing two years ago. I think it's a fun characterization! This would be submission as the Romans reckon it, with all attendant conflation. Plus, I figure AGH I WANT WHAT is a good way to increase dramatic tension.
I would like to say at this juncture that I am not a classicist and do not play one on TV; all my academic expertise is in linguistics. So, um, I tried!
Also, any similarities to the plot of Frontier Wolf are purely coincidental; I deliberately refrained from reading that until I'd finished writing this. I seem to have borrowed all the same locations and tribes. Whoops. And really, who doesn't like "disgraced dude gets Worst Command Ever" as a setup?
You may note that I have been very imprecise about exactly what cohort ("the tenth") Marcus' century is in. This is because it is entirely fictional. As far as I can determine from the Wikipedia list of Roman auxiliary regiments, there was never a tenth cohort of anything, anywhere, and I am fine with that. They are clearly sharing space with some of the unmounted Gallic units, though -- this would be something like V or VI Gallorum, not the IV Gallorum from canon (they're part-mounted, and furthermore were actually garrisoned at Vindolanda, as far as I can tell), not that I know if any of them were attached to Legio VI Victrix. VI Victrix was headquartered in Eburacum, so they are the likeliest affiliated legion for my imaginary cohort, or at least the furthest north). Besides, the tenth is clearly the Worst Cohort Ever and I don't want to besmirch anyone's good name.
There were Britons in the army, but after the revolt of the Batavi in 69, auxiliaries were no longer posted to the areas they'd been recruited in (IIRC the British cohorts were all in Dacia), therefore Esca's presence in the army proper (even the auxiliaries) in Britain is unlikely. Even as a spy or a scout, because as far as I can tell, intelligence units (which were, yes, made up of locals) were also commanded by locals in their own languages, and were probably a numerus rather than an actual century, and therefore not technically in the army in quite the same way. (My handwave-y explanation for story purposes is that Rome wanted local scouts, but they were paranoid enough about their loyalty that they wanted them in the official power structure so that they could be sure to get Romans commanding them on the ground. Whee, I am making stuff up.)
Right, so nothing about the particulars of the military structure is very likely. But, come on, I wanted Marcus in command of Esca in a command structure that is better-documented (and therefore easier to write about), so I'm hoping you can suspend disbelief.
Having said that, I would like to point out that there is epigraphic evidence for a man from the Brigantes serving in an auxiliary cohort in Britain at the approximate time of this story. North of the wall, even. Sometimes the truth really is that weird. (RIB 2142: "To the Spirits of the Departed. Nectovelius, son of Vindex, aged 29, nine years a soldier, a Brigantian, served in the Second Thracian Cohort.")
Also I totally made stuff up about what scouts do. You can probably tell.
More made up things: the temporary loss of an Eagle, because we are pretty sure which battles Rome ever lost standards in. (Most famously that would be Carrhae and Teutoburg, but there are a few others.) Furthermore, all the fighting here is invented anyway. Whee, fiction. Also I think generally the Votadini were actually friendlier than the Selgovae to Roman interests, but in a tip of the hat to Guern and his people, I thought maybe the Selgovae should be the nice ones. (Plus, have you read Frontier Wolf? Those Votadini are badass.)
You probably know this, but if Roman soldiers ever saluted they probably didn't salute the way we think they did. In this case, accuracy can bite me.
I was going to include a note here about how I was probably exaggerating Roman racism and general distrust of the various Celtic peoples for dramatic effect, but I have recently read a Livy passage where he invents a speech for a commander fighting the Gauls as saying that you cannot make them into allies once you've conquered them with arms, like the Latins or the Sabines: "We have drawn swords against wild beasts. Their blood must be drained or ours given." So, yeah, I'm willing to believe they could hate the Britons a lot. Wild beasts.
(Native Britons also tended not to be promoted very high, is my general impression; I have references for the tombstone of one centurion but that's all.)
They are at one of the temporary camps at the very small fort (no surviving name, as far as I know) at modern Cappuck, close to Trimontium (Newstead). This may actually have been closer to Votadini territory than Selgovae (maps: they are hard to read), but I figure if Sutcliff did it, so can I, and besides, I can spell Trimontium correctly. Also I am assuming that, this being 140, Trimontium was manned again; there is evidence of Antonine habitation.
Also there is no historical evidence, as far as I am aware, for the particular events of the story -- the treaties, the uprisings, and so on. (The super-big-picture historical events -- Cartimandua, Bar Kokhba, the Batavian revolts -- are all real, though.) Generally there were some problems around this time with "civilizing" the Votadini, so, hey, maybe something like this could have happened. But, you know, I made it all up. Including all the people. The VI Victrix was a real legion, though.
If Marcus learned to shoot at all, he probably really did learn the Mediterranean draw. However, I wanted to give him something he could be hilariously bad at first.
Foreign languages: What Latin there is is generally limited to titles and is, in my opinion, easy enough to figure out from context. There is some Greek that is perhaps a little less evident. The line in Homeric Greek is very famous and therefore Google-able, but Laetinianus' question in Koine to Marcus -- ἆρ᾽ οὐ μισεῖς αὐτούς; -- is not. It means "You hate them, don't you?" (Thanks to Lysimache and Thisprettywren for telling me what the Greek version of nonne was.)
Astute readers may also note that I have assumed Brythonic (British) to be SVO, possibly also V2. There is some evidence for this in Gaulish (see Koch (1991), "On the Prehistory of Brittonic Syntax," in Fife and Poppe, eds., Studies in Brythonic Word Order), even though one of the hallmarks of Celtic generally is that it is VSO. I am not now and have never been a Celticist. Or, technically, a syntactician. But I find Koch's argument convincing. Either way it's going to sound weird to Marcus, what with him being a native speaker of at least one and probably two SOV languages.
Also, there is one quotation from the Aeneid in a fairly apt place. Try to find it! Winner gets, um, my admiration.
Resources (Or: How to write about the Roman army using things you can probably find on your very own Internet, kids! Okay, also your public library! Or in my case, the used bookstore.)
Print:
J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary
Useful for dirty words and also a couple idioms that made it in.
Julian Bennett, Towns in Roman Britain
As the title suggests.
David J. Breeze, Forts in Roman Britain
Forts! With maps!
A. R. Burn, The Romans in Britain: An Anthology of Inscriptions
Or: how I found out, after writing the story, that I wasn't actually making it all up when I put some Brigantes in the auxiliaries north of Hadrian's Wall. (They were there! Really! Yes, in the army! It's so cool.)
Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts
I think this was the book where all the information on Celtic feast customs came from. And I didn't even put in the really wacky ones!
Paul Erdkamp (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Army
Hooray! All of the Blackwell Companions on every subject ever are really good. You know this is true. (Or at least, I can vouch for the linguistics ones; I am not a classicist, but these look good to me. My favorite part here is the article about record-keeping.)
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army
More army! More! More!
Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition
Because it's always good to look stuff up.
S. Ireland, Roman Britain: A Sourcebook
Basically, many many things written about or in Britannia, in translation. A lot of people built many sections of wall.
C. M. H. Millar (ed.), The Roman Army: Selections from Various Latin Authors
I am not sure this is widely-available, or useful to most people (it's in Latin), but I had a lot of fun with it. It is a reader for 1950s schoolboys with selections from Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Frontinus, Tacitus, and Vegetius, all about the army. It's divided into various sections about recruiting, famous battles, daily life, and so on. It is pretty awesome. Whee, primary sources.
Sara Elise Phang, Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate
It is more scholarly than most of the rest of these, but I was using it as a source for information on discipline -- what the punishments were and what they were for. (I know Eagle canon is way later than this, but I am hoping discipline didn't change that much.)
David S. Potter (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Empire
I really liked the Richlin article on sexuality here, but I would.
T. W. Potter and Catherine Johns, Roman Britain
Pretty pictures from the British Museum! Pretty pretty pictures!
Amy Richlin, "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law Against Love Between Men."
She has an awesome view of homosexuality as an identity as well as a behavior in Rome. I like it, so it shows up in my stories a lot.
H. H. Scullard, Roman Britain: Outpost of the Empire
Some pretty pictures, mostly a lot of text. Your basic history.
Rose Mary Sheldon, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods, but Verify
Weirdly, most of it wasn't relevant, as it is generally about domestic spying on other Romans as well as explicit wartime intelligence failures. It's a very good book anyway, though.
Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History
A decent general overview.
Graham Sumner, Roman Army: Wars of the Empire (Brassey's History of Uniforms)
If you like Roman armor, this is the best book ever. Armor! All armor, all the time! Glorious pictures! Discussions of who wore what! Did I mention the pictures? There's a picture of an optio. Optiones are my new kink.
Graham Sumner, Roman Military Dress
What the army wore when it wasn't wearing armor.
John Wacher, Roman Britain
This one had some good fort maps.
Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality
I think this is the standard reference on same-sex behavior in Rome. It has... a lot of information. Relevant bits for me were mostly the stuff about the Marian soldier (Trial of Trebonius), which... yeesh, Rome.
Websites
Celtic Personal Names of Roman Britain
Pretty much all the British names came from here, until I ran out of names and started composing them myself using a reconstructed Gallo-Brittonic Lexicon and a basic knowledge of morphology. My theory about Celtic names is that it don't count if it don't end in -rix, yo. Also one of my characters is named Penis King. (The Roman names mostly came from a list of attested cognomina. I just picked the ones I liked, and then afterwards it was pointed out that I have Tribune Piggy and Optio Love Happy. Oops.)
Lacus Curtius
Hooray, online encyclopedia! What did I take from here? Um. Possibly funerary customs.
Legio VI Victrix /Legio XX Online Handbook for Legionaries / Legio XXIV
Do you know who's already done the hard work figuring out what bits of clothing are period? That's right, the re-enactors! I hope they don't check their referral logs!
Roman Britain
More general information! This site is awesome. There is information on every fort ever. Check out the maps! Sure, OmnesViae and ORBIS have better, fancier route planners, but this has a page about every fort in Britannia.
Roman Scotland
More information, plus I think I got more fort maps from here.
Vindolanda Tablets Online
If you would like to read some daily correspondence from an actual fort on the Wall, the Vindolanda tablets are awesome. Come to my birthday party! Mommy, send socks!
Vegetius: De Re Militari
Okay, so Vegetius is many many many years post-period and he was never actually in the army, so therefore it may all be lies, but he wanted to write about what it was like in the army in the good old days when men were men and forts were built properly. Here is an English translation.
Wikipedia's maps: 1, 2, 3, 4
The Wiki maps are surprisingly good.
I am pretty sure I had more books than this, but I no longer remember them.
Hope you enjoy the story!
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