and equally well filled.

On our progress to Rome I saw similar inconsistencies in their behavior.
They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent
to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking
with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma
they emptied two _ergastula_ and never so much as approached the others,
repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia. Outside of Faventia
something, I never learned what, enraged a knot of the veterans, so that
their fury communicated itself to all the soldiery from Britain and
inflamed their associates, Gallic and Italian. Whereupon we burst the
Bononia Gate of Faventia, flocked into the town, sacked some of the shops,
left a score of corpses in the market-place and some in the streets near
it, set fire to a block of buildings, and burst out of the Ariminum Gate,
tumultuous and excited, but without so much as trying the outer doors of
any _ergastulum_.

Yet, after this riotous performance, we did no damage at Ariminum, not
even entering the town, not even enquiring if it had an _ergastulum_, as
it must have had.

Similarly at Pisaurum, at Fanum Fortunae, at Forum Sempronii, though these
were small towns and could not have resisted us, we camped outside,
accepted gracefully the tents and food provided for us and made no move to
maltreat anyone or do any looting. But at Nuceria, at Spolitum and at
Narnia we entered the towns and liberated the inmates of two of the
_ergastula_, in each, though we never so much as threatened Interamnia.

Looking back over these proceedings I explain them to myself approximately
as follows: the eighteen centurions from Britain treated each other as if
they all felt on terms of complete mutual equality, none ever assumed any
rights of superiority, seniority, precedence, or authority, none was ever
invested with any right of permanent or temporary leadership. If some whim
prompted any one of the eighteen to take the lead in emptying an
_ergastulum_ or breaking in a town gate, or sacking a shop, not one of his
fellow-sergeants demurred or expostulated or opposed him; they all
concurred in any suggestion of any one of them. And the soldiers followed
their centurions with, apparently, implicit confidence in them, or a blind
instinct of deference. So of submission to the request of any town
decurion, that they stay outside: mostly, they were acquiescent. But if
something