What Did Roman Soldiers Do When They Were Surrounded?

Your camp is burning behind you, and you're not allowed to turn around. You're a Roman soldier on a wall of earth in northern Gaul, and the ground in front of you is black with men. One legion, alone in its winter camp. Caesar wrote that sixty thousand enemies stood outside it. This is what the soldiers on that wall actually did, day by day. We follow the siege of Quintus Cicero's camp in 54 BC. A hundred and twenty towers go up in a single night. The enemy offers a safe road out, and Cicero refuses. On the seventh day, red-hot clay sets the straw huts on fire. Two rival centurions, Pullo and Vorenus, walk out of the gate. And one letter, tied to a javelin, has to get through. Topics covered: daily life of a Roman legionary under siege, how a Roman camp was defended, Quintus Cicero and the Nervii, the centurions Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus, Caesar's relief march, and what Caesar's Gallic War, Book 5, tells us about that week. Timestamps 0:00 Fire Inside the Camp 1:48 Winter in Gaul 4:53 The First Day 7:28 The Night of Work 10:30 No Deal 12:41 The Ring Tightens 15:26 The Seventh Day 19:06 Pullo and Vorenus 22:09 The Letter on the Javelin 25:28 Smoke on the Horizon 28:04 Caesar's Small Camp 30:42 One in Ten Stay to the end for the number Caesar wrote down when it was over. #AncientRome #RomanArmy #RomanHistory