consilium: the council of officers and other senior advisors routinely employed by a Roman governor or senator to guide him in making decisions.

contubernium (pl. contubernia): the group of eight soldiers assigned to share a tent on campaign and who may also have shared a pair of rooms in a permanent barrack block.

curator: (i) title given to soldier placed in charge of an outpost such as a burgus who may or may not have held formal rank; (ii) the second in command to a decurion in a cavalry turma.

decurion: the cavalry equivalent to a centurion, but considered to be junior to them. He commanded a turma.

dolabra: the military pickaxe issued to most, if not all, Roman soldiers. It is remarkably similar in shape and size to the tool employed by many modern armies. One famous first-century general claimed that ‘wars are won with the pickaxe’ for such was the importance of marching camps, fortifications, and siege works in Roman warfare. Trajan’s Column depicts some soldiers using them as weapons and this is also mentioned in our literary sources.

duplicarius: a ‘double-pay man’ was a junior NCO equivalent in the auxilia.

equestrian: the social class just below the Senate. There were many thousand equestrians (eques, pl. equites) in the Roman Empire, compared to six hundred senators, and a good proportion of equestrians were descendants of aristocracies within the provinces. Those serving in the army followed a different career path to senators.

fabrica (pl. fabricae): was a workshop set up by the army to make or maintain/repair equipment. Those in permanent bases, especially legionary fortresses, were often large.

hastatus posterior: the most junior of the six centurions in a legionary cohort.

Gades: modern Cadiz in Spain, originally founded by the Carthaginians and a thriving and wealthy community in the Roman period.

galearii (sing. galearius): slaves owned by the army, given basic uniform – the name means ‘helmet-wearer’ – and training and tasked with fatigues and assisting with the baggage train.

gladius: Latin word for sword, which by modern convention specifically refers to the short sword used by all legionaries and most auxiliary infantry. By the end of the first century most blades were less than 2 feet long.

lancea: a type of javelin or light spear, which could be thrown or thurst.

legate (provincial): the governor of a military province like Britain was a legatus Augusti, the representative of the emperor. He was a distinguished senator and usually at least in his forties.

legate (legionary): the commander of a legion was a legatus legionis and was a senator at an earlier stage in his career than the provincial governor. He would usually be in his early thirties.

legion: originally the levy of the entire Roman people summoned to war, legion or legio became the name for the most important unit in the army. In the last decades of the first century BC, legions became permanent with their own numbers and usually names and titles. In AD 98 there were twenty-eight legions, but the total was soon raised to thirty.