‘I don’t get it, sir,’ whispered Tincommius. ‘First you beat them, now they’re being given medical attention. So what’s the point of the punishment?’

‘The point?’ Macro’s eyebrows rose. ‘They have to be punished. But the army can’t afford to let that get in the way of their duty. Those men are still soldiers. We want them back in fighting condition as soon as possible.’

‘Sir?’ One of the legionaries nodded at the man curled up at his feet.

Macro stiffened his back and bellowed, ‘Proceed with the punishment!’

The two legionaries began to lay into the man on the ground, the sharp whack of their vine staffs driving the air from his lungs so that he grunted and gasped through gritted teeth. The gnarled surface of the canes began to tear at his exposed flesh, leaving bloody welts of gouged flesh. Macro counted the blows in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the men looking on in silence.

‘Twelve! . . . Thirteen! . . . Fourteen!’

Cato questioned how Macro could be so untroubled as the naked men grunted or cried out as they lay on the blood-flecked ground, arms wrapped over their heads. The young centurion had often wondered at the harshness of army discipline, with its emphasis on excessive pain and humiliation for almost any infraction that occurred within duty hours. There were few fines or fatigues, and many brutal punishments. Yet to Cato it seemed that men might respond more willingly to a system that treated them as more than mere beasts of burden, driven to war. Men could be reasoned with, after all, and could be encouraged to perform as much by a considerate form of leadership as by cruelty.

He had suggested as much to Macro once, over a jug of wine. The veteran had laughed at the idea. For Macro it was simple. Discipline was tough in order to make the men tough, to give them a fighting chance against the enemy. If the lads were treated kindly it would kill them in the end. If they were treated cruelly, it would keep them hard, and give them a decent chance of surviving their long years of service in the legions.