Roman discipline usually gets written about as a quality of character. It was closer to a piece of engineering, and the optio is where the mechanism is visible. Every century had one, picked personally by its centurion — the word comes from optare, to choose. The centurion led from the front. The optio's station was the rear of the formation, facing his own men, and the staff he carried was there for exactly that: a hastile, about as tall as he was, used to keep the legionaries in line and put back anybody drifting out of it. He drew a duplicarius' pay, double a legionary's. He ran the century's paperwork in camp, took command if the centurion went down, and if he was rated an optio ad spem ordinis he was being groomed for a centurion's post of his own. So an army whose ranks did not break was not simply braver than everyone else's. It had a man standing behind it whose pay, authority and promotion all depended on the line holding.

King & Country give you two of them stepping out with the hastile carried upright and the shield slung back off the arm — walking pace, nothing drawn, the look of men supervising rather than fighting. Sold in a pair because that is how you use them: one at the back of each block of troops. Put them behind a column of The New Roman Legions with Roman Centurion out at the head of it, and the diorama suddenly has a chain of command running through it instead of just a crowd. They work just as well in a camp scene alongside Roman Soldiers at Ease — the administration was as much of the job as the stick was.

Model: ROM084 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 2 piece set