A centurion's badge of office was a short staff cut from a grapevine, the vitis, and it was not ceremonial. He carried it to drive the men in front of him forward, to beat anybody trying to go the other way, and to administer formal floggings. Tacitus records where that could end. When the legions mutinied after the death of Augustus, the soldiers turned on a centurion named Lucilius, whom they had nicknamed Cedo Alteram — "Give me another" — because when he had broken one vine-stick across a man's back he would call out loudly for the next, and the next. They killed him. That is Roman discipline seen from below, and it is worth setting beside the fact that the rank was also lethal to hold: a centurion's place was at the front right of his eighty men, and centurions consequently died in numbers out of all proportion to how few of them there were.

The scarlet crest running crosswise over this helmet is the point of the whole figure — mounted transverse rather than fore-and-aft precisely so that eighty men could find him in the noise and follow where he went. King & Country have also given him mail rather than the segmented plate of the ranks, a variation seen among officers, with the scutum up and the gladius already out. Put The Marching Optios behind the formation while he holds the front of it, set him at the corner of Rome at War where the line meets the enemy, and keep Roman Soldiers at Ease at the far end of the diorama — far enough away to talk about him.

Model: ROM004 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set