20 Lindum ColoniaThe garrison of Lindum Colonia stood on a high hill, overlooking the flat marshland and the dense forests that surrounded it. To north and to south from the fortress ran a straight military road, the Ermine Street. It had been built by the men of Lindum, the Ninth Legion, nicknamed the ‘Hispana’; sturdy dark-skinned men from Spain, as able with pick and shovel as with pilum and gladius. The men of the Ninth, guzzling their raw vino rojo, that would have soured the stomachs of any other men, boasted that their soles were thicker and tougher than the boots of any other Legion. They had marched from Babylon and back, they said, before the other Legions had completed their preliminary training.
In their stone-built barrack room they sang a song which said:
‘The Fourteenth as
