"Based on the author's thirty years of painstaking research into the Roman military, using sources ranging from classical texts to tombstone inscriptions, this unprecedented regimental history paints an uncommonly vivid portrait of daily life in a Roman legion as it follows Caesar and his men along the blood-soaked fringes of the Empire. It was here that ambitious Romans built reputations through conquest, raw recruits became hardened foot soldiers, and the Tenth Legion became a killing machine - marching, digging, charging, ramming down gates, scaling battlements, storming through towns and villages, and slaughtering anyone who stood in their way."--BOOK JACKET.