Gladiator: Fight for Freedom

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Centurion Titus Cornelius Pollenius mopped his brow as he surveyed the battlefield stretching out around him. The hillside was covered with bodies, heaped together in those places where the fighting had been most fierce. His men were searching for injured comrades, or gleaning what little loot they could from their fallen enemies. Here and there the wounded cried out pitifully as they writhed amid the carnage. Among the bodies were Roman legionaries in their red tunics and chain-mail armour, now stained with blood. Titus estimated that thousands of his comrades had been killed in the battle. Even so, the Roman losses were nothing compared to those of the enemy.

He shook his head in wonder at the men, and women, he had faced earlier. Many had been armed only with knives and agricultural tools and most had no armour, not even shields. Yet they had thrown themselves on Titus and his comrades, shrieking with rage and eyes blazing with desperate courage. None of which had saved them from defeat against the better-trained and properly equipped soldiers of General Pompeius, the commander of the Roman armies that had pursued and trapped the enemy.

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