A General Address to the Roman Legions

To the fighting men of Rome, I salute you!

Some of you may have heard of the debating of the Senate. Some of you have even heard of my presence there, and my reluctance to address the Senate directly. I have a respect from decorum—I always have—and understand that I am beneath the minimum age for a Roman Senator. In accordance to aetas senatoria, to run an election, one must be thirty-one years of age, and to hold an official Senate seat, the normal minimum is thirty-two years of age.

Still, some of you are frustrating, as you have a right to be. When I was in Apollonia, as your commander, you swore your loyalty to me upon hearing of the assassination of the dictator, my adoptive father, Gaius Julius Caesar. You pledged your loyalty to me as your commander, and then, as the only son of Gaius Julius Caesar.

You have honored me, centurions and legionaries, and so shall I honor you. Indeed, I had the privilege of presenting to some of you, personally, the sum of money left to you in my adoptive father's will, as I have presided over the distribution of funds personally. But it is more than just this small gift.

Some of you cry, "Justice for Caesar!". And it is my cry as well. My father, indeed our father, was murdered. What greater insult is there? And yet, I have sat silently in the Senate.

I do so because I honor you. So have you pledged your lives to me, I shall not waste them. So much as it might be inevitable, I do not want Civil War. I do not want to fight the man who committed a crime against the Senate by trying to honor his brother-in-arms, my father, by giving him a decent burial. But most of all, I do not want you men to be forced to fight each other, to forced to kill and be killed, because of your loyalty to my father. And I do not want you, the soldiers, to have to worry for your families in Rome, caught up in this crisis.

But if ordered to fight, we must all do so, for Rome and her people, for our fathers and our families. That is why such a crisis looms.

In the meantime, what can I do? I can honor you men. I can do everything to assure that you are fed, equipped, and paid as appropriate. I do everything I can to bolster your numbers, for there is strength in numbers. But there is also honor in service, and that is the fate of a Roman soldier. Indeed, through the crisis, you men continue to serve—you protect the borders of the Republic, ensuring the safety of us all.

The fate of my father's murderers will be addressed in time. I wish it could be today, but to ask for such would be to bring Rome, her citizens and her warriors, into crisis. I, personally, will put your safety, and the safety of your families, as one of my primary concerns—I owe that to you, honorable men.