Publication Day for Wolf and the Crown!

Hi Everyone!

Wolf and the Crown, the second in my Shadow of Rome series is published today. This book tells the beginnings of the man who would become ‘Magnus’ Maximus and make himself Emperor of the Western Empire at the end of the fourth century AD.

We pick up the story, continuing with Tribune Sixtus Victorinus and Prefect Gaius Felicius as our POV’s, some sixteen years after Eagle and the Flame left off. Maximus has presided over a long period of peace in Britannia, serving as the Dux (Duke) with Felicius and Victorinus as his subordinates. But in the winter of 382 AD, he must marshal his forces and move north with all haste, for a Caledonian army masses north of Hadrian’s Wall, and Maximus wants to be on sight to stop it.

Victorinus and Felicius suspect something is up, and between them they discover that the tribes have been paid to attack, and that Maximus is having a strange shipment from the east delivered to him in the north of Britain…

And I will say no more! The majority of the book takes place along Hadrian’s Wall. I walked it from east to west a few years back, an amazing experience! Read about that here: Researching EAGLE AND THE FLAME 

I do want to write a little on battle tactics of the late Roman Army. Most people think of red crested helmets, red cloaks and big rectangular red shields when they think of a Roman soldier. Whilst that might be mostly right for a legionary serving in the first and second centuries, by the time the third comes around there have been some marked changes.

The gladius, the infamous short sword of the legions, was replaced with the spatha, a longer, straight bladed sword used previously by cavalry. The reason for this is that warfare was changing. More and more enemies relied on heavy cavalry on the battlefield, and the gladius, whilst great in a shield wall against enemy infantry, was woefully ineffective against mounted men.

Also, the rectangular shield changed to a lighter, oval one. Helmets were redesigned; chain mail took the place of the lorica segmentata (segmented armour). All of this was because the army itself went through a huge restructure.

The legions of the principate were disbanded, or their numbers were greatly reduced and they were left to man the frontiers. Instead of relying on them, the emperors of the east and west had their own field armies based close to them, ready to march to wherever they were needed.

With the legions went the old legion armouries, where each legions kit would have been made and maintained. Instead weapons factories popped up across the empire, usually close to the frontiers, and it was there the kit I mentioned above was made for the army as a whole, rather than for a specific legion.

All this meant that by the time of the events in Wolf and the Crown, the Roman army was very different to what it had been at Rome’s height. There are other reasons for the changes. Birth rates in the third century seem to have dropped sharply, meaning that by the latter third, maintaining the strength of the army was a struggle. Rome took to letting barbarian tribes into their territory on the promise their men would fight for them for twenty years – this resulted in mixed successes, and is also something I will cover later in this series of books!

Looking forward to the rest of 2026, there are going to be three more books in this series released, with the third, Tribune and the Sword, coming this April. So I do hope you enjoy this one, and are looking forward to many more marches with Victorinus and Felicius throughout the year!  

All the best,

Adam