"Countrymen, fellow citizens, brothers," the voice of General Mirodionus rang through the air to the ears of the assembled men. General Mirodionus was the greatest fighting man La Republicca had ever seen. In public life he was a senator and in private life a merchant in Sybaris, but now surrounded by his fellow soldiers on the dusty plain breathing in the remnants of long forgotten days swept up from the ground by mellow winds the blew incessesantly but brought naught of the calm relief of a sumjmer breaze in the plains of dear Calabria, he was a general.
"Answer me this," Mirodionus carried on, "why do we stand here today? Why do we stand here today, on this desolate plain, thousands of miles from our wives and mothers, fathers and sons, living off of land we have never seen before and fighting along men who do not even speak the same language?" A general murmur went up among the men, though it was likely just as much complaints of the dust settling on their spears as finding an answer for their commander's question.
"We stand here today," the General continued in the calm, dignified voice of the many aged senators to whom he was forced to listen to for so many years now, "for La Republicca!" The last statement burst from his throat with the power of a thousand drums. With a unison of motion, the men turned their attentionj away from the rags with which they tried desperately to polish their bronze blades and shileds.
The air still ringing with the force of his voice, the General continued, "We stand here today my brothers because we are men, Calabrian men, and Calabrian men never, never bow to anyone!" The last statement came out with such fury that his eyes dilated with the power of it, gleaming in the dim, shadowed light as if light from behind by a million suns and a million moons.
"We stand here today, my friends, because we love our freedom! We stand here because we are willing to fight, and to die for the republic! We stand here because we are true men, true Calabrian men, who refuse," and this, he emphasised, with the force of a wild boar crazed in the hung, and with the same glazed eyes the the general bore now, "who refuse, to be ruled by anyone but ourselves! Pescara is a nation ruled by dictators and kings, and we are a nation ruled by senators, and consuls!" Suddenly, the General ceased turning his head away, as his breathing slowed, the glaze and glow of his eyes quieted, and even the air seemed to grow still, the wind refusing the blow and the dust refusing to drift as if both, like the soldiers, were fixated on the glorious image of a man before them standing in peace and harmony but also with a hidden force only just having quieted.
"We stand here," he continued, his voice calm and quiet, such that the soldiers had to strain to here it, but still with a clearness like that of a mountain stream, "in the end, not for ourselves, but for out family and for our country." Slowly, now, he turned his head back to the soldiers in his eyes, blue as the Mediterranean sea, the men now saw not fury, not peace, but simply power, might, and glory raging forth like a tidal wave upon the sea or a charging bull out in the field, continuing, he said with the force of a thousand men and a thousand horses, a thousand bulls and a thousand boars, a thousand winds and a thousand waves, "We fight, for La Republicca!"
