pg 78
"Horatius could be no more effective than I shall be."
Publius Horatius Cocles was an officer in the army of the ancient Roman Republic who famously defended the Pons Sublicius from the invading army of Lars Porsena, king of Clusium in the late sixth century BC, during the war between Rome and Clusium.
The story is usually referenced as "Horatio and the bridge" (and is not to be confused with the Horatii.)
....Perceiving the danger, three officers (of noble rank) stood shoulder-to-shoulder to allow their own troops to pass and block the passage of the enemy: Spurius Lartius and Titus Herminius Aquilinus, commanders of the right wing (equivalent to colonels or lieutenant generals), and Publius Horatius, a more junior officer of unspecified rank. He was a patrician, and the nephew of consul Marcus Horatius Pulvillus and had lost an eye in a previous battle (hence his agnomen "Cocles". He was also said to have been a descendant of one of the Horatii who had fought the Curiatii of Alba Longa. Livy defines his station in the defense as "on guard at the bridge when he saw the Janiculum taken by a sudden assault and the enemy rushing down from it to the river ...." The three defenders of the bridge withstood sword and missile attacks until the troops had all crossed
"Well, you won't need to go swimming in no Tiber, anyway."
The bridge on which Horatius and the other two soldiers made their stand ran over the Tiber river, which runs through Rome.
"They made you head of the Pinkerton's or something?"
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, usually shortened to the Pinkertons, is a private U.S. security guard and detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton agents for his personal security during the Civil War.
Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America, causing the state of Ohio to outlaw the agency due to fears it could be hired as a private army or militia. Pinkerton was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at the height of its power.[1]
During the labor unrest of the late 19th century and early 20th century, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to provide agents that would infiltrate unions, to supply guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and sometimes to recruit goon squads to intimidate workers. The best known such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to enforce the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad; the ensuing conflicts between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to several deaths on both sides. The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
The company now operates as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a division of the Swedish security company Securitas AB, although its government division is still known as Pinkerton Government Services. The organization was pejoratively called the "Pinks" by the outlaws and opponents.
Asey and I looked at each other as Augustus might have looked when someone told him the sad news of his legions lost in the Teutoberg Forest.
The Teutoburg Forest (German: Teutoburger Wald) is a range of low, forested mountains in the German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia which used to be believed to be the scene of a decisive battle in AD 9. Until the 19th century the official name of the mountain ridge was Osning.
The forest was believed to have been the site of a battle between the Roman Empire and an alliance of Germanic tribes in AD 9. The location of the battle was identified by the Roman historian Gaius Cornelius Tacitus as saltus Teutoburgiensis (saltus meaning a forest valley in Latin), and the encounter was therefore called the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (described as clades Variana, the Varian disaster by Roman historians) (German: Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald, Hermannsschlacht or Varusschlacht) took place in 9 CE, when an alliance of Germanic tribes led by Arminius (German: Armin) (also known as "Hermann"), the son of Segimerus (German: Segimer or Sigimer) of the Cherusci, ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions, along with their auxiliaries, led by Publius Quinctilius Varus.
Despite numerous successful campaigns and raids by the Roman army over the Rhine in the years after the battle, the Romans were to make no more concerted attempts to conquer and permanently hold Germania beyond the river
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