Page 166 "...the river valley made safe by the Roman general Marius..."

Left: a bust of Marius; Right: engraving of Marius in Carthage.

[Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman, noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the structure of the legions into separate cohorts.]


From page 166 of the book:  "...He looked up to the clear, night sky which brought him to this ancient river valley made safe by the Roman general Marius, against the barbarians, two-hundred years before Christ.  He watched the stars hold forth as Marius might have done before he crushed the Teutons, and he asked the ungrateful night horizon to help him fight his trepidation."
 

Page 164 "...Owen's Civil War General George Thomas at the battle of Chickamauga..."

Clockwise from top left: Painting of the battle; General George Thomas;
Thomas Nast rendering of "Lt. Van Pelt Defending His Battery";
Photograph of the Chickamauga countryside at time of battle.

Page 164 of the book: "...There I was, standing up to the seminal representative of my faith, not cowering but vastly lost within my untried courage. What was I doing arguing with a priest? I thought of Owen's Civil War General George Thomas at the battle of Chickamauga, Tennessee. Outnumbered 2 to 1 by the Confederates, he held his ground against Longstreet's crushing advances, placed like Shelby Foote said "between an anvil and a sledge." He was The Rock of Chickamauga. It was there, in front of Revenant, that I held my own ground, although I resembled nothing like a rock, and nearly folded between this spiritual French blacksmith and the door."