#everyone wave hi to Lanius’ fake mom

[laniusbignaturals]

i have this idea that lanius would be really into epics like gilgamesh and stuff but at the same time i feel like legion indoctrination would be so against the idea of reading (or doing anything) for pleasure lol. i wonder how literate the average legionary even is…anyway, thoughts? I feel like you’d know the answer to this

I really like the idea of Lanius and epic heroes, but reading is a particularly difficult thing to square with his depersonalizing persona: maybe one of his minders reads to him? Lanius is attended exclusively by blind slaves, but he answers to Caesar and his lackeys. And apparently he’s “famous for his loyalty to Caesar,” so that obedience must take some demonstrable form.

In my headcanons, the Legate Lanius Persona and it’s affectations (the mask, the sword, the blind slaves) was first conceptualized by an enslaved woman, who serves as the Legion’s unofficial head of propaganda and the symbolic mother of Caesar’s monstrous creation. She personally performs the procedure of carving fresh scars into each new Lanius’ face, maintaining the legend of the tribesman who was butchered in battle long after the man himself was dead from infection. Perhaps she, or someone who worked for her, read Lanius epic tales to calm his nerves as he had his skull sliced up without anesthetic.

Imo, only the most privileged in Caesar’s Legion can read, and even then the skill is usually kept from soldiers and their families to maintain their ignorance. Female literacy rates are particularly low, although the few centers of “legitimate” authority which women have access to in the Legion (think wives & daughters, priestesses, professional enslavers, etc) have indirect methods for amassing knowledge amongst themselves. Legion cities are full of artisans, religious leaders, and other such members of the petit bourgeois who can only read and write in Latin. This keeps them feeling empowered and special while exacerbating their cultural isolation from the broader wasteland.