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Answer: “is” should be “are.”

“Neither the commanding centurion, nor the Roman soldiers, are treated unsympathetically by historians of the period.”

Error: The mix of subjects confused the writer of this sentence. The compound subjects “soldiers” and “centurion” are paired unequally, in a sense, because the first is plural and the second singular. The pairing is grammatical, however, and the applicable rule is that the plural subject should be placed next to the verb, with which it should agree. Therefore, the sentence should read, “Neither the commanding centurion, nor his Roman soldiers, are treated…” This writing mistake is No. 4 of 10 Common Writing Errors That Can Spell “Rejection” for Your Manuscript, which are posted elsewhere on The Published Scholar site.
這句話的作者混淆了兩個不同的主詞。Soldiers和centurion並非對等的主詞，因為一個是複數，另一個是單數。但此處這樣列舉兩個主詞並未違反文法規則，正確的寫法應該是讓動詞接在複數主詞之後，以達成正確的主動詞一致。正確的句法為“Neither the commanding centurion, nor the Roman soldiers, are(were) treated…” 這樣的寫作錯誤可參照本專頁所張貼之「10 個導致退稿的常見寫作錯誤之四：Avoid Error of Agreement When Using Correlative Conjunctions」。