"Their tribes were divided between a western and an eastern branch.
"Wandering down from Germanic lands, they had settled in regions north of the Danuvius and the Euxinus.
"Later the thrust of a wholly wild and terrible breed, the Huns, caused them to seek refuge among the Romans.
"They proved to be formidable soldiers, especially as cavalrymen...
"...but untrustworthy subjects, apt to rebel.
"Most became Christian...
"...though of the Arian persuasion..." (p. 214)
I have rearranged this passage into discrete data, numbering seven. We can read about these Goths, Huns and Arians in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."
"It was the Birthday of Mithras. Gratillonius rarely saw a calendar, but everybody knew when solstice happened, and from that he could reckon this day." (p. 216)
He and we remember when he celebrated Birthday on the Wall. His entire career as King of Ys has come and gone since then, just as we remember long periods of time when we worked in a particular place.
How many Birthdays of Mithras are mentioned in The King of Ys?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We also see mention of the Huns and Goths in THE DANCER FROM ATLANTIS, where a Hunnish character recalled how his people had driven the Goths into a Roman realm unlikely to welcome them.
Ad astra! Sean
And there's THE SADNESS OF ODIN THE GOTH, of course. That traces the Gothic migrations in detail.
Now, if the Huns hadn't showed up, the area of Germanic speech would probably have been much larger -- as large as the area of Slavic tongues is in our history.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
All Andersonians should read that story! Hmmm, absent the Huns, Germanic languages might have been dominant from what is now western Russia, Belarussia, and Ukraine westwards to the Rhine?
That certainly would have made for a very different history than what we have seen!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: at least that area. They might well have swamped the proto-Slavs entirely (the Slavic expansion didn't start until after the Volkerwanderung), and the Balts, and then later expanded eastward the way Russian did.
In which case, Germanic languages would predominate all the way from England to China.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that mention of China made me wonder if China, seeing how enfeebled the Marxist-Leninist catastrophe and Putin's bungling has made Russia, might try grabbing Siberia?
Ad astra! Sean
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