The novel climaxes with vastatio (devastation) and slaughter to be followed, according to Marcus Aurelius, by:
"'Peace...'"
-CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO, p. 439 -
- hopefully a permanent positive peace, not merely a post-vastatio wasteland.
The novel ends with the good news that, although an illness has arrived on schedule from the east, it is not measles but smallpox which can be and is being treated.
Nowhere to go but up? Or will there be unexpected obstacles in Volume II which is en route to me via eBay?
Artorius is a new Noah. The Biblical creation had been the separation of the waters above from the waters below and the moving aside of the waters below so that the dry land appeared. The Flood had been the undoing of that Creation. The withdrawal of the waters was the creation of a new Earth to be populated by Noah's, the new Adam's, descendants. Artorius and his team escape the destruction of an old Earth and remake their new Earth. A Biblical theme.
9 comments:
Well, the novel ends with the incorporation of the Germanic 'barbaricum' in the Roman Empire and vaccination against smallpox. Those are hopeful signs...
Indeed.
Not least because the Germanic tribes were constantly at low-level war -- abductions, burnings, blood-feuds. That's typical of tribal-level societies, tho' the Germanics were "on the way" to State-level organization, or at least the ones in contact with the Romans were.
Paul: I hadn't thought of it that way, but by Gum you're right about the Noah thing.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Good analogy, re Noah.
Mr. Stirling: That was bad luck for the Romans in our timeline, how some of the Germanic tribes were "on the way" to developing true States.
Ad astra! Sean
It gets better. At the end of APOCALYPSE, there is a new heaven and earth and "the sea will be no more." A third Biblical cosmic cycle starts and this one will not end because the pre-cosmic chaos, the sea, has been eliminated.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, and then I recalled how Christ warned His disciples (and us) that no man knows the hour of the Eschaton.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: "bad luck for the Romans in our timeline, how some of the Germanic tribes were "on the way" to developing true States."
Luck?
Doesn't being adjacent to a state level society tend to push a tribal culture toward being a state? Either that or being conquered by the state.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, those Germanic tribes directly neighboring the Romans would,. quite naturally, pick up some ideas from them, both political and military. I recall how, in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," Anderson mentioned how the Goths had learned some useful ideas about military organization and discipline from the Romans.
Again, yes, once agricultural/urban civilizations arose the trend has been, despite occasional and temporary reversals, for the barbarians to be conquered or absorbed by societies with true States.
Ad astra! Sean
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