Thursday 15 November 2012

The Dog And The Wolf


After the battle:

"Now and then an abandoned dog howled on a farmstead. It sounded much like a wolf." (Poul and Karen Anderson, The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989), p. 420)

And so it should:

"For between the Dog and the Wolf there is only the Law." (p. 504)

- which is the point of the volume's title.

When Gratillonius had fought the Scoti, his wife Verania, wanting to understand the difference between civilised and barbarian and knowing that it was not in the blood - we would say "genes" -, wrote a verse, really written by Karen Anderson, that lists possible differences, various bodily features, but ends by identifying only the Law.

When the Germani attacked:

"They were mostly big, fair men with long moustaches and braided hair." (p. 415)

- so these antagonists can be easily identified by their physical features and some members of Gratillonius' army might then identify barbarism with such features but this is a mistake, breeding xenophobia and racism.

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