"'...Rome endures, and that is what matters.'"
-Poul and Karen Anderson, Roma Mater (New York, 1989), p. 52.
It does not. He means the Roman Empire and that has not endured despite attempts to preserve or revive it. The City of Rome has endured so far, acquiring a different significance. But we have just seen that Romano-British society is changing around Marcus - and the Empire will soon withdraw.
Hivernian wisewomen and druids sense change:
"Wisewomen said [shifty weather signs] portended strange doings and great changes..." (pp. 31-32)
A druid says:
"'The signs I have read, in stars and staves and secret pools, are signs of mighty deeds, of a world in travail with a new birth.'" (pp. 35-36)
The new God's Patrician will soon enter Hivernia.
The Ysans also know that there will be a new age although not what will be in it. See here. The Nine know that changes in the heavens mean changes among the Gods. We are the heirs of those anticipated changes.
I am in Birmingham but with access to a computer.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, the usurper Constantine's withdrawal of the last legions in Britannia caused that diocese to temporarily fall out of Roman hands. But, as I've discussed with Poul Anderson in two letters to him, the underrated Emperor Honorius seems to have reoccupied Britannia after overcoming Constantine and the other usurpers who rose against him in Gaul and Hispania (which I based on the arguments of Arther Ferrill's book THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: THE MILITARY EXPLANATION). Mind you, this reoccupation was precarious and short lived (and ended about AD 439).
And while I agree the Roman Empire no longer exists, the Eastern Roman Empire had a good long run, surviving till 1453.
And of course the city of Rome still exists, and remembers the old Empire and is still the seat of the Papacy.
Sean
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