"It was a flitting thought at the back of [Everard's] mind, repeating what he well knew, gone again as his attention focused ahead." (p. 552)
When the thought has gone, Everard does not know that it has been and gone. Therefore, this sentence does not express Everard's pov but presents information delivered directly to the reader by the omniscient narrator.
The thought in question is that:
the barbarians are too disorganized to overcome Rome;
instead, the Empire crumbles from within;
the barbarians in any case take over the Empire spiritually by converting it to Christianity;
therefore, Western civilization, like the previous Classical civilization, is born on the Mediterranean, not along the Rhine or by the North Sea.
We need only add that, in Poul Anderson's other main fictional timeline, Western is followed by Technic civilization which in turn is eventually followed by civilizations spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy.
All praise to Poul Anderson.
6 comments:
In a way the Empire was made vulnerable by its accomplishment in establishing peace for a long time over a huge area.
The barbarian armies that wandered around the Roman territories in the 5th and 6th centuries were relatively very small. They could operate that way because the Roman interior had been thoroughly demilitarized for centuries.
Also, of course, the barbarians became more formidable over time because they learned from the Romans, both in politics and military technique.
By the fall of the Western Empire, the individual tribes had become confederations -- the East Goths, the All-Men (Allemani), the Franks.
One of the reasons Roman civilization vanished so thoroughly in England compared to the Continent is that its invaders were more primitive than, say, the Goths. They were untouched by Christianity and hadn't had any sustained contact with Rome, and instead of being State-level kingdoms, they came as countless tribal war-bands and raider groups, with no centralized leadership.
The Visigoths wanted to take over a functioning Roman society, though they failed. The Saxons just smashed everything they saw.
I think you meant "the Empire takes over the barbarians spiritually by converting them to Christianity", rather than vice-versa.
Though this analysis underestimates the barbarian-Germanic contribution to the eventual Western civilization, I think.
For example, thought the "shadow of Rome" remains intellectually potent, the actual political organization of medieval Europe, especially the way monarchy was conceptualized, owes a great deal to Germanic antecedents. The strong sense of dynastic legitimacy doesn't derive from Rome, for instance.
Also, there wasn't much social continuity between the late Roman and medieval worlds -- much less than historians used to think. The fall of the Empire was a social/economic phase change, particularly away from the immediate Mediterranean shores. The institutions of medieval Europe, particularly feudalism and the manorial system, didn't really get going until the 700-900 period.
Mr Stirling,
In fact I meant what I wrote but I was paraphrasing Anderson and I now see, on checking back, that I had misread him. In "...it'll have taken them over..." (p. 552), I got the pronouns the wrong way round.
Paul.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree that some of the Germanic tribes had achieved state level kingdoms by about AD 400. With institutionalized dynastic loyalty an important strengthening factor. But this should not be exaggerated--the disastrous custom of all the sons of a king having an equal claim to being king could and did lead to frequent fratricidal strife. A problem graphically described by St. Gregory of Tours in his HISTORY OF THE FRANKS, showing the descendants of Clovis, the first Merovingian king of Gaul, often at odds with one another.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: true. Though the Franks had a very bad reputation for that! Also, the custom of partible inheritance that led to the splitting of Charlemagne's kingdom between different heirs.
The Church was important in the development of an indivisible inheritance going only to the eldest son.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And despite the bad custom of partible inheritance, the Frankish kingdom was still the most successful of the barbarian kingdoms which took over in the fallen Western Empire. At least partly because, instead of becoming Arians, the Franks converted to Catholic Christianity, he faith of most their subjects. Yes, I agree the Church played a major role in encouraging the idea of an indivisible inheritance going to the king's eldest son.
Ad astra! Sean
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