Poul Anderson lets us escape from time travel paradoxes into historical fiction within a single narrative. When Germanic barbarians besiege Old Camp, their women keen rhythmically:
"...ha-ba-da ha-ba, ha-ba-da-da." (p. 471)
Although Anderson spells it out for us, I cannot hear this beat in my head. However, it reminds me that I once saw a mass picket pushing policemen down a street as if in a big rugby scrum. The pickets were chanting something that I initially did not understand:
"Da - da-da-dadada!
"Da - da-da-dadada!
"Da - da-da-dadada!"
Then I discerned the words. It was an ironic reproach to the police:
"Job - only doin' it!
"Job - only doin' it!
"Job - only doin' it!"
Lupercus the Roman legate reminds (some of) us of Dominic Flandry involved in the suppression of the planet, Brae. Lupercus also has something in common with the viewpoint character of section 2, Manse Everard: two men doing a job. Both must respond to a threat to the Roman Empire albeit for different reasons.
The Roman Empire exists in different timelines. In one, it is guarded by the Time Patrol. In another, it inspires the Terran Empire. The Romans know nothing of either.
The Patrol does recruit one Roman from Caesar's time who:
"'...never got it through his head that a machine can't be treated like a horse.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 14.
I did not expect to wind up with that when I began to write this post.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And we see a very different Roman Empire in Stirling's TO TURN THE TIDE/THE WINDS OF FATE, because of the innovations introduced by those Americans stranded there in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Ad astra! Sean
The upper limit of a society's morality is set by its technology. There is no lower limit...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Too true, if you mean morality can be very low indeed. I think with disgust of things like "legalized" abortion.
Ad astra! Sean
For example, until historically quite recently slavery was a -universal- human institution.
Hunter-gatherer bands had slaves (mostly captured women), Neolithic villagers had slaves, Bronze Age tribes and city-states had slaves, Iron Age wanderers had slaves. Slaves in empires, slaves in kingdoms, slaves in republics, you name it.
The first large area that -didn't- have slaves was Western Europe in the high middle ages; Japan abolished chattel slavery in 1590.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that's why I get so impatient with unrealistic hopes or expectations of human benevolence/perfection or fussing about forms of gov't.
Ad astra! Sean
"For forms of government let fools contest/What'er is best administered, is best" as the poet put it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! My views about such matters were summed up in my article "Political Legitimacy in the Thought of Poul Anderson."
Ad astra! Sean
Oh, and about chanting -- note that it can drive out individual thought and make people move in unison.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The example I thought of goes way back to Mao Tse-tung's lunatic Great Cultural Revolution and those massed parades or demonstrations of brain washed zombies chanting their adoration of the Great Chairman while holding up his LITTLE RED BOOK. (Snorts)
Ad astra! Sean
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