Real And Fantastic Histories

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series encapsulates considerable - concentrated - political and military history and geography covering several ancient and medieval periods. I focus on the mythology, theology and philosophy because that is my field of interest whereas one or two blog readers comment knowledgeably on the conflicts and personalities of Roman and medieval history.

The religious traditions present a series of fantastic reflections of real history:

one of the epic sources of the Pentateuch presented history as culminating in the Davidic monarchy;

however, history continued so various later prophecies were made, e.g., that not David but his descendant and successor would rule a universal kingdom;

Veleda prophesies the imminent overthrow of Rome by Germanic barbarians whereas Virgil/Anchises prophesies an eternal empire for Rome;

some might view the Virgilian prophecy as currently fulfilled spiritually instead of politically.

Poul Anderson does not show us Veleda's alternative history but does show us two alternative outcomes of the medieval church-state conflict.

We live in real history where, so far, no prophesies of Armageddon have been fulfilled. Indeed, empirically, history does not work that way. There is much conflict and unpredictability but all from purely human agencies.