Janne Floris reminds Manse Everard:
"'Finally Civilis agreed to meet with Cerialis and discuss terms. It is a dramatic scene in Tacitus - a bridge across the Ijssel, from which workers first removed the middle - the two men stood each at an end of the broken span and talked -'" (2, p. 489)
- and Everard remembers that that was where Tacitus' manuscript had broken off.
Poul Anderson makes the broken bridge a dramatic scene in 19 which, like some other chapters, is pure historical fiction. Snow covers burned buildings. The southerly sun casts shadows. Ice crusts dried reeds and drifts midstream. Wilderness glooms on the horizon. Civilis/Burhmund and his men ride to their side of the broken bridge and he walks to the end of it to face Cerialis while the workers who had demolished the middle of the bridge and a few ranked legionaries wait on the other side. The two leaders hail each other and begin a grave exchange in Latin.
And there ends this chapter. But the fact that the chapter is here confirms that the Time Patrol agents have completed their mission with the Northern Rebellion ended on schedule. 19, less than a page and a half in length, is followed by III, the third of the four mythological passages, as we approach the conclusion to this, one of the best ever time travel stories.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
A pity we only have large fragments of the works of Tacitus. High risk of loss when books had to be laboriously copied by hand. Only a few copies of Tacitus' works would be circulating.
Ad astra! Sean
It's a minor miracle that the "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius" survived, since he didn't even intend it for publication.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! The Greek text of the MEDITATIONS we have today almost certainly descends from a single ms. of that work which Arethas, archbishop of Caesarea, had copied from an older manuscript a little before 907.
Ad astra! Sean
Marcus Aurelius wrote it in Greek, btw.
Harry Turtledove says the Greek is pretty good... mostly...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Not a surprise, educated Romans of the High Empire would learn Greek as a matter of course. And I would expect Marcus Aurelius to be at least competent or better in it.
I have wondered how the Tarnation what the Emperor had only intended to be a private notebook of his thoughts ever survived. I doubt his unworthy son Commodus ever read the MEDITATIONS or had it copied.
Ad astra! Sean
I don't think anything but Rome, its environs and the gladitorial arenas were really real to Commodus.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember how that was what Artorius thought in THE WINDS OF FATE. If Commodus had been a well-meaning mediocrity like his father's co-Emperor Lucius Verus he might have died of old age on the throne.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, that's the genetic lottery of hereditary monarchy.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, and the way to hedge one's bets like that is thru a limited or constitutional monarchy. Or even having something like a Japanese style shogun doing most of the day to day governing.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, the Japanese lucked out - their Emperor was often powerless, but had tremendous legitimacy. Shoguns often had the heir to the throne marry one of their daughters, for instance, but none actually seized the throne.
When European arrived in Japan in the 16th century, they treated the Shogun as "king" and the Emperor as a religious figure -- which was near enough to how the Japanese of the time thought of it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirlng!
The closest analog in the West that I can think of for what happened in Japan was during the last 80 years or of the Merovingian dynasty in the Frankish kingdom, where the Mayors of the Palace were the actual rulers and the Merovingian kings powerless figureheads. At first the Mayors were content with their nominally subordinate position, but this Western shogunate never became as deeply rooted and institutionalized in Frankland as it was in Japan, and ended with Pepin the Short deposing the last Merovingian and seizing the throne.
Ad astra! Sean
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