Two More From Suetonius

We can get used to reading history in parallel with historical fiction.

"Some of Domitian's campaigns, that against the Chatti for instance, were quite unjustified by military necessity; but not so that against the Sarmatians, who had massacred a legion and killed its commander."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 299.

This is the kind of remark that interests and amuses us when we have just read a novel like SM Stirling's To Turn The Tide whose characters include a Sarmatian former gladiatrix who is a skilled fighter and bodyguard.

"Only an amazing stroke of luck checked the rebellion which Lucius Antonius, the governor of Upper Germany, raised during Domitian's absence from Rome; the Rhine thawed in the nick of time, preventing the German barbarians in Antonius' pay for crossing the ice to join him, and the troops who remained loyal were able to disarm the rebels."

-ibid.

This supports the much-discussed "history is a series of accidents" theory. Sf readers imagine an alternative history in which the Rhine remained frozen and Lucius Antonius overthrew Domitian. This might also happen in the Time Patrol timeline:

time criminals could deploy a weather-control potential distributor from the Cold Centuries;

a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy could keep the Rhine frozen for longer.

This is another of those posts where I did not know in advance where I was going to wind up.