The Last Legion

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The last breath of wind died down at that moment and the surface of the water calmed, revealing, reflecting a magical vision: the solemn figure of his tutor who had suddenly reappeared. The little silver mistletoe twig shone on his chest. His voice was nearly unrecognizable as he said: ‘It’s all over, my son, my lord, my king. No one shall ever dare touch you again, for you’ve passed through ice, fire and blood, like that sword which has penetrated the stone. You are the son of the dragon. You are Pendragon.’

  EPILOGUE

  Thus the battle was fought and was won: the battle of Mons Badonicus, which we call Mount Badon in our language. At the hand of Aurelianus Ambrosius Ventidius, a humble man, the last of the Romans. And thus the prophecy was fulfilled, a prophecy that had led me to undertake a journey that no one would have thought possible: first from my native land to Italy, and then, many years later, from Italy back all the way to Britannia. My disciple, emperor of the Romans for only a few days and then sentenced to endless imprisonment, thus became king of Britannia with the name of Pendragon, ‘the son of the dragon,’ as he had been acclaimed by the soldiers of the last legion on the day of his victory. Aurelianus remained at his side like a father, until he realized that the name Pendragon had definitively obscured the name Romulus, and that his love for Ygraine had completely occupied the heart of his adopted son. He then set off with Livia, the only woman he had ever loved in all his life, and nothing more was known of them. I like to think that they returned to their little homeland on the lagoon – Venetia – to continue to live as Romans without having to live like barbarians, and to build a future of liberty and peace.

  Cornelius Batiatus departed with them, on the same ship, but perhaps he did not follow them to their destination. Perhaps he stopped at the Columns of Hercules, the gateway to his native land: Africa. I shall never forget that it was the warmth of his heart that restored breath to my lifeless boy on the icy peaks of the Alps. May the Lord permit him to meet others as noble and generous as he, on his life’s journey.

  The seed which came from a dying world set down roots and produced fruit in this remote land, at the ends of the earth. The son of Pendragon and Ygraine is five years old now, as I finish this work of mine. He was given the name Arthur at birth, from Arcturius, which means ‘he who is born under the star of the Bear’. Only one who comes from the southern seas could give such a name to his son, which proves that whatever the destiny of a man may be, his most intimate memories never abandon him, until the day of his death.

  Our enemies were driven back and our kingdom extended southward to include the city of Caerleon, one of the first we encountered upon our return to Britannia, but I have preferred to stay up here, to keep watch and to meditate in this tower at the Great Wall, listening to voices enfeebled by time. The wondrous sword still lies sunken into the stone, ever since that day of blood and glory. Only I now know the full inscription, I who read it that day long ago when I saw it for the first time: CAI.IUL.CAES.ENSIS CALIBURNUS, ‘the Calibian sword of Julius Caesar’.

  Part of that inscription is buried deep in the stone now, and other letters have become covered by encrustations and lichens over the long years it has been exposed to the elements. The only letters still legible are E S CALIBUR, and that is the name that the people of this land give the sword, when frozen winter mornings allow them to walk over the ice to the centre of the lake and admire that extraordinary object. They say that only the hand of the king will ever extract it from the stone, on the day when he will once again have to combat evil.

  A long, long time has passed since the distant days of my youth, and my first name, Myrdin, has changed in the mouths of this people as well. They now call me Merlin. But my soul remains the same, destined to find the immortal light, like the soul of every man created in the image of God.

  The sun begins to melt the snow on the slopes of the hills, and the first flowers of spring open their corollas to the tepid wind that comes from the south. God has allowed me to finish my work and I render him thanks. Here my story ends. Here, perhaps, a legend is born.

  Author’s Note

  The fall of the Roman World is one of the great themes of the history of western civilization, and yet remains one of the most mysterious, given the complexity of the problem and the scarcity of original accounts and sources regarding the epoch of Rome’s final decline. What’s more, this event – traditionally considered a catastrophe – is a mere historical convention. No one even noticed in 476 AD that the Roman world had ended; nothing that happened that year was any more traumatic than what had been going on day in and day out for years. Odoacer – the Herulian chief who had deposed young Romulus Augustulus – simply turned the imperial insignia over to Constantinople, noting that one emperor was more than enough for the whole Roman World.

  Most of the story told here is the fruit of my imagination; what I’ve attempted to do is to render the enormous impact of this event, while bringing out the emergence of new worlds, of new cultures and new civilizations whose roots still held fast to Roman tradition. The ‘Arthurian’ outcome of the story can be interpreted symbolically, as a parable, but this is not its only reading. Scholars have long recognized that the events which gave birth to the legend of King Arthur, set down in the middle ages by Geoffrey of Monmouth, actually took place at the end of the fifth century in Britain. Among the protagonists was a mysterious and heroic Aurelianus Ambrosius, solus Romanae gentis (‘the last of the Romans’), the victor of the Battle of Mount Badon against the Saxons and the predecessor of Pendragon and Arthur. We often tend to think of these characters as medieval knights, whereas in reality they were much closer to the Celtic Roman world. There is also truth in the tradition that holds that the Roman-Britons of the fifth century invoked the assistance of the emperor in fighting off invaders from the north and south. General Aetius twice consented to their pleas and sent Germanus, an enigmatic figure, half warrior and half saint, to their aid. Other characters, like Myrdin the Celt – the Merlin of Arthurian legend – are taken from the epic tradition which revolves around the legendary sword Excalibur. This name has been interpreted by eminent Celtists as a sort of contraction of the Latin words ensis caliburnus, that is, the ‘Calibian sword’, an expression which hints at a Mediterranean origin. The mythical, symbolic hypothesis expressed in the story is thus inspired by actual historical events at the twilight of the ancient world, unfolding in that arcane moment that was to give rise to Arthurian legend.

  The events narrated are seen through the eyes of a group of loyalist Roman soldiers who still embody the traditions of the past and see the barbarians as ferocious aliens bent on destruction. This attitude was probably quite widespread at the time. The short-lived Roman/barbarian realms certainly failed due to irremediable conflict between the Romanized populations and the invaders. Today, the concept of invasion tends to be re-interpreted as a phenomenon of Volkerwanderung, or migration, although the end result remains much the same.

  In the turbulent modern day, the West – which sees itself as immortal and indestructible (much as the Roman Empire did in its heyday) – would do well to consider that all empires dissolve sooner or later and that the wealth of one part of the world cannot hope to survive long in the face of the abject poverty of the rest of the world’s populations. Those who were called ‘barbarians’ then did not want to provoke the destruction of the Empire; they wanted merely to become part of it. Many of them even defended it with their lives, but the die was cast, and the world plunged into a long period of chaos and degradation.

  Some of the novel’s characters express themselves in such a way as to suggest the residual survival of pagan sentiments; although this may not be easy to sustain historically at the end of the fifth century, it is not at all improbable, in the light of certain signals appearing in late sources. Such sentiments are best expressed in the ‘pagan’ attachment to tradition and to the mos maiorum, the customs of their ancestors, perhaps not wholly extinct in this age.

  Very few
details are known about Romulus Augustulus; in particular, the age at which the last emperor was deposed is controversial in historical sources. In creating the character, I’ve preferred the account of Excerpta Valesiana, 38, which speaks of him as a boy: ‘Odoacar . . . deposuit Augustulum de regno, cuius infantiam misertus concessit ei sanguinem’ (Odoacer deposed Augustulus from his throne and, feeling compassion for his tender age, spared his life . . .).

  The specialized reader will have recognized a number of original sources woven into the fabric of the story, most from the late Latin period: Ammianus Marcellinus’s History, De Reditu suo by Rutilius Namatianus, De gubernatione Dei by Salvianus, the History of the Gothic War by Procopius of Caesarea, the Lausiac History by Palladius, In Rufinum by Claudianus, Valesianus Anonimus, Cassiodorus’s Chronicles, Vita Epiphanii and Comitis Chronicon, as well as occasional references to Plutarch, Orosius, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome. A series of sources from the early middle ages forms the base for the ‘Britannic’ epilogue of the story: the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum by the Venerable Bede, and the De exitio Britanniae by Gildas.

  Acknowledgements

  My deepest thanks go to a number of dear friends who have supported and encouraged me with their suggestions and scholarship, especially Lorenzo Braccesi and Giovanni Gorini of the University of Padova, Gianni Brizzi and Ivano Dionigi of the University of Bologna, Venceslas Kruta of the Sorbonne and Robin Lane Fox of New College, who listened to this whole story on a long car trip from Luton to Oxford. Precious help was also provided by Giorgio Bonamente and Angela Amici of the University of Perugia, and my former colleague and collaborator Gabriella Amiotti of the Università Cattolica of Milan. Obviously, any errors or injudicious choices are my responsibility alone. I must also express my gratitude to Franco Mimmi, who steadfastly assisted me from his residence in Madrid, Marco Guidi, one of my staunchest and oldest friends, who I often consulted regarding events of the late Roman age in Britain, and Giorgio Fornoni, who in keeping with a decade-long tradition, welcomed me to his magnificent Alpine home where I worked on the final draft of this novel in total isolation from the rest of the world. Special thanks go to my wife, Christine, my most critical and attentive – as well as my most affectionate – reader, and to my literary agents Laura Grandi and Stefano Tettamanti who accompanied me step by step on this project, encouraging me even in the most difficult moments. I also thank Paolo Buonvino, whose music was my constant companion as I wrote this novel, inspiring its most intense and dramatic pages.

  Last but not least, thanks to Damiano of Albergo Ardesio, who sustained me with his delicious cuisine during my entire Alpine stay, and to Giancarla at Freccia’s Bar, whose matchless espresso always starts my day off right.