Gallicenae

by Poul Anderson

  “Lagini, I sing now.

  Wing now to cravens,

  Ravens; bespeak them!

  Seek them will bold men.

  Old men can only,

  Lonely, send greeting,

  Meeting them never:

  ‘Ever to sorrow

  Morrow shall wake you,

  Take you like cattle—

  Battle-won plunder—

  Under its keeping.

  Reaping is mirthless,

  Worthless is sowing;

  Growing dry thistles,

  Bristles the plowland.

  Cowland lies calfless.

  Laughless the hall is.

  All is turned sickly,

  Quickly, O Lagini.”

  And every day thereafter, for a full year, did the ollam poet mount the grave of his son to satirize yonder country, its King ana its people. And during that year, neither grain nor grass nor any green thing grew there. Herds starved in barren fields, flocks in sere forests, folk in foodless dwellings. When finally Laidchenn maqq Barchedo reckoned his vengeance complete, and the blight and the famine had lifted, that Fifth of Ériu took long to recover its health. Meanwhile pirates made free of the coasts, raiders and rebels of the interior.

  Such was the tale that, above the fire of past wrongs, hammered the soul of Eochaid into a knife meant for Niall.

  Buy Dahut Now!

  AFTERWORD AND NOTES

  I

  Chairs: In the ancient world these were usually reserved for persons of status. Ordinary folk sat on stools, benches, or the floor.

  Augustus: At this time there was more than one Roman Emperor. The senior of two was titled “Augustus,” his colleague and heir apparent “Caesar.” Usually both the Western and Eastern parts of the Empire had such a double monarchy. (Occasionally a given Augustus had two or more Caesars, each responsible for a part of his domains.) Hence the name “Tetrarchy.” Evidently Maximus’s designation as Augustus amounted to recognition that the Empire had now split into three coequal realms, de facto if not quite de jure. St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, had played a leading role in persuading him to settle for that, rather than trying to take over the entire West. In 387 he would break the agreement and invade Italy.

  Augusta Treverorum: Trier (Trêves).

  Early this year: Maximus made his terms with Valentinian and Theodosius late in 384 or early in 385; the date is uncertain, like the dates of many events in this era.

  Africa: North Africa, exclusive of Egypt and Ethiopia.

  Illyricum: A Roman diocese (major administrative division) occupying, approximately, most of the territory now comprising Yugoslavia and Greece.

  Lugdunum: Lyons.

  Burdigala: Bordeaux.

  Sena: Île de Sein.

  Sign of the Ram, etc: Precessing, the vernal equinox moved from Aries to Pisces about the time of Christ, and by the fourth century was well within the latter. To populations obsessed with astrology, this had an obscure but apocalyptic significance. It may in some degree have aided the initial spread of the Christian religion and (together with the ICHTHYS acronym) influenced the adoption of the fish as a symbol of Christ.

  Gallia: Gaul.

  Pagans in high Roman office: Symmachus is best known from this time, but there were numerous others, despite Christianity being now the state religion and attempts made to proscribe all the rest.

  Empire: The Roman state still called itself a republic, but had of course long ceased to be any such thing. Nobody took the fiction seriously. So, to avoid confusing modern readers, we have our characters speak the word which was actually in their minds.

  Italian Mediolanum: Milan. Several cities bore that name.

  Ambrosius: Today known as St. Ambrose.

  (Gallia) Lugdunensis: A province of Gaul, comprising most of what is now northern and a fair portion of central France.

  (Gallia) Aquitania: A province of Gaul, bounded approximately by the Atlantic Ocean and the Garonne and Loire Rivers.

  Osismii: A tribe occupying the western end of Britanny, hence the immediate neighbors of Ys.

  Ahriman: The supreme lord of evil in the Mithraic religion.

  II

  Tuba: In the Roman world, this was a long, straight trumpet, used especially by the military for commanding, signalling, setting cadence, etc.

  Pontus: A Roman diocese, comprising Anatolia.

  Hispania: A Roman diocese, comprising what are now Spain and Portugal.

  Caledonia: A loose term, referring more or less to what is now Scotland. Cf. the notes to Roma Mater.

  Condate Redonum: Rennes.

  Liger: The River Loire.

  Jufiomagus: Angers.

  Namnetes: A tribe occupying the right bank of the Loire from the seashore to its confluence with the Mayenne.

  Caesarodunum Turonum: Tours. At this time, those parts of city names that designated local tribes were increasingly displacing those parts the Romans had bestowed. Thus they often became the ancestors of the present-day names.

  Laeti: Barbarians allowed to settle within the Empire on condition that they give it allegiance—a proviso observed only loosely, at best.

  Jerkin: No such garment is attested until a much later date, but something of the kind must have been in use long before.

  Gesoriacum: Boulogne.

  Redones: A tribe occupying the area around Rennes.

  Maedraeacum: Médréac, a village near which we once spent a pleasant week in a gîte. The reconstruction of the ancient name is entirely conjectural, as is the history. However, many such communities did originate as latifundia.

  Last Day: Chiliasm was rampant in this era. About 380, St. Martin of Tours told a disciple that the Antichrist had been born. Countless people, high and low, educated and ignorant, were finding their own portents of the imminent end of the world. Like numerous other features of late West Roman society, this one looks rather familiar to an inhabitant of the late twentieth century.

  Organization of the Bacaudae (also spelled Bagaudae): Little is recorded about this. A couple of chronicles mention an “emperor,” though that word (Latin imperator) may simply have its original meaning of “commander.” Since the Bacaudae persisted for a long time and occasionally won pitched battles, they must have had more structure than, say, the medieval Jacquerie. But we can scarcely compare them to modern guerrillas; they lacked both a formalized ideology and the assistance of powerful foreign states. Our guess is that, as more and more individuals fled from an oppressive civilization and then perforce turned about to prey on it, they necessarily and almost blindly developed primitive institutions and a moralistic rationalization of their actions.

  Hand to arm: The Roman equivalent of the later handshake.

  III

  Martinus: Today know as St. Martin of Tours.

  The appearance of St. Martin: At this time there were not yet any particular vestments or other distinguishing marks for the clergy. Indeed, most still earned their livelihoods in ordinary ways and preached in their spare time; many were married; some of the married, when the husband had been ordained, vowed sexual abstention, but not all did by any means. Likewise, tonsures for cenobites were neither standardized nor universal. The kind adopted by St. Martin, which he may have originated, became that of the Celtic Church, eventually superseded by the Roman form with which we today are more familiar. Martin’s looks and traits are described by his disciple and biographer Sulpicius Severus.

  Martins elevation to bishop: This story, given us by Sulpicius, is not as incredible as it looks. Ecclesiastical procedures were often ad hoc, especially in the provinces, and there are well-attested cases of laymen being called to the episcopate and only then receiving baptism. A full bishop had so much secular importance that ordinary people sometimes demanded a voice in the choosing of him.

  Pannonia: A Roman province occupying an area now shared by parts of Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Its inhabitants at the time were largely, if not exclusively, Celtic.

  Ave
la (or Abula): Ávila.

  Ossanuba: Faro, Portugal.

  Manicheanism: A religion which was, like Mithraism, of Iranian origin, but if anything more of a threat to Christianity, since it incorporated important elements of the latter. Throughout the centuries, under one name or another, it has been a recurrent heresy. Among other deviations, it attributes creative powers to Satan.

  Gates of Trier: In Roman Imperial times there were four of these, of which the Porta Nigra survives as a ruin. Its name is medieval; originally it was not blackened by centuries of smoke.

  Mosella: The River Moselle (or Mosel).

  Rhenus: The River Rhine.

  Bonna: Bonn.

  Juthungi: A Germanic tribe living near Raetia.

  Raetia (or Rhaetia): A Roman province covering, approximately, what is now Bavaria.

  Basilica: Originally this word meant an administrative center, civil or military.

  The fate of the Priscillianists: Much is uncertain about events surrounding this trial, the historical importance of which includes the fact that it is the first recorded persecution of Christians by other Christians. The dates and the very year are debatable. We have chosen the 385 favored by most scholars and assumed that, because so much had been going on before, the trial took place rather late in that year. Some accounts say the heretics were burned, but it seems likelier that they were beheaded; the stake did not come into vogue until the Middle Ages.

  IV

  Fortifications: Legionaries on campaign had normally dug a trench and erected an earthwork around every camp, then levelled these upon leaving to keep an enemy from taking them over. By the late fourth century this cannot have been a common practice, for the old-style legion was on the way out. We assume that it lasted later in Britain than elsewhere.

  Lugdunum (or Lugudunum): Lyons. Several other cities bore this name.

  Vienna: Vienne (Wien in Austria, Vienna to speakers of English, was then Vindobona.) Remnants of a Mithraeum, such as are not found in Lyons, suggested that the cult persisted there, though by the time of Gratillonius’s visit it had been driven into a private home.

  Rhodanus: The River Rhóne.

  Circus: A space with tiers of seats on three sides, divided lengthwise by a barrier, for races, games, and shows.

  Asiatic: By “Asia” the Romans meant what we now call “Asia Minor” or “the Near East.”

  The Mithraeum in Vienne: As the model for this hypothetical last survivor, we have chosen some that have been excavated in Ostia.

  Tauroctony: A depiction of Mithras slaying the primordial Bull.

  Burdigala: Bordeaux.

  Rhetoric: Occasionally one sees classical schools of rhetoric, such as the great one at Bordeaux, referred to as universities. This is anachronistic, but only mildly so. Rhetoric, the study of persuasive argument, embraced not just oratory, but languages, logic, history, literature, and much else. Thus a mastery of it amounted to a liberal education.

  Garumna: The River Garonne.

  Paulinus: Ausonius’s grandson grew up into the kind of life that the old man envisioned, but it was shattered by the arrival of the Visigoths and other calamities.

  Duranius: The River Dordogne.

  V

  Mumu: Munster. The boundaries were probably less definite than in later times. Its association with women, musicians, and magic was ancient, and persisted into the Middle Ages.

  Ériu: Ireland.

  Children of Danu: Best known by a later name, the Tuatha Dé Danaan. According to legend, this race, the tuaths (only approximately equivalent to tribes; see the notes to Roma Mater) descended from the goddess Danu, held Ireland before the Milesians arrived from Spain. Overcome by the invaders, they retreated to the síd, mounds and hills whose interiors they made their dwellings. They themselves became the fairy folk. Most modern commentators think they are a Christian euhemerization of the pagan gods, and doubtless there is much truth in this view. However, the tradition of a war between them and the newcomers is so basic to Irish mythology that it must have some foundation in fact. Successive Celtic peoples did enter, taking land by force of arms. Our guess is that one or more of the earlier peoples, to whom their conquerors attributed magical powers, became conflated with the old gods, but that this had not yet happened at the time of our story.

  Children of Ír and Éber: Later called the Milesians; tradition makes them last invaders of Ireland before the Vikings.

  The Mountain of Fair Women: Now Slievenamon, southwest of Cashel.

  Síd (or sídh): Singular of sídhe. Both are pronounced, approximately, “shee.”

  Condacht: Connaught.

  Qõiquet Lagini: Leinster.

  Mide: A realm carved out of Connaught and Leinster, centered on Tara.

  The Ulati: The people of Ulster (Qóiqet nUlat). It should be remembered that the boundaries of all these territories were vague, and generally not identical with those of the modern provinces.

  Trade between Munster and Egypt: Potsherds up to the early Islamic period have been found.

  Christianity: The histories indicate that there was already an established and growing body of Christians in Munster, if not elsewhere in Ireland. For one thing, Palladius was sent to minister to them; and other bishops are mentioned, together with Irish clergymen serving on the Continent—all before the mission of St. Patrick.

  Conual Corcc (today usually rendered as Conall Corc): His dates are still more uncertain than Niall’s, and the stories about him that have come down to us are even more confused and contradictory. In both cases, we have tried to put together versions that make some logical sense.

  Fostering: Children in ancient Ireland, at least among the upper classes, more often that not were raised in other homes than their parents’. The ties thus created between families were as sacred as those of blood kinship.

  Alba: The early Irish name for what is now, more or less, Scotland. Sometimes “Alba” also included England and Wales. The name “Scotland” comes from its heavy colonization by Scoti, i.e., people from Ireland—just as Armorica was to become Brittany (Breizh, in its own language) after immigrants from Britain took it over. At the time of our story, the Scotic settlement amounted largely to an extension, into what is now Argyll, of the kingdom of Dal Riata, in what is now northern Antrim. (Some authorities put its founding as late as 500 A.D., but the event would have become possible soon after the Romans abandoned the Antonine Wall toward the end of the second century, and a date in the middle fourth century is consistent with other assumptions we have made for story purposes.) However, a king from Mide, adventuring in Alba, could well have defeated a Pictish leader and imposed an alliance in which the latter was a junior partner.

  The ogamm (today ogham) shield: This is evidently a Celtic form of an ancient and widespread story. Quite possibly the Vikings, in their day, brought it back to Denmark from Ireland. “Hamlet”—“Amleth(us)” in Saxo Grammaticus, Shakespeare’s ultimate source—is not a name otherwise found; one scholar has suggested that it may be a Scandinavian reading of the Gaelic spelling of the Nordic “Olaf”! Ogham was a very primitive and limited form of writing, so to alter it would not have been difficult.

  Ordovices and Silures: Tribes inhabiting what is now Wales.

  VI

  Éndae Qennsalach: Perhaps historical, perhaps not. The second half of his name refers to his ancestry.

  Founding of Mide: This is the legendary version. See the notes to Roma Mater.

  Origin of the Bóruma: This is also a legend, of course, but one which people of Niall’s time may well have believed. The tribute itself and its evil consequences are historical fact.

  Niall’s warfare: The sources say nothing specific; but given our story assumptions, campaigns like these are plausible.

  Ruirthech: The River Liffey. Then it seems to have marked the northern frontier of Leinster.

  Chariots: Roman tactics had long since made the military chariot obsolete, but it persisted in Ireland, where it did not have to face well-
drilled infantry and cavalry, until past our time. As for other equipment, see the notes to Roma Mater.

  Niall’s two Queens: Not only concubinage but polygyny was accepted in ancient Ireland, even after the conversion to Christianity. (For a while canon law decreed that a priest could have only one wife!) The chronicles say that Niall had fourteen sons by two wives, whom we suppose to have been more or less contemporaneous. Surely he had daughters too, and children by other women.

  Nobles and tenants: For a brief description of the classes flaith, soer-céli, and doer-céli, see the notes to Roma Mater.

  Combat tactics: Like the equipment, these too were little changed in Ireland from the old Celtic forms.

  Lifting a knee: Stools and tables were very low. To rise when a visitor appeared was a token of full respect. Short of this, though still polite, was to raise a knee, as if about to get up.

  Verse: Like Nordic skalds of a later date, early Irish poets used intricate forms, yet were expected to be able to compose within those forms on a moment’s notice. Our rendition here is a much simplified version of one scheme. Each stanza, expressing a complete thought, consists of four seven-syllabled lines. Besides the alliteration and rhyme, it is required that end-words of the second and fourth lines have one more syllable than those of the first and third. Oral skill such as this is entirely possible and historically attested. The poet naturally had to have an innate gift together with long and arduous training.

  Satire: The Celtic peoples were great believers in word magic. Well into Christian times, satirists were dreaded in Ireland. To a modern mind, it is not implausible that they could bring on psychosomatic disorders, even wasting illness. Our story supposes their powers went beyond that.