De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica

by Lucius Artorius Castus

  [57] Latin has no word for “revenant”. Lemures, like manes or larvae, refers to the disembodied spirits of the dead. Castus is verbally improvising here. He continues with lemures, despite the fact that Pacilus has offered a more appropriate Greek term; no doubt this reflects a preference for Latin usages, even in novel situations where Latin lacks appropriate vocabulary.

  [58] It has been suggested that the translation “doll” is more correct here, but Castus uses the expression mobile lignum, which Horace employs to describe a type of marionette.

  [59] Back door or servant’s door.

  [60] A primitive mastiff, used as both a watchdog and a sheepdog, mentioned by Strabo, Oppian, and Petronius, among others.

  [61] Another Greek word for the restless or vengeful spirits of the dead, in this instance the particular servants of the goddess Hecate.

  [62] Some Roman shutters were in a single piece that slid in a framework on the outer wall. Shutters as we would recognize them, in two pieces that moved in opposite directions, were called “junctae” or “joined”.

  [63] In some upper-class Roman households, in an affectation that dated back to Republican times, arms were hung on the wall in the dining room or near the hearth - as if the owner of the house was ready to join the legions at a moment’s notice.

  [64] A strongbox commonly kept in Roman households to store valuables.

  [65] A study or den for the master of the house.

  [66] A Roman sword stored in a sheath will accumulate moisture along the thickest part of the blade and rust very quickly.

  [67] Armor made by wiring small scales onto a fabric or leather jerkin. This variety of armor was not very common, compared to the more standard chain mail or segmented armor typically associated with the popular image of a Roman legionary.

  [68] This is the only first-person description of how lorica squamata was donned that we have, and was eagerly and gratefully received by students of the military equipment of this era.

  [69] A pruning hook or small scythe.

  [70] The tool we would consider a traditional axe – a heavy chopping blade head with an eye through which a wooden handle passes – was imported into the Roman world from the Gallic tribe of the Belgae.

  [71] A largely non-alcoholic mixture of water and sour wine or near-vinegar.

  [72] A toast to the health of the listener.

  [73] “May no evil enter here.”

  [74] The Roman god of the doorway, to whom the door-motto was usually directed.

  [75] The Danube River.

  [76] Hadrian’s Wall.

  [77] A cubiculum was a sleeping area or bedroom.

  [78] The Aramaic word for “demon”.

  [79] It had long been regarded as a settled issue among scholars that all of the gospels were originally written in Greek, and that the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s claim that the gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic had no factual or historical basis. The episode recounted in this section, however, breathed new life into the “Aramaic proto-Matthew” position: the fact that a Gallo-Roman and likely native Latin speaker would immediately employ the Aramaic word for “demon” in this situation makes it likely that he had previously read some sort of religious document written in that tongue.

  [80] The mistress of the house; the wife of Rufus.

  [81] Although elsewhere I translate voveo as “to vow”, from the mouth of a Christian the word has the sense of “to pray”.

  [82] Glancy, in Slavery in Early Christianity, argues that the “household conversion” episodes in the Acts of the Apostles imply that the evangelists were quite happy to baptize slaves who had been ordered to convert by their masters, and that the quality of those conversions was often in doubt. This incident supports both of those speculations.

  [83] This exchange is somewhat obscure. Although Castus identifies the slave as a German, the man appears to be proclaiming that he would prefer to propitiate the dead using the traditional Latin folk offering of black beans. This may mean that he had become a slave at a very young age and had grown up in a household that subscribed to Latin folkways, and he therefore retained no memory of German traditions. To this slave, the choice is not between Christian prayer and German customs, but between Christian prayer and Latin customs.

  [84] In full armor Radamyntos would have had considerable weight to support.

  [85] Miasma is a Greek term with a double meaning: it can refer to the air that rises from swamps, which the ancient Greeks and Romans both associated with disease; it can also refer to a religious pollution, arising from a foul or unclean deed that can stain an individual and mark him for punishment by the Fates. It cannot be determined from the context in which sense Castus meant to use the term, because either meaning is possible here.

  [86] Castus’ reference to Varro is both ambiguous and exciting. Marcus Terentius Varro in Rerum Rusticarum advised his readers to avoid swamps because they “breed certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases.” This uncanny anticipation of germ theory was always assumed to have been a scientific dead end, driven from the stage by Galen’s popularization of the theory of the humours and forgotten by history until resurrected by Fracastoro and van Leeuwenhoek. But the fact that the fate of Pacilus makes Castus think of Varro may indicate that a germ theory of disease made it further into the popular mind of the antiquity than we have previously believed. Combined with the tantalizing – but again, ambiguous – previous reference to miasma, Castus here comes painfully close to enunciating a nearly modern theory of disease contagion. He does not quite make it to modernity, however, and ultimately it is plain that he continues to regard the strange events he describes here as supernatural and not epidemiological.

  [87] Despite the extremely bizarre and dangerous series of events, Castus here shows concern that by making this threat to the mistress of the house he has failed in his duty as a guest.

  [88] Rufus abruptly switches to the Greek word here, no doubt correctly guessing that the Aramaic term is meaningless to Castus.

  [89] The slaves who attended to funeral rites were associated with the temple of this aspect of the goddess Venus.

  [90] When a Roman died among his family, it was the responsibility of those present to have one of their number attempt to catch the dying man’s last breath in their mouth.

  [91] An amphora was a large ceramic urn with a thin neck that was used to store significant quantities of oil, wine, or grain.

  [92] Roman ovens were fairly primitive. A fire would be built directly in the cooking area, and once the desired temperature had been reached the coals would be raked out into a trench in the floor. Food would be placed into the cleared space to cook in the residual heat.

  [93] A married Roman woman wore a second garment called a stola on top of the basic tunic.

  [94] Castus here refers to the practice of manumissio censu, where a slave was set free by having his name entered onto the roll of citizens by the censor. This was usually done at the request of the slave’s owner, but the censor could do it independently as well – or, as in this case, at the request of a prominent citizen or important political or military figure.

  [95] This cryptic comment is believed to be a reference to a legend involving the gods Mithras and Helios. These two gods are often represented in contemporary art as banqueting together and then journeying in the latter’s sun-chariot. The emperor Commodus, who would have received this letter, is recorded to have been an initiate of the Mithraic mysteries. Mithraism began its rapid spread through the western legions at about this time, so Castus may have been an initiate as well; if so, the striking thing is that faced with supernatural terrors Castus does not appeal to Mithras for aid at any point.

  [96] Literally “the god in the machine”. This expression, coined by Horace, refers to the practice often used in Greek tragedies of lowering a god on to the stage by crane to resolve the
plot.

  [97] Castus here employs the Latin term “territorium”. This term was sometimes used to refer to the rural area under the administrative control of a city or orbs, and sometimes used to refer to the entire administrative area subject to an individual military leader’s political jurisdiction. Both meanings would entail a quite large geographical area, and this may indicate that Castus is anticipating that the effects of the curse have spread quite wide by this point in the tale.

  [98] Insulae were multi-floor apartment dwellings common in Rome and a few other large cities of the period. Only a few insula possessed water or plumbing systems, and those were only effective on the first floor. The poorer tenants on the upper floors would often simply throw their waste out the windows on to the streets below – which made walking on some Roman streets an adventure in itself.

  [99] Cassius Dio’s Roman History (Book 72) recounts an episode during the Balkan wars of Marcus Aurelius where a small force of Roman legionary infantry defeated a much larger force of mounted Iazyges in an engagement fought on the ice of a frozen Danube River by employing a similar tactic. It has previously been theorized that it is possible that Castus was the unnamed officer in charge of the Roman force described in Dio’s account. The fact that Castus later is put in command of a large detachment of cavalry from this same tribe seems to support this possibility; barbarian forces often were more easily led when placed under officers who had earned their respect in battle. This exchange supports the unofficial designation of Castus as the unknown officer in Dio.

  [100] As noted earlier, Castus had to be aware of the fact that his absence from the camp, on a social call, during this emergency, could reflect poorly on his command abilities. He may have hoped to deflect attention from his questionable action by lavishing praise on the subordinate who assumed command in his stead. While several of the figures named in this letter are known to us, Decimus Valerius is completely obscure other than this reference.

  [101] Except for a few dismissive references in Christian apologia, we have little information about the religion of the Mauri, and no way therefore to identify the myths to which Castus refers here.

  [102] Although it was well known that the ancestors of the Berbers had served the Romans as light cavalry for centuries, the geographic extent of their service was not well documented. This is the best reference we have to the presence of Mauri cavalry on the northern frontier.

  [103] Official way stations maintained by the Roman state, for people and for vehicles and animals respectively.

  [104] Roman custom prohibited burial within a city boundary, and this caused tombs to be built on the sides of the roads on the approaches to a city. The roads outside Rome in particular were lined with tombs for a considerable distance.

  [105] This recalls the climax of Euripides’ Bacchae, where the head of Pentheus is proudly displayed as a trophy by Agave.

  [106] One of the two main roads in a Roman camp, running between the two side-gates and in front of the general’s tent.

  [107] A unit of eight men, roughly the equivalent of a squad, who lived together as a unit.

  [108] The main gate of the camp.

  [109] Despite their extensive service in multiple theatres of operations the Sarmatians were still barbarian auxiliaries at the end of the day, and their reliability and discipline were always in question, particularly among the cavalry. It is notable that Castus does not even dwell upon this breach of discipline and takes it as a matter of course.

  [110] A Roman officer would be trained in the art of rapidly determining the size of an enemy force based on the total ground area it took up and the density of the enemy’s formation.

  [111] Before being pressed for oil, olives would be passed through a mill-like device that ground them into a mash and removed their seed pits.

  [112] The Romans tended to interpret any foreign worship with military overtones as a variation on their own worship of Mars. What we know of the Sarmatian sword-cult would link it more closely with the worship of Apollo than that of Mars.

  [113] The aedes was a small shrine set up in the middle of a Roman camp to hold the legionary standards.

  [114] Enthousiasmos, one of the few Greek terms Castus employs without attempting to substitute with Latin.

  [115] This description of the battle-madness of Castus is a Latin mongrelization of lines from the Iliad containing Homer’s description of a similar madness that swept over Hector.

  [116] The general’s command tent, located at the center of the camp.

  [117] The opening of this chapter recalls both the description of the madness of Turnus in Virgil’s Aeneid and Euripides’ description of a psychotic episode suffered by Herakles. Together with the Homeric reference at the end of the last chapter, these are the strongest evidence that De Bello Lemures was in fact a literary exercise.

  [118] Castus on multiple occasions employs a singular form of the word lemures, which was previously believed to only exist in the plural form. This may simply be a usage error on Castus’ part.