Attila

  Isca Dumnoniorum - Isca of the Dumnonii, i.e. Exeter

  Isca Silurum - Isca of the Silures, i.e. Caerleon

  Isle of Môn - Anglesey

  Kernow - Cornwall

  Kharvad Mountains - the Hun name for the Carpathians (see ‘Harvatha’)

  Lauriacum - Enns*

  Londinium - London

  Lucrine Lake - near Baia. Oysters were first farmed here, by the enterprising Sergius Orata, in the 1st century BC. He had already made a fortune inventing the domestic shower. See Pliny, Natural History.

  Lugdunum Batavorum - Lugdunum of the Batavians, i.e. Leiden

  Lutetia - Paris

  Margus - Pozarevac, Serbia

  Mauritania - Morocco and Northern Algeria*. Not to be confused with present-day Mauritania to the south, virtually unknown to the Roman world.

  Mediolanum - Milan

  Neapolis - Naples

  Noricum - Austria*

  Noviomagnus - Chichester

  Numidia - Tunisia*

  Ophiusa - a Greek name meaning ‘abounding in snakes,’ common throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes and Cyprus were each known colloquially as ‘Ophiusa’ - ‘Snake Island.’ Scythian Ophiusa, a Greek trading station on the Euxine, is today’s Odessa, in the Ukraine.

  Panium - a humble and unremarked little town in Thrace

  Pannonia - Hungary*

  Patavium - Padua

  Portus Lemanis - Port Lympne, Kent. One of the haunting lost cities of Roman Britain; once a bustling international port with a huge natural harbour, now no more than a few broken walls on a green hillside.

  Puteoli - Pozzuoli

  Sarmatia - see Scythia

  Sarmatian Jazyges - the flat, rich, much-coveted pastureland of the Hungarian Plain, that lies between the Danube and the Tisza.

  Scythia - Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and all points east*

  Silestria - Northern Bulgaria*

  Siluria - South Wales

  Sirmium - Sremska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia

  Tanais, R - the River Don, in the Ukraine

  Tergestus - Trieste

  Teutoberg Forest - Much of present-day Germany. Scholarly consensus now is that the legions of Varus were destroyed near to Osnabrück, north west of the hills still called the Teutoburger Wald.

  Tibur - Tivoli

  Toletum - Toledo

  Trasimene, L - Trasimeno, Lago. The massacre took place between the two villages known to this day as Ossaia and Sanguineto - ‘the place of bones’ and ‘the place of blood.’ Any visitor there will soon understand the brilliance of Hannibal’s huge-scale ambush and use of landscape.

  Vangiones - Worms

  Vindobona - Vienna

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Jon Wood and Genevieve Pegg at Orion for enthusiasm, encouragement and patience throughout; to Patrick Walsh of Conville and Walsh, my incomparable agent; to Anthony Cheetham for the original impetus for this trilogy; to Marcella Edwards for all her support; to the wonderful staff of numerous libraries, especially Chelsea, Kentish Town, the London Library and the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution; to several people for a quiet place to work, including Mark and Yseult in Somerset, Michael and Trisha in Ashdon, and my parents in Eynsham. And for a not-so-quiet place to work, Anita’s, the only internet café in the entire department of Intibucà, Honduras, where under slightly unusual circumstances, much of this novel was revised: thanks, Anita. The ‘sibylline verses’ that appear on pp337 and 343 were first set down in English by the Victorian poet, Arthur O’Shaughnessy; the translations on pp53-5 are my own, from a eulogy of Claudian to the Emperor Honorius which is, alas, quite genuine.