by Caleb Carr
Lumun-jan Gibbon writes, “We can be in no doubt that the ‘vast empire’ to which the narrator refers was Rome, despite the fact that the name Lumun-jan does not seem to appear in most Germanic dialects.” Gibbon could not have known, of course, that he was looking in the wrong place; if we turn to the Gothic vocabulary, we find that lumun is a root common to various terms for “light,” or in this case “lightning,” while jan is a suffix incorporated into many words which imply “protection”—especially “shield.” The tribes who eventually made up the kingdom of Broken before (perhaps long before) the fifth century included Goths as well as smaller groups, and all must have had some contact with Roman military detachments before Broken’s establishment: despite Caesar’s vehement warning that Rome should never try to conquer the region north of the Danube and east of the Rhine, some ambitious emperors and generals did dispatch scouting and punitive parties into those areas, usually with mixed or disastrous results. At least some of the tribes of those areas evidently came to associate Rome itself with one of the most effective and time-tested Roman instruments of war, the scutum, or large rectangular infantry shield, which was usually embossed with some representation of lightning bolts. Hence Lumun-jan, apparently a Gothic-based Broken term for “lightning-shield,” and Lumun-jani, or “people of the lightning shield.” Thus deriving a name for a people from a weapon that they commonly use is not unique in world history, or even in the history of the areas making up and surrounding Broken: perhaps the most famous example is the Saxons, who are believed to have been named after a comparatively small, if still fearsome, weapon, their characteristic seax, or single-edged combat knife. —C.C.
had been labeled “Mad” It should not strike us as strange that the people of such a kingdom would refer to their founding monarch as “mad,” nor is the case by any means unique, in history or in legend—and it was certainly not inspired, as we will see some of the kingdom’s officials try to state, by his apparently heretical religion alone. “Madness” was often equated with vision or genius of any kind, particularly in less intellectually developed societies, which Broken evidently was when Oxmontrot began his reign; and the fact that the term would later be used, at least by many, in a pejorative way does not change this fact. Nor does the frequent use of the phrase “Mad King” in countless popular works of legend, fiction, and history from later periods: whether the very real, as in the case of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, or in fiction, as in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Mad King. Indeed, there were apparently many in Broken, Sentek Arnem among them, who looked back on this supposedly “mad” king with great admiration—something they would certainly not have done, had they considered him simply insane. —C.C.
Thedric This is another distinctly Gothic name, suggesting that Oxmontrot married a woman of those tribes. —C.C.
the remarkable Isadora Isadora is one of those rare Gothic names to have survived intact into the modern age. It is also a useful tool for helping us understand why the influence on Arnem’s wife of certain persons considered “exotic” would have been so frowned upon in Broken: like Amalberta Korsar, Isadora Arnem appears to have come from good Gothic stock, although in her case, the blood had definitely thinned, and the family had fallen on hard times, even before the deaths of her parents. But the notion that more northerly influences would have been viewed, in Broken, with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for persons from sunnier, more southeasterly lands is a noteworthy variation on the very old story of European distrust, prejudice, and arrogance. —C.C.
Reyne Niksar Reyne appears to be either an archaic or a Broken dialectal spelling for Reini, the shortened version of Reinhold, or “counselor [to the ruler].” Niksar, however, is more obscure: it seems, at first, a variation on Nikolas, and therefore yet another obvious confirmation that the influence of classical antiquity on the society of Broken was pronounced, Nikolas being a Germanization of the Greek Nicholas, or “victory of the people.” But there may be an alternate meaning, as sar may have been the Broken dialectal version of saller, which means, literally, “one who dwells by a sallow,” sallow being a type of small willow native to Germany. —C.C.
khotor and fausten See note, for Broken’s military organization; in brief, here, fausten were, perhaps obviously, detachments of some fifty men, ten of which made up a khotor. —C.C.
“At attention” Although this phrase did not come into common use, among armies, until the fourteenth century, there were and are generally analogous phrases contained in nearly every language, ancient and modern, all of which are descendants, not surprisingly, of the Roman command, which Oxmontrot would have known and respected; but, because the Broken dialect remains lost to time, the Broken Codex having disappeared with the translator, we will likely never know what the specific term was. —C.C.
the Merchants’ Council The close identification of the patron god of Broken, Kafra, with the city’s merchant class and leaders reinforces Gibbon’s earlier point about the way in which the kingdom’s rulers and citizens gave a “decidedly Germanic treatment” to what was originally, in all likelihood, a mere cult of hedonism and materialism, turning it into “a pragmatic and highly organized system of theocracy”—a theocracy whose most visible and powerful underpinning was a determined merchant oligarchy, rather than the kind of warrior-based aristocracy that could be found in most barbarian states and tribes of the time. —C.C.
“let alone a sacred bull” Gibbon writes, “The close association of lunar worship with male cattle—or, indeed, horned animals of almost any kind—was common to societies as ancient as early Mesopotamia, and likely existed in the vicinity of Broken long before the city came into being. Animal horns were identified with the ‘horns’ of the crescent moon, and from this comes the mystical association with virility and sensuality that was, evidently, a part of Old Broken’s lunar worship, and which survived among the Bane long past the arrival of Kafra. Indeed, in many parts of the Far East even today, high prices are paid for the horns of exotic animals, which are ground to powder and form the ingredients of traditional virility tonics; only one of the many paradoxes afflicting such Oriental peoples as the Chinese, who are capable at once of great works, great learning, and yet absurd, even vicious and exterminating superstitions.” It remains only to be said that this traffic in the horns and other parts of endangered animal species, illegally, brutally, and immorally harvested, has only grown with time; and that various peoples of the world—but especially, as Gibbon states, those of the Orient—will pay unheard-of amounts of money for such “virility tonics,” the efficacy of which has been found to be absurd again and again by modern scientists. —C.C.
“Blast it” Etymologically speaking, the persistent use of various oaths based on the word “blast” is interesting—and again, adds plausibility to the Manuscript—as it is one of the few words to originate in Old High German that has survived intact, but into English (by way of Old English), rather than into modern German: thus it becomes, in a sense, one of the “ghost words” of a dead language. This may seem implausible, if one assumes that the expression is somehow associated, as it usually is today, with explosives; but in fact, “blast” is another example of a phrase that might seem an anachronism, on first look, but which dates back to the early Middle Ages, where “blasts” of wind or man-made air (as in horn-blowing) occurred long before Europeans had divined the secret of how to blow each other up with gunpowder. —C.C.
“your accursed city was built” Gibbon writes, “We ought not think that the Bane are speaking, here, in any but literal terms. As our great British explorers—most recently the late and much lamented Captain James Cook—have discovered, the exile of tribal members who have proved unable to contribute to the advancement of a given society, onto some neighboring island, or into some wilderness or other in a remote location, is a practice found the world over—as are societies formed by those same exiles. The fact that, in this case, the exiles appear to have taken on a distinctive physical feature—reduced heig
ht—ought not surprise us, either: we have only to look to advances in, say, the breeding of livestock within England itself to understand the physical ramifications, positive as well as negative, of the careful selection of mating partners. If the citizens of Broken deliberately bred their progeny to grow tall, strong, and handsome, it only stands to reason that those exiled from the city would produce a significantly smaller—and less attractive—race.” Thus did one of the great historians of his own or any era instinctively anticipate a major scientific principle. —C.C.
“our unfortunate new recruit” Gibbon’s claims about the cultural mimicry of the people of Broken continue to be borne out in small ways: use of the word “recruit,” rather than simply “warrior” (or some one of the many similar terms used by barbarian tribes in Europe at the time), further calls to mind a society in which military service had been highly systematized and regimented along Roman, rather than early feudal, lines—a theory confirmed by the fact that such service was not, evidently, compulsory, even for the lower classes. —C.C.
“Hak” It is impossible, of course, to determine if the original translator of the Manuscript has left this exclamation intact, or if he has approximated some similar sound from the original dialect of Broken; but its close resemblance to the still-common German Ach is noteworthy. —C.C.
built for the healthy If the policy of “culling” weak members of those tribes that eventually made up the kingdom of Broken seems to contemporary sensibilities so drastic as to be mythical, we should remember that, even in Gibbon’s time (as he makes clear in an earlier note) there was awareness of societies great and small that had employed—that still employed—similar policies; although he fails to mention how often his own Britain did the same, to rid itself of those citizens who lacked financial sense or scruples—debtors and thieves—as well as other petty criminals, all of whom were sent to America, Australia, and other distant colonies.
Nor should we be smug about Gibbon’s deliberate blindness on this score: such practices have no more vanished from the twenty-first century world than they had from the eighteenth. Various tribes that are “indigenous” (a word that almost daily loses meaning, in a world increasingly marked by transient populations) to South America and Africa allow parents to have only the number of children that the tribe generally can support, killing off surplus numbers. The ancient Roman practice of weeding out physically deformed children by exposing them at birth to the tender mercies of mountainside wildernesses, meanwhile, is currently echoed both in the Chinese practice of selling or simply drowning unwanted female children—a “traditional custom” that occurs with regrettable frequency—as well as in the license that so many Muslim societies give to individual men and entire families to disfigure, murder, and anathematize women who are perceived as having disgraced themselves and their families, often by “allowing” themselves to be raped. —C.C.
the Celestial Way The appearance of the word “celestial” in the name of Broken’s main thoroughfare—assuming, again, that it is a literal translation, and not a whimsical choice of the translator—underlines the diversity of cultural influences on the city’s society as far back as its founding, “celestial” being a word that is far more commonly found in descriptions of Eastern palaces and potentates than in those of Western. —C.C.
“The Denep-stahla” Gibbon writes, “These more serious rituals of mutilation contain one common element: the use of stahla after the hyphen, which may indicate that they are derived from the sacred instruments used to inflict the punishments, stahl being a modern German word for ‘steel,’ particularly as pertaining to ‘blades.’ The origins of the first parts of the phrases, on the other hand, are matters for sheer speculation: They seem to have been adaptations of terms peculiar to the original cult of Kafra, and to have therefore been brought into Broken with that god and that faith. We do not know where, precisely, this religion originated, as I have said; but the physical manifestations of these strange words are made fully, indeed hideously, clear by the narrator’s descriptions of the rituals, and suggest an Eastern, even an Oriental, morality.” [Note: Gibbon is being, as was sometimes his tendency, openly prejudicial, here—it was, after all, the Western Romans who perpetuated such ancient and “progressive” punishments as crucifixion and being mauled to death in arenas by wild animals. —C.C.]
narrowed to sharp points Here we find more evidence to support the contention that Broken’s first king, Oxmontrot, served as a foreign auxiliary in the Roman army: the style of military fortification and housing in Broken’s Fourth District is almost identical to those outposts and forts that Roman armies of occupation constructed, particularly in central and northern Europe, where tall, stout pine and fir logs were to be had in abundance. —C.C.
the emblem of his rank and office Again, the emulation of the Roman military by the soldiers of Broken is striking, even down to such small details as the baton of rank and authority that was carried by senior Roman officers as well as the leaders of several other outstanding armies, most if not all of them imperial. In more modern times, it was bestowed on German field marshals during the Nazi era: indeed, as Gibbon occasionally notes, it almost seems that the society of Broken may have been something of a “missing link”—culturally, governmentally, and militarily—between Rome and those states of the modern West (especially but not solely Germany) that have had imperial pretensions and ambitions. —C.C.
beyond the Meloderna If we accept Gibbon’s contention that “Meloderna” was the name used in Broken for the modern Saale River, then the “river valley beyond the Meloderna” where this battle, presumably against the Huns, took place may have been the Mulde, although it seems far more likely that it was the Elbe. The latter represents the more significant barrier, in military terms (it was along the Elbe, of course, that American and Russian forces met to complete their fatal division of Germany during the Second World War), and is only some seventy-five to a hundred miles from the mountain Brocken—certainly within just a few days’ riding and even marching range of an army as organized and powerful as was Broken’s. —C.C.
detachment Here is an example of the translator, while not necessarily taking a greater liberty, at least using a much more modern word (which had come into use among military forces only at the end of the seventeenth century) to stand in for whatever the original Broken phrase was. The most common modern German word for a military detachment, verband (pl. verbde) might suggest to some that the translator would have done better service had he translated whatever the Broken dialectal word was into English as “band”; but that is a far more vague term, militarily, than “detachment”; and, as we have already noted, we cannot rely on modern German, when speculating on the Broken dialect, to be anything save a partial descendant of what remains a lost language. —C.C.
Kastelgerde This is the plural (as we shall soon see) of Kastelgerd, a word that Gibbon chooses to ignore, almost certainly because, again, experts of his day did not have the tools to interpret it; nor, indeed, can we say with any certainty that experts of our own time do. But, because of the great advances made during the last century in understanding both Old High German and Gothic, we can at least make a much more educated guess than could Gibbon: Kastel (a noun here, using the upper case, as most German nouns did then, and all do, today) is almost certainly a slight variation on the common German Kastell, a secondary and less frequently used term for “castle” (the more common being Schloss), while gerd is almost certainly a Broken variation on the Gothic gards, incorporating the vowel shift borrowed from Old High German, meaning “houses” as in important clan households. The purpose of the entire term is evidently to convey that these structures are “castles” as in palaces and family seats, not necessarily fortresses, although they seem to have had more of that utilitarian purpose early in the kingdom’s history. —C.C.
service as a skutaar Gibbon writes, “The appearance of the word skutaar is another example of the bridge that Broken’s society formed between impe
rial Rome and Europe in the Barbarian Age: the word itself is doubtless derived from the Latin scutarius, or ‘shield-bearer,’ which is also the source of our own words ‘esquire’ and ‘squire,’ as well as several similar terms we find in other European tongues—the French esquier, for example.”
the panther enters The legendary “European panther” is far more than a myth. In fact, there are two likely candidates for the “panthers” referred to in the Manuscript, both of which originated in the Pleistocene era and were, until recently, thought to have become extinct anywhere from eight thousand to two thousand years ago. The first example, commonly known as the “European jaguar,” is of interest because of its known preference for forests (although this preference has been challenged by recent research) and its solitary habits—as well as the fact that fossil evidence indicates that the last of its kind lived in Italy and Germany as little as two thousand years ago, and possibly far more recently. In fact, there have been unproved but insistent claims of sightings of the European jaguar up to, and even in, the present era. The second candidate, the “European (or Eurasian) cave lion,” is the great cat depicted in Europe’s famous Ice Age cave paintings, as well as ivory carvings and clay sculptures. Clearly, it played a vital role in the religions of those peoples, and one can easily understand why: It originated earlier than the European jaguar, and was a more massive animal. Males could reach a length of twelve feet and a weight of six to seven hundred pounds (females were about two thirds the size of males). They had the physical appearance to match the description of “Davon panthers” in the Manuscript: golden fur, short leonine manes, and tiger banding of varying hues. They could easily bring down the largest hoofed animals, including and especially horses, and therefore represented a significant problem for cavalry operating within Europe’s most ancient and thickest virgin forests, of which the Thuringian certainly was one, and in parts remains so.