After Rome
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
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F
OR
S
ONIA
S
CHORMAN
And always, always, for Charlie
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CONTENTS
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By Morgan Llywelyn from Tom Doherty Associates
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History and myth are both suspectâ
and for the same reason.
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PROLOGUE
In the beginning Albion was a shaggy wilderness belonging only to itself. When the glaciers melted and the seas rose Albion and the neighboring land of Eire became two large islands on the western edge of Europe. Stranded together in a cold ocean, they awaited an uncertain future.
Their earliest human inhabitants were nomadic hunters whose existence depended on circumstance alone. In this respect they were little different from the wild animals they hunted. Life was lived at subsistence level and always a struggle. They were born and mated and died within a brief span of years, during which nothing much changed except the islands. Gradually these grew warmer. And greener.
As a result the hunters became gatherers as well, collecting the random edibles produced by the improving environment. The long slow centuries rolled on and on. Eventually a few resourceful men and women began to plant seeds to raise their own grain, and domesticate wild animals for a reliable supply of meat and milk. A more settled way of life became possible. Stone was the all-purpose tool. The chipping and shaping of flint axes was almost an industry.
When prehistoric farmers found the tough sward of Albion difficult to plow with Stone-Age implements, they turned to the forest that covered most of the island. The earth beneath the trees, deep and rich with leaf mold, was easier to cultivate. Where trees were cut down and light let in, crops thrived. The limitless abundance of timber provided both shelter and fuel. Worship, responding to an impulse buried deep in the human spirit, developed around the sacral trees. They were revered both for their practical and their spiritual value, little distinction being made between the two.
After uncounted generations in solitude the islands were visited by a seagoing race. These voyagers, who navigated by the stars, roamed the western seaways. Wherever they went new art forms appeared and new rituals began. On Eire, west of Albion, the natives created stone- and earthwork monuments of astonishing complexity for observing the cosmos and employing the energies of the sky to improve their pastoral culture.
On Albion the reaction was much the same. The first temples the natives erected were made of timber, but over time the wood rotted and had to be replaced. They began using stone instead. Under the guidance of their astronomer-priests they searched out massive boulders, which contained sky magic, and transported them long distances. Giant megaliths soared upward from the plain. Elaborate ceremonies demonstrated that earth and sky were one and man was joined to both.
Albion celebrated the heavens.
Centuries became millennia. A new wave of strangers from the vast land mass to the east reached the islands in the sunset. They stayed to found colonies and utilize such natural resources as copper and tin, the necessary components for making bronze. Bronze was more malleable than stone and could be used for everything from axe heads to personal ornaments. The extreme southwestern peninsula of Albion was particularly rich in tin; there as elsewhere, metal became a valuable commodity.
The Bronze Age had arrived.
The natives of Albion and Eire, who believed the earth was alive and sacred and anything taken from it constituted a debt that must be repaid, began burying metal artifacts with their dead.
After generations of intermarrying the colonists considered themselves natives. Tribes were formed along the lines of ancestral heritage. Fertile fields were plotted and pieced together; claimed and named and fought over. On the hilltops tribal chieftains built earthwork fortresses and called themselves kings. In the valleys their followers fought with bronze weapons and called themselves armies.
For more than five hundred years the two islands retained their small, scattered populations. Their seclusion ended with a fresh influx of settlers led by fair-haired warriors with sweeping mustaches. Ardent, impetuous and fearless, the Celts burst on the scene and quickly made themselves at home. The newcomers absorbed and were absorbed by the indigenous people. Celtic language and Celtic culture triumphed.
In their original homeland on the continent the Celts had learned to work with iron. Albion had iron ore in abundance. The almost impenetrable primeval forest began to shrink as trees were felled and burned to make charcoal for smelting the new metal. The Bronze Age surrendered to the Age of Iron. As if by magic, smiths produced nearly indestructible iron cauldrons, spearheads, helmetsâand chains to bind captives taken in war.
Ruts made by iron plow scarred the land like sword slashes. The amount of available land for agriculture dwindled, but foreign trade increased along the coasts. Seaports were developed in the shelter of convenient headlands. Red Samian tableware and black glass jewelry from Gaul began to appear in chieftainly households. Such imported luxuries were purchased with quantities of native tin, as well as silver, lead, wheat and slaves.
The name of Albion began to be known abroad.
Yet the spirit of Albion did not change. Her gods remained nature gods. From Stone Age farmers to Iron Age kings, the inhabitants of the island were pantheistic. Life was lived according to the seasons. Man with all his accomplishments was recognized as a part of nature and not its superior.
Fifty-five years before the birth of Christ a small military force landed on the southeast coast of the island. Having crushed Gaul, Gaius Julius Caesar was turning his attention to Albion. After fierce fighting Caesar had advanced only a little distance into the country when he learned that many of his ships and supplies had been lost in a storm. He called off his troops and left. A year later he tried again. His second incursion was terminated when a revolt broke out in Gaul and Caesar was needed. Yet within a matter of years those early expeditionary forces were followed by a full-scale Roman invasion.
The invaders were not interested in agriculture, but in empire building. In Albion the Romans saw what they perceived as ignorant savages infesting a land ripe for the taking. As far as they were concerned the island's resources had but one purpose: to serve Rome. The struggle was long and bloody. In the end, Albion was renamed Britannia and Roman rule was the law of the land.
Britannia Primaâthe Western Empireâwas not an easy posting. The damp cold was a palpable presence, like a brother; known and familiar, to be endured or ignored. Born to it, the British tribes were indifferent to the weather until the Romans came. The legionnaires in the tavernae, drinking imported wine late into the night, talked continually of the palm-fringed coasts of the Mediterranean until native Britons began to dream of sunnier climes.
In place of hundreds of elected tribal kings ruling over a patchwork of territories, the Roman administrators installed a highly organized system of central government. To provide the large number of civil servants this required, the authorities set out to educate selected natives. These were mainly chosen from chieftainly families. Many of the noble Britons, already besotted with imported luxuries, were eager to embrace a more materialistic lifestyle. Thus was created a Romano-British aristocracy, which maintained control over the lower classes for their Roman masters. They were rewarded with tutors for their children and rare holidays under the Iberian sun.
Latin became the language of the privileged few. The upper and middle classes aspired to Roman fashion, Roman food, Roman architecture. Some gave their children Roman names. Abandoning the life of field and forest, they settled into new towns and cities built after the Roman pattern. “Urbanus” became a compliment; “rusticus” an insult. Urban men exchanged the hooded cloak for the toga; urban wives and daughters copied the hairstyles said to be fashionable in far-distant Rome.
Urban homes were warmed by hypocausts: tubes molded of kiln-dried clay carried smoke out of the house from an underground furnace while transmitting heat to the interior walls. Urban centers were proud of their public privies, which could seat as many as eight or ten at a time. A statue of the Roman goddess Fortuna was kept in public bathhouses to protect men when they were naked and at their most vulnerable. For almost three centuries these bathhouses served as a focus of city life, a sophisticated meeting place where the social elite could gather to sneer at the “peasantry.”
Then the Romans left.
Their armies were recalled to defend the Roman Empire from the hordes of barbarians that were sweeping across the continent. The last legion departed Britannia in AD 410. Unwilling to remain without an armed force to protect them, the Roman-born administrators and their families fled with the soldiers.
They did not take with them the educated native members of the civil service. Beneath a veneer of Latin sophistication many of the Romano-British still possessed the passionate, impetuous temperament of the Celt. They would not be welcome in Rome. Only a few generations removed from paganism, they practiced a Celtic version of Christianity at variance with the official version. They remembered and sometimes even used the language of their ancestors. Worst of all, they retained a stubborn belief in the rights of the individual over those of a monolithic state.