The Songs of Slaves (68 page)

As for being reduced to slavery through penury, this was a custom that changed from time to time and place to place.
According to some sources, in the heyday of the Rome as much as seventy-five percent of slaves were from within the Empire. Officially a person would become a slave through carefully regulated channels, though
there were
always criminals involved in human trafficking.
For at least part of the
Roman Empire it
would
be unusual or even illegal for a citizen to be sold merely on account of debt, though one could always be convicted to slavery
. But as the Fifth Century was a time of economic upheaval where many private citizens were losing their livelihood every day with no such thing as bankruptcy law, it is highly likely that this was one of the periods in which slavery was used to satisfy debts. One piece of supporting evidence for my assumption is that the evil consul Heraclian sold many of the citizens of Rome into slavery when they arrived on his shores after the Gothic sack.      

There is no history without opposing viewpoints. This book is quite unusual in that it is from the perspective of slaves and barbarians; but I have tried to include the bigger view whenever possible and to cue the reader in at times when the characters might not be completely accurate. Nonetheless, the same story would be very different from the Roman perspective. About midway through my college career I discovered that it is a mistake to readily take sides in history. When I watched movies as a child the Cowboys were good and the Indians were bad. By the time I was in college the Indians were good and the Cowboys were bad. The truth is that in studying the past it is good to feel emotion, but it is important to defer judgment long enough to understand as much as possible about all sides. Without this, the wisdom gets lost and one becomes open to propaganda and fantasy. Both the Romans and the Barbarians made their contributions to our global culture. As David
Howarth
wrote in his masterpiece
1066: The Year of the Conquest
:
“they are all our ancestors.” 

Anachronism

To some degree, anachronism is inevitable in historical fiction. It is extremely difficult to put oneself fully into the heads of some people living in our own world, much less one separated by centuries. Even if the author was fully successful in this feat, how much would the reader at large be able to understand, appreciate, and benefit from it? Luckily, we can observe from the study of Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, the Bible, Gilgamesh, and other old sources that the human experience – while an endless tapestry for cultural variation – has always been more similar than different. To a certain extent, one may consider small, accidental anachronisms to be part of the “translation” that occurs in the work. Now, this may be fine for such items as figures of speech and other insignificant things, but for the hard building blocks of describing major events and elements long past, no one is done a good service by sloppy anachronisms either in terms of technology, culture, or event.

The difficulty in writing about the Fifth Century is that anachronism comes both from the future and from the past. Much of what the average educated person
knows about the Roman Empire comes from its heyday – say Caesar Augustus through 180 A.D. The world of the Fifth Century had already changed substantially in every way. Even before the freezing of the Rhine in 406 and the sack of Rome in 410, the West was gradually beginning to resemble Dark Age Europe and the East was becoming what we know as the Byzantine Empire. This is, of course, seldom reflected in popular sources (i.e. TV documentaries, movies, survey classes, and even historical novels). We can forgive this oversight at times – given their budgets, who can blame the documentary makers for raiding the Ben
Hur
costume warehouse, and some works are intentionally trying to juxtapose the “pure” classical from that which followed. But overall we must tread carefully.

The most deliberate anachronism in this novel is, of course, Connor. My original question in writing this novel was “how would a modern, or at least reasonably enlightened person deal with such a chaotic world?” and so I set out to create one. Connor is born outside of the
Imperium
so he has more of a sense of autonomy and less respect for order than a Roman would probably have. Titus gave him a hardline classical education, which represents that aspect of our own culture; but he
gained more of an organic, emotional sense of spirituality from the Celtic influences of Dervel and the others. Yet his faith is challenged and at times eroded by the tragedies and challenges he faces. This combination of personal freedom with Classical/Christian influences divided by the humility of pragmatism is the closest approximation of a contemporary individual within the paradigm of that society. However, though Connor is as such an anachronism, the mechanisms of his origin and travels are historically valid. Were there many classically trained, escaped slave, Irish
Pankration
experts serving alongside the Goths at the siege of Rome? Not likely. Could there have been one or two? Yes.

Other seeming anachronisms in this book represent a best guess model. Some things exist in small form long before they exist in large form. This is especially true the further back you go due to the slow movement of communications and the scarcity of resources. The mention of
Ois
ki
Baha
in Chapter One may refer to the distilled drink whiskey (distillation is thought to have spread through the influence of the Irish monastic system, especially during the Eighth Century) or it could simply be referring to strong mead. The
references to Cu Challain in chapters one, two and elsewhere reflect the earlier oral tradition on which the Eleventh Century work was based on. Titus’ book is not meant to be the Book of
Kells
or other illuminated manuscript just like it (note that it was the Gospel of John in Greek, not the other three in Latin), but an early model representing a spark in the fire that was to come. The garrison in Rome using square
scutum
and
pilum
javelins when the armies on the frontiers had long since moved to oval or round shields and
spiculum
is based on the belief that the Romans, being proud conservatives (who had even outlawed the wearing of pants in their city because of their barbarian origins) may have wanted their garrison to reflect tradition. Plus the
pilum
was just too interesting and under-rated a weapon for me to pass up. In the same way, other anachronisms – such as Rufus invoking
Ockham’s Razor
– are small statements meant to show the similarities between these people and ourselves. Much of what we now hold as inviolate science was hinted at in the
graspings
of ancient philosophy, theology, and literature. 

Religion in the Fifth Century

             
Edward Gibbon described Rome’s attitude towards religion prior to the rise of Christianity as such: “All religions were thought to be by the layperson, equally true; by the philosopher, equally false; and by the ruler, equally useful.”

             
It was not so much for its inherent doctrines that Christianity was originally suppressed, but because of its insistence that it was the sole truth – especially as expressed in the Christians’ stubborn refusal to honor the Emperor as divine and to otherwise refuse to participate in the
Pax
Deium
. However, centuries of suppression with varying degrees of brutality did not stop the advance of this religion, especially with its message of redemption and equality to the millions of destitute and downtrodden within the Empire. In the early Fourth Century, Constantine the Great embraced Christianity, ending the persecutions and even offering material incentives to citizens who converted to this “new” faith. Throughout the Fourth Century, Christianity and Paganism were in fierce competition with each other. This period of governmental tolerance ended however, with the Battle of Frigidus and the reign of Theodosius in 398. So by the dawning of the Fifth Century, Paganism was outlawed (though still
very much alive, constrained to secrecy) and Christianity was ascendant. But herein
arose
a new problem: what was Christianity? For most of its history, the Church had been banned, persecuted, and forced into the shadows. Because of this, your typical local church may have been quite isolated from other churches except for that which could have been achieved through the clandestine structure. Moreover, the resources of any given church may have varied widely. Rather than having what we think of as a Bible, these churches may have only had a gospel or two and a few epistles (some of which were perhaps later rejected as non-canonical). On top of this, everyone interprets sacred writ differently. Thus, when Christianity could finally emerge into the light under Constantine it turned out that there was very little consensus as to what was doctrinally acceptable and what was not. Constantine did what he could to clear this problem up at the Council of Nicea in 338; but even this event was 1) under-represented, as only twenty percent of the bishops were in attendance, and 2) hotly contested. Even in the end, when Athanasius (with the Trinitarians) had beaten Arius (with the non-Trinitarians) there was only the beginning of some
agreement. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the type of consensus that drew lines instead of joined people together. Demonstrating the level of chaos we are talking about – consider that though he had sponsored the council, Constantine himself ultimately was baptized by an Arian priest. By the year 427, the official Church had catalogued no less than 400 of what it considered to be active heretical groups within the Empire.

             
Now, here in the Twenty-First Century none of these distinctions may seem important. But in the ancient world religion played a pivotal role in almost everyone’s lives. The end result of all of this religious maneuvering was that the average person was very ill-informed and confused as far as what he believed or was supposed to believe. This confusion probably added to the common person’s feeling of being adrift as the migrations and civil wars carved up and devoured the old order.

             
Paganism is itself an anachronistic word, stemming from the
Middle
Ages. Used by the powers at the time to deride and persecute those of another mindset, it literally means “country” or “rural”, with the
connotation being that it is somehow backward and unsophisticated. The word is also generally not capitalized. I used this word for lack of a better blanket term for the non-Christian religions (making the same distinction adversaries of Paganism in the Fifth Century would have), but I have capitalized it throughout the book as it reflects legitimate, classical religious traditions.

             
Paganism took on some interesting features in Late Antiquity. Forgotten were the days when Greeks solely worshipped Greek gods and Egyptians worshipped Egyptian gods, et cetera; the people of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries with their more urbanized, pan-imperial culture, worshipped particular gods without regard to geographical association. Somewhere along the line, the religion of Late Antiquity took on a distinctly synchronistic character; with the similarities of gods being emphasized over any differences. As a result, the rigid structures of the old pantheons were downplayed, and the classical gods evolved in both their particular status and character. Some of this was by design – for example, by syncretizing Jupiter with several of the Egyptian gods, the Romans could introduce
Serapis
to bring the proud
Egyptians closer into the cultural imperial fold. Others were the result of various influences – for example, Apollo blending with elements of Eastern religion to form the Third and Fourth Century mega-god, Sol
Invictus
.

             
Another aspect of Paganism in Late Antiquity was the popularity and influence of cults. Abreast of public religion, sects of secret religion began to thrive. The diverse origins of these particular cults attest to the diversification of the Empire – with soldiers along the northern frontiers often belonging to the cult of the heavily syncretized Persian god Mithras or upper-class women in Italy belonging to the cult of the Anatolian goddess Cybele. In this novel, I feature the cult of Isis.
Once mother of Egyptian goddesses, Isis gained a widespread secret following especially amongst women.
Like Christianity, the cult appealed to the lower social classes and to those with social constraints placed upon them. Very little is actually known of the practices of the cult, attesting to the effectiveness of their secrecy. It is known that initiates worshipped in underground or otherwise hidden temples known as
Iseum
(that Lucia practices in groves of trees instead may have been because her mother had syncretized the
old druidic rites of her people with the teachings of the
Isian
cult, or just simply a matter of her own aesthetics or practicality). While it may have begun as a cult that emphasized fairly primitive fertility rites (as Sergius accuses in this novel),
the outspokenly anti-pagan Fourth
Century bishop Saint Ambrose allegedly commended the
Isian
cult for their discipline and chaste behavior (probably on account of their practice of rigorous fasting in regards to food, sex, and other pleasures). If he is right, then one could easily wonder what role this movement had on the female component of the monastic movement that was soon to follow. This again just illustrates how in the ancient world things could change or be completely confused. As in all these things, I will leave the reader to their own
conclusions
.