The Wolves of the North (44 page)

The most influential modern study, A. Ellegärd, ‘Who were the Eruli?’,
Scandia
53 (1987), 5–34, takes a very reductionist line. To my mind better is M. Scukin, M. Kazanski and O. Sharov,
Dès les Goths aux Huns: Le Nord de la Mer Noire
au Bas-empire et à l’époque
des Grandes Migrations
(Oxford, 2006), 31–6. The reconstruction of the history and social and political structure of the Heruli in this novel largely follows the latter, and runs as follows.

The Heruli originated in Scandinavia, in modern Norway or Sweden. In the early third century
AD,
the tribe divided. One part moved to the North Sea coast somewhere east of the Rhine. The other migrated – as a tribe, accompanied by at least part of one subordinate tribe, the Eutes – to the Steppe north-east of the Sea of Azov. Here they subjected local tribes (some of the Sarmatians and others) and took on local culture (including nomadism and cranial deformation).

The Heruli elite was the ‘clan’ of the Rosomoni, who tried to mark themselves off from the rest by attempting to monopolize various (to us) weird cultural practices (e.g. cranial deformation, red tattoos, bestiality, sharing their wives and voluntary immolation). Below them were the ordinary Heruli, descendants of those of lesser status who had migrated from the Baltic, and locals incorporated on ‘good terms’. At the bottom were the ‘slaves’, locals incorporated on poor terms and people captured in raids. The novel’s assumption of quite a lot of upward social mobility via prowess in war comes from Procopius on Heruli slaves, and a famous individual with the Huns recorded by fifth-century diplomat and historian Priscus.

Politically, the Heruli are seen as rudely egalitarian by Procopius. Picking up on a suggestion by H. Wolfram,
History of the Goths
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1988), 87–8, I have pictured Naulobates attempting to install a charismatic kingship, partly based on his monopolization of the flow-through of trade from the Urals and the Volga.

A central theme of this novel is culture shock. For the preconceptions of those travelling from the
imperium
, I have employed Pseudo-Hippocrates,
Airs, Waters,
Places
; Herodotus; Strabo;
and Lucian,
Toxaris
. For men brought up in classical cultures, I believe, this is historically plausible: their thinking about the Steppe was shaped by reading just such books as these. For the realities they find, I have assumed Procopius’s ethnography of the Heruli is historically true – of course, this is a naïve and improbable assumption. I have then proceeded to import to the Heruli various things attested for other nomads: cannabis use from the Scythians and wife sharing from the Agathyrsi, both found in Herodotus, and scapulimancy and cranial deformation from the Huns.

Not all nomadic tribes are as under-studied as the Heruli.

On the Sarmatians, see: T. Sulimirski,
The Sarmatians
(London, 1970); I. Lebedynsky,
Les Sarmates:
Amazones et Lanciers Cuirassés entre Oural et Danube VIIe Siècle av. J.-C -VIie Siècle apr. J.-C.
(Saint-Germain-du-Puy, 2002); and R. Brzezinski and M. Mielczarek,
The Sarmatians 600
BC
–
AD
450
(Oxford, 2002).

On the Alani (who, most probably, were a Sarmatian people), see: B. S. Bachrach,
A History of the Alans in the West: From their first appearance in the sources
of classical antiquity through the early middle ages
(Minneapolis, 1973); V. Kouznetsov and I. Lebedynsky,
Les Alains: Cavaliers des Steppes, Seigneurs du
Caucase
(Paris, 1997).

Quite deliberately, I have included two types of migration in this novel. The Heruli moved as a tribe, with their women and children and dependants – a
Völkerwanderung
, as scholars tend to call it. In the case of the Urugundi, a small war band of warriors moved and then incorporated others to expand to a tribe, which
is one type of tribal formation often referred to as ethnogenesis. Neither case necessarily happened that way.

For a robust defence of the whole idea of migration, often summarily dismissed by scholars (e.g. Ellegärd, op. cit. above under
Heruli
), see P. Heather,
Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe
(London, 2009).

A leader of the Heruli called Naulobates is recorded in the time of Gallienus by the Byzantine chronicler Syncellus (p. 717). Unlike some scholars, I have decided he was not the same as the Herul Andonnoballus recorded by the sixth-century historian Petrus Patricius (fr. 171, 172) in the reign of Claudius II.

The messianic Naulobates of this novel owes something to two real men – a lot to Baron von Ungern-Sternberg of the Russian Civil War from J. Palmer,
The Bloody White Baron
(London, 2008), and a little to P. Short,
Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare
(London, 2004).

The interpreter Biomasos might be the son or grandson of Aspourgos, son of Biomasos, an interpreter of Sarmatian from the Kingdom of Bosporus, whose tombstone (
IG
XVI 1636) shows that he died accompanying an embassy to Rome, probably in the late second/ early third century
AD
. My thanks to Rachel Mairs of Brown University for bringing him to my attention.

This is the second main theme of this novel. The best book I have read on the subject in antiquity remains C. Wirszubski,
Libertas as a Political Idea at
Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate
(Cambridge, 1950). The debate was widened in a review of Wirszubski by A. Momigliano in
Journal
of Roman Studies
41 (1951), 146–53.

The killer’s modus operandi of cutting off the extremities of his victims, tying them on a string and packing them under their armpits, licking up and spitting out their blood three times and wiping the blade that killed them on their heads, derives from a description in Apollonius of Rhodes,
Argonautica
IV 467–84; with additions from the
Suda
E 928; Aeschylus,
Choephoroi
439; and Sophocles,
Electra
445. There is a useful modern discussion in R. Bardel, ‘Eunuchizing Agamemnon: Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and Maschalismos’, in S. Tougher (ed.),
Eunuchs in
Antiquity and Beyond
(London and Swansea, 2002), 51–70.

For forensic matters, I drew on the wonderful D. Starr,
The Killer of Little
Shepherds: The Case of the French Ripper and the Birth of Forensic Science
(London, New York, Sydney and Toronto, 2011). A medical friend, Andy Peniket, told me how to remove human eyeballs.

For classical concepts of blood guilt, I relied on R. Parker,
Miasma: Pollution
and Purification in Early Greek Religion
(Oxford, 1983).

That Calgacus gives the name Blood River to the battle around the laager by the river in Chapter XX is no surprise. It is modelled on the battle of that name between the Boer
Voortrekkers
and the Zulus, as recounted in O. Ransford,
The Great Trek
(London, 1972).

When Anglo-Saxon poetry comes into characters’ minds –
The Wanderer
in Wulfstan’s in chapters VI and XVI; the same poem in Ballista’s in chapter XXII, and
Beowulf
in chapters XI and XIX – as ever, in these novels, it is the splendid translations of Kevin Crossley-Holland,
The Anglo-Saxon World
(Woodbridge, 1982). When Ballista thinks of Beowulf in chapter XIX, he reinstates the original
wyrd
for the modern English
fate
.

The Homeric verse recited by Ballista in chapter XVIII is from Richard Lattimore’s unrivalled modern-verse translation of the
Iliad
(Chicago and London, 1951).

In chapter XX, Hippothous quotes Sophocles,
Oedipus the King
, ll. 1303–6 in the translation of E. F. Watling (London, 1947).

Ballista in chapter XI might somewhat overemphasize the role of the
Gerousia
(the council of elders) in classical Sparta.

Some may consider, and with some reason, that Ballista in chapter XXII is unfair to the works of consolation written by classical
philosophers. But it should be remembered that Ballista was forced to read them many years earlier. When he thought of them more recently, in
Lion of the Sun
, they brought him little comfort. He does not remember the works clearly and is prejudiced against them. The former deficit is shared with the author, who deliberately did not re-read them. This could be the authorial equivalent of method acting.

Among surviving works are Seneca,
To Marcia, On Consolation
;
To Polybius,
On Consolation
; Plutarch,
Consolation to his Wife
; Dio Chrysostom,
Melancomas
I and II, and
Charidemus
.

Almost everything about the hunt in chapter XXIV is drawn from T. S. Allsen,
The Royal
Hunt in Eurasian History
(Philadelphia, 2006), a superb example of
longue-durée
history and anthropology, although nomads actually often did employ nets. The classical philosophizing about hunting is examined in H. Sidebottom,
Studies in Dio Chrysostom on Kingship
(DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1990), 156–66.

As noted in
The Caspian Gates
, the modern study of ancient physiognomy has been put on a new level by S. Swain (ed.),
Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul:
Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam
(Oxford, 2007).

Each
Warrior of Rome
novel includes homages to other works of fiction.

The
yipping
of the Heruli is borrowed from the Mongols in Cecelia Holland’s enthralling
Until the Sun
Falls
(1969).

While editing this novel, I chanced upon a novel I read as a child. Re-reading
The Year of the Horsetails
by R. F. Tapsell (1967), I realized where my interest in nomadic warfare began, and, with Bardiya Tapsell’s siege engineer, outsider hero, something of the origins of Ballista. Tapsell was a superb historical novelist, and some enterprising publisher should put his works back in print for a new generation.

In
The Wolves of the North
, the assemblies of the Heruli draw heavily on those of the Cossacks in a much older historical novel:
Taras Bulba
by Nikolai Gogol (1835, revised 1842), in the splendid translation by Peter Constantine (2003).

Behind everything in
The Wolves of the North
lies the Steppe itself, and behind every description of it lies Anton Chekhov’s story ‘The Steppe’ (1888).

Every year, a new novel, but I am always delighted to thank almost all the same people.

First, my family, for their love and support. In Woodstock, my wife, Lisa, and sons, Tom and Jack. In Suffolk, my mother, Frances, and aunt, Terry.

The usual set of friends: Peter Cosgrove, Jeremy and Kate Habberley, and Jeremy Tinton.

At Oxford: Maria Stamatopoulou at Lincoln College, John Eidinow at St Benet’s Hall and Richard Marshall at Wadham College. The latter deserves especial thanks for his help compiling the List of Characters and the Glossary.

Finally, the publishing professionals: at Penguin, Alex Clarke, Francesca Russell and Claire Purcell; for copy-editing, Sarah Day; and at United Agents, James Gill. This book is dedicated to the latter, whose relationship with the author is not entirely a matter of percentages.

The definitions given here are geared to
The Wolves of the North
. If a word or phrase has several meanings, only that or those relevant to this novel tend to be given.

Ab Admissionibus
: Official who controlled admission into the presence of the Roman emperor.

Abasgia
: Kingdom on the north-east shore of the Black Sea, divided into an eastern and a western half, each with its own king.

Accensus
: Secretary of a Roman governor or official.

Acropolis
: Sacred citadel of a Greek city.

Aetna
: Mount Etna, volcano on the island of Sicily.

Agathyrsi
: Nomadic tribe living on the Steppe.

Agora
: Greek term for a market place and civic centre.

Akinakes
: Short sword used by the Scythians. Also the name of one of the two Scythian gods.

Alan
(plural,
Alani
): Nomadic tribe north of the Caucasus.

Albania
: Kingdom to the south of the Caucasus, bordering the Caspian Sea (not to be confused with modern Albania).

Alontas
: River in the Caucasus, the modern Terek.

Alsvid
: In Norse mythology, one of the two horses that pulled the sun across the sky.

Amber Road
: Name for a series of trade routes leading south from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.

Amphora
(plural,
amphorae
): Large Roman earthenware storage vessel.

Anarieis
: Form of impotence said by Herodotus to afflict the Scythians; the ‘female disease’.

Andreia
: Greek, ‘courage’; literally, ‘man-ness’.

Anemos
: ‘The Wind’; one of the two Scythian gods.

Angles
: North German tribe, living in the area of modern Denmark.

Anthropophagi
: Greek, literally ‘man-eaters’; a tribe of the northern Steppe thought to be cannibals.

Aorsoi
: Nomadic tribe living on the Steppe; subjects of the Alani.