Empire of Dragons (51 page)

‘Lucius Domitius Aurelian, Emperor of the Romans.’

‘Lucius Domitius . . . was an excellent officer and a great soldier when I left here, many years ago.’ He realized that he had lost count of how many. ‘What has become of Gallienus?’

‘You have been away for a long time, my friend! Lucius Domitius had him executed for having abandoned his father to the hands of the barbarians. Aurelian is now preparing to march against the last rebels still barricaded at Palmyra, in order to definitively restore the unity of the empire. But who are you who knows nothing of all this?’

Metellus took off his turban and showed him the little terracotta urn that he held close to his chest under his cloak, thus exposing the titulus hanging from his neck, with his name, rank and unit. ‘I am he who shared the bitter imprisonment of Emperor Valerian until his death, and have now brought his ashes back to his homeland as I swore to do. I am Marcus Metellus Aquila, Legate of the Second Augusta Legion, Commander of the army of Syria.’

The two legionaries looked at each other with stunned expressions, then stood aside and stiffened into a military salute.

‘Welcome back, Commander Aquila,’ said the older of the two. ‘We have never forgotten you. The emperor will be pleased to embrace you and to reinstate your rightful high command so that you may join in the fight to restore the unity of the empire. And your son will be no less happy to see you.’

Metellus responded to his salute, remounted his horse and set off in the direction of the city, Yun Shan at his side.

Metellus smiled at her, then looked over at the sun sinking into the highlands.

‘Let’s hurry,’ he said. ‘I promised my son I’d be back before nightfall.’

And away they raced at a gallop.

V
ALERIO
M
ASSIMO
M
ANFREDI
is the professor of classical archaeology at the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan. He has carried out a number of expeditions to and excavations in many sites throughout the Mediterranean, and has taught in Italian and international universities. He has published numerous articles and academic books, mainly on military and trade routes and exploration in the ancient world.

He has published nine works of fiction, including the ‘Alexander’ trilogy, which has been translated into twenty-four languages in thirty-eight countries, and
The Last Legion
, soon to be a major motion picture.

He has written and hosted documentaries on the ancient world transmitted by the main television networks, and has written fiction for cinema and television as well.

He lives with his family in the countryside near Bologna, Italy.

Also by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

A
LEXANDER:
C
HILD OF A
D
REAM

A
LEXANDER:
T
HE
S
ANDS OF
A
MMON

A
LEXANDER:
T
HE
E
NDS OF THE
E
ARTH

S
PARTAN

T
HE
L
AST
L
EGION

H
EROES
(
formerly
The Talisman of Troy)

T
YRANT

T
HE
O
RACLE

F
OR
M
IRELLA AND
D
ANILO

Those who would take over the world and shape it to their will, cannot succeed.

The world is a sacred vessel, not to be tampered with.

Those who tamper with it, spoil it.

Those who seize it, lose it.

Lao Tze,
Tao Te Ching

Many who read the name of Valerian emperor on a sepulchre believe that the Persians returned the body of that Valerian that they had captured . . .

Trebellius Pollio,
Historia Augusta
, XXII, 8

I would like first of all to thank my friend Lorenzo De Luca, who urged and inspired me to write this novel, and guided me with his expertise as a martial arts enthusiast. Without him it might never have seen the light of day. Special thanks are due to Aurelio De Laurentiis, who believed in this story from its conception. I am also grateful to sinologist Rosa Cascino for the constant attention to detail which helped me set my adventure in the China of the third century
AD
. I would also like to thank Mario Lucchetti of Soldiers, who did extensive research for me regarding the armed forces and weapons in use in the Roman empire at the time of Valerian and Gallienus. The liberties I’ve taken in adapting his rigorous reconstructions stem solely from the demands of the narrative itself. Thanks too to Laura Grandi, Stefano Tettamanti and Franco Mimmi for reading my pages with such care and patient intelligence, taking precious time away from their daily occupations. Last, but not least, my affectionate thanks go to my wife, Christine. Her exacting and yet creative assistance has had an important role in crafting this work.

VMM

This novel is the fruit of imagination, as are its main characters, except for the great historical protagonists of the age in which it is set (Emperor Licinius Valerian, Shapur I of Persia, Gallienus, Aurelian, Chinese emperors Huang-di and Yuandi, as well as famous thinkers such as Lao Tze and Mo Tze), although it is inspired by the recently debated hypothesis that Roman soldiers may have been present at some point in ancient China.

The problem was officially raised for the first time by Homer Dubs in his 1942 publication which considers a passage from the annals of the Han dynasty that speaks of a battle which took place in a locality on the Talas river, near the city of Zhizhi in Gansu (today Dusanbe in Tajikistan) between Chinese troops and the forces of a local chief who had rebelled against the empire. Among the rebel forces were foreign soldiers, probably mercenaries, who fought using fish-scale formation. This suggested the traditional Roman
testudo
formation to Dubs. Moreover, these soldiers, before the battle, were entrenched in a camp built with large wooden poles – a type of
castrum
, that is.

Dubs later discovered the existence in the Fanmu district of a city called Lijian, which in that era indicated the lands of the West in general, including Rome. He conjectured that it may have been founded by the Roman soldiers who had fought on the Talas river. The most commonly accepted explanation is that the toponym Lijian comes in reality from Alexandreia, a place name that generically indicated all the cities that Alexander the Great had founded in Bactriana and central Asia – that is, any settlement of Westerners. Chinese sources nonetheless report that Lijian remained independent for six hundred and twelve years, a very strange and absolutely singular occurrence.

If this story were true, who might these Romans have been? Many have thought, given the chronological correspondence, that they may have been Roman prisoners who survived the massacre of the battle of Carrhae in 53
BC
, deported by the Parthians to the extreme eastern regions of their empire. These men may have been the origin of the tradition of the legendary Lost Legion. It is a well-known fact that when Augustus negotiated peace with the Parthians in 20
BC
, demanding the restitution of the Roman insignia and prisoners, the former were returned, but there were never any traces of the latter. What could have happened to them?

Homer Dubs’s response – and later that of many other researchers both in China and in other nations – was that these soldiers, after long wanderings, reached the Chinese border and established a settlement there.

Recent investigations and archaeological surveys at the locality of Zhelaizhai have convinced a number of researchers that they are dealing with the legendary Roman settlement of China; genetic analyses have suggested that the inhabitants possess Western traits.

It should be noted that, in general, the evidence adopted to support this thesis is rather weak. The arrival of ancient Romans in such a distant land cannot be excluded a
priori
, but certainly requires much sounder evidence.

That doesn’t mean that the Romans did not know about the Chinese, and vice versa. Not only Horace, Pliny and other authors, but also the greatest cartographic document of antiquity – the
Tabula Peutingeriana
– indicate Sera Maior at the extreme eastern part of the world. Sera Maior is the Land of Silk – that is, China.

Regarding this subject, an extraordinary episode, mentioned in this novel, should be recalled here. In the era of Emperor Hedi, between
AD
97 and 98, the Chinese marshal Ban Chao, sent westward to restore order and security along the vital Silk Road, journeyed as far as the Caspian Sea. Ban Chao was the brother of the famous historian Ban Gu, and may have been inspired by his brother to send a delegation (led by an adjutant, Gan Ying) to seek out the sovereign of Taqin, the legendary empire of the far west: the Roman empire! Although Gan Ying actually arrived at a short distance from the border – from exactly what direction is not clear, although it might have been from the area of Mesopotamia or Syria or Caucasia – the fact is that the Parthian guides, who had realized his intentions, discouraged him from going on, raising any number of problems and difficulties, so that the Chinese officer was persuaded to cease his efforts. The Parthians earned enormous profits from the taxes they levied on consignments of silk crossing their territory, and would certainly not encourage the Han empire to enter into direct contact and establish direct dealings with the Roman empire, cutting them out as middlemen.

If the mission of Gan Ying had been successful, the consequences would have been unthinkable. The two greatest empires of the planet, too distant to find themselves in competition, might have discovered the benefits of collaboration. History might have followed a completely different path had Rome and Luoyang spoken!

Perhaps because all great empires resemble each other in the end, Rome and China had many things in common: the organization of their armed forces, their system of streets, the custom of founding military colonies, their methods for measuring and parcelling lots of land, the concepts of borders and of fortified walls, and even the habit of settling barbarians inside such confines in order to naturalize them and use them to defend the territory against other barbarians. They also had enemies in common, if it is true that the Xiong Nu named in Chinese documents were the Huns of Roman sources.

In the end, China has survived, transmitting its traditions, civilization and state structure intact over more than four millennia of history, all the way to the present day, while Rome collapsed a long time ago. This novel wants to tell the story – as if it were a dream – of the marvellous experiences that a westerner, like Commander Marcus Metellus Aquila, might have had if he’d managed to reach that remote planet called Sera Maior, an event not entirely impossible, one of the many that would have been forgotten or lost in the turbulent vicissitudes that have characterized the story of humanity.