Gallicenae (50 page)

Augusta Treverorum:
Trier (Trêves).

Early this year:
Maximus made his terms with Valentinian and Theodosius late in 384 or early in 385; the date is uncertain, like the dates of many events in this era.

Africa:
North Africa, exclusive of Egypt and Ethiopia.

Illyricum:
A Roman diocese (major administrative division) occupying, approximately, most of the territory now comprising Yugoslavia and Greece.

Lugdunum:
Lyons.

Burdigala:
Bordeaux.

Sena:
Île de Sein.

Sign of the Ram,
etc: Precessing, the vernal equinox moved from Aries to Pisces about the time of Christ, and by the fourth century was well within the latter. To populations obsessed with astrology, this had an obscure but apocalyptic significance. It may in some degree have aided the initial spread of the Christian religion and (together with the ICHTHYS acronym) influenced the adoption of the fish as a symbol of Christ.

Gallia:
Gaul.

Pagans in high Roman office:
Symmachus is best known from this time, but there were numerous others, despite Christianity being now the state religion and attempts made to proscribe all the rest.

Empire:
The Roman state still called itself a republic, but had of course long ceased to be any such thing. Nobody took the fiction seriously. So, to avoid confusing modern readers, we have our characters speak the word which was actually in their minds.

Italian Mediolanum:
Milan. Several cities bore that name.

Ambrosius:
Today known as St. Ambrose.

(Gallia) Lugdunensis:
A province of Gaul, comprising most of what is now northern and a fair portion of central France.

(Gallia) Aquitania:
A province of Gaul, bounded approximately by the Atlantic Ocean and the Garonne and Loire Rivers.

Osismii:
A tribe occupying the western end of Britanny, hence the immediate neighbors of Ys.

Ahriman:
The supreme lord of evil in the Mithraic religion.

II

Tuba:
In the Roman world, this was a long, straight trumpet, used especially by the military for commanding, signalling, setting cadence, etc.

Pontus:
A Roman diocese, comprising Anatolia.

Hispania:
A Roman diocese, comprising what are now Spain and Portugal.

Caledonia:
A loose term, referring more or less to what is now Scotland. Cf. the notes to
Roma Mater.

Condate Redonum:
Rennes.

Liger:
The River Loire.

Jufiomagus:
Angers.

Namnetes:
A tribe occupying the right bank of the Loire from the seashore to its confluence with the Mayenne.

Caesarodunum Turonum:
Tours. At this time, those parts of city names that designated local tribes were increasingly displacing those parts the Romans had bestowed. Thus they often became the ancestors of the present-day names.

Laeti:
Barbarians allowed to settle within the Empire on condition that they give it allegiance—a proviso observed only loosely, at best.

Jerkin:
No such garment is attested until a much later date, but something of the kind must have been in use long before.

Gesoriacum:
Boulogne.

Redones:
A tribe occupying the area around Rennes.

Maedraeacum:
Médréac, a village near which we once spent a pleasant week in a
gîte.
The reconstruction of the ancient name is entirely conjectural, as is the history. However, many such communities did originate as latifundia.

Last Day:
Chiliasm was rampant in this era. About 380, St. Martin of Tours told a disciple that the Antichrist had been born. Countless people, high and low, educated and ignorant, were finding their own portents of the imminent end of the world. Like numerous other features of late West Roman society, this one looks rather familiar to an inhabitant of the late twentieth century.

Organization of the Bacaudae
(also spelled
Bagaudae):
Little is recorded about this. A couple of chronicles mention an “emperor,” though that word (Latin
imperator)
may simply have its original meaning of “commander.” Since the Bacaudae persisted for a long time and occasionally won pitched battles, they must have had more structure than, say, the medieval Jacquerie. But we can scarcely compare them to modern guerrillas; they lacked both a formalized ideology and the assistance of powerful foreign states. Our guess is that, as more and more individuals fled from an oppressive civilization and then perforce turned about to prey on it, they necessarily and almost blindly developed primitive institutions and a moralistic rationalization of their actions.

Hand to arm:
The Roman equivalent of the later handshake.

III

Martinus:
Today know as St. Martin of Tours.

The appearance of St. Martin:
At this time there were not yet any particular vestments or other distinguishing marks for the clergy. Indeed, most still earned their livelihoods in ordinary ways and preached in their spare time; many were married; some of the married, when the husband had been ordained, vowed sexual abstention, but not all did by any means. Likewise, tonsures for cenobites were neither standardized nor universal. The kind adopted by St. Martin, which he may have originated, became that of the Celtic Church, eventually superseded by the Roman form with which we today are more familiar. Martin’s looks and traits are described by his disciple and biographer Sulpicius Severus.

Martins elevation to bishop:
This story, given us by Sulpicius, is not as incredible as it looks. Ecclesiastical procedures were often
ad hoc,
especially in the provinces, and there are well-attested cases of laymen being called to the episcopate and only then receiving baptism. A full bishop had so much secular importance that ordinary people sometimes demanded a voice in the choosing of him.

Pannonia:
A Roman province occupying an area now shared by parts of Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Its inhabitants at the time were largely, if not exclusively, Celtic.

Avela
(or
Abula):
Ávila.

Ossanuba:
Faro, Portugal.

Manicheanism:
A religion which was, like Mithraism, of Iranian origin, but if anything more of a threat to Christianity, since it incorporated important elements of the latter. Throughout the centuries, under one name or another, it has been a recurrent heresy. Among other deviations, it attributes creative powers to Satan.

Gates of Trier:
In Roman Imperial times there were four of these, of which the Porta Nigra survives as a ruin. Its name is medieval; originally it was not blackened by centuries of smoke.

Mosella:
The River Moselle (or Mosel).

Rhenus:
The River Rhine.

Bonna:
Bonn.

Juthungi:
A Germanic tribe living near Raetia.

Raetia
(or
Rhaetia):
A Roman province covering, approximately, what is now Bavaria.

Basilica:
Originally this word meant an administrative center, civil or military.

The fate of the Priscillianists:
Much is uncertain about events surrounding this trial, the historical importance of which includes the fact that it is the first recorded persecution of Christians by other Christians. The dates and the very year are debatable. We have chosen the 385 favored by most scholars and assumed that, because so much had been going on before, the trial took place rather late in that
year. Some accounts say the heretics were burned, but it seems likelier that they were beheaded; the stake did not come into vogue until the Middle Ages.

IV

Fortifications:
Legionaries on campaign had normally dug a trench and erected an earthwork around every camp, then levelled these upon leaving to keep an enemy from taking them over. By the late fourth century this cannot have been a common practice, for the old-style legion was on the way out. We assume that it lasted later in Britain than elsewhere.

Lugdunum
(or
Lugudunum):
Lyons. Several other cities bore this name.

Vienna:
Vienne (Wien in Austria, Vienna to speakers of English, was then Vindobona.) Remnants of a Mithraeum, such as are not found in Lyons, suggested that the cult persisted there, though by the time of Gratillonius’s visit it had been driven into a private home.

Rhodanus:
The River Rhóne.

Circus:
A space with tiers of seats on three sides, divided lengthwise by a barrier, for races, games, and shows.

Asiatic:
By “Asia” the Romans meant what we now call “Asia Minor” or “the Near East.”

The Mithraeum in Vienne:
As the model for this hypothetical last survivor, we have chosen some that have been excavated in Ostia.

Tauroctony:
A depiction of Mithras slaying the primordial Bull.

Burdigala:
Bordeaux.

Rhetoric:
Occasionally one sees classical schools of rhetoric, such as the great one at Bordeaux, referred to as universities. This is anachronistic, but only mildly so. Rhetoric, the study of persuasive argument, embraced not just oratory, but languages, logic, history, literature, and much else. Thus a mastery of it amounted to a liberal education.

Garumna:
The River Garonne.

Paulinus:
Ausonius’s grandson grew up into the kind of life that the old man envisioned, but it was shattered by the arrival of the Visigoths and other calamities.

Duranius:
The River Dordogne.

V

Mumu:
Munster. The boundaries were probably less definite than in later times. Its association with women, musicians, and magic was ancient, and persisted into the Middle Ages.

Ériu:
Ireland.

Children of Danu:
Best known by a later name, the Tuatha Dé Danaan. According to legend, this race, the tuaths (only approximately equivalent to tribes; see the notes to
Roma Mater)
descended from the
goddess Danu, held Ireland before the Milesians arrived from Spain. Overcome by the invaders, they retreated to the
síd,
mounds and hills whose interiors they made their dwellings. They themselves became the fairy folk. Most modern commentators think they are a Christian euhemerization of the pagan gods, and doubtless there is much truth in this view. However, the tradition of a war between them and the newcomers is so basic to Irish mythology that it must have some foundation in fact. Successive Celtic peoples did enter, taking land by force of arms. Our guess is that one or more of the earlier peoples, to whom their conquerors attributed magical powers, became conflated with the old gods, but that this had not yet happened at the time of our story.

Children of Ír and Éber:
Later called the Milesians; tradition makes them last invaders of Ireland before the Vikings.

The Mountain of Fair Women:
Now Slievenamon, southwest of Cashel.

Síd (or sídh):
Singular of
sídhe.
Both are pronounced, approximately, “shee.”

Condacht:
Connaught.

Qõiquet Lagini:
Leinster.

Mide:
A realm carved out of Connaught and Leinster, centered on Tara.

The Ulati:
The people of Ulster
(Qóiqet nUlat).
It should be remembered that the boundaries of all these territories were vague, and generally not identical with those of the modern provinces.

Trade between Munster and Egypt:
Potsherds up to the early Islamic period have been found.

Christianity:
The histories indicate that there was already an established and growing body of Christians in Munster, if not elsewhere in Ireland. For one thing, Palladius was sent to minister to them; and other bishops are mentioned, together with Irish clergymen serving on the Continent—all before the mission of St. Patrick.

Conual Corcc
(today usually rendered as
Conall Corc):
His dates are still more uncertain than Niall’s, and the stories about him that have come down to us are even more confused and contradictory. In both cases, we have tried to put together versions that make some logical sense.

Fostering:
Children in ancient Ireland, at least among the upper classes, more often that not were raised in other homes than their parents’. The ties thus created between families were as sacred as those of blood kinship.

Alba:
The early Irish name for what is now, more or less, Scotland. Sometimes “Alba” also included England and Wales. The name “Scotland” comes from its heavy colonization by Scoti, i.e., people from Ireland—just as Armorica was to become Brittany (Breizh, in its own language) after immigrants from Britain took it over. At the time of our story, the Scotic settlement amounted largely to an extension, into what is now Argyll, of the kingdom of Dal Riata, in what is now northern Antrim. (Some authorities put its founding
as late as 500 A.D., but the event would have become possible soon after the Romans abandoned the Antonine Wall toward the end of the second century, and a date in the middle fourth century is consistent with other assumptions we have made for story purposes.) However, a king from Mide, adventuring in Alba, could well have defeated a Pictish leader and imposed an alliance in which the latter was a junior partner.

The ogamm
(today
ogham) shield:
This is evidently a Celtic form of an ancient and widespread story. Quite possibly the Vikings, in their day, brought it back to Denmark from Ireland. “Hamlet”—“Amleth(us)” in Saxo Grammaticus, Shakespeare’s ultimate source—is not a name otherwise found; one scholar has suggested that it may be a Scandinavian reading of the Gaelic spelling of the Nordic “Olaf”! Ogham was a very primitive and limited form of writing, so to alter it would not have been difficult.