Gallicenae (51 page)

Ordovices and Silures:
Tribes inhabiting what is now Wales.

VI

Éndae Qennsalach:
Perhaps historical, perhaps not. The second half of his name refers to his ancestry.

Founding of Mide:
This is the legendary version. See the notes to
Roma Mater.

Origin of the Bóruma:
This is also a legend, of course, but one which people of Niall’s time may well have believed. The tribute itself and its evil consequences are historical fact.

Niall’s warfare:
The sources say nothing specific; but given our story assumptions, campaigns like these are plausible.

Ruirthech:
The River Liffey. Then it seems to have marked the northern frontier of Leinster.

Chariots:
Roman tactics had long since made the military chariot obsolete, but it persisted in Ireland, where it did not have to face well-drilled infantry and cavalry, until past our time. As for other equipment, see the notes to
Roma Mater.

Niall’s two Queens:
Not only concubinage but polygyny was accepted in ancient Ireland, even after the conversion to Christianity. (For a while canon law decreed that a
priest
could have only one wife!) The chronicles say that Niall had fourteen sons by two wives, whom we suppose to have been more or less contemporaneous. Surely he had daughters too, and children by other women.

Nobles and tenants:
For a brief description of the
classes flaith, soer-céli,
and
doer-céli,
see the notes to
Roma Mater.

Combat tactics:
Like the equipment, these too were little changed in Ireland from the old Celtic forms.

Lifting a knee:
Stools and tables were very low. To rise when a visitor appeared was a token of full respect. Short of this, though still polite, was to raise a knee, as if about to get up.

Verse:
Like Nordic skalds of a later date, early Irish poets used intricate forms, yet were expected to be able to compose within those forms on a moment’s notice. Our rendition here is a much simplified version of one scheme. Each stanza, expressing a complete thought, consists of four seven-syllabled lines. Besides the alliteration and rhyme, it is required that end-words of the second and fourth lines have one more syllable than those of the first and third. Oral skill such as this is entirely possible and historically attested. The poet naturally had to have an innate gift together with long and arduous training.

Satire:
The Celtic peoples were great believers in word magic. Well into Christian times, satirists were dreaded in Ireland. To a modern mind, it is not implausible that they could bring on psychosomatic disorders, even wasting illness. Our story supposes their powers went beyond that.

VII

Odita:
The River Odet. (Our Latin name is conjectural.) The distances mentioned have been rounded off, as they would be in the mind of any ordinary traveler. It should be noted that this stream was deeper then than it is now, when impoundments in the watershed have diminished its sources.

Stegir:
The River Steir. (This is also conjectural on our part.)

Aquilo:
Locmaria, now a district at the south end of Quimper. While the existence of Roman Aquilo is attested, our history and description of it are still more conjecture.

Mons Ferruginus:
Mont Frugy. More conjecture, this time based on the fact that there is iron ore in the area.

Durocotorurn:
Rheims.

Apuleius Vero:
The ancient tripartite system of nomenclature had long since broken down. Some people still employed it, but others, in the upper classes, did not. “Vero” is a hypothetical Gallo-Roman name commemorating the family’s most important connection of that kind. “Apuleius,” the old
gens
name, now went from father to eldest son, much as the same given and middle names may pass through several generations in our own era. Upon succeeding to the paternal estate, this Apuleius dropped whatever other names he had borne, if any. In this as in several more significant respects, he typifies a man of his time, place, and station in life. More provincial and thus more conservative, the Gratillonii of Britain clung to traditional usages.

The Duke of the Armorican Tract:
The Roman military official in charge of defense of the entire area. (This is a shortened version of the actual title, such as we suppose people employed in everyday speech.) Armorica was, in fact, considered a military district, not a political entity. Ravages along the coats indicate that at this time the Duke’s efforts were concentrated in the east and the interior of the peninsula.
This was doubtless because resources were limited and, terrible though the depredations of pirates often were, they seemed less of a threat than a possible Germanic invasion overland. Gaul had already suffered the latter, again and again, and sometimes the Romans had managed only barely and slowly to drive the barbarians back. Under such circumstances, the Duke might be glad to delegate authority in the west to some competent leader. Our idea that this particular Duke was covertly opposed to Maximus is a guess—nothing is known for certain—but not unreasonable.

Troops:
Increasingly, locally recruited soldiers were providing garrisons such as here described. Not being attached to any legion, they were known as
numeri
or
cunei
rather than auxiliaries. Civilian men,
limitanei,
were being made into reservists. These processes had gone much further in the Eastern half of the Empire than they had, as yet, in the West.

The Pulcher villa:
Baths, such as would have belonged to a substantial estate, have been excavated at Poulker (near Benodet). The form of this place name is unusual in Brittany. However, we only venture a guess as to its possible origin.

The defenses of Aquilo:
Our idea of what these may have amounted to is based on the lack of archeological evidence for anything else. Actually, the Gallic wall was a good, solid structure.

Corentinus:
Known in France at the present day as St. Corentin. His historicity is uncertain, but there are many legends about him, including that of the miracle of the fish and his later career as the first bishop of Quimper. For reasons discussed in the Afterword to the last of these volumes, we have conflated him with the equally enigmatic figure of St. Guénolé.

Smoke:
As we remarked in the notes to
Roma Mater,
primitive Celtic dwellings neither needed nor had vent holes for smoke. It filtered out through the thatch, killing vermin along the way.

Pictavum:
Poitiers.

Pomoerium:
The space kept clear just inside and outside a defensive wall.

Consecration of the Mithraeum:
Our description of this draws in part on our imaginations, but largely on the ideas of such authorities as Cumont, Stewardson, and Saunders.

Pater and Heliodromos:
Father and Runner (or Courier) of the Sun, the first and second degrees of a Mithraic congregation. Although knowledge of this religion is, today, fragmentary, what we do possess shows its many resemblances to Christianity, not only in belief but in liturgy, organization, and requirements laid upon the faithful.

VIII

Lugdunensis Tertia:
The Roman province comprising northwestern France.

Church buildings:
Most were quite small. The cathedral in Tours may have been the size of a fairly large present-day house.

Samarobriva:
Amiens.

St. Martin as a military physician:
This is not in the chronicles, but some modern biographers think it is probable.

Exorcists:
In this era, such priests were not specifically charged with driving out demons, but simply with the supervision of the energumens and similar duties.

The service:
Obviously this was very different from today’s ritual. It varied from place to place; what we have sketched was the so-called Gallic Mass. Strictly speaking, though, the Mass was the Communion service, reserved for the baptized.

Biblical texts:
Respectively Amos viii, 8; I Corinthians ii, 14 and Matthew viii, 8.

Martin and the bishops:
His refusal to attend any synods after the Priscillian affair is attested.

Greater Monastery: Majus Monasterium,
which probably is the origin of the place name “Marmoutier,” although some scholars derive it from “Martin.”

Chorespiscopus:
The powers granted priests in the early Church were very limited. A chorepiscopus, “country bishop,” ranked above them but below a full bishop. He had most of the powers later given a parish priest, but not all. See the notes to
Roma Mater.

Paenula:
A poncholike outer garment. From everyday garb of this period and later derived the priestly vestments of the Church. The paenula became the chasuble.

Cernunnos:
An ancient Gallic god.

IX

Sarmatian:
What people the Classical geographers meant by this name is obscure, and evidently varied over the centuries. To Corentinus, we suppose, the word would designate one of those Slavic tribes that were drifting into what is now Poland and Prussia as the Germanic inhabitants moved elsewhere.

Suebian Sea:
The Baltic
(Mare Suebicum).

Cimbrian Chersonese:
Jutland. The Heruls, whom tradition says once inhabited the adjacent islands, had by now migrated south, and the Danes were moving in from what is now Sweden. Jutes and Angles were still at home, although soon many of them would be among the invaders of Britain.

Franks:
This word
(Franci)
was a generic Roman term for Germanic tribes originating north of the River Main and along the North Sea. Moving into Gaul, they eventually gave that name to the entire country of France. Our account of their pagan religious practices draws on descriptions from other times and places; but it seems
plausible to us. Whatever the details, we have scarcely exaggerated the brutality of the Franks. It was notorious. Even after they had become Christian, the history of the early Merovingians is a catalogue of horrors.

Cataphract:
A heavy cavalryman.

Aquileia:
Near present-day Trieste.

Death of Maximus and Victor:
Authorities disagree on the precise date and manner of this, but it occurred in the summer of 388.

XI

The defeat of Maximus:
According to one source, only two Romans died at Aquileia, Maximus and Victor. This implies that both armies were composed entirely of barbarian mercenaries, which seems to us unlikely in the extreme. Surely Maximus, at least, would have needed legionaries to drive Valentinian out of Italy, and then, lacking effective cavalry such as Theodosius possessed, would have brought them to meet the latter.

Maximus’s veterans:
There is a tradition that they were settled in Armorica, and some modern historians consider it plausible. If this did happen, then doubtless the involuntary colonists included certain of the troops Maximus had left behind in Gaul, though probably only those whose loyalty to the re-established Imperium of the West was very questionable.

The gravestone:
Roman epitaphs, especially when military, were generally short and employed abbreviations. Expanded and translated, this one reads TO QUINTUS JUNIUS EPPILUS / OPTIO (deputy) IN THE SECOND LEGION AUGUSTA/HIS FELLOW SOLDIERS MADE THIS.

XII

Thracia:
Thrace, occupying approximately what are now the northeastern end of Greece, the northwestern end of Turkey, and southern Bulgaria.

Saxons in Britain:
There is good evidence for some colonization, as well as piracy, by these barbarians as early as the later fourth century. Be that as it may, Stilicho had hard fights against them.

Sabrina:
The River Severn.

Silures:
The British tribe inhabiting what is now, more or less, Glamorganshire and Monmouth.

Sucat
(or
Succat):
Birth name of St. Patrick. As nearly as possible, we follow traditional accounts of him, including that interpretation of them which makes the year of his capture, rather than his birth, 389. It must be added that a number of modern scholars have called into question all the dates and other details of his story; some actually challenge his historicity. His appearances before Niall is
our own idea. Even tradition does not make clear where he passed his time of servitude. Somewhat arbitrarily, we adopt the suggestion that was in County Mayo.

Temir:
Tara.

Cú Culanni:
Today better known as Cuchulainn, the greatest hero of the Ulster cycle. His king, Conchobar, was said by medieval writers to have died of fury at hearing that Christ had been crucified, though he himself was a pagan. This at least gives some hint at the time that tradition assigned to these sagas.

Emain Macha:
The ancient seat of the supreme Ulster kings, near present-day Armagh. The Red Branch (more accurately, but hardly ever, rendered as Royal Branch) was the lodge where their chief warriors met.

Fifth:
For the ancient division of Ireland into five parts, autonomous if not exactly nation-states, see the notes to
Roma Mater.

Qóiqet nUlat:
The Fifth of the Ulati people.

Cruthini and Firi Bolg:
There were Picts (whom the Irish called Cruthini) in Ireland as well as in Scotland-to-be—and, for that matter, in northern Gaul. As we have noted earlier, they were not at all the dwarfs of modern folklore, nor backward with respect to the Gaels; however, they were a distinct people. The Firi Bolg were, in legend, the first colonists of Ireland, subjugated by the invading Children of Danu. Perhaps this tale embodies a dim folk memory of an aboriginal population whom the first wave or waves of incoming Celts overran and intermarried with. If so, pride of ancestry persisted well into historical times; and to this day, there do appear to be at least two racial types native to the country.