The Legend of Broken (104 page)
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“… the endless steppes …”
The background of this character (prior to his becoming a traveling scholar, apparently well known throughout what we today call the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and even parts of India for his expertise in fields ranging from medicine to warfare) remains obscure, although certain logical conclusions may be reached that are important to the tale, as it contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the old man’s character and behavior. We can safely rule out any chance that he came from one of those known horse peoples who dominated the critical southern and central regions of the Pontic-Caspian steppe well before and then through the early Dark Ages: the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Goths during the Roman era, as well as the Huns and Alans from the fourth to the eleventh centuries
A.D.
None of these were noted trading tribes; farther north, however, there were peoples who not only better matched the old man’s physical description, but whose history at this time accounts for the his ancestors having become apparently changed from horsemen to successful tradesmen, with ships and caravans that visited the Mediterranean basin and northern Europe, as well as the Middle and Far East, in the latter case using what was already being called, in the old man’s time, the “Silk Path” (later the Silk Road), the only known land route to China. Now referred to as “proto-Balts” (possibly of Finnish origin), in their earliest incarnation these tribes were Indo-European peoples who had, by the eighth century, been pushed into concentrated communities, first inland, to protect themselves from coastal raiders, but, when they grew strong enough, on the Baltic Coast itself. The exact nature and range of goods available in these important ports and towns—known as “emporiums”—is not known, but it was certainly extensive: soon after the establishment of the Islamic empire during the same era, for example, Islamic silver was being traded in Baltic ports, marking their inhabitants as distinctly different from the Slavic tribes that were coming to dominate the areas to their south.
Among the most noteworthy Baltic peoples were (and in many cases remain) Lithuanians and Latvians to the east, as well as Pomeranians and Prussians to the west. These last two regions are of special interest in determining why the old man may have found Broken such a congenial home: Saxony (the German region in which
Brocken
was and is located) was close by, and may also have been “close,” in environmental characteristics and general feel, to those places where the old man’s family and tribe had been forced to go when they were pushed away from the great steppe, and became tradesmen rather than a horse people. —C.C.
‡
“… still understood and respected …”
Here is the first solid reference on the part of the narrator to the notion that scholarship and learning have been disappearing in the “known” world, suggesting that he is writing toward or after the end of Broken’s history (ca. the early eighth century), rather than toward the beginning (sometime in the fifth century): while the fifth was certainly not a century renowned for scientific advances, it would still have been too soon for a scholar to declare the onset of a long “dark age,” whereas by the early eighth century, that pattern was clear and unarguable, and had not yet been reversed by the establishment of the great Islamic centers of secular learning in Spain and Iraq. —C.C.
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Herophilus, Galen, and Bede
The fact that Gibbon feels no need to identify these characters both demonstrates the high level of even a “basic” education among the “educated classes” of his day, and is a special tribute to the historical awareness of Edmund Burke: Herophilus is explained in the note to p. 000, above, while Galen (
A.D.
129–216) was the most important figure in medicine between the legendary Hippocrates (ca. 460–ca. 370
B.C.
) and the advent of the Enlightenment in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. True, Galen based his work on the humoral system: the idea that the body had four primary organs of importance—heart, liver, spleen, and brain, the last considered directly tied to the lungs—that produced four basic fluids (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm), the harmonious balancing of which was the definition of good health. But he also made leaps and strides concerning anatomy and other areas of practical medicine so significant that he became the only doctor by whom more than one Roman emperor would consent to be treated. In addition, by telling us that Galen wrote his famous work on dreams “nearly five hundred years before the old man’s time,” the narrator would seem to be making an unusually definite statement that the old man lived during the early eighth century (although he may have been born in the last years of the seventh), which fits with all other actual chronologies in the Manuscript.
Bede, in the meantime, often called “the Venerable Bede,” was a monk who was indeed born in the important monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth, in the present British county of Durham, in
A.D.
673. However, although often identified (as he is by the Broken Manuscript’s narrator) with that institution, he completed his adult works—most importantly his
History of the English Church and People,
(
A.D.
731)—in nearby Jarrow, at the newer monastery of St. Paul, which one expert (Leo Sherley-Price) identifies as a “joint-foundation” with St. Peter’s. The library apparently shared by the two monasteries was one of if not the most extensive in Britain, and Bede played an important part in translating and critiquing great authors of the past, particularly those of Greece and Rome, and he had a mastery of subjects ranging from music to medicine. He was at the height of his powers when he would have received the visit from the Manuscript’s old man, who had been roaming the Far East, North Africa, and Europe; it is possible, in fact, that the old man crossed the “Seksent Straits”—again, almost certainly the English Channel at its narrowest point, between Calais and Dover—with the specific purpose of seeking out both Bede and the library at Wearmouth-Jarrow. —C.C.
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“Galen the Greek”
Apparently unnoticed by Gibbon (or perhaps, again, deliberately ignored, so as not to call attention to an apparent inconsistency in the Manuscript) is the use of “Greek” here, rather than what we will soon discover was the Broken dialectal term,
Kreikisch.
This sort of shift occurs too repeatedly, throughout the “Idyll,” to be mere accident—it seems, instead, to clearly indicate a desire on the part of the narrator to display the far more learned, cosmopolitan background and personality of the old man. —C.C.
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“… from their dreams.”
It is both amazing and frustrating to note how very close such early scientific minds as Galen’s and the old man’s came to unlocking the secrets of dreams, and thus stealing Sigmund Freud’s (as well as Carl Jung’s) thunder, at least a thousand years before those pioneers of psychiatry, psychology, and dream interpretation completed their work on the subject: had those earlier authorities only been able to realize that dreams are particularly revealing
symptoms
of mental and physical disorders, rather than analogous
identifiers
of disease, one is tempted to wonder how much earlier the development of Western psychology would have commenced, and thus how very different the course of Western history would have been. —C.C.
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“Roma”
Again, the use of the proper Latin name for the eponymous capital of the Roman Empire raises questions about when exactly the narrator chose to use particular forms of words, and in what languages, to achieve desired effects: that effect once more being, here, to underline the great learning of the old man. —C.C.
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“the Cilician Dioscorides”
The narrator refers to the eminent first-century pharmacologist, Pedanius Dioscorides, author of the five-volume
On Materia Medica.
Thought to have lived between about
A.D.
40 and 90, Dioscorides traveled throughout the world known to Western scholars, gathering samples of botanical, mineral, as well as what we would today call animal-based homeopathic remedies, although it is as a medical botanist that he was chiefly known and would be remembered. To provide practical tests of the various cures he either discovered or compiled, he sometimes campaigned with (and may actually have served in) the Roman army. His monumental work, published in about
A.D.
77, was definitive enough to remain what Vivian Nutton, in his
Ancient Medicine,
calls “the bible of medical botany,” one that was still in use “well into the seventeenth century”; and, as we shall see, Dioscorides’ life certainly served as an example for the old man, just as Galen’s did; but the old man was able to include, in his own (unfortunately lost) pharmacopoeia, plants gathered in both Afghanistan and India that Dioscorides had heard tales about, but never encountered. —C.C.
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the “museum”
Gibbon writes, “The ‘museum’ at Alexandria was, in fact, a building that reflected the early and literal meaning of the word, which is to say, a structure dedicated to the Muses, or to artistic and scholarly endeavor. It would be flattering to think that our own ‘museums’ have retained this character; plainly, it is not always or even usually so.” Yet this note does not seem aimed at Edmund Burke, who likely knew the classical meaning of “museum” as well as Gibbon did; and it’s therefore hard to shake the feeling that Gibbon was at least considering publishing the Manuscript, before he received Burke’s reply. —C.C.
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“the
patella
”
Gibbon writes (with the possible end, as stated in the next note, of distracting Burke’s attention from the horrors immediately following), “Here is proof, validated by the off-hand nature in which it is mentioned, that both the narrator and the priests of Kafra knew far more of human anatomy than we today associate with those ages we call ‘dark’: the
patella
is the Latin classification of the ‘knee-cap,’ a fact that the narrator of the Manuscript—whose expertise does not seem to have extended into medical realms—nonetheless seems to have taken as commonly understood.”
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“Roma … gangraena … crurifragium …”
As extraordinary as the horrifying detail (both historical and anatomical) provided here may be, Gibbon’s silence on the subject is almost as shocking. He likely maintained it because of how close the narrator comes to describing the Passion of Jesus Christ: Gibbon probably felt (and if so, correctly) that Burke would have already been inclined to view this brief description as near-blasphemous, without any further elaboration on his own (Gibbon’s) part.
Textually, we again encounter the use of Latin, apparently employed, here as elsewhere, not only to further convince us of the old man’s knowledge and erudition, but out of disdain: the narrator’s own contempt for the sadism of Roman punishment rituals is obvious and palpable, and is echoed in the translator’s sudden use of what we now suspect to have been the bitter and perhaps pejorative title for Rome,
Lumun-jan. Gangraena,
meanwhile, is again the Latin (and therefore, in Barbarian Age and medieval Europe, the official medical) term for gangrene, clearly meant to display the old man’s great medical knowledge; while
crurifragium
refers to a little-known detail of many Roman crucifixion rituals. Victims of this already nightmarish torture often lived—like Jesus—for a day or even two on the cross, in almost unimaginable agony: as the text here says, almost every joint, especially in the upper body, was nearly torn apart. The only “relief” that the unfortunate prisoner could even try to get was offered by the block of wood placed beneath his feet, which he could use to hoist himself up by his feet and legs. But after enough time, and as much out of tedium and the need to return to more important duty as out of any sense of mercy, the Roman guards supervising the ritual would use a mallet to break the victim’s shins: which, as anyone who has ever broken or witnessed someone who has broken these bones knows, is a particularly painful fracture to endure. The victim would either die instantly of the shock of this final outrage, or, being as he was unable to further support himself, quickly suffocate, the position of his arms having already badly constricted his breathing.
Again, any suggestion that such Romans had anything to learn about torture from “the East,” as Gibbon elsewhere implies, is quite clearly revealed, here as always, to be fatuous; while what the narrator calls the “fiendishness” of the Kafran religion—so clearly embodied in the at least partial ligature and cauterization of both the flesh and the arteries and veins (mainly those descending from the vital femoral, the
popliteal
and
tibial
) of the severed legs, which was, as the text says, intended to avoid their victims’ bleeding out too quickly—cannot realistically be contested: this point alone would have been enough to justify the stridency of Burke’s reaction in his letter to Gibbon. —C.C.
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“… derived from … opium and …
Cannabis
indica …
”
We never learn the old man’s precise methods for such derivation, although we know in modern times that such strengthened alkaline drugs (as opposed to their chemical imitators) are their most potent and least dangerous forms. Opium, of course, leads most immediately to heroin and morphine, the latter almost certainly what is meant in the Manuscript when “opium” is referred to, as its uses are always medicinal rather than recreational; as to
Cannabis,
prior to the twentieth century,
Cannabis sativa,
our own marijuana or hemp plant, was not only used in the production of rope (the fibers of its stalk being particularly strong), but was commonly available from druggists and pharmacies (no prescription required). This was true going back to the ancient world: the ostensible use of the drug was as a sedative and narcotic painkiller but, then as now, there were many people who used (and abused) it recreationally. The subspecies
indica,
which came from, among other places, the mountains of what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, was preferred in the West precisely because of its hardy nature, which allowed it to survive in the climates and mountains of northern Europe (and North America) as easily as it did in warmer climes; but
indica
was also considered by doctors and folk healers as superior to other subspecies of
Cannabis
for medicinal reasons, because it supposedly produced greater pain and anxiety relief with fewer of the “druggy” side effects. For this reason, it was often reduced to its resin form (what we know as
hashish,
the Arabic word for the resin), which doctors in the West would eventually market—as they did morphine, cocaine, and other narcotics—as a commonplace medication that could be eaten or drunk as a tincture, thus avoiding the telltale signs and physical dangers of smoking or injection. Whether the claims that
indica
was less stupefying than, say, the other
sativa
subspecies has, however, long been in doubt; and some drug researchers have argued for the formalization of
indica
as its own species of
Cannabis.
It is also worth noting that, from ancient times to the late nineteenth century, such unregulated drug use did not produce greater numbers of addicts and “fiends”; whereas the illegalization of such substances (like the prohibition of alcohol) created an entire “subspecies” of violent criminals. The society of Broken was an excellent example of this:
Cannabis
was one of the only crops the Bane could grow in the harsh wilds of Davon Wood, and was one of their most prized trading crops (cultivated land within Broken itself being used exclusively for subsistence agriculture); yet the Bane themselves showed no signs of having been a race of marijuana abusers. —C. C.
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“the
dauthu-bleith
”
Gibbon writes, with the same frustration we have seen elsewhere, “Here, once again, the influence of Gothic upon the dialect of Broken is hinted at, for this term almost certainly arises from that language: although we do not yet have the capacity to translate it literally, the spellings and word combinations are far more indicative of Gothic than they are of Old High German.” Developments since Gibbon’s time have allowed linguists to corroborate Gibbon’s speculation, and to more precisely translate this phrase as akin to a Gothic “coup de grâce.” It had originally been translated simply as “condemned [or sentenced] to death,” but
bleith
is one of several Gothic terms for “mercy”; and, as the original meaning of
coup de grâce
is a “merciful” as much as a “finishing” blow, it seems that the most recent translation relates the true intent more clearly. —C.C.
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“… his new, insulted form …”
The word “insulted” is used in one of its archaic forms, here, to mean “assaulted,” “injured,” or “demeaned”; Gibbon makes no note of it, as it was still generally used in this sense during his own time (as opposed to being specifically used in the verbal or medical sense, as is the case today). —C.C.
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“… prevent festering and control fever.”
Here we get a good idea of the old man’s pharmacological skills: despite the above average medical knowledge that Gibbon had gleaned through coping with chronic physical problems of his own, the extent of the old man’s understanding of the medicinal power of plants remained a mystery to the later scholar, as it would have to most people (even most doctors) in the eighteenth century. Hops represent an excellent case in point, particularly the wild hops that the old man would have found growing in the mountains that became his refuge: long before they were first cultivated as an ingredient in beer in the eleventh century, hops were recognized as having very real “anti-festering,” or antibiotic and antibacterial, powers, as well as narcotic effects (although this particular label was almost certainly unavailable to Barbarian Age healers). Similarly, honey was used (as it continues to be used, by some homeopathic and tribal healers) as an agent against sickness and infection, although many of the people who made or make such use of it did and do not realize that the human body metabolizes honey as hydrogen peroxide. Citric acid taken from fruit, meanwhile, can kill bacteria in both wounds and on food, as well as in the digestive tract (which is the original reason that lemon was used as a condiment on raw oysters). The extract of certain willow barks (as is more popularly known) provides a naturally occurring form of aspirin, and it was and is sought as an analgesic. The roots and flowers the old man initially used are not mentioned specifically, but we can imagine that they must have included wild species of such families as nightshade, or the
Solanum
genus—which, in uneducated or evil hands, had long been sought as the poison “deadly” nightshade, or belladonna, but which were also used (more carefully) as hypnotic anesthetics. In short, given the old man’s situation at this key point in his recovery, he could scarcely have assembled a better set of ingredients to use as both poultices and infusions, and there is no contesting that his knowledge was extensive, indeed. —C.C.
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the guttural sounds
Given the conjectures already made about the old man’s possible origins, we’re faced with several candidates for this language of “guttural” sounds: certainly, it could have been a proto-Baltic tongue, but it could just as easily have been one of the early German dialects, including Broken’s own. —C.C.
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laboratorium
Gibbon writes, “You may be tempted, my friend, here as elsewhere, to think that this use of a later form of a Latin term (this for ‘place of work’) is a contrivance of the Manuscript’s translator—yet he assured me that the term appeared in just this form in the original text. As to why, or even how, the narrator of the tale should have been aware of that later form, hints again at his temporal inconsistencies; and, things standing as they do in the narrative, we can but note it, and press on.” Unfortunately, we can offer no deeper insight today: unless the narrator was the first to use this original version of “laboratory,” or the old man himself was, we are hard pressed to say how it made its way into the document. —C.C.
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“Bactria, and from India beyond …”
Bactria was the fabled and very independently minded province, or satrapy, of the Persian Empire in southwest Asia. Most Bactrian territory comprised lands that today form much of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Conquered but never really pacified by Alexander the Great, these ruggedly fertile hills, mountains, and valleys continue, in our own time, to produce some of the most potent opioids, as well as other narcotics, in the world—and have also continued to be a thorny problem for would-be Western conquerors or liberators, as American soldiers have recently spent over a decade discovering. —C.C.
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“wild Davon sheep”
The phrase is evidently taken at face value by both the translator of the Manuscript and Gibbon, despite the fact that for “wild” sheep to have existed in the lands between the Erz and Harz mountains, they would almost certainly have to have been domestic sheep that had become feral; and, while such a development is certainly possible—there were several places in Europe where flocks of sheep were known to have undergone just such reversion—it would have represented a new phenomenon for Barbarian Age or medieval Germany. In addition, the fact that the old man is said to have “harvested” the wool suggests that these sheep were either of a variety that simply shed their fleece during warm spring and summer months (certainly, he could not have captured and shorn them) or that his companion hunted them and brought them back to the cave for meat. The latter seems by far the most likely explanation, since, while “shedding” of fleece is not unheard of, especially among feral sheep, it is not a common occurrence, and would likely not have yielded the quality or quantity of wool that the old man required. —C.C.
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metallourgos
The Greek root of “metallurgy,” and seemingly left untranslated, again, to give us some idea of the breadth and depth of the old man’s knowledge: if he wrote Greek, we can logically assume that he spoke it, at least enough to conduct technical conversations with the most advanced scientific minds of his age. —C.C.
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“alchemical sorcerer”
The fiction that alchemy was purely or even primarily a science devoted to vain attempts to turn lead into gold persists into our own day, and certainly dominated in the periods leading up to Gibbon’s: perhaps the greatest scientific mind of his own or any age, Sir Isaac Newton, was deeply fascinated by alchemy, but had to work hard to keep his experiments a secret, one that would keep him from the often-gilded gallows reserved for those convicted of the supposedly black art.
The truth is that alchemy and metallurgy were, in ancient times, almost indistinguishable: after all, when a man could turn rocks into such precious metals as iron, and then iron into that supreme (along with gold) utilitarian metal—steel—the transformation did seem otherworldly, indicative not only of the possibility of changing one metal into another, but of attainting some superior mystical and perhaps spiritual state. Certainly, what the old man was doing and experiencing in Davon Wood during the period described in this section of the Broken Manuscript more than fits under these scientific and spiritualistic rubrics. —C.C.
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the “books” and their authors
First, it’s important to remember, here, that the word “book,” in the pre-Gutenberg Dark Ages, was a very transitional term: it not only included early, bound stacks of parchment (often called
folios
), but also more informally fastened collections of parchment, such as the old man was producing during his time in Davon Wood; and finally, it also referred, very often, to “books” in the sense that the Romans knew them,
volumen
(obviously, the precursor of the modern “volumes”), which were the rolled parchment scrolls of which mention has already been made.
