Author: SeniorBatavianHorse
Original thread: [IB AAR] At The Limes

At The Limes




This AAR will be centred in the province of Raetia, in the diocese of the Italians, and will follow the fortunes of the remaining units of the Limitanei and Comitatenses under its surviving officers as they struggle to maintain the line of the Respublica along the Danube frontier. I will be heavily indebted to the outstanding work Pompeius Magnus has put in to elucidating the structures of the Later Roman Empire.

Some house rules -

I will be playing on H/H.
I will never autoresolve.
I will be playing 4 tpy.
I will only re-play if and when the result fatally compromises the AAR and then only for no more than 3 attempts. The third attempt will always stand for the will of the gods.
I will play character traits as best I can given the overall strategic aims.
Due to the dire straits the WRE will be in, there will be in all likelihood no re-supply or reinforcements for the province and so the decline in manpower and materiel will be realistic.

Other rules and/or interventions as decided on the hoof - author's prerogative!






THE ‘MANUSCRIPT E’



Translated and Annotated by Profs. Holbein and Escher




Winter, province of Raetia Secunda, Diocese of the Italians



Augusta Vindelicorum, headquarters of the Praeses and the civil administration for the province, and the Dux of the Limitanei for the provinces of Raetia Prima and Secunda (now deceased)



Consulship of his Most Sacred Dominus Flavius Augustus Theodosius, son of Augustus Flavius Theodosius Magnus



This being the Lists and Notes of the said Consilium of the provincial capitol, by the divine grace of God and the blessings of his Son.


. . . So begins the most unusual document so far to be excavated from the Venetoria Monastery, high in the Cottian Alps. Bound up in a single leather thong and tossed in amongst remnants of some fragments of Aristotle and Seneca, these notes and records were obviously deemed unworthy of archiving or being re-used as scrap vellum. Due to the unique preservative nature of the well behind the ruins of the monastery, we are lucky in that we now have in our possession a singular glimpse into the final months of one Roman province to the north of the Italian mainland in those years which saw the western Roman empire totter and finally collapse before the encroaching hordes of Germans and Goths beyond the Rhine and Danube rivers.

What follows in the document - albeit in a somewhat fragmentary and oblique form, complete with lacunae and interpolations - is a report compiled by the notaries of the governing Praeses of the province of the main events and officers who struggled to maintain or prevent the collapse of Roman authority in the area. While much of the notes are still damaged and incomplete, it is with some pride that myself and Escher and the various experts here at the Ancient Texts Library at Glasgow University, in conjunction with scholars from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Historical Research Archive at London Imperial College, present at this early stage a partial reconstruction of the Notes. We must advise all concerned readers that what follows is in places a contested translation and we have endeavoured to illustrate in the accompanying notes where critical opinion differs regarding key areas of interpretation. We are also very aware that as this is the first time that this document has been made available in translation to the public that there will be debate about some of our conclusions. We welcome this in the spirit in which it is intended.

INTRODUCTION

The curious document know here as Manuscript E recovered from the Venetoria Monastery three years ago is a specific record of the civil and military events in the two provinces of Raetia dating from the year 411 AD until the final collapse of Roman rule in the area. It lists the disposition of troops, the key figures in authority, the intelligence known, and references events also occurring primarily in Gaul and Italy at that time. What it does not cover, and what some of my colleagues find surprising as a result, is religious debates or philosophical issues arising from certain edicts promulgated by either the residing emperor in the west, Honorius or his colleague in the east, Theodosius II, sole Consul for the year in which records are kept in Manuscript E. We deduce from this that the records are archival in nature and not intended for public use or to be circulated to the various libraries which would be keen to store such information.

While some of the records are detailed and shed light on previously unknown or obscure events of the time, others are cryptic and even deliberately obscure, prompting us to wonder whether several antagonistic notaries were involved with the document or that indeed current politics necessitated a very careful wording. As such, we treat with caution some entries and make these known to the reader when they occur.

SETTING

As the opening notes make clear, the records begin in the early Winter months of 411 AD, when only the Emperor Theodosius II held the Consulship. This is a year after the sack of Rome by Alaric and his Goths and which also sees the western Empire in a parlous state indeed. Vandals are moving aggressively south into Hispania, Alemanni and Franks are massing north of the Rhine and Danube rivers, a usurping Roman general, Constantine III, is carving out a separate empire in Gaul and Britain. The economy of the empire is almost dry and the armed forces at the disposal of the Magisters under Honorius led by Constantius consisted of a mixed bag of regular Roman units and federate barbarians whose loyalty was increasingly becoming questionable. Several high ranking Roman generals were of barbarian origins and this was leading to tensions in the higher echelons of the Roman government. As will be seen, these factors played a decisive role in the final fall of Raetia and the city of Augusta Vindelicorum.

It is to be conjectured that the sudden adoption of accurate notes and records in some way represents an attempt to make the key players referenced within accountable - that in some way, the presence of legal accounts was a guarantee of intent or source to be used in the future should action be needed against possible traitors or agitators. We read these notes then with an eye towards mistrust and suspicion and feel that the reader would do well to be as wise. Nevertheless, having said that, one must not overlook the obvious heroism recorded nor the desperate valour towards the end when all was lost and left in utter ruin. These notes and records, then, we feel, are a testament not just to a desperate time when old certainties were falling (and with them loyalties) but also to the unfailing courage made manifest in the face of overwhelming odds.

As such, Manuscript E remains a unique document which should be read with compassion foremost.






The Danube Border



Augusta Vindelicorum stood as the provincial capital to Raetia Secunda, the upper province of the two Raetias, north of the Italian peninsula. It acted as a pivot for the two main Roman roads which traversed the lands south of the upper Danube river and was therefore of a vital strategic importance. It held the offices of the Praeses of the province, together with his administrative staff, and was also the seat for the regional frontier commander, the Dux Raetia, whose command included both provinces. While devastated and now lying fallow for some months, the fields and pastures of the province were fertile. The mountains around it shielded it from inclement weather and the sinuous Danube provided a third gateway to the lands further south and ultimately into Illyricum and Greece. The province was renowned for its produce of Raetian wine, honey and cheese. The capitol also housed one of the late Roman thesaurii or Imperial treasuries, which added to its importance.





However, in the context of our manuscript, this province is already devastated and in ruin. Repeated invasions of Alemanni and Goths, and the passing of Roman armies, have brought the province to the brink of destruction. With the sack of Rome in 410 AD, a crisis is precipitated and in the subsequent confusion, the Dux of the two provinces, Amalifida, clearly a Goth of the royal line, is slain and panic sets in among the remaining Limitanei troops stationed along the Danube border and also amongst the regular field troops currently in the area. As Winter closes in, the Magister Equitum, Allobich, assumes control of the civilian apparatus, ousting the residing Praeses, Jovianus, who retires in disgrace to Ravenna and the seat of the Augustus. This new Praeses, with full authority from Honorius, combines civil and military rule against normal Roman practice and attempts to shore up the two provinces and also quell the disorder among the line and frontier units.



We can assume with some confidence that it is as a result of Allobich’s initiative that Manuscript E exists. Given the unusual nature of his office, one can imagine that Allobich is determined to ratify his authority and so deems it necessary to record as fully as possible all which happens under his tenure.

As Magister Equitum, Allobich supersedes the authority of the office of the Dux and so gains order over the Limitanei in the two provinces. He also brings with him, one assumes, the full confidence of the emperor who must be painfully aware that the hostile troops of the usurping Constantine are nearby and that the Raetian units might all too easily revolt from lawful Roman rule. The province is thus a painfully thin spear tip separating on the one hand barbarian forces across the Danube and on the other break-away Roman troops eager to enter Italy and oust Honorius.

It is in such a morass of confusion and betrayal that the surviving fragments of Manuscript E begin.




The First Consilium

These being the records of the consilium of Allobich and the office of the civitatus of the Praeses at Augusta Vindelicorum, in the province of Raetia Secunda, under the divine will of his most sacred majesty, Flavius Honorius. It has been ordained that all knowledge and information deemed pertinent to his office and the lawful discharge of it shall be made known here. The scribes and notaries of the governor’s staff shall be directed henceforth to maintain this record with all due diligence, by the grace of God, his Son and the charity of the Virgin, amen.

It is to be noted that with the arrival of the Magister Equitum, Allobich, senator of the second class, and his attendant forces, the previous Praeses, Jovianus, senator of the third class, is removed and escorted to Ravenna for judgement by our Augustus. By special decree, Allobich now stands as the last appeal in the provincial court along with that of the military.

(A guarded reference to the unusual position Allobich finds himself in. Late Roman governance was strict in maintaining a division between military and civil law. A practice only reversed finally by Justinian with his reconquests of Italy, Africa and Spain. What is unusual here is the fact that Allobich is graded only at the second rank of senatorial prestige. A Roman officer of his rank would expect to be a vir spectabalis not a vir clarissimi. This is perhaps a result of his barbarian ancestry and reflects the unease with which the Romans dealt with the German and Goth officers in the higher echelons of the army. It should also be noted that as senator of the second class, Allobich outranked the remaining governor, Flavianus, of Raetia Prima to the south, an area over which he had no civil jurisdiction but in which he controlled all military assets.)

It is to be reported that this, our blessed city, Augusta Vindelicorum, now battered and laid low before the fury of the barbarians, is home again to the standards and eagles of the legions. Supplies are being brought in from the fields and depots along the roads and the soldiers of the Magister toil without complaint in repairing the ancient walls and in clearing the refuse from the ditches. All that we have regarding our poor state and the men who guard our borders is confided in Allobich being now his to do with as the Emperor deems fit.

The skies lie low upon our broken walls and the old winds from the east scour the empty fields so that dust and leaves tumble about like refuse. Our fair city is a ruin now and her people cower inside the walls like frightened lambs. We pray to Jesus and all the Saints for deliverance in these dark times and have hope in the wisdom of the Augustus and his servant, Allobich.

(After some study, 3 different notaries have been identified as having a hand in the transmission of Manuscript E. Escher, rather fancifully, identifies this early entry under the rubric of ‘Florus’ on account of his hyperbolic style and underlying worry. Although it is true that this notary’s rather ‘florid’ accounts lend a certain gloss to the entries, I am not sure I quite subscribe to my colleague’s colourful designation. To be sure, the remaining 2 notaries definitely identified produce rather more factual and in some cases epic entries.)

(A new notary is identified as taking over at this point.)

The lists and notes of the army were brought to Allobich and an assessment was made of the forces available in the province of Raetia. There was difficulty in reconciling all the lists as the units were scattered about the province, some in disarray and some in refuge - it is not for me to say hiding as I am a simple notary and know nothing about such manly things.



It was determined that garrisoned within the city lay the men of the III Italica legion resting now at the strength of over six hundred men in four ordines, all being well armed and armoured. With the Magister stood two ordines of palatine troops totalling three hundred, which formed his escort, two ordines of light auxiliaries to the total of four hundred, and the Magister’s own guard cavalry of barbarian nobles, some fifty strong.



To the west, along the Danube, camped out in the field remained the cavalry vexillations of the province. These consisted of survivors of the lists under the Dux, two ordines of light horse archers, one ordo of light scouts, and one ordo of barbarian Vandal cavalry to the total of four hundred equites. With them also were detached units from the Gauls and the East who had lost their officers and now lacked direction. These included two ordines of barbarian royal cavalry amounting to a hundred armoured horse, an ordo of Dalmatian cavalry, another hundred, and four ordines of the Senior Honorian Horse totalling some three hundred equites. These last were ‘lost’ from the diocese of the Gauls and in need of succour.

(This, the second notary, named by Escher as ‘Probus’ for his moral compass, reveals here and earlier his slightly ironic or sarcastic tone in contrast to ‘Florus’.)




The Tribune (unattached) Maxentianus arrived in the late glow of evening as the torches flared along the city walls, with word of events in Gaul and the fighting which had occurred between the troops of Honorius and those of the usurper, Constantine. His words brought joy to the decurions and councillors for he said that our patrician Constantius had defeated the tyrant in a great battle outside the walls of Arelate and that even now this tyrant was hemmed in and starving. Allobich demanded to know what news of the troops marked for the defence of northern Italy and the Alpine passes and Maxentianus declared that the patrician had dispatched several detachments from his field army to Raetia and that they would arrive within a month. Ulfilas, the Magister Equitum of the Gauls, and Posthumus Dardanus, the Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls had been ordered to bring the troops north through the passes before the snows closed in and fortify the limes frontier of the upper Danube. The rump of a field legion and some guard cavalry were all that the patrician, Constantius, could spare.







Allobich was pleased that reinforcements would be arriving but wondered on the news that two of the high dignitaries of the Gauls would be with them. The Augustus himself had given him command of the north of the Italies with orders to secure the passes and the limes so that no more barbarians could spew down into Italy and join the hordes of Alaric after the sacking of Rome. The Tribune reassured Allobich that Constantius had utter faith in him and had urged both his Gallic commanders to place their trust in the wisdom of the man chosen by the young emperor. It was remarked that it takes no little wisdom to keep chickens well-fed whereupon Allobich swore a barbarian oath and then ordered the consilium to cease its deliberations.





Word spread throughout the city of Augusta Vindelicorum that more troops would be arriving and that Roman valour had triumphed over the British tyrant in the Gauls. There was little rejoicing however as food was in short supply and the billets of the soldiers took up all the secure rooms and buildings. Tenants shouldered what little they owned and sheltered in hallways or in the taverns, wrapped in thin cloaks, anxious to avoid the demands of the army and the swaggering manners of those barbarians who fought under Roman standards. No few wondered on what would happen once even more soldiers descended upon their poor ruined city.



The Second Consilium

(Escher’s third notary takes over at this point - a man he insists on referring to as ‘Virgil’ for his obvious literary and classical leanings - in complete contrast to Florus, for example. While it is a welcome break from the moralising christianity of the latter notary we are also lucky in that Virgil seems to have taken it upon himself not just to record the main council meetings between the higher military and civil figures, he also interpolates some extraneous detail which fleshes out much of the material.)

In the days following the arrival of Allobich, Magister Equitum in the presence of the Sacred Augustus, much work was accomplished in expectation of the arrival of the troops and officers from the Gauls. The walls of our city were repaired, the annona was collected from those military storehouses which still remained secure, the river flotillas of the riparienses were rebuilt and once more Roman patrols guarded the mighty Danube river. There was much toil to be done due to the continuous devastations visited upon us by the barbarians now that we had abandoned our ancient gods and adopted the superstitions of the Nazarenes. The old temples lie now like broken trees struck in a Winter storm. No incense burns in the evening glow. The lower of sacrificial oxen are not heard as the knife flashes scarlet amongst the torches. This is not true high up in the hills and valleys beyond Augusta Vindelicorum where the little vicii cling to the unforgiving slopes and still worship the old gods with reverence and awe. But even those the barbarians have not spared in their wrath.

We are a poor province now, this Raetia Secunda, winnowed by war, famine and disease. Our crops are failing, the drainage ditches and the roads are falling into ruin, and the bonds between patron, freedman and slave are collapsing. We do build and make wealth but it is always to raise new churches or gild the cross of a bishop. These things are not the ancient Roman way and I fear for Raetia, my home.



A slave arrived with bound scrolls from beyond the Danube and a hasty meeting was convened in the city’s basilica. Allobich and his senior Tribunes together the remaining decurions - I make no apologies for using this archaic term - and those senators who still remained gathered to hear this slave read out their contents. It was word from Drusus Magnus far to the north beyond the Danube, a senator of the highest rank, and cousin to the emperor. His mission from the Augustus to the tribes of the Riparian Franks along the Rhine limes had gone as the emperor had wished, for which we all gave thanks, and now his retinue was returning south and east across the tumultuous lands between the high reaches of the Rhine and the Danube. Lands riddled with the violent tribes of the Alemanni. He warned that hordes were massing north of the Danube limes around the location of Argentoratum and that rebel Roman troops of the usurper Constantine were operating further south. He feared that they were in league and that a move was afoot to break down into the Italies via the Alpine passes south of the two Raetias. Drusus Magnus warned also that significant forces of local bacaudae, the two-shaped monsters, were also lodged in the remote valleys and presenting a problem for legitimate Roman authority. He wished all true and noble Romans all charity and duty to God and the Augustus and bade us look to our defences.

Turmoil ensued once the slave had finished and tied up the rolls again. Allobich revealed his barbarian colours and roared down the petty voices like a lion silencing lambs, if you will forgive the scriptural allusion. He ordered that the maps and scrolls of the lands beyond the Danube be brought forth and then hung up so that all could see. His officers, rough men, scarred and grim of eye, pointed out our two remaining bridges across the Danube and into the barbaricum and bade their Magister to break them down. This would limit the Alemanni and their ability to bring significant mounted troops over the mighty river and our river flotillas would then be able to prevent the barbarians from improvising a rough bridge in response. Allobich nodded in approval, despite the protests of the senators and the decurions who pointed out that the bridges were vital for trade north of the Danube. These protests he dismissed as chaff upon the wind.

It is not inopportune now to discuss this Allobich and his character in some small detail although I must protest that my poor writing arts are no match for the great panegyrics written by men such as Claudian or Themistius.

It is said that Allobich rose through the ranks from the position of pedes, or soldier, in the Sixth, Victory, Legion stationed in the northen province of Britain at Eboracum and that he left that wintry island, where the woad-painted bodies of the Picts stain the bitter snow in crimson and the keels of the Saxons fasten on its shores like the claws of the wolves, to join Stilicho and the court of the Sacred Augustus Honorius as a Tribune. Favour fell upon this Goth in the wars with the barbarians as Alaric forced his way into the Italies and honours lay strewn at his feet like leaves in an autumnal breeze. With the fall of the Vandal general, Allobich claimed the honour from the Emperor of Magister Equitum and rallied the remaining troops to the Imperial Labarum. Through a long and weary campaign, the Goth contested the northern routes around the Po valley and Mediolanum in a desperate attempt to contain the barbarian hordes around Rome from sacking what was left in the Italies. It is said that under his command, the dragon standards again raised up their heads in pride and that Roman swords knew once more the smoking blood of a slain barbarian.

As for his physique, this Goth is tall and broad-shouldered, with a mane of wheaten hair caught up in long braids, each one weighted at the end with a solidus stamped with the holy face of Constantius, he who passed away for the advent of the divine Julian, our last true Roman emperor, blessed be his memory. His excels in the arts of the javelin and the axe, and reads passably well our Latin. His faith is of the Arian heresy as espoused by Constantius but I confess, and how apt is this word, I know little of these doctrinal disputes which so wrack our ancient Respublica in these bitter days.

Like Mars with his flashing eyes, this Allobich moves now through the littered paths of our little province and great deeds are expected from him.


(‘Virgil’ makes no attempt here to praise Allobich as a personal panegyrist would do but is careful to report his reputation as it is perceived at the time. Both Escher and myself agree in that this notary carries within himself an innate anti-barbarian prejudice which colours his ability to assess Allobich. It is, of course, ironic, given what follows and the fate of the province, that ‘Virgil’ profoundly re-assess his relationship with Allobich. A re-assessment which is sadly never forth-coming from those other Romans who this Goth general had vowed to protect.)



. . . As the days drifted slowly into the cold hard snows of Winter, word reached Augusta Vindelicorum that the relief forces from Gaul were approaching the lower Alpine passes, having cleared the Po valley and the outer districts of Mediolanum. Progress was slow as the troops resented moving so far from their homes in Gaul and Hispania, and Ulfilas was forced to raid the treasury at Mediolanum to hand out late donatives to appease their mutinous spirits. Other messengers, braving the bitter winds and the danger of falling snow and ice, brought word from Ravenna and Arelate. The barbarians of Alaric, having sacked the Eternal City, had ravaged east across the high roof of the Apennines, laying waste to several towns on their route to the coast by the Adriatic. Our Dominus, Honorius, remained steadfast in his resolve not to treat with the Goths, yet refused to reinforce what little legions still shadowed the barbarian hordes. The Italies were in chaos. The British usurper, Constantine, remained in Arelate, braving a siege by Constantius our Patrician, but the end would be inevitable. News from the diocese of Hispania was equally grim with Vandal hordes plundering south and east even to the walls of New Carthage itself. As Allobich and his staff officers paced the rough walls of our poor city, their military cloaks wrapped up tight against the mountain winds, it seemed that even he despaired to see the next agens in rebus riding out of the south with more dark news. Our little Troy here in Raetia seemed almost a haven from the rest of the Roman empire - but we knew, watching the anxious bowed heads of the Protectors around Allobich, that that was an illusion. Our time would come soon enough.

(These reports by ‘Virgil’ on the state of the Roman Empire in the year 411 AD reflect the crisis enveloping most of the western half at this point. Only the Africa diocese remained relatively untouched by barbarian invasions - though that was to change soon enough - and it must have seemed to most provincial Romans that the end was imminent. Both Escher and myself agree in that while it has become fashionable over the last decade or so to refer to the collapse of the Roman Empire in terms which stress the continuing life of the institutions which defined it (christianity, the legal structure, the great rural latifundia estates, etc.) and which also refer to the collapse as a restructuring or evolving of a Romano-Germanic Europe, it is plainly apparent to us that the locals on the ground did not see it so cosily. Horror, shock and fear predominate again and again in late Roman writings and I doubt very much if a Roman soldier or farmer would look kindly on the academics of today who talk with such carelessness of a ‘Romano-Germanic’ accommodation.)



(Probus takes over the records at this point.)

The inhabitants of Augusta Vindelicorum looked with joy upon the arrival of more troops to billet and more mouths to feed from their meagre stocks - those that remained within the thin walls, that is, and who had not fled to their kin high in the alpine valleys above the town. Our town, once so prosperous and adorned with civic monuments, lies now a worthy testament to Imperial prestige and valour. The walls are decaying despite the engineers of the legionaries under Allobich, the town tenements are falling down, the merchants and craftsmen all long since either sold into slavery or vanished into the honourable monasteries hidden away in the high mountains or the thick forests around the banks of the Danube. It is preferable, it seems, these days, to wear the tonsure or hack at the thumb than to pick up a spatha and enrol under the dragon standards of Rome.







God shone his benevolence upon us, though, as a sudden thaw came unbidden and the Gallic troops were able to march suddenly up the long pass from Mediolanum and arrive in the depth of Winter into Raetia Secunda and Augusta Vindelicorum.

Finally, with the foederatii and the regular troops quartered throughout the town, Allobich summoned Ulfilas and Posthumus Dardanus and all the Tribunes and Praepositii of the province to a war council in the basilica, with the senators and decurions in attendance. There he outlined a shocking plan . . .




The Third Consilium

As the evensong faded away and the lighted tapers were brought out to illumine the great hanging tapestries around the walls of the basilica, Allobich and the imperial commanders, arrayed in all their splendour with gleaming military belts, encrusted swords, fine rings and torcs, assembled in the curial seats, now ghosted by discreet slaves and framed by low tables filled with goblets and flasks of the famed Raetian wine. Wine prized, some said, by Octavian Augustus above all other wines, even the Maeotic wine of Alexandria. Waiting with dignity below the curial chairs remained the town’s illustrious senators. A humble priest muttered a benediction to the mercy of Christ in the Catholic manner which was seen to irk those of the Arian faith in the basilica.

Allobich rose up then and swept aside his fringed cloak, resplendent with woven designs and claviculii, and spoke then in the simple army Latin of his trade. What he said shocked us all and caused many among us to cross ourselves in fear. His words, though simple, were powerful and carried the authority of the emperor himself. By his side, Ulfilas looked startled but kept his peace and the Roman, Posthumus Dardanus, a veteran of the wars with Magnus Maximus, smiled with eagerness at Allobich’s words. The Goth urged us all then to consider that there could be no peace with the barbarians. They rampaged across the Italies, had sacked Rome itself, trampled the Gauls and even now plundered south through the Hispanian provinces towards Carthage and the Africas, the food basket of the empire. Peace would never settle in the Roman lands while a single barbarian remained standing astride the ruins of this ancient civilisation. But - and here the Magister looked frankly at us all - the sacred emperor, Honorius, while loving us all as his children, could not care for us all equally. The Imperial treasuries were thinned now by endless payments to the Goths of Alaric, the Huns to the north, the Franks and Saxons around the lower Rhine, and so it must fall to us all to look to ourselves for valour and defence.



This little province north of the Alps, thrusting into the barbaricum like the head of an ancient pilum, must look to its own now in these desperate times. The grace of God and the Augustus had brought into these shattered lands what small forces could be spared and these must do what they could to hold the Alpine passes and halt the barbarians from flooding like a plague south into what was left of imperial lands. Honorius himself had placed a ring upon Allobich’s hand and kissed it in supplication to urge him to hold this province even despite its own survival. Here the Magister held aloft his right hand and revealed a onyx ring which gleamed in the light of the tapers. Raetia must hold its borders here north of the mighty mountains to the south even to the last breath of the last colonii and slave. Even to the smoking ruins of her towns and vicii. If Raetia allowed the barbarians to pass, all of the diocese beyond the Alps would fall forever and so too would Rome itself.

In the hushed silence which fell after Allobich ceased talking, men looked at each other with fear and trepidation in their eyes. Only the military men, standing around the two Magistii and the Praetorian Prefect like statues, remained stoic, casting disdainful eyes upon those nobles and priests who shrank back from the frame of Allobich.

This Goth, his solid gold coins hanging around his neck in the barbarian style, spoke into this awed silence and laid his second horror upon us that evening.

Raetia stood like a blade into the barbarian lands; a razor in the flanks of the enemy. Behind the province, lay the bastion of the mountains and the passes which led to Mediolanum and Ravenna and Rome. The limes here to the north along the southern flanks of the Danube river and the interior garrison castra and supply depots were all either ruined or in disrepair. The limitanei troops were indolent or derelict in their duties, the river patrols corrupt and negligent. What had once been a thorn in the side of the barbaricum was now more than a mote to be swept aside. The barbarians, the Alemanni beyond the Danube and the Burgundians further north, viewed Raetia as now no more than a stepping stone after the Danube towards the Alpine passes. They treated its inhabitants with contempt and bribed the limitanei with provisions stolen from the towns. Raetia was weak like a woman who swoons over paste baubles or the empty words of a poet.

Allobich looked us all in the eye then and not one among us, Senator, decurion, notary, or priest dared, God forgive us, look back into his hard eyes. Then he laughed like an ancient pagan god and threw himself back into the curial chair. His hand, scarred like the crisp veins on an autumnal leaf, clenched into a ball. Weakness was also a strength and therein lay the salvation of Raetia and the doom of the barbarians. Weakness would be all our salvations. Here Allobich gestured to one of his notaries and this man, thin and elegant like a reed, pulled back one of the heavy tapestries to reveal the large map of the province hanging against the brick of the wall.

The Magister bade us all scrutinise this map and gestured north along the Danube river to the old city of Castra Regina where even now the remnants of the cavalry vexillations were quartered some leagues south in the fallow fields. Here the bridge of the Danube was broken down eight days ago on the orders of the office of the Magister Equitum. The Senior Honorian Horse was ordered into the city in preparation for an early Spring campaign. The remaining units of mixed cavalry were reformed into a new unit, the Equites Raetianii Passerentiaci, or ‘Sparrows’, and were even now as he spoke moving west along the limes and the Danube to take up Winter quarters at the ruined town of Brigantium by the great lake. Look hard at the map, Allobich had urged. To the east, the vexillation of the Honorians and to the west, the vexillation of the Sparrows. While here in the centre, at Augusta Vindelicorum, lay the two legions - one brought up from the Gauls and the old III Italica which had always called Raetia its home.







Albinus, a senator of the third order, spoke up then and gestured to the hanging map, his heavy rings glinting in the light. What, he wondered in his nasally voice, crafted with the ornate Latinisms of his university upbringing, would all that achieve when the Alemanni could simply wait beyond the Danube until the river ran low and they would be able to cross as they had done in the past at a spot of their choosing away from the few defended castra or towns. All the Magister had done was to split up the meagre numbers of the emperor’s soldiery and open the gates to the province.

Allobich nodded as if agreeing to Albinus’ words and then looked hard at him as one looks down upon a cur. He said simply then that we had all misunderstood him. A pilum does not rest like a post upon a palisade - it strikes hard across the battlefield right into the heart of the advancing enemy. He, Allobich, was going to cross the Danube with the two legions and march straight into the lands of the Alemanni to strike while they all thought this province was weak and devastated. He would poke his fist into the beehive and stir up the angry drones - then he would fall back across the Danube as though in rout, drawing the barbarians after him towards Augusta Vindelicorum - then, and only then, would the two cavalry vexillations erupt from east and west closing a door upon the Alemanni and sealing them up in a trap from which none of them would emerge alive.

Raetia would be their sarcophagus. His legions would be the iron wall of their doom.






The First War Consilium

A most glorious sight greeted all our eyes as we rode up to the banks of the Danube on the Ides of Martius, and despite the pagan demon who graced this month with his name, how auspicious such a name was, for arrayed all along the banks and on the long pontoon of rough wood stood the serried ranks of our legionaries, standards aloft, the cornu’s braying and the bucinas shrieking. To my raw eyes, used only to the leaves of parchment and the flickering of tallow candles in the gloom, such finery and martial spirit lifted my heart as only the psalms of Christ can do. All around us, as we cantered along the river’s edge, watching the soldiers of the two legions cross the mighty Danube, joy burst forth from our souls like sunlight. The sacred ‘Alelluia’ fell upon our ears as the soldiers of our Augustus, the soldiers of Christ, moved over the swelling waters, like a tide of conviction, singing ‘alleluia, vidimus, stellam . . . Alleluia, song of sweetness, voice of joy that cannot die . . .’ (This is one of the few entries by ‘Florus’ in which he betrays an uncharacteristic optimism. We should savour it while it lasts.) The morning passed as the files crossed in good order under the watchful eyes of the legion commanders and the file leaders. All morning, the hymns of Christ filled our ears and it was a pleasure to be part of this wondrous march. Even the odd pagan chant or rude ditty about the ancient Roman emperors did not dull our rising faith.

Line after line of soldiers, shining in burnished corselets and helms, sunlight gleaming from shield-rim and spear-tip, vanished over the wide river into the woods beyond, with the light-armed units spreading out on the flanks and far ahead like eager puppies before the old grizzled war-hounds. The honour of the first to cross was given to the old III Italica Legion, guardian of Raetia since the days of Octavian himself, and now long since relegated to the ranks of the Limitanei. Raised under special order by Allobich to the rank of Pseudo-Comitatenses and admitted to the standing of the field army lists, the III Italica under the command of the Tribune, John the Pannonian, moved with alacrity into the lands of the Alemanni like avenging saints. Behind them, marched the ordines of the Leones Seniores, the Senior Lions, formerly under the Magister Ulfilas in the Gauls, led by the Tribune, Rutilla the Scyth. After both legions, came the remaining units of guards and escorts with Allobich and his staff officers.



Only in the afternoon, once all were across and the pioneers had dismantled the pontoon, did the Comitatus of Allobich advance swiftly north along an old trade track into the hinterland of the Alemanni. With the falling light, the woods seemed to close in around us like wary sentinels, and soon my companions and fellow notaries began to cast uneasy glances about us into the trees and the thickets which obstructed our views. Our guards laughed at this, however, and bade us take comfort in the valour of Roman arms and the lucky star which guided the destiny of the Goth, Allobich.

Days passed and our Roman Comitatus advanced deeper northwards into the barbaricum. Hovels were burnt, the inhabitants butchered like cattle, the livestock herded along with us for victualing. The little children of the barbarians, weeping and crying, were dashed against the rocks before their mother’s eyes. Great joy swelled in our hearts as we avenged years of rapine and slaughter and visited vengeance on the Alemanni with Roman precision and efficiency. Always the ‘Alleluia’ rang in my ears as we stained our swords on the enemies of Rome who even now despoiled Italian soil itself. Our Magister only encouraged the rapine of his troops as we marched ever north day after day. And yet he kept a tight fist upon the soldiers - always disciplining them if they strayed too far or disobeyed his orders, and then it dawned upon us that this was not at all Roman vengeance upon the Alemanni but instead his very deliberate provocation of these people. Allobich was waging war in the coldest and cruellest manner to goad and shame their leaders into action. We, our little band of notaries, in our stained robes and cloaks, understood then the mettle of our Magister.

Towards the end of Martius, deep into the hinterland of the barbaricum, with the Danube now a vague memory behind us, the work of Allobich bore fruit, and the hive stirred up its contents . . .



(‘Virgil’ takes up the records after ‘Florus’)

It was in a small clearing where a low hill rose up around a stream. The endless woods had receded somewhat and an old Roman column crowned the hill, its Latin marks now long since eroded away by the rain and wind. The Comitatus was encamped in a low vallum and fossa fort, all rough breastworks and fresh dirt, and the patrols were changing places to the cries of ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Hercules’. A glint in the woods alerted the exchanging guards and a swift phalanx of light scouts dashed out to challenge the newcomers. They strode out of the fringe of the trees, haughty and proud, clad in mail and wearing tall helmets with nasal guards and plumed tails. The lead barbarian held aloft a tall sapling bursting with a spray of green to signal their status as ambassadors. To the cries of the line Ducenarii and Centenarii, the legionaries tumbled out of the small camp and formed a honour guard as these tall warriors strode as though without a care in the world straight through the north entrance and to the wide leather papilio tent of Allobich himself.

He greeted them with deferential nods and bade them enter the tent as his Palatine guards arranged themselves about the outside of the tent in a double line facing outwards. We were bidden to enter with our papyri and record the ensuing debate.

In the simple confines of the campaign tent, seated on low cushions and curial stools, Allobich gestured for the newcomers to begin and then sat back as if studying them with a polite eye and an easy smile. He pulled tight about him his campaign cloak as if to shield out the cold of the day. To our surprise, the leader, a tall, broad-shouldered, man with reddish hair, rose and introduced himself as Goaric, of the Burgundians, around the Rhine. He unclasped one of his armbands and held it aloft saying that the Alemanni were to him as this armband was to his skin. Our violation of their land was a violation also of his people, the Burgundians. Neither the Alemanni nor the Burgundians would look with mercy upon men who murdered babes and despoiled women in their own hearths. This Goaric then tossed the armband at the feet of our Magister and bade him scoop it up for it would be all he would have from them should they stay any longer here in the dark forests above the mighty Danube. Take it and be thankful for such a small trinket when so many of the barbarians in the forests now waited to drink deep of their blood and avenge their kin.



Allobich remained in polite silence, his eyes resting easily upon the glower of this Burgundian chieftain, resplendent in furs and iron and leather wraps. Silence attended him and all those others in the tent - ambassadors, notaries, guards, slaves and priests - then, finally, the Magister curled one scarred hand into a fist and raised it aloft as had done this Goaric. As the Alemanni were to the Burgundians so too was this fist to Rome. Roman prestige and might strode unhindered again upon these tribal lands as it had done so many times in the past beyond the memories of all their fathers and grand fathers and their father’s fathers back beyond the birth of Christ himself. Rome held the world in its compass. That was why even petty tribes like the Alemanni and the Burgundians and the Saxons battered at its doors to be let in like petulant boys. Now these barbarians in their forest garb had broken the gates to the Eternal City itself and plundered her like a cheap tavern. The sandals of the forest dwellers had scuffed the marbles of the Coliseum, the mosaics of the Antonine Baths, the hangings of the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Did they really think Rome would leave itself unavenged before such a wrong? Do not throw trinkets at the feet of the army of Rome unless you desire to know what violation really is. Allobich stood up then and cast aside his military cloak, revealing a gold-chased cuirass clasped in the senatorial sash, with the diadem of the emperor himself upon his breast like a icon of a saint. What I heard next made my stylus tremble and caused me to glance in wonder again at the Goth - for he cried aloud in the pristine Latin of Tacitus that we came to make a desert of all here and call it peace. Roma Victa.

I swear on all the shades of my ancestors that on the utterance of those hallowed words, the air shivered in expectation and I felt the breath of the gods numbing the back of my neck. I looked upon this Goth in the employ of Rome, standing there in his dazzling armour which shone like a beacon, and slipped into the ancient histories of Rome as written by Tacitus and Livy and Suetonius. Allobich dropped his cloak and revealed not a Goth but a Roman from the old world of Jupiter and Mars. Tears clouded my vision then and I mumbled the ancient formulae and invocations heedless that my brothers around would hear.

Goaric stepped back in surprise and we saw his hand slip instinctively to the pommel of his sword - but then he checked himself and relaxed. The other Burgundians at his feet rose and formed up about him like a shieldwall. Then without a word, they turned and left the tent with its ring of guards and vanished into the dark woods not looking back once. When I turned back from watching them go, Allobich was slumped again in the curial stool with his cloak once more wrapped about his form and I wondered then if I had only imagined this vision of Rome.

The rest of the day was spent in sending out patrols and fortifying the camp against an attack but no word came back from our scouts regarding enemy movement. The woods remained ominously quiet and only the rough shouts of the Comitatus broke the arboreal silence. As I hurried from my duties to my own little tent within the turf walls, I remembered that despite Allobich’s fearsome resolve, it was all a charade and that we were all just bait, dangling here in the barbaricum, waiting for the Alemanni and now the Burgundians to sting us with their innumerable hosts.

(This bait had not long to wait, it seems. The Magister Equitum diverted their march westwards towards the main trade road which linked Argentoratum with the many settlements along the northward turning Rhine. A few more villages were torched and their inhabitants massacred and then it seems that Allobich deliberately turned the field army eastwards as though retreating back towards the Danube. Somewhere midway between the river and Argentoratum, the Alemanni finally mustered an attack.)

(Our records are slim here as no notary no matter how brave would be expected to keep detailed records during a time of ambush and attack but we know from battlefield archaeology that a major engagement was marked some twenty miles south and east of the old town and we are lucky in that some fairly detailed relics have been plotted which allows us to work out with some degree of accuracy how the battle played out. Obviously, there is a degree of speculation but both Escher and myself remain confident that in the main our analysis is accurate.)

(The bees did indeed swarm as Allobich intended.)








The Battle at the Twentieth Milestone

(The early spring rains finds the Comitatus arrayed some twenty Roman miles from Argentoratum when the Alemanni finally appear upon the stage, as it were. Allobich’s strategy of devastation has roused the chiefs and warriors and brought their wrath down upon his small force of some two half-strength legions - not, it must be stressed the old Republican legions of six thousand but the newer post-Diocletianic legions of between one thousand and one thousand two hundred - with accompanying guards and escorts.)

(Albright’s study of the ‘battle’ at the twentieth milestone raises some interesting questions which it is hoped further archaeology will elucidate but in the main he argues that this was not one major engagement fought out across the Roman road between the stolid lines of the infantry and the light Alemanni horse but instead a series and irregular clashes designed to test the resolve and patience of the Romans. See: ‘Space and Time in Battlefield Archaeology’, Harvard Monograms, 2006. While the material excavated at the sight supports the argument for a major engagement, Albright argues that this mass of material was deposited over a series of days not hours and that it supports his thesis of a drawn-out probing strategy on the behalf of the Alemanni. His topographic plot (page 36, ibid) demonstrates his survey in quite startling detail and if true illustrates an Alemannic foe more sophisticated that perhaps Allobich had imagined.)

(What Albright purports to have found is the main static lines of the two-legion front facing north-west across the old Roman road. The line of material is long and so argues for a classic eight-man depth to the line with the first four bearing the main heavy infantry with the lighter troops and archers to the rear. It seems that Allobich’s two ordines of escort troops - Palatine legionaries - formed an in-depth column on the right wing, with Allobich himself between the main line and the column. The Roman road seemed to act as a pivot point between the III Italica and the Senior Lions.)

(Remains of barbarians cavalry trappings, bones, weapon shards, fragments of armour, all litter this long front but in an irregular way which hints at not a combined continuous assault but instead a series of pin-prick strikes designed to wear the line down. If this is true, Allobich’s strategy has misfired quite spectacularly. His legionaries are now not the bait he hoped they would be but instead caught within the web of a more adaptable and intangible foe.)





(Albright posits the battle a series of light cavalry skirmishes against the Roman lines designed to keep them pinned down across the road and limit their manoeuvrability. We can hypothesise an engagement as follows, with the rains pouring down, and the Romans tired from standing all day in the amour, hearing the rumble of yet more Alemanni horse erupting from the woods and tightening up the ranks. The line officers would be barking out orders to stand to the dracos while the file closers would be tensing up towards the rear. Then the light horse of the barbarians would gallop forward to hurl javelins into the tightly-packed ranks, shouting out insults and taunts, as the legionaries raise up in their turn the large oval shields to turn away the incoming missiles. Given the flexibility of the Roman legions with their tactical structure, we can imagine Allobich ordering sections forward on the wings perhaps to box in the barbarian horse or attempt to flank it. A sudden charge from his own Gothic bucellari horse would no doubt end the sudden flurry of missiles and neighing horses, with the Alemanni turning in retreat back to the safety on the woods and what lay deep in its twisted interior.)













(Did this battle happen over days or weeks? We can never know but Albright contends that some few days must have passed and that the Comitatus was also harassed at night which would account for the lack of a secure vallum or fossa.)

(If Albright is correct, and his first-hand experience at the site lends his conclusions much authority, it seems that the Alemanni refused to fall for his bait. We can wonder if perhaps a further force of Burgundians were expected under Goaric and so they held off from a full engagement or perhaps their king was too shrewd to fall for the Magister’s hack and burn policy. We will never know for certain. What is known is that a short time later, against all expectations, Allobich forced-marched west along the Roman road and pinned the main Alemanni force inside Argentoratum, thus committing himself and his Comitatus to a lengthy siege for which they were plainly ill-equipped.)






The Second War Consilium


The Kalends of Aprilis found our Roman Comitatus in low spirits indeed. A month of weary siege operations deep in Alemanni territory with little in the way of resupply or victualing had left the men hungry and morose. The Ducenarii and the Centenarii of the ordines were pressed hard to keep the discipline in the ranks as day after day saw the flower of our legionaries reduced to manning the hasty vallum breastworks or conduct foraging raids in strength deeper in the barbaricum in search of food. Always the hordes of the Alemanni taunted us from the walls of Argentoratum, hurling insults and allowing their women to reveal their private parts, may Christ forgive them their lewdness and wantonness. Always the rains fell. Never a day passed without the heavens opening up and drenching us - our cloaks are sodden, the bowstrings lax, our tents dripping - and now the fossa are drowned in mud and refuse. The two great Roman legions are reduced now to grimy men with faces smeared in dirt and ash. The dragon tails hang limp and bedraggled in the pearly rain.

Allobich remains steadfast, however. The last council in his campaign tent found him in a bullish mood as his officers pressed for a withdrawal back to Raetia Secunda and Augusta Vindelicorum. John the Pannonian described how his troops were eager to reach Roman soil again after this fruitless toil and Rutilla stood up and agreed with his compatriot. Both legion commanders seemed to my tired eyes angry with their Magister. They pointed out that without the support of the cavalry vexillations, they were all at the mercy of the Alemanni horse and whatever Burgundian allies had deigned to join them. Pinned down like this in a fruitless siege now left them vulnerable and distracted. The plan had failed. It was time to admit that and retreat. Allobich smarted at that, at the suggestion of failure, and I remember watching as he struggled to contain his anger. He gestured to his aide, Promotus, a Briton, who then read out from that venerable historian Ammianus of the glorious victory the apostate emperor Julian won over the Alemanni near these very lands. The burnished Latin fell about our ears like a martial hymn and we fancied that we saw with our own eyes the Roman lines crushing the barbarians like wheat. To our ears, came the cries of the dying and the sounds of men running away in flight. When Promotus had finished and the syllables had died away into our awed silence, Allobich turned to both John and Rutilla and asked them should we retreat where Roman valour had once won so resounding a victory? Both Tribunes were shamed into silence and could not meet him in the eye.

And so we stay now in this mud and endless rain far beyond the Roman limes wondering on events at Augusta Vindelicorum or Brigantium and Castra Regina where our fellow soldiers wait, eager to wage war on the barbarians. I wonder on the worth of it all and compose myself in the knowledge that this is but a test from God to try our resolve. Victory goes only to those he deems worthy, amen. But it is hard here in the barbaricum below the walls and the shameless women who act like animals or Eve in the Garden.



Towards the end of Aprilis, a rough convoy rode into the breastworks and ditches from out of the forests to the north - a dozen iron-eyed men on small ponies lathered in sweat. Without a word, they passed the first line of pickets and rode in silence straight up to Allobich, who was standing outside his tent as if in expectation. He greeted them all by names which I could not hear and then these grim men disappeared into the faded purple of his tent. I was summoned as I was near at hand and told to record what news they brought. Their leader, an agens in rebus called Felix, unrolled a crude map of the Gauls and spoke quickly so that I had to hurry to pin his words down with my stylus. He told the Magister that the Ripuarian Franks had ratified the treaty proposed by Drusus Magnus which allowed them to hold the lands south of the middle Rhine. We could rely on the Frankish tribes not to ally with the usurper Constantine. This was good news. Drusus had done good work along the Rhine. More startling was the news Felix spoke next. The last Roman garrison on the Rhine had abandoned its castrum and was even now retreating south and east through Frankish territory in a desperate attempt to reach Raetia Secunda and the Comitatus here at Argentoratum. The soldiers were avoiding Constantinian troops by remaining in the deep forests and following the remote tracks using guides provided by the Franks and their allies. Felix warned that if Allobich retreated back across the Danube, these Roman units would be left to the spears and axes of the Alemanni and the Burgundians in the wild hills which parted the Rhine and the Danube rivers.

This galvanised the Goth and he ordered Felix and his men to move back out into the woods around Argentoratum; to hunt now the hunters and seek out the locales where the barbarians were hiding, to distract them with sabotage and butchery in the night. Nodding as one, these men, all the colour of an iron blade, gathered up their Gallic cloaks to their tight forms and then vanished once more out of the palisades on their tired ponies.

It was then that Allobich turned to me and grinned like a wolf. And I sensed then that our Comitatus would not so much devastate the barbaricum now as rescue fellow soldiers from out of the unimaginable vastness that existed beyond the limes of civilisation, of the empire. We were not destroyers now but saviours instead. I will admit that as his eyes fell upon me, my heart was moved with a sense of purpose and joy as if this Felix had brought an angel into the tent.





(The following months remain confused and indeterminate as the records are corrupt at this point due to damage to the surviving portions of Manuscript E. Escher has attempted to reconstruct some of the events leading up to the Second Battle of Argentoratum - based on a careful study of the Gallia Chronicle (455 AD) and the Ausonium Breverarium but it must be born in mind that it is at best a provisional account:

- The Tribune, Tertius, commanding the unnamed unit of milites or limitanei withdrawing south through Frankish lands encounters a large horde of Burgundians and detours west into the provinces held by the British usurper, Constantine. Summer passes with the lonely unit involved in careful and painfully slow manoeuvres to avoid contact which are on the whole successful but still leave the Roman troops far from either the Rhine frontier or the besieging forces of Allobich further south.

- Arelate is finally captured by loyal Roman forces and a major campaign is prepared to drive north up the Loire valley into the heartland of Constantine’s Imperium, commanded by the patrician Constantinus.

- In late Spring, with morale low and grumblings becoming louder in the ranks, Allobich makes the surprising move of ordering the two cavalry vexillations quartered at Brigantium and Castra Regina to move north across the Danube and support his two infantry legions around Argentoratum. The shadowy figures referred to in the manuscript as agens in rebus, imperial spies and agents provocateurs, locate the main Alemanni settlement to the north of Argentoratum although it has now been determined that their Alemannic chieftain is in fact bottled up inside the latter town. With the main legion forces involved in besieging Argentoratum, the cavalry units under Ulfilas and Posthumus raze the countryside around them and act as a shield, protecting them from sudden ambuscades by Alemanni horse.

- Escher now concludes that Allobich is in fact far outside his original remit from Honorius in protecting the province of Raetia Secunda and that the entire province’s military assets are now deployed either in besieging a barbarian town deep beyond the Danube, or deployed on mobile patrols further north even to the Vicus Alemanni itself, or, and here Escher refers to the vague figure of the Tribune, Felix, on long range reconnaissance trying to maintain contact with Tertius and the withdrawing milites in northern Gaul.







The more legible sections of the records pick up in late Autumn of 412 AD with Virgil’s stylus notating the lead up to the Second Battle of Argentoratum)

. . . The bitter winds have begun to sweep out of the north again and now hail and dust occlude our eyes as we stare endlessly at the stout walls of Argentoratum. The Tribunes, John and Rutilla, argue daily with Allobich now and the latter storms about the breastworks, his face all gloomy and mottled with frustration. Daily, riders gallop in from the north and the south and each direction brings only bad news. The Alemanni stay hidden in the deep recesses of the forests or behind the walls of Vicus Alemanni, avoiding all Roman contact. Foraging is getting harder and harder and now our soldiers look emaciated and tired. Little supplies reach us from Raetia Secunda and Augusta Vindelicorum despite the urgings of Allobich. The city’s curia argue that not enough colonii survived the barbarians' devastations to have sowed and reaped food for the province and the Comitatus here in the barbaricum. Each rider returning from the south only shakes his weary head to the Goth as though acknowledging the futility of even asking about the military annona.

I understand now why Allobich will not storm the walls here. The losses will be too great despite our assured victory. The III Italica and the Senior Lions are understrengthed as it is. Only in the open fields, with the legion ranks arrayed in all their martial splendour can the Magister afford to risk a battle. So we wait and each day sees us raise our tired eyes towards the walls of Argentoratum in the expectation of seeing the gates groan open and the barbarians pour forth. The gods will it otherwise, however, and now the cold winds of an early Winter begin to creep into our tents and watch-towers.

Last night, Allobich received a deputation from Augusta Vindelicorum urging him to forsake this futile siege and return to the Roman lands. They rent their cloaks and placed ash in their hair in supplication all the while turning to Bishop Palladius, who was their leader, begging him to convince this Goth but this Palladius saw the obstinacy in our commander’s eyes and could only turn away in mute anger. They left this morning glancing at our dirty standards and muddy paths to return to a province naked of troops. I sensed that all would not be well from this encounter and that dark seeds would spring up from it.

Then, this morning, Sol himself smiled upon us as our scouts raced out of the woods with news that an Alemanni force was marching in haste towards us in full martial display. Battle was imminent. They would be upon us by midday. The Goth sprang up like a reborn lion and shouted for his commanders as word spread throughout the tents. Suddenly men who only yesterday were dejected or mute were now galvanised into action. To my eyes, it seemed as if the gods themselves had stepped among us touching us on the shoulders with their blessings and whispering old invocations into our ears. Even I, who am not of the military, felt my blood race as helmets were donned and the Roman dragons were hoisted into the air.

Around Allobich congregated the staff officers and the two Tribunes, a small island of focused energy in the chaos around us. Now they could all vent their frustrations and muster their anger upon a foe who had so far proved elusive in the extreme. John the Pannonian gripped his ornamented helmet under the crook of his arm as he listened to the Magister outline the disposition of his troops to the north of the barbarian town. Beside him, Rutilla, his Hunnish eyes now blazing slits, shook loose the sword in his scabbard and nodded quietly as he divined the thinking of the commander. I gathered up all my writing implements and tarried beside these men, waiting for instructions. Seeing me in my composure, Allobich smiled once and then turned back to hurried discussion. Then I heard the barbarian cries from the woods to the north and knew that they would be on us in moments.






The Second Battle of Argentoratum (412 AD)

(This engagement seems to have occurred late in the day some few miles northeast of the barbarian town alongside the Roman road but not directly straddling it. From hints in Virgil’s ‘AAR’, to use a current acronym, Ulfilas and Posthumus were tasked with remaining in the rear of the battle to maintain pressure on the Alemanni inside Argentoratum thus leaving Allobich free to engage in an infantry battle. It also obvious that at the time no one seems surprised that a barbarian force would recklessly throw itself upon the serried ranks of the Roman heavy infantry against all expectations of the campaign so far. I speculate, and Escher concurs with me, that the relief of finally being able to fight a decisive engagement outweighs any speculation as to why the barbarians have changed tactics. Had Allobich and his staff officers made this leap then perhaps the battle would not have been fought and instead the Roman army would have retired intact back to Raetia Secunda in advance of the doom which was trailing the bloodied Alemanni.)







. . . The most glorious legions advanced in battle-array towards the yelling barbarians, standards high and our shields emblazoned in all their regimental colours (1). The men of the proud III Italica formed up on the right flank in place of honour, with the Senior Lions on the left. Our Magister, astride his doughty steed, and surrounded by his bucellari, rode out far on the right beyond the dense columns of the escort legionaries from Gaul (2). Ahead, through the rippling sunlight, we could see the mass of the Alemanni waving swords and angons and shouting rough curses into the late afternoon air. Jove himself beckoned us onwards, urging us to let loose our discipline and charge the insolent barbarians but our Roman training overcame our impetuosity and we remained tied to the standards awaiting the orders and signals from our line officers.







A sudden roar from the barbarians and then they were moving towards us. Dust riddled the air and their martial cries caused us to glance to our companions seeking reassurance in their steady eyes. Here and there, the sharp Latin of the Ducenarii and Centenarii kept the ranks and files in order - ‘sta’, and ‘ad latus stringe’, and ‘cum ordine seque’ - (3) and we gazed proudly over the tops of the dragons to the insignia of Allobich himself on the far right, as if seeking his approval for our discipline. All along the lines, men tensed and hunched down behind the oval scutum. Ahead, the barbarians were resolving from a mass of movement and colour into the warbands and boar’s heads that were their orders of battle. Their crude German shouts fell about us like chaff upon the wind. Closer now and as we raised up our light weapons they broke into a charge screaming like all the furies from Mount Olympus itself. A dash of cavalry sped out from their ranks, ahead of their bristling columns, and was the first to impact our lines with valleys of javelins and throwing axes. Instantly, the sun seemed blotted out as the command to release was given and our rear ranks let loose with arrow and javelin over the helmets of the front-line troops. Like two might breakers colliding at sea, the Alemanni dashed against our lines in a tumult of blood, screams and the harsh clanging of weapons. I stood amazed at the rear, deafened by the enormity of it all. The standards thrust up high as the cornus and bucinas sounded out above the din of carnage - and I sensed that they were bidding me to stay true - remain fixed - or die in the sudden melee.



All along the lines now the barbarians were dashing themselves recklessly against the overlapping shields, heedless of their flesh or souls. Our front lines around the III Italica were locked and heaving back into their ranks, jabbing and cutting in the Roman way like automata. I heard whistles signaling and our front rank revolved into the second and then the third so that fresh men stepped into the fighting even as the barbarians desperately hacked at the wide shields. To the rear of the lines, the lighter-armed legionaries kept up the hail of missiles now falling down upon thebarbarian's unarmoured heads, and avoiding, through long training, the returning missiles via double spacing and nimble use of the scutum. Then it was that I noticed the left front ordines of the Senior Lions advancing to flank the exposed right wing the Alemanni. Our length although thin was longer than the barbarians’ and now the cadence of the cornus changed and the standards dipped forwards in response. ‘Move’ - ‘Percute’ (4) could be heard above the clash of arms along the front. To the right, trumpets sounded and the Palatine troops advanced at speed to complement the envelop and I saw also Allobich himself gallop ahead and then wheel left into the flank of the confused barbarians. Now the trap was being closed and our Roman lines swung slowly shut about them, cutting them down as they tried to move to face us. It was useless. They paused in confusion and we gave them no mercy. Our wings closed in like a vice and it was then that we sensed victory on the wind.









As if guided by a divine star, all our lines surged forward then, a roar of triumph rising above the din, and the Alemanni broke in despair, throwing away their weapons and turning in flight. Bodies were hacked down without mercy and the command to open ranks was given so that the light troops could advance forward to harry the retreating enemy without respite. Screams rent the late afternoon air as Roman blades sought out and cut down fleeing barbarians and the ground became drenched in Alemanni blood. We had won a second victory here at Argentoratum over the Alemanni barbarians no less notable than that glorious victory of the Augustus Flavius Julius some fifty years ago. Roman valour had prevailed on the field of battle deep in the barbaricum.







(We must excuse ‘Virgil’s’ hyperbole here. There would have been no possible way for him to know yet what exactly was happening regarding the Alemanni attack and its sudden collapse before the iron lines of the Roman legions. In the heat of battle and its immediate aftermath as he struggled to note down the particulars, word would not yet have reached either Allobich or his notary on the battlefield to tell him why these Alemanni were already in the main wounded and desperate and why they were in fact not attacking the Roman Comitatus in support of their chieftain holed up in Argentoratum but instead attempting to break through the Roman lines to seek shelter or sanctuary inside the walls from an even greater threat. This ‘victory’ which seemed to have been won so easily was in fact far more hollow than anyone would have believed and which cost the Romans some two hundred casualties which they could ill-afford. We can conjecture that even as ‘Virgil’ penned his last sentence, messengers were arriving from the scouts to alert Allobich to the true state affairs.)

1 - Late Roman troops bore their regimental designations as shield emblems for the purpose of identification on the battlefield. There is some argument to the effect that each ordo within the legion or vexillation would also have a different colour so as to be able to distinguish itself.

2 - the two ordines of Palatine troops from Gaul which arrived with Ulfilas and Posthumus remain unidentified in Manuscript E but Escher conjectures that it was the remnant of a legion which had been decimated and thus never fully reconstituted. From a careful survey of the Notitia Dignitatum, he suggests the ‘Octavani’ or Eight Legion, which disappears from our records around this period.

3 + 4 - late Latin battle commands as evinced by Maurice’s ‘Strategikon’ which although dealing with the later Greek speaking Roman period of the eastern empire, preserves a number of Latin technical terms now substantiated by Manuscript E.








The Third War Consilium

(Most of the notes and addendums from this section come from the stylus of ‘Virgil’ and so we conclude that the two notaries, ‘Florus‘ and ‘Probus‘, were accompanying both Posthumus and Ulfilas at this time)

The night was feverish with activity. Men ran about with lighted tapers. Sentries challenged all comers with nervous cries. Horses galloped past as if born on the wings of Pegasus himself. Despite our proud victory over the barbarians and their broken bodies which littered the ground to the north, we were not glorious with the wine of triumph now. Patrols flung out deep into the woods late in the afternoon had returned with alarming news. Our cavalry units were retiring in good order from the depths of the barbaricum and re-grouping about the smoke-smeared sky around Argentoratum. One of Felix’s men, a low-browed man of Saxon extraction called Ufwine, appeared within our tents and palisades like a shade of the dead and spoke with Allobich in low urgent tones none present could hear. Then he was gone like chaff upon the wind. The staff officers were summoned in haste. All wondered on what portends had occurred to turn our victory into such a state of anxiety. The remaining survivors of the Alemanni host which we had driven from the field had scattered, with some fleeing back into the grim woods and others scrambling in desperation past the cavalry patrols to clamber into the besieged town. I heard officers of the line, as they strode about the battlefield, pointing to the barbarian dead and wondering on their pitiable state. One, Conon, pointed to a Alemanni chieftain sprawled amid a heap of his spearmen, and marvelled on the signs of starvation and exhaustion which lay upon him like a shawl. I noticed then that many of these barbarians were marked with old wounds, as if they had already suffered a great defeat. We gazed upon our enemy and saw only broken men who had fallen upon our shields in despair.

Late in the night, as we all assembled in the wide campaign tent of the Magister, its deep red folds sheltering us like a cave, the awful truth was revealed to us. Allobich himself was sat upon his simple curial stool, with Ulfilas on one side and Posthumus on the other. The remaining staff officers and the higher commanders of the legions and the vexillations sat or stood about, drinking wine or breaking the rough bread to dip it in small bowls of olive oil. Torches flared uneasily about us, sending shadows across the red leather sides, and an image came into my mind then of my ink spilling over the heavy vellum, washing out all words and all reflections.

Allobich spared us neither words nor sophistry when he spoke. Curling his great fists into scarred balls of bronze, he told us that Felix brought ill news indeed from the north and the far lands around the middle Rhine limes. The Tribune Tertius had been forced closer to the lands about Augusta Treverorum and the forces of Constantine. His long months of careful marching were proving fruitless and now his troops were dangerously close to being discovered and butchered. His Frankish allies and scouts had retired and now he was alone and cut off. His last message had been one of reckless courage - bidding us not to search for him and his men or wait to rescue him from the lands he now found himself in. His men were determined to die an honourable death in the service of the most august emperor Honorius and now the dragon standards would scream high into the oncoming ranks of the betrayers. These words reported by Allobich caused us much consternation as we had hoped that Tertius would reinforce our already weakened forces here in the barbaricum - but I noticed that Ulfilas, alone of us all, hid a smile and I wondered on that. Then Allobich rose up and unravelled the map scroll. He outlined our position at the painted mark of Argentoratum and then the sinuous line of the Danube many days behind us to the south and east. Far away rested Augusta Vindelicorum and the limes of Raetia Secunda. Then he placed the tip of an ivory stylus deep in the woods to the north and the Vicus Alemanni, where the remaining barbarians were entrenched. His next words stunned us all.

Eight days ago, according to Felix and his iron-eyed men, the entire host of the Burgundian nation had erupted from the vastness to the north and west and descended with fire and rapine upon the Alemanni people. Even now, the Vicus itself was under siege by a host of Burgundii too numerous to count. Less than a week’s march north lay a host of German barbarians far more ruthless and bloodthirsty than the Alemanni had ever been. Here Allobich held all our eyes as if in a vice. This Roman Comitatus was now not so much a punitive expedition to put in place the Alemanni threat of raiding across the limes but now a tiny force alone in the barbaricum in the face of a barbarian nation on the march - and we were directly in its path.

Chaos erupted inside the campaign tent of the Magister and the shadows seemed to flutter as if in response. Some shouted out on the Burgundian embassy weeks ago in this very tent and their proud boast of brotherhood with the Alemanni - but here Allobich cut them short and told them that it was just a ploy to lure the Alemanni into thinking the Burgundians were their friends. These savage Germans has used the Roman troops as a cover to get closer to the northern boundary lines of the Alemanni lands - that was all. Goaric had merely been a player in a barbarian play and we had all fallen into his script without realising it. Anger flared up then and I saw some of the officers curse this Goaric with frightful oaths in both the Nazarene and the Hellene ways. I myself wondered then on this Goaric’s mettle - to have walked so brazenly into our camp and challenge us all to our faces and all for a ploy to lure the Alemanni into friendship. Allobich silenced us all after a while and then turned to Ulfilas and Posthumus to speak their council.

The Magister Equitum per Gallias rose and spoke slowly with careful deference to his fellow Goth on his left. He pointed out that we were now many miles from our province and many months also from its sheltering walls and castra. The trap of Allobich not only had not worked but now events had changed the landscape beyond all recognition. Clearly, the Burgundians were intent on marching as a nation south through the Alemanni and try their lot with their fellow Germans in the exposed lands of the Imperium. They had scented blood upon the body of the Roman state and now wanted their share of the meat. It was imperative that all available Roman troops retire back to the limes of Raetia Secunda with all haste and attempt to defend Roman soil from the Burgundians - as per the imperial writ of His Most Sacred Dominus Honorius. Posthumus Dardanus rose up and said that while it was impossible to divine the will of the Burgundian hordes, it was necessary to abandon this siege and retire back to the province while the Comitatus was still a coherent force. Who could forget the tragedy of the emperor Jovian’s shameful treaty with the Persians when cut-off and desperate for supplies after the death of Julian? This force could not afford a similar tragedy. The priority must be to regroup at Augusta Vindelicorum and organise the defence of the province as quickly as possible to honour the wishes of the emperor. John the Pannonian spoke next, throwing aside his bread in disgust. He told of the drudgery of the siege and its wasteful time, of how his III Italica was now no more than a rabble of miners and shovellers, of how his legion was reduced to carting away dirt and mud, where once it was a proud defender of the Raetias. Anger clouded his brow and I could see that his darting gaze was directed mostly at Allobich, who remained sitting, his golden hair hanging about him like rope. Rutilla agreed with his most esteemed colleague. His legion troops also were tired of the endless siege. Let it be ended and the men marched back to Roman lands where the wine amphora were plenty and the fields full with oxen pulling haywains and colonii tilling the long strips of the soil. His Senior Lions were anxious to taste Roman life again not this dull barbaricum.

Allobich nodded and smiled into the angry words as he sat upon the curial stool. Light sparkled fitfully from the heavy gold coins in his braids and he rested his chin upon one fist like a judge listening to a number of contentious suitors. Then he raised a hand and stilled the voices. So be it. On the morrow, the Comitatus would lift the siege and leave the Alemanni to their fate with the Burgundians. Tomorrow, the legions and the vexillations would march back to the Danube and Raetia Secunda, once more to defend the limes of Rome. Relief swept around the tent at those words and I saw Ulfilas grin once into Rutilla’s face and saw a look pass between them that spoke of something secret but I could not catch at its import. Allobich sat still in the centre of all the enthusiasm and noticing this I moved closer to him. His eyes caught mine then and I saw a sardonic light in his face and realised then that this Goth, who had been born a barbarian but was now one of the highest Roman officers in the army, had not spoken his own will or his own thoughts regarding the new plight of the Alemanni. No one had asked for his counsel or wanted to know what he wanted to do. Looking at Allobich in the curial stool, I realised then on the true quality of this man for in leading a pack of lions one must sometimes be the lamb to appease all their angry barks. Why was this Goth always surprising me, I wondered?






The Historia Francorum and the Manuscript E

(An often elided section of Gregory of Tour’s ‘History of the Franks’ which details an obscure clash between Roman troops and is therefore usually omitted from most modern translations now corroborates details of our manuscript. It is worth quoting the extract in full for the light it sheds on the Notes of Raetia Secunda in the late months of 412 AD -



(Book VI, xx-xxii . . . It was while these events were unfolding and that the Frankish embassies were returning from the Roman officials in the Italies that blood and fire swept the lands west and south of Augusta Treverorum, now in ruins from the great raid over the frozen Rhine. In the chaos of the barbarians flooding south and east into the heart of the empire of Rome, and the sudden emergence of the usurper, Constantine, from the Britains, the garrison of Novaesium on the Rhine retired from its post and marched south through the dark forests to find succour with its comrades. The Tribune, Tertius, and the remnants of his men, all limitanei now orphaned from their homes, marched through the long days into the short days of the year, living in the dark folds of ancient forests under the guides of the Franks by the Rhine, ever watchful to avoid the troops of the British usurper. Many were the torturous paths given to them and many were the twists and turns which took them in and out of the broken hills and defiles near the Rhine. Finally, as the months shortened into winter, the men of Tertius fell foul to the troops of Constantine and a battle was fought not far from the ancient watch-tower now known as the ‘Cell of St. Ambrosicus’, that venerable martyr. Here, in sight of the ruins, Tertius fell in defence of his men and heavy was the slaughter. I, myself, have spoken with men who fathers had fought these Romans and still speak of this Tribune’s courage in leading his men and his gallant fall which allowed some to escape the men of Constantine. It is not known what happened to these men who survived the battle but some have said that they retired into the dark forests and took to brigandage to revenge the death of their leader . . .)



(It is a small account not given much worth in the translations of Gregory as it adds little to the history of the rise of the Frankish states after the collapse of Roman authority in Gaul. It has often been read as a no more than a piece of sensational story-telling to justify the inclusion of a mention of St. Ambrosicus, given that Gregory was fond of describing saints and using them to edify his readers. With the unveiling of ‘Manuscript E’, however, new light can be shed on this episode and something of the valour and desperate heroism of those times can now be appreciated.)

(The ‘Cell of St. Ambrosicus’ survives to this day as a low mound of Roman stonework some twenty miles or so west of modern Trier, Gregory’s Augusta Treverorum, and was long regarded as a sacred site in which the local saint dwelt in seclusion performing miracles. The ‘cell’ appears from recent archaeological work to have in fact been originally a Roman military watch-tower or limes post sited to guard the heavily wooded reaches in the low hills which stud the area. Local memory has long preserved reports of battle artefacts turning up in the fields slightly east of the ruin on a low hill running down from a series of peaks and gorges. Escher himself has visited the site and returned with several late Roman objects purchased from the local farmers, including spatha fragments, military belt fittings and coins dated to Honorius and Theodosius. One local farmer, Otho Wienstraub, an amateur war gaming enthusiast, has outlined his theory of the battle-site, which was published in the German magazine - Das War - in November, 2005. His findings corroborate a small but fierce conflict in which the Roman units under Tertius took up position below the hills and the ‘cell’ in a line formation facing a downward rushing force some three times its size. Otho judges from the scatter of the fragments that the Limitanei were gradually pushed back through sheer force of numbers and eventually routed from the field. Bone fragments however would seem to indicate many frontal wounds inconsistent with a rout and so Mr Wienstraub’s account has remained to date inconclusive.)



(We are now able, thanks to Manuscript E, to develop and shed further light on this obscure moment in the dying years of the Roman empire. Although somewhat out of context regarding the narrative line of the Notes, an addendum elucidates several details which, together with Gregory’s narrative, allows us to read in some detail what actually took place under the shadow of the old Roman watch-tower.)

(We can conjecture that Tertius and his men were caught by a following column of troops at the foot of the hill upon which the tower rested. Perhaps they were simply tired of running and hiding and had decided to turn and face their fates. Certainly the position was disadvantageous to the Romans, it being downhill from Constantine’s men and we can imagine that the outcome in their minds must not have been in any doubt. The Tribune arrayed his infantry into a long in-depth line with the sagitarii to the rear and then placed his own light cavalry on the left flank and forward . . . The Ducenarius, Agricola, one of the survivors now offers up his version of the events . . .)







. . . The soldiers of the usurper Constantine advanced towards us in good order and with their barbarian foederates in the front lines. I ordered my men to tighten ranks and brace their knees against their shields to receive the oncoming charge. Behind us, the lighter troops fired off volley after volley of fire-arrows into their dense ranks. It was heartening to hear the whoosh of the fire-arrows arcing overhead. On my right, the second ordo also held its ground under Manutius who eyes found mine across the dust. His wide grin caused me to smile back and I briefly remembered how we had hunted together in the pine forests along Novaesium, tracking boar and bear in the Summer. The bucinas cried out then and I saw our blessed Tribune, Tertius, his wide red Gallic cloak flung back over his shoulders, order his cavalry forward into a charge against the right flank of the advancing troops. My mouth opened in shock. This was not what he had outlined in those desperate moments when we had wheeled about to face the enemy and let go of all our desires to escape. I looked back to Manutius and saw his face also covered in shock. Why was Tertius abandoning his place in the line? I could only watch in horror as his cavalry, all light troopers from Belgica and the little islands in the Rhine, dashed forward releasing a volley of javelins into the mass ahead. I did not understand what was happening. Tertius had planned on remaining on the left flank to harass their right once it was in contact with our own lines.







Now we were exposed. Still the fire-arrows arced overhead lending a hellish aspect to the battle but now the cavalry were ahead and obscured by smoke and dust. Then the main line of the enemy engaged our own and we fell into the battle like drunk men to the wine. I do not remember much of what followed - only that their numbers fell upon our lines like a deluge and despite the shouts of the biarchii and the centenarii, we could not hold them. Always the trails of fire flashed above us, rendering all into a ruby light which turned our faces into the old masks of the Greek plays - all satyrs and rams gripped with passion and violence. Our javelins were spent now and I ordered the front rank to revolve into the second so that a fresh line of men would receive the brunt of the foederate lines.







It was useless, however, as we were slowly being pushed back and separated from each other. I looked in despair at Manutius and his men in the second ordo and saw that they too were being stretched apart by force of numbers. I looked behind me and saw that our sagitarii were running our of arrows and preparing to draw their semi-spathas. I sensed then that now was the time to face our fate and make peace with God. Nearby, I heard an old soldier, his helmet split asunder and blood seeping down his forehead, raise his eyes up to heaven and start chanting the ‘Alelluia’. Others crossed themselves and then grinned to each other and in those grins I saw such valour and honesty that it made me curse this Constantine for all his perfidy against Rome - that one man should so ruin and wreck the Roman state so as to surrender it to the barbarians. I heaved aloft my sword then and prepared to throw myself bodily onto the oncoming weapons of the foederates - and then I heard a plaintive bucina cry out far to the rear of their right flank. I knew then that Tertius was dead upon the field of battle. Slain by outlaw Romans on Roman land plundered by marauding barbarians



What happened next took me by surprise, however. Their right flank - now pressed so savagely against out thinning lines - hesitated and then stepped back as though giving ground. For a moment, I could not understand what was happening and then my Centenarius, an Armenian, Arascius, called out to say that the Constantinians were halting to regroup. I glanced over to Manutius and saw also that his ordo was momentarily free from the engagement. He looked at me with questioning eyes - and then I understood in a moment of inspiration what had happened. Grabbing a dazed Draconarius, I yelled at him to signal a withdraw even as my fellow Ducenarius, Manutius, divined my intention and also ordered his ordo to withdraw in good order. Moments later, our remnants were retreating with our shields facing the enemy in good order from the field of battle leaving our dead and wounded at their feet as if placing on offering upon the altar of their mercy. We were few, so few, but we retired, our swords bloody and our eyes fixed steadfastly upon our foe, and as we left the field of battle by the old watch-tower, we looked in vain for the light cavalry of Tertius on the flank. We looked for our dead compatriots who had charged so recklessly into their lines and with such savage might that they had, against all the odds, caused their entire right flank to halt and disengage - to re-order before advancing again. Tertius had seen the futility of our stand and in a heartbeat had plunged recklessly forward to shock the enemy by his charge. His death had bought us time and that time we used to retire from the field intact. His death also bought us respect from the enemy and that also allowed us to retire with our arms and honour intact. I will not talk of our retreat through the broken lands of the Respublica, of the devastation we witnessed and of the atrocities we saw, all I will say is that here, now, in Raetia Secunda, we present ourselves to you as Roman soldiers, our standards intact, our unit intact, through the grace and duty of one man only, the Tribune Tertius. May all praise and grace bless God and our lawful Emperor, amen . . .









(From the following records, only five troopers of Tertius’ light cavalry ordo were able to retire from the field alive but severely wounded. Many of the light rear soldiers survived and about a quarter of the two ordines under Manutius and Agricola. While we admire his reticence regarding his details about the march south and east to join up with Allobich at Augusta Vindelicorum, we lament the loss of what must have been in its own right an epic as these few survivors marched across the ruined lands of Gaul into the Raetias. And we take no small pride in setting the record straight to correct Gregory of Tours for now we know that these valiant Romans did not live on as brigands in the forests but kept their honour intact despite appalling odds.)












The Fourth Consilium

(We have little in the way of notes or addendums throughout the Autumn and Winter of 412 into 413 AD. We can conjecture that after the withdrawal of the Comitatus back towards the limes of Raetia Secunda and the subsequent rendezvous with the remnants of the Limitanei from the middle Rhine under the Ducenarius Agricola, Allobich re-entrenched Augusta Vindelicorum and the remaining towns whilst also consolidating the few limitanei units along the Danube castra. The paucity of notes or meetings speaks to a common consensus of activity and therefore a dispersal of troops and commanders throughout the province on military business.



Throughout that Winter we know from other records that the emperor Honorius was engaged in desperate action to contain the Goths now plundering central Italy. The city of Rome itself had thrown off imperial control and was attempting to raise up its own puppet emperor in the wake of the great sack earlier. Brigandage was rife after the devastation wrought by the Gothic hordes. There was a general lack of food and provisions throughout Italy which rendered the ability of the remaining mobile units effectively useless. Most, if not all, of the Roman forces which belonged to the praesental armies dug in behind the strong walls of the cities which dotted Italy and used the famed artillery pieces to make sure that the hordes of Gothic warriors, with their attendant families and wagon trains, were forced to move on.

In southern Gaul, Constantinus consolidated Arelate and began the groundwork for a Summer campaign up the Loire valley into the heartland of Constantine’s usurping empire. This effective strategy was hindered by the Vandal hordes which finally succeeded in breaching Hispania and then into the north African provinces. Devastation flowed like a stream of lava through the western provinces of Honorius’ realm and it was said by one writer of the time that ‘the sky itself became a shroud for death’ (Empedicius, epistle xxiii). The Roman forces mustered at Arelate were incapable of protecting Hispania, focused as they were on the Gallic lands and the rival Roman troops under Constantine.

Now in the early months of 413 AD, Vandal galleys are sighted for the first time in the Mediterranean and this ancient inner sea becomes no longer safe.

We can presume that much if not all of this reached the ears of Allobich in Augusta Vindelicorum sometime in late Spring 413 AD. Strategically speaking, none of this matters as his orders remain fixed - hold the province against further barbarian encroachments and protect the Alpine passes so that northern Italy can rally itself. These months then are used by Allobich to deepen the limes defences and thicken the defence in depth strategy common to the mind of the late Roman military.

A word at this juncture would seem appropriate regarding late Roman strategic thinking. Following on from Edward N Luttwak’s ground-breaking study (The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire - John Hopkins 1976), the principal structure of the Roman defensive limes in the 4th and 5th Centuries involved a layered defensive system in which several echelons of Roman troop types operated in conjunction at both the tactical and strategic level. This created an elastic structure which responded in a reactive manner to barbarian incursions.

The first or outer layer would be the limitanei troops stationed along the perimeter of major boundary lines such as the Rhine or the Danube rivers, the Vallum of Hadrian, or the more nebulous desert tracts in Asia and Africa. These limitanei have in the past been categorised by scholars as part-time or territorial troops, settled with families in the immediate vicinity and who received lower grade armour and weapons. They were often the remnants of the original Imperial legions. This is now generally agreed to be a gross misrepresentation of Roman border troops as proven by the fact that several units were transferred to the regional and praesental armies with the designation of ’pseudo-comitatenses’ - thus illustrating that such troops were not always or irretrievably tied to the local farming communities. Limitanei were in fact light-armed border troops designed to patrol along the limes, scout into the barbaricum and defend the hard-points of the Roman military and civilian structures which studded the frontiers. They acted principally as border guards and militia able to contain and prevent low-scale raiding or penetration of the limes.

Behind the limitanei stood the regional field armies under the command of a Comes and usually stationed near or within the main civilian centres deep in the province. These troops were disciplined regulars consisting of Roman units and federate barbarians. The bulk of the mobile field armies comprised of such men. Their function was to intercept and destroy the invading barbarian tribes through large-scale operations designed to either force a battle in the field or prevent foraging and so starve out the ill-equipped and often booty-laden enemy. Behind the Comitatenses stood the large praesental armies usually under the direct command of the emperor or an equally prestigious imperial figure.

The actual defensive structures of the limes thus worked as follows, according to Luttwak: the limes either in its manifestation as a river boundary or a solid stone or turf vallum impeded barbarian penetration but could never physically stop it. It would however allow the limitanei time to prepare defensive actions which included moving populations and food stocks into secure defended sites. The barbarians would then turn aside from such refuges and move deeper into the interior for ‘soft’ targets. This exacerbated their supply or foraging activities and allowed time for the Roman regional commanders to concentrate not just the field army but also assemble the appropriate troops dispositions to counter-act the specific threat. The main aim then was blockade of major passes and transit points, denial of food and provisions via well-placed defensive castra along the military roads, and carefully targeted harassing operations designed to wear down the enemy, force their surrender, and/or precipitate a major battle. A careful reading of Ammianus Marcellinus and the events leading up to and after the battle of Hadrianople illustrates these tactics in superb detail.

However, with the aftermath of the Gothic eruption into Italy and the sack of Rome, the entire defence-in-depth strategy has been over-thrown. The Goths are simply in too deep and too large in numbers. The regional armies are in disarray or - as in Gaul - embroiled in civil war. The limes are devastated and needing desperate repairs. Crops have been neglected and so food supplies are low, leading to bitter fighting between the Romans and the Goths over what little provisions remain. The entire defence-in-depth strategy has collapsed under the weight of too many incursions across too broad a front.

It is within this chaos that Allobich’s measures stand out and explains why his initial advance into the Alemanni lands was both provocative and also brilliant. It is an irony of history that it coincided with another barbarian migration and ultimately failed.

Raetia Secunda, then, over the Winter of 412/13 AD, is in a position where Allobich has upgraded the remaining Limitanei units of the old III Italica into a regular ‘modern’ legion and left the long run of the limes along the Danube and the old Agri Decumantes denuded of static troops. He has in effect concentrated all his units into a single regional army centred on Augusta Vindelicorum. He must have been aware that he simply did not have enough troops left to main the limes as it was designed to be and pulled back his forces to concentrate them. Raetia Secunda, then, is an inviting target for barbarian raiders or hostile tribes but when we look at the situation in more detail it becomes apparent that the Alemanni are in no position to make war on Rome and the Burgundians are far too strong for any limes to hold then anyway. Allobich’s apparent abandoning of the limes strategy is in fact a brutal piece of realpolitik.

With the first snowmelt of Spring coming early, Augusta Vindelicorum received a welcome convoy of weapons and armour from the imperial fabrica at Mediolanum, along with urgent news from the emperor himself. It is within this context that Manuscript E resumes in more detail as Allobich absorbs the imperial orders from Honorius . . .)




(The Spring thaws of 413 AD see renewed activity across northern Italy and once again our notaries become prolific with stylus and commentary. ‘Florus’ provides the bulk of the initial entries.)



. . . The arrival of the wagons from the fabrica at Mediolanum was a joyous occasion for all. As the oxen pulled the study carts under the high arch of the South Gate, escorted by a numeri of Vandal horse, our troops lined the streets to cheer and offer up wine to the tired drivers. Our Magister, Allobich, his golden hair gleaming in the sun, pulled back the wraps on the first cart to reveal the dull iron of helmets and corselets, all waxed and waiting for the first taste of battle. The Augustus in his most divine wisdom had not abandoned us and still cared for our little province north of the Alps.

To the rear, with an honour guard of Imperial Candidati, rode the Bishop, Faustinus, with mandates from Honorius. He rode his large Hunnish horse with dexterity and we all remembered that this Faustinus was once a military Comes before he surrendered to the black robes of the Catholic church. In the main square before the basilica, he reared his horse up high before Allobich and then leapt from the saddle, his robes flying out from him like the black wings of the raven. I saw him kneel then and make supplication to our Magister but noticed that he adored the onyx ring on his finger - that mark of respect from the emperor himself - and in so doing honoured not Allobich himself but Honorius. This, I think, rankled the Goth and caused some around him to look with uncertain eyes upon Faustinus. It was then that our Bishop, Palladius, stood forth and grasped his brother in a warm embrace.

That evening, after the psalms had been sung and the blessings performed with due diligence, a consilium was held in the basilica and Faustinus was invited to step forth and speak for the emperor. What a contrast was to be seen between the armoured ranks of the military in their wide cloaks and heavy belts, all studded with links and jewels and pins, and the austere dark robes of the Bishop and his brothers from Ravenna and here at Augusta Vindelicorum. Only Palladius demurred from the black and instead invested himself in the rich gold and purple robes of his office. As the audience was a formal one, all rank and privilege was adhered to and so each man stood or was seated as dictated by imperial decree. A large curtain veiled the proceedings from the lesser nobles and functionaries lower down the hall.

Once the customary adoration and praise of the emperor was performed with all diligence, Faustinus was invited to claim the floor and present the words of His Most Sacred Will. What followed was brutal in its brevity and took us all by surprise - although I must admit that, alone, Allobich seemed unmoved. The Gauls were in ruin, Faustinus proclaimed. The Patrician by imperial decree had now reclaimed Lugudunum from the British usurper and regained some measure of control over the southern and central provinces but the power of Constantine was not broken and now also bacaudae were pillaging the interior. The Augustus, too, was most displeased to hear of the failure of the advance into the Alemanni lands and also the news of the Burgundian hosts advancing south and east from the Rhine interior to the upper reaches of the Danube limes. These barbarians were not to be permitted to cross into Roman lands. To this effect, and to strengthen the authority of Allobich, Magister by imperial decree, Posthumus Dardanus was invited to resume his civilian office of Praetorian Prefect and govern the two Raetias until such time as his presence was required in the Gauls again. All civilian power was now removed from Allobich to help him focus solely upon the military aims and goals of Roman polity. To this end, Our Honorius, blessed by Christ and God, deemed it worthy that the Magister Militum per Gallias, as requested by the Patrician now at Lugudunum, remain here in the Raetias as the strong right arm of Allobich until such time as he is summoned to respond to the call of Constantinus. Ulfilas, may Christ damn my soul if I lie, winced at those words, and I swear the ‘Little Wolf’, as his name is so known in his Gothic tongue, stepped back deeper into the shadows around the hanging veils. Faustinus then spoke heavy words of defeat and blood regarding Rome’s lands in Africa and Hispania, which even now the Vandals were putting to the torch. The Roman state was in a parlous condition indeed but only the valour and courage of those who guarded the limes would avert disaster and ensure that Roman genius would arise again. Faustinus crossed himself then and all present followed his lead.



Much food and wine was then brought forth, and we all relaxed away from the heavy protocols into a more intimate evening. Allobich, Posthumus and Ulfilas congregated together with Faustinus and Palladius, and the leading members of the town curia, and seemed to be discussing in some detail the import of the emperor’s message. Ulfilas stood near to Rutilla, the Tribune of the Gallic legion, and looks passed between them frequently. Palladius and Faustinus seemed deep in matters of doctrinal interest and only politely included the Goths, who adhered to the Arian heresy. John of Pannonia, Tribune of our noble III Italica, tarried by the arm of the Ducenarius, Agricola, that remarkable officer who had led the survivors of the Rhine limes here to Augusta Vindelicorum - but this lean, scarred, officer smiled mirthlessly into John’s face and stepped away almost in disgust. I swear that had I had four hands, each wielding a stylus like a spatha, I would not have been able to record all that happened as the wine flowed deeper into the night - but I will write that all is not well. I know from my time before I became a brother in Christ’s bosom that the more the smiles grow into the wine the more men’s hearts grow cold and calculating. I looked then up at Allobich, a Roman Goth with hair like straw in the Summer fields, and a heavy hand fell over my heart but I did not know why.

In the morning, after the fumes of the wine had lifted a little, men from the Tribune Felix arrived from the north with word of the Burgundian barbarians. The Vicus Alemanni had revolted from allegiance to their rex and accepted the overlordship of the Burgundian hosts. Suomar, rex of the Alemanni, now remained at Argentoratum and was much reduced in power and prestige. So much so that he had acquiesced to Roman overtures of peace and now averred from all hostilities with the emperor. The Burgundians had migrated eastwards in large numbers, spoiling the barbaricum as they went, and were now encamped in the low hills north of the upper Danube limes. Their intent was unknown but Felix warned Allobich to watch them like hawks and trust them like a rabbit trusts a fox.

With the Alemanni subdued and meek now, our province might have a moment in which it could recover from the devastations which had shaken it. Allobich dispatched Ulfilas with the cavalry vexillations east along the limes so that these barbarians would not surprise us if they decided to cross into Roman lands. The ‘Little Wolf’, in his Roman armour and crested helm, looked down from his horse upon the face of Allobich, and smiled farewell before turning his horse to lead his cavalry out of the East Gate. His eyes, however, remained darkened by the rim of the helmet and we saw not such humour as was reflected in them.

(So begins the dance of betrayal which will see the fall of the Raetias into the duplicity and chaos which marks the final end of the Roman Empire in the West. ‘Florus’, a simple notary, remains sweetly unaware of the larger power politics being played out yet senses, if only innocently, the tensions among the higher Roman commanders. Loyalties and destinies swim about him as intoxicatingly as the wine which was supped the evening before, and his stylus only catches at the merest hint of it all.)






The Tribune Felix and the ‘Corrections’

(Manuscript E preserves some extraordinary documents as quotes or addendum to the main Consilium Notes - Agricola’s deposition being an example. Another is a series of reports styled ‘corrections’ which detail activities and personalities both within Raetia Secunda and outwith it. These ‘corrections’ primarily involve the figure of Felix, an ‘agens in rebus’, the imperial courier service which in the later empire operated as inspectors of the post to the provinces. These figures were classed as cavalry troopers in terms of pay and rank; and were closely associated with monitoring the transmission of information along the imperial highways. There is a general conception that these men acted clandestinely also as spies and informers however A H M Jones is careful to point out that only under the reign of Constantius II were these figures associated with such attributes and that generally such men were not ‘secret police’ in the terms as we would understand them.)

(Half a century later, we now have preserved the reports of an actual agens in rebus and clearly our Felix is half-spy and half covert ops. Allobich has used him and his men to scout and sabotage Alemanni settlements and also report on the wider political and military events around Augusta Vindelicorum. Felix clearly is ranked as a Tribune and operates with a retinue of irregular soldiers, all of whom remain sequested away from the normal Roman military routines. These men are both Roman and barbarian and are characterised several times as ‘iron-eyed’, or wearing ‘iron-coloured cloaks’, or more generally as being dour and monotone.)

(While it is difficult to draw a wider picture from a single set of reports, it is admissible that Felix is styled as an agens in rebus and that he specifically operates in the trade of information and covert operations. We speculate on whether Felix is acting officially or is rather improvising a new role for himself and his men after the chaos of Alaric’s invasion of Italy and the Rhine crossings by the Vandals and the other barbarians in that savage Winter when the waters froze over.)

(An example illustrates in detail the manner in which this agens in rebus conducted his ‘postal’ business in the Spring of 413 AD - )

(Taken from ‘Correction xxi - The Fourth Consilium’) . . . My men had been trailing this merchant along the upper Danube limes for several days. On the surface, nothing was untoward. He moved cautiously with his retinue of slaves and hired barbarian guards, using mostly river cargo boats and barges, as and when convenient. He manifested Greek and Syrian customs, bartered in spices and amphorae of dull wine - Ufwine will attest to that - and attempted to bribe his way past local Alemanni chieftains to pass north of the Danube when the occasion allowed.

It fell to my notice that this merchant, who styled himself Archilon, invariably made camp in or near our limes castra, whether intact or ruined. One of my men ascertained that he kept a papyrus which he assiduously updated. I arranged a meeting with him posing as a Alemanni hunter eager to sell him some hides and amber. He responded readily and we met on the ‘Avittia’, a Liburnian river galley moving upstream towards Castra Regina. We conversed in rough Gothic. During the lengthy and protracted bargaining, I was able to steal a glance at his writings which lay upon a low desk and saw that his handwriting was neither Greek nor Aramaic as I supposed it might be. It was Latin. I knew then that this man called Archilon was not a merchant from the Oriens.



I liaised with the Magister Militum per Gallias, Ulfilas, at Castra Regina and infiltrated my men onto the ‘Dona’, a sluggish river barge. Those onboard were rendered drunk one night - Archilon’s wine being useful for that purpose - and then cast off downstream. Next morning, we arranged to bring aboard this merchant as if we were the regular Danube barge, and then in mid-stream, away from the eyes of the colonii and the barbarians, we butchered his guards and slaves and tipped their bodies into the deep muddy waters. ‘Archilon’ confessed under torture to being an ambassador from Constans, the son and heir of Constantine in the Gauls, tasked with suborning the Danube garrisons and gathering information along the limes. I personally read his writings and can conform that they were filled with troop listings and dispositions. I blinded him and cut out his tongue before drowning him in the waters which he had sought to use to overthrow us and then sent his body back with a single slave we had kept alive for such a purpose to the usurping forces in the Gauls . . .



(Hardly the reports of an imperial courier and postal officer. I expect, although Escher disagrees, that this Felix, while styled an agens in rebus and carrying the title of Tribune, is in fact closer in action to the old Areani which were disbanded by Theodosius in Britain after the Great Conspiracy. Perhaps his father had been such an officer and Felix had merely followed in his footsteps, as it were, given the unprecedented emergency now overwhelming the empire.)




The Fifth Consilium

(Spring 413 AD moves quickly into the Summer months and the start of the proper campaigning season. The two cavalry vexillations under the Magister Militum per Gallias occupy Castra Regina and its environs, patrolling along the Danubian limes in conjunction with the riparienses patrols, and also begin to marshal provisions for the coming months. At Augusta Vindelicorum, the two Companion legions are dispersed over the limes which form the frontier of the broken ground between the upper reaches of both the Rhine and the Danube - the old Agri Decumantes - but remain clustered in large detachments for security. Allobich, together with Faustinus and Posthumus Dardanus, confer daily on reports from Felix and the rest of the empire, while the province as a whole gradually begins to knit itself together; sowing crops, ploughing the fallow land, repairing the supply depots, rebuilding the post-houses, tending the herds of cattle and sheep, etc. Little barbarian activity is reported and despite the chaos enveloping Gaul, Hispania and Italy, Raetia remains somewhat secure. But it is a precarious security and always somewhat of an illusion. High Summer shatters that illusion.)

. . . The acts we feared came upon us in the middle of the Summer months. It was not the Alemanni nor the Burgundians, who seemed only to drift eastwards north of the Danube, who threatened our porous limes but the perfidious troops of the British usurper, Constantine. Word came via Felix and his shadowy men that high in the upper reaches of the Rhine limes, Roman forces were re-investing the ruined limes castra. The glitter of arms was seen upon the crumbling walls and along the old turf ramparts. Soon we all knew that the Constantinians had seized the lands south and west of the Alemanni runs now that Suomar was cowed by the Burgundian hordes.



Allobich was fired by this news and ordered the infantry units to re-assemble on the provincial capital with all haste. The town councillors were alarmed by the movement of the enemy and divined that this was the initial thrust into the soft over-belly of the Italies. They petitioned the Magister Equitum to safeguard Augusta Vindelicorum as per the rescript of the emperor and he took all pains to allay their fears. Orders were dispatched to Ulfilas and the cavalry to enact a crossing of the Danube in force and proceed with all haste across the old Alemanni lands west and north of Argentoratum, with the view to flanking the Constantinian troops now re-entrenching the Rhine limes.

Days passed as the ordines of the two legions re-assembled into the town under their Ducenarii and then word came to us from our scouts that the Magister Militum per Gallias was deep into the barbaricum and moving westwards with ease. Suomar was content to remain behind his walls and the Burgundians, it seems, had drifted ever deeper away from the limes. Allobich sent word back not to trust either the Alemanni or the Burgundians as each may be now in the employ of the men of Constantine. The omens, however, seemed good as slowly our two legions arrayed themselves within the walls of Augusta.



Felix, ever elusive like a manes of the dead, sent word back via the monotone Saxon, Ufwine, that the Constantinians were commanded by a certain Gaius Macrinus, and that under him were many units of foederates and regular Roman troops from the lower Rhine limes and the distant tracts of the Britons. He estimated a force numbering in the thousands but was as yet unable to give detailed accounts. Days slid past and then on one dark night, with a hollow moon frosting the old buildings and the walls of our town, the Saxon appeared slumped at the north gate across his small Gallic pony. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds and his right hand gripped a short Frankish axe which he refused to let go.

He was carried in secret to Allobich and only myself and a Jewish doctor attended to him. Lighted tapers threw a mottled glow over his pallid features as this Saxon unburdened his words, which he had fought so hard to bring to us - and their import stunned all three of us into silence. His death as his wounds sprang open and gouted blood across the floor was a merciful release for him. We three stood above his twisted corpse and only the mute anger of betrayal lurked in our eyes. Vowing mighty oaths, we carried the body of the loyal Saxon out into the night and disposed of him with a much dignity as we could muster without betraying our purpose.

The next morning, as the soldiers of the III Italica assembled in the Field of Mars beyond the town walls, Allobich stood before them upon a turf dais and held aloft the Frankish axe like the fasces of old. He bade the soldiers gaze upon the blood which encrusted its dull and splintered metal, asking them if Roman honour would leave this weapon unavenged? Should he who had wielded this in the defence of Rome perish without his blood avenged? Was Roman honour so easily mocked? The men of the III, all descended from ancient bloodlines of Roman soldiers back to the time of Augustus himself roared back their indignation and called out for the blood of those who had defiled Roman honour. They clashed their swords against their shields, raised the old ‘barritus’ war-cry, and surged about the turf dais in anger. Allobich drink in their fury and then without a pause tossed the gore-clotted axe into the hands of the startled Ducenarius, Agricola, and bade him strike off the head of the Tribune, John the Pannonian. I swear that no plan had been made in secret to this officer who had braved the barbaricum to bring his survivors into Raetia - that only myself, Allobich and the doctor only knew of this man’s perfidy, but it was without a moment’s hesitation, and before even John himself could divine the import of Allobich’s words, that the axe flashed in a high arc and then the Tribune’s head span into the mud at his feet.

Allobich held all our eyes then and elevated Agricola to the command of the III and bade the men gaze upon their avenger. A score of officers, all cronies of John, started forward, hands on swords - but the Magister caused them to pause with his next words. Words which repeated the Saxon’s dying speech and caused all about the corpse of John the Pannonian to spit upon his bloodied body in disgust, even the officers who had shared his wine in the past.

Allobich gestured wide across the barbaricum to where Ulfilas and the two cavalry vexillations were roving and told them all that the Magister Militum per Gallias had taken the troopers across the Rhine into the Gauls against all orders with the intent of joining up with the Patrician at Lugudunum to smash the Constantinians. Ulfilas had betrayed his emperor’s orders, betrayed Raetia, and betrayed them all to death at the hands of the barbarians now that the province was denuded of its cavalry. John the Pannonian knew about the perfidy as did Rutilla for Ufwine had intercepted messengers between all three of them. Messages which revealed their plan to abandon the Raetias to the British usurper in exchange for gold and office in the new empire of the Patrician, Constantius

These words drove the men of the III mad with rage and as one they burst from the Field of Mars and ransacked the town until Rutilla was dragged from hiding among the slaves and torn to pieces before the eyes of the astounded officers of the Senior Lions. Manutius gained the mantle of the legion’s Tribune in his place. Others were slain in the aftermath but I will draw a veil over such carnage lest I besmirch the name of good men.



(Ulfilas’ betrayal signalled the end of the détente between the Roman forces stationed in Raetia and was the principle cause of the horrors which followed.)




The Sixth Consilium

(There is some confusion in the records regarding the sequence of events which now unfolded in the light of Ulfilas betrayal. We can be reasonably sure that the late Summer months saw the two cavalry vexillations move rapidly across Alemanni land, over the Rhine frontier, and then into the eastern reaches of the lands ruled by the forces under Constantine. The patrician, Constantinus, is concentrating his forces at Lugudunum, north of Arelate, in preparation for an advance in force northwards to, one presumes, finish off the usurper’s remaining troops and so finally bring the Gallic Diocese back under imperial control. With this in mind, we can conceive of the Magister Militum per Gallias’ advance westwards from Raetia into Germania Prima as a politically motivated attempt to support Constantinus’ final campaign to the detriment of both Allobich and the specific orders of the emperor. It is entirely possible that Ulfilas is operating under secret orders from the Patrician who himself is playing a wider political game which involves Honorius himself.)

(It is certain that the forces under Constantine and his son Constans are taken utterly by surprise. The sudden arrival of Roman cavalry from the east into the flank of the usurping forces throws everything into disarray. Late Summer now sees a dual pronged Roman attack on the usurper, one moving north up from Lugudunum and one from the east and the lands of Germania Prima.)

(Allobich, in a vigorous move typical of his character, engineers the removal of all of Ulfilas’ perceived supporters which is triggered by the murder of the two legionary commanders, John and Rutilla, and then sends dispatches south through the alpine passes to Mediolanum and Ravenna. We know that Bishop Faustinus is imprisoned by the soldiers of Allobich but have no extant sources to described exactly on what charges. Posthumus Dardanus, another colleague of Constantinus, and now the Praeses
Of Raetia Secunda, remains in his post and is thus exonerated from the betrayal.)

(We must admit that in the patch-work politics and back-stabbing which characterised the final years of the Roman Empire in the West, it is not entirely impossible that Constantinus is in fact manoeuvring to make a play for the imperial purple and is using Allobich to discredit Honorius in Ravenna. It is equally possible that Honorius himself through Faustinus has ordered Ulfilas to abandon Allobich and Raetia in a deliberate move to undermine the Magister Equitum, who is perhaps too close to the seat of imperial authority and thus a threat. That, in other words, the entire Raetia Secunda mandate is a set up. We will never know for sure. What is certain is that Allobich surprised everyone and again did the one thing no-one was expecting.)

(Late in Summer, with the campaigning season drawing to a close, he marched the entire Roman force out of Augusta Vindelicorum and deep into the barbaricum in pursuit of the errant cavalry.)



. . . The deep golden light of Summer with its tang of apples and honey was fading now. Again, the harsh lands of the barbaricum surrounded us with hostile woods and twisting tracks which seemed always to tempt us into an unwary ambush. The Alemanni remained hidden, though, behind their stout walls and palisades, and so we covered many miles as the days filed slowly past. Without our cavalry, we were dependant on the few men of Felix to guide and protect us and he worked tirelessly to achieve this aim. In two wide columns, the III Italica and the Senior Lions advanced onwards towards the Rhine limes through the uncultivated lands of the barbarians. Daily, Allobich, all anger and fiery purpose now, consulted with Agricola and Manutius over the routes they had taken from their castra across this land so that at least some knowledge guided us. All remained quiet, however, and for that we must thank the providence of God and His Mercy . . .

(Late in Autumn, the Roman Comitatus reaches the outer zone of the east bank of the Rhine. They have travelled long distances through barbarian territory in pursuit of Ulfilas and have left Raetia Secunda unguarded as a result. It is not hard to fathom Allobich’s reasoning here, however. Without the cavalry supporting the legions, his forces in the province would have been rendered effectively static and useless. Allobich needs those two cavalry vexillations as a city needs walls. So we can imagine that his gamble was to intercept the Roman cavalry under Ulfilas and convince them of the need to switch allegiance and return their standards back to his control. What happened next, as an early snow fell over northern Gaul and Germany, only added to the confusion of all involved.)

. . . Ahead of the main column, seated upon his Hunnish mount, Allobich spotted the riders advancing out of the dense woods before even his guards had seen them. They were Roman light cavalry, holding only the scutum, or large shield, for protection and were galloping in haste up to the brow of the hill. A veil of thin snow was falling softly over the frost-baked ground, and I heard a staff officer near me swear in surprise that these riders were from the Senior Honorian Horse. Instantly, a guard sprang up about the Magister but he contemptuously dismissed them even as the riders, a dozen tired men, reined in and leapt to the ground at his feet. Their leader, a Biarchus called Severus, gabbled out his tale and we could only listen on in wonder as his words fell about us almost as thickly as the snow.

Ulfilas had brought the two vexillations over the Rhine limes at the old stone bridge at Augusta Rauricum and so into the province of Germania Prima. There was much contention among the troopers for they all wondered on why they were moving so far from Raetia Secunda and the mandate of the emperor but the Magister Militum per Gallias had liberally sowed gold among the officers and so had bought an uneasy peace. Five days west along the main road, the cavalry column had topped a rise and below spread out in battle array were the forces Gaius Macrinus, all eager to confront the imperials and cut them down in defeat. Even as the officers had turned to order the standards and bark out commands to the rank and file, Ulfilas had galloped past in alarm and ordered the entire column to retreat back across the bridge at Augusta Rauricum.





Allobich started up at that. He demanded that this Biarchus repeat his words and this Severus said again that Ulfilas had turned the cavalry about and retreated them eastwards back across the Rhine into the barbaricum. This ‘Little Wolf’ had shown his true colours in the face of the enemy and as a result, the two vexillations were now south and west of the legions forces here. Some days ago, men of Felix had infiltrated the columns on the move and whispered about how the loyal infantry were even now only days from them eager to save them from the weak temper of Ulfilas. I saw Agricola grin then and urge Allobich to march south to join the cavalry units and oust this intemperate Goth from his command. Regain the cavalry, turn eastwards, and once again secure Raetia Secunda, the Tribune of the III Italica urged. Others about him supported Agricola in his words - and then Severus re-affirmed that the men of the Senior Honorian Horse and the Equites Raetianii Passerentiaci would as one throw their support back to the legitimate Roman commander.

Allobich smiled into their eagerness then and stretched his arms wide into the glittering snow. He cried out then and wondered on all their naivety and foolish blindness. Did they not see that Ulfilas’ stupid and vainglorious pride had brought them all an unlooked for triumph? That the retreating vexillations in all their haste had opened a door to Roman victory in the most unlooked for direction? His laughter echoed around the crown of the hill as we all stared at him in amazement.

That very next morning, we marched in battle-array westwards to Augusta Rauricum and the Rhine bridge.





(Eight days later, on the Ides of November, with early snows lying all about, the men of the III Italica and the Senior Lions engaged the Constantinian Comitatus under Gaius Macrinus, some miles westwards of the old stone bridge. Battle was joined.)

(This represents the ending of the first Book of Manuscript E, concerned as it had been with documenting in detail the orders and manoeuvres of the Roman authority in the province of Raetia Secunda. Book II and Book III covers the consequences of Allobich’s daring thrust in Gaul and the final fall of the province and those committed to defending it. Both Escher and myself are now in the process of translating and annotating the final drafts of Book II which we expect to publish early in December some time after the 3rd or thereabouts. We appreciate all critical comments made so far and look forward to even more debate once Book II emerges onto the scholarly field.)




Winter, province of Raetia, Diocese of the Italians

Augusta Vindelicorum, headquarters of the Praeses and the civil administration for the province, and the Dux of the Limitanei for the provinces of Raetia Prima and Secunda

Consulships of the Most Illustrious Flavius Lucius and Heraclianus

This being the Lists and Notes of the said Consilium of the provincial capitol, by the divine grace of God and the blessings of his Son

(So begins Book II of Manuscript E. The formal tone echoing the opening section of Book I in an attempt, one wonders, to underline the official nature of the writings and stamp some legitimacy on the proceedings in the wake of Ulfilas and the desertion of the two cavalry vexillations. Book II is different from the earlier writings in that more interpolations pepper its records and both Escher and myself see in this development both a need to vindicate with external commentary the harsh decisions which were forced upon Allobich and his staff at Augusta Vindelicorum and also to shed light upon events which at the time could not be elucidated clearly for political reasons.)

(Book II begins with ‘Virgil’ and the Comitatus deep in the province of Germania Prima, having made a surprise move across the Rhine limes from the barbaricum into Constantinian-held Roman territory. What became known as the Battle of Mons Arcades took place late in November, 413 AD, after what seems to have been some days of adroit manoeuvring by the Raetian Comitatus around and between the Constantinian forces led by Gaius Macrinus and a certain Basilicus who seems to have commanded the Limitanei troops along this stretch of the Rhine border. Clearly, Basilicus, a Dux under Constantine III, held the superior command and co-ordinated the two Roman columns which tried to outflank and pin Allobich’s troops. The latter, in a superb piece of strategic cunning, seems to have enticed Macrinus towards him with the lure of battle only to then fall back into the rough hills which fringed the Rhine river. In the confusion which followed, as both Macrinus and Basilicus jockeyed for position, the Raetian Romans appeared to have tempted Macrinus in a false direction even as they brought the Rhine Dux deeper into the rough hills. Four days after the initial confrontation, in November, much to the Dux’s dismay, Allobich turned his men around and pounced upon the rebel Roman troops along the undulating ridges of Mons Arcades.)

(While many Roman historians have dwelt upon the horrors of civil war and decried its waste, the Battle of Mons Arcades is particularly poignant in that while the slaughter took place barbarians were pillaging and destroying not only Gaul and Hispania but had also crossed the Mediterraneum and were now beginning a particularly savage rampage of the rich breadbasket of the African provinces. The ultimate results, as Peter Heather demonstrates in his excellent work ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’, contributed decisively to the end of the empire in the West. Here, as Roman fought Roman in a bloody civil war, the fabric of the Roman state was already being unwoven. ’Virgil’ himself acknowledges this state of affairs when he writes about the Constantinian troops especially. Agricola, the newly-promoted Tribune of the III Italica Legio also records his reaction to fighting fellow Romans in the shadow of the barbarian destruction - something he has already alluded to in his report regarding the death of his Praepositus, Tertius.)





. . . Our Magister Equitum, in the wisdom of his grace, allowed the Constantinians to follow hard upon our heels after we offered them battle in the lands west of the Rhine. In the days which followed, as we marched in cunning steps in the hills near the Rhine, their forces dispersed in confusion until, at last, Allobich turned like a sphinx and pounced upon the straggled lines of the Dux, Basilicus. On the slopes of Mons Arcades, in a bitter mist which caught at the eyes like nails, and in the shroud of falling snow, we arrayed our lines and waited for their advance up towards us. The Goth lined up the legions in battle with the heavy infantry to the front and the light troops and archers to the rear. The III Italica formed the right wing and the Senior Lions the left. To the rear and on the right, waited the Palatine soldiers with Allobich and his Gothic guard. The snow fell in heavy sheets over us and muffled the shouts of the Ducenarii and the Centenarii to dress ranks and close the files. It was cold but the heat of our blood was up and now it was time to show these betrayers what it was to be a true Roman under the eyes of the old gods. As the men settled down into their lines, we heard a soft rhythmic tread emerge from the veils of snow and slowly we could see - as if emerging from a dream - the faint outlines of their own lines and standards moving uphill towards us. In the distance, echoes of our own Latin commands came back to our ears and for a moment it seemed as if we were facing mirrors of ourselves in the narcissism of war. I trembled then at the horror of what was happening as we drew our weapons and readied them to slaughter fellow Romans . . .

(The Tribune, Agricola, commander of the III Italica Legio, contributes the next section which deals mainly with the action on the right wing.)



. . . We felt the coldness through our scale and mail corselets despite the warmth of the thick Gallic cloaks. Some of us had managed to stuff straw or woollen rags under the rims of our helmets to stave off the icy nails clawing at our heads. Our breath hung in the air like tattered standards. Everything was gray and misty. As we formed up along the brow of the hill, with the Senior Lions off to our left, and Allobich with the reserves behind us, it felt like we had strayed into that grey underworld the Celts from Gaul and Britain speak so much of: Annwn, or ‘antumnos’. I wondered then on the ankou or demons that prowled in that deep and dark place which even the cuccullati guardians could not keep back.



A soft rhythmic tread in the snow halted my reverie and my gaze fell upon the blanket of falling snow before us. It seemed to pulse as though alive and then slowly dim forms emerged from it as if shaped by the ice and the snow into human figures; gray caryatids or statues which advanced towards us in implacable silence. I glanced along the line and saw our Raetian legionaries shift their feet and brace themselves behind the oval shields. Endless snow fell across our sight but now the tread of the approaching soldiers wrapped us up and swept away our fancies. By my side, the Draco glistened with snow and ice like a beast from the pages of Homer or Xanthipicus, its teeth all shards of white. In my breast, I felt the old rage begin to rise but checked it with the discipline of my years and experience. I was not a line officer now, able to stab and slay with the men, but a Tribune of the III Italica and although I stood on foot with my legion, I was there to direct and order before all else.



Then the light rose slightly and the snow fell away from a thick blanket into a slight gauze and there before us were the ranks of the Romans of Constantine; Romans who laboured to defend the Gauls and the Britains from the barbarians and in doing so also sought to drag down the Augustus himself. I looked long and hard at these men as they toiled through the snow and saw old veterans from the Saxon Shore who had manned the crumbling castra across the Belgic Straights, all weary now, and young pups from the ancient Sixth at Eboracum, that city where emperors had been proclaimed, and where now the last remnants of Roman rule were being squabbled over by upstarts, and there among the centre of the line were my old companions of the Rhine limes - the men of the Cohorts who had defended the limes against the Burgundians and the Alans and the Vandals in that great dark Winter which had seen the river itself freeze over and the hordes come pouring across like Fate itself. I looked at these men, driven now in desperation to revolt from lawful Roman rule and pledge allegiance to a British usurper, and my old rage faded away like the falling snow. These men were honourable Romans fighting to protect their families from the barbarians and had cleaved only to those who could promise that protection - Constantine and his kin. These Romans, all Limitanei from the Rhine and the Saxon Shore and the great Vallum itself, were marching now uphill towards our Raetians and all I could see in their narrowed eyes was the awful pit of hopelessness.

They closed to missile range and then even as I shouted out ‘Silentium. Nemo demittat, nemo antecedat signum’, I heard my own words echo back at me from the opposing ranks and a shiver went down my spine. The air above my head became blackened with arrows and javelins, like angry serpents hissing back and forth. I was glad then for the cold armour of my corselet and my helmet. As the barbed missiles sped overhead, I involuntarily glanced behind me to the ranks of the light troops - the skirmishers and sagitarii - and found myself searching for the familiar faces of my Rhine comrades who had endured that awful retreat from the river to finally find refuge in Raetia. All had refused to don the armour of the front line legionaries and now remained alert and nimble in the rear four lines - limitanei to the last. Faces appeared through the mist and snow all along the line - old Pacatus with the scar along his brow, the disgraced Frank chieftain, Alardinic, all garbed now in Roman manners and clothes, the Syrian Melanus, far from the shimmering deserts, and there, on the far flank, his arms raised high firing his curved bow, Domitius, the last of a family gens stretching back to days of Marcus Aurelius and the old IV Flavian ‘Ever Lucky’ Legio, with its ancient emblem of the lion. A small part of me smiled as I realised that now he fought for the III which the old veterans whisper used to hold aloft the stork as its symbol. More missiles feathered the snowy air and then the lines crashed together and tumult enveloped my mind . . .

(‘Virgil’, it seems, has acted somewhat in the manner of an editor for the next section of Manuscript E contains notes from the Tribune, Manutius, commander of the Gallic Senior Lions. At some point, as the armies collided, the mist and falling snow evaporated, with the clouds vanishing like phantoms. This was obviously seen by many as a good omen.)



. . . As if God himself blew the snow away, the clouds parted and sunlight fell around us in great splashes of golden light, burnishing the ice at our feet. The ground trembled and then the Constantinians were upon our shields, pressing hard with swords into the hunched down figures of our men. The curve of the slope aided us, however, and with a measured shout the dracos dipped forward and echoes of ‘Percute’ rippled along the lines. Being on the downward lip of the brow, I could not see my old friend, Agricola, ever the introspect, or his men but I could hear their shouts and the clang of arms. Before us, fought the stubborn men of the Britains and the Germans, now so far from their old limes, and here and there I recognised an old face from the days before the Rhine crossing in that awful Winter when the river froze over and the barbarians poured across.. I knew Agricola would ponder on this fact with a philosophical heart but I am made of a different cloth and yelled my encouragement to my men as we strove to push them back down the slippery slopes. Crimson flowers sprouted against the snow and we heaved our lines forwards over the dead and the dying. I tried not to look down then at the torn cloaks and emblems of our fellow Romans . . .







. . . The whole line of our front - both legions - shivered and then surged forwards and by my side, I saw our Magister, Allobich, tense and raise himself up in his saddle, all the better to survey the battle. Now that the sun was blazing down on us all, throwing sparks and shards of fire from the helmets and shield rims, our hearts seemed to uplift with the joy of battle, and even I, a lowly notary by trade, felt my blood quicken and my pulse race with fire. There, on our right, the lines of the III Italica moved steadily forward down the through the slush of the slope. Cries of mercy and despair seemed to hang about them like empty banners. Behind us, the soldiers of the decimated Palatine legion stiffened in expectation and I could see their officers staring hard at Allobich, awaiting the orders to advance. Over to the far left, down the slight curve of the hill, the men of the Senior Lions were also advancing slowly and in victory as the Constantinians seemed to melt before them like the snow had done.





A mad laugh startled me and then I saw Allobich gesture savagely to his standard-bearer and then goad his Hunnish horse forwards. Around him, careered his Gothic guards, now all laughing too in that mad way barbarians do when the bloodlust is upon them. The ground trembled as together they charged forwards and through our lines into the heart of the crumbling enemy. I looked up then at Sol and gave thanks for his blessing on this most auspicious day . . .





. . . I urged the line officers and the file closers to move the lines downhill after the fleeing men. Thunder and shouts enveloped me and I had time to glance behind to see that our Magister was charging his guard cavalry towards us and the retreating men of the Constantinians. I urgently signalled the ‘part-ranks’ and the men smartly opened up to let the horse gallop through. Allobich grinned at me, his gold hair all bunched up under his jewel-encrusted helmet, as he swept past in a cloud of snow and dirt - and then they were among the routing troops even as the Palatine soldiers jogged out over the far right to cut off their retreat. My arm wearied then of cutting down Roman and I sheathed my dulled spatha and wondered on Manutius and his men . . .





(The Battle of Mons Arcades was to all intents and purposes a rout. It seems that Allobich had been astute enough to outmanoeuvre the more disciplined men under Macrinus and instead lure the worn-out Rhine and British Limitanei under the Dux, Basilicus into a one-sided battle. We summarise the remaining words of ‘Virgil’ here as his rhetoric gets the batter of him and he adds little in the way of fact but it seems that neither the right wing nor the left wing was able to overcome the Raetian lines and that they soon melted away. Allobich’s charge deep into the fleeing Romans wrought untold slaughter upon them and in effect decimated what was left of the Constantinian Comitatus. We know from the Gallic Chronicle that the Dux, Basilicus, fell in the rout, caught in a gully and cut down by the Goths of Allobich. The Raetians were victorious on the field of battle in the province of Germania Prima.)







(This account raises some interesting details which both Escher and myself feel add substantially to our knowledge of late Roman history. In the first instance, it has often been found controversial when Vegetius writes that the Roman soldier of his day refrains from wearing armour in battle and complains about its weight. This has often been either dismissed as alarmist exaggeration designed to prove his thesis regarding resurrecting the old legions of the early empire or evidence of the barbarisation of the Roman army via heavy recruitment from the Goths under Theodosius. Agricola’s comments regarding his fellow limitanei soldiers re-enrolling into the III Italica but refusing front-line positions in favour of the rear or skirmishing roles points at a third theory. Namely, that with the decimation of the eastern field army at Hadrianople and the massive upgrading of limitanei units into the Comitatus under the designation of ‘pseudo-comitatenses’ (see Heather’s astute analysis of this statistic - ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’), many of these so-called ‘barbarians’ now in the Roman army were in fact limitanei troops who chose to remain light troops as befitted their training and experience. That, in fact, this was not a weakening of Roman valour but Vegetius’ miscomprehension of why these men refused armour. These men preferred to deploy on the field of battle and across country on operations as they had been used to all those years while protecting the limes of the Empire.)

(The second instance of note is Agricola’s mention of the limitanei from Britain, specifically the Saxon Shore limes and the Vallum limes, no doubt brought over in the original van of Constantine’s assault upon the authority of Honorius. It is somehow regretful to read of these men’s demise in the low hills of Germania Prima so far from home - sentiments which Agricola himself almost seems to echo in his writings. It is a shame that no current battlefield site has been found which approximates Mons Arcades and that this battle must for the foreseeable future remain present only in these writings.)










Correction XXIX

(We do not know the precise events which occurred with Ulfilas, the Magister Militum per Gallias, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Mons Arcades. We do know that the Goth abandoned the two cavalry vexillations in secret and fled westwards with his immediate bucellari guards. At some point, they must have crossed the Rhine, perhaps lower down from Augusta Rauricum, and then proceeded by swift stages to Lugudunum and the assembling Gallic field army under Constantius. It was on this swift flight that the Tribune, Felix, our ‘postmaster’, details one of his reports which we feel appropriate to enter here.)

. . . They were not subtle in their flight from the barbaricum and it was with ease that some of my men were able to track them over the Rhine and into Germania Prima. Ever boastful and vain, this Goth known as ‘little wolf’ used his authority to requisition fresh horses from the public post houses and those few castra still manned by Limitanei in the area. Once into the province, their paced slowed and on not a few nights drunkenness overtook them like a plague. I divined that their route would pass through a small latifundia know as the Villa Alobricius and that Ulfilas would gain a day’s respite there under the enforced hospitality of its owner, Macrus. I made plans accordingly.

A day’s travel north of the villa lies a large wild forest in which legend tells of a Roman defeat some two hundred years ago. It is a tangled forest given over to hunting of the boar and bear. It now plays refuge to a band of bacaudae led by a disgraced Roman Ducenarius known as the ‘Boar’s Head’, no doubt after the military formation of the same name. I sent Cunellus and Brioarius to find this man and his band of brigands. They were not hard to find as superstition alone conceals them in the forests and my two men will have no time for such fool’s stories. This ‘Boar’s Head’ proved amenable to our gold and promises of a pardon and a return to the standards and so on the night in which Ulfilas arrived at the Villa Alobricius we sprang our trap.

The villa’s slaves and freedmen fled as we infiltrated the outer walls and then barred the main gates. The horses we turned loose and then tossed firebrands high onto the thatched roofs of the outer buildings. Fires flared up in the night and, in an drunken stupor, the Goths of Ulfilas blundered out into the inner courtyard, all rough shouts and beery curses. It was then that the bacaudae struck with vengeance. I remained with my men to the rear and encouraged the ‘Boar’s Head’ on to wreak havoc with the men of Ulfilas. As the Goths were being cut down, I saw the Magister Militum per Gallias leave via the roof and jump down onto the ground at the rear of the villa. A dozen men were with him, shielding him with their bodies from our desperate bow-shots. I was able to order the bacaudae near me to give pursuit but it was too late. Ulfilas was able to mount some horses which were nearby and then speed off into the night. It was too dark to pursue and in the confusion of the fighting which still remained much slaughter was still to be effected.

In the dawn light, with the smoke still trailing high into the Winter sky, we found many of the Goths dead about the villa. The leader of the bacaudae also was slain. The owner was distraught but reassurances from myself and promises of much gold mollified his sadness at the destruction of his property. We learned some days later that Ulfilas had reached the city of Lugudunum alive with only seven survivors of his bucellari guards. Rumour has it that the patrician, Constantius, is in a violent rage and has stripped the ‘little wolf’ of his rank and privileges.



(One can only wonder here on the possible ‘what if’ had Felix in fact managed to slay Ulfilas at the Villa Alobricius. Certainly, much bloodshed might have been avoided in the months and years to come as Ulfilas sought to avenge himself upon Allobich for this perceived treachery and the murder of his close-companions.)






The Seventh Consilium

It was deep in the month of Januarius when the last of the legion ordines assembled again in the decaying streets of Augusta Vindelicorum. A bitter Winter held the province of Raetia Secunda in a deep grip and banks of snow lay piled up in the fossa around the town walls. Cold winds knifed down from the Alpine passes. There was little celebration as the Magister Militum entered the north gate attended by his staff and guards. Even the embrace of our Praeses, Posthumus Dardanus, now working hard to repair the injuries suffered by the province, was formal and distant. The betrayal of Ulfilas and his flight to the patrician at Lugudunum had left a sour taste on all our lips and now distrust hung in the air along with the cold and the wind.

Across the Danube, the barbarians stirred little in the days which followed the return of the Comitatus. Allobich, ever restless, sent the cavalry east along the limes back to winter quarters at Castra Regina under the command of a newly appointed Tribune. Outside our vallum, the heads of the betrayers rotted on poles - John, Rutilla, and a score of lesser officers and notaries. The assembled consilium of the province, headed by our Praeses, was forced to release the Bishop Faustinus, as no evidence other than the dying words of the Saxon Ufwine could be admitted against him. He stood in the great basilica in his black robes like an angel of death and muttered solemn oaths to his innocence but we saw Allobich stir in the curial chair like a man fevered and wondered on the enmity between them. Missives from the imperial court at Ravenna ordered that Faustinus was to remain in the provincial capital to minister to the locals and tend to their religious needs. Palladius revelled in that news and admitted his Christian brother into his fold like a prodigal.

The winter days scrapped past in the slow fall of snow and ice. The live-stock was tended to with hay in the low barns. The grain houses were ventilated from the dampness which rots. Wine casks were laid up in the deep cellars of the rural villas which still remained intact from the depredations those few years ago. The military roads were re-metalled and the post-houses repaired by slaves and those in the legions who still knew the old skills.

It was during this time that Allobich worked tirelessly to drill his men. With the passes snowed in, no supplies could reach us from Mediolanum but thanks to the victory of Mons Arcades, our Magister was now well-provided with arms and equipment once requisitioned from the fabricae of the Gauls. In the short days, under a brittle sun, our Romans drilled in line and file under the stern command of the Ducenarii and Centenarii. Mock battles were staged below the vallum to cheer the townsfolk and revive in them the martial glory that is Rome. Along the limes, the river-patrols moved slowly in the icy waters, ever watchful for the tread of the Aleman or the Goth or the Hun. At night, all along the Danube and the Agri Decumantes, the old castra glowed again with watch-fires and torches like stars in the night - and only a few of us knew with trepidation that no soldiers manned these posts. That the fires were attended by manumitted slaves to give the impression that our soldiers once again guarded the limes; the frontier of Rome, and of civilisation itself.

Was that all we were now? Tiny beacons in the darkness of winter lit only by shadows of true Romans? Beacons that, one by one, were fated to flicker and die, all alone in the night . . .

(This notary remains unclassified and rarely has a voice in Manuscript E but we suspect he was a local Raetian given his use of ‘our’ several times and that he had witnessed personally the destruction of the province by the barbarians which accounts for his pessimistic trait. A trait, alas, not proven wrong.)






The Eight Consilium

We prayed devoutly through the months as Winter slowly retreated before the unfurling of the leaves and the birthing of the lambs. God’s mercy fell upon us like the sun which crested the sparkling ridges of the mountains around our little plains and we welcomed Spring with relief in our hearts. As our psalms and hymns rang loudly in the basilicas and in the small monastic cells in the high valleys, the snows faded away and the first carts and wagons arrived from over the Alps and the distant provinces of the Ligurian and Aemilian peoples. Olive oil, wool, silk, spices and the hunting dogs of the Hibernians appeared in the markets of Augusta Vindelicorum and Castra Regina; and many remarked that indeed the army alone garnered trade to itself.

The snowmelts made the Danube rise and this also allowed us to gain some respite from the barbarians. Under the watchful eye of Posthumus Dardanus, the province slowly emerged from its winter garb and began the long toil into fertility as crops were sown, the livestock tended, and the returns for taxes calculated. Patrols ranged warily along the limes but all was still and pregnant with the promise of a fine Spring. Blossom filled the air like prayer.

The Magister, ever restless like the wind, interrogated each patrol that came back and daily sent missives out to the Tribune Felix and his iron-eyed men deep in the barbaricum. Word of the events in the Gauls slowly filtered across to us here in this little province: lawlessness was rife with the bacaudae entrenched in the forests and in the high hills; the troops and foederates of Constantine were in disarray after Allobich’s foray across the Rhine limes at Augusta Rauricum and the death of the Dux Basiliscus; the patrician, Constantinus, awaiting more troops from the passes guarding Hispania, remained in Lugudunum and word told that Ulfilas dripped poison in his ear daily. But we were content here in Raetia Secunda. The Danube flowed with the cold waters of the mountains and now flowers were gilding the embankments in splashes of purple, crimson and gold. Easter arrived and all across the province celebrations were held and the people arrayed themselves in their best garments to attend the basilicas. Here, in the basilica of St John, Faustinus held mass and even the Arians among us sang like angels before the glory of God.

It was three days after the last liturgy had been sung in the Easter Triduum, that the dying rider fell in the shadow of the South Gate. His wounds were not martial but instead those of exhaustion while a grim resolve steeled his face even as he was carried, still dusty and caked in sweat, into the basilica of the consilium. An imperial rod tumbled from his hands, its ivory length and gold caps all dirty and streaked with mud. His sun-burnt face and olive skin proclaimed him a Roman of ancient stock and his scars spoke of service under the standards of the legions. Allobich arrived in haste pulling his great military cloak off to throw it over the rider. Others swiftly assembled as this rider choked out his words and then tossed to our feet a vellum scroll. Faustinus kneeled beside him and blessed him even as this man passed away, his face falling back into shadow and anonymity.

All eyes fell upon the Magister then as he picked up the scroll and unwound it by the light of a high window. Posthumus Dardanus, Agricola, Manutius and a score of lesser officers and decurions waited tensely until the Magister Equitum turned to us and told us in cold, hard, words that His Most Sacred Dominus, Flavius Honorius, was slain, cut down before the walls of Arretium while attempting to bring succour to the people there. Our emperor was dead and the empire tottered now like a rudderless galley heaving in a storm which encompassed the horizon.



(It is, of course, that fateful date of April 14th, 414 AD, according to modern reckoning, in which Honorius was slain while moving from Ravenna to Arretium with only his personal bodyguard of Candidati troops. Manuscript E gives no details regarding these events - no doubt because it had little need to. All was obvious to those who compiled and read those notes and addendums. However, it is worth quoting in full from the Breverarium of Victor Coruncanius given the light it now sheds on developments and personae in our document. His narrative forms the only extant source of the death of Honorius - all later historians and compilers citing his text - and is generally believed to be an accurate description of the events, even if it does elide over some of the more questionable decisions behind them. Our extract begins at Book XII, iii -

. . . During the consulship of Honorius and Theodosius, word came from the patrician Constantinus in the Gauls that aid was desperately needed at Arretium, north of Rome. The Senators and high imperial officers at Ravenna counselled the emperor not leave the marshy sanctuary of the city and travel south into the heartland of the Italies, now ruined by the Gothic hordes and the lawlessness of those traitors in Rome itself and its surrounding towns. They argued that it was better to send his esteemed generals with seasoned foederates or palatine troops - men skilled in war and the arts of ambuscade. The emperor, after a divine dream, demurred from their counsel and instead ordered his own guard forth so that he could ride in haste to succour the citizens of Arretium and so aid his patrician in the Gauls. (1)

So it was that Honorius accompanied by his bodyguard, commanded by a noble Roman called Maxentius, travelled south from Ravenna into the heartland of the peninsula. Much ruin met his eyes and he wept untold tears at the suffering of his subjects and the devastation of his realm. Word came to him that the Goth barbarians were ravaging the east coast and the cities which girdled it and also that Rome itself, now sundered from the authority of the emperor after its calamitous sack, was in tumult with rebels and mock emperors claiming authority with little shards of purple cloth in their hands. The Senate House remained empty and desolate with leaves and dirt decorating its marble floors. (2)

Near the ancient woods known as the Cloak of Silvanus, a day’s ride from Arretium, the guard of Honorius was forewarned that the Goths had marched west from the coast and were now ravaging the lands and villas near the town itself. In alarm, for the emperor had been told that the route south was secure, Honorius ordered all speed to be made for Arretium and to travel through the Cloak in all secrecy. Maxentius argued against such a route but was overruled and so the column turned off the road and into the dark woods.

Here the Goths in their thousands fell upon the emperor and slaughtered his guards with impunity so that only he alone and two of his companions were able to fight free and make for Arretium in desperation. Near the city, it was discovered that the bulk of the Gothic hordes were besieging the walls with mantlets and towers and that already sections of the stone defences were crumbling from the assault. Pinned by Goths on all sides, the Roman emperor resolved to fight with his remaining guards and Aurelianus, praying to the mercy of God and his only begotten Son. It was then that Jovius, commander of the city’s garrison divined the plight of the emperor and resolved to lead his legionaries out in a futile effort to avert his doom. So it was that on the Kalends of April that Honorius fell on the field of battle even as his soldiers fought and died to reach him, with Jovius himself cut down in sight of the sacred emperor. Arretium was sacked by the Goths and brutally put to the sword. Thus fell the youngest son of Theodosius and with him the last of the Theodosian house in the West. (3)

1 - The entire reign of Honorius was characterised by weakness and vacillation. Academics and scholars have puzzled for centuries on why at the last this young emperor who had rarely left the sanctuary of Ravenna should now vacate it with only his bodyguard to bring support to Arretium. Much has been made of the fact that Constantinus himself seemed to urge on the young emperor and that perhaps some amount of shame after the sacking of the Eternal City was now at work in him. They see this as a failed attempt at redemption. Others, seeing in Constantinus a more manipulative heart, concoct the idea that the whole episode was a cunning plot which the Goths were involved in. Durry, in particular, argues that the patrician planned to remove Honorius and allowed knowledge of his movements to fall into the hands of the Goths so as to facilitate this. The Cloak of Silvanus was thus an ambush which failed in its immediate aim but which forced Honorius and his three guards to make a break for Arretium little knowing that it was already besieged. The end was inevitable. Durry presents a convincing account but it was one which always lacked any real evidence and so remained largely conjectural. Manuscript E now lends more credence to his hypothesis.

2 - Arretium remains alone of the cities in central Italy loyal to the house of Theodosius and so is crucial to maintaining support for the armies further north in the Gauls and beyond the Alps. It is not difficult to fathom the patrician’s strategic aims here but the fact that no one in Ravenna supports his request for the emperor himself to travel there raises the interesting dilemma that suspicion was already rife in the imperial capitol regarding Constantinus’ designs. Their failure to prevent Honorius from leaving is a sad testament to how much the young emperor trusted his patrician. A trust which even extended to making his own sister, Galla Placidia, the wife of Constantinus.

3- ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it’ shorn of its Shakespearian irony would be an epitaph worthy of Honorius. The last few days of his life were unlike anything he had ever experienced in the cocooned world of the imperial court and it must be admitted that despite his flaws as an emperor who had presided over the sack of Rome his last acts were worthy of any emperor who had worn the purple. Michael Hornden’s novel ‘Twilight’s Gleaming’ (Fontana ‘87) which fictionalises those last days is worth reading for the sense of the desperation and panic which must have gripped those few Romans who had fought free of the Cloak of Silvanus, only to find Arretium entombed, as it were, in barbarians. We take the luxury of quoting in full the fictional trooper Aurelianus’ account taken from pp. 167-8 of the ‘95 reprint:








‘We were all arrayed in a tight column with the emperor, god bless his soul, up front riding with Maxentius like a real veteran. I don’t give two olives for what those perfumed eunuchs say about him in the marbled basilicas. With us, he was a soldier like young Julian had been or the stories tell of Hadrian. We rode hard for the fringes of the Cloak, knowing that the Goths would be hard on our heels and keen to capture a prize such as Honorius would present. Within heartbeats, we were in amongst the outer trees and away from the old Roman road. It was then that they poured out of those trees like a plague - thousands of barbarians, all howling and cheering each other one in their crude tongue.







In a flash, we divined that it was a trap. The trees closed in around us even as the Goths ran towards us, their spear-tips glinting in the half-light. Then Maxentius, our old dear friend and commander, smiled once at the startled emperor and then ordered the standards to dip forwards. Our horses surged ahead and we rode straight towards the milling mass of barbarians. We knew at once that speed was our only ally and so Maxentius hoped to punch through their centre - a tactic they would least expect, thinking that we would rally to defend the emperor. And it almost worked, too, god damn his soul, it almost worked! Oh, how we fought then as we lowered our kontos points and charged into their ranks. Young Scipio at my side was wrenched out of his saddle by a spinning axe. Old lame Pretorius surrendered to his killing lust and leapt from his saddle into a knot of snarling faces. A single horse, Julianus’, I think, remained upright, smashing her hooves into the skulls and shields about her long after her rider had been torn from her and riven into bloody bits. Onwards we rode but the numbers of the Goths and the wood itself seemed to always hinder us.







Maxentius cursed then in his fluid Hispanic dialect and quickly ordered us to fall back and re-group. As one, we wheeled about and with the emperor in our centre we cantered back to where we had first seen the Goths. We rallied into a long line, even as they poured out of the Cloak in their thousands and seemed to spill across the grass like a flood. A third of our number had fallen now and I looked to Maxentius to see that a broken spear haft protruded from his left side. Blood flowed in a sickly stream down his leg. Our emperor, seeing this wound and noting the numbers of our fallen, urged his horse forward to face the line and our weary faces. His smile was forced, that I could see, and sweat pricked his young brow, but his words touched us as only the words of gods can do - he spoke of Rome and an idea so slight you could crush it on your hand if you could but catch it. An idea so precious there were those who even now sought to drag it down into blood and ruin. An idea only whispered in the wind by those brave enough to think beyond the tribe and the ties of blood. That idea was the peace Rome brought to all. The Pax Romana which was the envy of all who thought only of greed and gold and revenge. And nowhere was this idea more cherished and more envied than when those who valued it gave up their lives in defending it as we were about to do now. He looked into our eyes then, this young emperor, son of the great Theodosius, his lips trembling with fear but one hand grasped resolutely around his spatha, and then he wondered on how many emperors of Rome had ever known the privilege of dying in the company of true Romans? We roused ourselves at those words and grinned at his bravura - so fragile and so fleeting - and we shouted out that the honour was all ours for he was our emperor - an emperor and Augustus of Rome!





Without more ado, Honorius wrenched the reins of his horse about and charged towards the Goths, his sword held high and shining in the light like a beacon. As one, we followed our emperor to our doom. I alone saw Maxentius crumple from his saddle and fall to the grass already dead but I did not heed his death for now another led us into the bloody jaws of battle and to us he was Rome incarnate. How many did we kill amongst those trees, you ask? Sooner count the tears on a face or the feathers of an angel’s wings. It did not matter how many we felled for always more rose to fill their loss. Around us, horses and men littered the ground in a crimson ruin and one by one we fell into that winepress never to rise again. I found myself alongside my emperor and used my battered scutum to shield him from the worst of the fighting. How young he looked and yet upon his face rested a serene calm. His arm rose and fell with cruel precision and yet to look upon him was to look upon mercy, it seemed to my old eyes, a mercy which taught that death was only the beginning not the end. I thought then that around his head glowed the great golden pinion wings of the eagle of Rome itself, shining like a halo, but of course I was merely blurry-eyed from sweat.











Then there was a lull and we, Honorius, myself and the Briton, Appolicius, reined back. The Goths had pulled back for a moment, stunned by our ferocity, and in that brief hesitation Honorius signalled to us pull free. As one, we gave rein and galloped out of their tangled lines, triumphant in our flight. In a heartbeat, we were out of the trees and racing across the low hills towards distant Arretium and sanctuary. We were alive! God had blessed us with his mercy in our darkest moment and the emperor would live to carry the standard of Rome high into the darkness and banish it from this world! I could almost hear the crowds of Arretium cheering our arrival, the creak of the gates being opened, and taste the wine offered to us for our deliverance! . . .’







While it might seem inappropriate to quote a fictional work within an academic text, Horden’s extract here seems especially apt given the irony of what happened next and the death of Honorius on the field of battle. There is something heroic and somehow poignant in the death of Honorius for he not only fell as a true Roman but also inspired those fighting along the walls of Arretium to sally forth in a doomed attempt to save him. An attempt which saw not only their general, Jovius, slain but also the city taken and brutally sacked as a result. We feel that Hornden’s work of fiction, in some way, captures something of the emotions and the truth of what was happening - and allows us to re-live a moment of history often academicised into dry facts and social analysis. Both Aurelianus and the Briton named Appolicius survived the death of Honorius and both Escher and myself wonder if it was one of those two who delivered the imperial baton and the vellum scroll to Allobich some days later. If so, then, at least, we can now raise from anonymity that rider who fell at the South Gate bearing ill news and perhaps a desire also not to outlive that news . . .









The patrician Constaninus was proclaimed Augustus five days later at Lugudunum.




The Ninth Consilium

(Emily Collins’ authoritative account of the Constaninus’ rule as emperor remains definitive - ‘The First Patrician of Rome’, Oxford Press ‘97 - and we remain indebted to her in-depth analysis and exhaustive source material. Manuscript E in itself adds little, it must be said, to her research but does shed further light on the more shadowy figures surrounding this controversial emperor. A more general but slightly dated account might be sought from either J M Bury’s work or that of Gibbon, of course, who has much to say about his fiscal acumen or rather lack thereof, disloyalty and anti-barbarian prejudices - the latter stemming from the death of his father, an unnamed Tribune, at the battle of Hadrianople, almost some thirty years earlier.







Concerning our rescued text from the Venetoria Monastery, the news of the death of Honorius threw all into confusion. It seems that voices in the province argued for abandoning all the Raetias to shore up Italy beyond the Alps; while others argued that until a new Augustus had been elected by both the army and divine mandate, it was foolish and premature to abandon the limes. The Magister Equitum remained steadfast to the orders of his dead emperor and refused to countenance withdrawal on any terms. The military officers supported him but in the main the decurions and the senators, fronted by Palladius and Faustinus, stood against him in the debates. It took the Tribune, Agricola, to point out that supreme authority resided in Allobich and that his word was final.

Some weeks later, a shadowy figure arrived from the Gauls and elucidated the situation further . . .)

We were barely out of the days of April and new snows had unexpectedly fallen like a severe blanket over the province, blocking some of the higher passes, when a small, dour, man rode unbidden into the town and sought audience with the Magister. He was a stocky Hispanic with grey hair who glared angrily at those around him as if they were always in his way. He brushed all courtesy aside and paced the marbled floor of the basilica until finally Allobich arrived attended by his slaves and escorts. Without deference, this Hispanic rider unveiled a ring hidden on a chain around his throat and I was shocked to see Allobich dismiss his attendants without courtesy or ritual. He bade me alone stay to record what transpired next.



This man introduced himself as Crispus Annaeus, under special orders from a certain eunuch at Ravenna who was to remain unveiled at this time. I saw Allobich nod then and understood that our Magister knew implicitly who was being referred to. This Crispus threw himself upon a stool and drew Allobich in towards him with his words which followed -

The patrician had been acclaimed by the army as the new Augustus at Lugudunum in the old Amphitheatre outside the walls in a pre-ordained ceremony presided over by the leading tribunes and bishops of the Gauls. A purple cloak and diadem had been mysteriously procured and, to the braying of the dragons and the trumpets, Constantinus had ascended a raised dais with the sister of Honorius upon his arm. Cries of ‘Imperator, Imperator!’ had shattered the cold air, and the newly raised emperor accepted with reluctance the mantle of the empire about his shoulders. The army of the Gauls was behind him and he was now adopted as the last of the House of Theodosius in the West.

I saw Allobich frown at this news but we all knew that it was inevitable. Crispus went on - Eight days after the election - now ratified by the church in the Gauls - the Augustus Constantinus assembled elements of the Comitatus and marched east towards the Italies and Ravenna to secure support from the senators and officers there who remained following the fall of Honorius. Messengers were dispatched across the western dioceses to herald the new emperor, and Octavius Aemilianus, a former Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls was sent via galley to win approval from the young Theodosius in Constantinople. The sudden snowfall had slowed the Augustus somewhat but he was even now marching in train through the eastern reaches of the Gauls and the old province of Narbonensis Secunda. He was expected to reach Ravenna within the month.

Allobich poured out some Falernian wine which this Crispus devoured and then asked about the patrician - and here he used his former title and not that of augustus - and his companions. Crispus nodded as if understanding and launched into a mocking account of the toadies and servile officers who flattered the new emperor like gulls screeching over a high pinnacle of rock, all eager for a good nest in its high crags. It was Ulfilas which most consumed their conversation and this Crispus told Allobich that the Goth had been re-instated as Magister Equitum per Gallias and left at Lugudunum to carry on the fight with the usurper in the north of the Gauls. Troops were thin now, though, and the Augustus was anxious to win support at Ravenna and in Constantinople so that he could procure new monies, levy troops, and push northwards on to the Rhine limes and then re-unite the diocese. There was little confidence in Ulfilas, however, and discontent could be heard along the walls and towers of the town at night now that the emperor was gone eastwards.

Allobich paused to digest all this news and I remember him standing by the light of a single tallow candle, illumined like a icon, his golden hair flashing with sparks and the gold solidii gleaming like miniature suns. He turned back to Crispus then and asked him what his plans were now? This Hispanic man with grey hair and the rude face grinned at that and told us that the ‘eunuch’ who could not be named had ordered him to remain here at the service of the Magister until such time as he was needed back in the cold and whispering halls of Ravenna. The relief and gratitude on the face of our Magister surprised me with its openness and I was left feeling odd that so slight a man as this Crispus should evoke such feelings in the Goth.

The next day, Crispus met with one of Felix’s anonymous riders and vanished north to the Danube.

(There is some confusion regarding the title of ‘patrician’ in late Roman studies and the general trend has been to regard it as a military title which supersedes the old Magister Equitum and Peditum (or Horse and Foot) which was later combined into the Magister Ultriusquae Militae, or ‘Master’ of both services. In the later years, under Aetius, for example, we can be relatively certain that that was the case, but recently, John Michael O’Flynn has argued quite cogently that in fact the title of ‘patrician’ was not a military rank as such but instead a mark of honour improvised in the wake of Constantius II, who increased greatly imperial ranks and distinctions. Time served to define this title as one of the highest one could possibly attain which saw figures such as Constantinus and Aetius use it to procure a higher status over defined military ranks. In other words, a Patrician, in late Roman society was a highly favoured Roman, intimately connected to the ruling house, often through marriage, who also operated a high military command. The addition of the ‘patricianate’ status allowed such individuals even more power than the official commanders could hope to wield and thus served to either reinforce imperial control or undermine it - Aetius and Valentinian being a prime example. O’Flynn’s research thus adds an interesting dimension to the title outwith its immediate military applications and so develops a particular strand of late Roman study (Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire, John Michael O’Flynn, The University of Alberta Press, ‘83)






The Tenth Consilium


. . . Divine Will manifests itself in a multitude of ways and the all-knowing God is magnificent in his benevolence. Yet his Will is also made unto us in trials and burdens which test even the most indomitable wills. So it was that word reached us all here in Augusta Vindelicorum that ill-forces swept the loyal men of His Most Dominant Augustus, Constantius Flavius, as he is now known, in honour of the tree planted by Constantine himself and which was often sprinkled with its own blood. Here, in the basilica, Allobich, ever impatient and aroused to oaths in his Gothic tongue, could only listen with impatience, as almost daily messengers arrived from over the Alps with news and none of which addressed our humble province. Many times, I saw him twist the onyx ring upon his finger, that gift from the dead Honorius, which must weigh upon his heart like a burden now.

Tired men from the Italies arrived with word that the Augustus had ordered Rome to be re-taken from the petty tyrants and senators who played at imperial politics, and that a hastily assembled force of legionaries and cavalry, newly recruited, had been brought up from the south of the peninsula to storm the walls, bearing aloft the standards of Constantius Flavius, who even now proceeded eastwards through the Gauls to the Italies. I saw Allobich question these tired men, men who had witnessed the devastations of the Goths under Alaric and seen the flower of the legions cut down in the field, and in his eyes I could see his despair as one by one these men looked away when describing those Romans who now marched north to the Eternal City, and the heart of Rome. What pride once resided in the names of the Roman legions! What fear they inspired in the pagan hearts of the barbarians who stormed our limes like a scourge from God! What honour gleamed like starlight in their eyes as they marched to the tramp of the feet ever fearlessly along our roads to face their foes! Now these men could not look our Magister in the eye when he asked them to describe these new recruits about to storm Rome itself. These tired men looked away, their shoulders slumped and their heads bowed before his stern gaze and I saw them grip the hilts of their spathas with all the frustration of men who knew that their old glory was fading and that where once walked titans now shuffled little boys, and it made me weep to see this pain and this humiliation . . .



As for our Augustus, his travel east from Narbonensis Secunda was delayed as bands of bacaudae roamed in the foothills of the mountains to the west and now the barbarians of Alaric, ever gloated with booty and the overbearing swagger of pride, moved north along the coast, sacking and burning the great latifundia estates as they went. The Gauls, it was rumoured would be next to suffer their depredations. This events gave pause to Constantius Flavius and rumour told us that his escort were moving slowly and with caution. Still, we waited on word from our emperor but none came as the Spring weather ripened into the full, lazy, months of Summer.



Then a messenger arrived with black news indeed.

The Magister was on field exercises north of the town vallum, where the little river know as the Oda merges into a straggling run of trees and copses. He was deploying the front-line infantry in battle-order against the lighter rear lines in skirmish order and demonstrating the effectiveness of the latter in field operations amongst broken terrain. It was late in the day, and many of the soldiers were resting along the Oda’s embankment, having doffed their helmets to quench their thirst in its crystal waters, when the dust-laden entourage appeared eager to speak to the Magister. Allobich, squatting down amongst his staff officers and in the middle of marking lines of engagement in the sands, stood up immediately and bade them speak freely. I was near-by and hurried to snatch up stylus and parchment.

Rome had not fallen from the assault by the legionaries under the Augustus’ orders. The Tribune, Aulus, in command of the newly raised Senior Constaninian Legion, in honour of the Augustus and by his mandate, had breached the huge walls of the Eternal City and stormed inside but this was a city which had suffered the sack of the Goths under Alaric and which was now garrisoned with tyrants dressed in purple tatters. Such men knew how to man her walls and knew how to defend her streets. The legion was picked off and cut down in pieces as it struggle to fight its way into the heart of the Forum and cut off the head, as it were. The fighting had been bitter and bloody, with Roman killing Roman in a mad rage like animals. Aulus had never stood a chance. His men were butchered in the alleyways and the atriums and the forums until they begged for a christian mercy which never came. Only the tribune with some desperate survivors remained to reach the centre of the city only to cut down by the Roman cavalry. The first newly-proclaimed and honoured legion of the emperor was no more. Its blood drying now in the drains and culverts of Rome itself.













Allobich walked away at that news, throwing his wide Gallic cloak over his shoulders. Agricola started up in his wake but Manutius pulled him back and shook his head. We watched this man who guarded our borders with such fidelity and such steadfastness disappear into the trees and his men, lolling now by the river-bank, and wondered on his thoughts as it dawned on us that the more we held this thin, red, line by the river, the more Rome at our back fell into ruin and decay. And I wondered on God’s Will then, that if the heart lay bleeding out its end, what use this limes, this fragile boundary we all fought so hard to hold here beyond the Alps?

Before these thoughts could rive my soul, these messengers, in their worn cloaks and dusty apparel, sighed and in simple words, almost so empty of emotion as to betray their import, told us that Theodosius in Constantinople, having heard the envoy from Constantius Flavius, had spurned the offer of imperial alliance and was even now marching westwards with the standards and the dragons of the east. My stylus trembled then to write those words and truly I realised that God’s Will was unfathomable, a divine mystery we mortals could never unravel . . .




Perhaps the advisors around the young Theodosius, seeing the apparent ruin of the western half of the Roman empire, counselled a re-unification under a single emperor at Constantinople and the reviving of the Theodosian House, shorn of Constantius’ intermarriage with Galla Placidia. Regardless, in the spring of that year, the praesental army and elements of the Thracian field army marched west into the Pannonian and Illyricum provinces, using two main thrusts. Late in Summer, the main forces under Aspar, lay siege to Salona on the Illyricum coast.

It is interesting, in this context of Roman civil war and conflagration, that Allobich hold so stubbornly to the limes in Raetia Secunda. He maintains order, deploys the soldiers on training exercises, steps up the river patrols and generally acts as if securing the limes is the entirety of his remit. Which it is, of course, but only under the mandate of Honorius. Escher speculates, and I have to concur, that the Magister Equitum, aware that chaos is sweeping the Italies, remains distant from it all in an attempt to preserve his integrity an also to see how the chips fall, as it were.

In this context, we cite a further report from Felix as evidence of Allobich’s continuing care in maintaining the doomed limes:

Correction XXXII

. . . It was high Summer and my men were infiltrating the outer hamlets of the Argentoratum. We were not expecting much, to be honest, as the passage of Roman armies across their lands and the ravages of the Burgundians had thoroughly subdued these people but as the old Areani used to say - the vigilance of one man is worth an ordo of sleeping men. We had a few men posing as beggars on the fringes of the main gates when, one morning, a large retinue of richly-clad barbarians arrived. We knew at once that they were Burgundians. I swear one of my men recognised Goaric from the gleam of his arm-bands as they trotted through the gates. This was not expected.



It took us days of careful work, a solidus here, an old favour called in, the gleam of a dagger in the night, before we ascertained that, yes, it was Goaric but he was only commanding the escort of a noble Burgundian chieftain called Isenbard, and this man was here to conduct careful negotiations with the Alemanni council and its rex. One of my men, Oriscus the Elder, a Greek who could blend in like a twig in a forest, spent three days working as a slave around the rex’s main hall and was able to tend to this Isenbard’s toilet on one occasion. Day by day, Alemanni nobles arrived covered in the dust of riding and held council deep into the night. To our surprise, the Burgundians were not treated with anger or contempt. Instead, they were honoured with mead and the best cuts of the hunt at the table of the Aleman rex.

One night, Oriscus reported to me in the woods to the north by the broken well; our arranged meeting spot. He told me that the Burgundians, deep now in the Gauls, wished only peace now with the Alemanni and invited them to migrate west where they were to join them as brothers against the weak Romans. These Romans had proclaimed a new emperor - a weak man, used to fighting only his own kind - and that now all the Germans could fall upon the Gauls like a flood, like an overwhelming tide of destruction.

Forgive my anticipation, my Magister, but there was not time to dispatch a rider through the barbaricum to inform you of all this and so I alone, without my men, crept into the barbarian encampment, now sprawling amid the old marble ruins of the Roman buildings of old, and sought out the abode of this Isenbard. If I have acted against your wishes, cashier me, my Magister or do worse. I will submit to your justice in all - but my men are blameless in this.





He was restless man, this Isenbard, he roamed the corridors late into the night, drinking mead and growling at the sleepy guards who honoured his presence, but I am tenacious. I hung upon his heels like a shadow in the night, black within black, and at last, I found him alone, in a little room hung with tapestries from Aegypt. He never knew what death it was that took his soul into whatever afterlife these pagans believe in. His eyes will remain forever frozen upon those tapestries. His mind lost in the wonder of the deserts and the lions and the sphinx herself, even as my slight blade slid beneath his ribs and silenced his heart between one beat and the next.



The next morning, a great outcry shattered the drowsy peace and Goaric could be heard roaring that the treacherous Alemanni had slain Isenbard in the night. We heard the clang of arms, the shrieks of the dying, and then a frantic clatter of hooves and witnessed the remaining Burgundians fight their way out of Argentoratum and to freedom. I saw Goaric gallop past, all covered in blood, and with a fresh scar upon his cheek, and for a moment his eyes caught mine and I tipped him a low Roman salute. You will rejoice to hear, my Magister, that the horror in his eyes at the salute will stay with him for a long time.

The Alemanni remain friendless in the barbaricum, my Magister and I await your orders






The Eleventh Consilium

It was high Summer and the news of Aspar’s advance into Illyricum and the siege of Salona wrought a black mood over us all here in Raetia Secunda. Word arrived that the eastern Romans had demolished the glorious three-nave basilica dedicated to the memory of St. Domnius which lay outside the city’s walls and that another church, dedicated to that glorious martyr, Anastasius, had also been defiled by the Hunnish foederates of the Imperial army. Behind the great walls of Constantinople, the Augustus Theodosius, proclaimed Constantius a tyrant who had wed into the Purple for his own gain and that the sacred line of Theodosius would not be sullied by such an impostor. There were rumours that agents of the east were even now moving over the Alps to present gold and titles to Constantine in the Gauls; and that Heraclius, the Ducal commander of the Africas, and nominally Caesar to our Constantius, was being suborned also. We trembled like the leaves on a sapling at every rider who cantered, weary and dust-laden, into Augusta Vindelicorum. And still no word arrived from our emperor.

But we were not meek in these times, either.

Deep in the barbaricum and across the Rhine limes into the provinces of the two Germanies, the Tribune Felix at the head of his silent and grim men moved like shades of the underworld; and at their passing blood and confusion were sowed like bitter seeds. Crispus, too, that glaring Hispanic with his grey hair and contemptuous look, drifted over the hills and dark forests with all the cunning of a native. If word from the east was unsettling then that from the north and west balanced it with the effects our craft and intelligence. I saw, also, many times the tireless energy of our Magister, Allobich, and sat with him through the long nights by the fading glow of the candles as he assessed reports and dictated lists and missives to those in the barbaricum or stationed at Castra Regina. But for his uncouth hair and those coins, this Goth and Arian struck on a regal pose and I wondered on those emperors of old renowned for their endless devotion and care for the state - Octavian, Hadrian, Marcus Antoninus and Diocletian - that first Augustus to bear a truly Hellenic name. I look hard then at this Romanised Goth and wondered on why he retained those barbaric locks and their golden ornaments but dared not break his work or concentration to ask him.



One time in particular, as the evenings faded gently into the hazy nights and the air was replete with the tang of quince and apple, and Allobich, Posthumus Dardanus, Agricola and Manutius, together with the slaves and notaries, exchanged hot words over the wine and honey, that the Hispanic from Ravenna appeared unbidden into the chamber like a silent breeze. He looked worn and tired but refused the proffered wine and instead tossed almost contemptuously onto the ivory table a scroll covered in blood. His words lacked all due ceremony as he informed us that the Constantinians were allied with the Saxon tribes to the north along the lower Rhine and that envoys from Constantinople were deep in the Gauls as we feared. A large force of regular troops was moving eastwards towards the Rhine limes and the bridge crossing at Augusta Rauricum intent on closing the door, as it were, which our Magister had opened with such vigour. Here, Crispus paused and eyed Allobich almost with pity which unnerved us all - used as we were to his prickly demeanour. He gestured to the scroll on the ivory of the table and told us that it contained lists of these troops and then he hesitated and his words fell away into a heavy silence. Posthumus, ever green and raw to the eddies of men’s minds began to question Crispus as to the commander of these troops but then Allobich rose up and forestalled him with a gesture from his scarred hand. The two Tribunes of the legions frowned at that and even the slaves hesitated from the pouring of the wine.





Allobich laughed then into our silence and told us in simple words, which made us all shiver to hear them, that these troops were commanded by Eldobich, his shield-brother, now a Comes in the army of Rome who had thrown in his lot with the usurper Constantine. This tyrant was now turning brother against brother across the limes in revenge for the defeat almost nine long months ago. It was both an insult and a challenge. Crispus rose up then and turned to leave into the velvet of the darkness beyond the flickering candles - his final words hanging in the air - words which spoke of Roman swords sheathed in Roman bowels and Roman cities aflame before the marching tread of Roman soldiers. That night, as the quince and the apple left fragrant traceries in the air about us, we all shivered like children and wrapped ourselves deeper in our cloaks.

The next morning, Allobich assembled the legions on the field of Mars beyond the fossa where over a year ago John the Pannonian was cut down with the axe of Ufwine and spoke words which I will never forget even though the old faith fall from my heart like rotten threads and my soul drift alone into the empty halls of my ancestors unloved and forsaken. Words which will warm me even after the last ember of Rome will have turned to ash forever . . .




The Oration of Allobich

(We are lucky in that preserved in another document - the remarkable Byzantine assemblage known as the Chronicalia Thespasia Codex No.47- lies the speech of Allobich made that Autumn 414AD outside the walls of Augusta Vindelicorum. Nothing was really known about the context of the speech in the past other than it being an example of the military oratorio. The Manuscript E now allows us to see the speech in its full context and appreciate it in greater depth.

It is late Autumn and the Gothic hordes under Alaric are flooding westwards along the shores of upper Italy and into Gaul. Ahead of them lies the entourage of the newly-elected emperor while the hills to the north are infested with bandits and bacaudae. It must have seemed to those little inhabitants of Raetia Secunda that ironically their province was an oasis of security - thanks in no small part to the efforts of Allobich and Posthumus Dardanus in honouring the remit of Honorius. The latter has been responsible for the civilian administration of the provinces and has also been active in recruiting new members into the depleted limitanei. Already, the re-constituted unit named the ‘Ursariensium’ or the ‘Bears’ stationed at Guntiae, a regiment of light infantry, has been re-enrolled back up to full strength and work proceeds apace on rebuilding the remaining limitanei. A full harvest has finally been brought in to the walls of the town for the first time in many years and traders are beginning to travel once more along the few roads which traverse the Alpine passes.

It is all a false security, though, and Allobich knows this. One morning, with early frosts on the ground and a watery sun low on the horizon, he assembles all the garrisoned troops on the drill field beyond the walls and, on a raised dais, gives perhaps the most important speech of his life.

. . . We have seen much in the few years we have fought and travelled together, my fellow soldiers, stationed here in the Raetias so far from the olive groves and old temples around Rome. We have scoured the barbaricum in that great crossing of the Danube and held the Alemanni by the throats in their own lairs. We have marched across the Rhine itself and cornered the tyrant’s men at Mons Arcades, a feat worthy of renown and honour. We have swept the traitors from our own midst and emerged worthy to hold aloft the arms of Rome herself. What can we not accomplish now, I ask, here before the walls of ancient Vindelicorum? Here, before the men of the old III Italica and the men of the Senior Lions, two legions worthy to hold aloft the old eagles of Caesar and Octavian, I ask what deeds can we not do together? I am your Magister, without me you are nothing. You are the legions of Rome, without you I am nothing. We are Rome. We are the bundle of twigs forever wrapped in strength and honour. We hold the edge and the boundary of Rome herself here where the mighty Danube carves her path east to the distant Euxine Sea and we stand at this edge with a sword in our hands and valour in our hearts. But now that is not enough, my fellow soldiers. As we stand here fulfilling our duty to Rome, the city itself and all who dwell in her has fallen into ruin. Italy stands in ashes. The olive groves have been cut down. The aqueducts shattered. The great villas of the Ausonii, the Serevenii, and the Catulii, all now no more than charred shells. Our Augustus is dead, the eldest son of the great Theodosius himself butchered by the barbarians of Alaric, the sacker of Rome itself. And now our new Augustus, Constantius Flavius, married to the daughter of Theodosius, is himself harried by these barbarian Goths. Our new Augustus, spurned by the Gauls under their own tyrant and spurned by the jealous intrigues of the court at Constantinople, is in danger of being slaughtered as Honorius was slaughtered even as we guard this limes with the fidelity of the old Romans under Marius and Sulla and Caesar himself. So I ask you, my fellow soldiers, what should we do, as Rome crumbles into ruin? What should we do as our emperor rides to his doom and all the world seems to mock us? What should we who have ever stood our ground do now?



(History, of course, does not record the response of these men nor does Manuscript E enlighten us either. Given what happened next, however, we can posit with some confidence that Allobich’s carefully crafted words had the desired effect for some days later we have notes detailing the assembling of a taskforce and its subsequent march south through the Alpine passes at speed to get ahead of the early snows. In a surprising turn of events, it seems that the Goth, Allobich, weary of waiting for word from the new Augustus and determined to take the initiative, advances south to attempt to impede the advance of Alaric into the Gallic diocese.

The men of the III Italica together with the Senior Honorian Horse - and we should not be surprised at this choice for the name of this emperor is now gaining prestige thanks to the manner of his death - and the unnamed Palatine units (Escher’s the Eighth) all proceed swiftly through the narrowing passes as the first snows fall. It is on this march that word arrives by fast courier from a over-stretched Drusus Magnus in the barbaricum that all overtures to the eastern Romans by his own office have been rejected out of hand. The armies of Theodosius II under Aspar will not be halted as long as Constantius Flavius remains wearing the purple. We imagine that Allobich is not surprised by this news and that in his mind events are coming to a head in the collision between Alaric, Constantius Flavius and the forces of Constantine in Gaul. It is also obvious that the Magister Equitum - ever active and bold - is gambling that this thrust south back beyond the Alps will redeem what little honour is still attached to the name of Rome in the eyes of the wider world.





It is, however, ever the case with history that no design by man remains untested and so it is that deep in the snowy passes as the Roman force slowly moves in good order and with high spirits, its dragons fluttering in the chilly breeze and the men's breath hanging like a mist, that word arrives that the Goths have found and assaulted the Augustus and that a great battle was about to be joined.)








The Battle of the Campus Oralicus

(Every schoolchild and student of Roman history is familiar with the battle fought on the shattered plains of the Oralicus; and there are several worthy commentaries and studies of note. Both Escher and myself feel that the inclusion here of the battle between the Roman emperor and the Goths under Alaric is necessary given the move south by Allobich and the III Italica and the Senior Honorian Horse. Those wishing to pursue further study into this conflict should consult Mommsen’s monumental work ‘In The Beak of Destiny: The Clash of Roman and German’ - particularly chapters’ fifteen and sixteen; and also Sturgeon Wilson’s less academic but infinitely more readable ‘Oralicus: The Turning Point of Rome’. The source material is also readily available through modern translations on the internet.





On September 6, 414AD, therefore, deep in the plain of the Oralicus (see Pfeltzer’s etymology on the meaning of the Latin here), a region in modern France still remarked upon for its uneven ground and odd boulder configurations, the small column of Constantius Flavius, consisting of the remaining elements of the old XX Valeria Victrix, now know as the Praesidienses legion after the fortress of Deva in Britain; and some guard units of cavalry, sights the lead elements of a Gothic column under Filimer, a cousin of Alaric himself. Light snow obscures much of the broader topography and it seems that Constantius Flavius, ever hot-headed and proud, determines an immediate assault upon the Goths - the latter seem surprised by the presence of the Romans and historians have concluded that Filimer was not so much hunting down the Romans as acting as advance guard for the main barbarian host days in the rear, under Alaric.







The old Twentieth, under the command of the Tribune, Severianus, deploys in a wide line with the lighter troops and archers to the rear, with the flanks guarded by the cavalry. Constantius himself stations his personal escort riders on the right flank and urges the lines to advance to contact with all haste. There is some dispute among scholars regarding the actual site of the battle on the Oralicus plains but the general consensus is that a league south of the modern farmhouse known as Vill’ sur Eschgonne, where many relics of battlefield debris have been found, is where the main fighting which followed took place.







We know that the snow eased off through the morning even as the main lines made contact and that the broken ground hindered somewhat the Goths from deploying properly as the Roman infantry advanced to missile range and then closed to shield-contact. Zosimus alludes to the uphill struggle of the Twentieth and that their experience in fighting Picts and Scotti in the north-west of Britain aided them in the terrain, and also that he vindicates their commanding officer, Severianus, and his bond with these men, drawn from the old tribes of the Cornovii, or the ‘Horned Ones’, and the Brigantes.



As the main legion lines made contact in the snow and the Goths under Filimer were milling in confusion attempting to form shield-walls and rally to their standards, the Roman cavalry under Constantius, swept around the Roman right wing and rolled up the barbarians. On the left flank, the remaining Roman guard cavalry were advancing at speed and pinning the Goths there who were unable to deploy effectively as a result.





What followed, according to Zosimus and Hydapius, was a bitter struggle in the centre as the snow turned into crimson mush and bodies choked the ground. Severianus, standing tall, surrounded by his staff officers and leading non-coms, urged his legionaries ever on with the memory of the sacking of Rome and the proud lineage of these Britons whose martial vigour knew no equal. Here, under the old standards of the Twentieth, Valeria Victrix, the swords flashed like serpent’s tongues and the arrows arced overhead with regular precision. To the right, the emperor himself led his cavalry deeper into the milling Goths and proceeded to pin them against the legion lines without respite. Both Zosimus and Hydapius mention how bitter the fighting was and most historians conclude that even though the Goths were not able to deploy effectively their fighting abilities were not severely hindered. We should also remember that Alaric has had access to Roman arms factories for many years, if not decades now, and that this is not a simple clash between Roman legionary and fur-clad barbarian. Quite the opposite, in fact. In terms of equipment and dress, there would be little to distinguish the combatants from each other save in martial prowess and discipline. And this is where the Twentieth came into her own. Garrisoned for over three hundred and fifty years on the north-west border of the diocese of Britain, while prior to that having seen action in Pannonia and along the Rhine, this legion was one of the oldest and most revered by those who knew her in the entire empire. Formed by Octavian himself and a veteran of the battle of Actium, it is to be doubted if a legion in the late empire could own battle honours equal to the Twentieth’s. Now, under the eyes of an emperor in the field, and inspired by a Tribune who clearly knew how to drive his men, these British legionaries, among the snow and broken ground of Oralicus, drove hard into the Gothic ranks fuelled by their oaths to Rome and their honour and love of the Twentieth’s Eagle standard.









We do not know how long the Goths held their lines or why they broke when they did but with Roman cavalry on both flanks and the legion lines driving deeper into the centre, it was only a question of time. Filimer himself was hemmed in by cavalry and infantry and hacked down with no quarter given - an act which only Hydapius condemns. In the rout which followed, Zosimus, in particular, draws to his readers’ attention the slaughter inflicted upon the Goths by the Romans, and also on the surviving clibinarius officer who ranged far and wide over the plains hacking down any barbarians he could find. By mid-day, with the battle over and the wounded being tended to, Constantius Flavius raised a dais and addressed the exhausted but victorious troops. Arrayed about him were the dragons of the soldiers and the old battered Eagle of the Twentieth. He spoke praising their courage and valour and likened them to the soldiers of Caesar and Trajan, and then he delivered a promise to these Britons from Deva and the provinces of Britannia Secunda and Valentia that Rome would never forget their valour here on the Oralicus and that the name of the Praesidienses would live on forever in the annals of Rome. Despite their fatigue and wounds, the men of the Twentieth acclaimed their emperor who stood beneath the shining wings of the Eagle.





Even as the shouts died down scouts arrived back with snow flying from the hooves of their horses with word that Alaric himself was bearing down upon them with a vast host of Goths. Vengeance was his intent and the wings of his gods themselves seemed to aid his speed. And as every schoolboy and student of late Roman history knows, the next morning began the second day of the Battle of the Campus Oralicus . . .






The Battle of the Campus Oralicus

Day 2

Initial estimates which had placed Alaric and the main Goth horde days behind Filimer had obviously been wrong. As the scouts galloped back through the evening bringing updates, it appeared that word of his cousin’s death had prompted Alaric to march on the Roman emperor with a vengeance. It must be remembered that Alaric has failed in practically all his enterprises since his early involvement with Stilicho years ago - and that now with the death of Filimer frustration and anger has finally taken its toll. Modern scholars agree that the sack of Rome was not the chaotic pillaging of a rampant barbarian but the carefully orchestrated plundering which occurred as a result of Honorius’ intransigence. Alaric’s main aim all along has seem to be a negotiated settlement of his Goths (who, it must be remembered, have been wandering since Adrianople all those years ago) in rich land close to the centre of imperial power. It was the frustration of these wishes which finally led to the three sieges of Rome and its final sacking. Now, marching west into the rich diocese of Gaul, Alaric seems bent on finding a natural home for his many tribes and their attendants and is aware that imperial power has thwarted him on too many occasions. Constantius Flavius unwittingly presents a tempting target on whom to vent his anger.

Our primary sources for the following day’s battle remain Zosimus, Hydapius and the solitary epistle from Aegidio to the Gallic bishop, Silvanus at Arelate, preserved in Sidonius Appolinarius’ Book II. The latter epistle is remarkable in that it comes from a reformed lower ranking officer who has converted to Christianity under the patronage of Silvanus. The latter clearly sees this Aegidio as suffering penance for his past and part of that penance has involved a detailing of his sins and errors for the bishop’s literary indulgence. Escher posits that this Aegidio must have been the Primicerius of the Twentieth, the late Roman equivalent to the old Primus Pilus of the Augustan legion. This senior ex-ranker, still waiting to be selected to enter the Domestic Protectors and receive an officer’s commission, was in many ways equivalent to today’s Colour Sergeant or Sergeant Major, if we take the late Roman legion of 1000 to 1,200 men to be similar in tactical size and function to a battalion in the British army. It is clear that Aegidio is not a Tribunes Vacans, a graduate of the Domestic Protectors still awaiting a commission, yet his knowledge of the battle and military details must have placed him high up the ranking ladder, nonetheless.

After a restless night in which the wounded were either tended to, placed on carts and dispatched west towards the little nearby vicus of Ratiomentum (otherwise unknown save for this reference), or put out of their pain, the morning brought light rain which turned the newly fallen snow into mush. Already, outriders of the Goths were seen in the distance among the irregular outlines of the strange rock formations. Zosimus makes it plain that Constantius Flavius, exhausted from a night spent in prayer and vigil, made no attempt to speak to the weary men of the Twentieth and instead sought refuge in the ranks of his guard cavalry, detailing the lines of the legion to Severianus and his staff. Hydapius excuses the emperor on the grounds of his tiredness and goes out of his way to detail Constantius’ long night in his campaign tent under the watchful eyes of the priests and their solemn hymns. This image of the emperor, kneeling and devout before the day of battle, has been one which has caught the popular imagination of artists throughout western Europe, from Titian’s ‘Pieta at the Oralicus’, to John William Waterhouse’s ‘Constantius Alone Among The Hymns’ and has remained ensconced in our popular imagination as an icon of the final days of Rome replete with romanticism and elegiac tones. It is interesting, in this context, to note Aegidio’s epistle which makes very clear that far from fasting and praying through the night, the Augustus was in fact anxiously attempting to make arrangements to flee along with the wounded and only the severe (living up to his name in an English pun) words of the Tribune Severianus curtailed his abandonment of the legion. In the hagiography of Constantius Flavius, Aegidio’s epistle is often over-looked as a guilt-ridden man’s fantasy yet a close reading makes it clear that far from wallowing in blame the writing in fact demonstrates a clear vision and grasp of a situation in which many of his friends and fellow-soldiers died but from which he survived. In the light of Manuscript E and Allobich’s obvious distaste for the emperor, Escher and myself now regard Aegidio’s writings as factual beyond the penance required by Silvanus and suggest that both Zosimus and Hydapius have gilded the lily, as it were.



Regardless, as the sun dawns over the rocks of the Oralicus, and the rain falls in thin strips from above, the Roman emperor moves off to the left of the main lines with the cavalry - his own guard and what remains from the other units. Out of earshot, and all on foot, the British Tribune walks among his tired and wounded men with Aegidio, it seems from his writing, in close attendance. There is no formal oratio in the manner of Allobich only sparse words to men long known and cherished. Little details are picked upon as Severianus moves among them: a draco standard now battered and covered in dried blood; a helmet crest rent and torn; the dented and cracked shields of the Twentieth sporting the blue star on a red background, all now dusty and muted; a shared joke here and a sharp word or two there; a hand clasped in friendship and honour. As the horizon in the distance becomes muted with the dust of the arriving barbarians, Severianus gives out the final orders for the disposition of the lines and then takes his place among the front ranks of his old Brigantes and Cornovii. Nearby is the Aquilfier of the Twentieth holding aloft the golden eagle standard once blessed by the hand of Octavian himself over four hundred years in the past. This Aquilfier has been ordered not to let the imperial eagle fall into the hands of the barbarians not matter what happens.

The Goths of Alaric spread out across the broken ground and immediately detached a huge force of horse off to Roman left, where the emperor is rallying his cavalry. The main warbands and skirmishing lines advance slowly towards the Twentieth’s stoic ranks, and up and down the lines can be heard the shouts of the Ducenarii and Centenarii to hold the line and look to the dragon standards. The rain falls incessantly and many men raise their grizzled faces up into it to bathe in its cooling brush even as a dryness grips their throats. It is then that Severianus’ voice echoes all along the lines bidding them all to remember their honour and their homes; to hold true to Rome; to show these barbarians the mettle of a Roman death on the end of a Roman sword. A great roar rises up at those few words as the legionaries from Deva in the north of Britain, used to fighting the woad of the Picts and Scotti, close ranks and lock shields.





The second day of battle at the Campus Oralicus begins




All Among The Bones of the Oralicus



We know that the left wing cavalry under Constantius advanced to challenge the skirmishers who had ridden out to flank the Roman lines. Aegidio is unflattering in his description of this action and how it left the Twentieth exposed on its left side. Mulvaney, in his analysis of the battle, remains unconvinced by Aegidio’s words and draws attention to the dangerous move of the Goth cavalry. Had they managed to flank the left, the legion would have been exposed to harassing fire from the rear. A potentially dangerous position. Regardless, this move on Constantius’ part in effective marks the formal opening of the battle and precipitates a general cavalry action far over on the legion’s extreme left, deep in the broken ground.



This skirmishing action continues for some time as the main Goth force advances inexorably across the uneven plains of the Oralicus. The elite Roman guard cavalry, fighting under the eyes of the emperor himself, make easy work of the light barbarian cavalry but numbers tell against them and eventually something dangerous occurs. According to Aegidio, the Goths fell back before the onslaught of the Romans but were able to maintain their ranks so that Constantius urged his cavalry ever on after them. One wonders if the emperor is carried away by the fighting and thinks if victory might just be his after all. The consequence, as the Tribune soon realises, is a widening gap between the edge of his ordines and the Roman cavalry. A gap the Goths under Alaric in the main van are not slow to seize upon.



It was now that the main barbarian forces advanced to missile range and began peppering the Romans with wave after wave of javelins and light spears. Severianus countered with his own battery of missiles from the rear ranks of the legion lines and soon the air between the two sides was peppered with the sound of hissing javelins and arrows. Here, the discipline of the Romans hold fast. Under the watchful eye of the line officers, the soldiers remained secure behind their large oval scutums, all locked tight against each other. The senior non-coms and file-closers sweated to maintain order all the while as the missiles hissed and thudded about them. Over all, the proud eagle remained high and glinting under the light silver rain. There is a sense from Aegidio here of resolve: that the legion would never crumble in such a fight. It would always stand firm under the rain of barbarian death. It was not to last, though. At some point, Alaric must have realised that the Roman lines would not melt before the withering fire and so he ordered a general charge across the slush and snow. Thousands of Goths and attendant barbarians surged forwards behind a final wave of javelins straight into the meshed shields of the Twentieth. At the last moment, with sharp Latin commands holding the men in place as the Goths came ever on, a single cornu brayed out and with a loud cry the men of northern Britain threw a final devastating short-range volley straight into the oncoming horde and then drew spathas, even as the two sides crashed together like crimson waves.

Severianus was heard to curse the lack of cavalry support as the Goths rose up around him in the centre of the front line, over the din of the fighting. Not a few legionaries heard that curse and glanced over towards their left to see the far distant standards of the Roman horse embroiled still with the skirmishing cavalry even as Alaric’s Goths massed through the widening gap on that flank. It was at this point that Constantius Flavius must have realised the plight he was in for he ordered the cavalry to about face and attempt to fight its way back to the left-flank of the Roman line. Almost as one, the guard cavalry and the remaining members of the other units wheeled about and cut their way free of the Goth cavalry, rallying to the standards and tuba cries as they did so. Behind them, they left a mangled carpet of corpses all twisted in the slush. To the cries of ‘imperator, imperator’, these few proud men hacked and cut their way to the figure of the Augustus, his purple cloak all stained with a deeper purple now, and then together cantered as best they could back towards the distant lines of the Twentieth, all entangled now with the barbarians of Alaric.



As with all elegies and paeans to the fallen, there almost always seems a slow inevitable dance into death which, while beautiful and endowed with grace, is never anything but doomed. So it is on this field called Oralicus as the men of the Twentieth, that old Legion removed from Britain by Stilicho, fight on with vigour and courage even as the cavalry under their emperor battles to reach them amid an ever widening field of Goths. Aegidio likens it to a raft struggling to make shore yet slowly pulled away from it as the tides reach in and flood the space between them. Men among the left flank ordines look to Severianus in desperation as the cavalry under Constantius seem to almost float away behind a sea of barbarians, willing him to order them to break off, form a ‘boar’s head’, and batter their way to the rescue but the Tribune remains resolute. He knows it would be suicide and now all his thoughts remain focused on the Twentieth alone; that legion which had defended Britain for centuries and had seen too many emperors for him to sacrifice the legion in vain now for one more. So the Twentieth remained in its place as the cavalry were swamped and then vanished from view one standard after another. No one saw the emperor fall into that wine-press. No one saw his death amid his bleeding guards. No one saw whether he fought like a ‘Honorius’, as some now commented, or fell in that anonymous shuffle of bodies, unremarked and unknown. What is known is that eventually the Roman cavalry could no longer be seen and all that remained were the yelling Goths who tossed the captured standards high into the drizzling air, roaring with victory.



It was then that Severianus raised himself above the rim of his hacked scutum and shouted out that Constantius was dead. Barbarians had brought down a Roman emperor in the very presence of the old Twentieth, ever Valiant and Victorious, under the eyes of its eagle and the proud emblem of the ancient boar, ever its guardian, the Twentieth raised by Octavian himself all those years ago, the Twentieth, which had routed the rebels under Boudicca under Agricola and won battle honours under another commander, Massallinus, despite being at half-strength, the Twentieth, which had never known defeat. Aegidio records that at that precise moment, even as the Tribune roused his men with valorous words, a Frankish throwing axe sliced into his helmet and brought him low into the slush and crimson at his feet, mortally wounded. For one stunned moment, the Legion was frozen in shock, even as the Goths maintained a relentless assault upon its lines. A cry went out that the Tribune was down and Aegidio wrote that that news wrought more pain upon the men of the Twentieth than ever did the death of Constantius.

What followed next was the death of the Twentieth as all its men fought to rally about their dying commander. The ordered lines collapsed and even the Ducenarii and Centenarii gave up on maintaining discipline. In the fall of a single man, a Roman legion dissolved and in its place arose a loyal band of brothers who fought on only to seek vengeance and join Severianus in a last embrace of death. It was an embrace Alaric was only too willing to give.

It is rare in the annals of Roman history to discover the end of a legion especially at the twilight of the empire as so many of them withered and faded away; all their honours and proud history becoming nothing more than dim tales and soon-to-be-forgotten stories. Here, at least, thanks to the words of Aegidio, who remained one of the few to survive that slaughter and live with that guilt in such a way that only Silvanus could aid him to burden it, we know when and where one such legion met its doom. And it is true to say that if many of the legions of the late Roman empire unravelled through lack of money and training and discipline, one at least did not, here on the broken plains of the Oralicus, amid the shrieks and bitter cries of barbarians. One legion remained true to its eagle and went down into a bloody defeat, its spirit unbroken and unyielding, fighting all alone around the dying figure of a commander it regarded as equal to any who had ever commanded it in its long and illustrious past. Fighting as one and fighting as free.

No wonder Aegidio remained alone and bitter for the rest of his life in that little cell of the monastery run by Silvanus, bearing scars no mark on his hide could ever compete with: the memories of all his fallen brethren on that broken plain, and the sight of his Tribune cut down in the middle of his last oration on the field of battle.





The Twelfth Consilium

Ante Diem Tertium Idus September

(Three days before the Ides of September, i.e: 13th of September)



By the high waters of the Eridanus, also known as the Padus to the vulgar, among the little vicii of the ancient Insubres, word came to us of the defeat of the Twentieth and the fall of our Augustus. Constantius was slain, cut down by the Goths of Alaric, the sacker of Rome. Our little column of Roman soldiers and cavalry halted for the day not far from the old town of Placentia, near where the Trebia flumen pours into the Eridanus, and our Magister convened a desperate consilium in the wide red leather of his campaign tent. I remember Allobich standing before us, all the assembled officers of the III Italica and the Senior Honorian Horse, his face weary and drained. We had been marching for a week through the early snows on the Alpine passes in a desperate attempt to bring aid to an emperor, in truth, none of us cared for. We had come nonetheless because this man, Allobich, had reminded us it was our duty as we had stood outside the walls of Augusta Vindelicorum. It was our duty as Romans to stand by our Augustus, under the divine grace of God. Now, the emperor was dead and our whole empire hung in the balance.

It was a chilly morning, with a sharp wind biting into the leather sides of the campaign tent and short flurries of snow swirling around the entrance flaps. Inside, iron braziers hissed like penned demons and despite their reluctant glow, we wrapped ourselves deep into the thick folds of our military cloaks. My fingers were numbed around my ivory stylus as I strove to capture the quick words spat out around me. Agricola spoke first and wondered on the fate of the empire now that Constantius was dead. The Tribune of the Senior Honorian Horse rose up and pointed out that Ulfilas was now the senior Roman general in the Gauls and that much power would fall into his hands as a result. The commander of the Palatine troops demurred, saying that now that Alaric was heading into the Gauls, Ulfilas was beset on all sides by foes. Lugudunum was a bolt-hole, no more. Allobich agreed with him and asked all present on whether we should turn back through the Alpine passes to Raetia Secunda or brave the journey south and west along the ancient Eridanus to confront Alaric in an attempt to stave off his invasion of the Gauls . . .

Only the sudden blast of the wind greeted his words and the tent shook as if all the demons and devils of Dis itself were outside. To travel on? To face a man who had sacked Rome, the Eternal City itself, and now slain our emperor? I felt a chill creep down my spine despite the thick Atrebatic wool in which I was cocooned. Allobich stood before us, bathed in an infernal glow from a brazier, his golden hair aflame with sparks, and seemed to watch each and every one of us in turn. For a moment, I instinctively looked north beyond the growing snows and the slowly filling passes back to the small valleys and pastures of our little province, bounded by the mighty Danube and limes of Rome, with its square castra and Liburnian galleys muzzling the sluggish waters, ever alert. I looked north and in my heart pined for my home - even as the men around me, all equally worn and thin, mouthed the few words which sent us south and west, away from the limes we had sworn to protect. Allobich took those few words, almost lost to the wind, and gave out orders for the march in column down along the military road to Placentia and the crossing of the Eridanus.

The next morning, as the men assembled in their ordines and wrapped up tight against the bitter wind, riders galloped out of the east and hurriedly dismounted before the Magister and his entourage of staff officers and guards. The lead rider shouted out through the weariness of his ride that Salona had fallen to the eastern Romans under Aspar, and that the even as he spoke, the soldiers of Theodosius were marching in triumph up the coast of Illyricum towards the Italies. Cursing, Allobich flung himself into his saddle and galloped ahead of us all, deep into the falling snow and dancing wind, seeming almost to vanish like a wraith into the elemental fury. We struggled in all our clumsiness to catch up with him with the legionaries and the cavalry toiling in his wake.








The Bella Gothica



(It is late in November, 414 AD, and Allobich has brought the remnants of the limitanei and the field army detailed to protect that fragile province of Raetia Secunda south into the Po valley, near the old town of Placentia, at the crossing of what the notaries call in a typically archaic fashion the Eridanus river, or the Po. We cannot imagine what is going through the minds of the Romans as reports filter in to them about the collapse of the western empire. Gaul is in flames. Hispania all but lost. The Vandals have crossed over into Africa and are pillaging their way eastwards to Carthage and the remnants of the imperial field forces there. The Romans of Theodosius under Aspar are marching north and west up the Adriatic shores to the top of the Italian peninsula. Most of Italy itself is lawless and given over to petty brigands, escaped slaves, and troops who have deserted from the standards. Rome remains riven with usurping senators all grasping at the purple and all failing in their hubris to hold onto it. The Augustus is slain on the field of battle before even the memory of Honorius has faded into legend and honour. And what does Allobich do? He marches his little band of Romans straight into the lion’s teeth; towards the hordes of Goths under Alaric.

But all is not dire news. In those drab days of march as they move out from the last shadows of the Alps and onto the broad Po valley, messengers arrive with news that Ulfilas has beaten back an assault upon Lugudunum by the forces of the usurper, Constantine, but with much loss, and that in a brilliant stroke of strategy, Valens, the Comes Domestic Peditum, ensconced in Sirmium, has sprung out of his fortress town and routed a force of eastern Romans back into Singidunum, modern day Belgrade, which he is now besieging. This desperate counter-attack by Valens has exposed the flank of the advancing eastern Romans and given them a short, sharp, shock. All of which leaves Allobich still alone along the banks of the Po river as he advances to meet the Goths . . . )

. . . We toiled like sheep before the mercy of God’s will, our standards torn and ragged, our spirits low, and our bodies numb as the frost which covered our leather tents every morning. We moved now in the wake of the barbarians and utter devastation was their mark. Villas were ruined. The fields despoiled. The little towns now more than empty shells stained with the smell of burning and rotting. In the distance, deep in the woods that we passed, we could occasionally see small bands of fugitives, clasping what little goods they had been able to carry away from the barbarians under Alaric. They were too frightened to approach us and truth be told we had little mercy to give them save God’s prayers. Our supplies were scant and now we scavenged like animals to gather fodder for the horses and the mules, and meat or oats for the men. We were thin, like reeds, and cold, so very cold.

Word came to us that the bacaudae were ensconced in the hills to the north and west, errant Roman soldiers who had turned their backs to the standards and taken to brigandage; or rebellious senators who had hired out bands of warriors to defend their estates from both the Goths and Roman law. Allobich despised these men and swore to put their heads upon pikes before the camp gates if we ever caught them. Winter fell upon us like a bitter blanket and with it came a savage wind down from the distant mountains. I saw men with chapped fingers and bandages across their noses on the march, all wrapped up in their meagre military cloaks. I too shivered with them all and only God’s grace and mercy kept me warm as we trudged weary mile after weary mile along the banks of the Eridanus towards what we all knew would be our end . . .

. . . He rode like Alexander upon Bucephalus at the head of the Roman troops and I doubt if a more desperate figure had ever rode beside these ancient waters. I looked upon Allobich and saw all his misery and pain and also all his anger and fire, and wondered on this strange man who fought now so tenaciously for Rome when all around us tore at it like rabid dogs over a morsel. He was driven like Alexander was driven but whereas the Macedonian strived to create an empire, this man strove with all his blood to preserve one. And I know not which is the more heroic.

An odd thing happened on that march, as we moved ever away from our little province and Augusta Vindelicorum, for the colder we became as the snows fell and the ice gnawed at our bones in the night, the more a dark fire burned in Allobich’s eyes. A fire I had never seen before and an anger which burned away all his humour and mockery. He rode atop his dark horse clad in the armour of Rome and eyed the wrecked world we passed like an angry god. And I began to fear him for the first time. I looked not upon a man, a Roman general with Gothic blood, but on the old fury of myth, a vengeful spirit or genius, who carried a weeping goddess upon his shoulder, her hair all unkempt and her tunic riven by blunt hands. And Allobich rode ever on in the wake of the Goths upon his dark horse, his golden hair glinting with an unearthly fire, as Roma wept her immortal tears upon his neck and whispered unrelenting words into his vengeful soul. At night, in my little tent, I shivered not from the unending cold, but from a new fear. The fear of what this man would do if he ever caught up with Alaric and could glut this vengeance She whispered like poisoned honey into his ears . . .

(On the Kalends of December, as the Comitatus of Allobich advanced to cross the Po river, word reached him that the Goths had halted and were turning to engage his little force. So began the battle of the Eridanus Flumen and a turning point in history . . . )






The Battle of the Eridanus Flumen



(Zosimus and Hydapius write extensively on the clash between the Romans and the Goths along the banks and wider tracts of the Po river, here referred to by its ancient name as the Eridanus. Both writers however allow their rhetorical pens free reign and modern historians have been bedevilled as a result in understanding in detail this battle and its wider consequences. For a summary of some of the problems raised by Zosimus and Hydapius, see Morgan Abercrombie’s extensive survey ‘Along the Po - Rhetoric and Reportage in Late Roman Historiography’ - Classical Review, Vol. 4, pp vii-xxi. As a result, the battle has always loomed in western historians and artists as an almost mythical conflict write large on the stage of history. One needs only think of Titian’s epic canvas or Mommsen’s opera, for example. Along with the Niebelungenlied and the Battle of Chalons, this battle stands as one of the defining moments in western European history and yet has always been shrouded in romantic imagery and imprecise detail.

Now thanks to the remarkable discovery of ‘Manuscript E’, we can shed new light, illuminating the Roman officers and generals who fought in what one notary - I suspect, Virgil - has referred to as the ‘Gothic War’. Rather than interpolate as is usual, Escher and myself have decided to allow the notes to speak for themselves as no doubt much expert commentary will develop in the months and years to come. Our main writer, Virgil, is appended to by both Florus and Probus, with supplementary material from various officers in the field, and I suspect the aim here has been to both record and defend the actions taken here along the banks of the Po river, deep in Winter, in the year 414 AD.)





. . . They say that on the day of a man’s death, an angel comes to his soul and weeps bitter tears. Not tears of lament but tears of regret for the angel will never know what all mortals must: that exquisite pain of the body’s end and the flight of the soul to the grace of god himself. I know not of such things for these are but superstitions to keep the common people and the slaves content. As Sol Invictus and Mithras teach us, all tales are but mysteries within which lie unfathomable truths. But I will say that if one could ever see these tears shed by angels then that day by the ancient Eridanus, as dawn broke and our scouts galloped back to the Comitatus with news that the Goths were crossing the stone bridge in force, these tears fell as crystal flakes from the skies above in an unrelenting wave; a blanket of sorrow and snow, all white and muted.

The shouts of the line officers and file closers were muffled by this snow, as orders arrived to turn the column off the old Roman road and form up in a line of battle. Everything seemed hushed and distant - as if the falling flakes hid us from each other and removed us partially into another world, a realm all faint and mute. Even the clack of scabbard against cuirass or shield was dim. The hooves of horses galloping past as the lines began to form up were muffled as though wrapped in cloth - a trick I knew scouts sometimes used at night. One by one, the wrappings were removed from the shields and some little colour and glory returned to our world. The emblem of the III Italica, its deep red and black circles, contrasted with the emblem of the few remaining Palatine legionaries, and the shields and the Senior Honorian Horse. The coverings came off the vexillum flags and the draco standards and in a windless air, all wrapped in falling tears, our poles were raised high as the ordines settled down and the shield lines merged.

I saw Allobich riding along the lines with his Gothic bucellari, his brow knit with anger and his eyes flashing with subdued passion. He barked out orders as though throwing out the ‘darts of Mars’ and his wide cloak rode up behind him like a giant wing. There was something else in his eyes now - a merciless light which gleamed like steel set before a fire, and again I shivered to look upon him. I fear he caught me then and laughed in my direction, all fey and careless.

We had been marching south towards the stone bridge over the Eridanus, hoping to cross it and hit Alaric hard before he could reach the Gauls and ravage what little remained of those provinces. It was rough country, all little copses and small hills, used mainly for timber and to graze the flocks. Few villas studded these hills - and now we knew that bacaudae also roamed the more remote regions to the west. The paved road here must twist and turn like a serpent’s back to negotiate these hills and it was around one such twist that the Magister Equitum arrayed the lines of the Romans. The III formed the mainstay of the line, with the Palatine troops to the left, extending that line, and a small vexillation of light horse archers beyond, to provide flanking cover. Behind the main legionaries, Allobich stationed all the light troops with orders to hold ground behind the heavy infantry. Far to the right, deep in the woods, now dusted in white, all our heavy cavalry were hidden, wrapped away in silence and snow.

There was nothing subtle in this - it must be said. Our scouts reported that a large force of Goth barbarians had detached from Alaric’s main horde and moved to cross the stone bridge. Their intent was clear - to prevent us from crossing the Eridanus and get in among the straggling Goths, with all their wagons and dependents. They were attempting to close a door in our faces. But in doing so they had to move uphill through woods and rough ground, all now deep in snow. They would be like a giant wave attempting to rush onshore but brought up against reefs and our long wall of shields. Allobich intended to break that wave and shatter it on his legionaries.

I shivered again in my old cloak and felt my hands becoming numb in the cold of the dawn light. Men stood all around me in grim, silent, lines. Everything was dim and worn. The helmets, the javelins and spears, the darts, the oval shields, the dented armour and cloaks; all seemed thin as though they had all been partially erased or rubbed away. Still the snow fell and looking up into the blanket of the sky I wondered if we had not all already died and become lost along the shores of Lethe where memories are washed away with no more concern than dirt from a hand . . .

If we were near Lethe, then it was Charon himself who rode out now and dismounted from his dark horse to stand before us. He removed his heavy helmet, all set with stones, and for a moment looked upon it. I could not see his eyes and knew not why he favoured the old thing with his attention but then he raised his head and looked all along the lines. Deep behind him, lay the woods and the barbarians moving towards us. He would not favour them with a glance but remained facing us. He spoke up then and told us of an old myth, so old no one now really remembered it, of the son of Helios, the sun-god, who pestered his father to allow him to ride the celestial chariot which carried the sun across the sky every day. This son, named Phaethon, so argued with his father, ever spurred on by his sisters, the Heliades, that eventually Helios relented and gave over the celestial chariot. Phaethon mounted it and made it leap into the sky, to the cheering of his sisters. But he could not control the golden horses and the chariot rose up so high that the earth froze and then it plunged so low as to scorch the ground. Zeus, from afar, saw this chaos and in anger sent a thunderbolt to smite Phaethon, killing him in an instant. His body tumbled out of the sky and fell into the sacred waters of the Eridanus Flumen, while Zeus turned all his sisters into poplar trees to line its banks. Allobich laughed then and looked around at the rows of trees under their mantle of snow. All poplars and very old. Then he held up the ring given to him by Honorius and cried out that these Goths had broken Rome apart, had felled not one but two Roman emperors - and, like Phaethon, it was time to smite them down into the Eridanus for their presumption and their arrogance. Let this river of myth become a tomb filled with their hacked limbs and severed heads in honour of all that was sacred about Rome, past and present. Let not a single Goth wash his limbs in these waters but that he drown in them.

The roar which greeted his words shocked me despite my numbness - that such old myths from a pagan time still moved these Romans, all christian now, even Allobich himself. The echoing cry, magnified by the shields, moved out across the low hills and seemed to vanish into the woods where even now the Goths toiled towards us.

They came out of those woods in dribs and drabs. Warbands and dense columns of spearmen, all ragged and jumbled. I was surprised - that in their haste to smite us, they would loose what order and discipline they had learned from Roman captives. Goths: the slayers of Constantius, Honorius and, a generation ago, Valens on the field of Adrianople. Still the snow fell and even as I looked around me at the men who readied themselves to face these foe, I still could not tell whether it was real or merely a figment of reality left alone upon the shores of Lethe . . . The poplars of the Heliades seemed to bow under the weight of the snow, as if weeping for the fate of their brother . . . I stood at the limes of one world and another . . .







. . . We shivered in our poor bodies, giving prayers to Christ and his mercy, as the barbarians streamed upwards towards our serried ranks. I had been shocked by our Magister’s speech and the pagan talk of Helios and Zeus. But I know that in my simple mind, such things are necessary before battle is joined. In the rear, among the baggage train and the servants, I sensed the fear and the expectation all men feel before battle is joined and found my hand itching to wrap itself around the hilt of a sword or a spear.

Savage cries assailed our ears and I heard the whooshing of javelins fill the air, vanishing into the falling snow like phantoms. Our sagittarii released wave after wave of barbed arrows high into the air to drop down onto the heads of the Goths. Then the barbarians swarmed up against our front ranks, howling like demented demons. The din of hand-to-battle engulfed all. I lost count of the number of prayers tumbling from lips . . .







. . . Our orders were simple: hold the line. Do not break. Do not advance. Do not chase the enemy. Hold the line and make them break themselves on it like rabid dogs bashing themselves against a brick wall. And hold the line we did. In the front row, among my men and line officers, I braced me knees against my shield and stabbed again and again with my spatha until the snow ran red with blood and warm trickles of it ran down the blade and over my fingers. Hold the line. They came at us upslope, the fools, all tired and ragged, never pausing to redress ranks or form a shield-wall. Behind me, the rear ranks loosened off volley after volley of light javelins, all falling into their ranks with lethal precision, while higher up our arrows sailed unerringly to their targets. This was an old legion, older than the limitanei I commanded along the limes of the Rhine, and proud of its traditions. Yes, it had fallen into decay and ended up in the castra and burgs along the Danube, guarding the river-crossings, but now Allobich, our Magister, had raised it again and now like the stork which had been its ancient emblem these men soared into battle with pride. Hold the line. Off to the left, I saw our light horse archers nibble at the flanks of the barbarians driving them into the centre, causing them to bunch and mill about. Snow fell without let and bathed my brow with a soothing caress, washing away the fevered sweat. Then I heard the muffled beat of hooves and saw Gothic guard cavalry ride up into the ranks of the legionaries on the left flank - Tanausis and his picked guard of warriors attempting to break our left. The horses crashed into the lines as the riders hacked and stabbed high over the shield rims but the line held and the Romans there dug in with a tenacious strength. We held all along the line even though here in the centre we buckled and bent like soft iron - but we did not break. It was then that I heard the harsh braying of the tuba and the shrill cry of the cornu. And I knew that Tanausis was about to find out that we had cavalry too . . .









. . . They came out of the woods on the right flank like a thunderbolt. The riders of the Senior Honorian Horse, all eager to avenge to death of an emperor who had raised their unit under his own name. Amid the flurries of the snow and clods thrown up high, these riders surged all along the rear of the barbarians, wreaking havoc like furies. Kontos points dripped with blood. Swords flashed with dull light. The gleaming draco snarled like a serpent from Hades. Then, as if by the will of the gods, the falling snow vanished in the blink of an eye - and all along the line, as we raised our eyes and saw as if for the first time, our men stood firm, reborn and proud. Gothic standards were falling like saplings. Those towards their rear were turning and running for the shelter of the woods below. But more than that - their chieftain, Tanausis, himself, with the remnant of his cavalry was already fleeing downslope ahead of his foot-troops.





It was then that Allobich thundered past with is bucellari and I saw his face frozen into a mask of such hate that it froze my blood. It was mask which promised no mercy and no honour for those who fell beneath the shadow of his sword. His golden hair tumbled from beneath his helmet and I saw blood streak his face like a christian baptism. Our lines had held. The wave was broken. Now its remnants streamed back to a safety I knew Allobich would never allow them. All around us, men heaved a sigh and then slumped against their shields or spears as the Goths fled, throwing away their weapons in their panic. Many were wounded but precious few had been slain.

Allobich and the troopers of the First Honorian Horse rode into the snow-dusted Heliades and for once I was glad that my pen was not there to record their acts for apart from Tanausis and his horse who fled early not one single Goth emerged alive on the other side, and I swear by all the old gods if the poplars did not weep before they do now . . .








There was once a river in myth know as the Eridanus which is the mother-stream of all streams and lies now high in the heavens with the stars to light its banks. It is a river tainted with blood and tragedy and pride. A river watched over by sisters all bowed and lost. It has a mirror here in this long and wide valley. A river which bears its name and reflects back those same stars into the heavens. Its banks, too, are guarded by the Heliades and now it flows satiated with the blood of barbarians much as Phaethon himself stained the celestial river. And yet how much do I yearn for that other river where memory itself is washed away into the forgetfulness of death? No tears from angels fall now as we step among the dead and retrieve what we can. We march south in the morning to cross the river but in my heart I wonder if a man can cross a limes in his heart or soul that he can never return from?





(The first part of the Eridanus Flumen conflict was over but the following day, as Allobich must have known, with the Roman Comitatus now south of the Po river and in among the Goths, the entire horde itself, all strung out, moved to wipe him out and avenge its defeat. Alaric had lost patience with the small group of Romans from Raetia Secunda.)






The Battle of the Eridanus Flumen - The Second Day - Morning

We filed in column after column over the tiny stone bridge, past the weeping poplars of the Heliades, our wounds covered in rough bandages and our hands numbed from the cold. We left the corpses of the Goths where they had fallen on the slopes and in the trees, especially those in the trees, whose fate I remained ignorant of. Those troopers of the Senior Honorian Horse and the bucellari under our Magister who had ridden out of those dark recesses did not speak of the slaughter which had taken place therein, and we did not ask. Now we crossed the silent waters of the Eridanus and looked with pagan eyes on its mirrored surface and the fate of those who presume to dare too much - and no little part of me wondered if we too were like Phaethon, daring to drive a chariot we could never hope to control, and march against both the Goths of Alaric and our own fate.

South of the river, among the copses of trees and the small hills of the pagi Decumentus, word arrived from outriders that all the barbarians were marching in haste towards us. The horde itself was turning like a giant serpent and bearing down upon us. A rearguard would arrive by midday, with the bulk of the rest by the early evening, at the latest. This news fell upon the men of the III Italica like a grim cloak and I saw soldiers tighten their belts and look to their weapons in the early dawn light as the last of us filed across the bridge.

Allobich, his face worn and tired, summoned a hasty consilium atop a low hill, and all the staff and officers of the Comitatus took their places around him and a small iron brazier which spluttered fitfully and gave us no heat worth the mentioning. Below us, lay a land wreathed in white like a corpse and I fancied that the smoke rising from the brazier was incense mourning the dead. The stylus shook in my hands and Allobich, noticing this, drew me in towards the brazier with a rough smile.

The Tribune of the III, Agricola, removed his iron helmet and gazed over the white land of Rome. He said then that the Eridanus would be as good a limes as any to stand against. It would be a wall to guard our backs as the barbarians flooded into us. Others around him nodded agreement. Let the Goths come once and for all. It was time to pay all the debts and dues to Rome in one last bloody glut of sword and blood. Allobich grinned then at their anger and fatalism. So be it. He ordered the lines of the troops to be drawn up by using a stick to mark the snow and then pointed out over the misty cold land where the Goths would be coming from and how best to catch and crush their advance. We were to advance a little south of the river and form up using the poplars again to aid our defense - here he looked around him at the dusted tops of the ancient trees and almost seemed to loose his christian veneer - if all the Goths under Alaric were turning to move north towards the Romans here at the Eridanus then their own numbers would tell against them as they straggled all mixed up with their dependents and their wagons. That disorder would mean that Alaric would have not time to form up a cohesive battle-line and each column would arrive on its own. It was a chance to destroy the Goths piecemeal and avenge Roma once and for all. He looked us all in the eyes then and what he said next shook us all. If we annihilated Alaric here now at the Eridanus we would not only be avenging the death of three emperors and the sack of Rome, we would be sending out a signal to all the barbarians clawing at the limes that Rome was a vengeful and haughty mistress who would not brook her violation without retribution.

It was then as we looked down upon the little lines sketched in the snow and wondered on our fates that a rider arrived upon the low hill. He slid from his sweat-lathered horse and knelt before the Magister Equitum with a air of deference we all found uneasy. His garb and armour spoke of an officer in a guards vexillation and we saw much gilding and ornamentation upon him. But his eyes spoke also of war and toil which belied his garb. He opened a leather tube and proffered up a scroll to Allobich but the latter thrust it aside and bade him speak to us all instead. Now was the time for words among friends not hidden messages alone. This officer rose then and I saw for the first time his face and the African blood which flowed in him. He paused and surveyed us all, noting our wounds and our tiredness, then his eyes hardened into black marbles which glittered with pride.

Rome had a new Augustus, proclaimed by the army and Senate, crowned with the imperial purple and the diadem of pearls, in Carthage, where once the greatest enemy of Rome had dwelt. The Dux Limitus Mauretaniae Caesariensis, Bonifacius, was now emperor of Rome, by divine mandate. This man raised up a newly minted solidus and we gazed for the first time upon the profile of our new Augustus, Bonifacius. Allobich took that gold coin from the hand of this African officer. His eyes were remote and cold.





The African took no notice and pointed to the east. Just over a day’s march, where the Eridanus opens out into the wide plains of the Mediolanum, the remnants of the Roman field armies from Illyricum and Dalmatia were moving west towards the Romans here under Allobich. At their head, rode the Dux Valeriae Ripencis, Aetius, and the Comes Domesticorum Equitum, Gaudentius, under orders from Bonifacius to restore order in the Italies prior to his arrival with the African legions. This shook us all and we gazed eastwards into the snow and mist as if we could all see the Romans with our own eyes. This African officer asked us then if we could hold the Goths until the legions and vexillations arrived and as one we all turned to Allobich. I saw something then which unraveled a little of his character for the first time as he took that gold coin with the face of our new emperor and wove it deep into a braid in his hair to hang with the others, all solidii of past emperors, I now realised with a shock. This man girded his head with the portraits of those he had sworn to defend. A barbaric and yet sublimely noble act. He turned then to this African officer and told him that we would hold this river until Aetius and Gaudentius arrived to take command from him in the name of Bonifacius.






It was then that this dark-eyed man grinned infectiously and told Allobich that he misunderstood. The Augustus had not ordered those generals to take over command from the Magister Equitum. Quite the opposite. The scroll in his hands now placed supreme command of all the forces in Europe under his authority by order of the Augustus. Aetius and Gaudentius were marching to come to his aid as his subordinates as willed by Bonifacius in recognition of all that Allobich had done to honour and defend Rome. Even now, the two generals were fighting through the rear-guard of Alaric, mere stragglers and looters, to join him here at the Eridanus and destroy the Goths once and for all under his command as Magister Utriusquae Militiae.











Soon, Allobich, Aetius and Bonifacius would stand triumphant over the broken bodies of the barbarians . . .

- Here ends Book II of 'Manuscript E'. The translation of Book III proceeds apace and will be published as soon as accreditation and references have been compiled.




POSTSCRIPT

The abrupt ending of Book II reflects in part the sudden and momentous events which now overwhelm the Romans under Allobich as they prepare to make a stand against the Goths of Alaric a league south of the Po river. We may better understand this ending in terms of little to no time left in which our notaries and various unit commanders were able to document or note down their reports. It is thanks to the reflective quality of the writing some days later, as the Notes begin again, which allows a reader to pick up where ‘Virgil’ leaves off, as it were.

It also goes without saying that the ending as it stands is wonderfully dramatic in an entirely unintentional way, much in the manner of Ammianus and his elephants, of course. Critical reception proceeds apace and Escher and myself feel confident that - all being well - Book III, the final saga of Allobich and the limes of Raetia Secunda, will be serially published from mid-February onwards. The delay is due to a conference Escher is attending in Antioch where certain theses of ours are being debated regarding late Roman unit terminology (‘Lanciarii, Sagittarii and Plumbatarii - Archaic Titles as Redundant Skills’ - Antioch University) where we suggest that there was no specialisation as such in the late Roman army and that these unit titles only referred to historical origins pre-Diocletianic era. It is a hotly contested debate and as such took away much of our time in preparation.

On a final note, we have found it puzzling and obscure in the extreme as to why Allobich, Aetius and Bonifacius are referred to in the concluding sentence of Book II. This sentence hints at some other congruence which eludes us entirely and we offer out this lack upon our part in the hope that some scholarly reader out there might be able to illumine both us and the readers of these Notes . . .

Holbein
Escher






THE MANUSCRIPT E





Winter, province of Raetia, Diocese of the Italians



Augusta Vindelicorum, headquarters of the Praeses and the civil administration for the province, and the Dux of the Limitanei for the provinces of Raetia Prima and Secunda



Consulships of the Most Illustrious Flavius Aetius and Mereobindus



This being the Lists and Notes of the said Consilium of the provincial capitol, by the divine grace of God and the blessings of his Son


(So begins Book III of the notes of the consilium, preserving the archaic title when clearly the notes are now referring to events deep in the plain of the Po river-valley. It is the day after the Kalends of December and Allobich has halted the Comitatus south of the Po to face the combined assault of the Goths under Alaric. News has reached the Magister Equitum that a new emperor has been acclaimed by the African legions and senators and now voyages across the Mare Nostrum to possess the imperial authority which is his due. In a shock move, this Augustus, Bonifacius, a former frontier commander, has raised up Allobich to supreme command of the remaining units in the Western empire, and ordered two loyal generals, Aetius and Gaudentius, to march west away from the advancing Romans under Sarus and reinforce the new Magister of all the army.

It must be borne in mind at this juncture that there is little left of the western empire of worth. Apart from the African provinces (now under threat from Vandal forces which have successfully crossed from Hispania), most of Italy is prey to tyrants, including Rome itself, while Gaul remains under the rule of Constantine III, although Ulfilas has been able to erode his authority with the little troops which stand under the command of Roman authority. Northern Italy, including the Raetian provinces, remains loyal but has been severely devastated by the Goths under Alaric. Hispania is a wilderness of barbarian tribes under the loose hegemony of the Vandals, and even the islands in the Mediterraneum have been either ravaged or claimed by Goths and Vandals. To the east, Roman armies under the supreme authority of Theodosius, have driven up Illyricum and Dalmatia to overrun the remnants of Roman garrisons and are now threatening to break into Italy itself. A weak counter-attack from the Roman commander Valens out of Sirmium had checked somewhat their advance but it was only a matter of time before Roman met Roman in bloody civil war again.





All of which must have seemed rather moot to Allobich and the remaining Romans now mustered south of the Po river. We can conjecture that once the news of his promotion had sunk in Allobich wasted now time in returning to the issues at hand - namely the swift approach of the advance guard. The Romans have crossed the Po river and arrayed about a mile south of it to await the initial advance guard of Goths. From what ‘Virgil‘ writes, it seems that rather than consolidating his forces, Alaric is intent on crushing the Romans as quickly as possible and had ordered a general advance. The result is that four main columns are now turning to close in on Allobich, with the first Goths arriving early in the afternoon.)

The Battle of the Eridanus Flumen - The Second Day - Midday

. . . No sooner had this African officer delivered his news to our startled ears than word arrived that the outriders of the Goths were emerging through the low poplar trees ahead. In a moment, Allobich dismissed the African and fell to ordering our lines. Now we had the measure of these Goths, the men were more confident and despite the cold and hard snows beneath our feet we moved out from the shelter of the Heliades and formed ranks. Again, the III formed the centre of the battle-line with the Palatine troops on the left flank. Light troops and archers supplemented the rear ranks and the light horse archers were stationed far out on the left. Once more, the Senior Honorian Horse formed up deep under the snow-candied canopy of the poplars, all muffled in silence and stealth. Out in front of the lines of the III, however, the Magister posted a single ordo of exculcatores with orders to harass the Goths as they advanced to battle.

There would be no respite from the fighting now, as we knew that Alaric and all his barbarians were pouring down upon us. Despite the stiffening snow and ice under our feet and the empty canopy of white which enshrouded the land around us, we knew that soon our limbs would be lathered in sweat and our brows prickly with the exertion of battle. This was our stand. Our resolve. Here south of the Eridanus, that river which flows below and above, in the sky and through the land, we would draw a line in the snow and say to these Goths no more. If there was any valour left to the name of Rome, any honour or dignity, it would be here now and today with the ancient river to our backs and the old enemy of Rome, the barbarian, at our fronts, ever desperate to pull down our shields and slash at our hearts.

As the lines of the soldiers settled down and men attended to the small things before battle - tightening straps that were already tight enough, mumbling the ancient invocations or the little prayers, swapping old jokes and stories of valour all long since worn empty through repetition - Allobich rode his dark horse out in front of the troops and waited until all their eyes - save the cavalry hidden away in the poplars - were upon him. I saw him look once to the African officer now mounted and among the ranks of his bucellari and then he shouted out that Rome had a new imperator - Flavius Bonifacius, Augustus, by divine will and the mandate of the African legions and Senate of Carthage. Even now he was sailing to join his beleaguered armies here in the north of the Italies. A Roman emperor was again in the field with his comitatus. There, to the east, Gaudentius and Aetius, with the remnants of the Illyrican and Dalmatian armies were fighting towards us here at the Eridanus. If we stopped the Goths here, now, and buried their race in the awful deluge of our vengeance, then Rome itself would rise again reborn anew like the phoenix of Aegypt. Let the blood of these Goths be the fires from which this new bird of Rome would rise, resplendent and martial, let the agonies of their death-throes be the first sounds to be heard, and let the their broken standards be the twigs to adorn its nest for all eternity. Rome is reborn as the phoenix is reborn in fire and smoke and ash . . .

He yanked hard upon his reins then and the dark horse rose up on its hind legs as if attempting to fly like the phoenix itself. His cloak spread out on the wind and his laughter fell about us like a shower of silver. Then our Magister, our supreme Magister, flung his naked sword high above his head so that the pale light caught at it and it seemed as if a god contemptuously hurled a lightening bolt back up into the sky . . .

The roar of the legions and the vexillations came upon him like thunder to the lightening bolt.




The Battle of the Eridanus Flumen - The Second Day - Late Afternoon

Agricola, Tribune commanding, III Italica

. . . I remember that we had come so far from the limes of the Rhine and the black forests which fringed it like a curse; evading the tyrant’s troops for so long before finally turning to confront them near the old watchtower of Ambrosicus. So far through the toil and sweat wrought from us by this Magister called Allobich and now here we stood with the Eridanus behind us and the Goths before us. Snow dusted the ground and the wide fringes of the poplar trees - which now the men fancied were the ancient sisters of that boy who had driven the chariot of the Sun itself. Helios, the Sun, Christ, Mithras, all names which spun around in my head like the fumes from a wine. I remember seeing the battle standards of our Roman troops arrayed along the lines, the vexillum flags and the dragon heads now glinting in the low sun, and wondered on all that was Rome as the barbarians advanced across the rough ground in their arrogance. Among me stood Goths, Gauls, Germans, Saxons, Raetians, Italians, Hispanics, and men who knew no country or tribe save that of the legion in which he served. Nameless men with old scars and tough hides. All united not under a banner or a standard but through an idea so thin it was almost a travesty that such rough hands should hold it, shield it, from destruction. An idea of liberty and justice; of the rule of law, not despotism or tyranny; of civilisation raised to shield all those from the bloodied hands of the barbarian. We were Romans and coming towards us were those who had pillaged and ravaged Rome itself. There would be no mercy on this day by the waters of the Eridanus and among the silent branches of the Heliades.



I remember that it was late in the day and the sun was a ball of flame on the horizon. Ruddy clouds drifted away from it like a spreading wound. On foot, among the men, I stood with my adjutants and guard about me as the III tensed into a martial line. The oval shield was heavy on my arm and once more I eased out the hilt of the spatha from its scabbard. I liked these men, these old legionaries from an even older legion. They reminded me of the tough limitanei along the Rhine; all grizzled faces burned by the sun and wind. These men would have suited Sulla well, or Caesar, or Trajan. I chaffed from the weight of the scale corselet and yearned to remove it and plunge into a cool bath, all oiled and scrapped clean. The helmet made my scalp itch and beads of sweat hung over my eyes. I remember seeing Allobich ride to join his bucellari and only hearing now the distant tramp of the approaching barbarians. I took a step out from the ranks then and turned to look my men in the eyes. No words passed between us - that would have been vulgar. Instead, they all approved my gaze as I in return nodded back my approval. We were ready.





The barbarians advanced and broke into a run, all yelling and mouthing obscenities like bullies in a playground. All of them were wearing either captured or bought Roman arms and armour but it was one thing to dress as a Roman and to fight as a Roman and quite another to be a Roman. I felt sorry for them in that moment before we collided. Sorry in that in order to possess so desperately the thing they coveted they had to break down its walls and violate it. What hate they must have for themselves. What horror must gnaw at their entrails. Then that moment passed and we were engaged. Above my head whispered wave after wave of missiles, slicing through the air, as around me my men hunched down and bore the brunt of the barbarian’s attack. Shouts pierced the din: I heard the Ducenarii and the Centenarii encourage the front-rankers to dig-in, raise shields, and thrust, thrust and thrust. Behind me, the light troops took a step back and then launched their javelins high to drop vertically onto the heads facing us. Crimson splashes flowered around me and then vanished as if they had never been. A shock rammed itself through my shield as an axe turned on the rim. I slid out the spatha and put a hand’s breadth of its steel into a faceless neck, under the chin. Every part of my body ached from tensing. Around me, my men, all professional and silent, stabbed and pushed with a rhythm and an ease not out of place in the fields mowing hay or cutting back the bushes. Badly thrown javelins clattered down onto our helmets. One man, a Biarchus to my left, swore in crude Latin, then more profusely in Gallic, as a barbed angon gashed his shoulder and became lodged into the armour pteurges. The man next to him yanked it out without even a glance. The pressure on our front-lines increased and word filtered down that the Gothic horse was attempting to shatter out left flank. I think I laughed then. I cannot remember. The fools - using cavalry against trained legionaries. Far out, I could see our skirmishing cavalry harass their flanks and felt a glow of pride at our army, the army of Rome. Forget Adrianople and that other defeat which the historians will not even honour with a name wherein the new army of Theodosius was routed after he had been raised by Gratian to avenge Adrianople. The first was led by vanity and the second by haste - and neither were truly Roman. Not anymore. This legion, the III, would see these Goths fall in unnumbered heaps at their feet.





It was then that the Senior Honorian Horse swept out of the Heliades like avenging Furies and caused the right wing of the barbarian lines to crumble. In and out, these armoured riders swept, causing havoc with their long kontos lances. All along the lines, the bucinas and the cornus cried out to advance and we responded with alacrity. They say that a battle is a dreary affair. A mess of shouting and confusion in which order and cohesion is written on afterwards for the benefit of the historians and the panegyrists. That nothing ruins a army more than a war. How absurd. In all the training and the drills, the one objective is to kill to the order of the generals. In that moment, when the line advances over the broken bodies of your foe, there is no confusion, no shouting, no chaos. Only a pure and unadulterated joy at achieving the single clean moment of your purpose in being. If mortal man ever approaches the sublime beauty of an angel, it is in that moment alone when action and thought cohere into one essence of being - and that essence is victory.





So I remember these Goths falling like leaves, like chaff, before us, before the might of Rome. I remember seeing all the faces of my men around me covered in sweat and blood, baptised anew in war, and I remember seeing the waves of our cavalry sweep across the field of battle cutting their routers down with no mercy, to the cries of ‘Honorius’, ‘Rome’, and ‘Constantius’, and now ‘Bonifacius’, our new Augustus. But more than that, I remember faces of men who would no longer stand amongst us yet to whom we owed this victory: the men of the limes all along the Rhine and the Danube; the men lost in the nameless forests in the barbaricum; and the men lost in all those little battles no historian ever chronicles. It was the faces of these men who crowded me most as we shattered the Goths and routed them - for each face was a fragment of Rome lost forever in the fading curtain of oblivion.







Allobich was triumphant. Our Magister rode his black horse amongst us weary and tired but smiling with a cruel light in his eye. It was only when the last spatha was sheathed and the last Roman legionary slid to ground all aching with the slaughter that word arrived that Alaric himself would be on us ere nightfall with his elite troops - and I remember looking south and wishing him speed to wing him to us so that I could welcome him into my heart as a brother . . . How strange you will think but unless you have known the embrace of battle you will never understand that thin line between enemy and brother and how easily it is traversed . . .









The Battle of the Eridanus Flumen - The Second Day - Sunset, The Bloody Sunset

. . . In all the great epics and panegyrics of Rome and her emperors, wherein mortals and gods share the same stage attired in the masks and heels of the tragedians, you will hear of bravery and courage and honour. Heroes stride to their doom with flashing sword and shining shield. Brows are uplifted in stern resolve. Eyes are filled with sparks of indomitable strength. Is it in Claudian that Roma herself appeals to Stilicho and Honorius to avenge her rape? I cannot remember. But gods act like actors and our actors act like gods - and always the divide remains vague, imprecise, like mist on water. And so it shall be, I have no doubt, of this battle, this long battle, by the waters of the Eridanus and among the poplars of the Heliades. Poets will sing of our feats - how white the snow was, how long the serried ranks of the legionaries were, how mighty the riders of the Senior Honorian Horse were - and all history will remember what we did by the banks of that ancient river. But when you read those epics, those panegyrics, you will not read of me or Allobich or the Tribune Agricola. You will not read of the battle we fought against Alaric and his Goths for all that we felt and suffered will never find its way into the elegant and decadent Latin of our poets. There has never been born a poet yet able to capture what we felt in battle amid that snow under that blood red sky as the Heliades themselves wept crimson tears. For amongst all the bravery and all the stoic resolve lay only our tiredness, our all-consuming tiredness, as we rose up from that hard ground with the bodies of the barbarians around us to hear that Alaric himself would be on us with his elite warbands. We rose up under no orders from either the Tribunes or even Allobich himself for we knew that there was no choice in the matter. Tiredness hung about us like fetters much as simile or metaphor hang about the heroes in our poems - only our tiredness will never itself find a way into such poems. So, reader, know this: that all the poems to come and all the panegyrics to come can never write about this last battle by the Eridanus. Those poems will write about another battle, another slaughter by the Eridanus; one in which we were not present. Remember that and you will, perhaps, one day come close to standing by us in the snow and among the endless bodies. Perhaps . . .

I cannot remember when word precisely reached me that Alaric would be on us - my robes were torn and smeared with clotted blood and a spatha hung in my limp hand like a giant stylus dripping crimson ink. Around me, men of the III stood up in dribs and drabs. Some slung their shields and others picked about the ground for a new, unblunted, sword, or a helmet which was not so rent as the one on their heads. A few did not rise up and remained slumped in the slush. To these few, I saw libations of wine being poured or the mark of the cross made about the head. All around me, men rose up in silence, girding their weapons and looking to their ranks, as word of Alaric passed through us like a chill wind. And yet I cannot remember when that wind exactly touched me. Was I that tired? My eyes ached and I constantly reached up to wipe away their fatigue but to no avail. The spatha in my hand felt as if it were made of the heaviest iron known to Vulcan himself. I felt rather than saw troops of horse clatter by, their harnesses jingling and their hooves pounding the ground around me, but to my eyes they were like phantoms in the twilight of an uneasy dawn. Tiredness hung over me and all around me like a heavy Gallic cloak whose folds seemed always to drag me down.

So we rose up and marched forwards in silence and in weariness. No orders reached us. No commands. No edicts. As one, we fixed our eyes upon the south towards the as yet unseen Alaric and his Goths and one by one we walked towards him. Each man in his solitary heart knew of no other fate but to slay this butcher of Rome and so each man grasped his weapon - be it a sword or a javelin or a kontos - and moved almost like a golem towards the beacon of his doom. Each step was a step towards the inevitable and each step was a step away from an easy and cowardly life. I too walked towards Alaric. All alone in my destiny and all alone in my utterly consuming drive to butcher this man who had broken the eternal walls, slain our emperors with impunity, and laid waste to the very roots of civilisation. I walked alone - and all around me walked thousands of other lonely Romans each bearing a weapon to take his life once and for all.

We marched south from the Eridanus across the frozen fields riven with Gothic corpses; an army of silent murderers; a solitary mass of avengers all bound into silence and loneliness, and every hand among us bore the weapon that would bring this willful barbarian down into the dust of his own hubris . . .

. . . And at all our shoulders, her pale hand stroking our bruised necks, stood Roma, her obsidian eyes utterly dark with pride . . .

South into the low-lying bloody sun as if walking into the portal of death itself . . .



(The final fighting on that long day seems to have occurred on a slight rise south of the Po river, roughly two miles from the stone bridge. Here, as the slopes bulged up around the Roman road, Alaric’s troops piled head-on into the oncoming and somewhat disorganised Romans, who, judging from ‘Virgil’s’ words were drunk with fatigue and vengeance. Recent archaeology has revealed an old Etruscan temple with later Roman additions crowning the slopes and overlooking the distant poplars and the wide river. There is no indication at the present time who the temple was dedicated to but it would not be beyond the bounds of probability that, being this near to the ancient and venerated river, the temple housed statues and altars to Cel, the earth goddess, and later Demeter, or the Great Mother, or Ceres. There is something prophetic in this given the allusions to Roma personified in the ‘Manuscript E’, and both Escher and myself wonder if our notaries were aware of the location of the temple and its significance. Perhaps, in their poetic and literary embellishments, the presence of this temple, now almost certainly ruined (see further: Otto Meenck, ‘Etruscan Ruins and Roman Temples’, pp 23-47, New Archaeological Review, Fall ‘07), provided a stimulus to their styli.

Regardless, some two Roman miles south of the Po river the Goths and the Romans collided in what would later be known as the ‘Bitter Sunset’.)

. . . I thank God and his mercy for his guidance in all things and know now that nothing proceeds without his divine hand in all things. His Saints guide us like fraternal brothers and our actions are merely pale echoes of his Will. Amen. I will not try to understand what it was that made us all rise up from the snow and begin that trek southwards out of the poplars and away from the rushing waters of the Eridanus. All I know is that the hand of God was at our shoulders. No orders urged us on. No officers raised their crops to our backs. Each man rose up and walked southwards as if under the eye of God himself. Our cavalry rode with us in silence. Each rider slumped with fatigue over the neck of his horse, his long cloak doing little to warm his bones against the bitter cold as the evening fell upon us and sun set before us in a great globe of fire and blood. We did not march so much as stagger, all wrapped up in our own worlds of vengeance - and I looked south also into the burning heavens and felt nothing but anger and hatred for Alaric, God have mercy upon my soul . . .

. . . How quickly, I realised, can a hand used to writing a word turn to one eager to take a life. As ink flows across the vellum and the parchment, numbering untold deaths in each little sentence, blood flows across the ground and so many names fall away into oblivion. This spatha in my hand, all clotted with blood now, would write a gory epitaph no less personal than one my pen could fashion in the cold ink far from battle. I walked among my fellow Romans all aching with tiredness and that numbness which comes from battle and knew not for the first time which I preferred - stylus or spatha. The snow gleamed underfoot, white and pristine, and I could not see the difference between it and my vellum. Was I a notary or a soldier? In truth, I did not care. Alaric would be on us in moments and an end would finally come, one way or another. About me, men walked all wrapped up in thoughts too dark to grasp at. They say that in that final walk into death, Roma herself is by your side, her pale hand upon your shoulder, her dark and imploring eyes drinking in your doom. I feel such things are beyond my grasp but, may all the gods protect me, as I glanced behind me back from where we arose up out of the snow amid the slain barbarians, our tracks in the snow were too many, too many . . .

It was then as we trudged through the snow and up a rise that the ranks of the Goths appeared. They crested the rise, coming out of the sunset like wraiths from the underworld, all haloed in flame and fury. Our presence must have thrown them for they seemed to pause and then mill about as though unsure what to do. Their ranks became mixed - horse and foot all together - and I could hear their chieftains shouting out rough commands in their barbarous tongue. At their appearance, not one of us paused. Not one of us turned for orders or to form up ranks. Those few who did react did so only to tighten a hand about a sword or heave a shield higher into place. On the flanks, our horse spurred forward even though the horses were lathered in sweat. Clumps of snow flew up in their wake. The Goths came out of the sunset and we in our doom walked endlessly towards them. We would all fall together into that crimson maelstrom - and still I could not grasp why we in our wake left more footsteps than we had living men . . .







The light horse archers on our left flank hit the Goths first, firing furiously as they closed to contact and such was the speed and anger as they advanced that the royal Goth cavalry before them crumbled and retreated in panic. I did not know then who it was that carried the royal Goth standard, not Alaric of that I was sure, but in our haste to close this Gothic chieftain of the royal line had turned his horse about and fled from the rest of his barbarian kin in fear. Without let, our archers pursued this chieftain even as we in all our messy confusion fell upon the rest of the barbarians. And I too fell upon them without let or respite. About me, soldiers hacked and stabbed with abandon, all pretence at order and discipline forgotten. Our standards rose up like avenging dragons and all about me all I could hear was the cries of ‘Roma’, and ‘Honorius’, and ‘Constantius’. I raised my spatha and almost of its own accord it hacked and slashed into a field of flesh, a living serpent of steel, knowing no respite or satiety. I remember laughing then, amid the snow and corpses, under the swollen sun of blood . . .







All along the Gothic lines we surged like demented demons - our tiredness vanishing like early morning mist; the ache in our limbs falling away like rotten rope. We fell upon the barbarians and avenged a score of wrongs no Roman in all our past had ever had to endure. And as the sun sank into its own bloody doom, we ploughed deeper into them as if marching willingly into that gory sunset, an army of heroes bent on one final Armageddon, as the Christians write of. Around me, men sank to the ground and vanished into a slush of bodies. An Illyrian at my side reeled backwards as an axe buried itself into his neck. Behind me, a stocky Italian with olive eyes and a sour grin battered away a score of sword blows upon his shield before falling not from any wounds but simply from exhaustion, his face one moment exultant with victory and then simply empty; a vessel devoid of water. Before me, a fiery Gaul, all red hair and blue eyes, vanished into a licking net of spears and daggers, his laughter seeming to hang upon my ears long after his body had gone. More fell never to rise but, by all the gods, many more Goths fell before us. It was then that I saw the standard of Alaric himself, deep in the centre of the milling troops, almost isolated from his men. Alaric, the Goth, trampler of Rome, the Eternal City - and all about me Romans surged forwards to bury their weapons in his lonely form . . .



No one will ever know who it was that finally cut him down. There are those who say to this day that Roma herself appeared by his side in all her martial glory, her amour blazing with silver light and her spear flashing like a comet through the night sky. Roma rose up out of the snow clad in her imperial splendour and pierced Alaric with that spear even as a cruel smile formed upon her red lips. Her spear rent his chain hauberk as if it were made of cloth and sprang a foot high out of his back, spraying blood like a fountain. Men swear that Roma leaned in then and whispered all the names of the Romans he had butchered into his ear, pulling back his head with an ivory hand as blood trickled from his lips. Still she pushed the spear into him so that it rose even higher from his back. Names and names and names slid from her crimson mouth into his ear as that spear rose up in dripping with his blood until the very last name, like a drop of poison, fell into him and took his life with a horror which made him gasp in fear and that name was her own . . . Roma . . .



The sun blinded our eyes as Alaric fell into the snow, all broken and lifeless. Flame and blood shone about us as we, in our turn, fell upon his corpse like wolves and I will not hesitate to write now that not one of us paused to satiate our vengeance upon him. Almost like cannibals, we feasted upon Alaric in all senses of the word - and about us the remaining barbarians recoiled from us in horror. But I will draw a veil over those moments not because I am ashamed but because my words will not do justice to our acts. Roma alone will know how we honoured her and our brothers. White and red, the snow beneath our feet and the ball of the sun hanging on the horizon - these alone were the colours which painted us as we paused amid the heaps of the fallen. The white alabaster of Rome and the deep crimson of her smiling lips as she mouthed that litany of names into a dying man’s ears . . .

Those few remaining Goths fled as though from accursed men - and who is not to say they were right to do so?







In a small copse of poplars near an old temple now long since given over to run and decay, our horse archers finally pinned and brought to bay those royal Goths who had fled from the battle. In confusion, these panicked barbarians ran here and there in among the last of the Heliades as the sun dripped its tears down onto the branches, and then finally Allobich himself with his Gothic guard rode in among the trees and butchered them all despite their cries for surrender and mercy. Now we knew it was Thorismund who cowered in the Heliades - the grandson of Alaric and a youth green in years. Cowering in fear, this young Goth pleaded for his life as Allobich dismounted from his dark horse and walked up to him. Without a word, our Magister took the sword from his trembling hands and then brought it crashing down onto his skull. Blood sprayed up across the bole of a poplar tree even as the light from the sunset dripped down from the branches above . . .

Rome was finally avenged by the Eridanus Flumen.
















Addendum

. . . There was no dignity accorded to the corpse of Alaric that night. Men spat on it or did worse amid the wreckage of the slaughter. Word spread that only a dozen or so barbarians had fled from our wrath as the sun set in its bitter veil of red tears - a few wretched men scrambling across the snow in fear and terror - men who had a few years earlier tore into the dignity of Rome and polluted it with their foul hands. I do not weep for them or feel compassion, as the Christians might. I despise them. We rested where we fell that night, in the cold and frozen landscape, with the bodies of our enemies piled up high about us like a dark bier. We fell into the uneasy folds of sleep, our hands grasping uneasily about our weapons, our eyes ever starting awake at the slightest sound. No word arrived from our wary scouts as to the movement of the remaining Goths and we wondered on that. We slept like Cerberus himself, ever roused by noise and the smallest of movements, and in our minds played again and again that final march, all ragged and consumed by vengeance, where we fell on Alaric and his men and exacted our awful price . . .

In the morning, as a watery sun rose up in a halo of silver light, Allobich walked among us, his eyes dim and guarded. About him, strode his bucellari and the staff officers, the notaries and the slaves of his retinue. My place also was with them and so I put aside the notched spatha and rose up to follow in their wake. A slave, seeing me, handed me my satchel and stylus, as I hurried after the form of our Magister.

By a small fire, we paused and waited, ever looking south into the broken ground where lay the remaining Goths. A low mist drifted across the landscape and rendered everything into pearly light. Our breaths hung upon the air as if miniatures of this mist and then I saw that each one of us was tired and marked by fatigue as though cut by a weapon. Agricola, the Tribune of the III, wrapped up tight in a yellow cloak of thick Atrebatic wool, his head sheathed in a Pannonian cap, looked for all the world as though he was a man asleep on his feet. Allobich himself was silent and remote: his golden hair now pale and lank, his grim smile no more than a bare thin line. One gnarled hand, scarred and knotted, seemed locked permanently about the hilt of his spatha. Blood encrusted that sword, all dark and ugly with portents of dooms to come.

As we stood uneasily and in silence about the low fire, riders emerged from the pearly mist and delivered their reports to us: the Goths had scattered at the news of Alaric’s death; some had fled east towards Mediolanum and the Roman columns under Aetius and Gaudentius, others had struck behind us and crossed the bridge over the Eridanus, intent on fleeing into the mountains and the bacaudae further north; and one force, lead by Athaulf, now claiming the rule of the Goths, was retreating south along the coastal road back towards Arretium and whatever sanctuary its walls might provide. We had cut off the head and now the parts were falling where they may.

I saw Allobich’s hand uncurl from his sword at that and slowly he roused himself from his deep lethargy. Fire burned again in his eyes like coals springing to life. He cast his gaze south and then east - and a dark smile spread over his face. I knew then that for the first time in these last long months that Allobich could sense a final victory over a foe he had always despaired of beating. He raised his head like an Hibernian hound scenting death and told us then that it was time to gild our new Augustus’ laurels with a prize worthy of a Scipio or a Pompey - and I knew he foresaw the utter destruction of the Goths here in the bruised lands of Italy . . . My hand, even as it penned this sentence, itched again for that sword I had dropped in the snow . . .








The ‘Navigatio’ of Flavius Eugenius

Surviving in a single Greek copy rescued from the sack of Constantinople in 1453 AD, the ‘Periplus’, as it is entitled in the Greek translation of the now lost Latin original, documents the movements and travails of a Roman bireme under the command of the Praepositus, Flavius Eugenius, out of Arelate, under orders from Ulfilas. While corrupted in places and for a long time understood to be a forgery under the whimsical pen of the 17th century Latinist, Comte Arlois deVillhume, recent scholarly attention has vindicated the manuscript. See in particular, Johnson’s admirable (no pun intended) study - ‘The Navigatio of Eugenius; Reading the Latin Through the Greek’, Heinemann, 2005. Johnson’s main research has unearthed references to a certain Commentary of a late Roman naval officer based in Gaul and from whom the Greek ‘Periplus’ is clearly an excerpt. Arguing that sometime in the 5thC, the excerpt as we have it was separated out from the main text and then translated into Greek, he proves by extensive analysis that only by understanding late Roman Latin can certain convoluted sentences in the Greek be understood. What we have then is a small fragment of a larger lost commentary penned by a Roman officer in the tumultuous years after the Sack of Rome. We may mourn the loss of the rest of the Commentary yet at the same time remain thankful to whatever scribes sought out and preserved the ‘Periplus’ extract for posterity.

Johnson argues that Flavius Eugenius was a Praepositus, or officer commanding a flotilla, berthed at Arelate on the Rhodanus river, caught up in the turbulent events which saw the Gallic provinces revolt from Roman authority under Constantine from Britain. With the capture of Arelate and the subsequent drive up the Rhodanus river to Lugudunum, Roman units were stationed along the coastal areas to secure the rear and prevent troops loyal to the British usurper from making coastal landings from Hispania. Eugenius seems to have been responsible for a medium classis or fleet of light galleys and transports, tasked mainly to supply and re-victual the Roman forces further upriver around Lugudunum. For a general survey of Roman naval strategy, see -
http://rgzm.de/navis/Themes/Flotte/FleetsAndBorder.htm Sometime in the winter of 414 AD, Eugenius takes the remarkable step of commanding a single bireme or Liburnian galley, the ‘Domina Helena’, and ventures out into the Mare Nostrum defying Ulfilas in an attempt to effect a rendezvous with the newly-elected Augustus, Bonifacius, sailing north from Carthage.

The ‘Navigatio’ narrates what follows as the light galley sails into waters infested with Vandalic raiders. It is a matter of taste as to its inclusion here amongst the Notes of ‘Manuscript E’ but we feel that these words add a gloss to the momentous events in Italy and perhaps remind the reader that not all heroics were performed under the standards of the ancient legions . . .



. . . The tidal estuary of the Rhodanus gave us her blessing and moving swiftly, like a dove on a wind, the ‘Domina Helena’ entered the central channel as the crumbling walls of Arelate fell behind us. I looked back to those walls and the impatient figure of the notary who stood upon them, the unread scroll still in his hand. I could just see in his face his anger and also his fear once Ulfilas, that Goth, found out that we had disembarked without his approval. I cared not for the feelings of a Goth. My emperor would sail into the Mare Nostrum with what little galleys he had from the old ancient docks at Carthage. He would sail into a sea infested with Vandal ships now crewed by Roman traitors and criminals like a deer into a den of wolves. Alone but for his few ships. Not while I remained in command. If it is my last act, I will take this Liburnian into the Roman lake and attempt to join my Augustus, Bonifacius, my old friend in the days when Theodosius held the purple. I breathe the sea air and see the wind take up the square sail in all its glory, the radiant face of Sol swelling large like an omen from the old gods of Rome. Gulls swing about us and along the banks of the river colonii pause to gaze upon us. Why is it, I wonder, when I am forsaking my command, I cannot stop smiling like an Alexandrian drunk on wine?

This galley is a light and responsive vessel. She seems to float upon the waters. Her crew, all rough men from the African and Hispanic shores, clamber about her like children in an olive tree. They are dark, this crew, burnt by the sun and the wind, but cheerful again finally to be out on the sea and not crewing old barges and the fat merchant ships up and down the Rhodanus. Then there are the soldiers - lean, tall, men in leather armour and bearing light javelins and spathas. They walk the decking as easily as the sailors and I see that our two artillery pieces are tended to as one looks after a precious vase. My heart swells with pride to be aboard such a galley and with such men, men little seen in these dying days as, fragment by fragment, Rome crumbles into dark oblivion. A sharp cry shakes me out of my inward musing and I see the rich green coast of Gaul slide behind us and we are out into the vast wine-dark sea of the Mare Nostrum. A sailor strikes up a hymn, an old tune to Poseidon, and others in their old superstition pick it up - and I am surrounded by pagan music and framed by the great face of Sol Invictus upon our sail. Mysterious feelings work in my blood and even as I pen this scroll my heart sings to ways not entirely dead yet.



We made good head-way south through the day despite the Winter swells and the threat of wind on the air. The ‘Domina Helena’, though light and trim, cut through the rising waves with a defiant touch. This Liburnian was a tried and tested galley. I found my heart responding to her like a hand upon the shoulder of an old friend. Late in the afternoon, with white foam curling about the bronze ram and spray slashing across our tired faces, Quintus, the Centenarius of the soldiers detailed to man this vessel, voiced concern that we were venturing too deep into Vandal infested waters. His eyes were wary of me for he knew that I alone bore responsibility for this sailing south towards Africa. To ease his concerns, I unrolled the parchment map and pointed to Carthage - our Augustus would be sailing to Italy or Gaul from there and must pass either the right or left shores of Sardinia and Corsica to make landfall. I told him I would stake all my lands and villas in Gaul and Hispania that Bonifacius was sailing westwards of those islands. Too many Vandal raiders and tyrants from Rome and the central lands of Italy lay eastwards. If I was right then he was sailing directly towards us and it was our duty as Romans to join with him on the seas. Quintus nodded but I could see he was not convinced. I did not blame him. It was hard lying to a man under whose orders rested almost eighty veteran soldiers but I had no choice. If Quintus knew what I really thought and planned, he would cut me down without a moment’s hesitation.

Night came upon us and the wind slackened somewhat. Lanterns were lit and placed at the stern and bow. I ordered the giant sail with its face of Sol loosened somewhat and the Liburnian slowed into the oncoming darkness. Phosphorescent lights glowed beneath us while above us the stars shone out like scattered diamonds worthy of an emperor’s diadem. Every time I breathed, the salt of the sea filled my lungs like incense. The sailors were muted now in the night, some sleeping fitfully on the long central decking and down in the rowers' planks, others watching the ropes and the sail like drowsy hawks, always tensing with each slow change in the elements about us. I stayed awake wrapped up in my thick cloak one hand grasping the worn oak of the rail, my eyes straining into the darkness hoping to see - what? My doom? Salvation? Possibly - but not for us on this Liburnian. I gazed into the blackness desperate to catch at my end and the end of all who crewed this dead ship - for although no one onboard knew it, we were all doomed and sailing inevitably towards a death deep in the glowing lights beneath us.

Only as Sol himself rose above the dim and watery horizon to mirror and warm up our own painted visage did I finally find what I was looking for - far out and no more than a speck so slight one might miss it. Far south it lay and off to starboard, its little sail no more than a fading snatch of breath.

It was then that Quintus turned to me with alarm etched upon his face and further towards the bow an old legionary cried out -

Vandals!!!

In my heart, I thanked all the gods. Our doom was upon us.



The sun rose up into a brittle sky, all grey and thin, and out of that greyness came the Vandal galley, her sail swollen and dark with an ominous wind. Quintus, ever alert and a veteran, shouted out to the men of his century to ready bows and fire-arrows, all the while strapping on his helmet. About me, the rough sailors from Africa and Hispania leapt to their stations as I ordered the oars out to put on speed. Quick curses cut the sound of the wind and the waves as the ‘Domina Helena’, like a thoroughbred, heaved to starboard and began a nimble run across the bows of the distant barbarian vessel. We let the great sail billow out into the cold wind and ran for the west.

Now with the oars knifing into the waters about our hull and Sol himself blessing our galley, we gained a little on the Vandal. I glanced down along the narrow inner deck, past the two oiled ballistae now being readied by their crews, to the tiller men sweating at their stations. Most of the legionaries of Quintus’ century were mustered there, about the small stern tower. I saw shields were being raised up to protect the tiller men, an iron brazier was lit to ready the fire-arrows, the Biarchus of the century, Origenius, a small knot of a man, was barking out sharp orders, and Quintus himself, slightly aloof as an officer must be, gripped the rail with both hands as he peered after the distant speck of the Vandal, judging distances. For a moment, my heart swelled with pride and honour to be among such men and I glanced up again into that golden face of the sun which graced our Liburnian - and then I remembered why it was that I was here on these waters and what I must do to save my emperor and old friend from so long ago. I turned my head away and prayed to what gods would still listen to forgive me.

The day passed in a slow endless chase as the Vandal galley gained stades by stades upon us despite our fearsome rowing and the touch of the wind. It was a wolf of the sea, that galley, roughly built but used to hunting in these waters and I marvelled at these barbarians, bred in the wilderness beyond the Rhine, who now held dominion on our ancient sea. Now this wolf was almost upon us and I could see the dull glint of helmets, swords and spears crowding her prow. The wind dropped then a little and in the lull I felt a change in the tempo about me - a tightening of hands about weapons and a hardening of resolve. Quintus glanced once briefly at me and I nodded back to him for no other reason than I could think of nothing else to do. He smiled at that and turned away from me. I was never to see his face again.

Their first volley fell short - the fire-arrows hissing into our choppy wake - and our men cheered at that, at how clumsy these barbarians were. Our own volley was not so casual and a trio of Vandals fell back from the prow upon which they had been squatting, flames wreathing their limbs and chest. A cheer went up but it was cut short as more arrows began to rain down upon us, the fire trails hissing through the air like tiny dragons. Instantly, I ordered the ‘Domina Helena’ about, barking out commands to the port-side rowers, and then the Liburnian spun to the south as though dancing about a menhir stone. For a single heartbeat we were broadside to the Vandal wolf, her snout bearing down upon us, tearing through the foam of the sea, and in that single long moment, suspended like a drop of water on the edge of a blade, our two ballistae bucked and two roaring projectiles slashed into the galley. Then we were arcing around her and - as our legionaries loosened cloud after cloud of fire arrows upon her - our bronze-sheathed prow ripped down into the oars of her port side. Wood snapped and showered splinters into air and the ‘Domina Helena’ raked down along the entire side of the Vandal galley. Our soldiers ran down along the sides creating a shield-wall as we passed so close that we could see the sweating faces of the barbarians. Then she jammed up against the stern and both galleys became one. I heard Quintus order his men to stand to and prepare for scutum and spatha, then chaos descended.

I do not remember much of what followed, as the Vandals leapt onto our decking, their swords and spears bristling like the tusks of a boar, and how we grappled with them, our oval shields all overlapping and firm. Smoke drifted across my vision as the fire-arrows danced above us and small flames sprang up along the deck and the square sail. The bitter, acrid, taste of that smoke filled my mouth and made my eyes sting. All was a crude brawl of men as the two galleys remained locked on the sea wreathed in smoke and flame. I heard Origenius shouting out in his barking voice and felt somehow calmed by the Latin. Blood lay upon my arms and neck but it was not mine and I do not know how it got there. There was a gash in my leather cuirass and the spatha in my hand looked notched as though it had bitten into iron but I do not recall how it happened. The deck was slippery with blood and the swell of the sea made both galleys roll like drunken sows in mud. I saw one of the ballistae overwhelmed, its crew cut down by two flaxen-haired giants wielding axes. The remaining ballistae swivelled then and a single bolt of orange fury impaled both these giants who fell back into the rowers’ benches screaming as the flames engulfed them. I remember seeing a silver-chased helmet lying on the narrow deck, its red horse-hair crest all tattered and thick with clots of blood and a distant part of me knew it was Quintus’.

Then I was high at the prow - still entangled up with the stern of the Vandal wolf - shouting out to Origenius to order his sagitarii to cut down their tiller men. He must have heard for moments later both Vandals toppled backwards into the rough sea - and for a single heartbeat, this wolf of the sea, with its savage cargo, faltered adrift of us. I glanced once to a tall, lanky, Hispanic with wild hair and broken teeth, and he divined my intent in a flash. Almost immediately, the ‘Domina Helena’ jerked free of the vandal galley, the rowers using the port-side oars to shove-off and in that momentary confusion a score of bodies fell into the widening gap, now choked with shattered oars and tackle. I shouted out to all that could hear to row for their lives as if the hounds of Hades itself were snapping at their heels - and to my utter astonishment, the Liburnian was free and pulling away with ever-increasing speed. Behind us, the Vandal galley was a mess of broken oars and railings, with her warriors shouting out rough curses as we slipped away from them. A ragged cheer rose up from around me as the wind caught at the sail and we surged over the waves. What greeted my sight, though, froze my own whispered cheer in my throat - half of Quintus’ men had been cut down in the fighting, with the rest all bloodied and wounded. I looked at the galley and saw also that she was badly mauled - the sail blackened with soot and fire-damage and rent here and there with great wounds, the port side was splintered and caved in from the ramming attack, and now as we picked up speed heading west, I could feel her begin to list and drag in the waters. Looking back to the Vandal wolf, I knew that we had barely scratched her. But for the fact that her tiller men were dead and her rigging was a mess, she would have been on us again before the sun could set.





It did not matter, though. The gods are capricious and play with us for their sport. Now the ‘Domina Helena’ limps south and west away from the Vandal and towards the lonely islands of the Baleares and their rocky shores. I know now, as again we descend into another night upon the waves, that those aboard are looking askance at me in wonder of why we drift so far west of Corsica and Sardinia, and that even the small knot of the Biarchus stares at me as one does to a serpent one does not trust. They are right to look so but it is of no avail. One cannot outrun the doom of the gods.

The night came upon us like a dark cloak and the ‘Domina Helena’ fell into it almost as a whipped cur retreats into a bush to lick its wounds. The Winter sea about us was cold and stinging as the spray flew up about the bronze-sheathed prow. The cordage thrummed with the wind. The sail, now rent and blackened with soot, seemed to scowl down upon us like a judging titan. I smiled at that and thought how apt it seemed but my smile was bitter and fragile. Around me, the sailors and the remaining legionaries under Origenius huddled against the rails or under the low canvas of the tents. All were wounded and plainly exhausted. The few coals in the iron braziers only served to highlight the cold darkness and show how small and pitiful we were. The wind rose in that night and the Liburnian cut through the sea heading ever westwards towards the Balearics and in our wake rose the phosphorescent lights, all winking and sparkling as if in mockery.

The apheliotes wind only increased as dawn rose in its fiery splendour and the ‘Domina Helena’, though limp and gouged by axe and fire, lifted her prow in response and great spumes of foam flew up over her. In the growing light we anxiously scanned the seas east and south of us but saw no distant speck or smudge of sail. Men heaved a sigh at that but inwardly I cursed to the gods and slammed my fist down upon the rail. Seeing this outburst, the Biarchus, Origenius looked oddly at me and then contrived to stand at my shoulder as if by accident. I looked into the face of this small knot of a man, all browned and scarred, his flat eyes seeming not to return my gaze, but I knew nonetheless that he noted every detail about my face. Sailors scurried about us intent on the rigging or tending to the sail and we both affected to ignore them. He mentioned casually then that the Vandal wolf was in no condition to pursue us. I nodded back in agreement, looking away to the west and the unseen craggy harbours of the Balearics. I knew he smiled at that - a harsh thin smile only a solider can give you. He turned slowly away as if bored by our encounter but said, very slightly and so quietly that no sailor could ever have heard him, that I was Flavius Eugenius, his lord and commander, and as I served the Augustus so, too, he served me now and without question. Then he was gone down the long plank of the narrow deck, his small body disappearing into the jostling sailors like a ghost. For a moment, I froze, doubting what I had heard, those few, little, words of Latin, and then their import smote me like a blow upon the chest. Such simple words and yet in them lay a small man’s courage and loyalty - and the absolute knowledge that we were fated never to survive this last voyage. I was glad that the spray gilded the Liburnian as we ploughed westwards for otherwise some men might have seen the tears upon my cheeks.

The sun was high and fierce as only a Winter sun can be when the mass of the Balearics finally hove into view, bruising the horizon with crags and rocky promontories. Gulls began to circle us, vile screams wrapped in feathers, and below us, pine branches and other detritus drifted past the prow. Here the currents rose up in angry fists and tried to shake the Liburnian but I ordered the rowers to out the oars and aid the apheliotes wind. It was then that the lookout spotted the Vandal wolf emerging from a low bay crowned with pine trees and white rocks. Her sail was stripped in red and blue and I knew that this was a different barbarian galley from the one which mauled us the day before. Behind the Vandal ship, high on the headland, a long plume of dark smoke now rose and I knew, as surely as a bee-keeper knows when he slides a burning stick into his hive, that we had roused the nest and now the warrior-drones were coming out. Behind my back, without my command or signal, Origenius barked out the command to fall to even as the ‘Domina Helena’ bucked into the waves and spray crashed over us in an orgy of water and foam. We made straight for the Vandal, our oars slashing the waters without pause.



There was no subtlety in our approach, as the waves slammed over us and the oars knifed again and again into the foaming waters. We gauged the wind and made straight for the Vandal galley with its red and blue sail, using the grain of the sea to bring us in close and fast. To my amazement, the Vandal seemed unsure how to respond - she hauled in her large square sail and then drifted to our port side as if attempting to make a return run to the rocky coves nearby. For a heartbeat I wondered if we had already won this fight with a show of our arrogance but then the galley heaved about and I saw the dull gleam of her oars picking up speed. Origenius, at my side strapping on his helmet and loosening the spatha in its scabbard, remarked dryly that it was to be a brute head-on clash - Liburnian against the Vandal wolf in these choppy waters; her ram against our own. I nodded back and for the first time in a long while grinned. Origenius was right - we were both approaching each other with the intent to ram, our rowers straining with all their might, the long snouts of the rams slicing through the waves. I turned then to the rowers below me and shouted out that now was the time to show these barbarian upstarts what real Roman strength was - row for all they were worth and row as if the shades of all our ancestors were at our backs urging us on. The ‘Domina Helena’ surged forwards as if born on wings.
I watched fascinated as the Vandal wolf grew larger and larger. Behind me, I could sense the legionaries readying their bows and arrows, the ballistae being uncovered and the torsion springs wound up, even as a mass of soldiers crowded around me, shields up and ready, bundles of javelins propped up against the rails in readiness. I watched this Vandal galley knifing in towards us, my gaze tight and narrow, passing over her every detail and movement - she was heavier than the ‘Domina Helena’, and rode the waves like a cataphract, all top-heavy and wearing her bulwarks as a city wears it walls. She dipped into the lowering swell and rode up sluggish but powerful and in that rise up I saw her list ever so slightly to port, if only for a fraction. Her port rowers were weaker or slower than the starboard and I knew then that I had this galley for every time my ship rode up through the waves she did so clean and true - a testament to my sailors and their training. The last of the forward sail was struck and then I ordered the main sail to be furled - watching the face of Sol Invictus crinkle away - and a moment later, two unerring darts arced high and forwards, leaving a wake of smoke. The lead bolt undershot by a fraction but the second cut through the red and blue sail to impact with a shower of sparks against the rear deck. A cheer went up from the legionaries around me - first blood to us. Now we were closing fast and the waves about us closed in like the roar of an audience watching two gladiators fighting to the death -

The Vandal wolf reared up, drifted to her port for a single heartbeat - and then we rammed into her, pushing aside her own bronze prow as easily one swats aside a falling leaf. The sudden impact caused us all to lurch forwards and my ears were filled with shrieks and the sound of splintering wood. The command to sheath oars rang out and yet again two ballistae bolts shot out into their confusion of cracking beams and falling men. Origenius ordered the javelins hurled and then sent his men over the side, all silent and deadly and true to the discipline of the standards of Rome. My sailors about me hurled out the drags and grapnels to bind the Vandal wolf close to us even as fire-arrows arced high above my head. Smoke trailed past me in great lazy swirls. We had ridden up high into the barbarian galley and so we were able to leap down onto her decking, hacking and slashing into their massed warriors who were still reeling from the force of the impact. These Vandals were all tough men, used to fighting and able to bear up to wounds and exertion, but we had the height to aid us as we fell down upon them. Behind me, our sagittarii crowded the rails and loosened off volley after volley into their mass.

I landed on a deck slippery with blood and amidst a phalanx of legionaries all crowding their shields together to protect me. As the smoking arrows hissed above our heads, we forged deeper along the narrow deck, cutting a swathe of blood, and shouting out to the others behind us to strive on, ever on. My sailors swarmed along the rails, hurling axes and javelins, clambering nimbly up the ropes and spars to get a better vantage. I remember shouting out that our emperor depended on us, that the Augustus needed us to wipe these seas clean of the Vandal curse, and then we were around their main mast, slipping on the blood beneath our feet, our eyes blinded by the smoke and our throats bitter with the taste of melting wax and pitch.

That mast became then a noose to doom us as we clumped up around it. The mass of the Vandal warriors and sailors closed in around us without respite and despite the confusion and the wreckage about us, we lost our momentum and closed up around the mast in a desperate defence. I saw Vandals fall and disappear into the mess at our feet never to rise again but more replaced them and then I knew that we were too few to exploit our ramming attack. That cursed mast had checked us along the deck and now the Vandals through sheer force of numbers were pushing us back into each other. I caught Origenius’ eye then and he divined my thoughts in a flash. His harsh Latin rang out and in an instant, we were interlocking our shields and moving slowly back to the up-thrust prow of the Liburnian, each legionary grimly hunkered down behind his shield, his spatha thrusting out in sudden deft moves. It seemed as if we retreated down that deck for an age as each step took its toll upon us. Blows and savage curses fell equally upon the shields but our training overrode the barbarians’ ferocity until at last we were at the tangle of wood, cordage and grapnels which linked the two galleys.

It was only as our shield-wall dissolved to allow us to clamber up over the sides that we really lost men to them. A retreat turned into a rout and despite the ceaseless rain of arrows we barely made it back onto the ‘Domina Helena’ alive. Orders were shouted out to cut the grappling ropes and with a great rending noise the Liburnian fell back and into the sea, her oars back-pedalling and picking up speed through the wash. I remember slumping down against the rails, my hand all numb with the effort of wielding the spatha, and tearing off the heavy helmet. I looked to the Biarchus and he shook his head to let me know that the Vandal wolf was too much of a mess to follow us. I could not believe him - dared not believe him - but before I could drag myself up to verify this, I saw behind him what was left of the legionaries. Barely twenty men had made it back from that savage fighting about the mast. Over half our number lay dead on the Vandal galley and those that were left were now all but walking shades of men. I slumped back and closed my eyes in tiredness. In my ears, I could hear the lap of the waves washing the side of the Liburnian, almost soothing her, but to me those sounds seemed hollow and full of mockery.





For seven days we drifted on the seas eastwards, battered, leaking and having no strength to pull the oars. I was shocked at how mauled we were. Barely twenty legionaries of the original century remained, less than three tents' worth of fighting men, commanded by Origenius. Sailors I had - enough to man the rigging and the oars but all were wasted by the fighting and the desperate effort rowing away from the Balearics. So we drifted with the pull of the sea beneath us and let the gods and fate herself guide us. Of the Vandals we saw no sign and my heart shrank at that. Perhaps my plans were unravelling and all this effort had proved for naught. The cold Winter skies fell low upon us like a shroud and in those mornings frost decorated our Liburnian, glinting cruelly in the pale light. For the most part, I stood alone and wrapped up in my military cloak high at the prow. I think in part I could not face those few survivors behind me but more than that I hoped and yearned to spot another Vandal wolf on the seas, its dark sail hanging on the horizon like an omen. It was a hope cruelly dashed again and again.

Then on the eighth day after our clash near the Balearics, a look-out spotted the low fat outline of a merchant ship off to port, her sails slack and the hull sluggish in the water. She was a grain ship out of Carthage - I recognised her lines and the slow clumsy way she wallowed about. Ordering the oars out and the sailors to put on canvas, the ‘Domina Helena’ eased about and made straight for her even as we flashed a shield-signal to her to proclaim our imperial business. Only against this merchant ship’s bulging lines and sluggish manoeuvring, as she dipped to meet us, did I truly understand just how light and trim our own galley was.

The ship was the ‘Isis’, carrying over fifteen hundred amphorae of grain and fish oil, along with ingots of lead. The gubernator, a wily Syrian named Phaestion, under license to a navicularius resident in Carthage, eyed us warily as we came along side. The ‘Isis’ sailors were all bronzed wiry men with gold jewellery and tattoos. I invited Phaestion aboard and alone by the prow we shared news and gossip respectively from Gaul and Africa. He told me that the Augustus had left Carthage five days before the ‘Isis’ had put out aboard a trireme with an attendant bireme as escort and that the bulk of the Roman field units had remained behind to defend the diocese against the encroaching Vandals. Africa was a riot of revolt and invasion as the barbarians had crossed from Hispania and were now plundering westwards along the coast. Tribes from the interior were raiding with impunity and many of the outlying castra on the limes were in ruins. Together we poured over the maps marking his route and that of my emperor’s and then I asked him why his merchant ship was sailing so fully laden in such unseasonal weather. Again, he eyed me with a guarded expression and it was only when I gestured to the legionaries lolling about the rails that he consented to give me what I asked for. The navicularius who owned the ‘Isis’ and the guild he belonged to were eager to sell their cargoes to the Gallic markets despite who resided there and so he had been ordered to sail out in Winter ahead of the sailing season before the Vandal ships closed in completely and cut them off. Commerce meant more then men’s lives in the forums and palaces of Africa and I saw him grin cynically then at his own words and shrug at it all. What was a man to do but follow the whim of the old gods down into his doom? His eyes took in our battered appearance then and the pitiable state of my crew - and he reached out to grip my arm urgently, bidding me to let him take off the wounded to his ship and safety. If he never did anything else for our dying Rome, let him at least do this one thing and make peace with the gods. His eyes bored into mine and I found in them an old, lost, pride which I had rarely seen in these days. His grip felt like an iron band around my arm and only then did I see the faded brand of a legionary mark upon his skin . . .

The ‘Isis’ slowly dipped away over the horizon north towards a distant Gaul and the safe ports of Arelate and the classis there. Phaestion stood alone high upon the roof of the stern cabin by the upraised swan watching us as we attempted some small repairs, his hand shading his eyes from the glare of the sky and seas. Only at the last did he raise his arm in a final salute as the old legionaries used to do their officers and emperors. I, too, raised my arm back in salute - one old soldier to another, both lost on a fading sea which had once been a Roman lake.




The ’Domina Helena’ was listing badly to port and the legionaries, under Origenius, were heaving endless leather buckets of water over the side, fighting to maintain her balance. High above, the rent face of Sol Invictus looked down upon us almost in pity. Smears of soot blurred his lines and gashes in the canvas gave his face a wounded, defeated, aspect. It was the ninth day since the ramming near the Balearics and a day after the ‘Isis’ had departed taking our wounded with her, bound for Arelate and classis there. The sun was a glassy ball low on the horizon behind us as we drifted with a lank wind eastwards and back to the mass of Sardinia and Corsica. Sparks of pale fire were thrown up on the waves as the Liburnian nosed ever closer to those islands. I again stood at the prow, vigilant and absorbed in my watch, my cloak wrapped up about me like a shroud. It would have been so easy to topple over the side in that cloak, into the arms of Neptune, and the endless drift along the sea’s bottom, a single gold coin in my mouth, with all the dead crew and legionaries of the ‘Domina Helena’ around me for an escort. I could not afford that luxury, though, not while Bonifacius, my old friend, risked all on these very waters. And so I stood at the prow, the bronze of the ram slicing the waters beneath me, shards of fire cascading up from it, looking ever upon the horizon in despair and hope.

It was as the glass ball of the sun touched the very sea with a lick of fire that I saw what I was looking for. There, far to the east, on the lip of the sea’s edge itself, lay a faint dot and I knew without a moment’s doubt that we had found another wolf. I turned to Origenius, that small Roman Biarchus, and allowed myself a thin smile. We had the setting sun behind us and a world of night ahead to stalk this wolf as she sailed eastwards towards Sardinia . . . My thin smile was answered with another as cruel and calculating as my own.

The night came upon us with an agonising slowness as we put on sail and fell into the faint wake of the Vandal. The sailors, sensing my resolve, did not light the oil lamps and we slipped into the darkness like a predator, our oars now wrapped in rags to muffle their impact, and every other spare cloak and piece of cloth onboard stuffed into the aching joints of this Liburnian. Ahead, like a prize, the Vandal wolf raised her running lanterns, oh so arrogant upon the waters, and we sidled ever so slowly through the night upon her. Our breaths were muted. Our weapons strapped. Our steering boards oiled. Like a phantom, we glided closer and closer as she idled eastwards at half sail, her oars stowed. I ordered the sleeping canvas raised along the narrow deck and beneath its darkness we lit a single brazier and then from its ashes we smeared soot over our limbs and faces, blackening our visages until only the whites of our eyes gleamed in that shadow. We dulled the iron of the spathas and carefully painted our shields black. There were only nineteen men left now, not including Origenius and myself, of the eighty which had once boarded at Arelate under my orders. Nineteen hardened veterans of ship-fighting. Men who had swarmed aboard Vandal galleys, Saxon keels, and Gothic transports all across the Mare Nostrum. Men who knew how to roll and swing upon a deck itself rolling and swinging in the seas. And so the night dragged in silence and oblivion and so the ‘Domina Helena’ came closer and closer upon this unsuspecting barbarian wolf, and so these men readied themselves, all grim and silent and deadly.

It was only when we were close enough to mark her lines, dimly lit from her lanterns, that I recognised this wolf and knew her for the Vandal galley we had run into in our first encounter out of Arelate. She still bore the marks of our scrape down her port side. A mirthless humour rose in me then, cold as ice and hard as rock. I looked up at the unseen face of Sol and raised a prayer to his mercy. Whispering orders as softly as a wind rustles the grass, I bade the rowers retract the oars and then let the wind and our own momentum gather us to the wolf on her starboard side, knifing through her wake like a dagger, silent and unerring.

In those few moments, as we loomed up upon her out of the darkness, I turned to those nineteen men, wrapped in black, wrapped in the night, and told them that it did not matter if we lived or died now in this bitter cold for the Vandal sailed to butcher our Augustus and that we would not allow, even unto the end of our lives. Each barbarian we slew would take a weapon away from the throat of Bonifacius and that was all that mattered now. There would be no sailing home, no victory celebrations, no honours. Only death and the knowledge that in that death we saved an emperor of Rome. Their silence at my few whispered words was more eloquent than any panegyric I had ever listened too.

Then we were alongside the Vandal wolf, a ghost on the sea, and I rose up and ordered my men to leap the little distance between us; shadows of death born from the night. Like a wave of silence itself, we swept over the railings and onto its deck, even as the Liburnian crashed in a splinter of chaos behind us, her ram ploughing along its side and opening up a scar like a wound. Origenius stood at my side then and raised his shield towards me as though protecting a brother he had never know. For the first time since sailing from Arelate, I felt a burden lift from my shoulders and knew that not a single man around me doubted my resolve. Then, in their confusion and fear, as these Vandals roused themselves with shouts of alarm, we fell upon them with utter determination, knowing we would never see the Liburnian at our backs again . . .



Is our doom written in the stars or do we ourselves have power over it in the choices we make as we run down the long mirror of life into eternity? That night, as we fell away from the ‘Domina Helena’ into the confusion of the darkness and the milling forms of the Vandal barbarians, I had never been more certain of my doom, waiting for me below on the point of a sword or an axe. We leapt, all silent and intangible like cascading shadows, into chaos, with the great swell of the Liburnian rising up behind us to the cacophony of its ramming. Its roar lifted us onwards as the roar of the crowd in the arena animates the gladiators. We fell into our doom and moments later were surprised to still be alive and that, perhaps, our doom was not death at all but something other, something nobler and also heavier: life itself.

So we cut and slashed as only ship-fighters can do, using our shields to urgently parry away clumsy and mis-timed blows, advancing in among the Vandals in quick, sudden, thrusts. We struck like demons of the night with only our narrowed eyes to betray us - and in our wake, the barbarians fell back bloodied and in shock. Myself, the Biarchus, and nineteen legionaries, the last of the century assigned to the ‘Domina Helena’, all fell into their mass and hacked as if each blow would be our last. And I found myself smiling with a joy I had not felt in a very long time indeed. I saw Origenius on my left, angling his shield towards me as he ducked below a rough sword slash and saw he too was smiling in unalloyed joy, a feral smile, a smile of utter triumph over the frailty of the flesh, a smile of the soul itself free from the fear of death. And all around me, those nineteen men of Rome were smiling too into the carnage and blood which rose up about them.

The Vandal wolf was listing down into the gash the ‘Domina Helena’ had inflicted upon her. Overhead, my sailors were firing blindly into the mass of the barbarians ahead of us. I could sense them passing close over my head but I did not care - we advanced deeper into them careless of what fate would befall us and with a reckless abandon sitting on the edge of our swords. Anger and confusion barred our way as the Vandals struggled to rally and put up a cohesive front but it was useless. We were in among them, all black and silent, before they knew what was happening. Blood ran upon the decking like spilled wine. Their cries and screams only goaded us on and soon we were up in the stern castle and driving the Vandals against its walls. There was no quarter then and no respite. A legionary called Asclepius fell into a grim embrace with a giant barbarian and both men tumbled overboard, stabbing as they went. A tall Sardinian whose name I never knew slid on the deck into a startled Vandal who, in an instant, buried a knife into his eye-socket. Origenius collapsed against me gasping from a wound to his side even as he cut down his attacker. I caught him up in one arm, dropping my shield as I did so, and brought him in amongst us. Lentulus, the century’s bucinator swore once as a javelin lodged into his back and then fell forwards into oblivion in the darkness. I glanced back to the Liburnian, burnished into a ruddy aspect by the Vandals’ lanterns, and saw with shock just how many dead lay between us and her. The deck was a carpet of corpses, some rolling obscenely as the galley dipped slowly to starboard like a wounded animal settling to ground to die. I glanced quickly about me and realised that we were the victors. This Vandal wolf was stricken and lame on the seas. Her crew and warriors retreating like children before us. In a flash, I knew then that we were triumphant - against all odds and against even perhaps the doom of the gods themselves. My spatha dipped to the deck, a gory blade, and slowly I lowered Origenius to my feet as about me my men gradually ceased their grisly work. The Vandal wolf was ours. My nineteen men had revenged themselves upon this barbarian ship and held aloft the honour of Rome upon the Mare Nostrum - and then to my amazed eyes I realised that of those nineteen only three had fallen in that sudden and violent assault along the deck. Three legionaries alone had gone to their gods. Deep in that night, as the Vandals shrank from us, we picked up the bodies of the Sardinian and Lentulus and carried them back to the ‘Domina Helena’. Asclepius was already home in the deep waters beneath us.

Alone, the last to leave, I let my gaze drift along the wreckage of the main deck, noting the corpses, the blood, the shattered accoutrement's of battle, and then found out the eyes of the Vandal chieftain who called this ship his own. I locked eyes with this barbarian, the haughty smile still on my lips, and watched his valour pale before that of Rome’s.





We are all doomed and at the mercy of the gods and whatever sport pleases their whims. I do not doubt that. I do know that whatever fate awaits man in each little life he leads, facing it alone and with honour is all that matters, whether we live or die. That is one thing the gods have no mastery over and, perhaps, will always envy us for. Now the sun rises as I write this and a pale warmth touches my face. Origenius groans beside me as a clumsy man tries to bind his wound, all the while dragging on the flask of wine. Along the deck, tired but smiling men wash soot from their limbs, mingling it with blood and sweat, and cast their eyes indifferently to the distant and fading Vandal wolf we have let live in our mercy. What is left of her crew will be a banner to our courage as they sail eastwards. These men who were only last night nineteen and are now seventeen shall grow in tales and legends to become so much more. The sun rises into my eyes and I blink to rinse away the sweat and I wonder on my Bonifacius also on these waters and pray to my old gods that his doom be like ours . . .



A rough wind assailed us through the night and the ‘Domina Helena’ drifted eastwards at its mercy. The sailors were too tired to put out the oars and I let them rest. With the wind came sheets of icy rain which fell upon us like slingshots despite the canvas we raised along the narrow deck. To me, though, it seemed as if the gods were cleansing us of our toil and blood and I felt reborn. Despite the cold and fatigue, I had never felt so alive as I did through that cold blustery night. Around me, Origenius and the remaining sixteen legionaries seemed calm, too. Each one still and quiet as if at peace as the rain bathed their brows and the wind tugged at their limbs. Peace - such an odd thought in these times of ruin and despair. Here on the Mare Nostrum in a violent Winter storm on a battered Liburnian we all looked at each other and knew peace, even as we sharpened our blades and bound up our wounds. How odd. The gods must have a whimsical sense of humour, indeed, and I saw below us in the deep waters a sardonic glow in those phosphorescent flashes which had never failed to follow us ever since we had left Arelate all those days ago . . .

The morning brought a swollen sun edging up over the rough seas, all grey and steely through the rain. Above us, the canvas of the sail was bedraggled and limp, now catching the wind only fitfully and in long sluggish moves. I remembered how bright and proud the face of Sol Invictus had been when we had first left the shores of southern Gaul. No more. Today as I penned this slight commentary, I saw with a detached feeling that only a single piece of vellum remained for my scribbles. One last entry after this and I would not be able to write any more aboard this gallery. I had smiled at that and wondered on the little omens our gods give us to bring us peace even in death.

A sharp cry from the prow took me out of my reverie and I saw one of the sailors pointing eastwards towards the dim outline of the Sardinian isle, now emerging from the shroud of rain. For a moment, I thought he was pointing to the island itself but then as my eyes adjusted from the light vellum to the distant smudge on the horizon I saw something else - and my heart quickened like a boy in love for the first time. There - so faint as to be almost invisible - two purple sails trimmed with gold, hanging before the island’s line like petals blown on the wind. In a moment, I was up at the prow, the vellum’s two sheets slipping from my lap, and my hand gripping the rails as if they would break. My Augustus, my emperor, and my friend from days now so long ago as to be almost a myth. Bonifacius alive!



Origenius was at my side in an instant despite the bound wound in his side which left him pale and sweating. A savage grin sheathed his face. There, in the distance, through the endless rain, was the imperial convoy heading north along the coast of Sardinia, their sails and pennants flying high and proud. Our Augustus sailing to join his battered armies in Italy and Gaul and win back the mantle of dignity and honour now so long since taken from us - and I remembered how Bonifacius and I fought under Theodosius, the father of the great emperor, in Africa and Britain, all laughing and arrogant in our pride, and how once this man, my friend, sat with me one night in our tent deep in a British gloom of fog and rain, and how we talked of ancient Roman valour and the old values of fortitude and sacrifice; stoicism and service to the state. Values all too lost now in this careless and violent age we live in. I remembered then looking at my friend and seeing in him something I had only read about in Virgil or Livy. We had sworn a pact then of duty to Rome beyond all else and we had consecrated that pact with our blood in the old Mithraic way.

My idle thoughts were again shattered as an another cry, from Juvenalis, one of the surviving legionaries and a fellow Briton, also prone to writing I had learnt, drew my attention southwards and away from the emperor’s galleys. Sails darkened the horizon, many sails, and I could see that among the wolf canvases of the Vandals were also Roman sails, all mingled in, traitors one and all. These dark sails were bearing down upon the two galleys of Bonifacius, coming out of the south in earnest pursuit like hawks bearing down upon a helpless doe.

I turned about then and saw with a surprise that even as this Juvenalis had raised his cry and caught my attention, my legionaries were already strapping on their armour and girding up their weapons, even as the sailors scrambled to put on the fore-sail and ship out the oars. Like a predator tensing its muscles, the ‘Domina Helena’ surged through the waves southwards into its final fate, her crew and soldiers all silent and stoic. My glance fell then on the two remaining sheets of vellum and I briefly wondered if I would ever get to write on that last pristine page, all white and blank . . .





The wind is blowing softly across the waves. Little tufts of white flicker up and die as far as my eyes can see, like the manes of stallions rising up from the water. That wind teases at my face and cools the raging thirst in me, if only for a moment. So much water and not a drop to aid me now. The sun is low on the horizon, baleful like a great cyclopean eye, and its glare pricks at my eyes and makes the writing of these words slow and awkward as I squint into this white vellum - the last sheet. That last sheet which I wondered if I would ever write upon.

To my right is the small pot of ink, splashes of which have stained the decking, while on my left is a widening pool of the deepest red I have ever seen - and between them this white now smudged with both. My words and my flesh pour forth and each has its own legacy. Not far from where I lie propped up against the mast, its comforting bulk easing my pain a little, I can see the twisted form of Origenius, all crumpled now, that last javelin rising up from his body like a mast all its own, rolling in the slow inevitable swell of the Liburnian. I knew so little of this man and yet could not have asked for a better soldier at my side than if he had been my brother. I honour him now with his name in the little marks of ink here. There is little else I can do for his memory. About me, the ‘Domina Helena’ wallows into the rising waves, creaking and cracking apart with the slow inevitability of death itself. She is side-on to the rising waves, nearing the looming cliffs and beaches of Sardinia, all a mess now of rigging, cables, shattered wood, and the endless black stains of soot and fires. The sail is a loose rag of tatters, the face of Sol Invictus all ripped away and gone as if it had never been - and I look upon my galley and wonder if this too is not the fate of Rome itself in these desperate days; a ship of state easing closer to the rocks, all battered and broken and riddled with the corpses of men this world will never see again. A sarcastic laugh, punctuated with a coughing fit, robs me of this image and brings me back to the mast at my back, the body of Origenius lolling on the decking and the stains of red and black which frame the white of this page and my own pale body.

Soon the rocks and the coast will take this valiant Liburnian into their embrace and all that will be left will be shards and splinters on the sands. Yet I cannot stop myself writing - filling in the last of this white as if atoning for some deed which I now need repentance for. How absurd. I have done nothing but my sworn duty to Rome and to my Augustus. The loss and sacrifice of a single galley on the Mare Nostrum was a price easily paid to preserve the safety of Bonifacius in his dangerous journey north from Africa to Italy. Yes, we drew the Vandal wolves to us and away from him. Yes, this was a sailing I knew I would never return from. Yes, I took all who sailed with me to their doom without their knowledge - but in the end, all of us faced that doom with honour and courage and Roman fortitude. No Vandal raider will ever look upon the sails of a Roman galley and dare to challenge her with contemptuous ease again. Of that I swear.

Oh, how the gods have a sense of irony, though - for in the end it was not the Vandals which brought us low in defeat but the sailors and legionaries of fellow Romans in league with the Vandals. Again, a bitter laugh erupts from me and descends into a long cough. Crimson spots litter the vellum beneath my stylus. For a brief moment, my mind travels back to the long clash this morning, as the Vandal and the Roman galleys closed in about us, their crews shouting out obscenities and attempting to rain missiles down on us. Our valiant Liburnian had closed down upon these insolent dogs and forced them to turn away from their pursuit of the imperial convoy lest they be vulnerable to our ram. It wasn’t until they were almost upon us that they realised we were so few and then their anger at having been tricked allowed their aim to be poor. The last of our ballistae bolts skewered a few exposed warriors on the Vandal wolf and then this barbarian galley heaved to and back-peddled with her oars so that a Roman trireme came up upon us at full speed. I knew then that we were lost. The shock of impact shattered us amidships and almost broke us in half. Men fell screaming into the crimson wash. In that single moment of impact half my sailors died. Then the trireme's legionaries, all young-faced boys from the Calabrian shores further south, boarded us behind a wave of javelins and darts. Oh, we fought like titans before the onslaught of the gods themselves but the end was never in doubt and our precious seventeen were soon no more - pushed apart and cut down without mercy or honour, even as the Vandals on the galley which had stood off urged the Calabrians on like men shouting at dogs fighting in a pit. It was obscene but I did not have time to dwell on such things as a spatha caved in the leather cuirass on my shoulder and I had crumpled down into a darkness which was almost a blessed relief. My last vision was of the little knot of the Biarchus dancing about the swords ranged against him almost like a spectre, a misty form taking human shape only slightly . . .

Now I am awake and dying slowly on a galley itself also slowly dying. In this distance, I can see the Vandal and Roman galleys sailing north up along the Sardinian coast but I know in my heart the emperor is safe. We exchanged all our lives for those few moments and in doing so allowed our Augustus to meet his destiny. Was ever an exchange so easily bought and so wonderfully held? The huge swollen eye sinks before me into the West, firing the sea with flames of light. Now the cliffs emerge out of the spray and I can see bars of golden sand fringing their edge. Perhaps this Liburnian will yet be lucky and wash up ashore on one of those golden fringes, a relic from a dying age? I will not be there to find out the final fate of the ‘Domina Helena’, though, for in the dying light of this sinking sun, I can see again the phosphorescent trails below me. A cushion of light in the sea which has never left us from the moment we shipped out of Arelate. I understand now why these soft glowing forms have trailed my Liburnian through these seas and know also what I must do before the last of my blood ebbs away. Now I am at the last of this white vellum. The page is ended - and I thank all the gods that my own life held on long enough for that small mercy . . . Flavius Eugenius, Praepositus, classis Arelate . . . Ave Imperator . . .








The defeat of Alaric by the Eridanus Flumen in the winter of 414 AD shattered the unity of the Goths and drove several bands of survivors eastwards and to the south in disarray. Little is know, of course, of the squabbles each chieftain fell into with his companions but both Cassiodorus’ narrative and in particular Hinkley’s outstanding research recently reveals bitter infighting and an alarming haemorrhaging of barbarians from the standards. It is a testament not only to Allobich’s daring in marching south from Augusta Vindelicorum with so few troops but also his reputation as the slayer of Alaric that brought so much panic into the barbarian ranks. Cassiodorus has always maintained the fiction that Alaric’s death was inevitable and that already several chieftains had been vying for power within the Gothic ranks. This suited his narrative line and also appeased the Gothic elements present in the court at Ravenna when he wrote his history of the Goths. Hinkley, in being the first major scholar to challenge this line, argues with good evidence that in fact Alaric’s fall was catastrophic and unexpected. The shock waves ruptured Gothic unity and the whole host fell into several disparate elements which even the proclaiming of Athaulf as rex failed to unify. ‘Manuscript E’ at last provides some corroboration to Hinkley’s thesis and finally places Cassiodorus in his right ideological perspective.



It is without question that the battles along the Eridanus were momentous at a strategic level and it would not be remiss to claim Allobich a place alongside Julian at Argentoratum or even Belisarius before Carthage. However, both Escher and myself agree that within the wider landscape of the western Roman empire it was by no means a decisive blow. The Numantian Chronicle, written in Alexandria, records the defeat of a Roman army west along the African coast - overrun by Vandal hordes now moving east towards Carthage - and it can be conjectured that in fact the reign of the new Augustus, Bonifacius, began with that defeat and not the death of Alaric as subsequent panegyrics claim. The eastern Romans under Sarus and Aspar make devastating advances west and north up through Illyricum towards the vital city of Ravenna and the latter itself we know from contemporary hagiographic accounts and recent digs labours under a severe plague.



That is also not to forget the usurping Romans in Gaul and Britain and the ever-present Burgundian and Alemannic tribes ever watchful across the Rhine and Danube limes.

However, having said that, within the remit of ‘Manuscript E’ and the notaries who ever labour in recording the events around the province and of Allobich himself, it must be confessed that the Eridanus limes, as it were, was a decisive event without parallel in the memories of the Romans present. Words from historians such as ourselves will never be able to do justice to the feelings and emotions of those survivors in the snow and ice, their armour hacked and shields rent, watching the Gothic bodies freeze slowly into a mute epitaph to Roman valour and arms . . .

. . . There is a dawn no man ever sees but as a moment alone and so private no words will ever translate it; a dawn in which a new sun emerges radiant in a diadem of light; a dawn which rises, it must be said, more from within that it does from without. A dawn which is spiritual beyond Sol Invictus himself. It would not be an error to write that on the morning after the last battle, with the dead arrayed about us like leaves from a frozen forest, with the Heliades bent always in an elegiac stoop, and with the river gleaming in a milky ribbon through the valley, not one of us did not touch or see that dawn as the sun rose into the Winter sky. The land we moved through as the little cooking fires arose and dried, stale, bread was broken open, was a land of the dead and even though we raised food to our cracked lips, wiping away dried blood as we did so, we could not but see death in all its forms about us - and yet not one of us did not have a thin smile always upon our faces. We broke our fast - meagre as it was - in a landscape littered with the dead of our foes - of the foes of Roma. What dawn could not but bathe us in a valedictory light, I ask you?

Allobich moved among us all through the day as the watery sun rose higher with his guards and staff officers about him like puppies. Gone was his brooding aspect with which he had awoken - now we knew from the scouts that the Goths were fleeing south and east into the arms of our Roman comrades. A brutal and joyous smile wreathed his features now and it was a smile which spoke of vengeance and glorious fighting to come. I trailed in his wake privileged to be by his side, ever eager to note down his words with my stylus even as I also now carried almost out of habit a spatha by my side. Both burdens I shouldered without complaint.

Everywhere he went men knelt at his passing as if an emperor himself walked among us. I could see that this irked him but on this day of all days he allowed them this affection to him. Even the African officer in his gilded armour with his olive-black eyes smiled in indulgence and was not offended - when in living memory had a Roman general deserved such a triumph? Only towards the end of the day as the sun gilded the tops of the poplars did Allobich strip off his armour and descend into the waters of Eridanus to bath away the grime and blood and fatigue. For one strange moment, in all my pagan fears, as he disappeared beneath the sacred river, I wondered if he would ever return and that perhaps Roma herself would take him away from us . . .



. . . The days which followed the demise of Alaric and the Gothic hosts were spent in garnering supplies from the barbarians’ wagons and hunting down what little survivors remained. Slaves were acquired in abundance and thanks to God’s mercy we did not now lack servants to maintain the camps and the temporary fossa, always overlooked by the stern gazes of the Centenarii. Always our sentries watched the horizon and our standards remained high. We were a Roman Comitatus on Roman soil among Romans and yet we could not shake off the expectation of further attack. Wine we now had in abundance - oils, silks, precious stones, and against all our expectations the treasures of Jerusalem once looted some many years ago by Vespasian and Titus. All the pillage and sack of Rome some four long and bitter years ago lay at our feet in the shambles of what had once been Alaric’s camp. I wept to see the gems and gold his barbarians had taken from Roma - the Eternal City and all around me as our soldiers and officers filed past to see these wonders I saw men bow in shame that Roman valour had failed to honour these victory laurels from so long ago.

It was then that Allobich had risen up upon a dais of rough turf clad in fresh armour and draped in a new long cloak of wine-dark materials. In the crook of one arm lay his crested helm and his other hand rested upon his spatha - the one item he had not changed and which still lay encrusted with barbarian blood. He spoke then into our shame and dismay and wondered that we revered such trinkets - mere spoilage of war not worth the remarking on. Had these shiny baubles saved Alaric from his destiny with Roma? Had all the gems and coins here in these tents won him a great victory over the little Roman army from Raetia Secunda - the merest of Roman provinces in the empire? No. They dazzled the eyes and moved the blood but in truth these were but the appearance of pride and honour. Forget them. Rome lives in mens' hearts and pride more than in the surface gleam of metal. I was astonished that this Goth should so speak in such Christian terms and it moved my heart to hear him bid us look to inner glory and not mere external fancies. I saw also that his words cheered our men and many looked not then upon the treasures of Rome but instead into each other and found again the strength which had caused us all to rise up unbidden and march all alone towards that final battle under the bitter sun . . . Amen . . .

. . . On the seventh day after the death of Alaric, as the notaries with a little Christian learning performed sacred rites among the papilio tents, word arrive via tired riders that Aetius and the Romans to the east had found and engaged the new rex of the Goths, Athaulf, near Verona and that in a fierce fight the rex had been humiliated and beaten further east into the low hills north of Ravenna. Further sporadic engagements had depleted what little forces he had left and now it was thought that Athaulf was in hiding in some caves and hidden valleys around the small town of Decentium. Only Theodoric, another minor noble and nominated by Athaulf as his successor - although no love was lost between them - remained to our south with a sizable contingent of Gothic warriors; though we knew in our hearts these forces feared us as the wolves fear a pride of regal lions now. Word also arrived that despite all our fears, the emperor himself with his retinue from Carthage was ashore and in good health, having braved the hostile waters from Africa to Europe with scarcely a single sighting of a Vandal galley. This new burned our hearts and made us smile for joy. It was then that Allobich ordered the commanders of the men to break camp and march down the Roman road towards the coast to finally meet Bonifacius. He sent orders to Aetius to arrive with all dispatch while also providing security for towns and villas near the remaining Gothic forces.

On that day when we finally marched away from the Eridanus Flumen and the ever-bowed Heliades not a single soldier among us did not weep and give prayers to whatever providence ruled his heart.





Four days later as if by divine mandate, among the rubble of the ancient Villa Deciamus, its vine-yards and olive grooves all trampled and ruined, Allobich, Aetius and Bonifacius clasped hands and poured a libation in honour of the dead . . . And I was privileged to hear from all of them in their turn a strange prophecy and a dream in which the fates of Rome - and I use the plural with care - were told . . .





In the ‘Anecdota’ of the Pseudo-Marcellus, a brief notice records the meeting of the Augustus with his generals at the ruined villa close by the shore of Etruria and near the old grounds which once bred the Tarquiniae. The notice is bald and lacking detail yet it does contain one curious item often ignored by scholars up till now:

‘ . . . in the low months in the Consulship of Aetius and Gaudentius, Bonifacius convened a consilium with his Magisters in the Villa Deciamus, now fallow, and all attended this meeting with high hopes and full loyalty, even the soothsayers and Etruscan priests . . .’

This is an age ripe with religious discord and fervour, with creeds and heterodoxies springing up faster than even the barbarians, and yet the Pseudo-Marcellus singles out the ancient Etruscan priests alone of all the religious figures who surely attended such an important meeting - the first official convening by the new emperor upon Italian soil. Most up until now have merely dismissed this as archaic rhetoric - glossing the ancient location of the meeting, nothing more. ‘Manuscript E’, however, now provides another version and one it must be said which only adds to the mystery surrounding this meeting.

Alone of all the entries by the various notaries in ‘Manuscript E’ - ‘Probus’, ‘Virgil’ and ‘Florus’ to name the most frequent and understood of them all - this meeting stands out as something singularly important and yet impenetrable to all those who read it. Even our notaries are aware in passing of sitting outside something to a degree - of recording words and actions of which even they have only the dimmest understanding. It is perhaps not inappropriate to remark with all due respect that in this one entry these notes move beyond history and into oracular writing - prophesy, even. Both Escher and myself are in agreement that the entries here must stand intact yet can add very little gloss or addendum to what appears to be a series of vague and elliptical words. It is the most sceptical and least present notary who ironically, given what follows, opens the entries . . .

. . . It is men who write their deeds upon the world and it is the world which suffers them to do so. Not gods nor the piety of saints. To appeal otherwise is naught but vanity. Men alone account to themselves. Even when wrapped up in their delusions. So it was that as the snows began their early melt and the wind blew a briny warmth from out of the ancient Tyrrhenian Sea our Augustus encamped among the ruins of the Deciamus estate, marvelling at the fallen statues, the broken aqueducts and the shattered walls. His tears fell without shame to see the ruin of his empire beneath the heel of the barbarian. Tents were erected then among the old villa’s boundary lines, all billowing in the wind, and the Dragon standards were hoisted high into the untilled earth. We stood and marvelled at the splendour of the emperor’s retinue - all chased gold and pattered silk - while we in our turn stood by in our rent armour and blunt swords. Not a few of us glanced up at the dull eagle of the old III Italica and felt a slow pride to see its fierce eyes roam still over us all, and we remembered the words of Allobich days earlier when we had gazed upon the spoils of Alaric.

Food and wine was carried forth from the galleys at anchor in the bay and soon all our officers and notaries of rank were feasting the health of Bonifacius and celebrating his safe arrival to these shores. Again and again the Augustus bade Allobich and Aetius tell of their exploits and only when our own lord spoke about that march south through the snows and the ice from our little province did the emperor pause as if in an act of piety. This I found strange that a man elevated to the purple by the armies of Africa and by the Senate should so move himself. Such was the superstition which fills men’s hearts. Soon all were addled with the wine and most ambled away at the emperor’s will to fall asleep or sing unquiet songs to the stars. It was then that Bonifacius invited both Aetius and Allobich to walk with him awhile through the ruins - dismissing his guards and only leaving the notaries alone to follow them. There amidst the cracked stones and toppled statues of now forgotten Romans attired in cuirass and laurel wreaths, all three unburdened themselves of words which I scarcely caught at - their import so eluded my stylus. Incense wreathed the early evening air and then old men appeared clad in thread-bare shawls, mumbling sounds in a dead language which raised my hackles more than all the chatter of a barbarian tongue can do - and inside my mind I felt again the old tug of superstition and fable. Mere trappings of those who are afraid to own their own deeds. I wrote but did not understand what came from my stylus . . .

. . . We had not expected to see the Etruscan soothsayers in the ruins, summoned by a glance from the emperor himself, all wreathed in incense, chanting the old litanies and formulae. I instantly recognised them from my youth so long ago spent in the pastures and fields of the old Etruscan highlands above Ravenna and where the ancient rites are still remembered in the folds of the night. Others around me of the Galilean bent recoiled in shock but on seeing the clemency of the emperor regained their composure and I swear even accorded them a little respect. Why should they not? These priests and soothsayers were older than Rome and guardians of her destiny. It is so deep in our blood that even to hear the Etruscan language is to touch the very legacy and history of our empire itself.

Then in a little knot shrouded in the smoke of the incense and the low murmurings of the priests, Bonifacius spoke of a dream and a nightmare which had plagued him all his life. A dream about the fate of Rome and her empire. This vision had never left him as a child and had driven him to seek power in the army and rise among its ranks to grasp at the last the supreme dignity itself - not to fulfil that dream but to avert it. I saw both Aetius and Allobich recoil then in shock and both men went white despite the low bronze of the sunset and the newly lit torches among the ruins. This was a face upon my Goth I had never seen before and my hand trembled then even as it strove to catch all. Aetius spoke first and said he too had a dream which had plagued him all his life and driven him to defend Rome to deny that dream its reality. I could see that his words were a great burden to him and that he had never spoken of such things before now. Both turned to Allobich then and he too nodded and to my amazement said that always in his dreams since he had been a child among his Gothic kin, Rome had harried him with a vision of such torment that he had resolved with all his heart to stem it from entering this world. Silence enveloped these three men save for the low murmur of the Etruscans. Far away the galleys rocked gently as the tide turned and, as if in another world, I could see figures ambling along the shorefront, still cradling wine under their arms.

It was then that Bonifacius bade Aetius speak first and unburden himself of his dream -

The Dream of Aetius

. . . He remembered standing on a shore of such barbaric appearance that it made his chest tighten with fear. Peaks of ice glimmered in the distance and dark woods fringed the shore. He knew that Rome was further away than any Roman could ever hope to reach yet reach it he must. Men waited upon him - soldiers in armour, all tired and wounded. They looked to him for hope and direction and he despite his fear lifted them up and took them into the woods all arrayed in martial splendour. He remembered a journey so long and filled with so much battle and in which friend after friend fell that all hope fled from them save his will alone. He alone lifted them across the roof of the world always showing the way back to Rome and the hearths of their families. Steppes, forests, mountains rose up to bar them but he guided his little expedition through them all until at last all lost and alone they fell one by one in a distant desert under the gleaming lances of a mailed foe which came upon them like an endless river. He remembered weeping alone in the midst of the enemy seeing all his friends cut down to the last and feeling the sand of the desert, its desiccated emptiness, encompass him like an omen. He fell then, the last Roman in the world, failing all those Romans whom he had led over the world . . .



In the silence which followed these words from Aetius, the Etruscans closed slightly in upon us like guards and the incense thickened in the gloom. Bonifacius clasped the shoulders of his companion and I could see that tears gilded his cheeks. Our emperor spoke next and gave us his dream to honour the words of Aetius -

The Dream of Bonifacius

. . . He remembered standing in a square in a Roman city baking in the heat of an African sun. This city was like Carthage but not like Carthage. Men readied themselves around him in tattered armour and clothing. Far away he could hear the sounds of gates being forced open and the squeal of timber breaking and he knew that an end was upon them once and for all. He remembered sitting upon his horse in this square and seeing a triumphal arch, its marble resplendent with carvings of Roman valour and honour, and wondering on the glory of an empire now gone. It was then that smoke and fire enveloped all and through the flames his men, the last of the Romans, fell joyous but doomed into the jaws of death, and it dawned upon him that he alone was given the fate to see an empire itself die. Then he was alone in a sea of licking blades and he knew that even death itself would never erase that shame from his heart . . .



The words of the Augustus chilled my heart. Such horror from so simple a description and a dream that it almost overwhelmed me. For a moment, Bonifacius remained alone and still - far away in his dream watching all his Romans being cut down and the city falling apart in flames - and I wondered on how any man could bear the shame of seeing an empire fall before his very eyes.

Allobich stepped forward then and unclasped the spatha from his military belt. He raised it before the eyes of the emperor and all could see the blood still encrusted upon its hilt and pommel. He spoke then and said that while one single Roman stood to wield this sword Rome would never fall. Here among these shores and in this ancient land a little band of Romans from a small province had avenged the highest wrongs Rome had ever suffered. Imagine what could be done now that our Augustus was among us in all his martial glory?

I saw Bonifacius smile at that and reach out to touch the spatha. Strength seemed to flow back into his face even as the Etruscans around us raised their murmurings. The emperor asked then that Allobich be the last and the most honoured to finally confess his dream, and all of us tensed even as the Goth gathered to himself his counsel.

It was then that an urgent messenger broke in among us - and I could recognise one of the dull iron-coloured men of Felix - scattering the Etruscans in his haste and blurting out without ceremony that Augusta Vindelicorum was besieged by a numberless Alemanni host and that Posthumus Dardanus and the remaining Roman troops would soon all fall if not relieved -

Before even I could comprehend this news I saw Allobich smile like a wolf then and one by one remove the gold solidii from his hair, each coin discarded as though no longer needed. He shook his mane free and turned to his emperor saying that now his dream was a dream no longer . . . His dream and nightmare was come true . . . The stylus fell from my hands and rang upon the cracked marble in the silence which followed.






Correction XXXIX

(This is the last of the addendums pertaining to the Tribune Felix and his men who remained within their shadows deep in the Barbaricum around Raetia Secunda. This entry and its location immediately after the ‘Dreams’ of Aetius, Bonifacius and Allobich shows how well our notaries grasped their doom and the fate of Augusta Vindelicorum. It would not be remiss to say that they knew no other testament would survive such to tell of their courage.)





. . . Oh how we missed your courage and steadfastness, my Magister Equitum, as the snow closed in on the province and the crows circled above us like harbingers of doom. True, you left us in peace and security - the cows lowered in the pens and the stores provided to keep us through the Winter were plentiful. The men of the Senior Lions and the remaining cavalry ordines were ever vigilant, and even the ice-floes on the Danube were of little impediment to the barges and small river flotillas which patrolled with diligence. You marched south through the Alps into the Italies with the III and the men of the Senior Honorian Horse and such soldiers as you deemed worth taking and it was we who thought you were marching to your doom. How wrong we were.

You know my men. They are wolves in the night. All hardened and inured to toil. Not the fallow idleness of wine and roasted beef for these men - few as they may be. These are men to watch your back in the subtle night when shadows seep poison and each creak on the floor or beneath a tree is laced with death. Men whose every relative or wife or son lies dead to a barbarian’s blade. Men who shirk no danger however fierce or unrelenting. You know that, Allobich. They are all dead now. All gone. Gone as if they never existed - Murentius of the many scars, old Scurilio, Maxentianus, and all the rest. Gone into that long night from which no one returns. Soon I will join them no doubt. I have lived far too rough a life not to fall into that darkness. So, one last scroll from out the Barbaricum, my friend, and then farewell. Do not mourn. I have drunk deep and savoured every drop.

It began five days ago deep in the old tracks which cut through the woods south of Argentoratum. Scurilio and two of his lads were escorting old Drusus Magnus back to Augusta Vindelicorum with news that his proposed alliance with the Saxon tribes north of the Lower Rhine had been successful. For seven days they had travelled slowly though the pacified woods around the Alemannic lands, rejoicing in their good fortune. Few barbarians had been seen and those that were had merely been toiling pitifully in the fields. The Barbaricum was empty and silent. That should have been enough to alert them but I imagine the rise of your star, your Fortune, gave them hope for peace and so their guard was down.

It came in the night barely a day’s travel from the limes. Flaming torches arcing over the tents panicking the mules and the horses, volleys of arrows and javelins, and then the warriors in among them, swords cutting down all who rose up in alarm. Scurilio alone kept his head enough to bundle Magnus onto the back of a horse and slap its rump with the flat of his blade. The last thing this old Roman dignitary saw was the flames reaching higher up enveloping the silhouettes of figures falling in agony. Drusus Magnus alone rode back into Augusta Vindelicorum with the soot from those fires still on his face.

I was three days’ north beyond the limes and to the east of the Alemanni lands when word reached me from the stylus of Posthumus Dardanus. I could not but help reading his words in disbelief. Was this young Roman Prefect unnecessarily alarmed? Angry that I was being deflected from work that needed to be done among the tribes I assembled my men and rode as fast as I could west and south towards the Danube and the small crossing at Castra Herculensis. Anger made me ride too fast and too far. They were upon us before we knew what was happening. It was a fierce and short clash which saw us slay all our attackers but which also saw all my men taken down save for myself and old Brennus the Gaul. We alone survived despite our wounds and now I knew that forces were rising here in the Barbaricum stronger than anything we had ever seen before.

On the day that we sighted the castra and the smoke rising from its shattered palisade, old Brennus collapsed in his saddle without a sound. I had time only to pour a small libation in the old way before spurring my horse forward to cross at the low ford by the castra. They were no survivors. The small detachment, no more than an ordo of limitanei, were all butchered, some still in their sleeping cots. The tribune in command was nailed up against the south gate, his corpse riddled with arrows.

I know now that they are tracking me in the shadows as I ride along the limes of the Danube towards Augusta Vindelicorum. It is three days’ away but it might as well be Rome itself for all the good it does me. The devastation is all around me and without let. The vengeance of the Alemanni for what we did to their villages has come to visit us, Magister. I fear for Raetia Secunda. I fear for Posthumus Dardanus and the legionaries who remain. I fear for all the simple people who live here in this little province so far from the great cities of our empire. I fear also that you will return too late and see only what I have seen since crossing the Danube.

It is night now and my campfire burns low. I know they will rush me in the night like dogs and I will wait for them to come my spatha naked across my lap. Do not mourn for me, Allobich. This is how it was always meant to be. I will stand and throw aside my old military cloak and show them what a Roman is. How a Roman dies. Before that however I will end this epistle and place it into the saddlebags of my horse. I will whisper a few words into her ears and then send her on into the night with a shout of triumph. Perhaps she will survive the night and reach the town and who knows you may yet read these words. The last words of Felix, Tribune of men I know without needing read are all dead across the Barbaricum. This night is cold but peaceful. The stars glitter so. I am in awe of their beauty . . .






The Fourteenth and Final Consilium

All through the night I shivered and prayed to God that He would alleviate my fears but in vain. The news from Augusta Vindelicorum was everything we feared since abandoning her and the people of Raetia Secunda in that long march south through the Alpine passes into the Italies. Now the barbarians were at the gates in all their savage fury and we were many leagues away in a softer land by a sea indifferent to all our sufferings. The words of the messenger burned into my soul even as he spoke them to our Augustus but it was the face of Allobich and the way in which he smiled, like a wolf which knows its doom is upon it, that will forever haunt my simple Christian soul. Around me I saw the other notaries tense and one, my brother in contention, and whom I once despised but now cared for as one can only do after sharing battle, shake and tremble like a leaf in a storm. He fumbled his stylus and I in my charity bent to retrieve it for him.

As I did so I too saw that my own hands shook as though with an ague.

Can men dream of the future and fight all their lives to avert it? Is it in our power to change the destiny writ large in all of us through the providence of God’s Will? I am too humble a servant to understand these questions and leave them to the great councils and synods convened by the emperors. But I will tell you this, reader, that in these three men alone in the murmuring ranks of the Etruscan priests, with incense wreathing their heads like diadems, I saw two who had done that very thing and one alone who had not. And this one, even as he unspun the gold coins and let loose his golden hair in waves about his wolfish face, seemed more content than the others - for I knew then as if touched by God’s grace that there is a peace to be found in marching to a certain doom. A calmness and even relish once the fight to avert destiny is given over and only the inevitable remains. I saw in that face, the face of a Goth more Roman than many I met though it shame me to say this, the calm peace of a man facing his death foretold and who was now finally free of dreams and nightmares. I think in my clumsy fashion perhaps I saw into the face of saintliness then and knew perhaps what the blessed martyrs felt as they accepted the fires into their flesh, may heaven preserve their memories . . .

. . . Augusta Vindelicorum besieged. The words hung about my ears even as I struggled to put them down on the vellum. Our town at the mercy of the Alemanni far, far, away beyond the Alps. Horror gnawed at my mind and only the continual act of writing allowed me to remain sane and focused on what was happening around me. I saw our emperor step up to Allobich and grimly pledge all his African legionaries and cavalry to ride north with him to avert the fate of his nightmare even as he himself had fought to deny his. Aetius too offered up his veterans from the Noricum and Pannonian provinces. Together they would all march north through the passes above Mediolanum and pour down like a flood upon the Danube and the limes which had remained true to Rome. As he, Allobich, had marched south so too would they march north and return the honour and the sacrifice. How can I describe the pride which filled my heart then? That this but newly blessed Augustus would revere us in so high a fashion? That the remnants of all the Romans in the Italies would sally beyond the mountains to save such a small town in so little a province? And for the first time I saw our Magister Equitum stumble as though wounded with a dart from Mars himself. Their words struck him greater than any blow I have ever seen fall upon him in battle.

What Allobich did next was perhaps the hardest thing and the greatest sacrifice he had ever done for he, with words so simple as to almost break my heart, forbade them to do any such thing. It was not for an emperor of Rome to throw away his life in the doom of another man’s dream. Two great fates had been averted but at the cost it seemed of one that was not. Let the gods have their due and let he and his men return to the land which they had promised to defend to their last breath. The city of Rome and the last of the Goths remained to be dealt with here and now. That was the legacy of their averted dreams.

I saw the Augustus lower his head at that and then accept the inevitable as the soothsayers bowed low into the gathering gloom. For a reason I cannot comprehend I found myself gazing upwards into the brittle night. A little snow was falling, no more than dust upon the earth, and it fell upon my hot face like a balm.

So it was that days later under the raised swords and lances of the African and Pannonian soldiers, we turned for home, all our heads raised high, despite our wounds and the tattered state of our armour and our weapons, despite the gaps in our ranks, which will never be filled, despite the stern yet humbled gaze of our emperor, Bonifacius who knew he would never see us again. We filed away from the ruined villa through the light snows and over the broken untilled land until the legions were nothing but a faded memory and the sight of the sea and the little galleys vanished into our memories. We rode north into the mist and the fading light, into the fallow unkempt places where once Rome stood as a testament to something other than the rule of the barbarian and the law of the strong, into the burnt and shattered lands where now only shadows lived. We rode all wrapped up in our little standards and flags, our faces scarred and our hands never far from the hilts and hafts of our weapons. We rode in silence and with a stern unyielding look upon our faces, we, the men of the Comitatus, the Senior Honorian Horse, the old III Italica, the remaining men of the Palatine ordines, and those light troops who always strode out fearlessly to harass the oncoming foe . . . And not once did Allobich ever look back or hesitate from that long march north into the Alps and our little province by the Danube . . . His eyes always straining north towards the limes of Rome, our limes, our home . . . That final limit which all men must cross into the Elysium of their dreams . . .



This is the last entry of the ‘Manuscript E’. It is fitting that it comes from the pen of ‘Virgil’ whose namesake of course wrote about another epic journey. It is obvious both from the state of the rescued fragments and the final words written above that there are no more entries. We do not know why the records of the province cease at this particular juncture but end they do. As the Comitatus of Allobich rides north and out of Italy so too does it ride in a sense out of our records and only on into dreams and speculations.

Fragments and little hints abound which give us some idea of what happened but nothing is sure as all students of history must know. In the Spring of 414 AD, a resurgent bacaudae devastated the lands west of Mediolanum as evinced by archaeological digs. Several forts and hamlets in the high passes which littered the main road north to Raetia were burnt or razed to the ground and some have argued that severe fighting accounted for this. We can conjecture a march north contested by rebel forces using scorched earth tactics but which in the end proved futile. The Kunst Universitatas’ ongoing UNESCO-sponsored dig has shown that sometime in late Spring Augusta Vindelicorum was subject to a devastating pillage from which it never recovered. Surrounding lands remained fallow for several generations and many of the once impressive Roman engineering works fell into disrepair or were robbed for stonework. Four mass burials have been found with evidence of sudden and violent death. Of the actual fate of the Comitatus and those in it together with the Romans who had remained behind to defend the limes and the Danube, there is no record. It is true to say that perhaps they will always remain riding to defend that thin line by the ancient European river which parted civilisation from barbarism, and that perhaps it is better to remember them as phantoms on that road north always doomed to ride and defend a dying empire which no matter how valiant it fought was never more than a single step away from falling . . .

There is, however, a legacy which shadows Allobich and his few, thin, men. A legacy which remains as a testament to their courage and their honour. For that Spring, Athaulf fell in battle to a Roman force whose own commander died raining blows about this Gothic rex’s helm. The king of the Goths lay slaughtered in battle fleeing with what few retainers he had high in the cold and misty hills north of Aquilea. He fell wretched and hungry like a starving mongrel dog and no mercy was shown to him or his kin.











One month later deep in the heartland of Italy Bonifacius and Aetius finally caught the remaining Gothic warriors, now led by Theodoric, who had grasped at the title of rex with hungry hands, and trapped them against the mighty walls of Rome itself. In a desperate attempt to cultivate allies, this Goth had bribed the petty tyrants of the Eternal City to ally with him but it was too little and too late. A surprise march and a night-time assault caught the Goths mere miles from the high walls of Rome and to the cries of ‘Allobich’ and ‘Honorius’, the African and Pannonian troops fell among them under a shower of fire darts. Theodoric was cut down with all his host and with him ended the Gothic nation and its blight upon the Roman Empire.











In the morning with the dust of battle still on him, Bonifacius received an emissary from Theodosius in the east promising him the rank of Patrician if he would step aside from the Purple and swear allegiance to a single Roman emperor enthroned in Constantinople. Historians to this day are still debating the wisdom of his acceptance.





Both Escher and myself sometimes imagine how Allobich, surely dead by now, would have dealt with that offer . . .