Roma Mater (62 page)

Ingena:
Avranches. Today it is Norman rather than Breton, but of course neither of those peoples had yet reached France.

Vorgium
(later
Osismiis
): Carhaix. Folk etymology derives the present name from ‘Ker-Ahes’ (‘Stronghold of Ahes’, the latter name being given to Dahut in some versions of the Ys legend), but this is false.
Mauretania:
approximately, northern Morocco.
Condate Redonum:
Rennes.

Veneti:
A tribe in south Brittany, occupying approximately Morbihan.

Fanum Martis:
Corseul. The tower is still there, in remarkably good condition.

Garomagus:
There was a Roman town of some small importance – as we describe later – in the area of modern Douarnenez, but its name is not known. Garomagus’ is our conjecture, referring to its production
of garum
, a fish sauce which was a major item of Armorican trade.
Passage grave occupied by refugees:
A case of this is known. There were probably more.
Ahriman:
The supreme lord of evil in the Zoroastrian religion and its Mithraic offshoot, as Ahura-Mazda (or Ormazd) was the lord of good.

Franks in Condate Redonum:
Those tribes lumped together as Franks (Latin
Franci)
originated in western Germany and the Netherlands. As yet they had not overrun Gaul, but some had entered and settled in various areas. The laeti at Rennes and their open paganism, including even human sacrifice, just at the time when Gratillonius passed through, are attested.

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Sena:
Île de Sein. Archaeology shows it to have been occupied since prehistoric times, but we suppose that for several centuries it was reserved exclusively for the use of the Gallicenae – as the first-century geographer Pomponius Mela says was the case in his own period.
House:
There are traces, now submerged, of what is believed to have been a Roman building at Île de Sein. Was this actually the sanctuary of its priestesses, remodelled under Roman influence?

Stones:
These two megaliths are still on the island.
Cernunnos: A
major Celtic god, represented as a man with stag’s antlers.

Yes, yea, aye:
You may have noticed that hitherto no person in the story has used any of these words. This is because Latin and the Celtic languages have no exact equivalent. We suppose that Semitic influence on the evolution of the Ysan tongue, otherwise basically Celtic, produced such words in it, just as the Germanic example would cause the Romance languages to develop them. Latin and Celtic do not employ a simple ‘No’ either when giving a negative response. However, we have supplied it in rendering the former, in order that that may seem colloquial to the modern reader, and have also provided Ysan with it.

6

Astrology:
Belief in this prevailed throughout the late Roman Empire, along with countless other superstitions. Since it appears to have been part of the Mithraic faith, Gratillonius was heterodox in his reservations about it.

Book:
The codex may go back as far as the first century. Towards the end of the fourth it had displaced the scroll except for legal and other special purposes. Elaborate illumination of the medieval sort was not yet done, but illustration of a simpler kind was, and it seems quite likely that the binding of some religious manuscripts was ornate and costly.

Twenty miles:
Roman miles, of course.

Gobaean Promontory (Promontorium Gobaeum
): The Cap Sizun area.

AVC: Anno Urbis Conditae
(‘V’ was habitually used for
‘U’ in inscriptions), year after the founding of Rome, for which the traditional date corresponded to 753
B.C.
The Romans themselves rarely counted time from this baseline, but the reference was not unknown.
SPQR: Senatus Populusque Romanus
, The Roman Senate and People’, proud motto of the Republic, long borne on standards of the legions.

Fortress and maritime station:
The remnant of the fortress can still be seen on Pointe de Castelmeur. There must have been more of it extant in Gratillonius’s day. The station is rather conjectural.

Key:
By Roman times, locks had developed into bolt-and-pin types not too unlike modern sorts. Their keys had corresponding prongs. When a key was inserted, these prongs pushed up the pins, whereupon a sidewise pull drew back the bolt.

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Fresh-made laurel wreath:
The laurel is an evergreen.
Cape Rach:
Pointe du Raz (hypothetical reconstruction of the aboriginal name). The
ch
is supposed to be as in modern Scottish or German.

Refusing the crown:
While today our knowledge of Mithraism is scanty, this detail is attested.

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Point Vanis:
Pointe du Van (hypothetical reconstruction of the aboriginal name).

Nummus
(plural
nummi): A
coin of the late Empire, minuscule and debased. It took more than 14,000 to equal one gold solidus. Archaeology shows that Gresham’s Law was as operative in Roman times as it is now.
Thule:
It is not certain what the Classical geographers meant by this name. Iceland and Norway are among the more common suggestions. We incline towards the latter.
The sea gate of Ys:
Today one would solve the problem of protecting a harbour from overwhelming tides by constructing locks. These, however, were not developed until much later.

Saxons (Saxones
): This name did not distinguish any single tribe or kingdom. Rather, it was a general term used by the Romans for all those robbers and invaders who came across the North Sea from the northern Netherlands, the German littoral, Jutland, and possibly regions still more distant.

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Soap:
This appears to have been a Gallic invention, regarded by the Romans more often as a medicinal for the skin than as a cleansing agent.

Basilica:
In this period and earlier, the word referred to a building for public business – administration, trials at law, etc.

The layout of the church:
Private homes were frequently converted for this purpose, but it is clear that no one in Ys who might be willing to make such a donation possessed a suitable one; so, as happened elsewhere (for example, to the Parthenon), this pagan temple was expropriated by Imperial decree. Normally there would be a baptistry, but in Ys there was no resident bishop, and a chorespiscopus had no authority to administer this sacrament – which was not usually given children anyway.
Vide infra.
Believers who had not received it could enter no farther than the porch or vestibule, and were dismissed before the Communion service began in the sanctuary. Even in the great churches, furniture was basically the same as described here. Such amenities as pews were for a later era.

Redonic:
Of the tribe of the Redones, around Rennes.
Audiarna:
Audierne, on the River Goyen, some nine English miles east of the Baie des Trépassés. There are traces of Roman occupation. Our Latin name is conjectural, and we assume the name of St Audierne comes from the town rather than vice versa.
Consecrated bread and wine:
At this period, only a bishop could consecrate the bread and wine for the Eucharist, or perform several other important functions. This consecration was generally of large quantities at a time, which were then distributed among churches. Eucherius would seldom have to restock. Not only was his congregation tiny, but the majority of it were unbaptized, having only the status of catechumens and therefore unqualified to partake of the Lord’s Supper. Baptism was a rite regarded with great awe. It must be done by a bishop or, at least, under the supervision of one; as a rule, this was just once or twice a year, notably at Easter. Most believers received it comparatively late in life, not uncommonly when on their deathbeds – as in the case of Constantine I. After
all, it washed away prior sins, but was of no avail against any that might be committed afterwards, which indeed would then be the deadlier.

Eucherius’s heresy:
It anticipated that of Pelagius, in some small degree; such ideas were in the air.
The appointment of Eucherius:
At this time the Church organization that we know today, including the Papacy itself, was still nascent. Originally each congregation had had its own bishop, the priests and deacons being merely his councillors and assistants, but eventually the numbers of the faithful were such as to require something more elaborate, which naturally came to be modelled on the Roman state. The process was under way in the decades around 400
A.D.
, but as yet there was a great deal of local variation, arbitrariness, and outright irregularity. For example, St Patrick may well have consecrated himself a bishop. The chorepiscopus served most of the functions later assigned the parish priest, but by no means all of them.

Neapolis:
Naples.

(Gallia) Aquitania: A
Roman province occupying, approximately, the part of France south of the Loire, west of the Allier, and north of the Pyrenees.
Tamesis:
The Thames.

The Hooded Three:
The
genii cucullati
, a trio of gods (?) in Britain about which we have little more information than some representations and votive inscriptions.
Handclasp:
The handshake as we know it seems to be of Germanic origin, but might have appeared independently in Ys, or been observed by travellers and become a custom at home.

Niall and the women:
In sleeping with women of various households, the King was not exerting any special prerogative nor giving any offence. Early Irish society gave a great deal of freedom to women other than slaves, includ
ing the right to choose which of several different forms of marriage or cohabitation they wanted. Wives often took lovers, with their husbands knowledge and consent.
Mag Slecht:
In present-day County Cavan. Cromb Croche (later Crom Cruach) and the twelve attendant divinities were probably pillar stones, sheathed in gold and bronze. There will be more about them later.
Ruirthech:
The Liffey.

Clón Tarui:
Now Clontarf, a district of Dublin on the north shore of the bay. It became the site of a famous battle in the year 1016.

Public hostel:
There were several classes of these in early Ireland, endowed by kings or communities with enough land to support the provision of free food and shelter to all travellers. Such hospitality was required to maintain honour; and, to be sure, it encouraged trade. The innkeepers were usually men, but sometimes women.
Border of the Lagini:
The River Liffey does
not
mark the border of present-day Leinster. It did, though, come to form one frontier of lands subject to the southern Uí Néill. Given the enormous uncertainties about conditions at the time of their great ancestor, we think it reasonable to suppose that Mide extended this far. After all, Niall could scarcely have ravaged Britain as repeatedly and thoroughly as the chronicles say, did he not have at least one port of embarkation on the east coast of Ireland.
Boru tribute:
About this, more later. Imposed of old by Connaught on Leinster, it came to be claimed by the Tara kings, but more often than not they had to collect it by force, and oftener still it went unpaid. In large part this was because it was exorbitant (though one need not take literally the traditional list of cattle and other treasure). King Brian, eleventh-century victor at Clontarf, got the nickname Bóruma – now usually rendered as Boru –because he did succeed in exacting it.

Smoke:
Modern experiments have shown that primitive Celtic houses could not have had vent holes as more elaborate halls did. Instead, smoke simply filtered out through the conical thatch roofs, killing vermin on the way.

Horseblanket:
The ancient Irish seem to have used merely a pad when riding. It is not certain whether they had saddles by the time of our story, but if they did, the use of these could not have been common.

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Greenish light:
Even the best Roman window glass had such a tinge.

Diocese:
A division of the Empire. In our period there were fifteen, of which Britain constituted one. Each was governed by a vicarius, who was responsible to a praetorian prefect. The praetorian prefect of Gaul, residing in Trier, also administered Britain and Iberia. A diocese was subdivided into provinces, whose governors, called praesides, had civil but not military authority.
Triclinium:
The dining room in a Roman house. However, the basic layout of an Ysan home was different from that of a typical Roman one.

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Ishtar:
The recorded Carthaginian form of this name is ‘Ashtoreth’ or something similar, but we assume ‘Ishtar’ was the older version; and Babylonian immigrants to Ys would have reinforced its use.

Sea level:
This has varied considerably in historical time, presumably because of melting and refreezing of polar ice as climate passes through cycles of warmth and cold. In the late fourth century it was at, or not long past, a peak. Western Brittany, where the tidefall is always great, would be especially affected – above all in small bays with steeply shelving bottoms between sheer headlands.

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Lutetia Parisiorum:
Paris.

Draughts:
Board games of various sorts were popular in antiquity, though none seem to have been identical with any played nowadays. However, versions of what we now call draughts or chequers go back to Pharaonic Egypt.

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Noble landowners: A flaith
was a man who actually owned land, normally by right of inheritance although subject to the claims of his kindred and tuath. He rented out most of it to others, for payment in kind and in services.
Beltene
(also spelled
Beltane, Beltine
, etc.): In the modern calendar, 1 May. In pagan times the date may have been set according to the moon, but would have fallen approximately the same. Most lunar calendars count from the new moon, which is the phase most readily identifiable, but we assume that the Northern Celts, at least, wanted a full moon at their great festivals, to help light ceremonies held after dark. They could have added fourteen or fifteen days to the time when they observed the new one – or
they may simply have taken advantage of the fact that the full one is less often completely lost to sight in the wet climate of their homelands. Second only to Samain in importance, Beltene carried with it many beliefs and customs which survived, somewhat Christianized, almost until the present day. We have extrapolated backwards in order to suggest what various features may originally have been like.