The Last Legion (59 page)

A long, long time has passed since the distant days of my youth, and my first name, Myrdin, has changed in the mouths of this people as well. They now call me Merlin. But my soul remains the same, destined to find the immortal light, like the soul of every man created in the image of God.

The sun begins to melt the snow on the slopes of the hills, and the first flowers of spring open their corollas to the tepid wind that comes from the south. God has allowed me to finish my work and I render him thanks. Here my story ends. Here, perhaps, a legend is born.

The fall of the Roman World is one of the great themes of the history of western civilization, and yet remains one of the most mysterious, given the complexity of the problem and the scarcity of original accounts and sources regarding the epoch of Rome’s final decline. What’s more, this event – traditionally considered a catastrophe – is a mere historical convention. No one even noticed in 476
AD
that the Roman world had ended; nothing that happened that year was any more traumatic than what had been going on day in and day out for years. Odoacer – the Herulian chief who had deposed young Romulus Augustulus – simply turned the imperial insignia over to Constantinople, noting that one emperor was more than enough for the whole Roman World.

Most of the story told here is the fruit of my imagination; what I’ve attempted to do is to render the enormous impact of this event, while bringing out the emergence of new worlds, of new cultures and new civilizations whose roots still held fast to Roman tradition. The ‘Arthurian’ outcome of the story can be interpreted symbolically, as a parable, but this is not its only reading. Scholars have long recognized that the events which gave birth to the legend of King Arthur, set down in the middle ages by Geoffrey of Monmouth, actually took place at the end of the fifth century in Britain. Among the protagonists was a mysterious and heroic Aurelianus Ambrosius,
solus Romanae gentis
(‘the last of the Romans’), the victor of the Battle of Mount Badon against the Saxons and the predecessor of Pendragon and Arthur. We often tend to think of these characters as medieval knights, whereas in reality they were much closer to the Celtic Roman world. There is also truth in the tradition that holds that the Roman-Britons of the fifth century invoked the assistance of the emperor in fighting off invaders from the north and south. General Aetius twice consented to their pleas and sent Germanus, an enigmatic figure, half warrior and half saint, to their aid. Other characters, like Myrdin the Celt – the Merlin of Arthurian legend – are taken from the epic tradition which revolves around the legendary sword Excalibur. This name has been interpreted by eminent Celtists as a sort of contraction of the Latin words
ensis caliburnus
, that is, the ‘Calibian sword’, an expression which hints at a Mediterranean origin. The mythical, symbolic hypothesis expressed in the story is thus inspired by actual historical events at the twilight of the ancient world, unfolding in that arcane moment that was to give rise to Arthurian legend.

The events narrated are seen through the eyes of a group of loyalist Roman soldiers who still embody the traditions of the past and see the barbarians as ferocious aliens bent on destruction. This attitude was probably quite widespread at the time. The short-lived Roman/barbarian realms certainly failed due to irremediable conflict between the Romanized populations and the invaders. Today, the concept of invasion tends to be re-interpreted as a phenomenon of
Volkerwanderung
, or migration, although the end result remains much the same.

In the turbulent modern day, the West – which sees itself as immortal and indestructible (much as the Roman Empire did in its heyday) – would do well to consider that all empires dissolve sooner or later and that the wealth of one part of the world cannot hope to survive long in the face of the abject poverty of the rest of the world’s populations. Those who were called ‘barbarians’ then did not want to provoke the destruction of the Empire; they wanted merely to become part of it. Many of them even defended it with their lives, but the die was cast, and the world plunged into a long period of chaos and degradation.

Some of the novel’s characters express themselves in such a way as to suggest the residual survival of pagan sentiments; although this may not be easy to sustain historically at the end of the fifth century, it is not at all improbable, in the light of certain signals appearing in late sources. Such sentiments are best expressed in the ‘pagan’ attachment to tradition and to the
mos maiorum
, the customs of their ancestors, perhaps not wholly extinct in this age.

Very few details are known about Romulus Augustulus; in particular, the age at which the last emperor was deposed is controversial in historical sources. In creating the character, I’ve preferred the account of
Excerpta Valesiana, 38
, which speaks of him as a boy: ‘
Odoacar . . . deposuit Augustulum de regno, cuius infantiam misertus concessit ei sanguinem
’ (Odoacer deposed Augustulus from his throne and, feeling compassion for his tender age, spared his life . . .).

The specialized reader will have recognized a number of original sources woven into the fabric of the story, most from the late Latin period: Ammianus Marcellinus’s
History
,
De Reditu suo
by Rutilius Namatianus,
De gubernatione Dei
by Salvianus, the
History of the Gothic War
by Procopius of Caesarea, the
Lausiac History
by Palladius,
In Rufinum
by Claudianus,
Valesianus Anonimus
, Cassiodorus’s
Chronicles
,
Vita Epiphanii
and
Comitis Chronicon
, as well as occasional references to Plutarch, Orosius, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome. A series of sources from the early middle ages forms the base for the ‘Britannic’ epilogue of the story: the
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
by the Venerable Bede, and the
De exitio Britanniae
by Gildas.

My deepest thanks go to a number of dear friends who have supported and encouraged me with their suggestions and scholarship, especially Lorenzo Braccesi and Giovanni Gorini of the University of Padova, Gianni Brizzi and Ivano Dionigi of the University of Bologna, Venceslas Kruta of the Sorbonne and Robin Lane Fox of New College, who listened to this whole story on a long car trip from Luton to Oxford. Precious help was also provided by Giorgio Bonamente and Angela Amici of the University of Perugia, and my former colleague and collaborator Gabriella Amiotti of the Università Cattolica of Milan. Obviously, any errors or injudicious choices are my responsibility alone. I must also express my gratitude to Franco Mimmi, who steadfastly assisted me from his residence in Madrid, Marco Guidi, one of my staunchest and oldest friends, who I often consulted regarding events of the late Roman age in Britain, and Giorgio Fornoni, who in keeping with a decade-long tradition, welcomed me to his magnificent Alpine home where I worked on the final draft of this novel in total isolation from the rest of the world. Special thanks go to my wife, Christine, my most critical and attentive – as well as my most affectionate – reader, and to my literary agents Laura Grandi and Stefano Tettamanti who accompanied me step by step on this project, encouraging me even in the most difficult moments. I also thank Paolo Buonvino, whose music was my constant companion as I wrote this novel, inspiring its most intense and dramatic pages.

Last but not least, thanks to Damiano of Albergo Ardesio, who sustained me with his delicious cuisine during my entire Alpine stay, and to Giancarla at Freccia’s Bar, whose matchless espresso always starts my day off right.