Theodoric (42 page)

The wagon trains of American pioneers or Boers on the Great Trek set out not as amorphous mobs but as organized mobile communities made up of separate groupings, and operating under strict codes of discipline, with a hierarchy of command. It is fairly safe to assume that the emigration of the Ostrogoths (to which must be added Fredericus' Rugians) must have been run on broadly similar lines. As no sources give any details, however, I've had to fall back on invention. How many did the Ostrogoths number? Again, no precise figures are available. Burns (in
History of the Ostrogoths
) suggests forty thousand, which seems far too low; Wolfram estimates one hundred thousand, a figure with which Moorhead agrees, while Richard Rudgley (in his fascinating
Barbarians
) suggests three hundred thousand. As a compromise, perhaps two hundred thousand would be a realistic total.

Exactly why the Gepids chose to offer battle remains a mystery. On the face of it, they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by taking on such a powerful nation. Wolfram (in his impressive and synthesizing
History of the Goths
) says, ‘Whether the Gepids were in league with Odovacar or whether they were doing this on their own is unknown.' He goes on to wonder if Odovacar may perhaps have enlisted the Gepids as allies, but admits that this is only speculation. Jordanes claims that the Gepids were old enemies of the Ostrogoths – hardly in itself a valid reason for confronting them at a juncture when they were merely transients and not acting in the least aggressively. I can find no other source which offers an explanation for the Gepids' conduct. Of course, all this uncertainty provides a splendid opportunity to devise a fictional reason, one which ties in with Thiudimund – concerning whom the records are largely (and conveniently!) blank. From the scanty information we do possess, we know that his claim to the throne was
passed over (because he could offer, Wolfram says, ‘no evidence of his fitness for the kingship') in favour of Theoderic's; also that in 479, when leading a column assigned to him by Theoderic, he was outmanoeuvred by the Roman general Sabinianus, only escaping by abandoning his people – resulting in many being taken prisoner, and hundreds of wagons being lost. This allowed me, without distorting known historical fact, to present him as a jealous sibling who was also cowardly and incompetent. (All very useful for dramatic purposes.) As history is silent about him after 479, I was able neatly to kill him off in the battle at the Ulca, he having fulfilled his fictional raison d'être.

Despite having a modern – well, early modern – ring, being chiefly associated with wars from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the term ‘Forlorn Hope' (from the Dutch
verloren hoop
, ‘lost troop') doesn't mean that the phenomenon itself is anachronistic in the context here. Ancient history abounds with examples of intrepid volunteers leading desperate sorties to carry a breach etc. (e.g., Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was awarded the
corona vallaris
for heading a scaling-party over the walls of Carthage). With their reputation for reckless courage, acts of self-sacrificing valour by barbarians were doubtless even more common than those by Romans. But, as history was written by the Romans, such incidents were seldom recorded. An exception was made in the case of Theoderic at the battle of the Ulca. The Roman panegyrist Ennodius wrote (in
Panegyricus dictus Theoderico
) that he turned the tide of battle by heading a counter-attack ‘like a lion in the midst of a herd', just when it seemed that the Gepids were gaining the upper hand. But of course on that occasion, Theoderic, acting in the capacity of Zeno's vicegerent-to-be, was fighting on the ‘right' side.

Except that it wasn't. In the 530s, Justinian, the Eastern Emperor, began a long campaign to restore the Western half of the ‘One and Indivisible Empire'. His brilliant generals Belisarius and Narses succeeded in clearing Africa, Italy and southern Spain of Vandals, Ostrogoths and Visigoths respectively, so that by the end of his reign, in 565, the Roman
Empire had almost regained the same dimensions it possessed just prior to Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. A truly remarkable achievement, but one that was destined not to last. By the end of the century Germanic Lombards had taken over much of Italy, and in the next, Avars, along with militant Islam, were to reduce the empire to an Anatolian rump, with an archipelago of tiny imperial possessions alone surviving in the West. (The Eastern Empire survived, though in increasingly attenuated form, until 1453 when Constantinople finally fell to the Turks.) Although, in a physical sense, the Roman Empire may have passed away, it is astonishing how the
idea
of Rome has continued to grip the minds of rulers and statesmen: from Charlemagne crowned emperor in Rome in 800 to the failed attempt to create a European Constitution, whose aims were prematurely carved in Latin in splendid Trajanic capitals on a marble plaque in Rome.

Sidonius Apollinaris wrote to Syagrius congratulating him on his ability to communicate with barbarians. ‘I am . . . inexpresibly amazed,' he commented, ‘that you have quickly acquired a knowledge of the German tongue with such ease . . . The bent elders of the Germans are astounded at you when you translate letters, and they adopt you as umpire and arbitrator in their mutual dealings.'

For most of the fifth century, the pre-eminent barbarian power in Gaul was the Visigoths, with Frankish influence west of the Rhine tenuous at best. Following the death of the great Euric in 484, that situation rapidly went into reverse. By the time of Clovis's death in 511, the Franks had become the dominant power in Gaul – whose name in consequence changed to Frankia/Francia (France).

To counter Saxon raids, an increasingly serious threat from the late third century on, a chain of ten massive forts was built from the Wash to the Isle of Wight, under the command of the
Comes Litoris Saxonici
, the Count of the Saxon shore, the second highest military post after
the
Dux Britanniae
. When the usurper Constantine (self-styled III) withdrew the regular troops from Britain in 407, the
limitanei
continued to function, even after the collapse of the Western Empire in 476. The last of them, the Numerus Abulcorum stationed at Anderida (Pevensey), were finally wiped out by the Saxons in 491.

Despite Ilchester's obvious Roman ancestry, I've been unable to trace its Roman name. In the Domesday Book it's Givelcestre, ‘Roman town on the Gifl'. Gifl, being an earlier name for the River Yeo on which the town stands, would have been a Brythonic appellation. In the same way that the Romans called Chester (on the River Dee) Castra Deva, I've guessed that they might have called Ilchester Castra Gyfel.

The grassy chalk uplands of southern England (mainly in Surrey, Sussex and Thomas Hardy's ‘Wessex') are rich in man-made features dating from neolithic times to the Iron Age: ridgeways along the crests of the various downs, chalk-cut giants and horses, barrows, stone circles of which Avebury and Stonehenge are the most famous, hill-forts, and that amazing eminence Silbury Hill (alluded to by Myrddin in the text). A few of the above are, or may be, imposters. All the extant White Horses, bar the one at Uffington (probably first-century
BC
), are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century, though two others, now destroyed, are known to have existed anciently. The Long Man of Wilmington is presumed to be ancient, as is the famously priapic Cerne Abbas Giant – though there's a theory that the latter is an eighteenth-century forgery by an aristocratic joker poking fun at antiquaries.

Known today as Cadbury Castle (officially South Cadbury hill-fort), this Iron Age hill-fort with late-fifth-century additions has long been held to be King Arthur's Camelot. This theory is reinforced by ‘Camel' place-names in the vicinity: West Camel and Queen's Camel; while the second name-word re the nearby Chilton Cantelo becomes ‘Canelot' by switching round the letters. The Cadbury site, along with
Glastonbury a few miles to the north, is a happy hunting-ground for Arthurian enthusiasts, with Glastonbury proving an especially copious fount of associated legend – the Holy Grail, Avalon, Excalibur, the Round Table, Arthur's Grave (‘discovered' in 1191), etc.

‘Mount Badon', in Arthurian legend, is where Arthur won a great victory against the Saxons. Two sites have been suggested for the battle, one at Liddington Castle, an Iron Age hill-fort six miles north of Marlborough in Wiltshire (the one I've chosen), the other at Badbury Rings, near Wimborne Minster in Dorset.

Sources differ as to what route through the Julian Alps Theoderic took to reach Italy. Heather in
The Goths
and Wolfram in his
History of the Goths
both say he reached his goal via the valley of the Vipava (through the southern part of the Julian Alps), whereas Burns in
History of the Ostrogoths
states that Theoderic advanced up the Drava River (well to the north of the Julian Alps), then crossed the Julian Alps to the Isonzo River and on to Italy. Clearly, these two routes are mutually exclusive. I've settled for the Drava route as being perhaps strategically preferable to the other. Also, it enables one to exploit the dramatic bonus provided by the arresting Luknja Pass (which Theoderic would have had to use), the col below the awesome cliffs of Triglav's north face.

I've been unable to find the Latin name for the River Sora, but as the Romans called the Drava ‘Dravus' and the Sava ‘Savus' . . .

Having had no luck tracing the three-peaked Triglav's Latin name, I've resorted to invention, following the example of ‘Trimontium', the name the Romans gave the three-peaked Eildon Hills in Roxburghshire, where Agricola established a great military camp. (S
ik, Triglav's sister peak, I've christened Spica, Latin for ‘spike': appropriate, considering the mountain's shape and present name.)

This is Vrata, the long valley that leads from the Sava up to the pass of Luknja, overlooked by the towering cliffs of Triglav's North Face. The waterfall described in the text is the upper one at Slap PericÆ nik; I've moved it nearer the stream (which does indeed disappear underground) to enable Theoderic's wagons to pass beneath it. The terrain on the far side of the pass I've described as less steep than it actually is, in order to point up the rigours of the ascent by contrast.

Wolfram, Burns and Heather say that an inconclusive battle was fought between the two rivals at Isonzo Bridge, resulting in Odovacar retreating to Verona. However, Moorhead suggests that Odovacar, alarmed by the size of Theoderic's host, withdrew from the Isonzo without giving battle. (7Ennodius, in
Panegyricus dictus Theoderico
, describes Odovacar as summoning all the nations against Theoderic, with very many kings coming to fight for him. Whoever these kings were – and it's tempting to dismiss them as hyperbolic – they were conspicuous by their absence when Odovacar did eventually confront Theoderic in battle.)

Rumours that Zeno had been heard crying for help from within the tomb (cries that were ignored, due to his being a hated Isaurian), gained wide circulation in Constantinople, and were long believed. Even a hundred and fifty years later, the emperor Heraclius gave orders on his death-bed that his corpse should lie in state until corruption had set in, lest he suffer the same fate.

Despite his being elderly at his accession, the twenty-seven-year reign of Anastasius was one of the Eastern Empire's longest. It was also, despite being comparatively uneventful, one of the most successful and enlightened. A mild and by all accounts rather colourless individual, Anastasius suppressed the barbarous fights between men and wild beasts, abolished the sale of offices and an ancient tax on domestic animals, constructed aqueducts, harbours and the Long Wall to the
west of the capital as an extra defence against barbarian incursion, and campaigned effectively against Persians and Isaurian insurgents. A not unimpressive record, which compares favourably with those of many Eastern emperors.