‘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.
Chapter 20
Sources differ as to what route through the Julian Alps Theoderic took to reach Italy. Heather in
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 Peric? 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
Chapter 21
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.
Chapter 22
Despite what, in the story, Cassiodorus seemed to believe, this was not the building that Scipio and Caesar knew, but an Imperial replacement dating from the reign of Diocletian and today known as the Curia.
A reference to the authoress of the Sibylline Prophecies (foretelling the future destiny of Rome), the Oracle of Cumae.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla, successful general and ultra-reactionary politician, became Dictator of Rome in 81 BC. There followed a reign of terror, which saw several thousand ‘enemies of the state’ proscribed and executed. The young Julius Caesar very nearly became one of Sulla’s victims, but saved himself by the coolness and courage of his deportment when interrogated.
Chapter 23
Liberius implemented a system of parcelling out called ‘thirds’. The term is surely misleading. Given the tiny number of Goths compared to Romans, this could hardly mean that the native Italians were to be deprived of one- third of their land and property. The fact that the final settlement seems to have satisfied Theoderic’s followers, without causing undue hardship to their Roman ‘hosts’, argues that Liberius pulled off an astonishing coup, squaring the circle of conflicting interests. (See Moorhead’s
One of the charges brought against Pope Symmachus (who seems, like some of his Renaissance successors, to have been as much worldly politician as spiritual leader) by his opponents, was that he consorted with loose women, especially one who rejoiced in the nickname ‘Conditaria’, which translates as ‘highly seasoned’, or indeed ‘spicy’, as Chadwick renders it in his
For the sake of dramatic clarity I have telescoped Theoderic’s confirmation of Symmachus as Pope, his fiat concerning Church lands, and his decision as to the fate of Laurentius, into a single incident. In fact, final settlement of these matters was not reached till some time after 500.
Displaying a breathtaking combination of inventiveness and lack of scruple, Symmachus produced a formidable battery of forged documents to support his claim:
Our present system of dating from the birth of Christ, devised by Dionysius Exiguus, was only officially adopted in 527, the year after Theoderic’s death. However, it’s not unreasonable to suppose its periodic use for some time prior to that date. Official acknowledgement of any important change often lags behind a ground-swell of popular usage or opinion; e.g., the adoption in Scotland of Christmas Day as a public holiday, which, for four hundred years following its prohibition as a pagan festival by John Knox, it had not been.
