The Mask of Command
Page 40
‘It occurs to me, domina,’ he said, pressing his fingers together beneath his chin, ‘that the imperial court is a precarious place. The higher one rises, the more mutable one’s allegiances become. There’s no telling to what ends a man might be driven, if enough pressure is exerted. You might do well to study the affairs of this Aurelius Castus very closely in future.’
The breeze through the windows freshened, making the shutters creak. Fausta smelled the lagoons and the open sea beyond.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, perhaps I shall.’
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Author’s Note
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Author’s Note
The surviving history of the early fourth century AD is essentially the story of the emperor Constantine. Our written sources follow him almost exclusively, as a spotlight follows the leading actor on a stage. Beyond the radius of their illumination, there are only suggestive shadows and the vague echoes of distant events.
While we know that Constantine’s teenaged son Crispus was promoted to Caesar in AD 317 and sent to govern Gaul soon afterwards, what happened there is harder to establish. He (or, more likely, his military commander) seems to have won a war against the Franks some time before AD 320; the orator of Panegyric IV refers to an ‘enormous victory’ over the barbarians from beyond the Rhine. This may be exaggeration, but it is noticeable that after this date the Franks, who appear repeatedly as enemies of Rome in preceding years, fall silent for nearly three decades. In fact, when we hear of them again they are acting as allies of the empire.
In composing my own depiction of events, I have freely adapted some episodes from later history, and in particular from the campaigns of the Caesar Julianus (later the Emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’) in the AD 350s. Ammianus Marcellinus gives a detailed account of the Caesar’s wars, while Eunapius of Sardis describes his negotiations with the Chamavi conducted from a vessel moored in the river. The later Greek historian Zosimus mentions a settlement of Saxon pirates on an island near the mouth of the Rhine. I have chosen to believe that similar events could have happened more than once in Roman history.
Considering their later importance, it is perhaps surprising that we know so little about the Franks at this time. Scant archaeological traces remain from the fourth century. Beyond a few lists of different tribal groups in Roman sources, most of what we know of them comes from the later ‘migration era’, when the Franks moved across the Rhine to establish the kingdoms that would one day become the heartland of medieval France. The Saxons, who lived around the mouth of the Elbe and southern Jutland during this period, are similarly elusive. Edward James, in his books The Franks (1991) and Europe’s Barbarians, AD 200–600 (2009), sets out what little we know or can determine. The ‘war boats’ of the Franks and ‘longboats’ of the Saxons I have based on the fourth-century oared Germanic vessel excavated at Nydam in Denmark, and to a lesser extent on the much later Anglo-Saxon ship from Sutton Hoo in England. John Haywood’s Dark Age Naval Power: A Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Seafaring Activity (1991) is a wide-ranging survey of the ships and seamanship of the various Germanic peoples of the era.
The situation in the Roman provinces of the north-west during this period is only slightly clearer. Older theories about barbarians entirely driving out the inhabitants, and a rise in the level of the North Sea inundating the land, have been challenged by more recent studies. But it does seem that large tracts of the Roman frontier territories were abandoned after the later third century, for one reason or another, and the coastal regions were partially claimed by the sea. Even so, the lands of northern Gaul did not become a desert, and the cities continued to thrive, protected by a strong military presence. Nico Royman’s Villa Landscapes in the Roman North (2012) argues for a continuation of at least some of the big villa estates of Belgica and Germania into the fourth century.
As this story is so much concerned with frontiers – geographical, social, even psychological – the wealth of literature on the Roman limites has proved invaluable. There isn’t space here to list too many titles; suffice to say that Harald von Petrikovits’ 1971 paper Fortifications in the North-Western Roman Empire from the Third to the Fifth Centuries A.D., while slightly dated in places, remains a solid guide to the military situation. Philip Parker’s The Empire Stops Here (2010), meanwhile, provides an engaging tour of the state of the frontiers today.
The Roman presence on the lower Rhine has left many visible traces. The excavated ruins of the riverside Praetorium of Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) are exhibited in a basement gallery below the modern Rathaus, while the city above still shows evidence of the ancient grid of streets and the circuit of the Roman walls. The Römisch-Germanisches Museum, near the cathedral, is built over the remains of a palatial third-century townhouse with fine mosaic floors. In Mainz (Roman Mogontiacum), the excellent Museum für Antike Schiffahrt displays full-size reconstructions of two late-Roman river galleys; the remains of these and several others were discovered in a riverbank harbour excavation. The smaller of the warships described in this novel would have resembled these vessels.
Most of the characters mentioned in this story are fictitious, although a few have their roots in history, and I have tried to do them justice. Lactantius, the Christian writer who acted as tutor to the young Crispus, did indeed argue that the world is flat; I have paraphrased the relevant sections from his own text Divine Institutes. However, it was an eccentric opinion even at the time, and was not adopted by the wider Church.
Once again, I must thank all those who helped me in the writing of this novel. My agent, Will Francis, and my editor, Rosie de Courcy, provided some very helpful discussions on structure, while Ross Cowan’s comments on aspects of the military organisation of the era were again invaluable. I am also very grateful to Mark Hebblewhite for allowing me to read some of his unpublished, and highly inspiring, work on the later Roman army.
About Ian Ross
Ian Ross has been researching and writing about the later Roman world and its army for over a decade. He spent a year in Italy teaching English, and now lives in Bath. Visit his website:, or find him on Twitter:
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First published in the UK in 2016 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Ian Ross, 2016
The moral right of Ian Ross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any fo
rm or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781784975258
ISBN (XTPB) 9781784975265
ISBN (E) 9781784975241
Jacket Design: kid-ethic.com
Jacket image: Arcangel
Author photograph: David Breckon
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