Legions of the Eagle

[steepholm]

lady_schrapnell  tagged me to talk about the one Henry Treece book on Roman Britain that I’ve read (are there others?).

Knowing Treece’s reputation I was keen to read this book, published the same year as The Eagle of the Ninth and (from the blurb) covering comparable ground. Both books describe a friendship between a Roman and a Briton, Sutcliff’s from the Roman’s point of view, Treece’s from the Briton’s. Intriguing, huh?




Dateline: Somewhere near Colchester, 43AD. The book starts with an episode in which our hero (the Belgae boy Gwydion) sacrifices a knife in order to appease the gods, after his best friend Math accidentally kills a sacred hare. When I read this I thought it was an interesting attempt to convey how radically different a mindset these characters might have from our own. In retrospect I see that it was the first of many demonstrations that the British are a race mired in superstition, in desperate need of being invaded by the forces of enlightenment under Aulus Plautius.

Gwydion’s father is one of Caractacus’s right-hand men, but in the first battle against the Romans he is killed, and Gwydion, his mother and Math are captured. Luckily Gwydion is taken under the wing of a kindly centurion, Gracchus, who sends him to Gaul to be company for his son Gaius.

In Lugdunum (Lyon) Gwydion finds a huge contrast to the life he’s been used to: “a broad, orderly town, its stone buildings shining in the sun, its clean roads bordered by regular rows of trees. The citizens strolled about in the sunshine as though they had never heard of Camulodunum, and Caractacus, and Caswallwn. Gwydion began to feel that he was a boy from some curious and primitive island, many hundreds of leagues away from civilization.” As indeed, he is. Later, when he and Gaius return to Britain to seek Gaius’s father, Gwydion is able to make the comparison with his homeland even starker. He looks out over Britain:

“It was a great, dark island, he thought, full of magic and of cruelty. Only here and there, along the hill ridges, did men till the land and build their comfortable houses. So much of Britain was a wilderness, where wild beasts roamed, and where people almost as wild as the beasts held their festivals of blood and suffering … As the boy speculated on the land of his birth, he began to wonder why the Romans had even bothered to come to Britain. What he had seen of Roman Gaul was good; it was a well-regulated land, with good roads, inns, and houses; a land where men paid their taxes in money, not in blood--and where, in return for those taxes, they were given something of value, the protection of the greatest army the world had ever known.”

Yep, military occupation - the gift that lasts.

Roman superiority emphatically extends to personal character. Gracchus is, as we have seen, kindly. As Gwydion’s mother puts it: “Did you know that he had arranged for me to be offered a home for life, as a Roman citizen? What Celt would have done that? None!” Later, she tells Gracchus to “take Gwydion and teach him your ways”. Gaius too is “a true Roman of the old school, who believed in telling the truth, in straight-dealing of every sort, and in honesty.”

We might note in passing the very subtle way in which Treece registers cultural differences between the Romans and the British. When Gaius pays Gwydion a compliment, for example, he does so under his breath, “for his education had been based on Spartan precepts, which taught that it was unmanly to make any show of the emotions.” Gwydion’s response is to burst into tears: then, “shaking the water from his eyes, he smiled and with a typical Celtic bravado, punched Gaius lightly in the chest.”

Gwydion is of course a Good Celt, with the potential to be Romanized and taught their Ways. And, indeed, he ends up a contented yeoman farmer in Gaul. But there are also Bad Celts. Math, Gwydion’s former friend, is one. A defeated fighter against Rome, and rejected in the end by Gwydion (who’s sunnily playing chess with his new friend Gaius), Math is last seen setting “his head towards those dark woods which covered the sullen face of the land.” Math is small, dark Silurian (i.e. he’s from South Wales), and they seem to be the tribe singled out for particular dislike. As the Roman company surgeon says, slipping into full-blown Heart of Darkness mode: “They are not pleasant fighters. … I’d rather deal with a straight slash any day than a mere prick that has been doctored by those black-faced cannibals!” Must be the coal dust.

But the prime example of a Bad Celt is Caractacus himself. In contrast to the noble warrior whose dignity so impressed Claudius in the history books, this Caractacus has after his initial defeat become cruel, shifty, untrustworthy and – I have to say it – chippy. Certainly, Gwydion is delighted in the final pages of the book to hear of his capture by the Romans:

“Now that Rome has finally broken that man’s pride and we have him prisoner and in Gaul, let us hope that the Emperor Claudius will treat him as he deserves, for all the suffering he has caused. Let us hope that Caractacus is never allowed to raise the tribes again, disturbing men’s lives and putting innocent ones to the sword. How can men work and till the land and harvest their crops if such madmen as Caractacus are allowed to carry on their ambitious ways unchecked?”

How, indeed. Are you listening, Plaid Cymru?

At no time is this rabidly pro-Roman stance ever questioned, or the Roman imperial enterprise subjected to any kind of critique. In this, by the way, Treece’s book is not out of step with other children’s historicals from the 1950s set in this era. Sutcliff does seem to be the true exception.

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Did Geoffrey Trease manage any better? I can't remember if he had a Roman book. He was certainly not a man to cheer on imperialism.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know of any off-hand - but you're right, I can't see the author of Bows Against the Barons having much truck with that attitude.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I remember Word to Caesar, which originated a favourite phrase of legionseagle's and mine: "We must get to Ravenglass and warn them!" What I can't remember is whether there were any significant British characters. As I recall it, the hero was the son of the commander of the fort at Hardknott, who survived an attack that wiped out most of the garrison, and then for some reason he stumbled on a plot against Hadrian and went to Rome to warn him. He came up with a cunning plan to attract Hadrian's attention, by diving into a swimming pool...

I keep trying to remember which Roman-British children's novel started with the suicide of the hero's mother when her master/his father died. The hero observed that, being a native, she stabbed herself instead of opening her wrists, so there was a lot less blood. Does anyone here know?

[(Anonymous)]

Mark of the Horse Lord!
Sutcliff

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Hurrah, it was Sutcliff! I thought it might be. I can just picture the cover now. And something about a plover's feather.

[sovay]

“They are not pleasant fighters. … I’d rather deal with a straight slash any day than a mere prick that has been doctored by those black-faced cannibals!”

. . . wha?

Here. Take some Kipling and lie down for an hour.

Peter Bellamy, "The Roman Centurion's Song."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I never read any Treece, regarding him as a snare and a delusion, filling up the library shelves where I was looking for Geoffrey Trease. I must have opened the books at some point and not liked what I saw. It's good to know that I was right all along!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I feel I should give HT a least one more go, as he's been praised to me on numerous occasions. I quite liked the sound of his book about the Viking bodyguard in Byzantium (I think?). I'm going to seek that one out, and if sucks as suckingly as this one, he's getting crossed off my list!

[gair.livejournal.com]

heheheheh, straight slash, mere prick, heheheheheheh.

(Don't mind me! You carry on!)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Trust a Latinist to lower the tone...