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 The
Story Behind Hadrian's Wall
William Dietrich
This novel began with a moment of curiosity.
While traveling in Britain, my wife and I spotted a sign for Hadrian's Wall and
decided to detour from our itinerary to take a quick look. All that remains of
the place the Romans called Banna are stone foundations and the stump of the
wall, winding off into the green distance of the English countryside. Yet in
looking north toward Scotland, the sense of what a lonely and evocative frontier
this must have been gripped my imagination. Here was the boundary between Roman
and barbarian, civilization and freedom, the classical old and the restless new.
I wanted to write a book about this place, and the idea of a young Roman woman
journeying north to marry occurred to me immediately. Other books, projects and
delays meant it would be eight years, however, before "Hadrian's Wall" saw
publication.
Meanwhile, events reinforced my enthusiasm for
this story. The United States has achieved a state of military and cultural
domination reminiscent of ancient Rome. At the same time September 11
demonstrated how our civilization is peculiarly vulnerable, causing us to create
a Department of Homeland Security. The Roman Empire was as big as the United
States, ringed with enemies, and faced the same problem of trying to secure
borders more than five thousand miles long. Having failed to subdue the wild
tribes of Caledonia � that region we today call Scotland � Rome decided to fence
them off with an eighty-mile-long stone wall that stretched from sea to sea. For
nearly three centuries this barrier protected its colony in Britannia to the
south. Cavalry patrols warred with barbarian tribes in campaigns reminiscent of
our American West.
Here was where civilization stopped -- or did
it? What were the people like who lived north of the wall that had been ordered
by the Emperor Hadrian? Why did the wall ultimately fail?
The fall of the Roman Empire is one of the great
mysteries of history. Numerous theories have been offered, but none fully
explain why humans would allow the stable and prosperous empire to give way to
what we call the Dark Ages. If "Hadrian's Wall" does not definitely answer this
mystery it at least explores it: through the longings, treacheries and gambles
of its main characters, and its exploration of Celtic as well as Roman culture.
This book is fiction based on well-researched
fact. There was a "Great Barbarian Conspiracy" in 367 A.D., there was a famed
Petriana cavalry, there were aristocratic Roman women who accompanied their
officer husbands to the Wall, and there was a tumult of new ideas and old decay
in the Fourth Century. My investigation led me back to Britain, where I visited
Roman and Celtic forts, roads, villas, reconstructed villages and museums from
Portsmouth on the south coast to Scotland in the north. What struck me is how
similar these ancients were to we moderns. They wrote love letters, worried
about retirement, jockeyed for advancement, prayed, cursed, fought, loved, and
in at least one case produced an intaglio showing a hand with its middle finger
raised. Our gestures date back a long time.
Join with Valeria, Marcus, Galba, Arden, Draco
and Savia as they explore this vibrant, colorful and cruel world. How long, the
narrator wonders, before the barbarians come again? It's a question for our own
time as well.
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