Culture – Page 42 – Into the Woods

Bonterra organic wines

Back in the 1990s, when I was living in San Francisco, had a comfortable income, and had access to a deep cellar, I lived in the French mode, bought wine by the case, and fetched it from the cellar. A lot of the wine I bought was from Bonterra Organic Vineyards. Bonterra’s wines aren’t the sort of wines that will knock your socks off, but they’re good wines and a good value.

Now that I’m in North Carolina and now that retirement has suppressed my wine budget, I no longer buy wine by the case (though I probably should — it doesn’t really cost any more that way). I had not even seen a bottle of Bonterra wine in years. Imagine my surprise, then, at seeing several bottles of Bonterra organic chardonnay and cabernet in an ordinary country grocery store in Walnut Cove. I bought all the bottles that were on the shelf. The 2011 chardonnay was about $10 a bottle and the 2011 cabernet about $12.

I find this puzzling. How did organic wine from a not-very-large California vintner end up on a shelf in a country grocery store in North Carolina? I’m afraid that it probably means that the wine was not well reviewed, didn’t sell well, and got remaindered out to free up warehouse space. But I’m speculating.

Still, if you come across Bonterra wine, give it a try. I see from their web site that they have a wine club. I just might sign up. I have not yet opened the cabernet. The chardonnay is slightly watery though strong on alcohol, but it has good color and a nice, fairly soft chardonnay taste. In short, it’s perfectly fine for a $10 wine.

It occurs to me that I’ve not written about wines here often, mainly because retirement has cut into my wine budget. For the record, I am strongly of the opinion that California wines are the best in the world. I prefer wines from Sonoma County, but Napa and Mendocino will do.

The people strike back

From time to time, when I think it is of general interest, I will post here about what I’m up to as a local political and environmental activist.

When I bought land in rural Stokes County, North Carolina, and built the abbey here, I did expect to have some involvement in the county’s civic life. I never guessed, though, that at times it would seem like a full-time job. I’m now chairman of the county’s Democratic Party. Three years ago, Ken and I helped start an environmental group called No Fracking in Stokes. This group has had its hands full, and many people say that it is the most effective grassroots environmental group in North Carolina.

The scenic Dan River runs through the foothills of Stokes County. Its headwaters lie in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. After weaving southward into North Carolina, the river meanders north again toward Danville, Virginia. (The river is about two miles from the abbey.) A shale basin lies underneath parts of the river, and geologists think that some (though probably not much) recoverable shale gas lies in this basin that could be gotten out with fracking. This was on no one’s radar screen until 2012, when North Carolina’s newly elected Republican legislature, stimulated largely by banking money out of Charlotte that found its way into Republican pockets, became hell bent on dragging North Carolina kicking and screaming into fracking.

Last night at a public meeting in the little town of Walnut Cove, people were too polite to kick and scream. But they were mad as hell, and they fired high-calibre volleys across the bow of the Walnut Cove town board, which at its previous meeting had voted to allow geologists from North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources to do sample core drilling on the town’s property. Though it’s true that the issue had been on the board’s agenda and was posted on the town hall door or something, the larger truth is that the board was trying to sneak it through in the dark of night. A reporter for our local weekly newspaper reported it, and people were quickly up in arms. The next meeting of the board was packed. In fact, the town’s fire marshall had to prevent more people from entering the building. A bunch of windows were opened in the old frame building (which used to be a school for black children), and the overflow crowd was allowed to stand outside and look in.

A retired schoolteacher told me that, as a nervous mayor was opening windows, the mayor saw a sheriff’s deputy standing outside and said, “Are you the only one here?” The deputy replied, “I’ve got backup.”

There is a well established African-American community in Walnut Cove. They live mostly in two neighborhoods. The test well is to be drilled in one of those neighborhoods. The African-American community is angry because they weren’t consulted.

To make the situation even more dangerous, if fracking comes to the Dan River shale basin, it would be dangerously close to a huge coal ash impoundment at Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station. A breach of the 130-foot dam there probably would wipe out the nearby community of Pine Hall, and the ash would certainly spill into the Dan River.

Few things warm my heart more than people talking back to government when government does what big money wants rather than what the people want. It’s unclear at this time whether the Walnut Cove town board will — or even legally can — rescind its decision. But one thing is for sure. The people will pay them back at the next election, and the county’s Democratic Party will do everything possible to help them with that payback.

For those who would like more information on our environmental battles here in North Carolina, below are some newspaper links. You also are invited to join our Facebook group, No Fracking in Stokes.

Winston-Salem Journal

The Stokes News

Poldark is returning to PBS

If asked to name my favorite Masterpiece Theater series of all time, it would be “Poldark.” The series started in 1975. It starred Robin Ellis as Ross Poldark and Angharad Rees as Demelza. Rees, unfortunately, died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. Robin Ellis, now 73 years old, lives in France and has an excellent web site and blog.

The Poldark series is based on a series of books by Winston Graham. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, I read at least nine of the books. Graham, who was English, died in 2003. He was a fine historical novelist. He has a cinematic, masculine style, and yet his novels rival the novels of women writers in that Graham is able to explore and exploit the emotional entanglements of his characters.

The Poldark story is set in Cornwall right after the American Revolution. Ross Poldark returns to Cornwall after fighting in America. Everyone had thought he was dead. His father had died, and his family home had fallen into ruin. The woman he loves had become engaged to a cousin. He was broke and in debt. The story revolves around his trying to put his life back together. Poldark is a man ahead of his time. He is a man of the Enlightenment, but all around him it’s still the Dark Ages in many ways.

The new Poldark casts Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark. It is, like the 1975 series, being filmed in Cornwall. Where else do you get those romantic cliffs overlooking the channel? Turner, now 31, who is Irish, played Kíli in “The Hobbit.”

British viewers started watching Poldark on March 8. In the U.S., the series will start in June, on PBS’ Masterpiece.

The books have been re-released, apparently with cover images from the new PBS production. There also are Kindle editions.

Watch out. If you read these books, you’ll become obsessed with visiting Cornwall. On my first trip to London in the early 1980s, I took a train to Truro.

By the way, Winston Graham wrote another novel set in Cornwall, The Grove of Eagles. As far as I can tell, that book is out of print, but it is one of my favorite historical novels, and this reminds me that it’s time to read it again.

The new painting is on the wall

Some months ago, Ken commissioned a painting of Acorn Abbey from Frank Duncan, a local artist. The painting is now hanging on the wall at the abbey. It’s a large piece — 56 inches wide. We put a lot of thought into the painting, and we chose to submerge the house into the woods and emphasize the fecundity of the setting. There are lots of little details hidden in the painting — a black cat on the front porch and lots of little animals hidden in the foliage.

I still intend to write a book about the building of Acorn Abbey, and I’ll use this painting for the book’s cover. But the sequel to Fugue in Ursa Major, now in progress, must come first.

Into the Woods: a review

Like many people, I have been waiting nervously to see what Disney Studios would do with Stephen Sondheim’s wonderful musical, “Into the Woods.” I saw this show on Broadway with the original cast, so I was braced for a disappointment.

But I was not disappointed. It is lush, it is beautiful, and not only was Meryl Streep absolutely stunning as the witch, she easily outsings Bernadette Peters, the witch in the original Broadway cast. I believe this film is destined to be a classic.

It would quibbling to try to find any fault with the production. The visuals are gorgeous. The snappy editing holds our attention. The special effects support the magic but never go overboard. I will quibble some about the singing.

Meryl Streep was flawless. To me, the high point of the film is her version of “Stay With Me.” I still believe that Daniel Huttlestone is a little too young for the role of Jack, but he sang Jack superbly. Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood was very disappointing and comes nowhere close to Danielle Ferland’s performance with the original cast. Tracey Ullman as Jack’s mother was a disappointment, compared with Barbara Byrne with the original cast. Johnny Depp surprised me. He was a perfectly fine wolf. Chris Pine was a little over the top as Cinderella’s prince, but at least he was clearly having a good time.

The last few movies I’ve gone out to see have all been in IMAX. “Into the Woods” was not released in IMAX. The sound seemed thin by comparison. Even compared with my home stereo system, the sound seemed thin. The orchestra did not sound as lush and Stephen Sondheim said it would in some promotional videos.

It puzzles me why people take children to see “Into the Woods.” It’s a fairy tale for adults. Both the music and the tales will go over the heads of most children, though children who are musically gifted will probably think they’re in heaven. Sondheim requires some musical sophistication.

Some readers might wonder whether this musical inspired the name of this blog. Not really. I named the blog “Into the Woods” for the same reason Sondheim chose the name — because it’s such a powerful metaphor for bravely facing our existential predicaments. Some people think the answers to their existential questions are to be found, say, in a church. Screw church, and the warhorse it rode in on. Brave folks go into the woods. After dark. Alone.

Ancient astronomy

An illustration from James Evans’ book on ancient astronomy

I’ve mentioned that the sequel to Fugue in Ursa Major is going to involve time travel. The plot requires that I have an understanding of the state of the science of astronomy around 48 B.C. As a source for that, I am reading James Evans’ The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy, which was published by the Oxford University Press in 1998. This is a beautiful, well-illustrated, and fairly expensive book. It has left me greatly impressed at just how much the ancients knew.

We generally assume that modern astronomy began with Copernicus and Galileo as the Dark Ages were coming to a close. In 1633, the church convicted Galileo for following Copernicus in saying that earth is not at the center of the universe. But some of the ancient Greek astronomers figured out that the earth moves around the sun, though it was not a mainstream idea in ancient times. Aristotle knew that the earth is a sphere. Heraclides of Pontos, a student of Plato, taught as early as 350 B.C. that the earth rotates and that the stars are fixed. Greek astronomers were able to make pretty good estimates of the size of the earth and moon, though their estimates of the size and distance of the sun were less accurate. The Greeks understood trigonometry. They had a pretty accurate theory of the motion of the planets. Even before the Greeks, the ancient Babylonians were excellent astronomers who made detailed star charts and kept accurate astronomical records. Babylon’s knowledge was passed down to the Greeks. The Greeks built on Babylonian astronomy, especially during the golden years of Alexandria, culminating with Ptolemy’s Almagest around 150 A.D. After Ptolemy, the Dark Ages began in the West, so Ptolemy remained authoritative for hundreds of years.

So, it’s not really true that, to the ancients, the science of astronomy was barely distinguishable from the myths of astrology. They knew a lot.

So how did they use what they knew?

For one, they wanted better calendars. The daily cycle, the lunar cycle, and the annual solar cycle don’t fit together in tidy ratios, so there is no perfect calendar. Our own Gregorian calendar, an antique which is a refinement of the ancients’ Julian calendar, requires all sorts of adjustments including leap seconds and leap years. In its essentials, our calendar today is the Roman calendar, which relied heavily on Greek astronomy.

Astronomy is critical to agriculture — when to plow, when to plant. This remains true today, and I still subscribe to an almanac, as did my grandparents. Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was a bestseller in the American colonies. People planted by it.

Astronomy also is critical to navigation, surveying, and mapmaking. Ancient sailors knew how to navigate by the stars. One of the reasons I chose Ursa Major as part of a book title was its importance to the ancients. The constellation of Ursa Major is visible for the entire year in most of the northern hemisphere. Ursa Major includes some easily identified “pointer stars” (the Big Dipper) that make it easy to locate the polar star and therefore true north. An ancient sailor who wanted to sail east at night would keep Ursa Major up to his left. We know that the ancient Celts had excellent seafaring skills and excellent ships and that the Celts also used Ursa Major for navigation.

How about astrology? It would be easy enough to accuse the ancients of being superstitious because they tried to use the stars to predict the future and to make generalizations about human nature and human fate. But we moderns are just as guilty, since horoscopes remain important in the lives of lots of people.

It’s easy enough to reproduce the astronomical observations of the ancients with some simple instruments. A gnomon (which is what a sundial is) will allow you to deduce and measure all sorts of information if you trace the sun’s shadow for a year. If you trace the sun’s shadow for a single day, you can very precisely locate true north. If you have a protractor or an astrolabe and measure the angle of the sun above the horizon on the summer solstice, you’ll know your latitude. Looking through tubes attached to a tripod will let you measure an object’s motion from hour to hour. You’ll need some star charts. And if you want to get fancy, you’ll need to brush up on what you learned about tangents, sines, and cosines in trigonometry class.

Even today, with an astrolabe, a watch, and a view of Ursa Major, you could throw away your GPS.

How would you do that? Measuring the angle of Polaris, the north star, above the horizon will tell you your latitude. That’s easy. Longitude is more difficult, and longitude bedeviled the ancients. But if you can determine your local time by getting a precise fix on noon (with the gnomon of a sundial, say, or the shadow of a stick stuck in the ground), and if you know what time it is at some distant place with a known longitude (Greenwich is handy for that), then you can calculate your longitude. At night, you can get a pretty good fix on the time by measuring the position of a known star.

To clarify the concept of longitude, keep in mind that the British navy carried accurate clocks on their ships (chronometers) not because they cared about the local time wherever they might be. Rather, the chronometer always said what time it was back in Greenwich. If you determine your local time from the sun or a star, then the difference between your local time and Greenwich time tells you how far you are east or west of Greenwich. After accurate clocks were available for ships, marine navigation greatly improved. This is why Britain’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich was commissioned by King Charles II in 1675. In the U.S., the Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific organizations in the country. The Naval Observatory was responsible for the “master clock” that the navy used for navigation. The observatory still is responsible for the master clock! The time used by GPS satellites is determined by the U.S. Naval Observatory.

But before GPS, if you were a ship at sea carrying Thomas Jefferson from Virginia to Calais, you’d needed a star to figure out the local time. The stars most convenient for that are in Ursa Major.

I like to think of it this way: The stars are still up there, raining information down on us day and night. All we have to do is just look up, and measure.

Review: Interstellar

A good test of a movie, I think, is to let it digest for a few days and then ask yourself: Having digested this movie, was it nutritious enough that anything stuck to my bones? With “Interstellar,” the answer for me turns out to be no.

“Interstellar” is highly entertaining. It’s fast-paced, very smart, and beautiful to watch. There are strong character elements, with well-paced emotional peaks and valleys. In short, it’s a great experience at the theater (I saw it in IMAX). But not much sticks to the bones.

The sport of second-guessing director Christopher Nolan’s science seems to have quickly faded from the media. I’m not hearing any Oscar buzz. I don’t think it’s just me. I don’t think it’s sticking to many people’s bones. Still, I love it when Hollywood makes science fiction blockbusters.

Was “Interstellar” an environmental movie? One of the flaws of the movie, in my opinion, was that it tells us too little about what had happened on earth and was in too big a hurry to get into space. And having gotten into space, it lingered a little too long. Matt Damon could have been written out of this film with no loss at all. Clearly back on earth there was some sort of climate disaster, and lots of people died. Clearly this led to ugly cultural changes and what seemed to be a kind of leftist fascism. But that’s all left vague. It’s almost as though the director is in a hurry to abandon the earth and get on with an earth substitute made with technology. There is an ugly whiff of techno-utopianism: earth is disposable; superior people will save our plebeian asses, but only just enough of us to assure genetic diversity.

The word “existential” shows up a lot in things written about Christopher Nolan. That is very appropriate. Nolan seems allergic to approaching anything with the scent of the collective about it. He does not concern himself with values. With Nolan, very little is shared. Everything is seen through the eyes of single individuals, and they all see something different. I’m not necessarily criticizing existentialism in art, but existentialism tends to involve heavy exertion while on a low-protein, high-carb diet.

Should you see “Interstellar”? By all means, in IMAX if possible. But go out for a burger afterwards, because you’ll probably leave the theater hungry.

You also won’t feel the need for another Matt Damon or Matthew McConaughey movie for a long, long time.

Divitiacus, a Druid

For at least 200 years, the Druids have been hopelessly romanticized. The Druids, of course, were the highest caste of the Celts. With the exception of making war (from which Druids were exempt), the Druids performed the leadership functions of the Celts — priests, judges, scientists, and philosophers. Maddeningly little is known about them. Many works of imagination have been written about the Druids, but hard, well-sourced information is very, very scarce.

Greek and Roman historians mentioned the Druids, but I believe that only one Druid is known to history by name. That was Divitiacus, a Druid of the Aedui nation, which lay between Lyon and Dijon in what is now France, near the border with Switzerland. Divitiacus’ nation, the Aedui, had been badly defeated by a rival tribe allied with Germans. Divitiacus went to Rome and pleaded before the Roman senate for help.

While in Rome, Divitiacus stayed with Cicero. Cicero mentions Divitiacus in his Divinations. Cicero spoke highly of Divitiacus, who was treated like a king in Rome. Divitiacus, said Cicero, would predict the future, “either by augury or his own conjecture.”

Julius Caesar makes many mentions of Divitiacus in The Gallic War, in books 1, 2, 6, and 7. Caesar trusted Divitiacus and greatly respected him. Caesar even went easy on Divitiacus’ rebellious brother, Dumnorix, out of regard for Divitiacus.

Druids are usually romanticized as old people in robes. But Divitiacus was quite young. He was believed to be about 32 when his nation was defeated by the rival Sequani and the Germans, and he probably was 35 or 36 when Caesar knew him. Caesar knew Divitiacus in Divitiacus’ role as a diplomat and leader of his people.

Caesar has a little to say about the Druids in The Gallic War:

“[The Druids] are concerned with divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, public and private, and the interpretation of ritual questions. A great number of young men gather about them for the sake of instruction and hold them in great honour. In fact, it is they who decide in almost all disputes, public and private; and if any crime has been committed, or murder done, or there is any dispute about succession or boundaries, they also decide it, determining rewards and penalties. If any person or people does not abide by their decision, they ban such from sacrifice, which is their heaviest penalty. Those that are thus banned are reckoned as impious and criminal. … Of all these Druids one is chief, who has the highest authority among them. At his death, either any other that is preeminent in position succeeds, or, if there be several of equal standing, they strive for the primacy by the vote of the Druids, or sometimes even with armed force. These Druids, at a certain time of the year, meet within the borders of the Carnutes, whose territory is reckoned as the center of Gaul, and sit in conclave in a consecrated spot. Thither assemble from every side all that have disputes, and they obey the decisions and judgments of the Druids. It is believed that their rule of life was discovered in Britain and transferred thence to Gaul. And today those who would study the subject more accurately journey, as a rule, to Britain to learn it.

“The Druids usually hold aloof from war, and do not pay war-taxes with the rest. They are excused from military service and exempt from all liabilities. Tempted by these great rewards, many young men assemble of their own motion to receive their training. Many are sent by parents and relatives. Report says that in the schools of the Druids, they learn by heart a great number of verses, and therefore some persons remain twenty years under training. And they do not think it proper to commit these utterances to writing, although in almost all other matters, and in their public and private accounts, they make use of Greek letters. I believe they have adopted the practice for two reasons — that they do not wish the rule to become common property, nor those who learn the rule to rely on writing and so neglect the cultivation of the memory. And, in fact, it does usually happen that the assistance of writing tends to relax the diligence of the student and the action of the memory. The cardinal doctrine they seek to teach is that souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another. And this belief, as the fear of death is thereby cast aside, they hold to be the greatest incentive to valour. Besides this, they have many discussions as touching the stars and their movement, the size of the universe and of the earth, the order of nature, the strength and the powers of the immortal gods, and hand down their lore to the young men.”

The few paragraphs above contain most of what history recorded about the Druids. As Caesar says, the Druids left no written records. After the conquest of Gaul, and during the Roman conquest of Britain, the last remaining Druids were hunted down and killed. One of the biggest slaughters was on Anglesey, a stronghold of the Druids in what is now Wales, in 60 A.D. Today, Celtic scholars base most of their work on archeology, which can sometimes reveal more about lost cultures that we might expect. Still, the Druids are likely to forever remain in the dark shadows of history.

My investigations of this period of antiquity, of course, is background research for the sequel to Fugue in Ursa Major. I would find it very wrongheaded to base a work of imagination on what others have imagined. Instead, I think it’s important dig out as much history as remains to be dug out.

Note: The translation from The Gallic War is by H.J. Edwards from the 1917 Harvard edition.

My grudge against Rome

It occurs to me that I have never fully explained my grudge against Rome. It’s because I’m a Celt.

Back in 2006, I signed up for a DNA test. I learned a great deal from it, including the fact that I do indeed have common ancestors with the notorious Dalton Gang, though that’s a story for another time. The thing I learned, though, that affected me even more than that is that my genetic haplogroup is R1b-M222. So what does that mean?

A haplogroup can be thought of as a clan, or an extended tribe. In the old world, members of the same haplogroup occupied the same territories and tended to migrate together. Geneticists use haplogroups to study ancient human migrations. Haplogroups persist across thousands of years.

The haplogroup R1b-M222 is still very much being studied by geneticists. It is a Celtic group identified with the La Tène branch of the Celts. The La Tène Celts flourished around 450 B.C. in a large area of Europe focused around Switzerland. They migrated to the British Isles and were well established in England and Scotland by 200 B.C. They migrated into Ireland and became one of the dominant haplogroups in parts of Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland and the northern counties of the Irish Republic.

In 2006, geneticists at Trinity College, Dublin, publicized research which they said showed that living humans of the R1b-M222 haplotype were descendants of the 4th century Irish king known as Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall was extremely powerful. In fact, he is the Irish king who is said to have brought Saint Patrick to Ireland, as a captive. He was so powerful, geneticists thought, that he was able to consort with a great many women and thus father a great many children. However, later research discredited that theory, because the R1b-M222 haplotype seemed to mark early migration into Ireland as well as later migration out of Ireland. Niall of the Nine Hostages was certainly an R1b-M222, but he’s not fully responsible for spreading the haplotype. Geneticists now think that the R1b-M222 haplotype is instead the La Tène marker.

What this boils down to is that, because of my genetic markers and because of the research done by today’s geneticists, I can know with high confidence where my ancestors were centuries ago. In 200 B.C., they were almost certainly in northern Britain. In 400 A.D. by the time of Niall, they were probably in the northern parts of Ireland.

There is something very powerful about knowing with high confidence where one’s ancestors were many centuries ago. This is not abstract to me. They are my grandmothers and grandfathers. If they were abused and oppressed, I take that very personally.

Rome committed all sorts of atrocities against my grandmothers and grandfathers. Though it may offend many people for me to say this, I also hold the Roman imperial religion, Christianity, in contempt. Its theologies and texts are weak, and all the nice parts of its theologies and texts were borrowed (don’t take my word for it — ask a theologian). Historically, the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity are worse, if that is possible, than the atrocities of the Romans. To me, it’s scarcely surprising that Rome chose Christianity as the state religion. They were a perfect match. I am unimpressed by what Christianity claims to be. I have tried to cultivate a long memory, so I am only concerned with what the historical record shows it to be. The long research that went into Fugue in Ursa Major, and which continues for the sequel, has only strengthened my views.

The Celts were warlike people. There’s no doubt about that. In that era, if you didn’t wage war you didn’t last long, and the Celts lasted for centuries. And no doubt there were elements of the Celtic religion that today we would find offensive. But they honored nature, and they were some of the nicest, most creative, most knowledge-loving people in the ancient world, as far as I can tell.

If there are vestiges of Celtic culture to found today, of course that would be in Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, and Brittany. Fifteen centuries of Christian domination have certainly changed Ireland, but I believe the spirit of the Celts can still be detected in the Irish love of music, of poetry, of love for the land, of simple and peaceful rural life. The Irish never conquered anyone, never sought empires and great wealth. In many ways, in spite of growing Catholic domination (and some help from Irish Catholic monks who were barely Christianized for centuries), Ireland kept the lights on during the Dark Ages. The Irish have been obliged to fight repeatedly for their way of life, and they never sought to impose it on others. What about Britain, you might ask. Isn’t Britain Celtic? Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland — yes. But the imperial English, I would argue, got their spirit from the Saxons, Germanic conquerers from the north who occupied England. Even today, the enmities between England and provinces such as Wales are remnants of the old Celtic-Saxon hostilities. It is a miracle that the old Celtic languages still have a toehold in those places.

The Celtic peoples who remain today — the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Cornish, not to mention the Bretons — have always wanted, more than anything, to be left alone. I am proud to have them as my grandmothers and grandfathers.

Julius Caesar against the Gauls

Wikimedia Commons: The Dying Gaul, Roman, circa 200 B.C. The sculpture preceded Julius Caesar by about 150 years and is based on earlier wars with the Celts.

Now that Fugue in Ursa Major has been sent out into the world to seek its fortune, I am already well into the research needed for the sequel. In the sequel, we will use some of the tools of science fiction to probe history, the better to understand how we got to this sorry state and to look for lost ideas that we might do well to recover.

A major turning point in Western Civilization, as I see it — if not the turning point in Western Civilization — was Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, a critical first step in bringing essentially all of western Europe (except for Ireland) under the control of Rome. This insured the near-extermination of the Celtic cultures and prepared the soil for the Roman imperial religion, Christianity. If one believes, as I do, that Western Civilization sucks in pretty much the same ways that imperial Rome sucked, then one must try to understand how we got to the state we’re in. Science fiction is a wonderful way to explore these themes. Good science fiction ought to be carefully grounded in its histories and in its science, and then it is free to ask, in plausible ways: What if?

I have dreaded the work, but one of the sources I needed to digest was written by Julius Caesar himself. It is hundreds of pages long, and it is mostly about boring military strategy. The book is The Gallic War. Caesar describes the conquest of Gaul in his own words. All the military stuff (at least to me) gets old really fast, so I speed-read through that to pick out the parts that contain other nuggets of history. One must be careful here, however, because Caesar was a propagandist. Part of his intention is to glorify himself, to glorify Rome, and to paint the conquered peoples as barbarians to help justify Rome’s treatment of them. The conquest of Gaul (the area of modern France, more or less) was almost a genocide. The language of Gaul became extinct within a couple of hundred years after Caesar’s military conquest. Latin morphed into French.

One thing that greatly impressed me was Caesar’s quoting a speech by a leader of the Celts, Critognatus, at great length. Caesar does this because he wants to show the speech’s “remarkable and abominable cruelty” (singularem et nefariam crudelitatem). Strangely enough, to me, the speech doesn’t sound cruel and abominable at all. It sounds pretty heroic, a cry for help and justice poignant enough to be heard and lamented two thousand years later. This is just an excerpt:

For wherein was that war like this? The Cimbri devastated Gaul, they brought great disaster upon us, yet they departed at length from our borders and sought other countries, leaving us our rights, laws, lands, liberty. But the Romans — what else do they seek or desire than to follow where envy leads, to settle in the lands and states of men whose noble report and martial strength they have learnt, and to bind upon them a perpetual slavery? ‘Tis in no other fashion they have waged wars. And if ye know not what is afoot among distance nations, look now on Gaul close at hand, which has been reduced to a province, with utter change of rights and laws, and crushed beneath the axes in everlasting slavery.”

I hear you, Critognatus.

Note: The translation is by H.J. Edwards and is from the 1917 Harvard edition.

Another note: Whenever I use the phrase, “Western Civilization,” I think of what Mohandas Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western Civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”