William Napier: The Judgement

Everything in the human world must vanish and nothing shall remain, though some there are who cannot change but are caught in time like insects in amber, trapped and killed there in its bright, clear, mindless gum, for ever loyal to a world they do not realise has gone. Such was the last and noblest Roman of them all…

The People are moving on, over the endless plains, stumbling in the cracked earth, about their covered ears the ancient songs of penitence and ash. Songs of grief and the graveside, the young buried before the old, children buried by their parents, and sorrow immeasurable at the right way of nature overturned by war and famine and pestilence. Broken temples, falling towers, clouds of brickdust, bricks coloured like dried blood, hard-baked in the ancient ovens of Babylon, Nineveh and Tyre…

They will come at last to a green valley, those pestilence-stricken multitudes, the Angel of History always at their back, harrying them, her sword blazing cruel and bright as the sword of the cherubim at the gates of Eden. They will look out on that pleasant valley of quiet streams and pastures, and they will begin to build again. Oh, the pity of it, and the grandeur.

The very stone of their building destined to fall again, their house never safe, their building never done, they will never know rest from heaven’s weathering. Their buildings will always fall, they will always build again, they will never surrender. They will never stop wandering, searching, over the endless plains, a storm that will not cease. It is mankind itself that is the storm, god-driven, god-haunted mankind, most pitiful, most magnificent of all creation.

They will never despair, though their proudest towers are burned to ashes, though their cities are inundated by the waters of the deep, though plague and famine encompass them round, though the sun burn them by day and the frost chill them by night, though the day holds its labours and the night its terrors, though they are but so many small, weak, naked, biped creatures, so many little parcels of mortal flesh, and death walks beside them daily. They will never lose hope, walking on resolute into the coming storm which is their own reflection, unbowed, undismayed, undefeated. They were made to suffer and to endure, to fall and to triumph, and never to surrender.

Among all the wonders of the earth, most wonderful is man. So I salute him, recognising him as made by the very hand of the Living God, in the tragedy of his fate and in the greatness of his heart.

Hic finis Historiae Prisci Panii, Anno Domini 488

Modern equivalents marked with an*asterisk are approximations only

Adrianople – Edirne, Thrace, European Turkey

Aemona – Ljubljana, Slovenia

Altai Mountains – mountain range in western Mongolia, sacred to the Huns and to many other peoples

Aquileia – present-day city dates only from Middle Ages

Aquincum – Budapest

Argentoratum – Strasbourg

Augusta Treverorum – Trier

Aureliana – Orleans

Azimuntium – in Thrace, precise location unknown

Bononia – Bologna

Britain – England and Wales

Burdigala – Bordeaux

Cameracum – Cambrai

Carbonarian Forest – the Ardennes*

Carnuntum – Petronell, Austria*

Carthago Nova – Cartagena, Spain

Catalaunian Fields – near Chalons in Champagne,

France, precise location unknown

Cisalpine Gaul – Lombardy

Colonia Agrippina – Cologne

Constantinople (also Byzantium) – Istanbul

Corduba – Cordova

Dacia – Romania

Dumnonia – Devon

Dyrrachium – Durres, Albania

Euxine Sea – the Black Sea

Fiorentia – Florence

Gades – Cadiz

Gallia Narbonensis – southern France*

Gaul – France

Gessoriacum – Boulogne

Hungvar – the Hungarian plain

Illyricum – Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia/Albania*

Isca Dumnoniorum, also Esca – Exeter

Lauriacum – Enns, Austria

Leptis Magna – Labda, Libya

Londinium – London

Lutetia – Paris

Maeotis Palus – the Sea of Azov

Marcianople – Devnya, Bulgaria

Margus – Pozarevac, Serbia

Massilia – Marseilles

Mauretania – Morocco*

Mediolanum – Milan

Mediomatrice – Metz

Mincius – River Mincio, Northern Italy

Moesia – northern Bulgaria/Macedonia*

Moguntiacum – Mainz

Mosa – River Meuse

Naissus – Nis

Narbo – Narbonne

Neapolis – Naples

Noricum – Austria*

Padus – River Po

Panium – a humble and unremarked little town in Thrace

Pannonia – Hungary*

Parthia – Persia, Iran*

Philippopolis – Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Ratiaria – Archar, Bulgaria*

Rhaetia – Switzerland

Rhemi – Rheims

Sardica – Sofia, Bulgaria

Scythia – Russia, Ukraine*, Kazakhstan*, and all points east

Sequana – River Seine

Singidunum – Belgrade

Sirmium – Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia

Tanais – River Don

Tingis – Tangier

Tolosa – Toulouse

Tornacum – Tournai

Trajanopolis – Maroneia, Greece*

Utus – River Vit, Bulgaria

Vangiones – Worms

Viminacium – Kostolac, Serbia