Myths of the Modern Man by Jacqueline T Lynch Read Free Book Online

conjured up everything from the calendar, which he had a lot to do with, to salad and the surgical delivery of newborns, which he did not, led the first invasions of the wild island of Britannia, where the Celts had been pushed back from their former holdings across Gaul and across Europe. By AD 43 under the emperor Claudius, Britannia became a Roman province. But the Pax Romana was to have a harder time establishing itself here than on the rest of the map of the Known World. The Briton Celts were unruly guerrilla woodland fighters who had not yet given up the stubborn notion that the land hereabouts was not theirs to keep.
    It had been a generation since the Romans conquered much of the island, and now the first bitter surprise of their invasion had simmered into poisonous resentment. The Romans did not help matters much. Despite the magnificent organization of their empire, diplomacy with savages was secondary to making them know who their masters were. You can flatter a Celt and take his horse, his land, his woman, but if you try to lord it over him with attitude, he gets miffed.
    The retired legionnaires now posted to this outpost of the Empire as petty officials, militia, and tax assessors had not yet learned this. They took a heavy hand with the Celts. They taxed not only in the name of the Emperor, but for whatever graft they could get for themselves.
    In an effort to subdue the Celts with their own cooperation, Rome made what for lack of a better word could be called alliances. Individual Celtic kings and queens were promised sovereignty and aid if they worked with the Romans. This meant accepting Roman authority, and some allied kings were unclear as to how this arrangement worked. They would find out when they disobeyed.
    So, I knew certain information about life here without Cailte telling me. I had the Cliff Notes. Lately, a new temple to the dead emperor Claudius had been built, and the local Celtic tribes were being forced to pay for it. This was a bit much for them. They did not want to pay for their conquerors’ religion, and they did not understand the Roman’s habit of deifying their emperors.
    They had a religion of their own.
    This, for the Romans, was the real problem with the Celts. This was why a massing of Roman troops gathered near the island of Anglesey in the west, called Mona at this period. It was a Druid center. They wanted an end to that. Druidism was dangerous.
    Taliesin watched me still. He looked like a mild fellow, not an enemy of the state. But he was an enemy, according to Emperor Nero. The druids’ religion has come down to us in fairy tales and theory. No one really knows all they stood for, what qualities of immortality they preached, or what their purpose was.
    We know they believed in the magic of a chaotic natural world. We know that they, unlike most of the so-called barbaric tribes of the day, believed that people had souls and that their souls were immortal. They had a place of eternal paradise waiting for them.
    The night lay down upon us with a warm, wet breeze. The stars in their patterns were immense and hauntingly close, hanging above us so closely as if to smother us. Long burnt out, I could not forget that, but immense in their design, and power, above us. I recognized constellations, not from having traveled among them, but from my boyhood vantage when I used to lie on the grass and look up on summer nights like this, grasping handfuls of my father’s neatly trimmed lawn to keep me from floating away into the dark sky. The stars, those stars, always threatened to take me away.
    There was Cassiopeia, and Hercules, and Pegasus. They bore names of figures from Greek folklore and religion, but Cailte and Taliesin didn’t know this, because the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy hadn’t officially given them these names until the Second Century AD, and here we were, here I was, still in the First Century. I was pretty sure of that. What I could understand of Cailte to me