Honorius shrugged at this decay. "The place lost a lot of its value when the sackings came- too hard to defend, you see, so far out of the city. That is how I was able to rent it so cheaply."

That night, amid this battered grandeur, they ate a meal together. Even the mosaic on the floor of the dining room was badly damaged; it appeared that thieves had taken any pieces that showed traces of gold leaf.

The food itself was a signature of the great pan-Eurasian mixing that had followed the expansion of the farming communities. The staples were wheat and rice from the original Anatolian agricultural package, but supplemented by quince originally from the Caucasus, millet from Central Asia, cucumber, sesame, and citrus fruit from India, and apricots and peaches from China. This transcontinental diet was an everyday miracle, unremarked on by those who ate it.

The next day they took the Scythian into the old city itself.

They walked to the Palatine, the Capitol, the Forum. The Scythian gazed around him with his horizon-sharp eyes, assessing, somehow measuring. He wore his desert garb of black clothing with scarlet wrap around his head; it must have been uncomfortable in Rome's humid air, but he showed no signs of discomfort.

Athalaric murmured to Papak, "He doesn't seem very impressed."

Now the Scythian snapped out something in his terse, ancient language, and Papak translated automatically. "He says he understands now why the Romans had to take slaves and gold and food from his land."

Honorius seemed obscurely pleased. "A savage he may be, but he is no fool- and he is not intimidated, not even by mighty Rome. Good for him."

Away from the monumental areas, central Rome was a clotted network of streets and alleys, narrow and gloomy, the product of more than a thousand years' uncontrolled building. Many of the residences here were five or six stories tall. Raised by unscrupulous landlords determined to get as much income as possible out of every scrap of precious land, they towered unsteadily. Walking through sewage-littered, unpaved streets, with buildings crowded so closely they almost touched above their heads, it seemed to Athalaric that he was passing through an immense network of sewers, like one of the famous cloacae cloacae that ran beneath Rome to the Tiber. that ran beneath Rome to the Tiber.

The crowds in the streets wore masks over their mouths and noses, gauze soaked in oil or spices. There had been a recent outbreak of smallpox. Disease was a constant threat: People still talked of the mighty Plague of Antoninus of three centuries earlier. In the millennia since the death of Juna, medical advances had barely slowed the march of the mighty diseases. Immense trade routes had united the populations of Europe, northern Africa, and Asia into a single vast resource pool for microbes, and the increased crowding of people into cities with little or no sanitation had exacerbated the problem. Throughout Rome's imperial period it had been necessary to encourage a constant immigration of healthy peasants into the cities to replace those who died, and in fact urban populations would not become self-sustaining until the twentieth century.

This swarming place was a pathological outcome of the farming revolution, a place where people were crowded like ants, not primates.

It was almost a relief when they reached an area that had been burned out during one of the barbarian sackings. Though the destruction was decades past, this scorched, shattered area had never been rebuilt. But at least here among the rubble Athalaric could see the sky, unimpeded by filth-strewn balconies.

Honorius said to the Persian, "Ask him what he thinks now."

The Scythian turned and surveyed the rows of heaped-up residential buildings. He murmured, and Papak translated. "How strange that you people choose to live in cliffs, like gulls." Athalaric had heard the contempt in the Scythian's voice.

When they returned to their villa Athalaric found that the purse he carried around his waist had been neatly slit open and emptied. He was angry, with himself as much as the thief- how was he supposed to be looking after Honorius if he couldn't even watch over his own purse?- but he knew he should be grateful that the invisible bandit had not slit open his belly in the process and robbed him of his life as well.

The next day Honorius said he would take the party out into the country, to what he called the Museum of Augustus. So they piled into carts and went clattering over metaled but overgrown roads, out through the farms that crowded around the city.

They came to what must once have been an exclusive, expensive small town. An adobe wall contained a handful of villas and a cluster of meaner dwellings that had housed slaves. The place was obviously abandoned. The outer wall had been broken down, the buildings burned out and looted.

Honorius, with a scrawled map in his hand, led them into the complex, muttering, turning the map this way and that.

A thick layer of vegetation had broken through the mosaics and floor tiles, and ivy clung to fire-cracked walls. There must have been agony here, Athalaric thought, when the strength of the thousand-year empire had failed at last and its protection was lost. But the presence of the new vegetation in the midst of decay was oddly reassuring. It was even comforting to imagine that after another few centuries, as the green returned, nothing would be left of this place but a few hummocks in the ground, and oddly shaped stones that might break an unwary farmer's plow.

Honorius brought them to a small building at the center of the complex. It might once have been a temple, but it was as burned out and ruined as the rest. The porters had to haul aside a tangle of vines and ivy. Honorius rummaged over the ground. At last, with a cry of triumph, he retrieved a bone, a great scapula the size of a dinner plate. "I knew it! The barbarians took the petty gold, the shiny silver, but they knew nothing of the true treasures here."

At the sight of Honorius's spectacular find, the others began to root in the dirt and vegetation with the enthusiasm of prospectors. Even the doltish porters seemed fired by intellectual curiosity, perhaps for the first time in their lives. Soon they were all unearthing huge bones, tusks, even misshapen skulls. It was an extraordinarily exciting moment.

Honorius was saying, "This was once a bone museum, established by Emperor Augustus himself! The biographer Suetonius tells us that it was first set up on the island of Capri. In later times one of Augustus's successors imported the best of the pieces here. Some of the bones have crumbled away- look at this one- they are clearly very ancient, and have been subject to grievous misuse."

Now Honorius found a heavy slab of red sandstone, with startling white objects embedded within it. It was the size of a coffin lid and much too heavy for him, and the porters had to help him raise it. "Now, sir Scythian. No doubt you will recognize this handsome fellow."

The Scythian smiled. Athalaric and the others crowded around to see.

The white objects, suspended in the red matrix, were bones: the skeletal remains of a creature embedded in the rock. The creature must have been as long in its body as Athalaric was tall. It had big hind limbs, clearly visible ribs suspended from its spine, and short forearms, folded before its chest. Its tail was long, something like a crocodile's, Athalaric thought. But its most surprising feature was its head. The skull was massive, with a great hollow crest of bone, and a huge, powerful jaw hinged under what looked like a bird's beak. Two empty eyes stared out of time.

Honorius was watching him, rheumy eyes glittering. "Well, Athalaric?"

"I have never seen such a thing before," Athalaric breathed. "But-"

"But you know what it is."

It must be a griffin: the legendary monsters of the eastern deserts, four-footed, and yet with a head like a great bird's. The images of griffins had permeated paintings and sculpture for a thousand years.

Now the Scythian began to talk, rapidly, fluently, and Papak scrambled to keep up his translation. "He says that his father, and his father before him, prospected the great deserts to the east for the gold that washes down from the mountains. And the griffins guard the gold. He has seen their bones everywhere, peering out of the rocks, just like this."

"Just as Herodotus described," Honorius said.

Athalaric said, "Ask him if he has seen one alive."

"No," the Scythian said through Papak, "but he has seen their eggs many times. Like birds they lay their eggs in nests, but on the ground."

Athalaric murmured, "How did the beast get into the rock?"

Honorius smiled. "Remember Prometheus."

"Prometheus?"

"To punish him for bringing fire to humans, the old gods chained Prometheus to a mountain in the eastern deserts- a place guarded by mute griffins, as it happens. Aeschylus tells us how landslides and rain buried his body, where it was trapped for long ages until the wearing of the rock returned it to the light. Here is a Promethean beast, Athalaric!"

On they talked, rummaging among the bones. They were all strange, gigantic, distorted, unrecognizable. Most of these remains were actually of rhinos, giraffes, elephants, lions, and chalicotheres, the huge mammals of the Pleistocene brought to light by the tectonic churning of this place, where Africa drove slowly north into Eurasia. As in Australia, as all over the world, so here; people had even forgotten what they had lost, and only distorted trace memories of these giants remained.

And as the men argued and pried at the fossil, the skull of the protoceratops- a dinosaur trapped in a sandstorm only a few centuries before the birth of Purga- peered out with the sightless calm of eternity.

"...These are accounts written down by Hesiod and Homer and many others, but handed down by generations of storytellers before them.

"Long before the existence of modern humans, the Earth was empty. But the primordial ground birthed a series of Titans. The Titans were like men, but huge. Prometheus was one of them. Kronos led his sibling Titans to slay their father, Uranos. But his blood produced the next generation, the Giants. In those days, not long after the origin of life itself, there was much chaos in the blood, and generations of giants and monsters proliferated."

They sat in the half-ruined atrium of the rented villa. The air had remained hot and still as the evening had drawn on, but the wine, the hum of the insects, and the luxuriant, unlikely greenery draped around the atrium made this place somehow welcoming.

And in this decayed place, over glass after glass of wine, Honorius tried to persuade the man from the desert that he must travel with him much further: back across the wreckage of the empire, all the way west to the fringe of the world ocean itself. And so he told him stories of the birth and death of gods.

Another generation of life had passed, and more new forms evolved. The Titans Kronos and Rhea gave birth to the future gods of Olympus, the Romans' Jupiter among them. Eventually Jupiter led the new, human-form gods against a coalition of the older Titans, Giants, and monsters. It was a war for the supremacy of the cosmos itself.

"The land was shattered," Honorius whispered. "Islands emerged from the deep. Mountains fell into the sea. Rivers ran dry, or changed course, flooding the land. And the bones of the monsters were buried where they fell.

"Now," Honorius went on, "the natural philosophers have always countered the myths- they seek natural causes that conform to natural laws- and perhaps they are right to do so. But sometimes they go too far. Aristotle holds that creatures always breed true, that the species of life are fixed for all time. Let him explain the giants' bones we dig out of the ground! Aristotle must never have seen a bone in his life! The thing embedded in the rock in the museum may or may not be a griffin. But is it not clear the bones are old old? How long can it take for sand to turn to rock? What is that great slab but evidence of different times different times in the past? in the past?

"Look beyond the stories. Listen to the essence of what the myths tell us: that the Earth was populated by different creatures in the past- species that sometimes bred true, and sometimes produced hybrids and monsters radically different from their parents. Just as the bones show! Whatever the precise facts, is it not clear that the myths hold truth, the myths hold truth, for they are the product of a thousand years of study of the Earth, and contemplation of its meaning. And yet, and yet-" for they are the product of a thousand years of study of the Earth, and contemplation of its meaning. And yet, and yet-"

Athalaric laid a hand on his friend's arm. "Calm yourself, Honorius. You are speaking well. There is no need to shout."

Honorius, trembling with his passion, said, "I contend we cannot ignore the myths. Perhaps they are memories, the best memories we have, of the great cataclysms and extraordinary times of the past, witnessed by men who might have comprehended little of what they saw, men who might have been only half men themselves." He caught Athalaric's frown. "Yes, half men!" Honorius produced the skull that the Scythian had given to him, with its human face and apelike cranium. "A human, but not a human," he murmured. "It is the greatest mystery of all. What came before us? What came before us? What can answer such a question? What but the bones? Sir Scythian, you told me that this skullcap comes from the east." What can answer such a question? What but the bones? Sir Scythian, you told me that this skullcap comes from the east."

Papak translated. "The Scythian cannot say where it originated. It passed through many hands, traveling west, until it reached you."

"And with each transaction," Athalaric murmured almost genially, "no doubt the price increased."

Papak raised his thin eyebrows at that. "It is said that in the land of the people with the pale skin and narrow eyes, far to the east, such bones are commonplace. The bones are ground up for medicine and charms, and to make the fields rich."

Honorius leaned forward. "So in the east we now know that there once lived a race of men of human form but of small brain. Animal men. Animal men." His voice was trembling. "And what if I were to tell you that in the furthest west, at the edge of the world, there was once another another race of pre-men- men with bodies like bears and brows like centurions' helmets?" race of pre-men- men with bodies like bears and brows like centurions' helmets?"

Athalaric was stunned; Honorius had told him nothing of this.

The Scythian began to talk. His smooth vowels and subdued consonants sounded like a song, barely perturbed by Papak's clumsy translations, a song from the desert that soared up into the humid Italian night.

"He says there were once many kinds of people. They are all gone now, these people, but in the deserts and the mountains they linger on in stories and songs. We have forgotten, he says. Once the world was full of different men, different animals. We have forgotten."

"Yes!" Honorius cried, and he suddenly stood up, flushed. "Yes, yes! We have forgotten almost everything, save only distorted traces preserved in myth. It is a tragedy, an agony of loneliness. Why, you and I, sir Scythian, have almost forgotten how to talk to each other. And yet you understand, as I do, that we float, like sailors on a raft, over a great sea of undiscovered time. Come with me- I must show you the bones I have found- oh, come with me!"

III.

Athalaric and Honorius came from Burdigala, a city of the thirty-year-old Gothic kingdom that now spanned much of what had once been the Roman provinces of Gaul and Spain. To get home, they were forced to travel back through the patchwork of territories which had emerged as Roman dominion had broken down across western Europe.

The relationship between Rome and the clamoring German tribes of the north had long been problematic, as the Germans pressed down hard on the old empire's long, vulnerable northern border. For centuries some Germans had been used as mercenaries by the empire, and at last whole tribes had been allowed to settle inside the empire on the understanding that they fought as allies against common enemies beyond the border. So the empire had become a kind of shell, inhabited and controlled not by Romans but by the more vigorous Germans, Goths, and Vandals.

As the pressure on the border increased- an indirect result of the mighty expansion of the Huns out of Asia- the last elements of Roman control had melted away. The governors and their staff had disappeared, and the last Roman soldiers left clinging to their posts, ill-paid, badly equipped, and demoralized, had failed to prevent the breakdown of order.

Thus the western empire had fallen, almost unremarked. New nations emerged amid the political rubble, and slaves became kings.

And so, from the kingdom of Odoacer, covering Italy and the remnants of the old provinces of Raetia and Noricum to the north, Athalaric and Honorius passed through the kingdom of the Burgundians, which spanned much of the hinterland of the Rhone to the east of Gaul, and the kingdom of the Soissons in northern France, before returning at last to their western Gothic kingdom.

Athalaric had feared his jaunt into the failing heart of the old empire might leave him overwhelmed by the inferiority of his people's meager achievements. But when he at last got home he found the opposite seemed to be true. After the crumbling grandeur of Rome, Burdigala indeed seemed small, provincial, primitive, even ugly. But Burdigala was expanding. Large new developments were visible all around its harbor area, and the harbor itself was crowded with ships.

Rome was magnificent, but it was dead. This This was the future- his future, his to make. was the future- his future, his to make.

Athalaric's uncle Theodoric was a remote cousin of Euric, the Goth king of Gaul and Spain. Theodoric, who nursed long-term ambitions for his family, had set up a kind of satellite court in an old, expansive Roman villa outside Burdigala. When he heard about the exotic visitors brought back by Honorius and Athalaric, he insisted they stay in his villa, and he immediately began to plan a series of social occasions to show off the visitors, as well as the accomplishments and travels of his nephew.

At these occasions, Theodoric was to entertain members of the new Goth nobility- and also Roman aristocrats.

If political control had been lost, the culture of the thousand-year-old empire persisted. The new German rulers showed themselves willing to learn from the Romans. The Goth king Euric had had the laws of his kingdom drawn up by Roman jurists and issued in Latin; it was this body of law which Athalaric had been assigned to Honorius to study. And meanwhile the old landed aristocracy of the empire continued to live alongside the newcomers. Many of them, with centuries of acquisition behind them, remained rich and powerful even now.

Even after visiting Rome itself, Athalaric found it ironic to see these toga-clad scions of ancient families, many of them still holding imperial titles, among leather-clad barbarian nobles, gliding effortlessly through rooms whose genteel frescoes and mosaics were now overlaid with the cruder imagery of a warrior people, horseback warriors with their helmets, shields, and lances. It could be argued- Honorius did did argue- that with their systematic greed, practiced over centuries, these exquisite creatures had destroyed the very empire that created them. But for these aristocrats, the replacement of the vast imperial superstructure with the new patchwork of Gothic and Burgundian chiefs had made no significant difference in their own gilded lives. argue- that with their systematic greed, practiced over centuries, these exquisite creatures had destroyed the very empire that created them. But for these aristocrats, the replacement of the vast imperial superstructure with the new patchwork of Gothic and Burgundian chiefs had made no significant difference in their own gilded lives.

In fact, for some of them, it seemed that the collapse of the empire had actually opened up business opportunities.

As a trophy guest the Scythian proved less than satisfactory for Theodoric. The man from the desert seemed revolted by the elaborate atrium, gardens, and rooms of the villa. He preferred to spend his time in the room Theodoric had granted him. But he ignored the bed and the rest of the furniture in the room, spread the rolled blanket he carried on the floor, and set up a kind of tent of sheets. It was as if he had brought the desert to Gaul.

If the Scythian was a social disappointment, Papak was a success, as Athalaric had sourly expected. Bringing a whiff of the exotic, the Persian moved smoothly among Theodoric's guests, barbarian and citizen alike. He flirted outrageously with the women, and captivated the men with his tales of the peculiar dangers of the east. Everyone was charmed.

One of Papak's most popular innovations was chess. This was a game, he said, recently invented to amuse the court of Persia. Nobody in Gaul had heard of it, and Papak had one of Theodoric's craftsman carve a board and pieces for him. The game was played on a six-by-six grid of squares, over which pieces shaped like horses or warriors moved and battled. The rules were simple, but the strategy was deceptively deep. The Goths- who still prided themselves on their warrior credentials, even though many of them had not been near a horse in twenty years- relished the sublimated combat of the new game. Their first tournaments were fast and bloody affairs. But under Papak's tactful tutelage, the better players soon grasped the game's subtleties, and the matches became drawn out and interesting.

As for Honorius himself, he was irritated that the parlor games of a Persian were so much more compelling than his tales of old bones. But then, Athalaric thought with exasperated fondness, the old man never had been much of a one for social niceties, and still less for the intricacies of court life. Honorius insisted on sticking to his usual games of backgammon, played with his cronies from the old landed aristocracy- "the game of Plato," as he called it.

After a few days of the stay, Theodoric called his nephew into a private room.

Athalaric was surprised to find Galla here. Tall, dark-haired, with the classical prominent nose of her Roman forebears, Galla was the wife of one of the more prominent citizens of the community. But at forty she was some twenty years younger than her husband, and it was well known that she was the power in his household.

A grave expression on his bearded face, Theodoric placed his hand on his nephew's arm. "Athalaric, we need your help."

"You have a job for me?"

"Not exactly. We have a job for Honorius- and we want you to persuade him to take it. Let us try to explain why-"

As Theodoric talked, Athalaric was aware of Galla's cool eyes appraising him, the slight opening of her full mouth. There was a myth among some of these last Romans that the barbarians were a younger, more vigorous race. Galla, in exploring intimacy with men she saw as little better than savages, might be seeking a muscular excitement she must lack in her own marriage to an etiolated citizen.

But Athalaric, a mere five years older than Galla's own twin children, had no desire to be the toy of a decadent aristocrat. He returned her gaze coolly, his face impassive.

This subtle transaction was played out completely beneath the attention of Theodoric.

Now Galla said smoothly, "Athalaric, a mere three decades ago, as even I can remember, this kingdom of Euric's was still a federate settlement within the empire. Things have changed rapidly. But there are strict barriers between our peoples. Marriage, the law, even the Church-"

Theodoric sighed. "She is right, Athalaric. There are many tensions in this young society of ours."

Athalaric knew this was true. The new barbarian rulers lived by their traditional laws, which they saw as part of their identity, while their subjects clung to Roman law, which for their part they saw as a set of universal rules. Disputes over differing rulings made under the two systems were common. Meanwhile, intermarriage was forbidden. Though all parties were Christian, the Goths followed the teachings of Arius and were met with hostility by their mostly Catholic subjects. And so on.

All of this was a barrier to the assimilation the imperial Romans had practiced so successfully for so many centuries- an assimilation that had led to stability and social longevity. If this place were still under Roman rule, then Theodoric would have had an excellent chance of becoming a full Roman citizen. But the sons of Galla were forever excluded from being accepted as equals by the Goths, forever denied true power.

Athalaric listened gravely to all of this. "It is difficult, but Honorius has taught me nothing if not that time is long, and that in time everything changes. Perhaps these barriers will ultimately melt away."

Theodoric nodded. "I myself believe it is so. I sent you to study in a Roman school, and later with Honorius." He chuckled. "My father would never have allowed such a thing. He didn't believe in schools! father would never have allowed such a thing. He didn't believe in schools! If you learn to fear a teacher's strap now, you will never learn to look on a sword or javelin without a shudder. If you learn to fear a teacher's strap now, you will never learn to look on a sword or javelin without a shudder. To him, we were warriors before anything else. But we, these days, are a different generation." To him, we were warriors before anything else. But we, these days, are a different generation."

"And the better for it," said Galla. "The empire will never come back. But I truly believe that some day, out of the union of our peoples here and across the continent, new blood will arise, new kinds of strength and vision."

Athalaric raised his eyebrows. Something in her tone reminded him unfortunately of Papak, and he wondered what she was trying to sell his uncle. He said dryly, "But in the meantime, before that marvelous day comes to pass-"

"In the meantime I am concerned for my children."

"Why? Are they in peril?"

"In fact, yes," Galla said, letting her irritation show. "You have been away too long, young man, or else you have your head too firmly buried in Honorius's teachings."

"There have been attacks," Theodoric said. "Property damage, fires, thefts."

"Directed against the Romans?"

"I am afraid so." Theodoric sighed. "I, who remember how it was, would like to preserve what was best about the empire- stability, peace, learning, a just system of law. But the young know nothing of this. Like their forefathers who lived simpler lives on the northern plains, they hate what they know of the empire: power over the land, the people, riches from which they were excluded."

"And so they wish to punish those who remain," said Athalaric.