Albonium

Volume XVII - Overcoming

Book XXXIII - Isle of the Blest

I - Those of the Isle

They loved the name of Rome! When it was there, it had always been the greatest!

But now Rome was in strife, and Rome was weakening! Did they not have a duty to serve Rome?

But why should they help Rome, the city? They had their own cities, they had Londinium and Eboracum! They had strong roads and wealth, and they had their own leader, Governor Sura! And he seemed wiser than any of the Roman senators.

Rome was suffering, yet they were not! But was this a reason to defect from Rome?

One day a pale army rose from Troy and named it Illiusbur! And then the Romans were defeated and fled! The Romans, descendants of Troy!

Thus the faraway islanders were troubled. Once Aeneas was washed onto Carthage, and then duty told him to journey to Italia! But now the Romans had been defeated by the Trojans! And thus, it seemed that history had abandoned the Romans!

Once were the Greeks, once was Alexander, and he conquered Persia! And once Persia conquered Babylonia.

And before him were the Trojans! And a few fled to Alba Longa! Thus came Rome! And although the ground of Troy had fallen, Troy had not, and became a great state again: it was called Rome.

Thus the gods had forsaken the Persians! And in predestiny, they had forsaken the Greeks!

Thus came Rome against Pyrrhus! Pyrrhus the Great, Pyrrhus the invincible! He was a genius, he had silver wings, yet he could only stall a rise of inevitability, of Rome!

Once the Greek culture was strong, then the Greeks became weak! Once the world had become the Ideal of Greek-ness, then it became tired of it, for the world was ever-lustful and ever-wanting, and thus was unsatisfied.

Once the Romans were a hammer, and Pyrrhus, a god! If Pyrrhus had lived in any other time, he would be Tamerlane! He would be Frederick! Yet he had been born in an age of a setting sun, and thus was his fate: to fight great battles and lose wars.

Now the Elven had come from Graecia! They who climbed out of Troy looked up at the rest of the Earth, and told them, "You who are above me, I shall climb to where you are!" And thus they seemed to be as they recovered and Rome was collapsing!

Once they were reduced to a single city, then they climbed out of it!

The Romans of the island were told of the transformation of their nature: of their removal of their humanity! All of humanity was united as Rome! Could not humanity be one great epoch that was to be replaced by a body of nihilism?

The Roman islanders looked at the title of Romans, and were fearful, for it seemed that their title was a brand of their coming disappearance!

Then Rome was invaded by the Fell! They came from the North like the Ostrogoths. Soon Libanius will be Majorian! One last great leader who could not hold an inevitable tide.

Everywhere was there fear, and everywhere was there hesitancy! But there could not be hesitancy. Were they not still Roman? If they did not call themselves Roman, what were they?

They could not be anything else but Roman: they were too fearful to make their own values! They were like everyone else: always pertaining to nature.

Now a strange nature had awakened, now nature was attacking them! And the priests said, "Tharizdun and the Fell are the spirits of the Titans, they have been sent to Tartarus by the divine Caesar and Nepos, chosen by the gods." But now nature was at stake!