Wednesday, January 30, 2008 Cariņo: The Lost Legion By Linda Grace Cariņo Paradigm Shift
ITALIAN author Valerio Manfredi has at least two novels based on a lost ancient Roman legion of the days of empire. In one (The Last Legion), as the empire crumbles, the lost legion disappears to the farthest corner of Britannia with the son of the last of the Caesars, who later becomes the legendary King Arthur. In another, the lost legion finds its way to China, where it serves an emperor of the Han dynasty as his royal guard.
Let us focus on the latter, entitled Empire of Dragons. The fiction is fascinating. In A.D. 260, the Roman Emperor Publius Lucinius Valerianus and the 10 legionnaires who serve as his elite praetorian guard are betrayed as they head to parley with the Persian king Shapur I. Valerian and said legionnaires are captured, banished to a mining camp, and made to work as slaves. Valerian dies, but his legionnaires are against all human odds able to escape and one adventure after another find themselves in China, this time as the security force of a rightful emperor, as against a usurper to the throne. In yet another of many battles for their lives, all but their commander is killed.
It is in China that that this commander then unearths, a la a terra cotta army, an army of fully armed legionnaires guarding the sacred tomb of Han dynasty Emperor Yuandi. In the fiction, said army is destined to rise from the dead should the Han dynasty ever be imperiled. With poetic magic, the army of statues comes to life to save and win the day.
All this naturally whets one's appetite for the fact behind the fiction. Manfredi's postscript tantalizes us with historical tidbits that have a possible Roman settlement in China around 53 B.C. Myself, I have caught a documentary on a Chinese dig that has long since unearthed a Caucasian settlement.
I find myself now saying, as I have said and said again, that the ancient peoples were far better traveled and cosmopolitan than many in this naīve day and age give them credit for.
