By 415 AD, the thousand-year-old Roman world was crumbling, overwhelmed by internal decay and barbarian invasions. The poet and former Urban Prefect of Rome, Rutilius Namatianus, decided to leave the ancient capital of the Empire and return to his estates in Gaul, after alarming rumors had reached him of the chaos and ruin wrought by the invading Visigoths in his native land.
A poem, rediscovered a millennium later in a forgotten monastic library, handed down to us the chronicle of his voyage home.
A poem, rediscovered a millennium later in a forgotten monastic library, handed down to us the chronicle of his voyage home.
"Fate snatches me away from these beloved shores-
the fields of Gaul are calling for their son.
Those fields, as lovely once as now they're pitiful,
are ravaged and disfigured by these long wars.
When times are good, ignoring home's not such a crime,
but now shared losses call back native sons.
The family home requires our presence now,
for often grief can tell how best to serve.
Ignoring such disasters further is not right:
delaying aid will only make them worse.
Great fires have ravaged proud estates. Now it's time
to start from scratch, rebuilding humble huts.
And if my native springs themselves could utter words,
and if the trees themselves could speak aloud,
they'd pick me up and scold me, fill my sails, and end
my homesickness by sending me back home.
Dear Rome's embrace is loosened. Conquered, I go home.
This journey home, so late, is hard to bear.
I chose to go by sea, for rivers flood the level roads,
and rocks obstruct the mountain ways.
Since the Aurelian Way and the fields of Tuscany,
wasted by bands of Goths with fire and sword,
no longer tame the woods with homes nor bridge the streams,
it's better to set sail on the treacherous sea.
The gates that I must leave behind I shower with kisses,
I cross unwillingly the sacred threshold."
Rome was not just the city to which he had dedicated his life. It was the emblem of civilization, which for centuries had enlightened the world.
We sing of you [Rome] and always will, while fate allows--
no one alive can be forgetful of you.
Accursed oblivion will whelm the Sun
before the honor due to you leaves our heart.
For you extend your gifts as far as the Sun's rays,
where all-embracing Ocean ebbs and flows.
As far as living nature has stretched toward either pole,
so far has your valor spread across the lands.
From many different peoples you have made one nation.
The lawless profited from submission to your rule.
And by offering equal justice to the vanquished
you have made a city of what was erstwhile a world.
But that city and that world were approaching the end. In his journey home, sailing up the Tuscan coast, he witnessed the countryside devastated by marauding bands (the descendants of Gothic refugees admitted into the Empire by Emperor Valens), ghost towns, emptied by the collapse of trade and industry, and, on the islands, communities of monks--men "who shun the light", seeking escape, by withdrawal, from a dying society.
We descry, all unguarded now, desolate ruins and squalid walls.
Men long ago, finding a mighty cliff to serve as a look-out
where the towering hill-crest overhangs the waves,
laid the foundations of a castle for twin services to man --
a defense on land and signal-post for sea.
But the memorials of an earlier age cannot be recognized;
devouring time has wasted its mighty battlements away.
Traces only remain now that the walls are lost:
under a wide stretch of rubble lie the buried homes.
Let us not chafe that our mortal bodies dissolve:
from precedents we discern that towns can die.