† the title “Interlude: A Forest Idyll” It is unclear whether Gibbon detected any note of either irony or outright sarcasm in the title of this section of the Manuscript: whatever the case, while the subject matter broadly resembles what we would expect to find in a typical “idyllic” pause between more narrative episodes, and while the central relationship between the two characters introduced in these pages would certainly seem to justify such a label, each of the histories of those characters is so marred by tragedy and violence, the examples of which are so carefully, indeed graphically phrased (and with so little concern for the elements of poetics or aesthetics), that it seems probable that the narrator, rather than attempting a true idyll, is attempting an earnest — indeed, a grim — broadside against some of the most fatuous popular misconceptions and literary foibles of his time. —C.C.
† “… the forces of revolutionary destruction …” Gibbon refers to the growing Romantic movement, and particularly to that school most obviously represented by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), whose theories centered on the Natural World, the “Social Contract,” and what is perhaps unjustly dismissed as the theory of the “Noble Savage.” Rousseau’s views on social and societal relationships among humans were indeed twisted and prostituted to the cause of excessive, unchecked violence during the French Revolution, as well as other unsavory episodes during that period and others to come. The most sensible of Romantics recognized the limitations of the philosophy, to say nothing of its dangers, during the French Reign of Terror; but many held on to the ideas tenaciously, rationalizing brutal behavior among human societies that any animal species would certainly have disdained. —C.C.
† neura Gibbon writes, “This is, of course, a term taken from Greek antiquity, one originally employed by [the fourth century B.C.] physician Praxagoras of Cos to describe what he thought were a special set of arteries that transmitted the ‘vital force,’ or ‘divine fire’ which all progressive Greek medical minds called pneuma, an invisible substance in the air that is inhaled and traveled from the lungs to the heart, vitalizing the blood that was to be sent to the various appendages and organs of the body, making function and animation possible. However, Praxagoras’s student, Herophilus of Alexandria [335–280 B.C.], building on his teacher’s work yet pushing well beyond it, realized that the neura were in fact not arteries, but instead represented an entirely separate method of transmitting the pneuma. In the modern age, of course, when we have learned through the work of the chemists Lavoisier and Priestley that it is oxygen that in fact fulfills the role assigned to the pneuma, such opinions may seem quaint; but we ought not underestimate their importance as steps along the way to the truth.” One need only add that we ought, too, to recognize that the work of the ancient Greeks is remembered in the name eventually and correctly given to that other “special set of arteries,” the nervous system, or nerves, the adjectival root for which is, of course, neural, and whose basic units of signaling all sensations are neurons using electro-chemical transmission. —C.C.
‡ “the thirl” A term used by various northern tribes — including, apparently, the old man’s unnamed steppe horse people, who were likely from the Ukraine or some other pseudo-European area — in the same sense that we use the word “thrill” today. Indeed, there is an obvious etymological connection between the two, and a behavioral one, as welclass="underline" the old man’s tribe, like many modern people, actively sought such experiences. —C.C.
† “… the endless steppes …” The background of this character (prior to his becoming a traveling scholar, apparently well known throughout what we today call the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and even parts of India for his expertise in fields ranging from medicine to warfare) remains obscure, although certain logical conclusions may be reached that are important to the tale, as it contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the old man’s character and behavior. We can safely rule out any chance that he came from one of those known horse peoples who dominated the critical southern and central regions of the Pontic-Caspian steppe well before and then through the early Dark Ages: the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Goths during the Roman era, as well as the Huns and Alans from the fourth to the eleventh centuries A.D. None of these were noted trading tribes; farther north, however, there were peoples who not only better matched the old man’s physical description, but whose history at this time accounts for the his ancestors having become apparently changed from horsemen to successful tradesmen, with ships and caravans that visited the Mediterranean basin and northern Europe, as well as the Middle and Far East, in the latter case using what was already being called, in the old man’s time, the “Silk Path” (later the Silk Road), the only known land route to China. Now referred to as “proto-Balts” (possibly of Finnish origin), in their earliest incarnation these tribes were Indo-European peoples who had, by the eighth century, been pushed into concentrated communities, first inland, to protect themselves from coastal raiders, but, when they grew strong enough, on the Baltic Coast itself. The exact nature and range of goods available in these important ports and towns — known as “emporiums”—is not known, but it was certainly extensive: soon after the establishment of the Islamic empire during the same era, for example, Islamic silver was being traded in Baltic ports, marking their inhabitants as distinctly different from the Slavic tribes that were coming to dominate the areas to their south.
Among the most noteworthy Baltic peoples were (and in many cases remain) Lithuanians and Latvians to the east, as well as Pomeranians and Prussians to the west. These last two regions are of special interest in determining why the old man may have found Broken such a congenial home: Saxony (the German region in which Brocken was and is located) was close by, and may also have been “close,” in environmental characteristics and general feel, to those places where the old man’s family and tribe had been forced to go when they were pushed away from the great steppe, and became tradesmen rather than a horse people. —C.C.
‡ “… still understood and respected …” Here is the first solid reference on the part of the narrator to the notion that scholarship and learning have been disappearing in the “known” world, suggesting that he is writing toward or after the end of Broken’s history (ca. the early eighth century), rather than toward the beginning (sometime in the fifth century): while the fifth was certainly not a century renowned for scientific advances, it would still have been too soon for a scholar to declare the onset of a long “dark age,” whereas by the early eighth century, that pattern was clear and unarguable, and had not yet been reversed by the establishment of the great Islamic centers of secular learning in Spain and Iraq. —C.C.