AH Vignette: If One Flame is Extinguished, So Shall Another Be Lit Against the Dark

"When the armies of the Sassanid Shahs conquered into Asia Minor, into Greece and Thrace and Dacia, to the waters of the Danube, in the chaos that followed the fall of Rome and the cursed empire of the Huns and their vassals turned rivals like the Goths and Allemani and Vandals, they brought the teachings of Zarathustra. The Magi that came among the new satrapies found ruined and sacked cities and starving people roaming aimlessly, murdering one another for grain in the wake of the barbarians gone to the Hun warlord's camp in the embers of Rome. Most held the household gods of the doomed Romans and Greeks or barbarian Germanic and Hunnic gods. Some more privileged were among mystery cults that revered Mithras, a common point between our nations, or Apollonius of Tyana. Bringing them to Zarathustra was hard. Some asked 'What strength has Ahura Mazda's fires if more of Attila's Huns come and snuff them?' 'Light is eternal. If one flame is extinguished, Ahura Mazda will light another against the dark."

-
Magi records in Istafan



I am a philosopher. So I'm told. I was a boy when Rome was sacked by Attila and the last Emperor slain and Honoria became his trophy concubine, one of many. But I was taught by scholars and I know enough of Plato, Aristotle, Galen and Heron of Alexandria to be considered a philosopher now that I am grown to be a man among the squabbling Hun hordes and their Germanic foederati that scavenge as birds of carrion atop the rotting corpse of Rome. I came from Sicily as a boy, but I know not what became of the isle of my birth in these dark times.

There is little use for philosophers. Or Latins at all. I am more use and better paid as a blacksmith in a small camp turned village of Latin survivors near the ruins of Ravenna. I smelt iron to make swords. I suppose my knowledge from works I was taught comes of some use, for I am told my swords are better than the crude broadswords the Gepids under Ardaric that took residence in what was once Ravenna brought.

It was dawn when a man I recognized to be the Gepid king and his son came, alone, with no guards as I started the furnace.

"Can you make a sword as strong as the Sword of Mars the Hun wields?"

"Probably not."

"You speak our tongue."

"Yes. May as well be practical."

"Most leftover Romans are too haughty."

"Nothing to be haughty about now."

"No. But you make good strong swords. My warriors say."

"I suppose. I was a scholar as a boy."

"How much for that sword there?"

"Whatever you'll pay. I don't risk my head bargaining with you."

He pulled some gold out. I was happy for that. Some tried to pay in Roman coins still, but raw gold was more to be trusted.

"I don't want my son to be the Hun's slave, his jester or fool. We made cause with him because your ancestors wouldn't give us good land and the Huns were strong, but they give us grief now. Come with me. You will be my son's teacher. You will teach him what Romans knew to build your haunted cities we sacked."

Futuo!

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The Gepid king took me to a wooden shack near his camp. The Germanic barbarians thought Roman cities were haunted so usually avoided the ruins they had helped Attila make. They looted them for luxuries and servants, but they didn't seem to want to live in what was left. The Huns had almost annihilated Rome and Ravenna and had greatly weakened Byzantium, though that city was now among the Persians.

"This is the new philosophical school where you will teach my son."

It looked more like a pig sty than the Library of Alexandra or the Academy of Athens. But not wanting a broadsword to the neck, I played along.

"Thank you, King Ardaric. I shall see to it the prince is well educated."

I walked in with the boy, perhaps 16, stout and grim faced.

He punched me in the gut as soon as his father left.

"Roman ass. I should be out hacking the other warriors so they know their place when I come to rule the tribe."

I hit him back, and shook from fear of it, but its the only thing they understand.

"Cleverness will kill faster and quicker than any sword, boy. Besides, your real enemy won't be them. They've no royal blood or what passes for it among your kind. Attila is long in the tooth now and Honoria killed herself without bearing him an heir, so Ellak will take power. Your father says he wants to challenge the Hun, so that will fall to you."

He stared at me.

"You are right."

"Now...we'll start with learning numerals and letters."

==================================================

"So, in Plato's story of Atlantis, the gods became angry and sank the isle beneath the sea."

"Our gods, Odin and Thor and their like, would reward warriors dignity, not punish it. We Gepids are proud and good at war. Germanic gods favor this. Are Plato's gods the same as the Romans? The Greeks live somewhere else."

"Yes, for the most part. Some differences, but the Roman and Greek gods are considered the same. Hubris, too much pride, angers them. When our leaders took power, someone would whisper to them 'memento mori" remember, you are mortal, to keep them from this...before your father's men and the Huns and Geiseric's Vandals slew them all, that is."

"Roman gods are weak. Strange my father seethes with such envy over Attila's Sword of Mars."

"Roman knowledge is not weak."

"Do you revere the Roman gods?"

"No...they failed, obviously."

=================================================

I taught the boy a while longer. When his father died, and Attila the Hun died not long after, he summoned me.

"I need an advisor, a soothsayer. You would do well."

"You will revolt against Ellak the Hun as your father tasked you?"

"Yes."

==================================================

So that summer, I stood upon one of the Seven Hills, watching like a proud father as the Gepid king lead his warriors into battle against the Huns of Ellak.

Blood stained the fields, arrows blotted the sun. Ellak held the line and the Gepids retreated, but they were not all killed.

My protege lived too, and so might some Roman learning in a man who could do something with it.

Perhaps some day, these dark times would lift.
 
The beginning of the Dark Ages in a No Christianity world. No Pope to stop Attila the Hun. Sassanid Persia gets as far as the Danube later. But I wanted to explore the idea that No Christianity does not mean No Renaissance, so I thought of this as an alternative measure for preserving classical knowledge instead of monasteries.
 
I quite like the set up of this timeline (and the inclusion of a throwaway mention of old Apollonius). I would be very interested to see where this going. Subscribed.
 
I could do a full on timeline maybe, between the other shit with rebuilding my life in Cali while my ex sends her brother here and tries to fight me and is engaged.

Basically, there was no Christianity. I'm thinking some Maccabees Revolt POD butterflies Jesus. The Roman Empire takes over from the Seleucids and continues roughly as OTL until some major changes from lack of Christianity kick in.

The Roman civic religion is still played out, but everyday people practice it. The elite becomes more and more enamored with foreign mystery cults like Mithras and Isis (Egyptian Goddess, not modern day bastards), Apollonius of Tyana, and such. Rome becomes dominated by secret societies of foreign religious cults feuding to convert Emperors, and this divides the state as feuding between Arian and Catholic did.

The Eastern-Western arrangement is still put in, since that came before the conversion anyway and was a practical move, but Constantine does not convert and Byzantium stays called Byzantium.

The Volkwanderung happens and is worse because converting the barbarians to Christianity helped blunt their advance and bring them into Roman society. Here, their still show up, but with the Germans sticking to good old Odin and Thor and Freya and the Romans squabbling over which trendy Near Eastern deity the elite should have secret rituals to this week, there's alot less integration of German migrant waves.

Attila the Hun fucks up Byzantium somewhat, as I think a bribe or something stopped him from, but he moves on to the west as OTL. The big difference here is when Honoria offers herself and the Western Empire to him and he comes to collect...there no Pope Leo to beg him to spare the city and more Germans side with him. Attila sacks Rome and basically obliterates it due to heavy fighting, makes Honoria his latest harem bed mate, she regrets her actions as she realizes she traded a forced marriage to a boring senator to a forced marriage to a bloodthirsty foreign warlord who sees her as just another sex slave and commits suicide by snake as did Cleopatra, and Attila claims the entire Western Roman Empire as the dowry while she is still alive, then loots it, and gives the leftovers to his German allies, such as the Gepids, Ostro and Visi Goths and Vandals.

So the Dark Ages start early and more apocalyptic.

In OTL, Ardaric the Gepid led a revolt when Attila died. Attila lives longer here and his son does it, but its a stalemate. The Hun empire lumbers along for a while longer until the Avars and Slavs show up and between them and a wave of Germanic revolts among the Gepids, Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandal North Africa, the Hun empire topples, though a remnant survives in Gaul.

As new kingdoms form, they start looking to be seen as Roman successors. Instead of Christianity, they try to appear "learned" by sponsoring philosophical schools and patronizing mystery cults.

So here, where there are no monks of Ireland and Papal libraries, comes the seed of a later Renaissance.

The Sassanid Persians get off way easier. As OTL they survive the Huns better and then go takeover the Roman Middle East and Asia Minor and much of Greece all the way to the Danube. These areas get more Persian influence and though the usual religious tolerance stuff is there, there are conversions to Zoroastrianism.

The rest of the Dark Ages and Early Medieval Period is characterized by a struggle between the barbarian successor states of Rome in Europe, Hunnic Gaul, Vandalic North Africa, Visigoth Hispania, The Gepid and Ostrogothic kingdoms in Italy, versus the sprawling Sassanid Persian expansion in the Near East and Southeastern Europe.

By the 1200s, a new cultural ferment, stranger and not similar to OTL's stirrings of renaissance with Bacon or Averroes is brewing...while the Tartar Host begins to advance on the successor dynasty of the Sassanid Persians.
 
Nice. I especially love your light symbolism (fitting with both our "enlightenment" metaphors and Zoroastrian cosmology).
Subscribed!
One Gepid king as a carrier of classical knowledge is quite precarious. But of course, there are the Sasanians who can take care of Alexandria, Athens and the like; I suppose classical knowledge and a bit of its culture are going to survive there?

EDIT: I didn`t see your latest posting. Hm, overall structure looks interesting. What happens to Scandinavia, will there be Vikings and Varangians? And Arabia, I take it you`ve butterflied Islam away, but will it create trouble for the Sasanians?
 
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What the Roman guy did is symbolic of a larger trend. It won't be just that king. Barbarian kings will be doing this across the board one way or another, and there will be relict Roman populations around long enough to transmit knowledge to the German, Hunnic, Slavic, migrants as OTL to some extent as they interbreed. Where he is is worse than some other places. The Ostrogoths and Visigoths as OTL preserve more Roman public works and practices and come through better as Hun vassals, but leaving the infrastructure and knowledge base intact somewhat. As barbarian kings and their courts join the Cults of Mithras or Isis, they get knowledge from them.

The Persians leave the Library in Egypt and the Academy of Athens intact, though there is some damage in sacks. But somewhat like how in OTL, a cultural divide between Christendom and Islam slowed intellectual exchange, a divide between Zoroastrian Persia and syncretic kitchen sink pagan Europe will keep the good stuff under Persian control mostly.

I read an old Poul Anderson short story called Uncleftish Beholding about an ATL Germanic science text not using Greek or Latin terms. I'm not doing that exactly, since if anything, these Germans are going to be taking classical paganism and twisting it in a weird direction, but I want a Europe that has a cultural-intellecutal-religious milieu that resembles a mix of Conan the Barbarian's Hyborean Age extended to the Early Renaissance with mixtures of German and Roman paganism, Near Eastern mystery cults, bits and pieces of leftover classical philosophy, folk traditions, etc.
 
Yes, there will be Vikings. I'm considering having them overthrow Hunnic Gaul completely since it will be rotten out pretty much and then having Norse Gaul, as well as them taking over Britain and Britain being much more Scandinavian in the ATL. They will be mercenaries once they have less weak nations to raid as OTL, but Persia won't be hiring an all Varangian Guard in the ATL since they control what would be Byzantium and its not the same at all.

I'm considering having Arabia become either taken over by Abyssinia which will not be Christian in the TL, or convert to Buddhism from trade with India, or both.

I'm also debating who takes over Persia after the Sassanids but before the Mongols.
 
That is a lot of cool ideas that you have there.
I wouldn`t be so sure as to the divide between Zoroastrian Sasania and the rest of Europe, though. Obviously, the Sasanian Empire is going to be the number one civilization in this georegion.
(Just think of where they could go: With no Romans / Byzantines to bother them in the West, they would have enough power to secure control over what the Hephtalites have left of Central Asia and the Silk Road before Tang arises. They might even have the resources to expand and conquer much of what had been Gupta India prior to the Hepthalite incursions. All of this would make them the world`s strongest economic, commercial and cultural power.)
But even if you don`t go that far with the Sasanians, they`d still be the new source of cultural attraction for all the little barbarian nations of Europe.
As your Gepid prince asks in the text: why care about what`s left of such a weak civilization as the Greco-Roman one, which they had had no trouble destroying? The Western Sasanians would wield the same knowledge, but they`d have the nimbus of victors, the winners of history. Why not learn from them?

Buddhist Arabia sounds cool, I don`t know if there has ever been a timeline exploring this possibility.
 
Yeah, I'm going to go with the Buddhist Ethiopia dominated Arabia. Why not do both?

In any case, I gotta sleep. I'll see what I can do with turning this into a proper TL later.
 
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