Empire of the Eagle

Introduction by Susan Shwartz

I well remember the first time I heard of the Romans who became the protagonists of Empire of the Eagle. It was in 1964, and I had been spending my lunch hour reading The Last Planet, by Andre Norton. Those of you who know this book know that it opens with a description of Romans in Asia, marching east, always marching east, and, unnoticed to history, forming their last square somewhere in Asia—a perfect prelude to a tale of decaying empire.

Her Operation Timesearch brought my attention to the Motherland of Mu, the Atlanteans, and the Uighurs; I was delighted, much later, to discover on the map a real Uighur Autonomous Republic in western China, on the border of what was formerly the Soviet Union. Several books later—Silk Roads and Shadows and Imperial Lady (written with Andre Norton)—I have still not visited this area in any way but research and dreams. Nevertheless, when the subject was proposed, I found myself ready to return in my writing to those places, and more than ready to deal with the enigma of Romans, marching across the Tarim Basin.

How did they get there? With only a few records in Chinese history of people who might be Romans, we can only conjecture. On one such conjecture we built this book: the defeat of Crassus and his Legions at Carrhae in 43 b.c. A few things are certain: During the first century b.c, Rome first became aware of the trade routes now known as the Silk Roads and the wealth that traveled west along them.

Especially interested was Crassus, already a spectacularly wealthy man. but one who envied his fellow triumvir Julius Caesar and sought victories of his own by campaigning in the Near East as a proconsul. Unfortunately, in addition to his greed and ambition, Crassus was a poor general.

He was profoundly either unwise or unfortunate in his choice of allies, and was betrayed both by the Nabataean Arabs and the king of Armenia. In addition, he made several strategic and tactical blunders that doomed his campaign. Goaded by the Nabataeans, he allowed himself to be convinced to march his Legions at a cavalry pace. He waited for his son Publius's crack Gallic cavalry. And he fought his Legions under the hot sun near Carrhae, a garrison town near present-day Haran, without rest or water. Worse luck, he fought against The Surena, a charismatic, powerful, and skilled Parthian clan leader, who was later killed by his own king for Caesar's own fault—overmuch ambition.

Those interested in this time and this part of the world know that the Parthians were skilled horse archers. Faced with archers, the Romans formed their testudo, or tortoise, shields over their heads to protect themselves against the arrow barrage and wait for the Parthians to exhaust their supply of ammunition. However, they had not counted on the heat, the thirst—or The Surena's bringing up additional supplies. Nor did they count on Crassus's collapse when his son's head was paraded before him.

The defeat was staggering: Rome lost not only tens of thousands of men, but the Eagles of their Legions, the sign of their power and their honor. Abandoning the dead and wounded, Crassus and the remnants of his command holed up in Carrhae and, ultimately, sought terms.

What happened to the remnants of the Legions—and the captured Eagles? Most likely, they finished out their days in captivity, the Romans as slaves, the Eagles as trophies.

That is the story that has intrigued Andre Norton for decades. And that was our jumping-off point. What if, as they marched east into captivity, they marched straight into myths? Asia—especially Central Asia—is an incredible nexus for myths; and we had two extraordinary storehouses of such myths to hand. We had the stories of fabled Mu, often combined with Atlantis and solar mythology in inimitable nineteenth-century-type scholarship that seeks to prove survivals of a lost culture and a lost continent. And we had the ancient Indian epic. The Mahabharata, with its gods, demigods, and princes striding among mortals in epic battle. I had become fascinated with it after seeing a performance of Peter Brooks's adaptation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I was intrigued to learn that the stories of Krishna and of his human allies, Arjuna the hero and his brothers, their wife, Draupadi, and their wars are still loved, taught to children, and even form the inspiration of modem comic books.

Certainly, this combination removes Empire of the Eagle firmly from the realm of historical fiction and into fantasy such as, I like to think, the elephant-headed Ganesha records in The Mahabharata.

Imagine him opening his story. It is dark. Men are crouching in a swamp, betrayed, defeated, unsure of their leaders. And messengers are coming—bringing terms and, for us and for them, the beginning of a journey across cultures and across time.