21 On the Great Wall

RUDYARD KIPLING
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The Wall was not the scene of constant fighting between Roman
defenders and the northern attackers, but it had to be constantly
garrisoned, never a popular prospect for the professional Roman
soldier. In this passage from Puck o f Pook's Hill by Rudyard
Kipling, such a man expresses his dismay at what he finds when he
arrives at the Wall.

‘Of course, the farther North you go the emptier are the roads. At
last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare hills, where
wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that have been. No more
pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates who knew your Father when
he was young, and invite you to stay with them; no news at the
temples and way-stations except bad news of wild beasts. There’s
where you meet hunters, and trappers for the Circuses, prodding
along chained bears and muzzled wolves. Your pony shies at them,
and your men laugh.
The houses change from gardened villas to shut forts with watch-
towers of grey stone, and great stone-walled sheepfolds, guarded by
armed Britons of the North Shore. In the naked hills beyond the
naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry
charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. The hard
road goes on and on—and the wind sings through your helmet-
plume—past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken
statues of Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the
mountain foxes and hares peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freezing
in winter, is that big, purple heather country of broken stone.
Just when you think you are at the world’s end, you see a smoke
from East to West as far as the eye can turn, and then, under it, also
as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres,
Copyright 2014. Routledge.

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EBSCO Publishing : Hiperkitap (eBook Collection) - printed on 5/19/2023 9:02 AM via UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
AN: 1053994 ; Edward H. Jones, Michael Hayhoe, Beryl Jones.; Roman Britain (Routledge Revivals)
Account: s2985883.main.ehost
 barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind . . . always
behind . . . one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing
line of towers. And that is the Wall!’
‘Ah!’ said the children, taking breath.
‘You may well,’ said Parnesius. ‘Old men who have followed the
Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful
than first sight of the Wall.’
‘Is it just a Wall? Like the one round the kitchen-garden?’ said Dan.
‘No, no! It is the Wall. Along the top are towers with guard­
houses, small towers, between. Even on the narrowest part of it
three men with shields can walk abreast, from guard-house to
guard-house. A little curtain-wall, no higher than a man’s neck,
runs along the top of the thick wall, so that from a distance you see
the helmets of the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. Thirty
feet high is the Wall, and on the Piets’ side, the North, is a ditch,
strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood, and
tyres of wheels joined by chains. The Little People come there to
steal iron for their arrow-heads.
But the Wall itself is not more wonderful than the town behind
it. Long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the South
side, and no one was allowed to build there. Now the ramparts are
partly pulled down and built over, from end to end of the Wall;
making a thin town eighty miles long. Think of it! One roaring,
rioting, cock-fighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from Ituna
on the West to Segedunum on the cold eastern beach! On one side
heather, woods and ruins where Piets hide, and on the other, a vast
town—long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. Yes, a snake
basking beside a warm wall!!
My Cohort, I was told, lay at Hunno, where the Great North Road
runs through the Wall into the Province of Valentia.’ Parnesius
laughed scornfully. ‘The Province of Valentia! We followed the
road, therefore, into Hunno town, and stood astonished. The place
was a fair—a fair of peoples from every corner of the Empire. Some
were racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched dogs
baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks fight. A boy
not much older than myself, but I could see he was an officer,
reined up before me and asked what I wanted.
“My station,” I said, and showed him my shield. Parnesius held
up his broad shield with its three X’s like letters on a beer-cask.
“Lucky omen!” said he. “Your Cohort’s the next tower to us,
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 but they’re all at the cock-fight. This is a happy place. Come and
wet the Eagles.” He meant to offer me a drink.
“When I’ve handed over my men,” I said. I felt angry and ashamed.
“Oh, you’ll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense,” he answered.
“But don’t let me interfere with your hopes. Go on to the statue
of Roma Dea. You can’t miss it. The main road into Valentia!” and
he laughed and rode off. I could see the statue not a quarter of a
mile away, and there I went. At some time or other the Great North
Road ran under it into Valentia; but the far end had been blocked
up because of the Piets, and on the plaster a man had scratched,
“Finish!” It was like marching into a cave. We grounded spears
together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel of the arch,
but none came. There was a door at one side painted with our
number. We prowled in, and I found a cook asleep, and ordered
him to give us food. Then I climbed to the top of the Wall, and
looked out over the Piet country, and I—thought,’ said Parnesius.
‘The bricked-up arch with “Finish!” on the plaster was what shook
me, for I was not much more than a boy.’
‘What a shame,’ said Una. ‘But did you feel happy after you’d had
a good------’ Dan stopped her with a nudge.
‘Happy?’ said Parnesius. ‘When the men of the Cohort I was to
command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, their birds
under their arms, and asked me who I was? No, I was not happy;
but I made my new Cohort unhappy too . . . I wrote my Mother I
was happy, but, oh, my friends’—he stretched arms over bare knees—
‘I would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered through my
first months on the Wall. Remember this: among the officers was
scarcely one, except myself (and I thought I had lost the favour of
Maximus, my General), scarcely one who had not done something of
wrong or folly. Either he had killed a man, or taken money, or in­
sulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the Gods, and so had been sent
to the Wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear. And the men were
as the officers. Remember, also, that the Wall was manned by every
breed and race in the Empire. No two towers spoke the same tongue,
or worshipped the same Gods. In one thing only were we all equal. No
matter what arms we had used before we came to the Wall, on the
Wall we were all archers, like the Scythians. The Piet cannot run away
from the arrow, or crawl under it. He is a bowman himself, he knows!’
From Puck of Pook’s Hill
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