​Invasion of the Barbarians, by Ron Wetherington

Invasion of the Barbarians, by Ulpiano Checa (Spain) 1887

​Invasion of the Barbarians

The Barbarians came at dawn. We had expected them for weeks. In poor health, amid barren fields, and most of all with our deficient legions, Rome was ill-prepared to meet them.

The Barbarians came in the aftermath. We had known that they would; the sterile winds of drought and smell of decay had attracted them decades before. Famine and plague had already reached us from those same lands.

The Barbarians were always prepared for this, you understand. They knew that the essence of vulnerability rests on the corrosion of self-confidence. They moved west from their own wind-swept fields a century back, crossing the Danube in desperation, seizing crops and laying waste.

The Barbarians brought with them the disease they fled from and the hunger that drove them. They were more determined to pillage than we were to resist, had less capacity to govern than to plunder. 
They were passing through.

The Barbarians wanted not so much to rule as to abuse. We had long been abused. The Pagans and Christians each blamed the other for the failings of their gods. The Caesars and the soldiers blamed each other for their weaknesses of character.
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The Barbarians, you see, came simply to mop up.

Ron Wetherington

Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction and ekphrastic prose and prose-poetry.. Read some of his work at https://www.rwetheri.com/