From the collection “Words at Play” by William Estabrook
Author’s Note: In the grand tradition of screen writers and librettists everywhere, we have blended in the following scenario fact with fiction in order to create a glimpse into life as it was long ago. It is a tale of peace and war, love and hate, allegiance and treachery, rich reward and merciless vengeance. The story is based on events in the lives of three members of the Gothic royal Amal family: sixth century monarch Theodoric the Great, his daughter Queen Amalasuentha, and her daughter Princess Matasuentha. Names have been altered.
Our story begins one thousand five hundred years ago, after fierce Germanic tribes have swept into the Western Roman Empire and made it their own. Chief among these entities were the Cuthars, who were divided into two main groups that were mutually antagonistic. One of them followed King Athadaric, while the other accepted the rule of Theroluin. After much internecine strife and bloodshed, Athadaric suggested that the two opposing warrior leaders meet in the northern coastal city of Ravenna, in order to arrange for a peaceful sharing of power in the conquered Roman territory. At the outset of the conference, Theroluin stood and presented his terms of agreement. Athadaric rose then and responded by drawing his sword and striking his adversary in the soft area of his body between the rib cage and pelvis. Such was the force of the blow that Theroluin fell to the floor neatly severed into two separate pieces.
The power of Athadaric’s argument, which left little room for rebuttal or negotiation, carried the day. After decreeing that any remaining supporters of Theroluin should be rounded up and summarily dispatched, the King departed from the meeting as sole ruler of a united Cutharic nation, which incorporated modern day Italy, a large part of southern France and all of Spain. Having thus settled matters of diplomacy, the King set out to arrange for the administration of his realm. Over the following months, he reined in the martial enthusiasm of his generals and began to establish the principle that all good that was Roman, their laws and social structure and their very way of life, should be preserved for the benefit of all inhabitants of the kingdom, an arrangement that was intended to allow victor and vanquished to live peacefully side by side and for each group to retain its own cultural identity.
As quickly as political events permitted, the King turned full attention to the ordering of his own personal affairs. Of primary urgency was the acquisition of a male heir who would guarantee the continuation of the Athad dynasty. Toward that end he renewed his attentions to his wife, a woman called Brauthela, who was the eldest daughter of Minodaric, king of the Vordans. The alien princess was a proud and haughty creature, rather lacking in physical beauty and openly disdainful of the Cuthars, whom she regarded as deficient in grace and cultural refinement. Her antipathy for the people she had been forced to serve as Queen was matched only by their fervent lack of affection for her.
The regenerative activities between the Cutharic king and his Vordanic queen proved futile and unproductive. Despite the most dutiful and repeated efforts of Athadaric to sire a child with his mate, and her stoic submission to his exertions, she remained barren, and in this manner the King expended much fruitless effort. Impatient for success, Athadaric abandoned his contacts with Brauthela and selected from among his own people a woman of eighteen years to serve as his royal concubine. His age at the time was forty-two. The lady was the daughter of a Cutharic general, and her name was Alurafleta. She was possessed of such perfect beauty that she was said to be rivaled only by idealized statues of the Roman goddess Venus. The young woman took well to life at the royal court, and over time she exhibited selfless devotion to her king in all ways. She produced several children for him, all girls, the first of whom was given the name Athadamantha. The child grew to be the spit and image of her mother; tall, graceful, slender and blond and blue eyed
A historian of the Cuthars, and a contemporary of Athadamantha, described the young woman as “a heavenly beauty. A daughter worthy of her father.” There were other children, born of successive concubines, but among them was no son and heir. The King showered his love and attention on his first born, the child by his beloved Alurafleta. Such was his devotion to the girl and his ambitions for her future that when she had attained the age of eight years he invited a certain Roman scholar named Carolinus, a man widely renowned for his knowledge of science and the arts, to take up residence at the royal court and become tutor to the young lady.
Athadamantha took well to instruction and exhibited such great affinity for foreign tongues that by her twelfth year she was able to read and write and speak the language of the Romans with perfect fluency. At the age of sixteen she attempted to translate a Roman play from its original text into the written form of her native Cutharic, but the priests at the royal court objected strenuously, saying that their sacred Biblical idiom should not be profaned by allying it thus with pagan thought. King Athadaric, a devout Arian Christian, deferred to the wishes of the churchmen and caused the work of his daughter to be destroyed. Thus ended any attempt to make of the Cutharic language a vehicle for secular literature, a development that surely would have preserved it in its entirety for future ages.
In order to soften his beloved child’s disappointment at this frustration of her efforts, the king permitted the two children of her tutor Carolinus, girls aged thirteen and fifteen named Claudia and Flavia, along with their mother Barbara, to take up residence at the court. The two Roman girls became fast friends with their multilingual royal companion, and in addition to their studies the trio engaged in sports such as running and swimming and throwing of the ball, as well as riding horseback, and sailing in the local harbor. During hours of repose, the ladies engaged in much ancient girl talk. In her later years the royal Athad lady was wont to say that the time she spent in the company of her two Roman friends was the most joyful of her young life.
On the occasion of her eighteenth birthday, Athadamantha learned from her father, who had attained the age of sixty years, that the time had come for her to put away personal interests and to assume her royal duties, the first of such obligations being to take a husband. He revealed that her spouse was to be a Cutharic noble named Wittalin, a man from the western provinces who was ten years her senior. The dutiful princess accepted the wisdom of her father’s design and raised no objection. King Athadaric staged a grand banquet for the purpose of introducing his daughter’s prospective husband to her and to the other people at court. According to contemporary reports, when Athadamantha first saw her prospective husband entering the banquet hall her heart was greatly gladdened, for he was tall and handsome and sturdily constructed and of regal bearing. He possessed a great mane of reddish blond hair and piercing brown eyes.. He was in all respects the perfect mate for her.
When the King introduced Wittalin formally to the assembled guests, the sturdy warrior stood and in the customarily direct way of the Cutharic male he expressed his thoughts. Turning toward Athadamantha he proclaimed that he would have fought his way through an army in order to reach the side of so magnificent a woman. Not to be outdone, the royal daughter smiled and responded that in such an event she would have been most happy to welcome him. Shouts of approval rang out and there followed a great and joyous thumping of goblets and knuckles on the table top. The King proceeded then to announce that in the absence of any royal son to succeed him, this future husband of his daughter was to assume the role of Crown Prince, heir to the throne. Not a single voice was raised in objection.
Within the month all ceremonies were concluded, joining Athadamantha and Wittalin in holy union. As she became better acquainted with him, she was especially charmed by his soft Western accent and his colorful ways of expressing himself. This somewhat rustic western Cuthar and the urbane and thoroughly Romanized princess might have seemed something of an odd couple, yet each found in the other a perfect life companion. In their private moments, she played the lyre for him and sang songs and recited poetry in Latin and also in Greek. He could understand but few of the Latin words, and none of the Greek at all, but the excellence of her delivery and the warmth of her voice are said to have moved him at moments to tears. In all ways the royal couple devoted themselves to each other ardently and often, and before two months had passed the Princess revealed to her husband that she was with child. So it was that on the thirteenth day of September in the year 516 AD a daughter was born in the royal household, and the name she received was Saramantha. Two years later a boy arrived whom his parents called Gantharic.
The two children were very much dissimilar, both in appearance and temperament. Saramantha had the reddish hair of her father and the blue eyes and fair skin of her mother, and she exhibited a figure of surpassing beauty. She proved to be an avid student, displaying a quickness of intellect that served her well in her studies. Gantharic possessed pure blond hair and green eyes. He was handsome and also intelligent. He was, however, a dreamer who soon revealed that he was much more inclined to mischief and idleness than to any discipline of purpose.
Unfortunately, the union of Athadamantha and Wittalin was fated not to end well. In the tenth year of their marriage, he was thrown from his horse and did not rise again. His widow commanded that the animal be destroyed and dismembered and its remains taken out to sea and thrown to the fishes. In deepest grief over the loss of her beloved husband, the royal lady withdrew for a period of mourning and was not seen in public for one full month.
When she re-appeared, Athadamantha went to the King and confided to him that she preferred not to re-marry, but to remain single and devote herself to the raising of her son and daughter. He approved of her request. As time passed and the two royal offspring flourished, little Gantharic continued to charm all with his sunny disposition and talent for innocent naughtiness. His older sister Princess Saramantha, however, showed herself to be a model of royal propriety and devotion to duty. The young lady immersed herself in her studies and followed the example of her mother in her mastery of Latin. The loving bond between mother and daughter grew even firmer as they spent many a pleasant afternoon conversing in that most expressive and pleasant idiom, pursuing discussions that remained generally private, since they eluded the comprehension of others at court who lacked sufficient fluency in the foreign tongue.
The spirit and beauty of little Princess Saramantha was a delight not only for her widowed mother but also for her grandfather King Athadaric, in whose presence she was clever enough always to display her excellent command of the stately and complex Cutharic language. This courtesy pleased the old man greatly, for he was a stout champion of all things Cutharic. He saw in the young princess much resemblance to her grandmother the concubine Alurafleta, who remained at his side and was a great comfort in his advancing years. The boy Gantharic prospered in his own way, pleasing all by reason of his native charm and handsomeness rather than by any evidence of accomplishment. He saw no purpose or benefit to be gained from speaking a language other than that of his people, and he resisted all efforts to inflict such a program of study on him.
The intentions of King Athadaric for the royal succession had received a cruel blow with the untimely passing of his son-in-law Wittalin. In the months following that tragic event, increasingly intense discussions arose in the court concerning the royal succession. No small number of prospective candidates for eventual succession to the kingship thrust themselves forward to fill the gap, including close relatives of the King as well as members of the Cutharic aristocracy in general. All of those men could advance at least a theoretical claim to be considered. The elderly monarch counseled with Athadamantha, whose judgment he valued and upon whose discretion he could depend utterly.
The king’s daughter suggested that her son Gantharic, who was then a mere lad of seven years, might be named Crown Prince, since he was an Athad male and a direct descendant of the current ruler. King Athadaric agreed. Despite certain objections to this proposal from various nobles at court, the King did not relent. His grandson was now the next in line to rule the Cutharic nation. The question of royal succession had been regulated. For the next year there was peace and serenity in the capital city Ravenna, and then the unthinkable happened. Athadaric the Great, King of all the Cuthars, was discovered to have died peacefully in his sleep. He had attained the age of seventy-two. Little eight year old Gantharic was proclaimed king, and his mother Athadamantha assumed the role of Queen Regnant, to rule in the name of her son until he should reach the age of eighteen.
Objections were raised immediately to this arrangement according to which a woman would be ruler of the entire Cutharic nation until her little boy should reach his majority, a period of ten years. Traditionally, the king had been a fierce warrior who could lead his people in battle. There were especially three powerful nobles who began a campaign to remove the queen and her son and to install immediately as king an adult male of their own choosing. Queen Athadamantha learned of the plot and moved swiftly to counter it. Under her authority as regnant, she appointed each member of the cabal to a high position on the far frontier. When they had settled into their new posts, the queen caused each of them to be assassinated. Again, the crisis of succession had been dealt with swiftly and decisively.
As time passed and the juvenile King Gantharic entered into his adolescence, he displayed little interest in matters at court. He was more inclined to slip away and wander incognito about the streets of Ravenna, seeking the forms of excitement and diversion to be found so easily in the ancient Roman seaport. He discovered establishments of a peculiar kind, in which women dwelt who would perform certain services for a fee. In those places of business there were also beverages available that would greatly enhance a young man’s enjoyment of any occasion. Other lads at court and those he came to know in the city accompanied Gantharic in his reckless pursuit of pleasure and were only too eager to abet his every licentious impulse. By the time he had reached his seventeenth year, the boy king was well advanced along the path to moral and physical corruption.
His mother Queen Athadamantha, from whom nothing could long remain hidden, continued to display uncharacteristic and perhaps even foolish charity concerning her darling son’s wayward behavior, trusting no doubt that he would reform himself as he reached manhood and prove ready to undertake the awesome responsibilities that awaited him. Her other child, Princess Saramantha, remained the model of correct royal behavior, as she pursued her classical Roman education under the skillful guidance of the tutor Carolinus.
In her sixteenth year the Princess received an invitation from Emperor Justinian to spend the spring and summer at the Imperial Court in Constantinople, seat of the still existent Eastern Roman Empire. The very much Romanized Queen Athadamantha, who was an admirer of the Emperor and a staunch ally of his, was quite pleased to send her daughter off on such a friendly mission. During her stay with the Byzantines, the young royal lady made many close friends. It was an experience from which she was to draw great personal benefit in the future.
In 535 AD, which was the ninth year in the reign of Queen Regnant Athadamantha, many tragic events transpired. Early in February, the young and dissolute Gantharic fell prey to a malady that, although not uncommon among seafaring men, was only with extreme rarity to be found among the nobility. The royal surgeons were at a loss to heal the affliction, and the boy died not long after his seventeenth birthday, never having attained his rightful place on the throne. The predicament into which Athadamantha now found herself thrust was more serious and fraught with danger than anything that had preceded it. Her father Athadaric the Great was dead, and also her husband Wittalin and now her son Gantharic. She and her unmarried daughter Saramantha, aged nineteen now, were alone at court and surrounded by people who did not wish them well, which was especially true of the many relatives of the three nobles whom the Queen had caused to be murdered. There was no male heir and no immediate prospect of one. After much discussion, mother and daughter hit upon a a plan to rescue them from almost certain catastrophe.
Not very many miles distant from the royal city of Ravenna there lived a male cousin of the Queen by the name of Thudaric. He was the son of King Athadaric’s eldest sister Thiodafrida. The cousin was an older man who was passing his days on his estate as a gentleman farmer. The Queen sent an urgent message to her cousin, requesting his immediate presence at court. He responded, and she straightaway suggested to him that he remain in Ravenna and share the throne with her, but only as a figure head and with no real authority. It would be necessary for him to swear allegiance to the Queen, who would continue to rule. She explained that this arrangement, with the royal couple being not a husband and wife but two cousins, would be most unusual, but the extreme need for swift and decisive action in order to place an eligible male on the throne and thus preserve the Queen’s position, and indeed perhaps to save her very life and that of her daughter, left no room for careful and prolonged consideration of various options.
Thudaric assured his cousin that he accepted the wisdom of her proposal, and would be most happy to join her in the royal city. Again a boiling crisis of succession had been staved off. There was now a king with a queen, and all appeared to be well at the court. Queen Athadamantha had every reason to trust her sweet natured old cousin, who in their private moments continued to address her by her childhood nickname Mashi. Many times as a small child had she sat upon his lap or allowed him to hoist her upon his shoulders and gallop about, to her infinite delight and pleasure. Princess Saramantha knew him as Uncle Thudo, although they were actually cousins. The new king brought his wife Adralotha to the court. In the odd arrangement that prevailed she was of course not the Queen, but merely the wife of the King. Nevertheless, she expressed much joy in her new and greatly exalted status.
With the passage of time, however, the country cousins began to re-assess their position at court. Adralotha reminded Thudaric at every opportunity and with increasing insistence that his right to the throne as a mature Athad male should have superseded that of his female cousin Athadamantha upon the passing of King Athadaric. As a consequence, the royal consort began to experience deep dissatisfaction with the arrangement into which he had entered and the promises that he had made. His scheming wife had awakened in him long dormant ambitions, and he began to chafe unbearably under the firm hand of his much younger cousin. He resented also what he perceived as the haughtiness and affectations of her urbane and sophisticated daughter Princess Saramantha. The habit of the two royal ladies to converse together not in their native language, so that others might freely understand them, but in the foreign idiom of the Romans, irked him fiercely. He saw it as an expression of their snobbishness and disdain for people like him. They were simply not Cutharic enough.
At the same time, resentments continued to fester among the relatives of the three nobles whom Queen Athadamantha had caused to be slain. They began to ask themselves whether the arrival of Thudaric on the scene might not have brought an opportunity for them to achieve revenge, for they seemed to detect in the behavior of the make-believe king and his wife many subtle indications of discontent. Casual conversations with Adralotha confirmed their suspicions. The relatives chose someone from among them to approach the King in the most cautious and tactful manner and initiate private conversations designed to explore the possibility of recruiting him as an ally. These intensely delicate discussions progressed swiftly and did indeed produce welcome movement in the intended direction.
On the thirtieth day of April in that year, 535 AD, a lovely spring morning, an agent of Thudaric appeared in the rooms of Queen Athadamantha and inquired whether she and her daughter might like to join the King and his wife and a few others on an excursion by horseback out into the surrounding countryside. They would of course be accompanied by an armed group chosen from the King’s personal guard, merely to assure the Queen’s safety. The Princess declined the kind invitation but her mother accepted and made haste to prepare herself for what she believed was to be a pleasant bucolic interlude. Without delay, the group set out from the stout walls of the palace.
Several hours later a squad of armed men came to Princess Saramantha in her apartment and enjoined her to accompany them to the throne room. Upon entering that space she observed her Uncle Thudo, dressed in the full regalia of the King and seated on the throne. He informed her that her mother was no longer in power, and would not be returning to the palace. He and his wife Adralotha were now rulers of the Cutharic nation. The new King commanded that Princess Saramantha retire to her chambers and remain there until further notice. She departed from the throne room in a state of greatest consternation concerning the fate of her mother. En route to her rooms she asked one of the armed men escorting her, someone she had known since childhood, if he could tell her what had happened to the Queen. He promised to make inquiries among his colleagues. Some time later he came to the Princess and revealed that, on the order of King Thudaric, her mother had been pulled down from her horse and executed by strangulation. The lady who was now pleased to call herself Queen Adralotha had insisted on personally supervising the deed.
The Princess realized that she herself was now in a most perilous situation. She was alone at the court, as her mother had once been, deprived of any male relative who might offer protection, since her father Wittalin and her brother Gantharic were both dead. Even worse, she was exposed to the tender mercies of the man who had treacherously murdered her mother, as well as being utterly vulnerable to the nefarious designs of his wife. It was only a matter of time, and of that Saramantha was certain, before the guards would come to take her away to the site of her own execution.
Because of her imprisonment, the Princess was unaware of developments that were even then occurring in far off Constantinople. As a result of the treachery of Thudaric and Adralotha, news of which had spread swiftly southward, relations between the Cuthars and the Eastern Roman Empire had taken a disastrous turn for the worse. When reports reached Emperor Justinian of the murder of his friend and ally Queen Athadamantha, and the assumption of power in Ravenna by the anti-Roman elements, he proclaimed that he would both avenge the Queen’s death and re-claim lands that had once been Roman. He dispatched a large armed force across the border into the Cutharic kingdom.
A group of King Thudaric’s nobles descended upon him immediately and demanded that he take instant and strong military action in order to protect the home land, but the elderly monarch responded to their words only with hesitancy and indecision. He dispatched emissaries to counsel with the Romans, in hope of achieving peace through negotiation. As his only answer he received the severed heads of the hapless agents.
For several weeks Princess Saramantha remained incommunicado in her rooms, oblivious to the armed conflict spreading up from the south. She passed the days reading in her favorite books. At eventide she would take up a position at one of the windows, to stare morosely out into the emptiness while enduring the chill moments of approaching dusk. She continued to grieve for her mother and dwelt in constant fear that she might soon lose her own life.
Deep one night Saramantha was awakened from a fitful slumber by the sound of loud noises from the hallway outside. She recognized the harsh voices typical of soldiers. At last, she told herself, they had come for her. She wondered in what form she would experience her death. Would the cruel men use their knives? Or a noose with which to strangle her? Would she be forced to drink poison? Perhaps horses would be employed to tear her living body asunder. Would they take her aloft to some high point and cast her down to her destruction? Or was it possible that the brutes would ravage her first, one after the other, and then abandon her wretched and defiled corpse where it lay? She rose from her bed and turned toward the entry way, prepared to confront her fate.
She heard a knock on the door, and then it opened. The soldiers did not rush in upon her but stood aside, as a lone figure walked quickly through their midst and approached her. He was also dressed in military garb, but it was of a style that was much more ornate than that of the others. Obviously, he was the officer in charge of the group. The man stopped before her and removed his helmet. He bowed and introduced himself in Cutharic as General Anadorin. Then he stepped back and saluted her and announced that he and his men were at the service of Princess Saramantha and awaited her orders.
But where, she gasped in total confusion, was King Thudaric? What had become of him?
The General revealed that the King had greatly displeased the military leaders by his weakness and inability to take immediate action to repel the forces that were savaging the nation. As a result he was no more. The nobles had hacked him to death with their swords and placed his wife under house arrest. At that very moment the conspirators were meeting in the throne room in order to elect a new king who would lead them against the enemy.
Saramantha requested that her female attendants be permitted to join her, and her wish was granted. The soldiers withdrew, and she and her ladies sat in hushed conversation throughout the night, awaiting the decision of the nobles. Just at dawn General Anadorin returned. He announced that he had been chosen king, and in his unaffected soldierly way he asked Princess Saramantha whether she would consent to become his wife. Such an alliance between him and the granddaughter of Athadaric the Great, he explained, would not only provide safety for her but also make him de facto a member of the Athad royal family and bestow the stamp of legitimacy upon his claim to the throne.
Without a moment’s hesitation the Princess accepted this most welcome proposal, and a priest was summoned to perform the necessary ceremony. By the light of two hundred hastily gathered candles, and with all the pomp and glory possible under the circumstances, the ad hoc rites were witnessed by the entire court. King Anadorin bestowed a perfunctory kiss on the hand of his new bride. He bowed to her and bade her farewell and strode away in order to resume command of his soldiers.
And thus it came about that the young lady greeted the new day not as an unfortunate orphan who feared for her very life but as Saramantha, Queen of all the Cuthars. Those people at court upon whose good will she had so recently been forced to depend were now subject to her every whim and fancy. She drew on bright colored garments as a sign of her new status and set about to establish her control over matters at court. She intended to right with swift acts of vengeance those wrongs that had been imposed on her. Her very first decree was that the lands of the traitorous King Thudaric be seized and ceded over to Saramantha’s grandmother the concubine Alurafleta. She then commanded that the deposed monarch’s wife Adralotha be taken to the highest tower in the palace at the next rise of the sun, stripped of her royal garments and flung down against the harsh pavement below. Clad in robes of purest white and wearing her royal crown, Queen Saramantha stood by and witnessed the execution.
Scarcely a month after her marriage to King Anadorin, and without having seen him at all in the interim, Queen Saramantha received news that her husband had been slain in battle. The Roman armies were advancing everywhere, and the Cutharic forces appeared to be approaching a state of collapse. Her position as Queen remained unchallenged, but she was in no way trained or prepared to inject herself into military events and effect a beneficial outcome. Some of the nobles elected to take matters into their own hands and raised separate armies against the invaders. Reports reached the court of conflicts that were raging in various areas of the nation, but in no strategically organized manner. Clearly the enemy’s power was superior, and was prevailing. Slaughter and carnage of a ferocity that defied description were raging everywhere. It was only a matter of time before the Roman legions would arrive at the gates of Ravenna, eager to inflict death and destruction on the royal city and its inhabitants.
The Queen assembled all members of the court in the great meeting hall and addressed them, explaining that they were free to do whatever they thought would be most likely to ensure their individual safety. She intended to remain in place and await the invaders. Several of her ladies stepped forward and proclaimed that they would stay by the Queen’s side, while most of the assembled company fled with unseemly haste. Quietly and with the dignity appropriate to her station and heritage, Saramantha took up her normal duties and made no display of the emotions that were raging in her.
When the Roman soldiers arrived, they quickly surrounded the city. To the utter amazement of Saramantha, the general in command of the army did not attack but instead sent in a request to the royal court that he be allowed to enter the city alone and unarmed in order to speak in person with Her Highness the Queen. She acquiesced and withdrew to the throne room. When the Roman military man arrived, Saramantha was amazed to see how young he was, scarcely older than she, and how familiar in some inexplicable way his features appeared to be. She welcomed him in Latin. He saluted and bowed to her and requested permission to speak, which she granted.
He introduced himself as Hermanicus, a cousin of the Emperor Justinian. Instantly, Saramantha recognized him as someone whose acquaintance she had made during her extended visit to the Imperial Roman Court only four years earlier. She dismissed her attendants and descended from the throne and walked to one of the tables and invited her guest to sit down with her so that they might talk in greater comfort. He revealed that he remembered her well and was happy to see her alive and safe in the midst of the horror of war. He expressed his deep sorrow and that of the Emperor at the untimely death of her mother. The young queen thanked him for the courtesy. Saramantha commanded then that food and wine be brought in. She and her friend spent the following hour reminiscing about better days. His age was twenty-three, and she was twenty.
Finally their conversation returned to matters of greater consequence. General Hermanicus told the Queen that his orders were to take control of the royal city by whatever means necessary. When he learned, however, that Queen Saramantha was still in residence, he had determined to speak with her before making any move and if possible to shield her from harm. If she would agree to open the gates and surrender Ravenna to him, then no injury would come to her or her people. Clearly, the Queen had no option but to accept the General’s terms, not only to secure her own well being but also to assure the safety of her subjects. She sent for the commander of the remaining Cutharic forces in the city and told him that he and his men must lay down their arms and allow the invaders to enter.
By late evening the royal capital was occupied by Roman soldiers. True to his word, Hermanicus left the population unmolested, taking from them only such food and drink as were necessary for the provisioning of his men and clearing space where necessary to secure satisfactory quarters. No public notice was issued concerning the status of the Queen, and the assumption became rife among the populace that she remained on the throne and was cooperating fully with her lifelong friends the speakers of Latin. Soon the word everywhere was that Saramantha had selfishly conspired with her allies the Romans to deliver the city to them in return for a guarantee of her own safety.
Gaudy tales of the Queen’s perfidy were fueled by reports that she was to be seen frequently in the company of the dashing young Roman general Hermanicus. The two were reported to be dining with no one else present and sitting for long periods in the royal garden, deep in conversation. Allegedly they took long walks together in the evening. People who claimed to have been eye witnesses to the interactions of the couple avowed that they could be observed, and quite often, strolling hand in hand. These reports were, however, not at all mere rumors and fantasies. They were rooted in fact.
In other parts of the land, the attempts by various Cutharic groups to defend their nation had come to naught. After dreadful loss of life and much wanton destruction of property, the Romans emerged victorious. The brief and tumultuous reign of young Queen Saramantha was at an end. The Athad dynasty had ceased to exist, and with its passing began the decline and ultimate disappearance of the Cutharic cultural identity that King Athadaric the Great had attempted to preserve. They were to lose their language, their customs and their sense of self and become instead integrated into the world of Rome.
When the time came for General Hermanicus to depart for Constantinople he prevailed upon Saramantha to accompany him, and she readily accepted his invitation, for there was no future for her in the land of her birth. In the capital city of the Eastern Empire, she renounced her allegiance to the Arian Christian faith of her people so that she and Hermanicus might be wed in the great cathedral by the Archbishop of the Eastern Christian Church. The Emperor Justinian himself was in attendance. The young virgin queen had taken to herself her second husband, but the first who was actually to consummate his claim to that title.
The lovely and sophisticated Saramantha, granddaughter of King Athadaric the Great and daughter of the strong and beautiful Queen Athadamantha, and herself once Queen of the vast Cutharic nation, if only for a brief period, became the object of much attention and discussion and curiosity at the imperial Byzantine court. She emerged as a great favorite of the Roman aristocracy and was constantly in demand on social occasions. She was a fine wife and mother, and gave birth to several beautiful Roman children. Upon the death of Saramantha’s husband in battle, the Emperor appointed her to the office of Proconsul, a position that she occupied with great success. Never again for the remainder of her long and happy life did she hear or speak another word of her native language.
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