Bureaucrat in a Bog

THE LITTLE EMPERORS (255 pp.)--Alfred Duggan--Coward-McCann ($3).

One dark, wet night A.D. 406, Caius Sempronius Felix, civil governor of Roman Britain, sat shivering all alone in a Hertfordshire bog with only a poor man's cloak against the wind, and wondered how in the world he had come to such a pass. The novelized story of Felix's fall, as told by Britain's Alfred Duggan in The Little Emperors, is the story of the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain.

In the year 405, Roman rule in Britain seemed as placid and secure as it had been 200 years before. True, the garrisons in the north had been withdrawn to Londinium (London) some years before, but then there had been no real enemies for them to fight. Also, the authority for Wales and most of the west country had been delegated to the barbarian federated kings, but they were loyal, even if they paid no taxes, and only small tribute.

Milk the Merchants. Taxes, in fact, had, as they increased, become increasingly hard to collect, as Felix, whose responsibility they were, had cause to know. Confiscations were the alternative, and as a good bureaucrat, Felix issued an order to confiscate. After all, if he did not, the army would, and then he would have nothing at all for roads and public works, instead of very little. Felix never actually built a road during his ten years in Britain, but he liked to think he meant to. With the confiscation, more & more of the farmers fled to the camps of the barbarian kings, and lately there were just not enough taxpayers to support the administration and the garrison. Still, it was possible to milk the rich merchants and keep things going, always exempting one's friends and relations, of course--notably the Senator Gratianus, whose pretty daughter, Maria, Felix had thought it wise to marry. Still, these were just the routine troubles of dominion.

Then it happened. One night in December 405, the Rhine froze, and a German raiding party crossed. They found only shadow garrisons against them; the Legions had been called back to Italy to resist Alaric. The word spread, and by spring the unopposed German tribes had overrun eastern Gaul and were pouring west to the sea and south to the Pyrenees. Britain was cut off from Rome--and the Dark Ages were approaching on the double. But these matters were hard to sense fully in misty Britain. All that seemed perfectly clear to some of Felix's bolder friends was that the Emperor Honorius in Rome had suffered a military disgrace--and that the imperial purple beckoned to the strong.

Be a Stoic. With the financial backing of Felix's father-in-law Gratianus, a young tribune named Marcus Julius Naso hoisted his standard in Britain and took the title of Roman Emperor. Title, of course, was not possession, but it was nice for a start, and Honorius was too far away to dispute it. But when the new "emperor" refused to play ball with Gratianus, the old merchant persuaded Maria to skewer him while she lay in his bed.

Maria enjoyed murder so much that she made a habit of it for a while. Felix, who had encouraged her to begin with Marcus, began to wonder if she might not end with him. His mind was set at rest, though his prospects were unhinged, when another young soldier, Constans, killed Gratianus and Maria, and raised another "emperor" to the purple. Felix, of course, had to flee for his life, and so found himself sitting miserably in his bog, trying to be stoic about it all.

The portrait of Felix is surely one of the subtlest, wittiest and kindliest of a civil servant in a long time, and the story of his reluctant, harassed but courageous progress through the murderous fiddle-de-dee of the year 406 is told without a word out of place. As an extra dividend, the book is clearly intended for reading as an oblique comment on the British character, and especially on the modern British bureaucracy. Author Duggan seems to suggest that, given a bowler and bumbershoot to go with his tidy, official face, Felix might patter along Downing Street without winning a second glance.

Duggan himself, like Felix a man in a niche (he is the expert on armor for the British Natural History Museum), is not one to discuss politics as such. But 15 centuries from home, he can utter a refined razzberry at some noteworthy blunderers of the past.

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