Eagle in the Snow

This ambitious novel seeks to illustrate nothing less than the collapse of the Roman Empire through the eyes of one man, Paulinus Gaius Maximus. Growing up in Deva (Chester), Maximus has known only army life from childhood. Rising through the ranks he finds himself patrolling 'the worn grey stones' of the Northern Wall as Commandant. After quiet years on the Wall, barbarians threatening to overrun it constantly harass his troops. Maximus is forced to consider the unthinkable - the possibility that the civilized world could be destroyed. Soldiers manning the forts are deserting, like his cousin Julian who years earlier turned traitor against the state. Promoted to General and commanded to travel overseas to defend another border, the River Rhine, Maximus and his trusted lieutenant attempt to stem the advance of some hundred thousand tribesmen. Still bruised from the Picts and Scots, he is now almost overwhelmed by Vandals, Huns and Goths. Once glorious capitals are filled with signs of decay, Christianity is making inroads on the temples of the Roman Gods and the people he is trying to defend are mutinous. Maximus can no longer refuse to admit that the Roman Empire is breaking up. First published in 1970, this is a magnificent panorama of a splintering civilization, centred around the 'fierce, hard, ungenerous and incorruptible' figure of Maximus. Dramatic, elegiac and deeply moving, its reissue is longer overdue. (Kirkus UK)