The opening scene of Mark Clavier’s historical novel Tillers of the Soil depicts a Roman bathhouse in western Britannia during the final years of the Roman Empire. The old building has lost its central function and is essentially a ruin; it’s something just to be looked at, wondered at, dreamed about.
The bathhouse initiates the reader into the story by hinting at the historical period’s strange qualities and tensions. Clavier includes a historical note at the end of the book explaining how the bathhouse was inspired by an actual archaeological discovery made shortly after the American Revolution. Why it was built there, in Roman Britain, he writes, remains a mystery, as does much of the history of this time and place. The ruin does suggest, though, that the Roman world is still present but in its twilight, and that its golden age is over. In addition, we find that the pagan myths of the land still persist, but now a new religion is starting to spread. Tales of a strange, crucified god with power over death itself are germinating in people’s hearts and minds. In short, this world and culture, shrouded with a fair dose of mystery, is on the brink of intractable change. The land is Christ-haunted and yet still riddled with its ancient myths and customs.
Clavier introduces a colorful cast of characters in the first few chapters of the novel. Luckily, we’re given a character index at the beginning of the book, so if you get a little lost, simply flip back a few pages to reorient yourself. There is the Rusticelli family, including Gaius, the father of the household, his wife Corotica, who helps run and maintain the estate, Rusticelius, their eldest son, and Publius and Rusticella, the two youngest children. Rusticella is the only daughter in the family. Rusticelius, the oldest son who is studying abroad in Corinium, is described as a typical young man who bears a complicated relationship with the place where he grew up. He returns home from his studies early on in the tale but thinks his town and its people are backward, that true enlightenment lies beyond the borders of home. He is an ancient version of a certain type of character in a Wendell Berry novel who always thinks real life is on the other side of the fence. We’re also given an index of various places referred to in the book along with a visual map—an absolute necessity, in my opinion, for a novel so concerned with place. Ultimately, these characters have to contend with the crumbling Roman Empire and impending dangers. In short, they must learn to fight off invasion, survive, and hold fast to the land they love.
This is a fitting book to read for a people who today, some 1,600 years later, feel themselves to be living in civilizational decline as well. What forces must we moderns contend with and what culture and place ought we to defend? While we may not necessarily fear the physical destruction of our immediate environments, we do deal with a new set of forces no less bent on cultural decay. One gets the sense from Tillers of the Soil that the solution back then might still be relevant today: Commit to the place you find yourself, care for it and its community, and do your part to maintain, beautify, and reform it. The vandals might not literally be at the gates (although those AI data centers do give ancient barbarians a run for their money), but the call to community and commitment in difficult circumstances remains.
Historical fiction like Tillers of the Soil can help us imaginatively relive moments from the past even when the record has dimmed with time. Books like these lend the wider perspective our now-obsessed culture needs and show us that, while civilizations rise and fall, the souls of individual human beings, as C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, live forever.
Image Credit: John Singer Sargent, “Market Place” (1890s) via MET.
