Trevor Bloom – Author

website of Trevor Bloom, author of The Half-Slave

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Anglo-Saxon colonies in France

August 29th 2010 Posted at Anglo-Saxon

Researching the Hunnic invasion of Gaul for my next book I discovered that in 451 AD Saxons had fought alongside the Franks as allies of the Romans. These were probably Saxons who had settled in North West Gaul, rather than Saxon raiders from the North German plain. By the time that Aetius, Magister Militum or Supreme Commander of the Roman armies in the West, was gathering allies to fight the Huns, these Saxons had probably been settled in Gallia some time and owed allegiance to the Franks. Which is perhaps why they were fighting for a Roman General at a time when their northern kinfolk were taking control of eastern Britain from the Romano-Britons.

The battle, in which the Huns were defeated – or at least prevented from conquering Gallia – is believed to have taken place east of Orleans, near Troyes.

There is not much historical evidence for Saxon colonies in north-west France but place-names do give a clue. In Flandres and Artois and Picardy there are many villages with names that would not be out of place in an English shire. For example: Eringhem, Ledringhem, Ruminghem, Moringhem, Radinghem, Blaringhem, Honninghem and the wonderfully appropriate Drinchem, to cite but a few.

The ‘–ing’ suffix means ‘the people or dependants of’; and ‘ham’, or ‘hem’ as it is written in France, has the same root as ‘home’. So Gillingham would have originally meant ‘the home of Gy(th)la’s people.’

Operation Overlord

August 8th 2010 Posted at Barbarian tribes

Returning from France we passed the Normandy beaches, site of the allied landings (codenamed Operation Overlord) in 1944 and I got to wondering whether some military planner with a strong sense of history had named the landing after Clovis, the first Overlord of the Franks.

I first came across Clodovech (or Clovis as the French call him) while researching The Half-Slave. I was determined to make him a character in the novel and had a lot of fun imagining him as a very edgy, slightly psychotic and fiercely ambitious teenage ruler. On the continent he’s seen as a cross between King Arthur and King Alfred, and was a much bloodier and more ruthless Overlord than anything you’ll find in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Overlord game.

Clovis the Merovingian

The real Clovis/Chlodovech became Overlord of the Franks – a Germanic tribe living around the mouth of the Rhine – in 481 AD at a time when the Roman Empire in the west was rapidly disintegrating. Over the next thirty years Clovis overran the last Roman territory in Gaul, established his capital at Lutetia Parisi (modern Paris) and overran the barbarian tribes who had occupied Gaul, taking over their territories. On the way, he eliminated any Franks who he felt might threaten his rule, including members of his own extended family. He was the first and one of the most successful post-imperial rulers and the early mediaeval state he created would become modern France.

Saxon raiders had terrorized the coastline of Britain and Gaul since the 3rd century. By the middle of the 5th century the politically fragmented British were no longer able to to resist the northern raiders and the Saxons, Jutes and Engle were able to settle and colonize the eastern part of Britain. But across the Channel, the northerners found the former province of Gallia under unified political control. The strong political and military continuity that Clovis brought to Gaul in the wake of the Roman collapse was a major factor in ensuring that Saxons did not land and settle in northern France as they had across the Channel.

I’ve often wondered whether, if there had been no Clovis, and the Saxons had consequently succeeded in settling on both sides of the Channel, would the people of Belgium and northern France today speak English as their mother tongue.

Frankish ruler raised on his shield

Roman baths at Chassenon

July 28th 2010 Posted at Roman


Visiting France this summer, we came across the Roman Baths at Longeas, a small hamlet just outside Chassenon in Charente. Regarded by archaeologists as among the best preserved thermae of their type in the territory of Ancient Gaul, and possibly in the whole of the former Roman Empire, the baths make up only a small part of the large Gallo-Roman town of Cassinomagus, which is recorded in Peutinger’s Table and lay on the borders of several tribal and later Roman districts. Large parts of the town still await excavation.

The baths were part of a large religious complex and were built around a temple dedicated to an unknown deity. There are 49 huge cisterns arranged in a grid pattern by the southern part of the temple, which were designed to stock water for the baths. An aqueduct supplied water to the town and close by are the remains of a theatre with a flattened semi-circular shape.

Particularly interesting was the use of concrete (opus caeminticium) which was made from slurry of lime, mortar and stone. The trace marks of the wooden forms and planking into which the concrete was poured can still be seen in the underground vaults. The limestone paving on the floor of the hot water pools and the brick pillars which once supported the concrete floor above the hypocaust are also very well preserved.

Like other baths, Chassenon had heated rooms (caldarium and sudatio), warm rooms (tepidarium) and cold rooms (frigidarium), much like a sauna or Turkish baths today. A substantial labour force would have been needed to build and maintain the baths, and huge supplies of timber from the surrounding countryside would have been required over the five centuries the baths were active.

The baths were abandoned early in the 6th century and the site slowly disappeared under layers of earth until archaeologists excavated the area in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Gladiators

July 7th 2010 Posted at Roman

Gladiators are very much in the news at the moment. We have the brutal swords and sandals TV epic Spartacus Blood and Sand going great guns, just ten years after Ridley Scott’s Gladiator starring Russell Crowe. And while we may gasp at the macho goings-on of gladiators who dared to defy an empire, the archeological discoveries are no less astonishing, or bloody.

Three years ago the remains of 68 individuals were found at Ephesus in Turkey, once a major Roman city. Scientists concluded that they were the bodies of young gladiators, together with one older man who was believed to be their trainer. The remains had healed wounds suggesting that they received expensive medical treatment. Analysis showed their diet was mostly vegetarian, although meat was eaten on special feast days.

And then two months ago a gladiator burial ground was discovered at York. Described as the world’s best preserved gladiator burial ground – a sly dig at Ephesus where the graves are more a collection of bones, the York graveyard contained the remains of 80 robust young males, many of whom had been decapitated rather than hammered to death as was the custom elsewhere. One had a bite from a large carnivore, presumed to be a lion, tiger or bear and many had sustained brutal weapons injuries consistent with gladatorial combat.

And now, following hard on the heels of York’s discovery, we have the announcement that the remains of a female gladiator have been found at Hereford of all places. Originally, archeologists assumed they had discovered the remains of a strapping big bloke but the pelvis, head and gender indicators all suggest the body is that of a woman.

With women gladiators and vegetarian lifestyles, our knowledge of gladiators has clearly come on in leaps and bounds since Kirk Douglas played a dimpled Spartacus in Kubrick’s 1960 film. Yet the stream of movies and media interest in the archeology show that the Romans’ habit of forcing men and women to fight for their lives in the arena continues to fascinate us. Perhaps gladiatorial combat demonstrates how different Roman morality was to our own? We have advanced beyond the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering in a public arena, (I’m not counting England’s abysmal defeat in the World Cup). And yet, the use of CGI enhanced close-ups and slowmo techniques to heighten the tension and maximise the gore suggests otherwise. The appeal of watching others struggle and die while you remain safe and comfortable munching popcorn in seat G28 has perhaps not altered as much as we think.

Kalkriese and the Varian disaster

June 15th 2010 Posted at Barbarian tribes

Lot of interest at the moment in Kalkriese, the site of the Varian disaster, where three Roman legions, plus cavalry and auxiliaries, were annihilated as they returned to their winter quarters on the Rhine. Since Tony Clunn first discovered the site in the late 1980s over 5,000 artefacts have been discovered including slingbolts, coins, harness fragments and armour.

I visited Kalkriese a couple of years ago with Christian, a German friend. It was a cold, wet and misty day and it was not difficult to imagine what it would have been like for the Romans, soaked and chilled to the bone, sloshing through ankle-deep mud while trying to defend themselves from the arrows and javelins arcing out of the trees.

As you can see, the site today is wooded but not impenetrable. Although the landscape has been drained and cleared over the years, it has probably not changed dramatically. Archaeologists believe the area was settled and farmed long before the battle took place.

The new museum is very bleak and austere and looks like an aircraft shed. They are recreating the vegetation of the period, and have reconstructed the turf rampart that was a feature of the battle.

The destruction of Varus’ legions was a devastating setback for imperial expansionist ambitions. It created a boundary between Latin and Germanic cultures that still exists . Fascinating to think how different Europe would be today if Arminius had failed. Most likely, Germania would have fallen under Roman rule and would have become a romance-speaking country. The two world wars would never have happened.

Launch of The Half-Slave

April 9th 2010 Posted at Uncategorized

We had a launch party to celebrate the launch of The Half-Slave in a restaurant on the Kings Road in London. And although it was short notice – we’d been too busy to think about organizing these things – we had a cracking turnout and a lovely evening.

My publisher – Yvonne Barlow from Hookline Books – said a few words, and I said a few more, and then I signed copies of The Half-Slave and walked around with a big smile on my face thinking how absolutely wonderful it was to see my baby launched and to relax with family and friends after all that hard work.