The Cataphract

I was thinking about the word cataphract. It is a good word. Makes me think of steel and leather and the smell of horses. It comes from the greek kataphraktos which means "armored" or "completely enclosed". (Citational nod to Wikipedia. Thanks.) Cataphracts were shock cavalry. I wrote this fictional letter from one old veteran to another:

"Nikephoros, 

I have been thinking about things.

Duty. Order. Unity. The soldier's gods are deaf and dumb. And they do not save from corruption. This city is mad. Justinian is mad. We are all mad, and the empire bathes in gold and blood and splendor. We are savage. Never mind the Hagia Sophia, or the Code. The real symbol of the empire is the spathion.

Do you remember Belisarius, before they took his eyes? He had...vision. You saw it better than I did, before we trampled the Sassanids at Dara. Crushed them under the weight of discipline, horses and steel. He was a fine commander, but just as mad as the rest of us, in his own way. You were right. Discipline and Duty are harsh deities. They marched us in circles. Ah, but what a dust we raised - you remember the dust! It caked everything. We brought it from one end of the empire to the other. I can still taste it.

How is Italy? I heard that you retired. That must be fine - I wish you were at my back, here. Procopius has been stirring things up in the palace, but somehow the little piece of camel dung manages to stay out of trouble. The empress turns a blind eye to him, and Justinian, well...You know what he's like these days. The imperial backbone is splintering. I do not know what to think. What have we fought for?

It is very late, and the candle is guttering out, so I will give my secretary a reprieve. Take care of yourself, my friend. Because the empire will not.

Charsios."

And here is a poem fragment I wrote quite a while ago about the same subject, but from a much later point in Byzantine history. The letter would be dated somewhere around 550 AD. I wanted heavy internal rhyme and fairly strict rhythm for the poem so that it would reflect the Empire and all things ordered and imperial. And it should read with increasing rapidity until the exclamation "Byzantium!". Hopefully I accomplished that. There may be more verses coming. 




Our shattered spears will glint no more,
nor bleary eyes collect a crust
of wind-borne rust red Turkish dust -
from dust we must return to dust -
The unjust blind and bury us
Byzantium!
Remember Belisarius!