A Wizarding History of Britain from Earliest Times: Excerpt 3

A HISTORY OF WIZARDING BRITAIN FROM EARLIEST TIMES

I am bringing out these excerpts as quickly as possible as I have realised that I cannot rely on the book staying on my shelf. I am all too aware that my bookshelves connect in to L-space, and that Other librarians browse along them occasionally - there is the odd banana skin that cannot be accounted for and I am quite sure that Lucien has walked off with a couple of books, including one I borrowed from someone else. If Lucien can get there, Binns certainly can, and if he takes it into his head to return the book to Hogwarts, one of these days I am going to get home and find it missing.

BOOK 3: UNDER THE NAILED BOOT

CHAPTER 5: ELEPHANTS AND CASTLES

Caesar paid the inevitable price for his ambition. Convinced of his ability to make the transition to Superwizard, he took no thought for an eventual heir, and after the slaughter of his wizarding offspring the only kinsman available to follow him (Brutus being the acknowledged son of another man's marriage and Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra, being ineligible for reasons of nationality) was his great nephew whom he adopted in his will, a sickly but intelligent youth known then as Octavian. What Caesar had not taken into account was the possibility that he might be succeeded by a Squib, but such indeed was the case. It was only by means of his wife's magic that Octavian, who later had himself named "Augustus", was able to prevail. His intellect was as great as his magical powers were weak, and he thus avoided so much as meeting with the Egyptian Witch Cleopatra, taking care to bring about the destruction of her child by Caesar who, the offspring of two powerful magicians, would have been a great danger to Octavian had he lived.

His successor and stepson, Tiberius, was far otherwise. Heir on both sides to the Sabine magical arts, he was the greatest wizard of his age, and was first to formulate the amiable intention of becoming the sole wizard at Rome, forbidding the private practice of Divination and expelling all those even suspected of possessing magical powers. No smooth path led, however, to the accomplishing of this ambition, resisted by so many at Rome that he was once heard to remark that he held the Wolf by its ears.

If Caesar experienced the pleasurable uses of the Left Hand path, the later career of Tiberius exemplified the corrupting effects of their misuse. It was indeed such effects that led to the following of this path being discouraged; there are those still to be found in the hallowed halls of Hogwarts who remember the short career there of John Wilmot, whose arrival was so soon followed by his expulsion, wandless, and though it might be said by cynical Muggles (did they but know) that Hogwarts' loss was Oxford's gain, the dismissal from the magical world of any wizard can never be viewed with anything but regret.

Tiberius experimented widely with different variants on the Left Hand path, both by vicarious usage of the exertions of others and by introducing (for it cannot be with certainty attributed to any earlier time) a new procedure. For the representation that he chose over a legacy of 10,000 gold pieces, and which depicted "Meleagro Atalanta ore morigeratur" (1), cannot be paralleled in any surviving paintings, not even those illustrating the wares on offer in a Pompeian house of ill repute. That the practice existed in his time, however, is attested by his employment of young children and even infants to use him in this manner.

Had he used these techniques for the good of Rome, who among the Romans could have uttered a word against him? But in later years his sole desire was their practice as an end in itself, purely for the pleasure they produced, with no thought to the common good nor even the lives and well-being of his hapless minions. He died feared and resented, neither attempting to attain Superwizardhood nor even having reputed to have done so.

In many ways his successor was his most apt pupil. His great-nephew Gaius, known as "Caligula" from the miniature army boots he wore as a child, showed precocious talent both in the use of magic in general and in pursuit of the Left Hand path which he followed assiduously with the aid of his sisters. It is by no means impossible that he was involved in the death by magical means of his Squib father; his being taken under his great-uncle's wing might in part have been an act of self-preservation on the part of the older man. It is indeed possible that this prolonged Tiberius' life-span even if it was not entirely successful in preserving his life, and it is of note that although at one point Gaius confessed to having contemplated ending Tiberius' life with the aid of an athame, in the event a method was used that avoided the shedding of any blood.

The considerable powers manifested by Gaius, augmented not only by the use of the Left Hand path (which he practised in the manner of Julius Caesar by taking both roles) but also by the necromantic properties of blood, enabled him to bring about great feats of transforming the landscape: "campimontibusaggereaequatietcomplanata ... montiumiuga " (2). He held two great ambitions: to surpass the great Julius both by conquering Britain and destroying the power of the Druids and also by achieving Superwizardhood. In both of these he was thwarted, though he did achieve a preliminary to the former which was eventually of the highest importance. Aware of the deadly force of the storms summoned by the Druids in destroying Caesar's fleets, he felt it vital to commence by assuring Rome of dominance of the sea. To this end he waged a campaign against the forces that controlled the outer seas, defeating them and celebrating a triumph to mark the occasion. With regard to the second, it must be said that he emulated his great predecessor in more ways than he can have wished, for he too perished at the hands of a coven armed with athames. Thus perished a wizard seen even by those of the Dark persuasion as a redoubtable figure of the most evil persuasion. It has been alleged that he was totally without conscience, but this must be challenged by one instance, however isolated: having transformed an erstwhile boon companion into a horse, he would not allow it to be treated as a mere beast but housed it as the human it once was, and would (had his life not been cut short) have raised it to the Consulship.

To the astonishment of all, both Muggle and Magician, he was succeeded by the person least expected.

Not least of the manifestations of his uncle Claudius' power was his ability for much of his life to convince his family that, like his brother and his father, he was a Squib. The reality was far otherwise.

In him, as in his uncle and his nephew, the Sabine heritage ran true, and his studies gave him an unparalleled mastery of both Etruscan and Carthaginian magic; he was indeed the author of the definitive treatises on these, which can still be consulted by those of a properly scholarly disposition. In compiling these works he carefully destroyed all his sources, thus ensuring that his books were the only surviving documents relating to them. (3) In addition he was able to draw on other family connections, for his mother's half sister, the daughter of Cleopatra, was wedded to the King of Morocco; a relationship that as will be seen was of great significance.

Drawing like his nephew on the power of gladiatorial blood, he shared the two ambitions, but his immensely augmented powers gave rise to a far different outcome. Having already given indications of his powers by retrieving from the German wizards articles of great power that had been lost in the reign of the Squib Augustus, he prepared for the ultimate campaign: that to bring Britain beneath the boot heel of the Roman armies and crush forever the power of the Druids.

Two things came greatly to his aid. In the first place his predecessor had overcome the powers controlling the sea, giving him easy passage; and in the second place (though previous in time) he was the beneficiary of the lamentable tendency of the Druidical peoples to internecine conflict. For not only was he offered help and support by exiled Muggles, but one of the Superwizards on whom the Druids called had given him his assistance.

It can only have been sentiment on the part of the Superwizard Lugos that led him to turn against his own kind and give succour to the Wolf. A Muggle might feel that chance led to Claudius being born out of time and place in the city dedicated to Lugos, on the day dedicated to Lugos; but as wizards know well, "chance" is not a relevant concept in such situations.

His plan of campaign could not be faulted. He had both magical and Muggle support in Britain; he had control of the sea; amongst his generals was to be counted the great wizard (eventually to become Superwizard) Vespasian; and from his kin in Morocco he had access to beasts even more to be dreaded than Julius Caesar's steed.

From his Carthaginian studies he had learned of the skill that had brought them into Italy and nigh to defeating Rome. All wizards know of the properties of Erumpents (4), but few at the time realised the potential of cross breeding them with elephants in order to mitigate their explosive tendencies and render them more tractable. It was these hybrids that brought Hannibal so near to victory; Julius Caesar was aware of their existence, to the extent of showing one upon a coin, but he had no access to suitable breeding stock. The Moroccan monarch had crossed them with the local elephants, with a great degree of success, and it was these beasts that Claudius had conveyed across the Channel.

The combination of his skills and resources was devastating. Despite the best efforts of the Druids the onward progress of the Roman forces could not be stayed, and Vespasian in particular swept along the South Coast like a tempest, overwhelming strongholds that had gone untroubled for centuries.

Caractacus, the British leader, was no Cassivellaunus, and in despair he fled West and then North, taking refuge at the court of the Brigantes. This powerfully magical tribe was headed by Queen Cartimandua, one of the greatest witches that Britain has ever seen. Daunted, however, by the power of the Romans, she threw in her lot with theirs, casting off her husband whose wish was to withstand them and remaining indifferent to his fate. The Druids who wished to continue their resistance as a final, desperate resort, made use of him in a necromantic gift of power to the Superwizards of Britain, slaying him by the multiple means traditional in such circumstances, but to no avail. (5) Applying to Cartimandua for help and shelter was therefore an injudicious move, and it was not wondered at long when she handed Caractacus over to the Romans.

An indication of the extent to which his powers exceeded those even of Julius Caesar can be seen from the fact that Claudius felt no need to make use of Caractacus' life as Julius Caesar had done with Vercingetorix' and rather than presenting it to his ancestral Superwizard, Claudius almost contemptuously allowed him to live out his life in Rome.

The Romans worked with grim competence, sweeping all before them, and finally concentrating the surviving witches and wizards in the narrow confines of the island now known as Anglesey. This island, rich though it was in magical power, still could not give the beleaguered survivors the powers they needed and all resistance was finally crushed. The power of the Druids, potent for nigh on a millennium, was broken, and all but the wildest periphery of Britain subjugated by the Wolf.

Claudius was now free to turn his attention to his other ambition. Making use of an attenuated form of the Left Hand path by marrying his niece, and drawing on an unparalleled knowledge of the magical properties of fungi, he finally succeeded in passing across into the Borderlands of the Other World in the body and became a Superwizard. His confidence in being able to accomplish this can be seen from his granting permission for his being revered as such even before the transformation took place; the defeated and demoralised Britons, convinced that no mere wizard could have confounded the Druids, made overtures in this direction that were confirmed by a massive building being constructed in a town devoted to one of Lugos' rivals, thus underlining the victories achieved by both Roman Emperor and Celtic Superwizard.

His passing over caused not a little embarrassment to his wife. The absence of a body made it all too apparent to those who remembered the deaths of those who earlier had laid claim to the rank of Superwizard, that Julius Caesar and Augustus, whose funerals were well remembered and attested, could not possibly have done likewise. In order to save the appearances, she ordered a substitute body to be constructed, in a form well known to be of itself magical, using staves for body and limbs and the only suitable item readily to hand, a pumpkin, for the head. Faintly perceived and ill understood by spectators, this gave rise to a confused tale that Claudius had in fact died, and then been transformed into a pumpkin. From this strange circumstance can, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, be traced important elements of traditions relating not only to wizards but also to Muggles.

His abstention from the most striking excesses of the Left Hand path gave Claudius a higher repute amongst Muggles than his predecessors, but no wizard can view his career with anything but dismay. As was shown in Book 1, when Superwizards emerge, wizards must cower in fear, and such was the case here: his actions in expelling and penalising magic as practised by any but the ruler were continued by his successors, to the extent that magicians once identified were punishable by death. Thus it is that though his Muggle subjects hailed him as a conqueror and revered him as a Superwizard, to wizards his rule marks the beginning of a reign of terror that lasted for centuries and whose effects are still to be felt.

(1) "Atalanta gives Meleager a blow job"

(2) "he built up fields level with mountains and ... levelled down mountains to the height of fields"

(3) This is apparently the explanation of the total disappearance of the books believed by Muggles to be simple histories of the Etruscans and Carthaginians

(4) For more information on these animals, see Newt Scamander's invaluable book on Magical Beasts.

(5) It is not clear whether Biggs is referring to the individual whose body was eventually recovered, known variously as "Lindow Man" and "Pete Marsh", or simply someone who died in a similar manner. The radiocarbon dates for Lindow Man are very ambiguous, and the chief argument for placing him at an earlier date is the fact that he appears to have belonged to a pastoralist as opposed to an agricultural society. However, Muggle sources do indicate that the Brigantes were seen as somewhat backward in this respect (it is noteworthy that some areas in their territory never actually experienced a Late Neolithic, simply proceeding directly from Early Neolithic to the use of metals supplied by their neighbours).

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