β Scribed by Bryher
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
βIt was a familiar story. The armies plundered, the farmers died, merchants starved, nobody sowed the field.β Bryher, acclaimed for her magical skill in recapturing past periods of crisis, has taken the confusion and hazards of the Second Punic War as background for her new novel. Her protagonists are marginal characters, men who do not make history but witness and endure it. Through the fates of two Greek traders (and a donkey, Sikelia), she evokes the greatest struggle in which ancient Rome engaged. Zonas and Dasius come from Greek settlements on the Italian seaboard and their allegiance to Rome is tenuous. When Hannibalβs brilliant campaign carries the Carthaginian troops into southern Italy, the traders have no compunction to seek out the enemy, who, far from his native bases, pays well for leather and oil. Both men, however, are compelled by more than gain. Adventure, the call of the road, the mirage of the golden sands of Africa lure them into unknown territory, among alien, untrustworthy people and shadowy dangers. But Bryher has done more than describe the fate of men: with extraordinary insight she records the dying of the cities of the vanquished, the subtle and corroding change that accompanies the fall from power. The Coin of Carthage is history and parable, the present in the past.
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