The thundering legion

McHugh1 has two annotations to 167.22: Thundering legion = 12^th legion, and Olymp = Mt Olympus. This is not enough. More information is required to get the meaning of this short sentence of 9 words. The difficulty for understanding resides in the dependent clause “that it end.“ That what end? What is “it”? By syntax “it” can refer either to the object of our sentence “Olymp” or to a word outside our sentence. Let us examine both alternatives

In Roman time several mountains in Greece and Asia Minor were called Olympus, but the best known was always Mt Olympus in the North of Greece near the Macedonian frontier, 2918 meters high, the highest mountain in Greece and in mythology the heavenly dwelling place of the Greek gods. So two different readings of the sentence suggest themselves, one realistic and one metaphorical.

If we try the metaphorical first – not a procedure to be recommended in reading Ulysses or Finnegans Wake – the sentence becomes false in the sense that, according to logic, any sensible sentence can be either true or false. The Romans did not conquer Greece in order to end Greek religion and culture. They adopted both and thus preserved them. But if we give our sentence a realistic reading, it does not become any less false: Mt Olympus can be climbed by experienced mountaineers, but not in the sandals worn by Roman soldiers through centuries. And the dependent clause becomes nonsensical: A mountain can be ended by erosion in geological time but not by human impact.

If alternatively we now try to refer “that it end“ to a word in the surrounding context, we find no immediate contextual reference in section 11 of chapter I.6 of the Wake. The preceding sentence comes from Inorganic Chemistry and the following sentence from the Law of the Twelve Tables. Professor Jones who is answering Shem’s 11^th question for Shaun is jumping from one subject to the next. As he feels himself competent in all arts and sciences, he is very keen to show it. In a letter of 14 August 1927 to Harriet Shaw Weaver, Joyce2 writes: “No 11 is Shaun in his know-all profoundly impressive role for which an “ever devoted friend” (so his letters are signed) unrequestedly consented to pose....”. Since this “friend” is Wyndham Lewis, it seems likely that our sentence is taken from his voluminous work. To seek it there is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, a task that may be left to readers of this eccentric artist.

Nevertheless, the perfect tense of the verb “has stormed” and the indication of a specific legion point to a particular event in Roman history. So I asked my wife, a specialist in Roman archaeology, for help, and what follows is based on her explanations.

A legion was the principal Roman military unit of 5-6000 men. The legions of imperial Rome had a number – up to 30 – and a name. The 12^th legion had the name of Fulminata derived from fulmen which means lightning or thunderbolt. Therefore the English translation Thundering Legion. Mommsen3 translates as Blitzlegion. All historical documents regarding Legio XII Fulminata have been compiled by Ritterling4. It is mentioned for the first time under this name in the year 41 B.C. as belonging to the army of the young Augustus, then not yet emperor. In 70 A.D. it was sent by Vespasian to Melitene in Cappadocia, now Malatya in Turkey, where it was stationed for the next 2 centuries. The most remarkable event in its history is its participation in the 1^st war of Marcus Aurelius against the Marcomani and Quadi 168 – 175 in what is now Bohemia and Moravia, and its alleged role in the so-called rain miracle of 174.

Theodor Mommsen (l.c.), whose mention in Finnegans Wake under the disguise of “Mumfsen and Thumpsem” (FW 155.33) occurs (by chance?) in the same section 11 of chapter I.6, as does the thundering legion, has written a detailed, critical review of all available evidence for the Regenwunder. The best known testimony, contemporary and authentic, is its representation in relief on Marcus Aurelius‘ column in Piazza Colonna, Rome. It was begun in 176, the same year when Marcus celebrated his triumph, but was completed 193, after his death in 180. Other evidence comes from four different historians treating the incident independently but based on the same report which the emperor sent from his camp to the Roman senate and which was published immediately but is now lost. In this letter the emperor announced that he won by divine intervention an unexpected victory decisive for the whole war. The following is a short summary of the event:

After the pacification of the Marcomani, the Romans invaded the land of the Quadi in midsummer 174. There they were attacked by superior Quadi forces which encircled them and cut them off from all water supply. The Romans stood in line, burned by the heat and dying of thirst. The Quadi had already ceased fighting, awaiting their surrender, when suddenly clouds collected and a terrific thunderstorm and downpour burst over the battlefield. This had a twofold effect: It refreshed the parched Romans and their horses and it broke the resistance of the Quadi, who made their submission.

The reports of the four historians differ in two interconnected questions: Who was the intervening god and who moved him successfully to intervene? Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher, did not specify this in his letter and apparently spoke neutrally of “divine help”. By this time the official Roman religion had become a mere formality, and no Roman any more believed in old Jupiter fulminator as the bringer of rain and sunshine. For the biographer of Marcus Aurelius5 it was the emperor himself who implored the divine support. In the representation on the column, certainly not designed without the emperor’s placet, we see an unspecified, general and abstract rain god, winged, and with his arms spread over the battlefield.

What a contrast to all these generalizations is the report of Cassius Dio6^: “Indeed, there is a story to the effect that Arnuphis, an Egyptian magician who was a companion of Marcus, had invoked by means of enchantments various deities and in particular Mercury the god of the air, and by this means attracted the rain.” And equally distinct are the two Christian historians Tertullianus7 and Eusebios8 with their claim: It were the prayers of the soldiers of the Thundering Legion from Melitene, all Christians, who moved their God to help them. When, however, the monk Xiphilinos9 claims, that the 12^th legion got its name Fulminata from Marcus Aurelius in recognition of the rain-miracle, then it is in Mommsen’s words “a forgery or expressed more politely, a legend”.

...The thundering legion has stormed with its prayers Olymp, the Heaven that it, the plight of the enclosed Roman army, may end.

How Joyce himself understood the sentence when he inserted it in Finnegans Wake can only be discussed when the context in Wyndham Lewis has been found. Let us hope that it will be.

1 Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake. Revised edition Baltimore & London. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1991.

2 Letters of James Joyce vol. I. ed. Stuart Gilbert, Faber & Faber, London, 1957, 257-8.

3 Theodor Mommsen, Das Regenwunder der Marcus-Säule. Hermes 30, 1895, 90–106, reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften iv, 1906, 498–513.

4 Emil Ritterling, Legio XII fulminata, Paulys Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 25, 1925, 1705–1710.

5 Julius Capitolinus, about 320, Marcus Antoninus, the philosopher, pp.133-205 in Scriptores Historiae Augustae vol I, Latin with an English translation by David Magie, The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1921.

6 Cassius Dio, ca.150–235, Roman History, Epitome of book 72, p.26 ff, Greek with an English translation by Earnest Cary, The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1927.

7 Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, ca. 150 – 230, q.n.v., see 3.

8 Eusebios, ca. 260-340, q.n.v., see 3.

9 Johannes Xiphilinos, 11^th century, monk at Constantinopel. Dio’s Roman History books 61-80 survived only in his epitomes and with his annotations.