A Gothic king is buried in a riverbed and never found. Eight centuries before him, a Gallic warlord sacks the same city on the same terms.
Between them, Rome built walls against exactly the people it kept hiring to defend them...and then executed its best general for having the wrong blood.
We begin where Guðríður ends her pilgrimage, in the city that knew what "Roman" meant, but never quite decides who counts as such...
A poet publishes a sex manual while the government criminalizes sex. Augustus sleeps with senators' wives and calls it statecraft. Ovid gets shipped to the edge of the map. The books stay popular. The poet dies in exile. Everyone remembers him anyway.
- EssayA Song, an Heir, and the Ruler of AllPlanned"This place is a backwater." Ovid, probably. He screws up; the Emperor sends him to Tomis. The same lands give rise to Alaric, who, after Stilicho is executed in 408 for being, essentially, too German, breaches the very walls Aurelius raised in anticipation of him. A fate Guðríður might have seen as ordained, looking back from her vantage as a new Catholic, walking these streets just decades after her own people chose the cross at Öxarárfoss.
- Field RecordingWalking the Aurelian WallsPlannedThe walls built 270 AD against the threat Alaric fulfilled 140 years later
- HEMASala d'Arme Achille Marozzo RomaAspirationalItalian school of swordsmanship, XV-XVI century treatises. Marozzo's Opera Nova (1536) is the foundation. If scheduling permits, we train with the Rome chapter.
- Language StudyThe Tongues of Rome's UndoingPlannedThe atta unsar echoes on the walls as Rome's monks sing the pater noster within them. Different in language, stock, and values. Not even agreed on which brand of Christian to call themselves.Two prayers to the same god in two Germanic tongues, separated by centuries and a creed.
What did the pilgrimage actually feel like, day to day? The blisters. The inns. The men who stared. The women who shared bread and stories. The saga sources give us her route. We have to imagine the rest...honestly, without invention, toward the silence the record keeps.
- EssayA Song, an Heir, and the Ruler of AllPlanned"This place is a backwater." Ovid, probably. He screws up; the Emperor sends him to Tomis. The same lands give rise to Alaric, who, after Stilicho is executed in 408 for being, essentially, too German, breaches the very walls Aurelius raised in anticipation of him. A fate Guðríður might have seen as ordained, looking back from her vantage as a new Catholic, walking these streets just decades after her own people chose the cross at Öxarárfoss.
- EssayGuðríður: The HeirPlannedWhat did the pilgrimage actually feel like, day to day?The blisters. The inns. The men who stared. The women who shared bread and stories. What did she think, walking through a city that had swallowed empires?The saga sources give us her route. We have to imagine the rest...honestly, without invention, toward the silence the record keeps.
All planned content
- EssayA Song, an Heir, and the Ruler of AllPlanned"This place is a backwater." Ovid, probably. He screws up; the Emperor sends him to Tomis. The same lands give rise to Alaric, who, after Stilicho is executed in 408 for being, essentially, too German, breaches the very walls Aurelius raised in anticipation of him. A fate Guðríður might have seen as ordained, looking back from her vantage as a new Catholic, walking these streets just decades after her own people chose the cross at Öxarárfoss.
- EssayGuðríður: The HeirPlannedWhat did the pilgrimage actually feel like, day to day?The blisters. The inns. The men who stared. The women who shared bread and stories. What did she think, walking through a city that had swallowed empires?The saga sources give us her route. We have to imagine the rest...honestly, without invention, toward the silence the record keeps.
- Field RecordingWalking the Aurelian WallsPlannedThe walls built 270 AD against the threat Alaric fulfilled 140 years later
- HEMASala d'Arme Achille Marozzo RomaAspirationalItalian school of swordsmanship, XV-XVI century treatises. Marozzo's Opera Nova (1536) is the foundation. If scheduling permits, we train with the Rome chapter.
- Language StudyThe Tongues of Rome's UndoingPlannedThe atta unsar echoes on the walls as Rome's monks sing the pater noster within them. Different in language, stock, and values. Not even agreed on which brand of Christian to call themselves.Two prayers to the same god in two Germanic tongues, separated by centuries and a creed.
- Unreal RenderThe Execution of StilichoPlanned30-60s. Ravenna, 408 AD. Rome's best general kneels. He's half-Vandal. That's the crime.
- Unreal RenderAlaric Beneath the BusentoPlanned30-60s. The river diverted. The king laid in the riverbed. The workers killed. The water let back in. No one finds the grave.
- Unreal RenderBrennus on the Servian WallsPlanned30-60s. 387 BC. The Gauls breach the walls. Dies Alliensis. Rome remembers this for eight centuries until Alaric does it again.
Want to support the Rome research phase?
Sponsorships, collaboration, and language partnerships welcome.
Get in touch.