The Pict | Jack Dixon | Rome's Greatest Enemy

The Pict | Jack Dixon | The Picts v. Roman Legions

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The Pict

	The Pict Jack Dixon iUniverse, Inc., 2007 - 190 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Calach stood. His anger was surfacing, and he felt suddenly seized by the demons he had been struggling to contain. Sioltach stared at Calach in admiration as he quickly translated his words.

?Why have you lost one legion, soon to be followed by another? Look, and see! Your soldiers are wide-eyed Roman lads, fighting beside non-Romans who were your enemies longer than they have been your slaves. They are bewildered by a strange and frightening land. They are bound to you not by loyalty, but by fear, and when their fear ends, only hatred will remain.

?For all of your pomp, you have none of what inspires men to victory. Your soldiers fight for nothing but the glory of an empire that has crushed their own nations and tribes. They have no wives to inspire them, and no parents to mock them should they shrink from battle. They have no country, or if they do it is not Rome, and it is in ruins.?

Agricola began to grow pale. He was certain that he would die at the hands of this man whose spirit he could not comprehend.

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Rome's Greatest Enemy

Jack Dixon has written a story that Michael Curtis Ford should pay attention to since it makes a mockery out of the title to Ford's, The Last King: Rome's Greatest Enemy. After reading The Pict it is easy for me to say that Ford may have to change his title to Rome's Second Greatest Enemy. After all, in Ford's book, Rome wins in the end.

It is obvious that Rome's greatest enemy is really Calach, the elected general of the Picts. There was a reason the Roman's built two walls, the Wall of Antoninus and Hadrian's Wall to keep the Picts out of Britannia. The fierce tattooed warriors, who fought like Apaches but reminded me of that army of the dead from Tolkien's Return of the King, were almost invincible as if those dreaded tattoos embodied these canny, fearless warriors with magical powers that struck fear into the soon to be dismembered hearts of Rome's Ninth Legion. "With a start, Felix realized the sound in his dreams had been real. It was a solemn, mournful moan. It grew louder and seemed to be coming closer to the camp. But then, just as it seemed upon him, it suddenly stopped.... The sounds were eerie, as if the voices of ghosts or demons, threatening. Like Felix, Lucius lay silent and still, with the same fear pounding in his chest."

Although the first chapter should have been a prelude and the story really gets going with chapter two, once I reached page nine, I was hooked and read relentlessly to find out what was going to happen to Dixon's bigger than life characters. If you enjoy the books written by Valeria Massimo Manfredi, Steven Pressfield, Bernard Cornwell and Michael Curtis Ford, you will enjoy The Pict. The only complaint I have is that The Pict ended to soon. I wanted more.

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The Picts v. Roman Legions

Right out of the gate, "The Pict" begins with maces and battle axes flying as the Scythians, ancestors of the Picts, an ancient tribe of Scotland, fight the latest of many battles against the hordes pressing in on them from the eastern steppes of Eurasia. Guided by their warrior leader, Cruithne, the Scythians retreat to the west until they arrive at a northern sea where they must take to the water or submit. Thus begins the epic voyage that will eventually take the refugees to the far north of Caledonia.

For a thousand years, a loose confederation of tribes, each with its own leader, inhabited the Scottish Highlands, occasionally joining forces to defeat a common enemy. But their peaceful co-existence ended when the Romans, who had defeated the Britannic tribes to the south, began to march north toward Caledonia. After the massacre of an entire village by the Romans, the Pictish tribes once again come together to fight off the legions sent from Rome to conquer them. The warrior, Calach, is chosen as their leader. Outnumbered by the Romans by ten to one, Calach understands that it is only by waging guerilla warfare that the Romans can be defeated.

Other than one major battle, little is known of the Picts' war against Rome except that these primitive people were able to stop the advance of the seasoned and battle-tested Roman legions. Jack Dixon creates a surreal landscape where the eerie sounds of a hundred pipes precede the Picts' attacks on a Roman camp, and phantoms tattooed with demonic symbols emerge silently out of the night to kill their sleeping enemy.

Over the centuries, the Picts ceased to exist as a separate people, and together with their Celtic neighbors, became the ancestors of today's Scots. Because of the thin historical record and few artifacts yielded by archeological digs, Jack Dixon must spin a tale from his own understanding of the times, the landscape of the Highlands, and the other inhabitants of Scotland who did leave a record. In this he was successful, and he leaves the reader wanting to know more about the warriors who fought against the might of the greatest empire on earth.

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The Pict

A light read, somewhat thin in total length. It seemed to be two short stories woven into a larger book; two different time periods,a reborn hero. Some very interesting research done to identify the Picts and their original route to what will become Scotland.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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