Word: felix
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Milk the Merchants. Taxes, in fact, had, as they increased, become increasingly hard to collect, as Felix, whose responsibility they were, had cause to know. Confiscations were the alternative, and as a good bureaucrat, Felix issued an order to confiscate. After all, if he did not, the army would, and then he would have nothing at all for roads and public works, instead of very little. Felix never actually built a road during his ten years in Britain, but he liked to think he meant to. With the confiscation, more & more of the farmers fled to the camps...
...overrun eastern Gaul and were pouring west to the sea and south to the Pyrenees. Britain was cut off from Rome-and the Dark Ages were approaching on the double. But these matters were hard to sense fully in misty Britain. All that seemed perfectly clear to some of Felix's bolder friends was that the Emperor Honorius in Rome had suffered a military disgrace-and that the imperial purple beckoned to the strong...
...Stoic. With the financial backing of Felix's father-in-law Gratianus, a young tribune named Marcus Julius Naso hoisted his standard in Britain and took the title of Roman Emperor. Title, of course, was not possession, but it was nice for a start, and Honorius was too far away to dispute it. But when the new "emperor" refused to play ball with Gratianus, the old merchant persuaded Maria to skewer him while...
Maria enjoyed murder so much that she made a habit of it for a while. Felix, who had encouraged her to begin with Marcus, began to wonder if she might not end with him. His mind was set at rest, though his prospects were unhinged, when another young soldier, Constans, killed Gratianus and Maria, and raised another "emperor" to the purple. Felix, of course, had to flee for his life, and so found himself sitting miserably in his bog, trying to be stoic about...
...portrait of Felix is surely one of the subtlest, wittiest and kindliest of a civil servant in a long time, and the story of his reluctant, harassed but courageous progress through the murderous fiddle-de-dee of the year 406 is told without a word out of place. As an extra dividend, the book is clearly intended for reading as an oblique comment on the British character, and especially on the modern British bureaucracy. Author Duggan seems to suggest that, given a bowler and bumbershoot to go with his tidy, official face, Felix might patter along Downing Street without winning...