Notes: The Triumph of 169 AD

Department of Legacies
Roman History Subdivision

CLASSIFIED
Private Notes, 3/14/876

The previous excerpt was discovered in the remnants of an old library, buried in the shallower levels beneath New Rome.  It is the last shred of an old parchment that probably no one alive has read.  Is this not such a tragic thing?  Books are made to be read, to bring enjoyment and knowledge.  What has this little thing done to deserve such neglect?

The author is questionable in his lack of a professional tone.  The account appears to be a factual one, and yet he interjects with personal memories quite often.  Said memories are unverifiable by nature, and thus should be scrutinized.  How mortifying, that we must distrust the dead.  What conceivable motivation could this man have to tell a fabrication?

There is such irony in the glorification of the Triumph that the author describes.  He writes decades after the event, surely an old man looking back at his youth.  But how was he able to maintain such wide-eyed optimism, remembering that between that time and his present, there was a devastating stain on the annals of time?  Of course I could never say the glory of Rome was 'ironic.'  I only meant of the plague that followed brought back by the Army of  Rome is indeed glorious.  I mean Her no disrespect.

Inspecting the paper, likely teeming with fungus and invisible growths, I could find no evidence of tampering or other indications to discredit the validity of the account described.  The date written on the excerpt was indeed verified as accurate.  The pages were so fragile.  Infant, and old woman, at the same.  I held it in my hands.  I'd be ridiculed for such thoughts.  That's why I have to write them in unseen ink.

A different parchment fragment was discovered in the vicinity that tells of the Plague, perhaps with more vividness than any account I could give.  And more vividness than one would need in a lifetime.

The next excerpt is this fragment.


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Gnaeus Aurelius Avitus
Archivist Apprentice: Tier III
876 AD