Local & International
DRUIDS and white witches have been recruited to act as unofficial guardians of Cornwall's prehistoric monuments during next month's total eclipse.
The pagans have been granted permission to perform rituals at stone circles and other ancient sites in the hope that they will protect them from hordes of hippies and New Age travellers planning free festivals and raves to coincide with the eclipse.
Last month the Druids were forced to abandon plans to celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge after an invasion by hundreds of protesters demanding free access to the site. Demonstrators tore down a fence, forced their way through a police cordon and climbed on top of the stones until they were evicted.
The groups involved in that invasion have been using the Internet to advertise gatherings at Cornish monuments such as Men-an-Tol near Penzance next month. The police and council programme to oppose an invasion has been codenamed "Operation Obscure". Gates to important sites are being blocked with granite boulders to prevent vans arriving to set up camp.
Archaeologists have been producing signs and booklets which they hope will persuade visitors to tread softly over the county's ancient treasures. The most effective protection is likely to be the local pagans who have been invited to lead mystic celebrations, arrange music and set a good example.
Andy Norfolk, a member of the Cornish Earth Mysteries Group, is among pagan volunteers who have helped English Heritage and council workers repair stiles and patch fences.
He said: "I suppose you could describe us as custodians of the stones, or unofficial stone wardens. At the eclipse, groups of responsible pagans will lead celebrations of the eclipse for people to join in, setting an example and, hopefully, keep people from doing things like lighting fires. Our presence is less likely to spark confrontation than the police."
Mr Norfolk said that pagans all over the world were heading to Cornwall. "The millennium means nothing to us, the eclipse is the big event, the end of an era. We find divinity in the natural world, the Sun and Moon are very important, there is a great power when they come together like this."
Cassandra Latham, self-styled "village witch" in the west Cornwall hamlet of St Buryan, intends to spread "positive vibes" at one important stone circle. She said: "We are expecting the eclipse to draw a very primitive response from people."
PITY poor Hypatia, the perfect victim of the fifth century: a pagan, an astronomer, a philosopher and, perhaps above all, a woman. She lived in Alexandria in 415, admired by all except the local Christians led by Bishop Cyril.
In March of that year, she was done in by the monks. A writer of the time, Socrates Scholasticus, described the incident.
``Some of them, therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal ... waylaid her returning home, and, dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.''
For this and other efforts, Cyril was made a saint.
Of course, not all Christian high-fliers of the fifth century had such poor form. There was Patrick, for instance, a Briton who was captured by Irish raiders and set to slavery as a shepherd for six years before becoming one of Christianity's most effective proselytisers.
Only two documents written by the semi-literate Patrick have survived, and they reveal him to be a very nice chap indeed, although a little bothered by some of the local Irish customs. ``I refused to suck their breasts for fear of God,'' he wrote, of the local form of greeting.
Breast-sucking, thankfully, was not a habit of the people of Hippo in Algeria, otherwise Saint Augustine might never have made the grade. In his Confessions, he admits how in his young years he was ``so firmly caught in the toils of sexual pleasure'' that he ``could not possibly endure
the life of a celibate''. He managed eventually, however, and died in Hippo in 430, to the sounds of the Vandals laying siege.
The Vandals, like the Visigoths, could put on a mean invasion, but they were amateurs compared to the man who was probably the pre-eminent figure of the century: Attila the Hun.
By 435 Attila's empire stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One of his achievements, missed by many scholars, may well have been the introduction of stand-up comedy to the West. In 450, a no doubt nervous envoy of the Eastern Roman Empire, Priscus, attended a diplomatic function for Attila. His description survives, in which he notes the entertainment: ``A Scythian entered, a crazy fellow who told a lot of strange and completely false stories, not a word of truth in them, which made everyone laugh.''
Attila's empire crumbled shortly after his death in 452. The cause of his demise was apparently a burst blood vessel occasioned by over-vigorous sex on his wedding night. Over in Britain, meanwhile, things were going from bad to worse. The Romans had abandoned the place, taking most of the gold reserves with them. The Scots and the Picts raided from the north, the Welsh and the Irish from the west, the Anglo-Saxons from the east. A devastating European plague hit the island in 447.
The principal British king, Vortigern, invited another mob of Anglo-Saxons over to serve as protective mercenaries. This turned out to be a mistake of monumental proportions. The mercenaries liked the place so much they invited their families, friends and even distant acquaintances to join them.
The second half of the fifth century found Briton in a state of multi-faceted civil war, with the Britons, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Jutes and Germans all beating the snot out of each other while the Irish, Welsh, Scots and even the Bretons chucked missiles from the sidelines.
It was an ignominious position for the once proud Celts and Romano-Celts of England, and one that pretty much spelt their doom. Little wonder, then, that revisionist sentiment over the next couple of centuries invented
King Arthur, a romantic hero who is supposed to have protected England's honor in what Tennyson later called the ``last dim weird battle of the west''.
Arthur turned out to be a massive boon to the publishing industry. For centuries earnest amateur historians have been trying to prove who he was, and where he lived. ``Yet reluctantly,'' writes modern British historian Michael Wood, ``we must conclude that there is no evidence that Arthur ever existed''.
Meanwhile ... tea arrives in China from India ... Aryabhata, the great Hindu astronomer and mathematician, is born ... the Gupta empire in India is overthrown by the Epthalites ... Ostrogoths invade Malta ... Venice is founded by refugees from Attila the Hun.
