By profession I am a soldier, a general in the glorious Roman army. As a playwright, I think of myself as a sublime amateur.
In Cesar Aira's new novel, Fulgentius, a fictitious 67-year-old imperial Roman general-"Rome's most illustrious and experienced"-is sent to pacify the remote province of Pannonia.
He is a thoughtful, introspective person, a Saturnine intellectual who greatly enjoys being on the march away from his loving family, and the sometimes deadly intrigues of Rome. Fulgentius is also a playwright (though of exactly one play) and in every city he pacifies, he stages a grand production of his farcical tragedy (written at the tender age of twelve) about a man who becomes a famous general only to be murdered "at the hands of shadowy foreigners." Curiously what he had imagined as a child turns out to be the story of his life, almost. As the playwright-turned-general broods obsessively about his only work, the magnificent Lupine Legion, "a city in movement" of 6,000 men, an invincible corps of seasoned fighters, wearing their signature wolfskin caps, kill, burn, pillage, and loot their way to victory. But what does victory mean? As he leaves each conquered city behind, Fulgentius suspects that once Rome's eyes are again elsewhere, the "subdued" provinces will go right back to their old ways. For it seems there is no end of rebellions to pacify-or opportunities to stage productions of his favorite play: Fulgentius takes his theater of war quite literally.
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