The Hyborian Age

Howard, Robert Ervin

Published: 1930
Categorie(s): Non-Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy
Source: http://gutenberg.net.au

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About Howard:
Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was a classic
American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing,
western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stor-
ies and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and
is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of
swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror." He is well known for
having created — in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp
magazine Weird Tales — the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Con-
an the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can be com-
pared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Sherlock Holmes, and James
Bond. Between Conan and his other heroes Howard created the genre
now known as sword-and-sorcery in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
spawning a wide swath of imitators and giving him an influence in the
fantasy field rivaled only by J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien's similarly in-
spired creation of the modern genre of High Fantasy. There is no evid-
ence that Tolkien was influenced by the earlier author, however. A full
century after his birth, Howard remains a seminal figure, with his best
work endlessly reprinted. He has been compared to other American
masters of the weird, gloomy, and spectral, such as Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Jack London. Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Howard:

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• The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)
• People of the Dark (1932)
• Gods of the North (1934)
• Beyond the Black River (1935)
• A Witch Shall be Born (1934)
• The Scarlet Citadel (1933)
• Black Colossus (1933)
• Queen of the Black Coast (1934)
• Jewels of Gwahlur (1935)

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2
(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any
theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional back-
ground for a series of fiction-stories. When I began writing the Conan
stories a few years ago, I prepared this 'history' of his age and the
peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his sagas a greater aspect of
realness. And I found that by adhering to the 'facts' and spirit of that his-
tory, in writing the stories, it was easier to visualize (and therefore to
present) him as a real flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready-
made product. In writing about him and his adventures in the various
kingdoms of his Age, I have never violated the 'facts' or spirit of the
'history' here set down, but have followed the lines of that history as
closely as the writer of actual historical-fiction follows the lines of actual
history. I have used this 'history' as a guide in all the stories in this series
that I have written.)
Of that epoch known by the Nemedian chroniclers as the Pre-Cataclys-
mic Age, little is known except the latter part, and that is veiled in the
mists of legendry. Known history begins with the waning of the Pre-
Cataclysmic civilization, dominated by the kingdoms of Kamelia,
Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule and Commoria. These peoples spoke a
similar language, arguing a common origin. There were other kingdoms,
equally civilized, but inhabited by different, and apparently older races.
The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far out
on the western ocean; the Adanteans, who dwelt on a small continent
between the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and the
Lemurians, who inhabited a chain of large islands in the eastern
hemisphere.
There were vast regions of unexplored land. The civilized kingdoms,
though enormous in extent, occupied a comparatively small portion of
the whole planet. Valusia was the western-most kingdom of the Thurian
Continent; Grondar the eastern-most. East of Grondar, whose people
were less highly cultured than those of their kindred kingdoms,
stretched a wild and barren expanse of deserts. Among the less arid
stretches of desert, in the jungles, and among the mountains, lived
scattered clans and tribes of primitive savages. Far to the south there was
a mysterious civilization, unconnected with the Thurian culture, and
apparently pre-human in its nature. On the far-eastern shores of the
Continent there lived another race, human, but mysterious and non-
Thurian, with which the Lemurians from time to time came in contact.
They apparently came from a shadowy and nameless continent lying
somewhere east of the Lemurian Islands.

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 The Thurian civilization was crumbling; their armies were composed
largely of barbarian mercenaries. Picts, Atlanteans and Lemurians were
their generals, their statesmen, often their kings. Of the bickerings of the
kingdoms, and the wars between Valusia and Commoria, as well as the
conquests by which the Atlanteans founded a kingdom on the mainland,
there were more legends than accurate history.
Then the Cataclysm rocked the world. Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and
the Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new
continent. Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves,
or sinking, formed great inland lakes and seas. Volcanoes broke forth
and terrific earthquakes shook down the shining cities of the empires.
Whole nations were blotted out.
The barbarians fared a little better than the civilized races. The inhabit-
ants of the Pictish Islands were destroyed, but a great colony of them,
settled among the mountains of Valusia's southern frontier, to serve as a
buffer against foreign invasion, was untouched. The Continental king-
dom of the Atlanteans likewise escaped the common ruin, and to it came
thousands of their tribesmen in ships from the sinking land. Many
Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the Thurian Continent, which
was comparatively untouched. There they were enslaved by the ancient
race which already dwelt there, and their history, for thousands of years,
is a history of brutal servitude.
In the western part of the Continent, changing conditions created
strange forms of plant and animal life. Thick jungles covered the plains,
great rivers cut their roads to the sea, wild mountains were heaved up,
and lakes covered the ruins of old cities in fertile valleys. To the Contin-
ental kingdom of the Atlanteans, from sunken areas, swarmed myriads
of beasts and savages—ape-men and apes. Forced to battle continually
for their lives, they yet managed to retain vestiges of their former state of
highly advanced barbarism. Robbed of metals and ores, they became
workers in stone like their distant ancestors, and had attained a real
artistic level, when their struggling culture came into contact with the
powerful Pictish nation. The Picts had also reverted to flint, but had ad-
vanced more rapidly in the matter of population and war-science. They
had none of the Atlanteans' artistic nature; they were a ruder, more prac-
tical, more prolific race. They left no pictures painted or carved on ivory,
as did their enemies, but they left remarkably efficient flint weapons in
plenty.
These stone-age kingdoms clashed, and in a series of bloody wars, the
outnumbered Atlanteans were hurled back into a state of savagery, and

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the evolution of the Picts was halted. Five hundred years after the Cata-
clysm the barbaric kingdoms have vanished. It is now a nation of sav-
ages—the Picts—carrying on continual warfare with tribes of sav-
ages—the Atlanteans. The Picts had the advantage of numbers and
unity, whereas the Atlanteans had fallen into loosely knit clans. That was
the west of that day.
In the distant east, cut off from the rest of the world by the heaving up
of gigantic mountains and the forming of a chain of vast lakes, the
Lemurians are toiling as slaves of their ancient masters. The far south is
still veiled in mystery. Untouched by the Cataclysm, its destiny is still
pre-human. Of the civilized races of the Thurian Continent, a remnant of
one of the non-Valusian nations dwells among the low mountains of the
southeast—the Zhemri. Here and there about the world are scattered
clans of apish savages, entirely ignorant of the rise and fall of the great
civilizations. But in the far north another people are slowly coming into
existence.
At the time of the Cataclysm, a band of savages, whose development
was not much above that of the Neanderthal, fled to the north to escape
destruction. They found the snow-countries inhabited only by a species
of ferocious snow-apes—huge shaggy white animals, apparently native
to that climate. These they fought and drove beyond the Arctic circle, to
perish, as the savages thought. The latter, then, adapted themselves to
their hardy new environment and throve.
After the Pictish-Atlantean wars had destroyed the beginnings of what
might have been a new culture, another, lesser cataclysm further altered
the appearance of the original continent, left a great inland sea where the
chain of lakes had been, to further separate west from east, and the at-
tendant earthquakes, floods and volcanoes completed the ruin of the bar-
barians which their tribal wars had begun.
A thousand years after the lesser cataclysm, the western world is seen
to be a wild country of jungles and lakes and torrential rivers. Among
the forest-covered hills of the northwest exist wandering bands of ape-
men, without human speech, or the knowledge of fire or the use of im-
plements. They are the descendants of the Atlanteans, sunk back into the
squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality from which ages ago their ancestors
so laboriously crawled. To the southwest dwell scattered clans of
degraded, cave-dwelling savages, whose speech is of the most primitive
form, yet who still retain the name of Picts, which has come to mean
merely a term designating men—themselves, to distinguish them from
the true beasts with which they contend for life and food. It is their only

5
link with their former stage. Neither the squalid Picts nor the apish At-
lanteans have any contact with other tribes or peoples.
Far to the east, the Lemurians, levelled almost to a bestial plane them-
selves by the brutishness of their slavery, have risen and destroyed their
masters. They are savages stalking among the ruins of a strange civiliza-
tion. The survivors of that civilization, who have escaped the fury of
their slaves, have come westward. They fall upon that myterious pre-hu-
man kingdom of the south and overthrow it, substituting their own cul-
ture, modified by contact with the older one. The newer kingdom is
called Stygia, and remnants of the older nation seemed to have survived,
and even been worshipped, after the race as a whole had been destroyed.
Here and there in the world small groups of savages are showing signs
of an upward trend; these are scattered and unclassified. But in the
north, the tribes are growing. These people are called Hyborians, or Hy-
bori; their god was Bori—some great chief, whom legend made even
more ancient as the king who led them into the north, in the days of the
great Cataclysm, which the tribes remember only in distorted folklore.
They have spread over the north, and are pushing southward in leis-
urely treks. So far they have not come in contact with any other races;
their wars have been with one another. Fifteen hundred years in the
north country have made them a tall, tawny-haired, grey-eyed race, vig-
orous and warlike, and already exhibiting a well-defined artistry and po-
etism of nature. They still live mostly by the hunt, but the southern tribes
have been raising cattle for some centuries. There is one exception in
their so far complete isolation from other races: a wanderer into the far
north returned with the news that the supposedly deserted ice wastes
were inhabited by an extensive tribe of ape-like men, descended, he
swore, from the beasts driven out of the more habitable land by the an-
cestors of the Hyborians. He urged that a large war-party be sent beyond
the arctic circle to exterminate these beasts, whom he swore were
evolving into true men. He was jeered at; a small band of adventurous
young warriors followed him into the north, but none returned.
But tribes of the Hyborians were drifting south, and as the population
increased this movement became extensive. The allowing age was an
epoch of wandering and conquest. Across the history of the world tribes
and drifts of tribes move and shift in an everchanging panorama.
Look at the world five hundred years later. Tribes of tawnyured Hy-
borians have moved southward and westward, con-uenng and destroy-
ing many of the small unclassified clans.

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 Absorbing the blood of conquered races, already the descendants of
the older drifts have begun to show modified racial traits, and these
mixed races are attacked fiercely by new, purer-blooded drifts, and
swept before them, as a broom sweeps debris impartially, to become
even more mixed and mingled in the tangled debris of races and tag-
ends of races.
As yet the conquerors have not come in contact with the older races.
To the southeast the descendants of the Zhemri, given impetus by new
blood resulting from admixture with some unclassified tribe, are begin-
ning to seek to revive some faint shadow of their ancient culture. To the
west the apish Atlanteans are beginning the long climb upward. They
have completed the cycle of existence; they have long forgotten their
former existence as men; unaware of any other former state, they are
starting the climb unhelped and unhindered by human memories. To the
south of them the Picts remain savages, apparently defying the laws of
Nature by neither progressing nor retrogressing. Far to the south dreams
the ancient mysterious kingdom of Stygia. On its eastern borders wander
clans of nomadic savages, already known as the Sons of Shem.
Next to the Picts, in the broad valley of Zingg, protected by great
mountains, a nameless band of primitives, tentatively classified as akin
to the Shemites, has evolved an advanced agricultural system and
existence.
Another factor has added to the impetus of Hyborian drift. A tribe of
that race has discovered the use of stone in building, and the first Hy-
borian kingdom has come into being—the rude and barbaric kingdom of
Hyperborea, which had its beginning in a crude fortress of boulders
heaped to repel tribal attack. The people of this tribe soon abandoned
their horse-hide tents for stone houses, crudely but mightily built, and
thus protected, they grew strong. There are few more dramatic events in
history than the rise of the rude, fierce kingdom of Hyperborea, whose
people turned abruptly from their nomadic life to rear dwellings of na-
ked stone, surrounded by cyclopean walls—a race scarcely emerged
from the polished stone age, who had by a freak of chance, learned the
first rude principles of architecture.
The rise of this kingdom drove forth many other tribes, for, defeated in
the war, or refusing to become tributary to their castle-dwelling kinsmen,
many clans set forth on long treks that took them halfway around the
world. And already the more northern tribes are beginning to be harried
by gigantic blond savages, not much more advanced than ape-men.

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 The tale of the next thousand years is the tale of the rise of the Hybori-
ans, whose warlike tribes dominate the western world. Rude kingdoms
are taking shape. The tawny-haired invaders have encountered the Picts,
driving them into the barren lands of the west. To the northwest, the des-
cendants of the Atlanteans, climbing unaided from apedom into primit-
ive savagery, have not yet met the conquerors. Far to the east the
Lemurians are evolving a strange semi-civilization of their own. To the
south the Hyborians have founded the kingdom of Koth, on the borders
of those pastoral countries known as the Lands of Shem, and the savages
of those lands, partly through contact with the Hyborians, partly
through contact with the Stygians who have ravaged them for centuries,
are emerging from barbarism. The blond savages of the far north have
grown in power and numbers so that the northern Hyborian tribes move
southward, driving their kindred clans before them. The ancient king-
dom of Hyperborea is overthrown by one of these northern tribes,
which, however, retains the old name. Southeast of Hyperborea a king-
dom of the Zhemri has come into being, under the name of Zamora. To
the southwest, a tribe of Picts have invaded the fertile valley of Zingg,
conquered the agricultural people there, and settled among them. This
mixed race was in turn conquered later by a roving tribe of Hybori, and
from these mingled elements came the kingdom of Zingara.
Five hundred years later the kingdoms of the world are clearly
defined. The kingdoms of the Hyborians—Aquilonia, Nemedia,
Brythunia, Hyperborea, Koth, Ophir, Argos, Corinthia, and one known
as the Border Kingdom—dominate the western world. Zamora lies to the
east, and Zingara to the southwest of these kingdoms—people alike in
darkness of complexion and exotic habits, but otherwise unrelated. Far
to the south sleeps Stygia, untouched by foreign invasion, but the
peoples of Shem have exchanged the Stygian yoke for the less galling
one of Koth.
The dusky masters have been driven south of the great river Styx,
Nilus, or Nile, which, flowing north from the shadowy hinterlands, turns
almost at right angles and flows almost due west through the pastoral
meadowlands of Shem, to empty into the great sea. North of Aquilonia,
the western-most Hyborian kingdom, are the Cimmerians, ferocious sav-
ages, untamed by the invaders, but advancing rapidly because of contact
with them; they are the descendants of the Atlanteans, now progressing
more steadily than their old enemies the Picts, who dwell in the wilder-
ness west of Aquilonia.

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 Another five centuries and the Hybori peoples are the possessors of a
civilization so virile that contact with it virtually snatched out of the wal-
low of savagery such tribes as it touched. The most powerful kingdom is
Aquilonia, but others vie with it in strength and mixed race; the nearest
to the ancient root-stock are the Gundermen of Gunderland, a northern
province of Aquilonia. But this mixing has not weakened the race. They
are supreme in the western world, though the barbarians of the waste-
lands are growing in strength.
In the north, golden-haired, blue-eyed barbarians, descendants of the
blond arctic savages, have driven the remaining Hyborian tribes out of
the snow countries, except the ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, which
resists their onslaught. Their country is called Nordheim, and they are
divided into the red-haired Vanir of Vanaheim, and the yellow-haired
AEsir of Asgard.
Now the Lemurians enter history again as Hyrkanians. Through the
centuries they have pushed steadily westward, and now a tribe skirts the
southern end of the great inland sea—Vilayet—and establishes the king-
dom of Turan on the southwestern shore. Between the inland sea and the
eastern borders of the native kingdoms lie vast expanses of steppes and
in the extreme north and extreme south, deserts. The non-Hyrkanian
dwellers of these territories are scattered and pastoral, unclassified in the
north, Shemitish in the south, aboriginal, with a thin strain of Hyborian
blood from wandering conquerors. Toward the latter part of the period
other Hyrkanian clans push westward, around the northern extremity of
the inland sea, and clash with the eastern outposts of the Hyperboreans.
Glance briefly at the peoples of that age. The dominant of Hyborians
are no longer uniformly tawny-haired and grey-eyed. They have mixed
with other races. There is a strong Shemitish, even a Stygian strain
among the peoples of Koth, and to a lesser extent, of Argos, while in the
case of the latter, admixture with the Zingarans has been more extensive
than with the Shemites. The eastern Brythunians have intermarried with
the dark-skinned Zamorians, and the people of southern Aquilonia have
mixed with the brown Zingarans until black hair and brown eyes are the
dominant type hi Poitain, the southern-most province. The ancient king-
dom of Hyperborea is more aloof than the others, yet there is alien blood
in plenty in its veins, from the capture of foreign women—Hyrkanians,
AEsir and Zamorians. Only in the province of Gunderland, where the
people keep no slaves, is the pure Hyborian stock found unblemished.
But the barbarians have kept their bloodstream pure; the Cimmerians are
tall and powerful, with dark hair and blue or grey eyes. The people of

9
Nordheim are of similar build, but with white skins, blue eyes and
golden or red hair. The Picts are of the same type as they always
were—short, very dark, with black eyes and hair. The Hyrkanians are
dark and generally tall and slender, though a squat slant-eyed type is
more and more common among them, resulting from mixture with a
curious race of intelligent, though stunted, aborigines, conquered by
them among the mountains east of Vilayet, on their westward drift. The
Shemites are generally of medium height, though sometimes when
mixed with Stygian blood, gigantic, broadly and strongly built, with
hook noses, dark eyes and blue-black hair. The Stygians are tall and well
made, dusky, straight-featured—at least the ruling classes are of that
type. The lower classes are a down-trodden, mongrel horde, a mixture of
negroid, Stygian, Shemitish, even Hyborian bloods. South of Stygia are
the vast black kingdoms of the Amazons, the Kushites, the Atlaians and
the hybrid empire of Zembabwei.
Between Aquilonia and the Pictish wilderness lie the Bossonian
marches, peopled by descendants of an aboriginal race, conquered by a
tribe of Hyborians, early in the first ages of the Hyborian drift. This
mixed people never attained the civilization of the purer Hyborians, and
was pushed by them to the very fringe of the civilized world. The Bosso-
nians are of medium height and complexion, their eyes brown or grey,
and they are mesocephalic. They live mainly by agriculture, in large
walled villages, and are part of the Aquilonian kingdom. Their marches
extend from the Border kingdom in the north to Zingara in the southw-
est, forming a bulwark for Aquilonia against both the Cimmerians and
the Picts. They are stubborn defensive fighters, and centuries of warfare
against northern and western barbarians have caused them to evolve a
type of defense almost impregnable against direct attack.
Five hundred years laters the Hyborian civilization was swept away.
Its fall was unique in that it was not brought about by internal decay, but
by the growing power of the barbarian nations and the Hyrkanians. The
Hyborian peoples were overthrown while their vigorous culture was in
its prime.
Yet it was Aquilonia's greed which brought about that overthrow,
though indirectly. Wishing to extend their empire, her kings made war
on their neighbors. Zingara, Argos and Ophir were annexed outright,
with the western cities of Shem, which had, with their more eastern
kindred, recently thrown off the yoke of Koth. Koth itself, with Corinthia
and the eastern Shemitish tribes, was forced to pay Aquilonia tribute and
lend aid in wars. An ancient feud had existed between Aquilonia and

10
Hyperborea, and the latter now marched to meet the armies of her west-
ern rival. The plains of the Border Kingdom were the scene of a great
and savage battle, in which the northern hosts were utterly defeated, and
retreated into their snowy fastnesses, whither the victorious Aquilonians
did not pursue them. Nemedia, which had successfully resisted the west-
ern kingdom for centuries, now drew Brythunia and Zamora, and
secretly, Koth, into an alliance which bade fair to crush the rising empire.
But before their armies could join battle, a new enemy appeared in the
east, as the Hyrkanians made their first real thrust at the western world.
Reinforced by adventurers from east of Vilayet, the riders of Turan
swept over Zamora, devastated eastern Corinthia, and were met on the
plains of Brythunia by the Aquilonians who defeated them and hurled
them flying eastward. But the back of the alliance was broken, and Ne-
media took the defensive in future wars, aided occasionally by Brythunia
and Hyperborea, and, secretly, as usual, by Koth. This defeat of the
Hyrkanians showed the nations the real power of the western kingdom,
whose splendid armies were augmented by mercenaries, many of them
recruited among the alien Zingarans, and the barbaric Picts and
Shemites. Zamora was reconquered from the Hyrkanians, but the people
discovered that they had merely exchanged an eastern master for a west-
ern master. Aquilonian soldiers were quartered there, not only to protect
the ravaged country, but also to keep the people in subjection. The
Hyrkanians were not convinced; three more invasions burst upon the
Zamorian borders, and the Lands of Shem, and were hurled back by the
Aquilonians, though the Turanian armies grew larger as hordes of steel-
clad riders rode out of the east, skirting the southern extremity of the in-
land sea.
But it was in the west that a power was growing destined to throw
down the kings of Aquilonia from their high places. In the north there
was incessant bickering along the Cimmerian borders between the black-
haired warriors and the Nordheimir; and the AEsir, between wars with
the Vanir, assailed Hyperborea and pushed back the frontier, destroying
city after city. The Cimmerians also fought the Picts and Bossonians im-
partially, and several times raided into Aquilbnia itself, but their wars
were less invasions than mere plundering forays.
But the Picts were growing amazingly in population and power. By a
strange twist of fate, it was largely due to the efforts of one man, and he
an alien, that they set their feet upon the ways that led to eventual em-
pire. This man was Arus, a Nemedian priest, a natural-born reformer.
What turned his mind toward the Picts is not certain, but this much is

11
history—he determined to go into the western wilderness and modify
the rude ways of the heathen by the introduction of the gentle worship
of Mitra. He was not daunted by the grisly tales of what had happened
to traders and explorers before him, and by some whim of fate he came
among the people he sought, alone and unarmed, and was not instantly
speared.
The Picts had benefited by contact with Hyborian civilization, but they
had always fiercely resisted that contact. That is to say, they had learned
to work crudely in copper and tin, which were found scantily in their
country, and for which latter metal they raided into the mountains of
Zingara, or traded hides, whale's teeth, walrus tusks and such few things
as savages have to trade. They no longer lived in caves and tree-shelters,
but built tents of hides, and crude huts, copied from those of the Bossoni-
ans. They still lived mainly by the chase, since their wilds swarmed with
game of all sorts, and the rivers and sea with fish, but they had learned
how to plant grain, which they did sketchily, preferring to steal it from
their neighbors the Bossonians and Zingarans. They dwelt in clans which
were generally at feud with each other, and their simple customs were
blood-thirsty and utterly inexplicable to a civilized man, such as Arus of
Nemedia. They had no direct contact with the Hyborians, since the Bos-
sonians acted as a buffer between them. But Arus maintained that they
were capable of progress, and events proved the truth of his asser-
tion—though scarcely in the way he meant.
Arus was fortunate in being thrown in with a chief of more than usual
intelligence—Gorm by name. Gorm cannot be explained, any more than
Genghis Khan, Othman, Attila, or any of those individuals, who, born in
naked lands among untutored barbarians, yet possess the instinct for
conquest and empire-building. In a sort of bastard-Bossonian, the priest
made the chief understand his purpose, and though extremely puzzled,
Gorm gave him permission to remain among his tribe unbutch-ered—a
case unique in the history of the race. Having learned the language Arus
set himself to work to eliminate the more unpleasant phases of Pictish
life—such as human sacrifice, blood-feud, and the burning alive of cap-
tives. He harangued Gorm at length, whom he found to be an interested,
if unresponsive listener. Imagination reconstructs the scene—the black-
haired chief, in his tiger-skins and necklace of human teeth, squatting on
the dirt floor of the wattle hut, listening intently to the eloquence of the
priest, who probably sat on a carven, skin-covered block of mahogany
provided in his honor—clad in the silken robes of a Nemedian priest,
gesturing with his slender white hands as he expounded the eternal

12
rights and justices which were the truths of Mitra. Doubtless he pointed
with repugnance at the rows of skulls which adorned the walls of the hut
and urged Gorm to forgive his enemies instead of putting their bleached
remnants to such use. Arus was the highest product of an innately artist-
ic race, refined by centuries of civilization; Gorm had behind him a herit-
age of a hundred thousand years of screaming savagery—the pad of the
tiger was in his stealthy step, the grip of the gorilla in his black-nailed
hands, the fire that burns in a leopard's eyes burned in his.
Arus was a practical man. He appealed to the savage's sense of materi-
al gain; he pointed out the power and splendor of the Hyborian king-
doms, as an example of the power of Mitra, whose teachings and works
had lifted them up to their high places. And he spoke of cities, and fertile
plains, marble walls and iron chariots, jeweled towers, and horsemen in
their glittering armor riding to battle. And Gorm, with the unerring in-
stinct of the barbarian, passed over his words regarding gods and their
teachings, and fixed on the material powers thus vividly described.
There in that mud-floored wattle hut, with the silk-robed priest on the
mahogany block, and the dark-skinned chief crouching in his tiger-hides,
was laid the foundations of empire.
As has been said, Arus was a practical man. He dwelt among the Picts
and found much that an intelligent man could do to aid humanity, even
when that humanity was cloaked in tiger-skins and wore necklaces of
human teeth. Like all priests of Mitra, he was instructed in many things.
He found that there were vast deposits of iron ore in the Pictish hills, and
he taught the natives to mine, smelt and work it into imple-
ments—agricultural implements, as he fondly believed. He instituted
other reforms, but these were the most important things he did: he in-
stilled in Gorm a desire to see the civilized lands of the world; he taught
the Picts how to work in iron; and he established contact between them
and the civilized world. At the chiefs request he conducted him and
some of his warriors through the Bossonian marches, where the honest
villagers stared in amazement, into the glittering outer world.
Arus no doubt thought that he was making converts right and left, be-
cause the Picts listened to him, and refrained from smiting him with
their copper axes. But the Pict was little calculated to seriously regard
teachings which bade him forgive his enemy and abandon the warpath
for the ways of honest drudgery. It has been said that he lacked artistic
sense; his whole nature led to war and slaughter. When the priest talked
of the glories of the civilized nations, his dark-skinned listeners were in-
tent, not on the ideals of his religion, but on the loot which he

13
unconsciously described in the narration of rich cities and shining lands.
When he told how Mitra aided certain kings to overcome their enemies,
they paid scant heed to the miracles of Mitra, but they hung on the de-
scription of battle-lines, mounted knights, and maneuvers of archers and
spearmen. They harkened with keen dark eyes and inscrutable counten-
ances, and they went their ways without comment, and heeded with
flattering intent-ness his instructions as to the working of iron, and
kindred arts.
Before his coming they had filched steel weapons and armor from the
Bossonians and Zingarans, or had hammered out their own crude arms
from copper and bronze. Now a new world opened to them, and the
clang of sledges re-echoed throughout the land. And Gorm, by virtue of
this new craft, began to assert his dominance over other clans, partly by
war, partly by craft and diplomacy, in which latter art he excelled all oth-
er barbarians.
Picts now came and went freely into Aquilonia, under safe-conduct,
and they returned with more information as to armor-forging and
sword-making. More, they entered Aquilonia's mercenary armies, to the
unspeakable disgust of the sturdy Bossonians. Aquilonia's kings toyed
with the idea of playing the Picts against the Cimmerians, and possibly
thus destroying both menaces, but they were too busy with their policies
of aggression in the south and east to pay much heed to the vaguely
known lands of the west, from which more and more stocky warriors
swarmed to take service among the mercenaries.
These warriors, their service completed, went back to their wilderness
with good ideas of civilized warfare, and that contempt for civilization
which arises from familiarity with it. Drums began to beat in the hills,
gathering-fires smoked on the heights, and savage sword-makers
hammered their steel on a thousand anvils. By intrigues and forays too
numerous and devious to enumerate, Gorm became chief of chiefs, the
nearest approach to a king the Picts had had in thousands of years. He
had waited long; he was past middle age. But now he moved against the
frontiers, not in trade, but in war.
Arus saw his mistake too late; he had not touched the soul of the pa-
gan, in which lurked the hard fierceness of all the ages. His persuasive
eloquence had not caused a ripple in the Pictish conscience. Gorm wore a
corselet of silvered mail now, instead of the tiger-skin, but underneath he
was unchanged—the everlasting barbarian, unmoved by theology or
philosophy, his instincts fixed unerringly on rapine and plunder.

14
 The Picts burst on the Bossonian frontiers with fire and sword, not
clad in tiger-skins and brandishing copper axes as of yore, but in scale-
mail, wielding weapons of keen steel. As for Arus, he was brained by a
drunken Pict, while making a last effort to undo the work he had unwit-
tingly done. Gorm was not without gratitude; he caused the skull of the
slayer to be set on the top of the priest's cairn. And it is one of the grim
ironies of the universe that the stones which covered Arus's body should
have been adorned with that last touch of barbarity—above a man to
whom violence and blood-vengeance were revolting.
But the newer weapons and mail were not enough to break the lines.
For years the superior armaments and sturdy courage of the Bossonians
held the invaders at bay, aided, when necessary, by imperial Aquilonian
troops. During this time the Hyrkanians came and went, and Zamora
was added to the empire.
Then treachery from an unexpected source broke the Bossonian lines.
Before chronicling this treachery, it might be well to glance briefly at the
Aquilonian empire. Always a rich kingdom, untold wealth had been
rolled in by conquest, and sumptuous splendor had taken the place of
simple and hardy living. But degeneracy had not yet sapped the kings
and the people; though clad in silks and cloth-of-gold, they were still a
vital, virile race. But arrogance was supplanting their former simplicity.
They treated less powerful people with growing contempt, levying more
and more tributes on the conquered. Argos, Zingara, Ophir, Zamora and
the Shemite countries were treated as subjugated provinces, which was
especially galling to the proud Zingarans, who often revolted, despite
savage retaliations.
Koth was practically tributary, being under Aquilonia's 'protection'
against the Hyrkanians. But Nemedia the western empire had never
been able to subdue, although the latter's triumphs were of the defensive
sort, and were generally attained with the aid of Hyperborean armies.
During this period Aquilonia's only defeats were: her failure to annex
Nemedia; the rout of an army sent into Cimmeria; and the almost com-
plete destruction of an army by the AEsir. Just as the Hyrkanians found
themselves unable to withstand the heavy cavalry charges of the Aquilo-
nians, so the latter, invading the snow-countries, were overwhelmed by
the ferocious hand-to-hand fighting of the Nordics. But Aquilonia's con-
quests were pushed to the Nilus, where a Stygian army was defeated
with great slaughter, and the king of Stygia sent tribute—once at
least—to divert invasion of his kingdom. Brythunia was reduced in a

15
series of whirlwind wars, and preparations were made to subjugate the
ancient rival at last—Nemedia.
With their glittering hosts greatly increased by mercenaries, the Aqui-
lonians moved against their old-time foe, and it seemed as if the thrust
were destined to crush the last shadow of Nemedian independence. But
contentions arose between the Aquilonians and their Bossonian
auxiliaries.
As the inevitable result of imperial expansion, the Aquilonians had be-
come haughty and intolerant. They derided the ruder, unsophisticated
Bossonians, and hard feeling grew between them—the Aquilonians des-
pising the Bossonians and the latter resenting the attitude of their mas-
ters—who now boldly called themselves such, and treated the Bossoni-
ans like conquered subjects, taxing them exorbitantly, and conscripting
them for their wars of territorial expansion—wars the profits of which
the Bossonians shared little. Scarcely enough men were left in the
marches to guard the frontier, and hearing of Pictish outrages in their
homelands, whole Bossonian regiments quit the Nemedian campaign
and marched to the western frontier, where they defeated the dark-
skinned invaders in a great battle.
This desertion, however, was the direct cause of Aquilonia's defeat by
the desperate Nemedians, and brought down on the Bossonians the cruel
wrath of the imperialists—intolerant and short-sighted as imperialists in-
variably are. Aquilonian regiments were secretly brought to the borders
of the marches, the Bossonian chiefs were invited to attend a great con-
clave, and, in the guise of an expedition against the Picts, bands of sav-
age Shemitish soldiers were quartered among the unsuspecting villagers.
The unarmed chiefs were massacred, the Shemites turned on their
stunned hosts with torch and sword, and the armored imperial hosts
were hurled ruthlessly on the unsuspecting people. From north to south
the marches were ravaged and the Aquilonian armies marched back
from the borders, leaving a ruined and devastated land behind them.
And then the Pictish invasion burst in full power along those borders.
It was no mere raid, but the concerted rush of a whole nation, led by
chiefs who had served in Aquilonian armies, and planned and directed
by Gorm—an old man now, but with the fire of his fierce ambition un-
dimmed. This time there were no strong walled villages in their path,
manned by sturdy archers, to hold back the rush until the imperial
troops could be brought up. The remnants of the Bossonians were swept
out of existence, and the blood-mad barbarians swarmed into Aquilonia,
looting and burning, before the legions, warring again with the

16
Nemedians, could be marched into the west. Zingara seized this oppor-
tunity to throw off the yoke, which example was followed by Corinthia
and the Shemites. Whole regiments of mercenaries and vassals mutinied
and marched back to their own countries, looting and burning as they
went. The Picts surged irresistibly eastward, and host after host was
trampled beneath their feet. Without their Bossonian archers the Aquilo-
nians found themselves unable to cope with the terrible arrow-fire of the
barbarians. From all parts of the empire legions were recalled to resist
the onrush, while from the wilderness horde after horde swarmed forth,
in apparently inexhaustible supply. And in the midst of this chaos, the
Cimmerians swept down from their hills, completing the ruin. They
looted cities, devastated the country, and retired into the hills with their
plunder, but the Picts occupied the land they had over-run. And the
Aquilonian empire went down in fire and blood.
Then again the Hyrkanians rode from the blue east. The withdrawal of
the imperial legions from Zamora was their incitement. Zamora fell easy
prey to their thrusts, and the Hyrkanian king established his capital in
the largest city of the country. This invasion was from the ancient
Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, on the shores of the inland sea, but anoth-
er, more savage Hyrkanian thrust came from the north. Hosts of steel-
clad riders galloped around the northern extremity of the inland sea, tra-
versed the icy deserts, entered the steppes, driving the aborigines before
them, and launched themselves against the western kingdoms. These
newcomers were not at first allies with the Turanians, but skirmished
with them as with the Hyborians; new drifts of eastern warriors bickered
and fought, until all were united under a great chief, who came riding
from the very shores of the eastern ocean. With no Aquilonian armies to
oppose them, they were invincible. They swept over and subjugated
Brythunia, and devastated southern Hyperborea, and Corinthia. They
swept into the Cimmerian hills, driving the black-haired barbarians be-
fore them, but among the hills, where cavalry was less effectual, the Cim-
merians turned on them, and only a disorderly retreat, at the end of a
whole day of bloody fighting, saved the Hyrkanian hosts from complete
annihilation.
While these events had been transpiring, the kingdoms of Shem had
conquered their ancient master, Koth, and had been defeated in an at-
tempted invasion of Stygia. But scarcely had they completed their de-
gradation of Koth, when they were overrun by the Hyrkanians, and
found themselves subjugated by sterner masters than the Hyborians had
ever been. Meanwhile the Picts had made themselves complete masters

17
of Aquilonia, practically blotting out the inhabitants. They had broken
over the borders of Zingara, and thousands of Zingarans, fleeing the
slaughter into Argos, threw themselves on the mercy of the westward-
sweeping Hyrkanians, who settled them in Zamora as subjects. Behind
them as they fled, Argos was enveloped in the flame and slaughter of
Pictish conquest, and the slayers swept into Ophir and clashed with the
westward-riding Hyrkanians. The latter, after their conquest of Shem,
had overthrown a Stygian army at the Nilus and over-run the country as
far south as the black kingdom of Amazon, of whose people they
brought back thousands as captives, settling them among the Shemites.
Possibly they would have completed their conquests in Stygia, adding it
to their widening empire, but for the fierce thrusts of the Picts against
their western conquests.
Nemedia, unconquerable by Hyborians, reeled between the riders of
the east and the swordsmen of the west, when a tribe of AEsir, wander-
ing down from their snowy lands, came into the kingdom, and were en-
gaged as mercenaries; they proved such able warriors that they not only
beat off the Hyrkanians, but halted the eastward advance of the Picts.
The world at that time presents some such picture: a vast Pictish em-
pire, wild, rude and barbaric, stretches from the coasts of Vanaheim in
the north to the southern-most shores of Zingara. It stretches east to in-
clude all Aquilonia except Gunder-land, the northern-most province,
which, as a separate kingdom in the hills, survived the fall of the empire,
and still maintains its independence. The Pictish empire also includes
Argos, Ophir, the western part of Koth, and the western-most lands of
Shem. Opposed to this barbaric empire is the empire of the Hyrkanians,
of which the northern boundaries are the ravaged lines of Hyperborea,
and the southern, the deserts south of the lands of Shem. Zamora,
Brythunia, the Border Kingdom, Corinthia, most of Koth, and all the
eastern lands of Shem are included in this empire. The borders of Cim-
meria are intact; neither Pict nor Hyrkanian has been able to subdue
these warlike barbarians. Nemedia, dominated by the AEsir mercenaries,
resists all invasions. In the north Nordheim, Cimmeria and Nemedia
separate the conquering races, but in the south, Koth has become a
battle-ground where Picts and Hyrkanians war incessantly. Sometimes
the eastern warriors expel the barbarians from the kingdom entirely;
again the plains and cities are in the hands of the western invaders. In
the far south, Stygia, shaken by the Hyrkanian invasion, is being en-
croached upon by the great black kingdoms. And in the far north, the

18
Nordic tribes are restless, warring continually with the Cimmerians, and
sweeping the Hyperborean frontiers.
Gorm was slain by Hialmar, a chief of the Nemedian ALsir. He was a
very old man, nearly a hundred years old. In the seventy-five years
which had elapsed since he first heard the tale of empires from the lips of
Arus—a long time in the life of a man, but a brief space in the tale of na-
tions—he had welded an empire from straying savage clans, he had
overthrown a civilization. He who had been born in a mud-walled,
wattle-roofed hut, in his old age sat on golden thrones, and gnawed
joints of beef presented to him on golden dishes by naked slave-girls
who were the daughters of kings. Conquest and the acquiring of wealth
altered not the Pict; out of the ruins of the crushed civilization no new
culture arose phoenix-like. The dark hands which shattered the artistic
glories of the conquered never tried to copy them. Though he sat among
the glittering ruins of shattered palaces and clad his hard body in the
silks of vanquished kings, the Pict remained the eternal barbarian, fero-
cious, elemental, interested only in the naked primal principles of life,
unchanging, unerring in his instincts which were all for war and plun-
der, and in which arts and the cultured progress of humanity had no
place. Not so with the AEsir who settled in Nemedia. These soon adop-
ted many of the ways of their civilized allies, modified powerfully,
however, by their own intensely virile and alien culture.
For a short age Pict and Hyrkanian snarled at each other over the ruins
of the world they had conquered. Then began the glacier ages, and the
great Nordic drift. Before the southward moving ice-fields the northern
tribes drifted, driving kindred clans before them. The y£sir blotted out
the ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, and across its ruins came to grips
with the Hyrkan-ians. Nemedia had already become a Nordic kingdom,
ruled by the descendants of the AEsir mercenaries. Driven before the on-
rushing tides of Nordic invasion, the Cimmerians were on the march,
and neither army nor city stood before them. They surged across and
completely destroyed the kingdom of Gun-derland, and marched across
ancient Aquilonia, hewing their irresistible way through the Pictish
hosts. They defeated the Nordic-Nemedians and sacked some of their
cities, but did not halt. They continued eastward, overthrowing a
Hyrkanian army on the borders of Brythunia.
Behind them hordes of ALsir and Vanir swarmed into the lands, and
the Pictish empire reeled beneath their strokes. Nemedia was over-
thrown, and the half-civilized Nordics fled before their wilder kinsmen,
leaving the cities of Nemedia ruined and deserted. These fleeing

19
Nordics, who had adopted the name of the older kingdom, and to whom
the term Nemedian henceforth refers, came into the ancient land of Koth,
expelled both Picts and Hyrkanians, and aided the people of Shem to
throw off the Hyrkanian yoke. All over the western world, the Picts and
Hyrkanians were staggering before this younger, fiercer people. A band
of ALsir drove the eastern riders from Brythunia and settled there them-
selves, adopting the name for themselves. The Nordics who had
conquered Hyperborea assailed their eastern enemies so savagely that
the dark-skinned descendants of the Lemurians retreated into the
steppes, pushed irresistibly back toward Vilayet.
Meanwhile the Cimmerians, wandering southeastward, destroyed the
ancient Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, and settled on the southwestern
shores of the inland sea. The power of the eastern conquerors was
broken. Before the attacks of the Nordheimr and the Cimmerians, they
destroyed all their cities, butchered such captives as were not fit to make
the long march, and then, herding thousands of slaves before them, rode
back into the mysterious east, skirting the northern edge of the sea, and
vanishing from western history, until they rode out of the east again,
thousands of years later, as Huns, Mongols, Tatars and Turks. With them
in their retreat went thousands of Zamorians and Zingarans, who were
settled together far to the east, formed a mixed race, and emerged ages
afterward as gypsies.
Meanwhile, also, a tribe of Vanir adventurers had passed along the
Pictish coast southward, ravaged ancient Zingara, and come into Stygia,
which, oppressed by a cruel aristocratic ruling class, was staggering un-
der the thrusts of the black kingdoms to the south. The red-haired Vanir
led the slaves in a general revolt, overthrew the reigning class, and set
themselves up as a caste of conquerors. They subjugated the northern-
most black kingdoms, and built a vast southern empire, which they
called Egypt. From these red-haired conquerors the earlier Pharaohs
boasted descent.
The western world was now dominated by Nordic barbarians. The
Picts still held Aquilonia and part of Zingara, and the western coast of
the continent. But east to Vilayet, and from the Arctic circle to the lands
of Shem, the only inhabitants were roving tribes of Nordheimr, except-
ing the Cimmerians, settled in the old Turanian kingdom. There were no
cities anywhere, except in Stygia and the lands of Shem; the invading
tides of Picts, Hyrkanians, Cimmerians and Nordics had levelled them in
ruins, and the once dominant Hyborians had vanished from the earth,
leaving scarcely a trace of their blood in the veins of their conquerors.

20
Only a few names of lands, tribes and cities remained in the languages of
the barbarians, to come down through the centuries connected with dis-
torted legend and fable, until the whole history of the Hyborian age was
lost sight of in a cloud of myths and fantasies. Thus in the speech of the
gypsies lingered the terms Zingara and Zamora; the AEsir who domin-
ated Nemedia were called Nemedians, and later figured in Irish history,
and the Nordics who settled in Brythunia were known as Brythunians,
Brythons or Britons.
There was no such thing, at that time, as a consolidated Nordic em-
pire. As always, the tribes had each its own chief or king, and they
fought savagely among themselves. What their destiny might have been
will not be known, because another terrific convulsion of the earth,
carving out the lands as they are known to moderns, hurled all into
chaos again. Great strips of the western coast sank; Vanaheim and west-
ern Asgard—uninhabited and glacier-haunted wastes for a hundred
years—vanished beneath the waves. The ocean flowed around the
mountains of western Cimmeria to form the North Sea; these mountains
became the islands later known as England, Scotland and Ireland, and
the waves rolled over what had been the Pictish wilderness and the Bos-
sonian marches. In the north the Baltic Sea was formed, cutting Asgard
into the peninsulas later known as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and
far to the south the Stygian continent was broken away from the rest of
the world, on the line of cleavage formed by the river Nilus in its west-
ward trend. Over Argos, western Koth and the western lands of Shem,
washed the blue ocean men later called the Mediterranean. But where
land sank elsewhere, a vast expanse west of Stygia rose out of the waves,
forming the whole western half of the continent of Africa.
The buckling of the land thrust up great mountain ranges in the cent-
ral part of the northern continent. Whole Nordic tribes were blotted out,
and the rest retreated eastward. The territory about the slowly drying in-
land sea was not affected, and there, on the western shores, the Nordic
tribes began a pastoral existence, living in more or less peace with the
Cimmerians, and gradually mixing with them. In the west the remnants
of the Picts, reduced by the cataclysm once more to the status of stone-
age savages, began, with the incredible virility of their race, once more to
possess the land, until, at a later age, they were overthrown by the west-
ward drift of the Cimmerians and Nordics. This was so long after the
breaking-up of the continent that only meaningless legends told of
former empires.

21
 This drift comes within the reach of modern history and need not be
repeated. It resulted from a growing population which thronged the
steppes west of the inland sea—which still later, much reduced in size,
was known as the Caspian—to such an extent that migration became an
economic necessity. The tribes moved southward, northward and west-
ward, into those lands now known as India, Asia Minor and central and
western Europe.
They came into these countries as Aryans. But there were variations
among these primitive Aryans, some of which are still recognized today,
others which have long been forgotten. The blond Achaians, Gauls and
Britons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded AEsir. The Ne-
medians of Irish legendry were the Nemedian AEsir. The Danes were
descendants of pure-blooded Vanir; the Goths—ancestors of the other
Scandinavian and Germanic tribes, including the Anglo-Saxons—were
descendants of a mixed race whose elements contained Vanir, AEsir and
Cimmerian strains. The Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and Highland
Scotch, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans. The Cymric
tribes of Britain were a mixed Nordic-Cimmerian race which preceded
the purely Nordic Britons into the isles, and thus gave rise to a legend of
Gaelic priority. The Cimbri who fought Rome were of the same blood, as
well as the Gimmerai of the Assyrians and Grecians, and Gomer of the
Hebrews. Other clans of the Cimmerians adventured east of the drying
inland sea, and a few centuries later mixed with Hyrkanian blood, re-
turned westward as Scythians. The original ancestors of the Gaels gave
their name to modern Crimea.
The ancient Sumerians had no connection with the western race. They
were a mixed people, of Hyrkanian and Shemitish bloods, who were not
taken with the conquerors in their retreat. Many tribes of Shem escaped
that captivity, and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed with
Hyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, Israelites, and
other straighter-featured Semites. The Canaanites, or Alpine Semites,
traced their descent from Shemitish ancestors nuxed with the Kushites
settled among them by their Hyrkanian masters; the Elamites were a typ-
ical race of this type. The short, thick-limbed Etruscans, base of the Ro-
man race, were descendants of a people of mixed Stygian, Hyrkanian
and Pictish strains, and originally lived in the ancient kingdom of Koth.
The Hyrkanians, retreating to the eastern shores of the continent,
evolved into the tribes later known as Tatars, Huns, Mongols and Turks.

22
 The origins of other races of the modern world may be similarly
traced; in almost every case, older far than they realize, their history
stretches back into the mists of the forgotten Hyborian age …

23
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