The Dream of Scipio

By Iain Pears

RIVERHEAD; 416 PAGES; $27.95

The south of France, and that part of it whose role as a favored Roman province gave it a name, Provence, has cradled culture since before the last Ice Age, when the first artists began to decorate its caves. It has cradled rebellion too, sustained Christian heresies and seen them vanquished, launched crusades and, more recently, nurtured many a British and American expatriate writer.

Now Iain Pears, the author of "An Instance of the Fingerpost," a best- selling historical novel whose acclaim almost matched that of Eco's "The Name of the Rose," has chosen Provence as the stage for a historical novel spanning 1,500 years.

Pears could not have chosen a setting richer in beauty or in historical resonance. The three periods he chooses to focus on in his new book, "The Dream of Scipio," echo one another balefully. From late Roman times, under threat from Goth and Visigoth, we leap to medieval Europe during Rome's decay and Avignon's rise to glory as the seat of popes, while the Black Death threatens its residents as fearsomely as any barbarian horde. From 1400 it then seems a small step to occupied France during the Second World War, when darkness once more looms over European civilization.

In "The Dream of Scipio," our three periods each contain a hero with fateful political choices to make at a time when no one's hands can remain entirely clean. Our guide to the chaos of Roman Gaul under siege is Manlius Hippomanes, an aristocratic poet and philosopher who has been resigned to watching the curtain fall on civilization in the company of a dwindling band of friends. Now the opportunity arises to intervene

in the political future of Provence at the highest level, and test his philosophy against the exigencies of power.

Interwoven with Manlius' story is the medieval tale of young Olivier de Noyen, a poet like Manlius but a less erudite one. Not only younger but also more rash than Manlius, Olivier too intervenes in the political machinations of the period, and wagers his life for love.

Our third hero is Julien Barneuve, a French historian trying to navigate between extremes of left and right in occupied World War II France. Like Manlius and Olivier, Julien leaves purely intellectual pursuits behind and enters public service, in his case as a civil servant carrying out Nazi orders while attempting to mitigate their most cruel aspects.

Is it possible to tread a tightrope between competing evils? Is purity of heart enough? Is it ever right to sacrifice the innocent few for the greater good, and if not, must we simply back off and surrender power to evil? These are the questions that Pears addresses with patience and ingenuity, as his three heroes encounter similar moral conundrums dressed in the garb of different centuries.

They encounter healing love, too, each in his different way. For Manlius, it is Sophia, exiled heiress to an Alexandrian legacy of Gnosticism that, as the wheels of history turn, becomes a Neoplatonism that challenges Christianity on every point. For the Gnostic, there can be no resurrection of the body: The body is a hell we submit to in our soul's quest for purification and a blessed return, at death, to the universal soul. Manlius can never win Sophia's heart, much less her body, but only try to learn from her unyielding struggle toward the unity of wisdom and right action.

Olivier de Noyen loves Rebecca, an adoptive Jew. This puts him on a collision course with his patron, the formidable Cardinal Ceccani, for whom murderous anti-Semitism provides a popular platform in his own quest for the papacy and a return of the Church to Rome. And Julien Barneuve, the fastidious 20th century intellectual, also loves a Jew, the painter Julia Bronsen, at the worst possible moment in history for such an entanglement.

Sophia, the name of Manlius' adored teacher, invokes wisdom itself. In "The Dream of Scipio" it is the women who most embody the sense of certainty their men seek in vain. The women strive for truth and goodness and remain faithful to their beliefs.

Then again, neither Julia nor Rebecca aspire to worldly power, and Sophia actively shuns it. The reader might well conclude from "The Dream of Scipio" that this detachment from terrible choices makes it easier to cultivate wisdom.

In this fine, somber novel, the Jews and their scapegoat destiny recur in each of the three narrative threads, as they must in any panorama of European history. "The Dream of Scipio" is an adventure and an achievement to match "An Instance of the Fingerpost," even though the reader may feel that our scholarly author sometimes holds his intricate design at arm's length, happier describing than dramatizing. It's disappointing that the "Dream of Scipio" of the title, an imaginary reworking by Manlius of Cicero's masterwork and, notionally, the novel's exemplary Neoplatonist thesis, is scarcely brought to life by the author except in the form of general commentary.

The message of the book, however, is clear even in its omissions: The meaning of history lies in the design, in the weave so cunningly evoked by Pears in "The Dream of Scipio," and not in philosophies or histories or in the conclusions drawn by the wise. In the journey itself, as Pears' most enlightened characters repeatedly point out, lies the understanding.